love from leila

!

2011-07-11T14:46:00.004-07:00

Captured with my iPhone when I was at the Home Depot yesterday, I wanted to get exactly this moment of lightning striking. We have been having thunderstorms every single afternoon---and sometimes evenings as well---for the past week plus. They're going to end soon, but this muggy heat and storminess has been wonderfully dramatic, an excuse to wear cosy grey marle in the p.m., and the cause of a mushroom the size of my head that's growing in our garden.

YES way

2011-07-10T16:41:00.002-07:00

I can think of so many people who would get a kick out of this, starting with my husband and ending with my father. For some reason it reminds me of driving up the Northland hill to my job at Eagle Boys' Pizza when I was about fifteen.

They Might Be Giants covers Chumbawamba

Via Amelia McGee.

scintillate, scintillate globule vivific

2011-07-08T17:01:00.001-07:00

THIS is very clever. If only Marzieh would tolerate slash learn these alternative lyrics.

that which I am not

2011-07-08T16:58:00.002-07:00

enjoyments

2011-05-19T13:11:00.006-07:00

God, it's been so incredibly gloomy outside every day since what feels like FOREVER. It's honestly and literally like dementors have taken up permanent residence in Colorado.

Despite the bleak outlook, or perhaps because of it, we've---well, mostly I've---been investing time in things that bring lots of lovely comfort and enjoyment.

1. BBC's Monty Don's Italian Gardens:

2. As Time Goes By:

3. Toni Childs's 'Zimbabwe'; 'When the Red Red Robin' (sung by Doris Day, Dean Martin, and "Whispering" Jack and "Whistling" Carson Robison); and 'When I am laid in earth':

4. the WOW Museum in Lafayette:

5. Admiring our plump, crunchy radishes and finding things to do with them:

6. Eating things like homemade pizza and Quicky and Creamy Vegetable White Bean Soup (at the bottom of the web page)

7. Looking at the fabulousity:

8. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:

9. Going to estate sales and finding gems like this:

10. Basking in these photos and looking forward to the days of summer; surely they will come soon.

long's gardens

2011-05-08T12:15:00.004-07:00

Another Spring Sunday, another morning outing. Today we went to Long's Gardens, a place I heard about just two days ago through a friend. We went and chose some buttery ones whose name I guess I don't remember correctly, since I can't seem to find them on the internet, and then because it's Mother's Day weekend we got to choose our own dwarf iris for freebies! Now we just have to work out where to plant them.

Shaun pointed out that, at just one mile north of downtown Boulder, these gardens must be prime real estate and therefore worth a mint. Except.

But the gardens are really quite lovely and quiet, Flatiron-adjacent and all.

In between some of the iris beds was this rye growing:

Along with a bunch of picturesque junk.

After that, it was a short ride into the city centre so that mama could eat some hot breakfast in the sun. Marzieh ate almost all of her Kid's breakfast at the Boulder Cafe after "gently" touching as many of the tulips in Pearl Street Mall that she could get to with her sticky paws.

denver botanical gardens

2011-05-02T14:43:00.002-07:00

It's still a little bit insufferably grey and overcast for a Colorado spring, so we had a bright treat on Sunday morning at the botanical gardens downtown.

balance

2011-04-22T12:25:00.008-07:00

Eat

Watch

Sing

Smell

See

Think

The Soul of Unemployment.

Hear

Read

Relate

This Moment.

Deliquesce

Laugh

Celebrate

Happy Ridvan xxoo

herbs mixed in

2011-04-03T08:33:00.004-07:00

Brandywine tomatoes, with unseen eggplant seedlings behind them.

Marjoram: tiny weeny seeds that have just been pressed into the surface of the soil.

Cucumbers!

Summer savoury. (I can't wait to try this.)

Mustard greens. (Also looking forward to mixing these into salads.)

There really is nothing else like seeing plants grow from seeds that you planted, watered, rearranged every day for maximum sunlight, and then eating the fruits of your labours. I look forward to this, and love it, every year. (This being my second year.)

something good

2011-04-03T08:09:00.003-07:00

To come out of being woken up before six a.m. on a Sunday morning by an unnaturally wakeful child:

sated

2011-03-25T18:14:00.003-07:00

I love this photo. The dress, the colour, the movement, the light. (via TLo.)

And if you have any interest whatsoever in body-image disorders, media literacy, fashion's beauty standards, or modelling then I recommend the model's memoir, "Hungry". It was funny, honest, inspiring, and intelligent.

small and greenies

2011-03-25T13:36:00.004-07:00

It's that time of year again, the one where spring is clearly on its way because our tomatoes are sprouting! This year we're doing things a bit differently, and that means watering the garden on a daily basis instead of hoping that Marzieh's intermittent hosing (with the hose; no innuendo intended) will do the job. So hopefully we will have some veggies that don't just start growing right before the first frost of the season and then turn to soggy mush overnight. (It was very sad coaxing our darling lone capsicum daily only to have it collapse in on itself sometime in October.)

Badí calendar

2011-03-24T13:38:00.004-07:00

Just this past weekend I received a super-big treat in the mail. It was a calendar, put together by a friend who is a photographer, that is based on the Bahá’í months. I can't even believe how beautiful it is, even printed on recycled paper. So lucky and happy, I put it above my head when I sleep.

twelve years old at heart

2011-03-24T13:23:00.002-07:00

I know that this is, like, so eighteen years ago, but I still wish that I could dance like this:

supermoon

2011-03-19T07:42:00.003-07:00

This morning when I woke up before dawn to fast, I couldn't understand the strong yellow light reflecting on the wall from the window. I peeked outside (maybe we had left an outside light on?) and saw the supermoon.

It was setting over the Rockies, and it was large, yellow, visibly cratered, and full.

I felt like some magic had touched me.

And later that morning, as I was trying to finish my breakfast, I realised that although from one window it was pitch-black outside, from the window on the other side of the house, morning blue had already lit up the sky.

It was kind of a cool metaphor.

soup

2010-09-26T12:58:00.003-07:00

As we move into colder months and our fridge holds two leftovers of kinds of soups made last week, I feel that this short film is very apropos.

In addition, it made me smile and think and cry, be moved, within the one minute fifty-four seconds of its duration. For me, it is a little genius.

Soup

Created by Andrew Nicholas McCann Smith & Rob Stockman
Directed by Aaron Phelan
Featuring Winnie MacIsaac

(Also, it is created by my friend Andrew McCann Smith, and it is shortlisted for the Guggenheim Museum YouTube Play competition, the video for which runs at a very different pace to "Soup".)

a small update

2010-09-22T11:42:00.006-07:00

1. Favourite new smell, which is actually almost intoxicating: in a dry pan, stir two teaspoons of whole cumin seeds until the pan begins to smoke. Pour into a (coffee) grinder and blitz for about 20 - 30 seconds. Remove lid, bend over, and put nose directly into the smokey aroma coming out of the grinder. It's a trip, man.

2. There's nothing else like the experience of plunging my finger into my daughter's diaper while she's still wearing it, and coming out with a finger covered in poo.

3. Cooler weather started last weekend, and I brought out my winter cardigans. Bring on the cosy.

4. When we go to Australia in December, I think I will have to buy the Stickmaster. And an adapter for when I bring it back to America.

5. This raita is the one of the best I've ever tried, and, although the flavour changes somewhat, the vegan version using coconut milk instead of yoghurt is equally delish. I've been eating it with toasted pita bread.

6. The only animals that spot the fields surrounding our suburb are cows. Black cows, and only a handful at that. Nevertheless, Marzieh is super enthusiastic about bovines, bellowing MOOs whenever she sees one (on a flashcard, in a book, etc.), and that makes me look twice at things like the World's Smallest Cow.

7. After recently finishing watching the second season of Masterchef Australia, I can't separate this song by Katy Perry from the experience of watching that show, but the visual of being on Sesame Street does actually add something different:

8. Although the book that I've been reading since 4 July is a good one, it's also a slow-moving long one ("Eleanor and Franklin" by Joseph Lash). So every so often I'll read another book for a few days, which mostly has the effect of making me like the old tome more, appreciative of its writing, etc.

Speaking of good writing, this article is not. Iris Krasnow's "Surrendering to Motherhood" is a book I bought at the library for a few cents, and, knowing nothing about her, I googled her to just get a grasp on the basics.

'Feminists took homage with Krasnow’s ideas. “I was at Stanford in the 70s when women were fighting for equality. I was a features writer for UPI before my son’s were born, roaming the world interviewing celebrities ..."'

Of course I could just be under-read and have never come across this construction before, but is it possible to "take homage with" something? I look up "homage", and it indicates that it means, "respect or reverence paid or rendered". I think that even if you want to say "took homage" it would have to go with another preposition, most likely "from". So, to me, that sentence is a mess---to read, to understand, to fathom.

And even if you think that's okay, how can "before my son's were born" be condoned? I mean, I know that the internet is full of this stuff, and I have no idea what kind of newspaper "The Examiner" is, but it looks to me like a published article, and underneath the author's profile pic, there is a link that invites you to read more stuff by her. Did no one else proofread this? I feel baffled by the idea that people were paid to produce this content.

9. Just this weekend I went from the cheapest phone out there to the most expensive. After just over a year with Motorola Tracfone, which would deduct (paid-for) minutes without sending messages and for which I had to spend approximately one week of my life on hold, I decided that I needed a cellphone that actually worked, even if I had to pay for it to do so. This feeling was compounded when our landline---and that does cost us a bunch---also began to screw up, cutting out my voice from phonecalls, especially ones in which I was trying to get across very. important. points.

