I almost every night talk with my sister on video call. She is in Iran and is not interested in leaving. Definitely not because she is satisfied there; on the contrary, she is furious. But she can perfectly rely on her inner world and inner peace in toxic environments.
We talk about lots of stuff, and some of it is so good that it can become a book! A show! An important “something”! All of them, of course, include exchanging news about Iran. Did you see that breaking news? Did you see this video? By the way, she was arrested, he got executed, etc. Then we curse, criticize, and judge, and afterward we stare at some point in our rooms, in silence with a combination of frustration, anger, and hopelessness, and then we encourage each other to let it go and take a deep breath and watch a good movie or read a good book and just focus on our TODO list, which is never empty, for both of us.
Sometimes we share our mobile screen to show a video, a picture, or anything else; today she was talking about starting a new novel and then told me, “Have you checked out bookmarks there yet?”.
Well, I must also say that we are both crazy about stationery, specifically pens and pencils! It is a disease, I am pretty sure. One day I took her out, on the phone, of course, and we went to a popular stationery shop here, and I showed her every pen and pencil there on video call, and we bought a couple of pens and markers together! We were like two crazy kids talking about each of them with excitement and strange sounds! I am pretty sure the Germans were thinking, “Oh, look at this poor girl who has never seen such colorful stationery shops.” 😐 They did not know that no matter how much my sister and I see this stuff, we always react like this.
When she mentioned bookmarks, I opened the Amazon app and shared my screen, and we went crazy again to check out different designs of bookmarks together.
Funny stuff is out there! Have you seen them?! There are bookmarks in the shape of animals trapped in the book, scary hands coming out of the book, and so on. I mean, WTF! Who can read a book when they see a poor animal head coming out of it? Don’t you feel the urge to save that poor creature?
When we were surfing, we saw a bunch of products to serve the functionality of “holding” something! Pen holder, tape holder, toothpick holder, sticky note holder!
Who the F* needs something to hold their pen?! Are they sick or something? What is wrong with leaving your pens on the table?! Haven’t we already risen a bit above ground level by inventing tables, beds, and sofas? What is this human obsession with keeping their distance from the ground? And why does everything need a “holder” or a base anyway?
Just imagine this: My sister and I, laughing like maniacs at these products on Amazon after those serious conversations about the political situation in Iran and about this killed that, those are in prison, that Molla said this, and what not.
This is how the world is fucked up, you see?
In some places, people are getting killed for not wearing F* hijab, while at the same time, somewhere else, someone is getting panic attacks thinking, “Oh shit, where should I put my pen now? I need a pen holder…”
Leave it on the F* ground dude! It is just a tool for you to become a better human by writing or drawing something, to free yourself, and hopefully others! Just make peace with the ground for the love of God!