Gliding Beauty – Desert Journey Chapter Two

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                                              Drawing by Gino 2007

 

Preface: This is Chapter Two of a story, a book I began writing in 2007 in Jordan. I decided to not continue out of respect for the characters (both living and dead) It is a true story, my story and I will share it with you in a total of 5 chapters during this month of Ramadan.  I hope you will take the time to read each installment. This is as far as I got. Many of you know now about Umahmad from my poetry.
This is how it all began.

Chapter Two

Donna found herself in a small apartment on the other side of the world Christmas Day 2000, the first anniversary of her mother’s death.
Being an only child, and having lost her father so early in her pre-teens, made her mother a particularly strong and vital influence in her life .
She was old enough now, to even look back and feel sorry
for her, trying to raise such a child as she turned out to be!
Other subconscious thoughts and intentions can be seen by Freudian psychiatrists, like great motion picture projected on the outside of a face, while they remain totally invisible to the one inside having them, experiencing, and planning their life without even realizing how they are triggering and affecting each plan, like magnetic fields acting on the earth. Perhaps it was plain to everyone but Donna, that when she converted to Islam in the simplest of ceremonies, that June 23rd day year 2000 in her living room in Costa Rica perhaps she had decided somewhere in the dark plots of her own mind that she would never celebrate another Christmas as it would be too painful.

Forever it would remind her of calling her mother, who was almost bed-ridden on Christmas morning and have no one answer. Knowing her mother had a phone in every room of the house, including next to the toilet, there was no good or logical reason why she didn’t answer her early morning Merry Christmas call. One year later, Donna was celebrating Ramadan, the muezzins song heard through the cold air like a chanting invitation as a reminder of how far away from home she had traveled.

Lying by her side, a new husband, so much more difficult than the others before him. A gas space heater turned off for the night was put on hastily and she wrapped herself in a long wool coat, with scarf to brave the temperatures of the kitchen, with its big windows, so lovely to see out of in the summer, but so easy for letting in the cold desert drafts that whipped her second- story corner of the building without mercy.
The houses were not constructed for this weather, and for Donna, the fact there was even such a thing as a harsh winter in Jordan, was beyond any rudimentary knowledge of the country she held, before she actually mounted a plane that would carry her away to a new life.

A Jordanian winter was so much colder than she could ever imagine and some had said it might snow that night. Here she was in the land of sparkly new moons that shone like crystal instead of Santa Clauses and Reindeer, Christmas trees and nativity scenes . From her kitchen window she could see the green and red lanterns hung on windowpanes, lit even in the day, to mark the approaching Eid, a three-day feast that officially ended Ramadan and the obligatory fasting.
The only thing she needed to do in the kitchen that 25th of December morning, was to cook rice in boiling water, to feed to the hungry sparrows and pigeons and doves, who had come to expect a hot steaming plate of sticky starch every morning on the window sill behind her kitchen sink. They were already lining up, hungrily, fighting for position and peering in through the semi frosted glass which proved it was a bit colder outside than in. Breakfast would be ready in about 15 minutes, but only for the birds.

Her first meal, her” fatoor” would be at sunset perhaps some 12 hours away. Osamah stayed up all night, eating his last meal, perhaps at 4:00am before the “fajar” dawn prayer was called. Then he would sleep maybe at 6am and wake up a few hours or less before the call for the “Mahgreb” prayer which signaled the end of the day’s fast. Most of his fasting was done asleep, but she could not breach that subject, as it would be the beginning of perhaps a fight to last all night. She was a new convert, and knew next to nothing . Getting irritated with her was a regular habit of his, even when he wasn’t on his Ramadan schedule, which meant he was in a bad mood and she had to tip toe around the house all day to not awaken him. If she closed a door too loudly she would hear from the bedroom, ”Now, what are you doing?” His shouts echoed her own thoughts,” What was she doing on Christmas Day, keeping a husband asleep until the late afternoon?” She studied Arabic on the internet, wrote emails to friends back home telling them how exciting her life was, when the truth was, she felt lately like a prisoner, trapped in a cold apartment, with an  unconscious husband, who could transform into something worse with just the sound of a click or a doorbell.