So on Saturday I got an iPhone 4. The phone part hasn't been connected yet, but I have been LOVING taking videos of Marzieh and immediately sending them to family through email, or uploading them to flickr with one or two clicks. I know that the monthly plan could support the entire magazine industry of a small country, but in this case it's justified (in my mind, at least) by our cutting not only the old cell phone, but the landline as well.

10. One of my other favourite recipes is this on Girl's Gone Child, for kale. Crispy kale. The combination with parmesan cheese is almost unreal---such an unusual, new sort of umami flavour---but they are seriously delicious alone with salt. I've been making it about once a month since that post came up ... and in fact, I have some kale in my fridge right now.

photoshop disaster

2010-06-16T10:08:00.003-07:00

This is why people are afraid of their shadows.

(Australian actress Naomi Watts in Blackbook magazine; original at Just Jared.)

noo zild treks

2010-06-08T09:37:00.002-07:00

I recently got in touch with an old friend from New Zealand; he was travelling around, writing and playing his music back then, too, and I am just so heart-burstingly happy for him for pursuing his dreams: his music, which is always raw and true. And not infrequently falsetto.

Now he has released three albums, which I'm adding to my collection of his music: up until now it's consisted of a single cassette that I've carried with me around the world for the past ten years, and since my husband forbids me to bring a tape player into the house, I haven't even been able to listen to it for the past five.

Thank goodness for YouTube:

And this song has been around since before I left Wellington, although back then I remember Tommy saying that when he recorded his album it would be called "Pillows", which he'd yell out at the close of the music, mainly in order to mess with people. The video clip is hilarious, especially if you manage not to pay attention to the lack of seat-belt safety:

Also there's this fantastic song by Grant Hindin-Miller, If, for which his son, Isaac, has put together a video clip:

perfect peonies

2010-06-06T10:52:00.005-07:00

My new favourite flower, courtesy of the people who planted our garden before we moved into our house.

They look great in close-ups.

And have a lot of texture.

Could be mistaken for other flowers.

And can be disguised in the abstract.

Like a bloom from a previous era, vintage.

With outrageous colour.

A refreshing burst in the late-Spring heat.

So delicate.

And fleshy.

And perhaps just a little too much.

wedgies

2010-05-28T10:28:00.002-07:00

Spinaches. One of the rows is Bloomsdale, an heirloom variety, and the other is Lavewa.

A rose that we bought on sale, it's very fragrant, and I think a tea rose? Heirloom? So bad with names, unless I keep the packaging.

Carnival carrots!

Serrano Tampiqueno (chile peppers), sun gold cherry tomatoes, green zebra tomatoes, and purple beauty and canary bell capsicae (capsicums? bell peppers).

Inadvertent lettuces in our gravel border:

And sweet peas on the deck.

things i've learned in the past month

2010-05-26T17:33:00.005-07:00

1. Ground cardamom is $72/pound, which means that our monthly cardamom budget is approximately $16.

2. I am the luckiest girl in middle America: this year alone we have had, or are projected to have, a total of thirteen of our nearest and dearest come to visit us in Colorado. It's like being at the World Centre again.

3. Of course the same week that it is utter chaos at our place, with four-and-a-half house guests, including children and teething, I get my first little work assignment in months.

4. There is a finite number of syntactical ways to combine the information of the revenue (in billions of dollars) and the total employees of sixty different global companies in interesting yet logical sentences.

5. Did you know that babies drink in their mothers' hormones while breastfeeding? Yeah, there is a reason why menstruation is usually suspended during the period a mother nurses her child.

6. I am not at all prepared for three-year-olds.

7. I can drive to new destinations by myself, even leading another car without getting lost.

8. That I love, love, love taking long and strong solitary walks in what counts for the wildnerness in our suburb. The prarie dogs, the birds of prey, the wind, the light, the sky: it makes me feel self-sufficient, and lean and mean and free.

9. That my daughter is going to bring an infinite amount of love and joy into my life, forever and away. She is so amazing, so affectionate and headstrong and silly, it physically hurts me to not be able to literally force her whole body down my throat.

10. The day after you lend a friend your spare car, the one that almost never gets used, the "check engine" light of your main car will alarmingly turn on when you're on the way back from the airport, and you'll be carless indefinitely, which in the suburbs feels terrifyingly like being stuck and lost at the same time, even though you barely use either car in the first place.

ta douleur

2010-04-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know whether I've posted this clip before, but the point is that Camille's album "Le Fil" is one of my favourites to listen to when I am trying to get stuff done while the baby is asleep.

She is awesome.

spring

2010-04-18T19:29:00.002-07:00

One year and one day ago, the three of us moved to Colorado, hoping for a better life. Well, hoping for more sunshine.

This weekend we spent some time unintentionally celebrating the difference between where we were at, literally and metaphorically, 365 days ago and today ... as well as some similarities.

I just ran out of steam to write down a full list, so for now I'll let my pictures do the talking:

I CAN SEE

2010-03-31T19:36:00.003-07:00

Now that I can drive, I thought it was high time I could see as well.

Life is so amazing right now: I'm busy as heck but somehow it's all good. And the thing that just sent everything soaring into the stratosphere was leaving the optometrists' office wearing contact lenses.

I have been wearing glasses since I was eleven years old. This is the first time in my life that I can see clearly without little peripheral frames, dark edges in between my eyes and the world.

It's unbelievable. It's miraculous. I feel like I've had lasik surgery. I feel like I've been reborn. Actually, what I wanted to shout out loud when the nurse first slotted them onto my eyeballs was, I'M ALIVE!

I'm sure this is what babies feel when they open their eyes for the first time in this world: You guys, I'M ALIVE!

I have lots of pictures of the past ... erm ... weeks. Also there are articles and links and lovely things to look at. Most importantly, for your eyes as well as mine, there is this fabulous OTHER collaborative photography project, based on the Badi calendar of nineteen months which are each named after an attribute of God. Fittingly, it is called Nineteen Months.

The first Baha'i month is Splendour. Here are fifteen photos from around the world that have captured a moment of splendour.

in the past week

2010-03-15T19:43:00.009-07:00

My husband brushed out three dreadlocks from my hair. They had formed naturally. The whole time he combed and teased out, he talked about how it's not rocket science, this daily maintenance of hair. And then he asked me what is this substance that's holding them together, is it peanut butter?

I found a fridge magnet that was missing its small round magnet. It coincided with a day of not-very-good-eating on the part of my fourteen-month-old daughter. I took the empty plastic up to the husband, asking whether she might have swallowed it and therefore could it be cause for concern? His first response was, "You know some cows spend their whole lives with magnets in their stomachs."

Yesterday it was a rare day of lots of rain in the Denver area. As we drove down to a family dinner in another part of town, we passed a man in our neighbourhood who was in his front garden, wearing a heavy raincoat with the hood up over his head, watering his lawn.

In less than seven days, I interacted with two women who each had at least one heavily black and bruised eye. One of them had stitches in addition to the injury. Since they were wearing big black sunglasses indoors, I presumed I was meant not to notice, and so I didn't say anything. Now I'm wondering whether I should have, anyway.

I received a surprise bill from the hospital where Marzieh was born, in Washington State, for a very overdue $15.00. Now I know what to do with the cheque I received last week from the same hospital, for overpaying my account by $15.00.

I got a print-out of my driver's licence, still waiting for the card to arrive in the mail, and I drove (!). Multiple times (!!).

Marzieh and I spent time with our next-door neighbours, and it turns out that the wife portion of the couple is from New Zealand.

I opened my antique sewing machine, bought at an estate sale a couple of months ago, and for the first time since I was fifteen, I sewed together an item of clothing. A summer-weather sleep sack for our baby bean! My pride knows no bounds.

Whoever decided daylight savings's time change was a good idea did not have children.

The baby just started imitating the sound of the kettle whistling when it boils on the stove.

with flying colours

2010-03-08T16:52:00.004-08:00

Today I sat my final driving lesson and passed my driving test with flying colours! Literally! The tester told me I was speeding a little too much!

And now you have to imagine me crouched over the steering wheel while I'm doing this flamboyant speeding, because I'm almost thirty years old and still learning how to drive.

GOUT AND DECREPITUDE!

Anyway, exhaustion is setting in. In between the nineteen days online project and the nineteen days book, my delicious little toddling one-year-old, my necessary bedtime reading, and a million other little projects that I'm putting as second priority after I clean a week's worth of dinners off our kitchen floor, I have commanded my husband to command me to go to sleep at 7:30 pm tonight.

Yep, life is good.

This video is just the icing on the cake:

And this video just only showcases the coolest, cutest, awesomest, turned-up-to-eleven most fantastic song ever:

"nineteen days" book giveaway

2010-03-07T08:50:00.005-08:00

Amy, Anjali and I spent the past two months collecting the images and the words of our 'nineteen days' project from last year. The result? A lovely book, filled with over eighty full-colour pictures, from a cup of tea in America to a blazing sunset over an African capital ... it is a truly precious thing to us, and we hope it will be to you too!

We have three copies of the book to give away---as a special thank-you to friends who purchase the book and help spread the word about it. Here is what you need to do to be eligible for the giveaway:

(1) Do at least one of the following: join our facebook group, follow us on twitter at @nineteendays, post the cover of “nineteen days” to your flickr account and link to the “nineteen days” shopping site, or blog about this giveaway.

(2) Buy at least one copy of "nineteen days": the more copies you buy, the more times you are entered to win one of the three giveaway copies.

