Leaning into the Creative Moment

Six months ago, I applied and interviewed for an artist residency at The Residency Project (TRP) in Pasadena, outside Los Angeles. In my application, I dreamed about spending the weeks leading up to Nowruz visiting and writing about my impressions of Tehrangeles—a place I’d fantasized about in my early adolescence as a second-gen kid. 

When I was actually offered the residency, it felt surreal. I immediately began planning: I would spend mornings exploring Tehrangeles and afternoons rifling through archives. On Chahar Shanbe Soori, I’d watch children jump over (controlled) fires at the beach, and on Sizdeh Bedar I would go on a picnic, knot my lentil sprouts with wishes, and find a running stream. I daydreamed about finishing my first full-length poetry manuscript Iranicana, which I have been working toward for at least 5 years. This residency, I felt, would be the last leg of that journey.

What bewilders and infuriates me most about the Eaton and Palisades Fires is that they were avoidable. The deaths, injuries, and destruction of homes and earth—as well as the consequent unfolding health complications, housing crisis, and economic devastation—were avoidable. On TRP’s website, Founder and Steward Sarah Ulmes writes, “Though many homes including ours were never in the direct burn area or forced evacuation zone, they were unlivable for weeks due to the ash, smoke, and wind damage. …I’ve spoken to community members who are still displaced these two months later, at the mercy of over-stretched disaster remediation crews, wading through arduous insurance processes.” Reading her account has been a reminder that official statistics—devastating on their own—don’t even account for the full scale of the disaster. There are so many people and organizations in and around Los Angeles deserving of support. You can read about The Residency Project and/or offer a donation here. 

I am drafting this newsletter on March 20: Nowruz, the spring equinox, the day I would have finished my residency. To say that I was sad to hear of the residency’s cancellation would be an understatement. In the months before the residency, I began to put enormous weight on what I imagined the residency’s three weeks would transform for me: not only finishing my manuscript but also further multimedia exploration, community-building, inner healing. The residency’s necessary cancellation was the death of an imagined future—albeit a short-term one—that I so badly wanted to live in.

At the same time, it felt selfish to feel my own grief and anxiety—much less articulate it—even to myself—when so many victims of the fires were still navigating the harsh everyday logistics of an ongoing disaster. It also felt shameful that my self-talk aligned with the belief that my own loss had to outweigh an entire region’s loss in order to be permissible—hadn’t years of therapy taught me that suffering is not a competition? Don’t I endlessly encourage others to give themselves grace? Couldn’t this simply be a both/and situation?

I am grateful for ritual. Khane Takani, or spring cleaning in preparation for Nowruz, literally translates to shaking the house. I’ve historically processed loss through deep cleaning: after the 2024 election, after the death of a pet I loved for 17 years, after the fissure of a 5-year relationship, I cleaned. In response to smaller hurts too—an embarrassing interaction, a rejection or disappointment, a lesson plan gone wrong—I’ve cleaned. These past three weeks I’ve spent wiping down walls, windex-ing windows, dusting radiators, vacuuming under furniture, and laundering curtains—and writing about deep cleaning as an act of respect for and stewardship of place. 

As I cleaned, I began conceptualizing how else I might experience and write about Nowruz, if not in Pasadena and Los Angeles. I took a bus to NYC to visit a pop-up Nowruz Bazaar with a friend; on the way home, I wrote down sprouting lentils wrapped in tin foil, marzipan goldfish, sumac and pomegranate beer. After months of waiting, Libby blessed me with Tehrangeles* by Porochista Khakpour, and—holy shit. I listened to the 11-hour audiobook in less than 24 hours and began a new piece the next day. I signed up for Farmer Sama’s Hayati Seedkeeping Program, and I plan on writing about the process as my basil varieties sprout. (Irani friends, there’s still time to sign up, if you’d like to join! The cutoff is March 31.) Like previous years, I read Chai and Conversation’s Nowruz Letters as they appeared in my inbox. I followed along as Naz Deravian (author of Bottom of the Pot: Persian Recipes and Stories*) posted her sabzeh growing journey on Instagram as an act of community building for at least the third year in a row (even though this year the Cat Distribution System blessed me with a kitten so there have been some variations to my usual sofreh haftsin, including cat grass instead of lentil sprouts!). On my walls, I’ve hung up lists and lists and lists of images, ideas, phrases, lines.

I’m constantly relearning how to lean into the moment and experience it, to redirect my life away from goals (finish book now!) that rely on circumstances beyond my control and, instead, toward values (creativity! community! compassion!) I can practice daily.

A fragmented journal entry from last night:

Nowruz Wishes

Free Palestine

Pleasure

Downfall of Empire

Resisting hierarchies of love

Quiet mornings

Resisting perfectionism as an anti-capitalistic practice

Public Library Renaissance 

Values > Goals

Inner Child Work

Vegetable broth

Abolition

Privilege of Boredom

Slowness as a Life Practice 

Self-Care ←→ Community Care

Reconciliation 

More poems! More yarn! More art! 

Co-create communal third space(s)

Build a free library

Making > Sharing > Thrifting > Buying

Beauty in the everyday mundane 

Lean into the Creative Moment