Umahmad knew enough to never ring the doorbell, and Donna never forgot to leave the door unlatched on her days to come to clean. She heard footsteps on the stone stairs, and she smiled. Her friend was about to come to the rescue. She felt as if she had one big present, that would soon sweep through the door, dressed in black and perhaps a gold scarf. Her very own package, that little by little, if she could just learn the language, she could unwrap to reveal the gift she sensed waited for her inside.

* * * * *

I never learned how to pump up the kerosene heater to make it work instead of making it smoke. It was the heater we used in the kitchen, but since I wasn’t planning on cooking anything until mid-afternoon I gave up quickly and thought soon Umahamd will be here, then I looked up and she was in my kitchen doorway. It was her way of walking that allowed her to always surprise me. She could creep up behind me and I would not even sense her presence, let alone hear a footstep. I loved that about her and when I was alone, I even tried it myself, but I could never do it like she could. I looked rather ominous, where she was the height of gracefulness, I looked like I was stalking, but she, looked like she was gliding.

She was holding an immense heavy pot, giving off steam, and a rather deliciously unusual aroma and she said
“Peace be with you” I helped her put it on the counter,
“And also with you” and we smiled simultaneously.
I had now two months speaking to her three times a week and she was my inspiration and my teacher. I studied my Arabic course online, but she told me that it was really only good for reading the newspaper and literature, that “real people” spoke the “spoken language” and that was much more vital for me to learn than any Modern Standard Arabic course. I was convinced that I just wanted to learn to be able to speak with her, so if it was spoken Arabic, with a Jordanian dialect and many Iraqi words thrown in..then that was the Arabic that mattered to me. I just wanted to be able to convey my feelings, hopes, wants, fears and my life story as well as understand hers. I didn’t care so much about learning how to say” vacuum” or” iron” I could do that with charades and make her laugh. By The end of December, I only wanted her to know how important she had become for me and how I felt she was holding my sanity in her strong hennaed hands , that if I didn’t see her one day, that I felt like I was holding my breath until the next time she came back into my life.

She looked at me in the harsh kitchen light and I felt old and ugly, compared to her beauty and unblemished skin. Even in bad winter lighting , she looked beautiful and I felt her stare a little too long at my face and thought she was analyzing my crows feet. There was an uncomfortable moment and then she said, pointing to the big pot, ”Kershat” I said “Shoo?”(What?) she used the word for cattle (kershat), which could mean, sheep, goat, lamb, or beef and then pointed to her stomach and then licked her lips. I understood it was tripe probably from a goat, but it struck me so funny. I said “This is for me? For fatoor?” and she nodded and pointed to the bedroom as if saying” and for your husband too” I pointed to her “Your stomach you will share with my husband?” and she caught the joke and we laughed even more as she violently shook her head “no” and wagged her limp wrist up and down in a gesture of “shame on you.” While she rolled her eyes in pretend embarrassment.
“What’s wrong with my face? “ I said and gestured
“Nothing” and she made a face like she had no idea what I was talking about.
I said “You looked at my face a lot, is my face so ugly?”
She looked shocked” No never ugly. Why you think that?”
“I see you look to my face. I think it is ugly so you look.”
“No. No” she protested, I think your face hairy.
Arab husbands don’t like hairy face.”

This made me laugh even more and I closed the kitchen door to not wake up the sleeping faster in the other room. I was blond and had a very light hint of peach fuzz in an almost invisible beard and mustache. I had never thought about doing anything about it, as no one did in Costa Rica, and it was barely noticeable
“Where is Husband?” she said and then made the gesture of sleeping and snoring.
I said “shhh” and we both grabbed each other on the elbows and steadied our balance that had been thrown off by our silly brand of humor we had been perfecting from the first time we saw each other until this present moment.
She said “Dishes I wash later, you come to living room, I make your hairy face… beautiful.
She held nothing in her hands and I was thinking what could she possibly do to make me less apelike with her bare hands?