(3) Let us know that you’re in to win by contacting us. You can do one or more of the following:

* tweet this message: “Hey, @nineteendays, count me in for your book giveaway!”
* leave a comment on this blog or the nineteen days blog
* contact us on flickr, letting us know you’ve posted the cover (Amy, Anjali, or Leila).
* post something relevant on your facebook status (and then let us know on our facebook group’s wall).

(4) Winner(s) of the three giveaway copies of “nineteen days” will be chosen by random selection.

(5) On Tuesday, 9 March 2010, at 5pm MST we will announce the winner(s) of the three giveaway copies of “nineteen days“!

This is a beautiful book, a five-star book, a book you know you need.

be your own hero

2010-03-06T20:42:00.004-08:00

"Whip It" is awesome. It makes me think I should join my local roller derby. You should watch it.

iranian thesaurus

2010-03-05T07:19:00.004-08:00

Me: Today at the park, this woman walking her two dogs called out to me, "Do you watch Days of Our Lives"? And I was like, No. And then she said that I look like one of the characters from that show, someone called "Chloe". She said she had long black hair and I looked just like her. So now I'm looking up "Chloe on Days of Our Lives" on the internet (I was wearing big sunglasses at the park, obscuring most of my face, hence the perceived resemblance), and guess what? The actress is half-Iranian. Her dad is Swedish and her mum is Iranian! What are the chances of that?

Shaun: You're asking, What are the chances that you look half-Iranian?

Me: ...

Shaun: That's crazy.

Me: ...

Shaun: What will they think of next?

(Thanks, Behi, I LOVED this videoclip!)

to see or not to see

2010-03-04T09:07:00.008-08:00

Ever since I sat on my glasses one evening, warping them irreparably, as I was putting Marzieh to bed, I've been thinking more seriously about transitioning to contact lenses.

For seventeen years I've worn glasses, though. (Oh, goodness. Seventeen. Years. A lifetime unto itself.) Right now my old frames fall off my face if I bend over from the waist at 90 degrees, which is most of my day, living with someone under three feet tall. It's very irritating, and I know that the exact same thing could happen if I replace these ones with new glasses, but I'm not sure whether I'm completely ready to give them up entirely.

Especially when frames like these are alive and well in the world.

So, this is one of my current conundrums: contacts or glasses.

While I ponder that in the innermost recesses of my soul, my eyes enjoy things like this, because it's so different from my life, it may as well be life on the moon:

beautiful book

2010-03-03T09:47:00.006-08:00

I have my copy of "nineteen days"! It's one of the test runs, so it's an earlier version of the copy that you'll receive.

It's a sweet, neat package, with bright, true colours; original photography; and peaceful, inspiring words to read.

The layout of the book is different to the website; each "day" has been designed specifically with that day's reading and selection of photographs in mind.

I have been working on this book, together with my friends Anjali and Amy, for more than two months now, and every day I've been thrilled with the results, inspired by the artistry, and heart-swelled with reading the chosen passages of text.

I mean my enthusiasm has not waned one jot or tittle. It is simply a splendid spread.

It really is as beautiful as it looks, and I think you'll agree with me in realising that your life is incomplete without a copy of "nineteen days" on your bookshelf, especially when you consider that it's a non-profit, limited edition of 250 copies. Hurry, get your copy quick! Vite, vite! SCHNELL!

nineteen days, volume one

2010-03-02T07:39:00.004-08:00

nineteen days is an ongoing photographic collaboration designed to share moments of the dawns and dusks of the Bahá’í Fast, from Bahá’ís around the world.

Started in 2008, nineteen days was at first only an online project, at www.nineteendays.wordpress.com

This year its creators have collected some of the photographs from the project’s second year and compiled them into a book.

Filled with more than eighty full-color pictures, from a cup of tea at breakfast in America to a blazing sunset over an African capital, the original and intimate images of nineteen days offer the reader’s eyes a visual feast, even as the Holy Writings of the Bahá’í Faith quoted on each day’s spread provide sustenance to the soul.

nineteen days’ quotations from the spiritual words of Bahá’u’lláh, the Báb, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá are accompanied by a beautiful ensemble of photographs that have been chosen to rejoice the heart and give pleasure to the spirit as the reader journeys through the mindful and sparkling days of the Fast.

To pre-order your copy of nineteen days please visit

www.nineteendays.bigcartel.com

We thank you for your support!

For further enquiries, please contact 19dayspress [at] gmail [dot] com.

nineteen days, year three

2010-03-01T10:34:00.003-08:00

It's that time of year again: The Baha'i Fast.

It is essentially a period of meditation and prayer, of spiritual recuperation, during which the believer must strive to make the necessary readjustments in his inner life, and to refresh and reinvigorate the spiritual forces latent in his soul. Its significance and purpose are, therefore, fundamentally spiritual in character.

–Shoghi Effendi —

Amy and I are preparing a spectacular photographic collaboration, starting tomorrow, of dawns and dusks from around the world, as Baha'is begin and break their daily fasts.

I'm speaking, of course, of nineteen days.

The first year we started this project, in 2008, Amy and I worked together from across the world to capture glimpses from these precious moments of the early mornings and evenings of our days.

Then, last year, in 2009, we asked one guest photographer to join us every day, a collegial effort that resulted in six photos daily, and many coincidentally beautiful harmonies.

This year we're turning the volume up to eleven with a broad, ambitious project of thirty-eight photographers.

We're returning to our roots in formatting, with two photographers posting two photos each day. Amy and I will post for one of the nineteen days of the Fast, but the rest of the images will be from our generous and talented guests.

This year we hope you'll join us again, spread the word, and hopefully even participate, by posting on your own flickr or website the photos you take every dawn and dusk.

We hope nineteen days will be a refreshing, inspiring, and artistic accompaniment to your fasting experience.

Happy Ayyám-i-Há!

2010-02-28T18:45:00.004-08:00

[The below essay was sent to me in an email, written by an individual believer. Apart from the italicised quotations, no part of this is authoritative or to be considered part of Baha'i Scripture. It is simply one person's understanding of these days that are currently being celebrated by Baha'is around the world. And I liked it.]

Ayyám-i-Há: Days Outside of Time

The Ayyám-i-Há holiday begins each year on the evening of February 25 and ends at sunset on March 1st. Of this period Bahá’u’lláh writes: “It behoveth the people of Bahá, throughout these days, to provide good cheer for themselves, their kindred and, beyond them, the poor and needy, and with joy and exultation to hail and glorify their Lord, to sing His praise and magnify His Name.”

A closer look at the history and background of Ayyám-i-Há can help us to value it even more for its unique spirit, resist any temptation to turn it into a “Christmas equivalent,” and discover some of its beautiful and mystical symbolic meanings.

The Baha’i calendar of 19 months of 19 days needs 4 days (5 in leap years) to equal a solar year. By definition such added days are “intercalary” days. In revealing this “Badí’” calendar, the Báb did not say exactly where to place the extra days. Some of the early Bábís included them as part of the Fast, others stopped fasting 4 or 5 days before Naw-Rúz (the new calendar year). Bahá’u’lláh named these days in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas and specified their place in the year:

“Let the days in excess of the months be placed before the month of fasting. We have ordained that these, amid all nights and days, shall be the manifestations of the letter “Há”, and thus they have not been bounded by the limits of the year and its months...and when they end—these days of giving that precede the season of restraint—let them enter upon the Fast. Thus hath it been ordained by Him Who is the Lord of all mankind.”

As in His prayer for Ayyám-i-Há, Bahá’u’lláh juxtaposes these “days of giving” with the Fast’s “season of restraint.” Ayyám-i-Há is intended partly as spiritual preparation for the Fast, a reminder of its approach, and a way of fostering the detachment from material things so necessary for the Fast.

Ayyám-i-Há means the “Days of “Há”.” “Há” is the Arabic letter corresponding to the English “H”, and one of the three Arabic letters which make up the word “Bahá.” Both Bahá’u’lláh and the Báb followed the Arabic tradition of assigning numerical values to letters, and of giving spiritual meanings to both. The numerical value of “Há” is 5, the sum of the numerical values of the letters in the “Báb,” and the maximum number of intercalary days.

“Há” is also the first letter of an Arabic pronoun commonly used in Arabic religious writings to refer to God, or “the Divine Essence.” “Há” by itself is used as a symbol of “the Essence of God,” and was the subject of many an Arabic essay on its mysteries. In Bahá’u’lláh’s Tablet of All Food the realm “beyond which there is no passing,” or the realm of the Divine Essence is designated as “Háhút.” In the Báb’s interpretation of the letter “Há” (quoted by Bahá’u’lláh in the Kitáb-i-Iqán), the Báb speaks of martyrdom in the path of God and warns “even if all the kings of the earth were to be leagued together they would be powerless to take from me a single letter...”

Bahá’u’lláh has designated the intercalary days “amid all the nights and days” as “manifestations of the letter ‘Ha’ ”—that is, as Days of the Divine Essence. These extra days stand apart from the ordinary cycle of weeks and months and the human measure of time. They are not “bounded by the limits of the year and its months”—just as the infinite reality of the divine Essence of God is unbounded and cannot be captured or comprehended within the cycle of time or any other human measurement.

