Dream (April 27, 2010)

I was in a spacious room with big glass windows overlooking the sea. Weather became stormy. High tide and big waves reached the windows. I looked around and said to the others in the room:
- Look, this is what always happens in my dreams.

Dream (April 17, 2010)

There was an old palace open to the public visitors.
The palace was beautiful with big terraces, but in a rundown condition with dark hallways and broken glass windows. I ran into friends and acquaintances. S was an old friend who did not change a bit. He was still radiant and spontaneous as he used to be. H was my sister's friend. She also looked as she used to look 20 years ago. I was surprised to see her alone without her husband and four kids. And I also met B (I have just met B few days ago in a professional gathering)

Both S and B gave me two different pieces of clothes. Shirt and trousers.
I visited the palace again looking for S or B to give back the clothes. I felt it was my responsibility to return them but I walked alone in the hallways and there were very few people.

I only found H and we went together to one of the terraces. It was spacious and beautiful but the railing was broken. I looked around and felt happy and joyful and told H: Where can we find such beauty anywhere else? I looked at the broken railing and said to myself: Even this doesn't matter.

The key

After a hundred years
Nobody knows the place,--
Agony, that enacted there,
Motionless as peace.

Weeds triumphant ranged,
Strangers strolled and spelled
At the lone orthography
Of the elder dead.

Winds of summer fields
Recollect the way,--
Instinct picking up the key
Dropped by memory.

Emily Dickinson

Young, Happy and Dead

Painter: Morteza Katouzian


I knew him in 1998. He unexpectedly died from a brain stroke while walking in the street in 2001. He was 37 years old, married with one kid and he had an impressive path of changing careers.

What I remember most about him is when he said, while we were sipping our coffee some afternoon, that throughout his 4 year pre-marriage relationship and 6 year marriage, he never had a fight with his girlfriend/wife.

Superstitious as I was/am, I felt my heart sank at hearing him. It was never a tradition in my family to brag about being happy. Happiness seemed like a sin/bad omen the moment someone thought to utter the word.

I do not remember I met anyone who was as satisfied with his significant other and with his life as that friend was.

It is strange that the two friends of mine, whom I considered really lucky, passed away young.

In high school I had a close friend who seemed to miraculously get away with every wrong doing. When I heard later about his drowning in a lake, I felt ashamed of myself.

It was not only like admitting being happy was a bad omen, but even thinking that someone else was happy, I felt back then, was also a bad omen.