#farnaz

[noleavestoblow]

- Farnaz Fatemi (from poem "Farnaz")

[jamiebythesea]

Beatrix, Marina & Farnaz

[missedstations]

“Farnaz” - Farnaz Fatemi

1. Our parents argued in a language we didn’t understand. We were born in Las Vegas or Teheran,

twin cities of fantasy and chance. My sister and I found our words in Long Beach, Big Wheels and Barbies,

Bluebird troops and kidnap breakfasts. A war forced our cousins to buy false passports, lose their savings.

We ate Chef Boyardee after school, hot spinach and meatball soup on the weekends. I yelled into a phone

so my Iranian family could hear me. I learned I was the silk carpet my mother didn’t own, the casino

payout my father kept chasing. I didn’t know until later the Persian Leopard was trapped

in the Zagros mountains after the Iran-Iraq war, in danger of tripping old mines.

2. I taught myself who I was by watching my sister carefully.   I worried when  

the day came and I wanted to say I’m not her. First out the womb,   she was named and I wasn’t.  

Her name is Iranian but sayable   by everyone. My name would wait. They waited until

they knew they had it right. Not Sheila, my mother’s veto. Farnaz, a name that made me lonely.  

We lived in between Iran and America, a customs declaration zone. By the time I was born

my mute parents wondered how to speak as Americans as they moved away

from the people who loved them. How could I know the dark inside their mouths hurt them, too.

3. My father studied numbers in the racing forms, and I bet following my gut. I influenced dice at the craps table

by spinning three times   in each direction while my father   placed his bets. Even now,

I’ll retell stories in my head one hundred times to end them right.   It’s a system.  

I came from the racetrack, ignoring   all the horses in the flesh. I sounded out   the names of long shots.  

The odds say Blinding Telegram will win, but I like the music of Queen the Fox.

I believed that how I got my name would mean something. I am still finding the names for some things: the youth my parents brought to parenting, the attention

I didn’t know I was waiting for, the word for wanting, feeling its deep hole. Such naming I have been slow to do. I am waiting until I have it right.

I know that once named there is a road down which that named thing runs, and I am not the one who built the road.

[all-seeing-ifer]

OH GOD DID HE KILL HIMSELF WHILE TRYING TO GET RID OF FARNAZ??? AND NOW HES TRYING TO STOP ALMA GAINING HER POWERS SO HE CAN COVER IT UP?????

[sensingthelandscape]

In this project, I was interested in creating a space where it gave away a hint of danger and disconnection but still craving company. The red light is used to emphasise this.

[sensingthelandscape]

trouble w/ wilderness

Throughout reading this text, I began to reflect on the “wilderness” of the different cultures that I have been introduced to as I have lived in 3 different areas and have visited 2. Cronan explaining wilderness being made by humans makes somewhat of a sense to me. We create these spaces to satisfy something within us that we crave and erase whatever history and belonging it had (Native Americans in this case). Israel is doing somewhat of the same thing; wiping away lands only to introduce a new “wilderness” in which humans come and manipulate in selfish ways. I see this as political and environmental as well.

I disagree with Cronan saying that “... our environmental problems began with the invention of agriculture”. I look at that invention in a different perspective where that act begins to bond wilderness and man; the act of planting a tree or hunting is something that the earth is here to provide. This theory then does not go with his thought on how man should cease to exist for wilderness to and vice versa. I do think that I have a biased and different perspective than Cronan to have such opinions as I see the true wilderness as a gift from God which man has selfishly manipulated to a point where one day it will become extinct and man will suffer - but that may also be an irrational statement to make. However, if we were to have treated wilderness with consideration we would not be in the boat that we are now. 

Comparing the wilderness of America (reflecting on Chicago + Texas) and of Iran was a sad realisation to me. In a sense, I believe there can be better solutions than we see here compared to Iran and I am sure to other locations as well. There is something different about the rain in Iran than the rain in America. The smell of grass is something I have never smelt so strongly here, of nature and of the soil (Iran does have its exceptions of course as Tehran is very polluted), but the natural outnumbers the artificial which is enhanced through the sense of smell as our eyes can trick us of what is real and what is not when we remove and dictate nature from this world and “correct” God’s intention with nature. The architecture of the whole country, Italy too from the places I’ve experienced, flatter the nature of the area as well if we are to consider human manipulations today and in the past. The grid system today is one of the most disturbing systems I’ve seen and this is because of the rigidness of it. It celebrates, to me, the inventions we’ve come up with and the extent of conveniences we crave which I am grateful for as I am guilty of this but am not proud of. This goes to many first world countries, whereas other areas where nature is celebrated gives the sense that you as a human are invited to this wilderness to dwell in.

[komid]

hey.... @farnaz i apologize for this being late but i wanted to draw u for your birthday. happy belated birthday!! i love you!✨💖

[bartolomeothecamiball]

farnaz replied to your post:did anyone like eureka 7 ao because i fucking...

It was good but i didn’t love it like I found out there was another season and it looked so bad I was like Bye Y'all I can’t do this for another 50 episodes

yea the only thing that seems enticing about it to me so far is that renton is now voiced by the guy who voiced holland and i fucking love that voice actor but the story is just not good enough to put above other stuff i want to watch