Thus Ayyám-i-Há can be thought of as days outside of time, days that symbolize eternity, infinity, and the mystery and unknowable Essence of God Himself. Contemplation during these days of the timeless mystery of the Essence of God provides us the “joy and exultation” with which to “sing His praise and magnify His Name.”

colorado

2010-02-27T17:50:00.004-08:00

This photo makes me think "the shack", which is also the name of a book that has been recommended to me by some friends. It was at my Bible-study group that "The Shack" was mentioned, and because of the subject we were discussing at that moment, I asked, "Is it a parenting book?"

Boulder is where I have my driving lessons.

Shaun has to drive me there, since I'm still learning.

When we left the suburbs, we could see Longs Peak really clearly.

But mostly the countryside looks like this recently.

eighties nostalgia

2010-02-26T15:27:00.002-08:00

Today I read that Cyndi Lauper and Tori Amos have done a collaboration for some album based on Imelda Marcos's life? It sounds unlikely, but then so are those two songbirds. The video clip of their song on the yet-to-be-released album is not a video clip at all, so don't bother watching it, but I do like the musics:

It reminded me of Kate Bush, actually. (The video clip is a bit saucy.)

And "Babooshka", or one of her other emphatic songs, is what I'm always reminded of when we listen to "Who Put the Alphabet in Alphabetical Order?" by They Might Be Giants:

today

2010-02-25T16:54:00.002-08:00

I was on hold with my cell-phone provider for a total of two hours this morning, even though I have the direct extension number for the person who's handling my case. (For full effect, add these hours to the other three hours I've been on hold with them so far this week.)

Marzieh and I made it to the library on our walk just as it began to rain. And then snow. Again.

I had vegetarian Chinese food for dinner.

Marzieh ate some of my spicy Chik'n patty without flinching.

Moments before heading out the door, I dropped a glass jar onto our kitchen tiles, where it shattered right next to a pile of baby gear, including Marzie's winter jacket.

I had to nurse my baby for about twenty minutes to help her calm down after the hysterics caused by using the vacuum cleaner on the swept tiles.

I discovered that I have lost all faith in all customer-service representatives of all businesses.

This soothed me, made me feel better about life.

I am so glad that the closest experience I have to this one is being told by a complete stranger, with whom I had been interacting for three minutes, to "Be a good mother! Give her chicken nuggets!"

We hung out with dear friends today and enjoyed looking at their colourful Ayyam-i-Ha decorations.

got ants in my pants

2010-02-24T16:19:00.006-08:00

Lately I have had a bad run, or karmic return, or something equally superstitious and utterly real, with "customer-service" representatives of various businesses and offices.

It can cause white-hot rage and then instantaneous, crushing disillusionment within nanoseconds because I abhor the injustice of the situation but am in reality utterly powerless to do anything other than change my attitude about it.

If I could, if I were any kind of celebrity, I would honestly threaten these companies with Internet Infamy: I have enough reason to, and they deserve it, and I hate them all, etc., and I know it's not the most spiritually evolved, zen yogic position to take in these scenarios, but, by God, if it gets results, then I would do it.

In addition to spending more than one-and-a-half hours on hold to get through to someone for whom I have a personal extension number, I realised today that I may never again be able to keep my eyebrows under good repair. My face suit! I was devastated.

It was the eyebrows that broke the mama's back.

Thankfully, James Brown came to the rescue. Again.

There is nearly always a mix of music playing in the background during the day, and while I occasionally have to fast-forward through a rousing rendition of Electric Six's "Gay Bar" (Mum, don't click that link!) or a droning lecture on bioethics, it's generally an awesome selection of upbeat music.

James Brown, of course, has a starring role in the lineup. Today when "I Got Ants in My Pants" came on, I turned the volume up to 11 because I could and danced at the top of my lungs, with Marzieh happily bouncing along, and the world was made right again.

I want to go to there:

Same song, this time with puppies:

decals

2010-02-23T16:47:00.003-08:00

I would love to decorate Marzieh's as-yet-undecorated room with any or all of these decals.

I will always have a soft spot for dinosaurs, and since I hope my baby will too, these dinosaurs from Mae Collection would help cultivate that desired fondness. (Via on montague.)

Okay, so this one would be a bit impractical, since she'd topple that magazine stack, smacking each sheaf of paper against the walls, before you could say "Who's the most ladylike baby in the room?", but I still think Florian Kremb's seat-decal looks cool (and what a fabulous name!), if somewhat narrow for my post-partum posterior. (Via a friend I know from the Balkans.)

And last but not least, these little chalkboard wall stickers from cocoboheme are so appealing to me because of the contrast of whimsy and stark silhouettes. Again, I don't know how reasonable it would be to combine blackboards with impossible-to-cut baby fingernails, but the ideal idea is charming. I especially love the penguin. (Via Offbeat Mama.)

everything is illuminated

2010-02-22T09:28:00.006-08:00

... and sparkling, and blue, and clear, and crisp, and cosy.

Ever since Thursday, when it started snowing on our way home from the social security office in Boulder (part of a saga I can never forget), we have been smothered in inches of snow and freezing weather. It's gorgeous. I love it. I love it here.

All around the country---nay, all around the northern hemisphere---I incline my ear to the lamentations of my dearest friends as they bemoan the length and frigidity of this winter.

I do understand their feelings, as I have myself frequently felt the oppression of the cursed seasonal affective disorder.

But my own reminder of how long it's been cold for came just over this weekend, when I was nursing Marzieh, who was wearing a short-sleeved onesie. Tickling her dimpled elbows, delighting in her soft shoulders, it occurred to me how terribly long it's been since she has hung out with bare arms. Since any of us have hung out with bare arms (with the exception of Shaun, who long ago deliberately developed subcutaneous fat for the express purpose of wearing short sleeves all year long and besides must have a small furnace surgically implanted in his belly, because he is never cold. The weirdo).

It's been months and months of snow and below-freezing temperatures: normally at this point I would be languishing under covers, refusing to acknowledge a point to existence or even that anyone could find it adorable to look at canoodling kittens playing with a rescued squirrel.

What has been going on that I hadn't noticed the winter?

Well, there's my own version of adorable infant animals: my own canoodlesome Marzieh! She just gets better and better, especially now that she's sleeping through the night (for more than eleven-and-a-half hours, suckas!), and is communicating more and more, and is just the most enormously perfect individual with her own wonderful, weird, and winsome personality.

And there is our lovely house, with lots of rooms to move around in through the days and weeks of snow and cold. We don't really get bored, really.

But the main thing, I think, is the weather. Colorado weather. It's glorious. It's splendid. It's delicious. It's terrific. It's where I want to be.

Almost every day is sunshine and blue skies. The overcast days seem to be ones where it's snowing all day, so it's more misty white than glum grey (I'm looking at you, Seattle). It hardly ever rains. Wind is noticeable because it's so rare. There are at least three beautiful little green parks within a short walking distance---no, five---and even in the middle of winter, the warmth of the sun transforms the day from brisk to balmy. Even though the grass and trees are mostly bare and brown right now, we can't see them! Because of the ugly-covering snow! And by that I mean the snow that covers everything that's ugly! So the evergreen conifers are what you notice when you look outside, them and the starkly beautiful aspens, which are stunning whether leafed or no, and your eye glides over any imperfections.

You honestly can't imagine what it's like until you come here (OI! EXTREMIE!).

You have to come here. You all have to come here. (We have lots of beds.)

weird wednesday

2010-02-17T10:21:00.006-08:00

Two weird things, both card-related:

1. My friend Amy, who sent Marzieh a cosy little woollen hat that she herself hand-knitted, received a thank-you card from us yesterday. The very same thank-you card I'd dropped off at the post office an entire year ago.

2. This is one of the cards my husband received for his birthday a couple of months ago:

From someone he's never met.

Our mortgage broker.

One more time for the people in the cheap seats (me):

on the nature of capacity

2010-02-15T08:29:00.002-08:00

... capacity is of two kinds: natural capacity and acquired capacity. The first, which is the creation of God, is purely good---in the creation of God there is no evil; but the acquired capacity has become the cause of the appearance of evil.

For example, God has created all men in such a manner and has given them such a constitution and such capacities that they are benefited by sugar and honey and harmed and destroyed by poison. This nature and constitution is innate, and God has given it equally to all mankind. But man begins little by little to accustom himself to poison by taking a small quantity each day, and gradually increasing it, until he reaches such a point that he cannot live without a gram of opium every day.

The natural capacities are thus completely perverted. Observe how much the natural capacity and constitution can be changed, until by different habits and training they become entirely perverted. One does not criticize vicious people because of their innate capacities and nature, but rather for their acquired capacities and nature.

'Abdu'l-Baha, "Some Answered Questions", pp. 214--215

same time, same place

2010-02-14T09:37:00.004-08:00

... different week. One week exactly after the last snowfall, our Colorado suburb has had another. This time I was canny enough to schedule my driving lesson for Saturday, so I had an amazing two-hour drive all over the place yesterday, even, if you can believe it, on the motorways.

yoga or the holy spirit

2010-02-13T08:52:00.013-08:00

I'm participating in this Bible-study class for mothers, once a week. It's a lot like a Ruhi book. There's even a "textbook" with quotations from the Bible and questions about our lives as mothers that relate to the biblical passage. Hopefully Marzieh will adjust her nap schedule so that we can make it to an afternoon session, where she'll play with other babies while the moms and I talk through mindful parenting, but right now I'm always late to the evening sessions, rushing out the door as soon as I'm assured that she's down for the night.

