Author Archives: Farah

The Two Faces of a Coin; Love and Relationship.

Art by Ksenija Pronina

A healthy relationship, according to my own definition is that which does not feel like the involved people are operating from their “shadow fronts” rather than from their “authentic fronts”. In other words, those who are self-aware rather than self-conscious. Who still do their best, without coming off insensitive. Who have a healthy moral compass.

A relationship should feel like a safe place of exchange; where thoughts, emotions, and preferences are communicated safely and without having to feel scared or humiliated. A skillful approach is vital in communicating ones own needs and thoughts. It should not hurt the person or others.

Space and time work best for the clarity of mind and heart. It is meant to communicate to the other that there are no attachment issues in order for trust to prevail.

Although having space and time is important, they also don’t mean that it is a form of mind game or done to make the other person feel weak, or needy, or even to test someone’s love or affection.
It means accepting that things must take time, and rushing into sex or into something too intimate might not feel right or worth it in the future. So, one must really know who they are dealing with. Even if it wasn’t intended as a romantic relationship.
Knowing that respect is everything in all relationships, and to be treated with unconditional care if not with unconditional love.

To also be human, but not a humiliating or demeaning one.
To tame down the ego, and to never come off as needy, desperate, or selfish.
Selfishness is a disease. It originates from the ego’s despair for not believing one is worthy enough or good enough. So they become so feisty, and want to do anything to convince their ego that they are worth it in an unhealthy way, and it is mostly instinctive such as: greed in food, sex, time, and money in the form of addiction.

A healthy relationship means the person cares about their decent image thus say what they mean and mean what they say. They are simply reliable.

They can make mistakes, but are okay to apologize sincerely, without having to excessively show they are sorry, or to keep bringing up the resolved subject.

Who also don’t make you feel like you are too much, and your pain is small. Who don’t raise their voice to silence or to shut your pain down.
Who love and respect your vulnerability. Because they are safe at feeling vulnerable too.

Who get it when you are nice because you choose to be nice to them, not because you are sexually attracted. In other words, they can distinguish between your true colors, and their own lens—an instinctive projection.

Love grows without feeling pressured, or guilty for choosing oneself, when it is done in a specific pleasant manner.
Love does not make the other person lie about who they are, or try to change the other person’s reality when the person actually loves and feels safe in their own reality, even if it is (so) different.

Love doesn’t fear to lose the person but it is careful of not losing the person, consistently, and not for selfish reasons.

When in a relationship, give and take flows naturally, and it isn’t meant to boost egos or to win approval, neither a competition.

And in order to be satisfied in a relationship, one must have the freedom of choice in which they can be themselves, which at its best form, comes from their safest childlike and higher self place.

For those with immature qualities, mistake it with being vulnerable. While it is the unhealed aspects from their childhood or past, which in return, activates it in others with whom they encounter. And for those with vulnerable qualities, they feel safe at being healed, feel free to be open to experience, and don’t have to please everyone. But to keep monitoring themselves, all the time.

Love and relationship are the two sides of the same hard coin, one side will always affect the other, or represent the other, as well as the people involved.

This is my take on the psychological dynamic of love and relationship, since these two literally govern our lives, but we always have the power and it is in our right to rule in or to rule out what brings meaning, or what brings distress to our lives. Because what matters the most is our peace of mind, in order to feel and be more productive in life.

* This was an excerpt from my diaries.

Have a lovely day!

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Modern Crowdedness

View Master 3-D viewer (stimulation toy/machine)

Falling into the spiraling loop of nostalgia is like getting no where in actual reality. I realized the burden of the modern world when I saw photos and heard songs of people along the timeline of the past 30 years or so. These were school-year photos; old schools with children dressed in memorable school uniforms—which I had to wear too. And many other emotionally impacted objects such as toys, phones, drinks, places, candies, cartoons, TV shows and humble restaurants.