She led me to our guest-room, the most formal and lavish room of our cozy apartment. She was always holding my hand, inside the house or in the street; I always felt like an awkward child being led by a floating princess. She sat down on an embroidered Damascus cushion of our wall -to -wall Arabic couches that covered the outer walls of this large room. Beautiful oriental rugs, originals, lined the floor. She gestured me to sit down next to her and I did, and I found myself, pulled into her lap looking up into her face, and having no idea what to expect. She pulled out a bobbin of strong black sewing thread, and tore off a large strip. Placing one end in her teeth, then turning and twisting the other side so that it made a little lasso, she began passing it over my face starting at my cheeks, all the while it slid between her teeth.

Years later people asked me in Costa Rica how it was done, and I never could figure it out. All I can say is, it left my entire face tingling, red like a spanked baby’s bottom and just as smooth. It was absolutely the most painful beauty treatment I had ever experienced, but I trusted her, looking up into her face, her large black eyes staring down intently on the area where she was pulling out peach fuzz. I relaxed in her lap, never taking my eyes off of her, and the way the thread slipped through her teeth without breaking. When she was satisfied, that the ape had been changed into a woman, the kind “Arab husband’s like”
She looked me directly in the eyes for just a prolonged second, and then she bent down tenderly and kissed me on the lips and the forehead.
I could have stayed that way forever.

To Be Continued

Part One can be found here:here

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Gliding Beauty- Desert Journey Part One

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                                          Drawing by Gino 2007

Preface: This is a story, a book I began writing in 2007 in Jordan. I decided to not continue out of respect for the characters (both living and dead) It is a true story, my story and I will share it with you in a total of 6 chapters during this month of Ramadan.  I hope you will take the time to read each installment. This is as far as I got. Many of you know now about Umahmad from my poetry.
This is how it all began.

 

Chapter One

I seem to be thinking of you a lot when I go to the movies, I thought of you again in the movie theater because we were such a magically unconventional love, even in those times of glorious unbridled unconventional loves, and we were a movie. If any true love story should be shared on the big screen it was ours. Is this arrogant of me or totally foolish of me to think this way?

I have written almost 30 poems for you, ..
actually restarted writing again because of you,
your love and the effect it had upon my soul, upon my very being.

By Allah. this story is not about me; it is about you, Umahmad, about your effect on this soul…so this soul must be sketched in, if only in italics, in a third person’s name, at least from time to time, because this is a love story, and every love story has more than one person to share it with. Then of course there also exists
the incredible pain and the “maktoob” of your coming into my life.

In the Arabic culture we believe that much of our lives is destined, it is written “maktoob” or meant to be “naseeb” Like our parents that we cannot choose, there are places and people too that come into our lives and therefore are maktoob, and they always come for something, even if we are slightly unaware about Life and our place in it, these moments are usually perceived and contemplated by all who experience the arrival of a gift destined for them and them alone.
Umahamd was my gift and I knew it the first time I set eyes on her.

She was about to be my domestic that day, and I was so irritated at my husband, for sleeping through the morning unable to fill his necessary position of translator between us.
She spoke only Arabic and I only Spanish and English. There she was, poised in the doorway of our apartment in Karak, a provincial Crusader castle town in the south of Jordan that chilly fall day of 2001.
She came in with an “Asalaam Alaykum”(peace be unto you) and I politely answered
“Wa alaykum salaam”(and also to you)

We quickly checked each other out as women have a tendency to do, even subconsciously I suspect. We both made a quick eye sweep up and down, and then I said “please come in” gesturing to enter .
I had no idea who this woman would be to me, not even a faint intuition that she and I could actually become friends of the deepest kind, but in my fast scan of her face I saw beauty not usually found in domestic employees. She had an almost movie star quality with an aquiline profile, which made me think of a proud black- maned knight on the chessboard..

She was robed in a long ebony abaya a sheer light weight over-garment cooler than it looked and made for hot weather. It protected her body shape as well as it could from the eyes of strangers, and strange men in particular, and it protected her virgin skin from the merciless desert sun. She was maybe 5’ 6’’ with a strong symmetrical build and her skin was shockingly white and without blemish.