Because I'm not a Christian, I have questions about ideology and idioms that I've never thought about or heard of before. Last week, there was a lot of talk about how as fallible human beings we often don't have the wherewithal to deal with challenging (parenting) situations in the best, most spiritually-minded way. That is, even though we may think that we're the mouthpiece of divine wisdom when deciding things for, or speaking with our children or husbands ... we're really not. There was discussion about how to let go of what we think we want/need and to let Jesus Christ step in, almost step into our skins, and act and speak for us.

There is a lot of nuance in any thoughtful person's spiritual beliefs, and so I'm not sure that I understand the whole picture of what the other women were talking about. I do believe that Jesus Christ was a divine Messenger from God, Who lived on earth to educate humanity on how to live most happily, most healthily, and most prosperously. I do believe in humility about my own abilities: no matter how capable I am in different fields, I suppose that it is possible I don't always know what's the best way of dealing with everything, all the time (Bob Dylan/Abe Lincoln/P. T. Barnum said something like that). And I think that there is not only free will, but virtuous character traits that every person is born with.

My point is, I don't know that I think it makes complete sense, every time I am faced with a situation that it stumping me, to say that the only option open to me is to turn my will/desires/needs/wants over to Jesus Christ (or a holy spirit, or divine grace). If I understand correctly, this is called "being crucified with Christ"; I think I would call this "dying to self". I think that that is part of it, but not only to I have to make the effort to relinquish my will, I also have to make an effort to think of a stronger thought of peace when I am filled with war.

There's grace, and there's free will, and there's the refinement of my character.

Here's an example, not necessarily of showing how these three elements work perfectly together to produce a shining moment of heroism and sainthood, because, Hello! to the contrary, my life rarely works like that, but I think it'll illustrate the point nevertheless.

Marzieh is getting better and better at sleeping. THANK YOU, GOD. I knew it wouldn't be any skin off Your nose to get her to sleep in more than two-hour increments! She is more and more frequently sleeping through the night, for five or six hours at a time, and this feels miraculous.

There are some nights, however, where she wakes up three or four times, and although I really try not to look at the clock before I go to her, because I don't want to wind myself up even more, these times are generally around nine p.m., midnight, three a.m., and five-thirty a.m.

And these, verily, are nights I despise.

Of course there must be a reason for her wakefulness, teeth coming through or bad dreams or hunger or something. But I promise you, there is almost no way that I am able to deal with it other than to resentfully throw off the covers from my slumbersome body; stagger out of my warm bed (occasionally holding on to furniture on my way); pick up my screaming baby with the utmost loathing for the requirement of my eyes being open; lie down with her on the cold mattress on her floor, the coldness of which is magnified by my surliness to the frost of an ice floe; and energetically but silently smother every reasonable impulse to firmly tell my pre-verbal one-year old that It Is Three O'Clock In The Morning. Now Effing Go To Effing Sleep.

Naturally, all this resentful loathing and surly mental swearing requires a lengthy enumeration in my mind of all the ways in the history of the world in which I have ever been wronged. There is a lot of fuming thinking, much tensing of muscles and gritting of teeth.

It's three o'clock in the morning and I am so wired and angry I can't fall back asleep.

So this is the thing: whenever this happens, which is every time that Marzieh wakes up in the middle of the night, I try really hard to catch myself before I board that train to Angry Crazy Town, located in the middle of Insomniatic Mess, and I try to do the divine grace thing. I try to ask God to take over for a few minutes, mainly so I can go back to sleep easily when Marzie's finished nursing. I am exercising my free will in taking that breath and doing this asking in the first place, and then it's very obvious to me that I am becoming more refined in calmness, patience, empathy, and peacefulness. Look, I'm such a lady! I didn't scream and curse at my crying baby!

On the same subject---actually it's written in a way that I find much more relatable than the idea of asking Jesus to step into my skin---Eden Kennedy recently wrote a post called "Don't give it what it wants", about this exact thing of rising panic, or frustration, or anger, or immenent going-bananas-ness, and how she is learning how to deal with it through her yoga practice. It's excellent and mindful, so perfect for what I'm trying to describe here, and it's funny too.

Without her permission (I'm hoping my liberal referencing and indented quotes will save me here), I'm re-posting a bit of Eden's blog (fussy) below:

Occasionally my yoga teacher, Steve, does this thing in class where he asks us to stand slightly bent over, with our hands on our knees, and breathe. Breathe all the way in until we feel like we're going to burst, then all the way out until our lungs feel flat. We do this in-and-out thing a couple of times and then we breathe in our fullest breath and hold it. He tells us it's not a contest, to let out our breath when we need to, but when we feel that instinctive, almost panicky feeling that we can't hold it another second, hold it one more second. Then breathe. But don't let the panic decide.

That moment -- when the panic's standing there looking at you in shock for your insubordination -- must be like when a pendulum gets to the top of its swing and just floats there for a moment, thumbing its nose at gravity.

Then we do a few more rounds of deep in and out breaths, and then we blow everything out and hold it. That's the one that gets you, having no air in your lungs at all. No one can hold out nearly as long, the instinct to get air into your lungs becomes unendurable pretty quickly. But wait, says Steve, for one second beyond what you think you can endure. Don't give it what it wants.

He says this strengthens our neural pathways. I believe him. Steve can do things, things you'd think were impossible.

Suddenly, last week, after years of doing this exercise, the broader lessons began to apply as well. I realized that when I feel a tiny jolt of anxiety about whatever, a dirty dish, or I had ten things to do in the time it would take to do one of them well, I could think: Don't buckle. That's what it wants. Pause first. It'll back right off and then you can put away the dish with a quiet heart instead of the other. Pet the dog instead of pushing him aside to get at the laundry; pet the dog and then get the laundry. Don't give it what it wants, because what it wants is to be in control, it'll snap you around like a flag on a windy day. Your nerves will literally fray.

This is the type of emotional control that helps you get up and stay in your handstands, too, of course. Handstands and laundry. I should pay Steve double for his classes.

butterflies

2010-02-12T09:07:00.003-08:00

I am one of those people who loves children's music; every day Marzieh and I listen to her Seasame Street disco, her infantalized Beethoven, her Shimama album. It's all so upbeat and wholesome and fun to dance to.

But lately I've been hankering after some new stuff, and then somehow it occurred to me that we have basically hundreds of old CDs of music that we never listen to anymore. So we're semi-dedicatedly going through the sleeves, trying to listen to every one, even if we think we don't want to listen to two discs' worth of Elvis Presley's Top Hits (what do we know, anyway?).

Because it's been literally years since some of these albums were last played, it is actually a lot like getting a bunch of new music all at once. Celebrate good times COME ON! And if I wanted to feel pious about it, I could tell myself that this is recession-proofing my music collection. Didn't people during The Great Depression do something similar, like instead of buying new ones, they swapped cassette tapes with their neighbours? I'm pretty sure I'm right.

This is one of my recent re-discoveries, Ian Love's self-titled album from 2006. My good friend Melanie introduced him to me when we were living in Israel, and although towards the end of the disc, somewhere around the last four songs, I want to turn it off, his song "Butterfly" is a real delight. Spirited and joyful. Here is a home-style video recording of him playing this one live:

excruciating/excellent

2010-02-11T07:50:00.008-08:00

I started reading "Gone With the Wind" last night, wanting some light but engaging literature to keep me occupied in the hours before Marzieh wakes up for her midnight snack.

My copy, which looks exactly like this picture, was picked up at our library in the "for sale" section, for about 50 cents.

Whether books should be judged by their covers or not, the point is that they always are. At least by me. And now all you other book-cover-judgers can come out of the closet! I've liberated you!

And although I've seen the movie, I had no idea what the book would be like, what kind of writing it would be, and no idea whether the author was any great shakes at using language.

Turns out that this book is way more compelling than I had any expectation of. I mean compared with the film version it comes across as a bit more waffly, a touch more verbose. There are so many freaking words written in it. There's a whole bunch of back story and contextualizing that the Vivien Leigh-Clark Gable vehicle wisely dispensed with. And the cover, of this particular edition at least, did not prepare me at all for a complete dearth of bodice-ripping within the first five chapters. Since my parents read this blog (or used to), I'll keep my disappointment to myself.

However, I cannot believe, and I mean Cannot. Believe. the two-dimensional characterizing of nearly every person in this story. Maybe two-dimensional is not strictly accurate, because I do think that the stereotypes are not abandoned as they are: each of the characters does become three-dimensional as they are explained. But in terms of broad brushstrokes? Caricatures.

The racism is jaw-droppingly, eye-bulgingly ghastly. It's preposterously bad. Many paragraphs require multiple readings before I realise that their subject is not an animal but a person. It's outrageous. It's criminal. I mean I honestly feel like it should be illegal to print books that have this kind of language in them about human beings, even if it's fiction. And even if it's historical fiction! And even if this is AMERICA!

I feel like my eyes, my mind, are befouled by reading this stuff. It's exactly like that awful feeling when you chance upon something (usually on the Internet) that's crude, or perverse, or debasing, and it's such a shock to the system that you can't get rid of memory; the image or imagery lies like a transparency on top of everything your eyes turn to and makes you feel dizzy and sick. And you want to wash out your brain with soap.

Now that I'm thinking more about this, the "historical fiction" label should rather perhaps be "fictional history". At least it should be applied to certain things about this book, including the way African Americans are depicted. God, I don't even want to get into it, because it's so blergy. But I have to say this one thing: When I read a description of a female character, for instance in this book, that says that she's saintlike, that her daughter thinks she's really and literally the Virgin Mary, that she lost her entire personality when she was fifteen and The Love of Her Life moved away and then died, that she's subsumed her entire being in service to her husband and children, that she never raises her voice and never complains and never cries, that she's a true model of feminine wifeyness and maternal perfection, this is what I think: Yeah, right.

