#danielnayeri

// #danielnayeri on weighing the nature of entropy… -- I don’t know which belief is true – nobody does. But what you believe about the future will change how you live in the present. -- Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad is Untrue (memoir), 2020 (at Crown Hill) https://www.instagram.com/p/CjDVdrjLqnK/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

// #danielnayeri on reading as listening while speaking… -- Reading is the act of listening and speaking at the same time, with someone you’ve never met, but love. Even if you hate them, it’s a loving thing to do. You speak someone else’s words to yourself, and hear them for the first time. What you’re doing now is listening to me, in the parlor of your mind, but also speaking to yourself, thinking about the parts of me you like or the parts that aren’t funny enough. You evaluate, like Mrs. Miller says. You think and wrestle with every word. It’s like when you’re hearing a great story from Scheherazade and you’re seeing past the thing to the main thing – past the adventures of the orphans to Scheherazade herself, begging to stay alive another day. -- Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad is Untrue (memoir), 2020 (at Crown Hill) https://www.instagram.com/p/CjAwhSurjyG/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

// #danielnayeri on the waiting that will… -- In a refugee camp, it’s the waiting that will kill you. The whole point of a refugee camp is that there are actual people trying to kill you. But really, it’s the slow numbing death of hopelessness that does it. You have to imagine a room that’s just a cement cube – nothing beautiful in it. If you’re not careful, this is also what becomes of the parlor of your mind. -- Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad is Untrue (memoir), 2020 (at Crown Hill) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ci-I9zfr9tW/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

// #danielnayeri on perpetual momtion… -- Every rock smashes into everything else and breaks. That doesn’t matter. What matters is whether the rock keeps going the same direction it was going when it smashed. Do you see what I mean? What keeps going? What do you know that keeps going? Never distracted? Never bored? Never deterred? Beat up and threatened, sure. Humiliated and ignored, often. But never never stopped. That’s right. You get it now. My mom. -- Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad is Untrue (memoir), 2020 (at Crown Hill) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ciz1mZuLBHF/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

// #danielnayeri on the story of the story… -- …if you spend time with each other – if we really listen in the parlors of our minds and look at each other as we were meant to be seen – then we would fall in love. We would marvel at how beautifully we were made. We would never think to be villain kings, and we would never kill each other. Just the opposite. The stories aren’t the thing. The thing is the story of the story. The spending of the time. The falling in love. -- Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad is Untrue (memoir), 2020 (at Crown Hill) https://www.instagram.com/p/CixO1JlrOZs/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

// #danielnayeri on Scarry english lessons… -- I remember that plane ride because I left my kite behind – it was too big. But I kept my book by Richard Scarry called "What Do Western Animals Do All Day?" which was how I learned English words – for instance, if a pig enters a gymnasium, he will lift barbells, and then go to the butcher to purchase cured meats. -- Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad is Untrue (memoir), 2020 (at Crown Hill) https://www.instagram.com/p/CiuuDAorqAp/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

// #danielnayeri on soft meat and parentropy… -- To us, parents are like blankets. Or parachutes, in a world that is otherwise full of snakes, and leopards, and Committee men, tornadoes, bullies, and death. And as a kid, you’re looking out and seeing all this with a near constant spike of adrenaline – always a second from panic – because you understand you can’t do much. You’re a little ball of soft meat with no shell or escape skills or battle strategies. You’re a milk drinker with milk teeth that fall out and you bleed. The only protection is those two distracted grown-ups, fighting and scratching at each other. It’s like looking up and seeing the material of your parachute fray and flutter. And you think, “I’m going to die. They’re going to split apart and I will free-fall into brambles where the demons hide, into their waiting claws. The whole world will tear me open.” -- Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad is Untrue (memoir), 2020 (at Crown Hill) https://www.instagram.com/p/CisJ2GTLCV7/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

// #danielnayeri on the point of all these stories… -- Dear reader, you have to understand the point of all these stories. What they add up to. Scheherazade was trying to make the king human again. She made him love life by showing him all of it, the funny parts about poop, the dangerous parts with demons, even the boring parts about what makes marriages last. Little by little, he began to feel the joy and sadness of others. He became less immune, less numb, because of the stories. And what about you? -- Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad is Untrue (memoir), 2020 (at Crown Hill) https://www.instagram.com/p/CikcSVhrHMX/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=