Her large black eyes, long straight nose and naturally full lips gave her the appearance of many different stars all seen on the big screen, but mixed and combined so it was impossible to say,
“Oh she looks just like so and so.” She looked a lot like many cinematic goddesses, and when she walked through my front door, I was given a living example of another way for human transport.

She did not walk, she floated, glided over the carpet like a smooth graceful hovercraft. To the last day I watched her glide away, I was never sure how she could do that, how effortlessly she made it seem, like she was always in an invisible bubble of zero gravity, and it was all she could do to keep from floating away out of sight.

I led Umhamed into my small kitchen, with big sliding glass windows that looked down the hill at similar Lego-style apartments that were so common in Jordan . Even though they all were cut in the same style, the stone siding and the balconies and imaginative window framing, made them not unpleasing to the eye. The second floor room was cool and there was a crisp fall breeze that shook the panes, as we sat across from each other at my square white plastic breakfast table. Then there was a long pause as I studied her face in repose and realized there was no way on earth I was going to make her understand what I wanted her to do, to clean my apartment that day.

She was my Iraqi refugee domestic helper (this was all I knew about her) and I wasn’t even sure how to say “clean, dishes, bed,vacuum, dust” the basic vocabulary necessary, so we remained a bit too long just staring at each other until the impossibility of communicating anything with her or she with me struck me so funny, I smirked involuntarily.

She saw it and half-smiled back. My eyes twinkled, I felt the rise of hysteria because of the ludicrousness of it all. Lack of communication can get you killed or it can make you die laughing depending upon who you do it with. Her eyes told me she was seeing the same humorous side of our predicament and her eyes just bubbled. I saw them overflow and the outer corners crinkled, and I burst out laughing, almost spitting on the table. She followed suit. It looked like her cheeks were filling from the inside with helium until they finally just bwaaah, burst and she popped out in a broad spontaneous laugh.
I laughed harder and tears on both our cheeks ran down our faces respectively in that fabulous hysteria of spirit that bonded without words, telling us instinctively we were like souls who had “light blood”(dem hafeef) the Arabic expression for good sense of humor, jovial personalities.

I said something in English and it made her laugh even harder. She answered me in Arabic and I held my stomach in. I couldn’t control it now, I went right over the top of normal silliness into the realm of total hysterical combustion. She was right there with me, didn’t miss a beat. We grabbed on to each other’s forearms like two drowning raucous victims laughing and crying and at least for me, we bonded as two kindred souls for all eternity right there in my kitchen. I will never forget that day. I will never forget the first 15 or 20 minutes of shared humor. I drew pictures on the back of an envelope to try and explain myself, I sketched stick figures washing dishes and she laughed even harder. We tried charades, pointing and pantomiming chore movements.. I fell in love with her that destined morning. I knew instinctively, she would be so much more than my domestic employee, and I was totally correct in my assessment. Two years later I laughed again with her like that, but in the wide open pink sand spaces of Wadi Rum.
Three years later, after a love lived like few others, fate turned again and she was gone.

To Be Continued….

 

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Ramadan Kareem 2023!

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A blessed Ramadan to all Muslims all over the world!
Ramadan begins today at sunset and will last until The sunset on April 21st
Fasting, charity, family, sharing , good deeds,  kindness, generosity, and prayer are all part of the month of Ramadan.
I will not be able to travel to be with my family in Jordan

this year, so I will not have the benefit of breaking the fast every night with them and I will miss that very much.
I might be a little slower posting and reading,
as I will not have as much time for my blog.

Have a blessed month everyone!
Ramadan Mubarak!  Ramadan Kareem!!

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Lucid Dreaming….Sort of

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                                “City Rain” by Dale Innis on Midjourney

Put me in this place I need to be today
if you bring the right music.
I will shut the door behind us.
I’ve been feeling good about myself
for one whole week
and now I need to let
the words slip through the grate
slide out in dance
or with grace,
take a picture
of my beaming face,
I hope you’ll stay the night
my muse.