In real life, women are not like this. In real life, I actually know someone who has actual light radiating from her face because she's that selfless and that in love with God, and she is not like this. She's more interesting! More, I don't know, more three-dimensional. More human. She sometimes acts silly and goofy, and yells at the top of her voice because she's having fun. She says things like, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say," with a completely straight face, and she means it. She's angelic, yes, but in a really awesome way, because she's human. Any book that talks about a woman being a Perfectly Perfect Perfecthead is not telling the whole truth about that character, and it makes me groan and move on to the next, hopefully better, bit.

I don't care that this book was set two-hundred-some years ago and that women had to behave differently then. I don't care that there were different standards of femininity and opportunities in life. Women are women are women. We have always been human beings. And it is disingenuous for anyone to say that this kind of woman may really have lived and really have talked, have behaved like that, all of the time. It simply doesn't ring true. It's a fabrication, an idealization of what a woman is, whether then or now. It's Woman-As-VirginMother. It's a reduction of what a real human woman is ever going to be like.

I started out by saying that this was about the racism in the book. And it is. The point is that any depiction of an African American in this book is prey to the same analysis: I do not believe that "Gone With the Wind" is telling the truth about the reality of these characters. I do not believe that it is accurate "historical fiction" to have them all as these reduced, idealized, stereotypes of what African Americans---two-hundred years ago or now---are really like as people. Just because the Time and Culture and Laws that are the setting for this book were very different from those we have today doesn't mean that somehow what it means to be human has changed!

Perhaps what I'm railing against is the inexpert handling of the writing of characters. Most of them don't ring true for me. In some respects they have the variety of individual uniquenesses, but because the foundation for all of them is this reduced idea of what a woman/Irishman/African American/poor white person is, in almost every paragraph I am curling my mouth in annoyance at evidence of stereotyping or struggling about whether to throw the book in the fire because it is just simply and offensively hateful.

The weird thing is that it is compelling to read: anything that doesn't deal with a particular character, that deals instead with the historical context, or a description of the season or land, is very bloody enjoyable to read. It's well-written, discerning, unaffected, interesting language. I want to read more.

And as I think about it more and more (as I write about it here), I think that this is where the ambivalent "excruciating/excellent" feelings make sense: It's a good book. I think I do want to read the whole thing. It's enjoyable and interesting. But it's got this God-awful, untruthful and unfaithful, offensive stereotyping all through it. It's not easy to classify, either way. When I read Ian Fleming's "Live and Let Die", it was peppered with offensive stereotypes too, but it was a ridiculous read. The plot was jumpy and incoherent; the point was to give readers a quick fix of entertainment. There was no reference whatsoever to "historical fiction" (even though today we might read it for historical tropes). I wasn't bothered by the ugly stuff because I didn't care about it as literature, and nobody else thinks it's that important either.

But "Gone With the Wind" is considered classic American literature, the choice of bodice-ripping cover aside. It's taken seriously as a feat of writing by the author, (nonconformist) Margaret Mitchell; and as cinema, selling the most tickets to any film in U.S. history and winning ten Oscars, including the first time such an award was given to an African American actress, Hattie McDaniel. (Did you know that at the film's premiere in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1939, the African American actors couldn't sit with their white colleagues, or stay in the same hotels? To me that makes the stereotyped depiction of African Americans in the book even more meaningful, less open to being dismissed as "historical fiction": "we were racist then".) The whole thing is kind of a big deal.

I think that this is why I struggle with it, whether I will ultimately consider it worth it to read. On the one hand, I'll learn some stuff about the history of the South, and I'll have a good time reading a book that is well-written and classic literature. On the other hand, my soul will burn with outrage, or in hell for the sin of thinking bad words (ooooh naughty!), every time I read anything that pertains to an African American character---because it will invariably be a grotesque distortion of what any real African American at that time was truly like as a human being---and I'll have to restrain myself from spitting on the pages.

I promise to keep you updated.

boris the soviet babysitter

2010-02-10T07:08:00.004-08:00

"Comrade Stalin salutes you."

Deeply unsettling.

seven innocents

2010-02-09T09:39:00.005-08:00

On Sunday, we hosted a devotional to offer prayers for the seven Baha'is in Iran who have been imprisoned there because of their religious beliefs for two years, without trial for almost that entire time:

Their first trial date was 12 January 2010, and on 7 February they appeared in court again for a second session of their trial. The first year of being jailed they had no access to their lawyers, one of whom is Shirin Ebadi.

According to Iranian-government-sponsored media, these Baha'is are being charged with "espionage, propaganda activities against the Islamic order, the establishment of an illegal administration, cooperation with Israel, sending secret documents outside the country, acting against the security of the country, and corruption on earth."

All of these charges have been denied.

Our community here, in this neighbourhood of Colorado, is very small. The freezing night before our devotional, it began snowing. And then it was Superbowl Sunday (a big football game in America that also showcases the best video advertising for multinational corporations. Also, hotdogs are very important). The most-watched television show in history!

It kind of felt like a metaphor, the snow. Like it was making everything quiet so that the sounds of our prayers could travel immense distances to their cells in Evin prison, and still be heard by them. Even if they were whispers by the time they got there.

Okay, that's not really metaphorical. But more metaphorical like the cold and the snow were a symbol of how cold are the hearts of the people who are holding the Baha'is captive.

Or, because we had the fire going: it has to be really cold "out there" so that we can feel and appreciate the heat inside. Inner, spiritual heat, in case you didn't get it.

Section XCI of "Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah" was one of the readings.

Even though it was mainly written for those Baha'is who were literally being killed in mid-19th-century Iran, it is still pretty applicable to the current situation of Persian Baha'is, some of whom are in prison for believing that the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) was followed, about one thousand years later, by another Messenger from God.

"Consider these martyrs of unquestionable sincerity, to whose truthfulness testifieth the explicit text of the Book, and all of whom, as thou hast witnessed, have sacrificed their life, their substance, their wives, their children, their all, and ascended unto the loftiest chambers of Paradise. Is it fair to reject the testimony of these detached and exalted beings to the truth of this pre-eminent and Glorious Revelation, and to regard as acceptable the denunciations which have been uttered against this resplendent Light by this faithless people, who for gold have forsaken their faith, and who for the sake of leadership have repudiated Him Who is the First Leader of all mankind? This, although their character is now revealed unto all people who have recognized them as those who will in no wise relinquish one jot or one tittle of their temporal authority for the sake of God’s holy Faith, how much less their life, their substance, and the like."

The gathering was small but potent. We said prayers while our babies slept, and then we ate cake and drank tea and coffee with the spiritual presence of our coreligionists surrounding us. Watching us eat what they could not, I guess? But we ate and drank what they can not. We meant well. We meant it to be metaphorical. And were hungry.

The people of Iran, their wish for civil peace, democracy, and human rights, were also in our thoughts. Apparently the European Union and United States government have been thinking about them, too:

"Joint Statement by The European Union and The United States Calling On The Iranian Government To Fulfill Its Human Rights Obligations

The United States and the European Union condemn the continuing human rights violations in Iran since the June 12 election. The large scale detentions and mass trials, the threatened execution of protestors, the intimidation of family members of those detained and the continuing denial to its citizens of the right to peaceful expression are contrary to human rights norms.

Our concerns are based on our commitment to universal respect for human rights. We are particularly concerned by the potential for further violence and repression during the coming days, especially around the anniversary of the Islamic Republic's founding on 11 February. We call on the Government of Iran to live up to its international human rights obligations, to end its abuses against its own people, to hold accountable those who have committed the abuses and to release those who are exercising their rights."

We all dearly hope that these "embodiments of detachment" may be returned to their families, preferably today or tomorrow, but this weekend at the very latest, safe and whole and healthy.

can your baby be your bff?

2010-02-08T11:21:00.002-08:00

I got a kick out of this, maybe because something like it happens every so often at our house, especially when we're snowed in (like today).

snow

2010-02-07T18:38:00.002-08:00

My first driving lesson was cancelled today because of snow.

GOOsebumps

2010-02-06T16:45:00.005-08:00

You'd think that after four years of marriage, I'd be way too jaded to feel any kind of frisson of poignancy when viewing sentimental advertising, but that's just how unpredictable life is when the person living it is me:

Haiti

2010-02-05T19:54:00.003-08:00

I know that since Marzieh has come into my life, all you have to do is say the word "baby" to get me sobbing, but in all seriousness, this photo essay was so moving it made me cry. Click the image to view the whole slideshow.

2010

2010-02-04T10:51:00.013-08:00

Getting back into the swing of things. First up: We bought a house! The light in this state, coupled with a tax credit for first-time house buyers, convinced us that we wanted to stay here for a while.

angst

2009-08-25T13:33:00.011-07:00

I was lying in bed during Shaun's lunchtime. He comes home to eat lunch with us, and we all really like it. Marzieh is seven months old now, but every time I try to feed her "food" (baby applesauce) she vomits. It had been two weeks since her last "meal" and I wanted to see if she'd eat any more, because she does like the flavour of it, whether the teaspoon of apple mush would stay down.

It didn't. She vomited, over the bib and her onesie and the blanket she was sitting on. And I'm tired. Last night I barely slept, and this morning Marzieh woke up early, without warning, a banshee cry. She almost never cries. She wouldn't stop crying until I opened my eyes permanently. I wish I were joking: it was the one thing I didn't want to do to comfort her, and it was the only thing she needed. She kept on looking at my face with fear, I noticed through heavy-lidded eyes as I cuddled her, patted her back, shushed and sung prayers to her---crying at my unrecognizable face. Was she wondering where my soul went?

