The air is so clean. It’s so fresh, I can’t stop taking deep breaths. 1-2-3-4, in through the nose. 5-6-7-8, out through the mouth. I want this breath to fill me up like a helium balloon and float me through the crystal blue skies. Make me a blimp and give me aerial views of the sinewy alleys, streets, and towering trees.
The sheer need to take all this air in without a looming spiral of anxiety to solve for is a novelty. I need this purely because it feels good. I have the capacity to take on so much more of it. I’m embarrassed to admit my resting heart rate lowers almost instantly after leaving America.
I can’t tell if I want to consume the air, or want it to consume me, replacing my corporeal form with something infinitely lighter and pure. If the air was a color, it would be the most beautiful, delicate sky blue — the one from my plastic Crayola carrying case with 71 other delightful shades, including ‘macaroni and cheese.’
My musical mind always finds a soundtrack for my emotional state, and today’s is a throwback. My brain takes me to: ‘the sky was rose, it was gold, I was taking sips of it through my nose and I wish I could get back there, someplace, back there.’
I resent my brain for picking Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life” for this divine feeling, especially when OutKast’s “So Fresh, So Clean” is *right* there. But really, I resent my brain because I’ve followed Max Collins from Eve 6 (an icon) on Twitter long enough to know that the Third Eye lead singer is a jerk, and partially because I only recently learned the song is about being addicted to crystal meth. The lyrics very explicitly include the phrase ‘doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break’ but I never really noticed that over the stupidly catchy refrain. This feels like a metaphor for a lot of heavier things in life. ‘Doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo.’
The sky here feels airier and bigger, but not in the way that it feels in Montana. The skyscrapers, towers, and cranes don’t impose the way they do in New York. The architecture gives snippets of London; the big boulevards spark memories from Buenos Aires; Mount Fuji in the distance reminds me of Los Angeles. There’s something deeper inside me that tells me this city feels like Tehran, but I’ve never experienced it. There’s no use in trusting my gut this time.
I can’t stop thinking of my late uncle, Shoja (‘Brave’), while walking around this place. The eldest of eight boys, he dropped out of school at age eleven to care for his siblings. Eventually he rose through the ranks of the import-export world, and he took trips from Tehran to Tokyo in the 70s to make deals and to bring everyone back the best rice cookers. I only learned this recently after a conversation with my parents about this trip, and I have so many unanswered questions. Are Shoja and I the only Shariats who have stepped foot in this country? Who translated between Farsi and Japanese? What airline did he fly and what was that experience like? What did he eat, and what did he think of the food? Who gave him his first chance at employment and why? I’ll never know. Instead, I’ll project. I’ll see his gentle eyes and his silver hair on elderly men here and feel a semblance of relief.
I didn’t expect to start writing less than a day into my sabbatical (Ed Note: Will I ever be able to say this word without feeling like a priest?), but my buzzing brain was too loud to ignore. I feel anxious sharing something so fresh and off-the-cuff publicly, but the evil, corny Kermit inside me told me ‘we tell stories in order to live, and you need to live más.’
The sky here isn’t even rose, it’s cerulean.