If you say yes,
we can keep up
the pace,
until the break of first sunlight
the following day.

In my lucid dreams
I have no control it seems.
I watch it aware this unfolds
on my very own stage,
but …
I have never been the director.
I am never in control of my lines
or the scenes;
lucid as a wide awake schoolgirl,
I stand in the middle of the street
and watch it all with my eyes open
and whoever is,
changing the scenery
lowering the scrims,
cuing the rain…
is hidden from me
in the shadows of backstage.
and it just feels so real,
so very real.

The colors and where I find myself
assure me I am asleep
and yet I do not have any idea
how this scene will end,
or where my next line will
begin.
Can I intervene with lucid clarity
and push the plot
Like this> < like that?
To here> < to there?
Is love at the end or a fall
from a roof top around the bend?
And I, the ecstatic spectator
have given up any control
so long ago.
I sit in awe,
my mouth wide open
and hope to catch a glimpse
of the director,
before lights are dimmed
and the curtain descends
and the play is over.

Karima Hoisan
March 17, 2023
Costa Rica

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Train Ride Down With Tukso 2012

Changing up the pace from real life to avatar life today:)…Here is a video I made (when I barely knew what I was doing) for a Second Life-Real Life singer who is still performing in Second Life for more than 15 years. He was and is amazing!
I was just starting out making my machinimas (screen-capture videos) and inventing as I went along..(The Pre-Natascha Randt days) Still I think it captures the energy of Tukso’s music back then.. Every instrument you hear on this piece is played by Tukso. He uses a looper and lays down a song,  track by track. It’s amazing to witness and hear:)
Enjoy and turn up the sound:)

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Toni

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                                                                   Toni

Please push play to hear me recite this poem to Neil Young’s “Helpless”

Toni

This is the music that played through our days
The Canyon was our forever home
hippies roaming the sunset strip
parading after dark up and down
and right above that happy colorful freak show
was a glen called a canyon… Laurel Canyon.

We were being carried on the winds of change
and didn’t even know it,
because these were the happy innocent times.
Somehow you and I made it our home
and I don’t even remember how we met…
Looking back it seems you were always in my life.
You were so much bigger than Life
our own Canyon Janis Joplin,
so naturally gorgeous and a hostess
to all her colorful friends
who were constantly dropping by.

Her VW Bug, top down
Dumpster dog riding shotgun
until I sat down,
“Move over Dumpy! The Dons is here”
Tom, Toni me
We played the superstar couple of our times
Me in my striped T-shirts and suspenders
you in velour and lace.
Mick Jagger started us thinking about unisex,
the gender neutral of the day
and I cut my hair like Rod Stewart,
a long shag and you looked
like a movie star,
an hourglass figure with wolf eyes
and the most contagious laugh in all of Hollywood.

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My very first platonic romance,
with all the elements
love and jealousy, passion and tears
just where we became one
was not in a bedroom
but on horseback above
the Hollywood sign at midnight
looking down on all of the lights of Los Angeles
spread out below
holding hands and drinking wine
trotting in sync, knees bumping
each other from time to time
singing Neal Young
to the rhythm of our horse’s hoof beats
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.
We sometimes fought,
and hurt each other but
we recovered and yes,
it was better to cuddle and laugh,
better to hit West Hollywood town…
See & be seen at the Gay Discos
lose ourselves on the dance floor
at The Farm.

Our neighborhood water fights were legendary,
our crazy ideas like Bath-time with Toni
when we were holding court in your bathtub,
our friends spread out on the floor.
Listening to Dr. John.
Crawling along the side of a mountain
the “doggy trail” laughing too hard to stand
Everything we did,  we did in stereo- and in living color.

The hardest person to say goodbye to
was you, when I left.
I gave up so many friends and neighbors
even a good marriage just to follow the call
to travel down the Pan Am highway
with young Poett and get away from it all.

I said I’d be back in six months
I didn’t even know that was a lie.
You finally chose to forgive me
came down to visit me…
The rest is history.
Our love was and is forever
You were and always will be
That charismatic, energetic
bestest of the bestest
That spirit that still haunts
the full moon trails of the
Hollywood
Hills with me
and haunts my dreams.