Life looked great back then. Although I was born in the very early 90s, I still consider myself very fortunate to have witnessed, and especially for having felt the atmosphere of the real life, what we now refer to the Golden past.

Old is not just gold, but one that we must keep in safe storage. Which in many cases, people are doing, and I am grateful for their fondness of preserving the beauty of the past and popularizing its dominant existence that once used to be.That is, everything we enjoyed before the year 2000.

In my own experience of going over documented memories, I had a feel for the past.With an instant rush of belonging traveling through my being, as I wished the 80’s were only a button away. Click, and I’m there. But, certainly this, time does not allow. For time is in a constant race with itself, while we are also racing with it. Yet most of us are running towards the future while also peeking at the past, throughout the whole process of running.

There is something truly endearing about the way people dressed, the quality of the photos taken at the time, the simplicity of the roads and places, and the spontaneity of life of the 70s until the 90s. life felt much more meaningful and exciting. Enthusiasm felt more natural among the people, and the contentment of the present moment had a more natural flow to it.

While modernity is very crowded; as it seems as though everything and everyone is lost somewhere in a crowd, for depth is the key word here. The modern life has exhausted our simplistic needs from nature, and in the process, humans exhausted nature. And although the modern day slogan calls us to delve deep into the inner world—the self, it seems that this must mean to return to our human nature, or to get out of it and be prepared for a celestial mission or such.

In both ways, diving deep is a valuable quality to have, but are we only going further from the simplicity of nature, while having to understand our human nature? And, instead of being able to travel to the past, are we aiming to leave the Earth and explore life in the outer space?

I think this is an inevitable mental and emotional process to go through—-in which for every generation of 30 years and above, will notice how fast life is moving. And how there is always more pleasure in the way life used to be. For although the past can be quite painful to remember, it can also represent aspects of gratefulness that our hearts will forever cherish, as we actually do for our present moment over the many things to be grateful for, well, until this becomes a past too.

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The Golden Yellow

Apples make a great source of vital nutrients. Not only do apples taste delicious, but they also come in a variety of flavors, shades, and colours. Ranging from shades of green, light to dark yellow, pink and all the way to dark red. As for their flavors: very sour to very sweet.

The importance of an apple has made it into the story of Adam and Eve, to Newton’s discovery of Gravity, and to Apple Inc. it is clear enough that an apple has a sublime source of bliss in and for our lives. Also, an apple is as picky in how it decides to show up in our lives, as how we would like to pick it.

I think it is the only fruit in the world that has picked humanity in ways we never imagined a fruit could.

My personal preference in apples is for the Golden Delicious. I like it because it’s sweet and crunchy, and can replace an unhealthy sweet-tooth craving quite well for me. It also reminds me of my childhood. I always chose it among all the other apple varieties.

The benefits of apples are numerous; from essential vitamins, insoluble fiber, to natural antioxidant. Besides, they taste great being baked in a pie.

Art by Karen O’Neil

So here is a crunchy tanka I wrote for apple lovers:

Golden Delicious:
Its saccharine, lustful burst
Makes a fancy sweet
Granting health longevity
As essential as pure gold.

Have a delicious day!

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Night Dream World

Art by Aykut Aydogdu

What a dream, I saw my past packed in one stream

Of flooding memories that were left untouched

Always left at the same place where my fragmented pieces were for them to deem

In my sleep I have the key to access those memories

Where I still have questions unanswered, with pains that were destined to be buried; either my fragments or them.

I saw clowns thriving on the grass of prosperity, and victims trying to pave their rejected ways among the harsh.

Though in a dream, what could be impossible, if everything the heart misses or wishes is accessible.

They deceived some of our innocence; while they carried around the honor of adulting. As if their excuse is a wisdom guarantee, while for the children, it is their trapping destiny.

But this child’s reality, is a new world for the child to keep getting in, forever in their minds until growing. Some places are meant to be visited in reality, to finally resolve while their eyes are open, rather than a germ that keeps infesting their dreams.

