The Wandering Dervish from Tehran, New York
I almost moved again.
I’ve moved six times since I came to California just over a year ago. This is a record, even for me. My parents have long called me a gypsy due to my limited cash flow, constantly changing addresses, destitute appearance (unruly hair, mainly) and lifestyle (“You have a fogha licence, an Ivy League education…what do you mean you teach yoga?”).
Only now am I truly living up to their gypsy label, after realizing that having been an over-achiever most of my life was making me age.
But then I recently decided to move in with my parents because I wanted to be Good. Baba and Maman are 81 and 76. Mom’s the young fox, and I declared myself their caretaker after a nursing home nearly killed her, when all she needed was rehabilitation with her walking.
Most of my friends fell silent or told me I’m insane when I said I was going to move in with my parents. A few folks praised me. My brother accused me of trying to scam the family for free rent. Several other family members called me a Fuckup.
Gentle reader: the Publisher and Editor have asked me to abstain from foul language that may offend. Even the Persian guy I dated briefly scolded me for it (this is after I repeatedly scolded him for constantly trying to get me lokht ). He told me the use of the word Fuck sounds “working class,” as if that were the ugliest thing to be. As if he’d never heard John Lennon’s song, “Working Class Hero,” redone again by Marianne Faithful in a fine fucking cover of the ode to the Everyman. I don’t think he has heard these songs because he’s been too busy being upper class and trying to get laid!
I’d like to let all the aforementioned folks off the hook for my potty-mouth. It’s not them, it’s all me. It truly is me. And, I cannot stop being the Beetarbiyat Wandering Dervish from Tehran, New York, because the Lord made my mercurial mind and spirit according to His/Her own specifications and I don’t believe I have a right to change that. Plus, after this entirely meandering aside, if the Publisher and Editor were to cut the words “Fuckup” and “Fuck” so as to replace them with milder ones, the entire word-count of this article would be thrown off, we’d miss the printing deadline, advertisers would be upset, and etcetera.
But let me ask you, Dear Reader: Would a Fuckup give up her beach-canyon studio, dirt-cheap rent and an enormous stainglass window with the wildest views of Laguna’s hiking trails from the vantage point of a toilet to care for her parents? I dare say no! No true slacker would turn away from what I have. Never…
I truly decided to live with my parents because I wanted to assume responsibility and be Good, even though this is not a very trendy thing to be these days. But I’m a strong believer that if your parents wiped your butt, it’s your duty to wipe theirs when the time comes. This is why I would never hire a nanny if I were to have children, even though I do not judge people who do. My parents are completely able to wipe their own butts, just for the record, but should that day come when I need to care for the people I love the most in this world, even though past words, actions, and rebellions could easily disprove my stated sentiments, I’ll refer back to this very article and remember my commitment to reciprocate all my parents have done for/to me.
Other truths be known: what cemented my decision to live with my parents was the very frightening image of my own life fifty years from now, a life with no loving hands to hold, only a mouse. In this vision, my friends were inevitably married, dying or dead alongside their spouses, with children visiting, and grandchildren too. I was the pension-less Wandering Dervish from Tehran, New York, trembling hands still typing odd stories and forming shaky namastes, making due without appropriate health care (no one will have this without Social Security), decent housing or nutritious food.
When I saw that my imaginary future was pretty much the life I’d been living thus far, I realized it’s not so bad. And when I stopped projecting my fears of a lonely death onto my parents’ lives, they refused me, without us ever speaking a word about the horrors that had crossed my mind about the life I’ve chosen for myself.
See, my parents are not of the Wandering Dervish variety. They would like nothing more than for me to leave my wandering ways and have the career, the 401K Plan, the husband, several children, smooth skin, and a steady hand with variations of khoresht and kabab. They don’t understand this artist-business. They think this Writing is an excuse for Sudden Laziness Syndrome. They fear that being a single, attractive thritysomething taking care of her parents will hurt my chances of one day having all the aforementioned comforts I’ve never really wanted.
Sadly, living with my parents in my thirties would not have disrupted my life in the least. But this is mainly because I sleep alone.
I prefer sleeping alone and it could very well be the reason why I don’t have a husband and have had two broken engagements. It could very well be why I want to take care of my aging parents so I don’t carry the karma of dying alone. I want to sleep alone but not die alone. It makes no sense. Sex is not the problem. The problem is the sleeping. I must do it alone, on a big bed, and sometimes starting off in pigeon pose (yoga).
I need to daydream for hours alone in my bed.
I need to fantasize about a life I don’t live (oh, fiction!) all alone in my very own bed.
I need to write down the fantastic absurdity (yes, the fiction), alone and preferably in my very large, very lavish and very-mine bed.
Maybe Wandering Dervishes were not meant to sleep with their lovers. Maybe it’s like an oath of passionate celibacy. The longing in Rumi’s poetry is founded on a deep longing for the spiritual, for a union, with The Beloved. The Beloved in Rumi’s poetry is both God and Shams-e-Tabriz, a wandering dervish who is the Muslim equivalent of Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.
Rumi was married. He never longed for his wife, at least not in his writing. And Kerouac—he longed a little too much for a few too many women, but never a wife. But can a female dervish get married and still have room to long alone? Can a female writer who meditates on what happens when man-meets-woman do this?
Maybe I’ve become purely asexual. Or maybe Wandering Dervishes hold the secret to the most passionate love-life (How romantic: to have a separate bedroom from a husband, to sneak off into his bed after waking up alone in the middle of the night post pigeon-pose relaxation, a nap, perhaps some writing…).
Or maybe I’ve become a sexual deviant, a pervert who can’t handle the mundane mating habits of committed partners with a single bed.
Whatever the case is, I know my sleeping habit is the reason why I refuse to couple and am destined to die alone. As for my parents, they have each other and are healthy again (bismillah!). If they need me, they can find me on the beach.
I’m not moving...
