Photo: Gulf of KutchI’ve been using GoogleEarth a bit too much for work. My thoughts tend to follow continually zooming streams and locations: World. Continent. Country. State. Village. Town. City. Neighborhood. Household. Individual. Then back out: Me. Siblings. Parents. House. South Amherst. Amherst. Massachusetts. New England. US. North America. World. Then back in: World. North America. US. West Coast. Northern California. Bay Area. San Francisco. Oakland. Richmond. Yusef. Selina. Turhan. Mallichai. Hannah. Me. Then back out: Me. Saath. Satellite. New City. Old City. Ahmedabad. Gujarat. India. South Asia. World. Then right back in: World. Middle East. Iran. Tabriz. Borujerd. Grandmothers. Grandfathers (someone else’s memories). Uncles. Aunts. Mother. Father. Me. Then I see my parents playing as children. My mother as the tough tag-along to her brother and his friends. My father as the leader of his raggedy pack of 13 siblings. With this imaginary (silent) home video I fight back tears, close my eyes and plead with my mind to log off.
GoogleEarth. What a crazy tool.
But this reminds me: Of all the times I’ve been to Iran I’ve never seen where my father and his siblings grew up. And I’ve spent very little time with the children of those siblings: My cousins. That doesn’t feel right. I’ll need to make sure it changes..... Which itself reminds me of how I've been feeling a lot of this these days:
“Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.” –Jelaluddin Rumi
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