We made the magic happen
you and me and no one
can take that away from us,
because no one would even try.

Karima Hoisan
March 7, 2023
Costa Rica

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Making it Real…..or Surprise!!!

Today is my Birthday. My real-life Birthday and I want to tell you a story:

Once upon a time, an avatar named Karima Hoisan was born in Second Life on
December 26th 2007.  She looked like this and grew up over 15 years to become
The avatar-poet you all know on WordPress and in Second Life:
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Now, I would like to tell you another, somewhat parallel story:

A little girl named Donna Leviash was born in Milwaukee Wisconsin on the 9th of March.

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Donna at 3 years old                                          Donna at 18 years old

She had a very interesting and complicated life and lived many stages and phases. She ran away from home at 18 when her mother decided to re-marry, 7 years after her father’s death,

1. She was a hippie in Hollywood and played organ in a R&R band while living in a striped house.

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2. She was first married to the lead guitarist:      3. Then to the bass player
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and they had a small daughter, Poett and moved to Laurel Canyon in Hollywood.
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           Poett 3 days old with mom                          Poett all grown up    Toni Laurel Canyon_n                        The Wild & Infamous Pair of Dons & Tones – Canyon Girls

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Her beloved Raven “Strangeways”+Laurel Canyon “Sasha”  +  Skeet Shooting
(Please go to YouTube to see our home movie walking around Laurel Canyon:) 

4. She became very politically involved, anti-establishment and packed up Poett and drove down The Pan American Highway to Costa Rica, when Poett was 5 years old, looking for a better life. They lived on the top floor in this house that the high tide came in and washed through the first floor twice a day. It was like living out at sea.

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5. They bought a farm and lived the ranching life without electricity for 10 years until soon after, her son Julian was born.

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            Harvesting Black Beans                          On the way to somewhere:)

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Poett in the ranching days                                   With her loyal friend Beto
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                              Luis                                               Buying a horse

When Julian was born, they were still living remotely, but she contracted Hepatitis and for reasons of health had to sell the farm and move them to a town that had electricity.

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              A collage of  small Julian                          Julian &  Poett  all grown up

Now….a quick montage!
6. She was a close friend of the bishop and the priests for many years.
She offered to cook them meals on retreats and they came to her house, regularly for dinner.
These were her priest years

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7. She was Vice President of the Fútbol Team 10 years with 9 players living in the house for over 4 years….Really involved in Fútbol!  Her Fútbol years,

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She had always lived with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, but she was not diagnosed until later.
With the beginning of the internet, she found out so much more about a condition she had lived with, all her life and was invited to be studied by a team of doctors in Philadelphia.
* A footnote. her collagen defect makes her look about 20 years younger than she was. The only good thing about this disease.

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                                                    Back row 3rd from the right

8. The Jordanian years
She married again and moved to Jordan for 10 years. She converted to Islam, not for marriage, but for conviction. She loved living there and had incredible experiences, learned to adore her new family and felt this time in her life was very destined to be. She also added Arabic to her spoken languages….rode camels:) and met her platonic soulmate…
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Jordan on the road to Amman                        In the Wadi Rum with UmAhmad
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                        Havana Cuba                                            Petra Jordan                                                           

In 2007 she joined Second Life after returning to Costa Rica. Her marriage was over.
In the virtual world, she regained her self-confidence, her self-worth and she healed
little by little from emotional trauma she had lived through in this last year. 
Today, the 9th of March I celebrate my 76th Birthday… I decided today was the day to join my two very real selves. Karima & Donna into who I am today:) I am very proud of all I have lived, learned and accomplished in my 76 years on earth in both the virtual and the real, Alhamdulillah. An old lady?? Never! My spirit has not aged at all… Too old to learn something new? Never!! While there is breath, all is possible…Keep learning!!
PS. I have no baggage with me…I have forgiven everyone and been forgiven by everyone.. I travel light to the next phase of the journey. Alhamdulillah.

