Back off

Privacy;
We all want it. Preserve it. Cherish and love it.
Anonymity, control, confidentiality; These words seem less tangible in today’s online world. The internet has certainly changed our control over what we call ours. But there are obviously two sides to the argument of protection and deterioration of privacy policies.
- Features like Facebook and Gmail can use our private information such as search habits, favorite products, age, gender and location to target advertisements. This may help us find what we need better and find an efficient way to connect to our needs on a daily basis.
- This information can also make the life of journalists easier to discover, uncover, and present news to the public.

Oh, but wait:

- What if you don’t want this information to be public?
- Some experts suggest this violates privacy laws.
- How do you protect your name and image to be used in ad targeting and product promotions?

I found this: a ten step manual to protect your privacy online

1. Look for privacy policies on the Web
2. Get a separate email account for personal email
4. Clear your memory cache after browsing
5. Make sure that online forms are secure
6. Reject unnecessary cookies
7. Use anonymous remailers
8. Encrypt your email
9. Use anonymizers while browsing
10. Opt-out of third party information sharing
Extra! Use common sense


Wow! This seems like a lot of work for a medium that was created to save time.

make me

I am the right measure of love and make
I am making love
I’ve become detached to the concept of human relations and i know it well where it’s taking me.
But I’m in for a ride.

The line of her back stretches on the bed. She scratches a page of his mind. A sip of the half full bottle of last night’s wine.
Its easy to fall inlove with white and black sheets. Difficult to leave, but they stink if you don’t .

I anticipate the neighbour’s frowns. And compassion. And seduction.

I need a new bruise.

ponder

fourteen years ago my father drew me a pond. It was sitting in the veranda of a friend’s home in Yazd. One of those ‘kah-geli’ old gardens.
the water-colour pond is made up of dark and light greys, with a hint of teal on the corner. The figure of two lean and lonely trees is reflected in the water; drawn to perfection, in my eyes.
‘For my dear Tara, 1372.’ It says on the right hand corner.

every time I look at it I wonder why my dad dedicated this to me. I was only 6 years old back then. Why did I have to know about the abandoned pond, the water in it, or the rusty tap? Was he telling me that life is stagnant, was it the splash of teal that I had to look forward to?
or am I the dry tap, waiting to be opened.

my mind runs on. But... what if, he just drew a sketch of a pond in front of him and wrote his daughter’s name on the bottom, as a gesture of gratitude? No subliminal messages, no paternal guidance behind it.
And if so?

stories from under the pillow

I concur, for a while I have been dumb. Mute as a bat. I hate microphones.

I remember the day I followed a little mouse all the way to your house. The cold tiles on the ground kept me awake, but how difficult it was for the petite mouse to climb the stairs. The crisp moonlight was scattered in the corridor, and I never told you but I hated those curtains with their washed out floral ornaments. I tried really hard not to step on my chaperon.

For your own sake you should have left me curious and seditious longing behind the door. I should have resented trusting the abstract idea of ‘what’s behind the door’.

I drank you and it wasn’t enough, I drank more and I felt sick, I puked and I wanted some more.

I leave and I find a burgundy bottle under my pillow filled with you.

shoe laces and memories

digits
unfamiliar stories of untold absurdities
too habitual
to win my calligraphy.

like scissor on an ice
-cube
permeating a fond collapse of an unfinished
cupid

as i conjugate the summers one after the other
making sense of past tense
and proverbs
the grammar of forgetfulness
woven on a rusty swing
tangled around my neck.

this is not a

I need Farsi
fonts
I require an examination of each space between the letters
Of
myname.
The hazardous fountain of his intoxicated blood
pouring on
vowels describing a bird long time ago long ago forever ago.

cupped

The interior of an empty cup.
Refusing to be filled
hesitating on the impulse of
the dark stain left for the coffee reader to
unveil-
I speak in a low tone. Someone is coughing I can hear its monochromatic repetitions, dusting away.
I speak in a lower tone when I tell you my bones ache. They ache from growing inch by inch displacing the muscles attached to them.

People around me are rushing to the subway entrance with their fists in their pockets ... my shoulder brushes on someone’s cold red jacket. The tube, the tunnel, why is it such a waste of time...why is my destination the ultimate place to-breathe-to-move? We sit quietly on the most isolated scarlet and grey seat, diving in those light books and these heavy shopping bags. The comfortable etiquette, the solution to civilization and Western democracy, is gushed out on the cover of a book this girl with gold locks is reading: Middle Eastern People. Like the herd, or the mysterious creatures on the other side of the moon. Desperately oblivious.
I contemplate all this and I don’t speak to anyone. Yet sometimes they smile back.

I see my nails grow and break and grow back again, trying hard to stay plain, as my revolting mind rejects time.

I reach out for the cup and the heavy unforgotten steam clings around my hand. It has been ages since the cup was full. A brown coloration has penetrated a deep hole into it, and if you tilt the cup on a 45 degree angle you can see a thin crack moving through.
Ahh..but who cares it’s just a fucking cup. I’ll get a new one tomorrow.

What is Tara?

I have been absent for quite a while.
I will share with you why:
I turned 20 on January 5. Amazingly, I couldn’t be happier about my life when I flipped the calendar to that date. I feel like the weight of getting through teenage years and becoming what I always hoped to be, is now off my shoulders. I see what I was: the 14 year old immigrant who stepped into a world of agitating dispossessions. And somehow between reading the works of the legendary Iranian writer Sadegh Hedayat and decoding Shakespearian old English at school, I realized I can consciously and attentively select each fragment of the future me. This may sound like a post-structuralist narrative of my growth, but in actuality of it I was perpetuating this image as far as I can remember.

And so, thanks to my Online Journalism class, I was pushed to start writing on this little blog of mine again. This program (journalism at Ryerson University) has been an interesting roller coaster of new uncertainties and old expositions. Since the first day of class, I tried to introduce myself as an ambitious “journalist” with a passion for politics and literature. I say politics, in its purest most philosophical nature. And I realized this is what I am going to do when at the age of seven I rescued 78 ants from drowning in a leak in our basement.
But you must understand, I still think and sing in Persian. I lack the tools to convey to you what I deeply mean inside, in this English-fluent world of today. My weapon is vocabulary, and I have yet to master it.


I am supposed to write about citizen journalism. You can check out its definition on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism.

There are people in my field of study/work that either want to look good in front of an Entertainment News camera, or take pictures of a 12-year-old abused girl in Oshawa. I am in no place to judge them or their goals but I can say this: I don’t want to write about shifting moments in human history, I want to be an agent of change, or revolutions, and fresh comprehensions. Is this too big of a bite? I don’t know! Only time can tell. But with the drive that I seek in me, with the movement I feel in my mind, I know I possess unique experiences that will lead me to this agency no matter what. However, if I don’t channel this towards something “good” it may become the most destructive force of my life.

Citizen Journalism? Yes. It is a great invention and discovery. If there is one good thing about technology and consumer capitalism it is our opportunity to voice out and record the present as we see it. AIDS, feminism, WTO, post-modernism, homosexuals, terrorism. These are the words defining the length of our insignificant short lives. Let us become politically aware, socially critical, and aesthetically functional.

My dearest reader, I come from a family that many envy and many detest. I come from a background that is the most misunderstood culture of the world. I have been exposed to experiences in such an early age you must never know or question:

Will you be my ant?