So I put all the soiled things in the washing machine, and then the fridge had a bit break off of it earlier, so Shaun took the baby out to the front office to deal with that, and I just threw myself onto my pillow and started to try to sleep while he was on his lunchbreak and could be with the baby.

I was so angry. Just, angry that Marzieh still wakes up several times a night, sometimes to eat. And it would help me if she didn't need me for all her nutritional needs any more, and I want her to start being able to eat things. Gnaw on a piece of bread, digest a teaspoon of pureed apple. Maybe she would sleep through the night if she were more full. It's frustrating that she doesn't.

And sleep. I think Shaun's getting to a point where all he hears is my complaints. And I try not to be only about the things to complain about, but when I'm this tired, it's hard. I think I need to be sympathized with. I want to hear that someone is sorry I haven't slept in seven months.

Part of it is my fault, even though I've tried different things, but I can't sleep immediately. It's always taken me a while, but now it takes hours. It's exhausting.

This lunchtime I was lying on the bed, seething and feeling hard-done-by. Not moving so I wouldn't disturb the comfort of the cool pillow against my cheek. And all of a sudden I remembered a smell of sodden earth. Camellia leaves and hedge clippings. Being so tired and angry, misunderstood and with my life controlled by another, had taken my olfactory memory back more than ten years.

There were the small pink flowers on my bedroom's cornflower-blue wallpaper. My single bed was wedged into the corner, the bay window to my right. I used to smoke out the windows and imagine that my parents didn't notice the smell. Or the butts I would insouciantly drop to the ground. Once my father was gardening outside my bedroom, and he called to me through the open window, "Leila, could you please put your banana peels in a rubbish bin? They don't look good lying whole among the daffodils."

I had a rough woollen blanket, mustard and persimmon colours, and I lay in bed reading "Crime and Punishment", crying through "A Tale of Two Cities", and trying not to let the sting in my eyes cloud my reading, out loud, of "Macbeth". If I ever did any real homework, I have no recollection of it. And I know I was often angry, at the world, my life. Others dictated the terms, and no one told me that they were sorry about things.

Marzieh is my choice in life. I choose this baby, I choose this life of deep sleeplessness and gummy smiles, pear-scented breath, a warm dry hand moving up and down my forearm while she nurses.

Remembering the smell of Wellington's wind---salty even up in the hills of Karori---and the refuge of my bed's cool pillows against hot and wet cheeks, I slept easily today. A little nap, just half an hour during my husband's lunchtime. I reminisced, I delved into the memory of childhood smells, the anger leaked away, and I rested.

taking some pictures

2009-08-24T23:01:00.002-07:00

If my camera is pointed away from my daughter, then is it turned to the skies? You betcha.

our hood

2009-07-09T22:21:00.004-07:00

Shaun, Marzieh, and I are chilling on the couch over the weekend, tickling her, letting her bite on our fingers, reading her stories, and making up songs to our sweet little babe. It's hot, but for the summer breeze we've opened our apartment's windows.

All of a sudden, a tweenage boy yells out the following---twice---to his friend at the top of his lungs outside our window: "F*** off, you homo!"

I turn to Shaun, and communicate all my distaste for this, as well as my sense of frustration for our lack of ability to protect our baby's ears, through a LOOK.

Shaun interprets this LOOK as though I'm seeking translation and deadpans quietly, "Apparently there's a homo outside."

That man.

even my subconscious is faithful

2009-05-10T22:08:00.002-07:00

a couple of nights ago, i dreamt that i was married to a man who is one of our mutual friends, a great person, someone we haven't seen in years.

and in my dream, i was disappointed.

when i woke up, the most salient part of the dream for me was the bit where i was grumbling to myself, "Why can't I be married to Shaun?"

foreign humour

2009-05-07T18:05:00.002-07:00

Leila: "Shaun, do you want to host a French exchange student this summer?"

Shaun: "Why? You want to have that international experience, that certain 'I don't know what'?"

these can be added to the post below

2009-05-03T09:47:00.011-07:00

Talking with someone who was complaining emphatically about a new, local politician. "What has he done?" I asked, interested to hear details of babies on spikes or whatever other version of inhumanity it was that could cause this particular brand of dislike. "Well, he's GAY. And he's given a LOT of his own money to the Democratic party."

The girls across from us had a "make out" party on Friday night. They had a list of the rules of the party still hanging outside their door when we made our way to the Ridvan celebration the next morning: Singles only; Don't get too "frisky" (i.e., "NO HAVING SEX!!!!!!!!!!!!!"); Must participate in games; Brush teeth.

(I just read these two things to Shaun, and he asked, "Oh, you didn't take a picture of the list? They took it down."
"Maybe I should just ask them for a copy of it."
" 'Hi. We're thinking about having one of those parties of our own. Couples only; NO GAYS.' ")

The first week we were here, we stayed in a lovely hotel. Next door to a Hooters.

things i want to remember about our first days in this place

2009-05-01T13:45:00.008-07:00

Suburbs of Denver

How much I'm enjoying this book.

The light brown chihuahua, belonging to one of our apartment neighbours, that accidentally got let out by a workman and had the whole complex out looking for it.

The name of the chihuahua: "Layla".

Hearing people, strangers, call out my name all day long outside my windows, weirding me out.

"Hey mamma, you're busy with baby, huh!" called out to me by a fellow resident as I headed up to our apartment instead of joining a dog-searching team.

The lonesome wail of a coyote in the field adjacent to us when some fire trucks approached our neighbourhood.

Seeing a tiny brown wild bunny the size of a guinea pig hop into a gutter under my feet when I went to check my mail today.

Asking the front office about the dog, hearing that it was eaten by the coyote, the remains of its tiny body found nearby, and that the bunny I had seen would be dessert.

Everything on every menu contains cheese, and it all comes with cheese or cheese sauce on the side. The same thing could be said for cream.

Upon meeting our baby, a lady who was showing us some apartments exclaimed, "I've never met a Marzieh before!"

A woman going for a walk, saw me applying sunscreen to Marzi's legs kicking in her carseat, stopped to coo at the baby and chat, started talking to us about the huge telecommunications business across the road that had mismanaged its finances and was now practically bankrupt, turned to me and said: "I mean, they made such a mess of it, you and I, as women, we could have run it better!"

The woman telling us that the apartment complex we were interested in was much better than the one she lives in, saying, "The police get called out to that place far less than they do where I am!"

"'Get me out of these blue clothes, mommy!'", said to me by good-humoured woman behind the cash register at the petrol station, about my daughter (wearing blue).

Getting Shaun's soda for free at the petrol station, because the woman thought Marzieh was totally adorable and Shaun was a "good daddy" for carrying Marzi in the ergo.

Getting 25% off the price of our lunch at a local restaurant as a "welcome to the neighbourhood".

A woman walking towards me on the same pavement when I went out for a walk with Marzi (in the babyhawk) switched sides, saying as we passed each other, "Let's keep that baby away from the curb!".

The lining of my nose creates a new topography every day; every morning I have to blow my nose because of the high, dry air here. There is so much bodily fluids (are? many? fluid?) leaking out of me through my nostrils. I will say no more.

The eternity between moving in here on Saturday and our internets being turned on on Thursday. TAAAAAAAAAKE FOREEEEEEEEEVER.

"My life was stupid. ... And dumb. ... And I wanted something cool."---A Baha'i in our community, new friend, on how he became a Baha'i.

Moving into a kitchen that---impossible though it may seem---is smaller than our old kitchen in Seattle. The one where I was using a bookcase for pots-and-pans storage.

Seeing this typo in our co-sleeper: "MISE EN GARED."

Going for an extended drive one day to ensure that Marzieh got a good rest when she fell asleep in the car, and accidentally suddenly finding ourselves in Boulder.

The number of bogans on the street, a sight unseen since I was last in Wainouiomata circa 1997. Weirdly, this area is a haven for strip-malls, McTownHouses, and bogans.

Not being asked where I'm from.

Inadvertently offending the two women who were showing us the apartment complex that we now live in: The first one was cooing over Marzi, and the second one said, "Yeah, she has four kids!" I wanted to say something about how, considering how much she was ga-ga over Marzieh, I wouldn't be surprised if she had even more children in the future. What actually came out of my mouth was, "And it looks like there's another one on the way!" I blame sleep deprivation.

The second instance of offence was when the second woman, after half an hour of chat and showing rooms and general interaction, asked me where I come from. I happily told her, and for some reason continued to say how much I appreciate not being asked where I come from, which is generally what I've found to be the case in the Denver area. I think I was trying to make a point about how she was the first person to ask me, and how it was nice that it's not the first thing that everyone asks. Can sleep-dep cover this situation too?

After a week of clear skies and sunshine, waking up on Monday morning to snow.

How much Marzieh's second cousins (Shaun's first cousins) loved on her at the memorial service for Marzi's great-grandma's husband.

"Her name's Matilda, right?", asked of me by a distant, older, relative about Marzieh's appellation.

The number of golf jokes that I didn't get during the eulogies.

I forgot that there was a pocket-knife, a swiss-army thing, in my purse, which I took as carry-on luggage on the plane from Seattle. My green card indicates that I have the same country of origin as Osama bin Laden. No one stopped me. I found the knife a week later when we were unpacking all our stuff into our new place. I thought for the schvorteen-teenth time about how America really needs to learn about security from Israel. Also about how glad I am that security at the airport made me take off my sandals.

