Sometimes pressing buttons will cause people, places and things to chase after you & race to meet you. I am a girl whose nicknames are longer than my real name and who sees the world through olive-tinted glasses. Someone once said that while most people live in their country, my country lives inside me and I think for this reason I like to push these buttons often. This morning I swayed in the hallway while waiting for the elevator, I never have to wait too long, but time is relative and I'm never in a rush. I swayed to the melody of the humming that waved out of my vibrating lips. In that moment, i experienced the sounds as if it was something happening to me, rather than something i had created. That extra-sensory perception of the way i breathe and move triggers memories of my mom. her fingers would crawl along with her anxiety up the steering wheel on the stressful mornings when she'd tiredly drive us to school. It was a synapse where her wrists intersected with her memories and her fingers with her feelings and the result was a swivel of her small hands that showed me more about how she felt and experienced the world than any other action she shouted or word she made. i thought about her until the elevator came.

p.s. I would like to write a short story about a man who is the only documented case of an adult who outgrew his/her autism. I have a feeling he might miss the way he used to see the world and the singularity of his perception. He might spend the rest of his life trying to find a new way to see the world, through kaleidoscopes, telescopes and the glass his girlfriend makes.

I also thought it would be important to write a story about things that were accidentally dropped but ended up in places of purpose and the bird who couldn't find her purpose because she never quite let herself fall.

sincerely,

chicago deel.

this morning i woke up and i was twenty and for the first time, i felt younger. surprisingly, it wasn't the coffee i drank with the old drifted friends and the puzzling way we fit together timelessly over the course of all the little stretching withering things. it was reaching into my glove compartment and pulling out pieces of my childhood. this is what happens when i rock into a lull between work and school and i wake up in a bed covered in clothes i don't want anymore. i bought a new perfume that fits the exact direction i moved in, i just need my life to catch up. can a person outgrow their sentiment? i feel like i have and that i need to buy new clothes. i just want something that fits. 

Sincerely,

your expatriette in tunis.

it was their play and their story and i know that, but the more time that passes since i saw it, the more it interacts and interweaves with my life and the more i grow to love it and i'm guessing i changed a lot of it as a result of poor interpretation and an active imagination. thats it. they were a couple who had escaped from the world and deeply wanted and maybe in most ways needed to be alone and together. they were seen as mental or unfit and misunderstood by others so they bought a house for free in the forest and there they expected to be alone and together. during the summer, the sun will seep in through the cracks of the shutters and shine onto the walls & they dreamt of making shadows of animals that would live with them. cats, dogs and dinosaurs, of course. in autumn, the wind will seep in & their shadows and their animals will dance and love and sway. in the winter, it will rain and drown all the shadows & the old wind will make new bubbles which will float to the top and when they burst, they will breathe the autumn wind again. and for them, it will be exactly the kind of nostalgic new beginning that their spring needed. at their best, their thoughts took them through the seasons, but at their worst, she told him "please get out of my brain, you don't have a right to go there. those thoughts aren't for you. i can't think with you in there. you've broken my thoughts and now i have to pick them up. so please be quiet." he told her "there's no use. once thoughts break, you cant put them back together. their defective. just return them and make new ones. & besides i cant be quiet. so i can figure out my thoughts, i need to talk and hear them out loud. i need to hang them on ropes in front of me and let them be shaped by the birds chirps, and the rain and your eyes. you can't just cut the ropes, ok?" she understood, but she folded her napkin and turned away from him. she realized they could never think and live and breathe like they do when they're alone and be together. they were away from the world, but not their thoughts and that was three. in the end, they stayed together, and apologized to their thoughts for not being alone. afterwards, all i wanted to do was draw and write and dance. there really was a creative energy that sparked there between all of us and i decided to save new wind in old jars and breathe more often. 

