note #2: the deer came to the apple tree

النص رقم ٢ : أكل الغزال التفاحة

The rocca family extends itself to many others, it is not just diala, ola and rocca. Many friends made along the way, over the years, across spaces and continents. They are friends and friends of friends, making the family bigger until it is untraceable.

san francisco - mount shasta - ashland - bellingham - medford - san francisco

15 - 24 August 2016

kristina and allan in the woods

with the cat

i p o h

we ate their greens and picked their berries

[we ate their thoughts and picked their brains]

we slept at the parents’ and cooked with their untouched pots

we met their friends and swam in their lakes

we drove to them and back

heritage, narcissism, healing, shamans, queer aesthetics, deers, language, yemen, fears, breakfast, korean rice.

[the deer came to the apple tree]

I am touched by a sunset. Consumed with oohs and aahs and other such obscene expressions. Walking in reverse up the hill to see more of the bleeding horizon. Exploding. Imploring. I feel taken by the beauty and deeply sad for being away from home. I think of the faraway city of hills cleansed by a sunset, the shadows of pain darkened disappear for a moment. If a horizon is present, the pigeons seem free, a breeze almost gentle, it can be really good. fleeting. The sun sets behind the hills protecting the mission from carl and taking away the last bits of an overwhelming crimson. Flashing gold. Unnamable colors changing too fast for a code. I climb up and up. I stop by the terrace of a small public park and I stare until I am made uncomfortable by a man creeping his way closer. He may have wanted to share the sunset joys. I will never know? I will never ask him. But I am programed to relinquish the space to him and leave. A lonely figure. Abandoned. I walk up and take out the music from my ears so I can both surrender to the transformed/transforming skies and to my fears. Every man is suspect. Every dark corner is a crime.

But very few are and only a few times.

الغول

I remember reading one of Rebecca Solnit’s articles where i think she describes violence against women as an international plague but also saying that women are safer traveling and walking than in their own homes, if numbers were talking. But the fear is focused on the stranger and the other and is quickly fed into a phobia size monster. And the phobia size monster is accommodated and given so much space that it grows and grows and takes over and we are too scared to live. Do not go out at night or the ghoul will eat you. if you do not eat your rice to the last grain, the rice will eat you. if you count the stars, you will get as many zits as you count stars.

a gas station. bored young men. drugs.

our station is protected by loaded rifles

usa roads, here we come: queers, born females, brown, born muslim, arabs.

pleasantly surprise me

اللي بيخاف من البعبع بيطلعله

The normalization of sickness. Today, people are phobic. The phobia monster lives in every home. That is not cool. That is not ok. Fear is a natural instinct to help us survive, to support our wellbeing, a tool to use to live. Phobia is paralyzing, demonizing, isolating and an obstacle to living. Literally used for the killing.

THE INDUSTRY OF FEAR

I walk the streets of a new city and this city has dogs and the dogs are taken for walks and they poop and the kaka is left behind. What is the name of the city? You ask. I do not remember, but it sure had lots of dog kaka on its pavements and I successfully managed to avoid it all. I can assure you, dog poop, like human shit comes in many shapes and forms. Sky? What sky?

What is the name of the life lived in search of shit?

What is the name of life controlled by fear?