A family is not always there to protect, they are likely to be adults in wolf skin, unbothered to replace it with a sheep’s one; as what could a child really know about reality?

Dreams do relieve what is hidden, yet they are also called dreams for a reason; to resolve pain, or to wish for something better.

Written by: Farah A.Y

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Behind the Window Glass

Art by Claire Kayser “ Red Booth”

Across the oblique road corner from where I was placed on the diner seat, suffocating in the spiciness of the meal,
I jerked my hand to someone outside the window glass,
Thinking it was you!
All I wanted you to know is that I was still there, in case you were able to make it today before Sunday!
I fell captive in a momentary urge that caught me in the most unprolific substantial tendency of waving my hand to someone I thought I knew.
I assume Halloween was still predominant in the air; playing tricks on the mind.
But she looked like you; the width of shoulders and hair, with almost the same face.
I whispered words to myself, that only I could hear.
I think she knew I was mistaken, but I was still excited to see her!
She left with someone else, the last thing I saw was a little smile in her eyes… she grew further and further away, but your spirit was still all around me.

Written by Farah A.Y

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The Energy of Times

Art by Freydoon Rassouli

Through the passage of time’s memory
The universe declares all sensory
By the means of energetic spectrum
Along the chronology of wisdom
For the liveliness of its lucid mass
Materializing like transparent glass
Thereby an intense profusion of guise
Tinting sundry colours into the eyes
While embodying magnetism in display
Through its penetrating, cryptic way
In all things; among darkness and daylight
Hence pure quiddity resides at its might
The sublime source of Energy’s empire
Alternating between both ice and fire.

Poem by Farah A.Y

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Crystal Stone

For all the faces of a crystal
They are all made of stones
Conserving its sacred essential
In many dimensions and tones
Inside mountain bones
Under the laws of heat
On lands and in all seas
So wherever it lays, its gleam will greet
Like fruits of bliss found on trees
For the beauty it admits, pleases all it sees
As a crystal holds protection
And from Earth’s essence it stems
Through the journey of compression
Producing life with gems
That comply to ancient tastes, and to all modern trends
Gems are gifts indeed
Out of Earth’s crystal seed

Poem by Farah A.Y

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The Arion Voyage

Blanket of winds among the sparkling glints, shining

Where stars and clouds around the moon, flowing

On voyage to a land beyond the sky

With a mighty Arion steering us so high

While the wine on our lips, dried by the wind

For the horse is swift and from both sides, winged

As we reached the land, striding our way inside

There stood a castle, with gardens on each side

Behind the trees, we move around to peek

With one thing in mind; is to play hide and seek

Throughout this play we did not speak

In search for each other, we got lost in the maze

Amid the grass, we started out the chase

But it all seemed as though an unfolding plan

When soon into each other we finally ran

Poem by Farah A.Y

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Newspapers

Serene spherical story semblance
Tripled times till tomorrow’s topics
Amused amid archaic amazements
Descrying demeanors during drudges
Of omens omitted over one’s own opinions
Bricks, broken bones, brine bonkers
Love lasts long lest laden, lavish lies
Haggard, hindered hearts’ hurting
Nattering nouns; nine nuances
Papery production paradigm.


Painting credit: Norman Rockwell, “Behind the Newspaper”

Poem by Farah A.Y

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Sonnet for a Mistress

Though love’s tongue does strum the heart’s reaps deeply

For such love bares you desire and loss

Hadn’t been your desire to grow wearily

As fortuitous grasps bewilder the toss

Which your strife quivers it’s untroubled lyn

Making your heart wary of rumbling throbs

And now by the lyn he touches her skin

Whilst his eyes bestow her as his phoebe

As a mistress to her lover, a tale

For in her voice a melodic guitar

Tiptoeing his ears with her major scale

Thus he unearths his lover in memoir

To untie the twines of their love’s vow

Thereby love’s flavor for both to endow.

Poem by Farah A.Y

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