Sincerely,

your expatriette in tunis.

when i woke up this morning the goat whose baaaahh's are usually overwhelmed by construction and the cafe next door's music were loud and the only sound i heard. he seems sick and i think when i leave the house, i'll try and check on him. im also going to a gallery opening by my house on saturday and plan to love it. today i have a lot to do and more to think about which especially takes a lot of time. i just cant get out of bed. i think i have been bit by a tse tse fly and also hit by cupid's arrow except the combination of the two has created an interesting result. there is a story behind this, but the explanation is complicated for my pre 10 AM words. the result is me loving moments & cabs and having a disenchanted feeling about non-platonic romances. on days that i feel at all lonely are the days i need to stay away from people the most but on most days i feel this flapping wingless independence and seeing people is the loveliest because i also feel so nice about the person im taking home & that is myself. 

sincerely,

your expatriette in tunis.

she took every form of public and private transportation possible. she thought about the sign on the side of the brick store and came back later to take a picture. "do you take pictures of us everyday?" she didn't, but she should and would soon. especially since the guy at the camera store told her to stop by anytime- she could take pictures of new memories with old cameras and someone else's film and it would all compound into a base that supports the structure of her brain. she made some new nice stranger friends at the bus stop only because it was raining and they were pressed up against her shoulder as she kindly asked the forward stranger boy not to proceed with his plans of talking to her, no she doesn't want you to have her phone number and yes she understood. she felt pessimistic about the world but very optimistic about where she stood. the 3 hearts that together with hers formed a square over coffee was the playground that her brain bounced in. it was recess and class and lunchtime all in the same timeplace; she learns the most from who she plays with here and she likes that very much. today, she also felt very out of her body and that gave her more courage but less power and that was that. later, & this wasn't so much whimsical as much as it was a red herring, but the rainbow was the first one she'd ever seen and it faded the second she noticed it. 

sincerely,

your expatriette in tunis.

i miss the lamb at chak wak park, but nothing else about that place. but the peacock was regal and i did feel nurtured by him in a court 5 kind of way. he would have sparkled with the glassiest of our chandeliers and mama would have fun chasing him as if he were a robot vacuum, i know she would, i just don't miss him. he made me miss too much. & OK, really today everything is so free and flipping through the layers is more like ruffling the all the feathers and i would like it if the story would billow out from under the pages over my hair and around my ears in an illustrated kind of way. jenna is here now and she is sleeping on the floor next to me, but i've been up since the zainab rooster crowed for no breakfast, more cartoons and a lollipop. she plopped on to my bed and wanted me to be a duck and sometimes im not in the mood and thats ok, so i drew her a fish and showed her a duck and it was enough. it would have been enough if we just went to passover seder last night at SIT, it was a lovely tradition to live and fake the rituals of, the food was tended to and labored over and in many ways loved over again. I am glad we went to the cafe afterwards though so we could relive some of our tunisian tales and laugh and tickle and tea, of course. today, we will start with the sun and move on to the water with the steam; we'll jump into the wind and yet again end on top of the hill. this is tunisia. i do love seeing it through the eyes of a visitor, even when they are grumps like stuffed eels, but also when they are silly like jennas. Oh! & i would say my demeanor ought to change if i am ever going to get my eggs into a basket and take them to a new a city, but i kind of like the juggling and toppling and wavering right here. I know we might call that a careless kind purposeless, but i'd swear it wasn't. it is a situation where different people will take you to different places and in those places you find 5's, kuwaits, cherries and beige flowers and they are all things to some degree that wouldn't make as much sense without each other. it is an ambiguously complex kind of life and kind of "like like." not barsha barsha, not deema deema, just shwyea shwyea.

and i know today i woke up feeling empty under my ribcage and light all around, but i was thirsty and hungry and after i ate some olive oil and fig jam i felt much lesss compact and heartier in a could be a happy hefty kind of way.

sincerely,

your expatriette in tunis.

5 words. live tunisian heavy metal scene.

done & done. 

i never thought id be so giggly and light as a part of an audience for such a band. but, i loved it. i am loving more often here than i have in a long time. it makes little sense since i am away from most of the people and the places i readily love. sometimes, i feel very affectionate towards little things and strangers and dirt roads and wooden doors and iron fences and of course towards children and innocent faces and warm hearts. people are very loud here very often and it makes me feel like being very quiet and listening to all the sounds. right now though, it is very quiet in my house and i miss the noise and feel like being very loud. my mom is especially making me jealous, because i miss her and because she is dancing and singing and im watching her through metal and glass. thank you ichat. ichat, youchat, we all chat. some of us, across oceans and some of us are so very fortunate to whisper into each others ears, but i do enjoy new media and the digital age because when i can't do the much preferred latter, i have metal and glass that end up meaning much more than their material value and that is sort of art in a way. im rambling, but whats a girl to do after a night of tunisian metal? mmm, ok. lara is arriving in 16 hours. isn't that the gravy of being part of an eel family?

sincerely,

your expatriette in tunis.