The loveliness of having Shaun walk home to have lunch with us every day.

The guy who connected our internets, a sunbeaten tattooed man called Robert, telling me that he has swine flu. ... Ha, ha.

Super Target.

shaun's version of a persian dad joke

2009-04-07T10:27:00.009-07:00

Shaun (preparing a bowl of lettuce for me to eat while I nurse Marzieh): Are you sure you don't want anything else with this? Maybe some carrot sticks?

Leila: No thanks. I like it as is.

Shaun: You're welcome garaban shaw.*

Leila: Pardon?

Shaun: You're welcome garaban shaw.

Leila: I don't get what you're saying?

Shaun: You said "I like it, aziz."**

* He meant "Ghorbane-shoma".***

** Aziz = "dear" in Farsi. And you can't imagine how much I laughed at this joke. No, you literally can't imagine, because my laughter, it lasted for several days.

*** I know that spelling out the joke takes away from it somewhat, but I also know that not everyone has a working knowledge of Iranian tarof, so I'll translate: "May my life be sacrificed for you", which is often used in place of "mate".

lovely, lovely words

2009-04-02T10:46:00.002-07:00

sequacious \sih-KWAY-shuhs\, adjective:

1. proceeding smoothly and regularly
2. disposed to follow, especially slavishly

sanguine \SANG-gwin\, adjective, noun;
Also used as a noun, red iron-oxide crayon used in making drawings:

1. cheerfully optimistic, hopeful, or confident
2. reddish; ruddy
3. (in old physiology) having blood as the predominating humor and consequently being ruddy-faced, cheerful, etc.
4. blood-red; red
5. Heraldry. a reddish-purple tincture.
6. a red iron-oxide crayon used in making drawings

osculation \os-kyuh-LAY-shuhn\, noun:

The act of kissing; also: a kiss.

velleity \veh-LEE-uh-tee; vuh-\, noun:

1. The lowest degree of desire; imperfect or incomplete volition.
2. A slight wish or inclination.

propinquity \pruh-PING-kwih-tee\, noun:

1. Nearness in place; proximity.
2. Nearness in time.
3. Nearness of relation; kinship.

spoonerism \SPOO-nuh-riz-uhm\, noun:

The transposition of usually initial sounds in a pair of words.

and some unusually timely ones ...

bilk \bilk\, verb, noun:

1. to defraud; cheat
2. to frustrate
3. to escape from; elude
4. a trick; fraud; deceit.
5. a cheat, swindler

pinchbeck \PINCH-bek\, noun, adjective:

1. an alloy of zinc and copper used to imitate gold in jewelry-making; by extension, something counterfeit; an imitation
2. not genuine; fake

defalcate \di-FAL-keyt\, verb:

to steal or misuse money or property entrusted to one's care.

not as much time nor brain to read these days

2009-02-25T11:31:00.002-08:00

can you believe i'm a mother?

2009-01-13T21:20:00.006-08:00

shaun and i are now parents to a tiny little baby girl called Marzieh Eleanor. she was born yesterday afternoon.

Marzieh Gail is one of my favourite writers, and shaun has been calling the fetus "Zezia" as a nickname for months now. her middle name is for a friend of mine i met at the Baha'i World Centre, a person i think is one of the most admirable women alive (as well as one of my favourite), and it's also a lovely coincidence that several of Jane Austen's heroines---whose oeuvre of work i read at least once a year---are called Eleanor too (e.g., Dashwood, Tilney).

our daughter is extremely long, with feet and hands already the length of her father's. i know i should be sleeping when she is, but i can't help but do things like eat. shower. write on this blog.

speaking of her father, somebody has been falling in love with a certain baby over the past day and a half.

childbirth was childbirth. everything went exactly as i was hoping not to, and at the same time everything went exactly perfectly and i couldn't have dreamed of a more excellent situation if i'd tried.

i managed not to swear, but shaun says that i told him to BACK OFF more than once. it's just unbelievable to me that this is the way human propagation works. and that anyone has done this more than once. i tried to remember to give birth using my 'monkey brain', but----just---wow. my body was consumed with endless, consuming pain that made me cry pitifully to the nurse and shaun Please. Please Help Me.

but, oh my goodness, having that baby placed on my stomach seconds after she was born; looking down and hooking an arm around her purple, quivering body; and hearing the glorious sound of her lamblike, vibrato cry as i did so: my life was changed. THIS IS OUR BABY. i think i thanked everybody in the room. i probably told them I LOVE YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART.

oh, Baha'u'llah, thank you for this gift.

and thank you, so many of you, for your loving and enthusiastic comments here. i have loved reading them, and i hope to respond to them ... at some point.

we have some invites left to her private baby blog, and if you would like to view it, please let me know by writing me at lovefromleila at yahoo dot co dot uk.

yep, still pregnant.

2009-01-08T14:56:00.003-08:00

i might have something different to say tomorrow, though.

prayers, please! thanks very much.

sleepless in seattle

2009-01-08T14:50:00.002-08:00

junk food junkie

2008-12-15T12:26:00.003-08:00

i eat some potato chips: they stay down.

i eat a dinner of cooked vegetables with hot millet: it doesn't stay down.

i eat a bowl of sweet cereal: it stays down.

i eat a breakfast of brown-bread toast and marmite: it doesn't stay down.

i have an egg-nog latte with a bite of brownie: they stay down.

THIS BABY IS TRYING TO TELL ME SOMETHING.

because i can never sleep

2008-12-12T10:50:00.013-08:00

pukey talk

2008-12-05T13:20:00.011-08:00

at the beginning of this pregnancy, i was hit with two months of feeling like death warmed up ALL THE TIME. truly, i didn't know that it was possible to feel that sick, even when i stopped smoking and had migraines for a month and i cried because i was in so much pain and the closest i got to sympathy was the suggestion that i might have brain cancer.

i didn't know how lucky i was to not have read any pregnancy/childbirth literature in those days.

dear, dear shaun, who---among too much else---listens to me complain and who reads to the baby (still inside the belly), and who has on more than one occasion made a late-night trip to the supermarket for chocolate eclairs, who rubs my back and who makes us dinner, and who thanks me for looking after our child, also leaves my breakfast next to my bed when he leaves for work in the mornings at 6:15.

this is because, after a several-month hiatus, i once again have the morning sickness. thank goodness it is pretty much restricted to the mornings. according to my weigh-ins at the clinic, i've even been losing weight, which i don't really believe, but whatever. i'll take weight loss wherever i can find it, even if it's caused by out-of-date equipment and the vagaries of nurses. p.s. i'm full-term now and could give birth any day. who else is freaked out by that?

if i try to get out of bed before forcing something down my throat, my body will protest at the tablespoon or so of hydrochloric acid that swills around in my cramped stomach, which organ forces it up and out with what feels like maximum unecessary pain and even, if i'm very lucky, a treat like a burned tongue i can carry around in my mouth for the next day or two.

the physicality of pregnancy, the pure EMBODIEDNESS of it, is something i was not at all prepared for and has put all prayers into a new context: the actual world.

since those early months, i have been reading parent-centric stuff, including my favourite and must-read-if-you're-thinking-of-reproducing, "Ina May Gaskin's Guide to Childbirth". this book is SO empowering and calming and helpful. it definitely advocates home-/natural births as being the main way to go, but at the same time i felt like it refrained from much (if not all) of the prejudice and judgement of other writing that shares the same opinions. at least it provides reasons, rather than simply opinion, for the positions that it holds on this subject. really, REALLY, read this book if you are parentally inclined.

having said that, however, there is one thing that i remember reading in this book that i wish i had not, because my brain reminds me of it at the inopportune times of when it is hanging over a toilet bowl, i.e., every morning.

along with all all sorts of tips about how to be physically relaxed and confident during birthing, it points out correlations between parts of our bodies, like how if your jaw is relaxed then you can't be physically tense elsewhere if you know what i mean, and the author also says at one point something to the effect of,

"If you're not gracious/graceful about puking, then you will probably find yourself tensing up during childbirth too." [emphasis/imprecision mine.]

from this i have concluded: when throwing up think ballet. my body should, perhaps, arabesque as i hold up my hair with one hand and the cistern with the other.

i know that Ina May probably didn't say it like that, but it's TOTALLY how i remember it being in the book, and my brain has for whatever reason chosen to fixate on this particular combination of phrase and concept WHICH IS NOT EVEN ONE OF THE MORE HELPFUL TIPS, so this whole thing has led to this ridiculous situation of my regular matutinal, face-first visits to the toilet being accompanied by this internal, paradoxical, screaming directive:

"REMEMBER TO VOMIT GRACEFULLY! RETCH GRACIOUSLY! BE GRACEFUL! AND GRACIOUS! IT SHOULD LOOK EFFORTLESS!! OTHERWISE LABOUR WILL HURT!!!!"

i needed to get this off my chest, but ... please. don't internalize and then do this to yourself. if for no other reasons than IT IS NOT EFFORTLESS, and i can guarantee you NO ONE IS LOOKING.

two new words that i am very fond of

2008-11-23T10:16:00.001-08:00

horripilation \haw-rip-uh-LAY-shuhn; ho-\, noun:

the act or process of the hair bristling on the skin, as from cold or fear; goose flesh.

Lucullan \loo-KUHL-uhn\, adjective:

rich; magnificent and luxurious.

the sun goes down real early around here

2008-11-15T16:25:00.006-08:00