Julian Leviash, Poett Ryan, Donna Leviash (aka Karima Hoisan))
 to my right-Sebastian Valverde, my oldest grandchild
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And….the rest of the grandchildren!!
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        Axel -Danna-Jack- James (in the back)

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PS. My big party is on Saturday! Bring a helium balloon and join us:)

Posted in Uncategorized | 100 Comments

Luis

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                               “Riders” by Dale Innis on Midjourney

Please click Play to hear me recite this poem to the music from Buddah Bar Vol V

It’s 1am and I’m awake
thinking I wonder why you have not called;
it’s been a week
since the last time I heard your voice
and you said, “Hey Tita..how’s my girl?

I can barely walk and you faint
and fall on the floor.
It seems an impossibility
you will ever visit me again.

I had not seen your face for
30 years and then there you were
in my living room
sitting side by side again
holding hands after so much time
It just seemed so right.

Age has changed the lighting
and now what we have left
are just our memories
our dreams now and then
and a phone call once a week.

But once upon a time,
We were in our prime
when I met you at a dance.
You came to our table
and held out your hand
and pulled me close,
and in a tight two – step
like we had danced together forever
we moved across the room.

You were so handsome,
the iconic Latin cowboy
with surprising green eyes
and a white hat saying
all those words that just thrilled me.

Time drifts away from us
and I don’t look like me
and you don’t look like you.

But when we close our eyes
and just hold hands
we are those wild versions of ourselves
riding at full gallop in the rain
our cutaway black rain coats
with tails flying behind us.
I get a tear when I remember
that you and that me
young and full of passion
and life
and somehow that still stays inside
and I can barely walk and you
faint and fall dizzy to the floor
and neither of us will ever ride
again.

Oh I don’t know how long
I can keep on going
some of the best
are getting left behind
and now even memory starts to fail me.
Did I ride the roan and you the bay
or was it more the other way.

I loved you in those days and we were
such a handsome couple
ranching and riding, while the waves
crashed below us on the shore.
I get tears in my eyes when I remember
but I’m so grateful for those times
I would awake locked inside your arms
each break of day.
and for each glorious sunset
that caught us on the trail.

Of course I would do it all over again.
You know I would do it all over again.

Karima Hoisan
March 5, 2023
Costa Rica

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King of the Coffee Table

WhatsApp Image 2021-07-14 at 2.49.33 PM

  Maktoob alias Maki…..the day I rescued him

“Almost
Eaten by the dogs
he climbed a tree to safety
his siblings were not as lucky
Maktoob”

The word maktoob means:
“destined” or “already written” in Arabic
If you did not read the original post, you can find it here:
https://karimahoisan.com/2021/07/25/the-story-of-maktoob-that-which-is-already-written/

Alhamdulillah, today almost two years later, he is our undisputed….

                                          👑King of the Coffee Table👑

WhatsApp Image 2023-02-26 at 10.56.21 AM

                                 Mashallah….another kitty success story !!

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House of Prude

WhatsApp Image 2023-03-01 at 12.50.50 PM

                              Victorian Bedroom by Dale Innis on Midjourney
Please click play to hear me recite House of Prude to Portuguese singer, Carminho

House of Prude

Black curtains were drawn at 1pm after lunch
The butlers and maids were excused…
No wall paper had ever seen children conceived
No lamps swung with the rhythm
of Madame getting her dues…
You would have found no love making to have to excuse
Inside the sterile and decaying House of Prude.

No catalogue underwear strewn on the bed
next to pictures of ankles swathed in red lace…
just sensible shoes removed near the royal purple divan
a book of Virginia Wolf, with reading glasses atop
setting the somber pace…
There was not even a fantasy floating through space
Inside the sterile and decaying House of Prude.

Burned were the chippie books, with dirty girl’s looks
Denied! Any photograph of a stolen touch or a snug
Without memory of being fed strawberry tarts with lips half apart
only the maid’s vacuuming once a week
sent sparks flying off the rug…
Around her buttoned shirt never a canoodle or hug
Inside the sterile and decaying House of Prude.

Karima Hoisan
March 1, 2023
Costa Rica

 

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