shaleewa

I go mad and disappear for 3 days every month with the moon

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Stockholm, Sweden

May 2016

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Croatia

June 2016

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Zagreb, Croatia

June 2016

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Plitvice Jezera, Croatia

June 2016

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Croatia

June 2016

I caught my wife with this fish. -Branko

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Italy

July 2016

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Italy 

July 2016

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Italy 

July 2016

It's humorous to me, they watching and we just yachting off the island hopping off Amalfi coast. Mafioso! Oh baby, you ever seen Saturn?

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Norway

August 2016

22 hours of daylight, night is merely dusk. 

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Stockholm, Sweden

May 2016

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BAY[L] AREA pt Trois

Circa 2016

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Russia

October 2016

Sprinkled between Moscow and St. Petersburg are shanti towns tucked into the trees, only partially visible to the passing high-speed trains transporting businessmen, screaming children and tourists. Homes built of corrugated iron or splintering wood that would quantify as sheds where I'm from and dilapidated, but functioning factories whose purposes were not translated loomed next door. Sitting in some sort of diner with not a blip of my language to be found, the best English speaker in town was called and presumably told to come meet me.

The now-familiar, boxy 1980-something Lada pulled up about 10 minutes later. With her pin straight hair and lipstick on her teeth, she told me I was the first American to visit their town, which I can't pronounce or spell on this keyboard, since the Cold War. There was an eerie sense of being an unwanted, but interesting spectacle.. she said I was "like a picture in your sleep." The borscht, with its side of sour cream, was free.

I called her Liz and she insisted on taking me somewhere I couldn't interpret. It was their local cemetery, which had a putrid scent, shallow graves and fresh cut flowers littered carelessly about. I did not take any photos and I cried when I got on the next train out.

The hospitality shown to me, the historical enemy, was captivating.

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St. Petersburg, Russia

October 2016

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Paris, France 

December 2016

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I need a mouth as wide as the sky to say the nature of a True Person, language as large as longing. The fragile vial inside me often breaks. No wonder I go mad and disappear for three days every month with the moon. For anyone in love with you, it’s always these invisible days. I’ve lost the thread of the story I was telling. My elephant roams his dreams of Hindustan again. Narrative, poetics, destroyed, my body, a dissolving, a return. Friend, I’ve shrunk to a hair trying to say your story. Would you tell mine? I’ve made up so many love stories. Now I feel fictional. Tell me! The truth is, you are speaking, not me. I am Sinai, and you are Moses walking there. This poetry is an echo of what you say. A piece of land can’t speak, or know anything! Or of it can, only within limits. The body is a device to calculate the astronomy of the spirit. Look through that astrolabe and become oceanic. Why this distracted talk? It’s not my fault I rave. You did this. Do you approve of my love-madness? Say yes. What language will you say it in, Arabic or Persian, or what? Once again, I must be tied up. Bring the curly ropes of your hair. Now I remember the story.

Rumi, The Fragile Vial

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Paris, France 

September 2015

I will cheat on every lover I ever have with Paris.

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Morning Light

I guess my first memory isn’t even a real* memory. It’s a dream. I had it every night of my life, until I realized I was having it every night of my life. For what seems like years, but couldn’t have been more than a few weeks, I was trapped in a cube shaped room. All the walls were white. Or they might have been black. Somehow there was so much depth to them. I sat in the corner, curled into a ball, cradling my own knees. 

I tried to think my way out. I paced the creases of the structure with my eyes. It was all smooth. Perfectly sealed. I wasn’t getting out. But how did I manage to get in? If I had gotten in, I had to be able to get out. I thought I could figure it out.

There never was an exit though. There was just the promise of the impending daylight.

I’ve always been a morning person…

Stockholm, Sweden 

August 2015

The most tender of lights shine on the summer mornings up North