"Trip to Iran – Q4 1997"

The Iranair flight to Tehran was awful. The plane must have been from the "Era of Daghianus" (Persian expression referring to a very old object. "Daghianus" is the Persian form of Daghius which is the Arabic form of Desius, the 3rd century cruel Roman Emperor.) The ventilation system was suffocating, part of the electronics were out, the guy next to me found hair in his chick-kabob meal, his utensils were dirty and his seat was broken. Good thing I had brought my own pillow and bread. The Swiss check-in agent said she had never seen someone request a veg-meal on Iranair flights (I located it by luck on the aircraft). She asked if I drank Vodka. "Of course not". She said: "Iranians drink lots of Vodka"! (the ones she knows)

My back-pack guitar wasn't even noticed as I walked through costumes! Tehran's air was clean and beautiful. As you walked out of the airport you  are asked once if you need a taxi, and are not pestered as in India. Walked into a 3rd floor apartment where my grandma used to live. The place still has a still quality of her magnificent, radiant, affectionate, wise being.

Shadows, afternoon pink sun, and patches of rocks turned the gigantic nearby snow covered smooth-peaked mountains into a legend of mystery. My first day here I called about 30 friends/relatives to say hello. The social network here is very strong. We have many deep old friendships. Being here provides a better chance of seeing the collective conditionings.

JK did not talk much about what lies after physical death. He thought what is more important is to understand this life, and really live it. On a few occasions, e.g. when he was pressed, he'd say a bit about how he saw it, though, I think, this was not his favorite topic to talk since this is metaphysical, and his teachings mainly dealt with concrete human problems. Here's one excerpt(he was saying how a person can seek comfort in the idea of life after death, continuity, etc... "Now, if I do not seek comfort in any form-what is the fact? If I have lived a shoddy, petty, jealous, anxious life, as millions of people do, what is the importance of me? I am like the vast ocean of people. I die. But I cling to my little life, hoping that at some future date, I will be happy. And with that idea I die. And I am like a million others in a vast ocean of existence, without meaning, without significance, without beauty, without anything real. And if the mind steps out of that stream, as it must, then there is a totally different dimension. And that is the whole process of living: to move away from this vast current of ugliness and brutality. And because we can't do it, we haven't got the energy, the vitality, the intensity, the love of it, we move along with the stream." (1975): "...can selfishness with all its subtleties, come totally to an end?...and therefore there is a totally different manifestation..."

I am amazed at how quickly women can look at you as a life-long partner when you’ve just met (just as men evaluate a woman quickly for a partner with no “time-horizon" in mind). Here, tradition doesn't allow boys and girls to be friends. You can get arrested for being in the same car with a girl you are not married to! Received several marriage proposals but I am not even operating close to that frequency. A prospect told me: “marriage here is the first step: you first marry then get to know each other, then if things don't workout and families are open-minded you can divorce". Every time I come to Iran, there are pressures and candidates for marriage. A foreign-residing man is specially attractive to girls who mostly want to go abroad. Traditionally, the man with his parents go “suiting"(khastegari) and the girl brings tea...now girls come requesting; She walked in with her parents and she was holding the sweets. I brought tea for them :-)  (totally reversed roles). But for me marriage-as-we-know-it is completely out of the question - at least for now. The priority in life for Persian girls I've met are: 1) get married 2) go to the West. And what better than a man who can provide both.

Typical Persian interpersonal expressions: may I die for you, may I be thy ransom,