Bøger af Tom Omidi

This book's 180 mages are selected out of 400 large photos the author had printed in his colour darkroom painstakingly out of a large collection of negatives and slides (around 10K) that he had captured with non-digital cameras for forty years. The photographs have been chosen mostly by the way they inspire a memory or mood for the author, but hopefully also reflect the glory of nature, artistic intonations, or interesting notions. As the title implies, the stories behind these images, including the author's customary emphasis on the declining state of humanity and families, have been a main factor for preparing this book as well.

The value of a person's thoughts depends on his/her personality, primary wisdom, mood, and motives. However, we all share the same fundamental thoughts about life intuitively. They are the most primitive and instinctual thoughts (and questions) that we reflect upon regarding our existence. They are primary thoughts behind the whole philosophy, processes, and actions of life. We know intuitively-like a kind of magical power-about our need for fundamental thoughts to define life, grow our convictions, and develop a personal life philosophy. Only then, we believe, we can begin to justify our existence as an intelligent person somewhat. At the very least, we like to feel some basic senses of compassion, love, and peace in line with valid thoughts.At the same time, the miraculous, vast scope of our thoughts reflects the complexity of human nature and hints the possibility of reaching a higher level of humanness if only we understood our naiveté, sentiments, brilliance, arrogance, and ignorance that be-siege us, all at once or in rotations. We only need to know the right thoughts to make our lives meaningful.Surely, our success in life depends on our character and back-ground, but also personal efforts to control our thoughts at least thirty percent of the time. Even this minimal awareness of our thoughts is helpful for maintaining a healthier lifestyle. Yet, most of us do not know the best way of using our brains.

This book provides the images of 133 paintings by this author during 1996-2006. It also provides the background information about the paintings and the author during this period before he was drawn to writing novels and academic books as a more potent means of expressing his frustrations with human relationships and social mechanism toward human demise.Painting, especially landscapes, had felt like a sacred mission to me for healing at the age of fifty when both my career and marriage had felt doomed. In fact, it had proven a timely distraction and hobby that occupied all my free time for ten years before I became a zealous writer in 2006 when the chances of words expressing my convoluted sentiments had felt better and easier.The idea of archiving those paintings in a book hit me recently. At least their mere existence had to be recognized now that I have stopped showing them in galleries, while experts and the public have also made favourable comments about them all along. Then, adding some background about the paintings along with my current feelings about art and humanity felt useful, too, even at the risk of parading the depth of my senility or naïveté at this age.Good paintings enthralls our spirits, as we stare at them for hours serenely. Then again, it is getting harder every day to fathom the meaning and value of art while the world is falling apart and life's hardships are rising fast. Soon, we will be merely too occupied by social chaos, natural disasters, and personal sufferings to keep up with the burdens of living in our allegedly modern societies, let alone be artists. Nobody will have time and energy for pleasures, arts, or reflections, as we must struggle harder every day just to survive, repair ruins, manage our stress, and fool ourselves to keep living.Even before reaching this sad state for humanity, defining art and its value for society had been fluid and judged by its effect on humans' welfare, while most artists have pursued art, especially nowadays, for financial rewards, social recognition, and fulfilling their needs for achievement.

Grasping the realm of our spirit and learning how to empower it through a personally defined spirituality is the only way to survive life's hardships and perhaps find a relatively peaceful life, too. As another natural wonder of the universe, fortunately, our urge for spirituality is deep within us like a conduit for boosting our spirits. Of course, attaining this private sense of divinity is a personal challenge, which neither religions nor scholars can explain to us or help us attain. We must set out to grasp it on our own in a hard way. Then, we can draw on this inner power and intuition to set our personal beliefs, build our identity, and keep our spirits intact. Otherwise, we would stagger along with the cocky crowd without knowing who we are and what the purpose of our living is.An inherent link exists between our spirit and psyche as well, but it must be reinforced through self-awareness and growing a personal sense of spirituality. It begins with exploring our urges, psyche, and needs, which we must tune collectively to revamp our deluded mentality about life and being. Through a soul-searching process, we must somehow come to terms with our neglected and pained spirit and feel our link to the universe. At the same time, our invigorated spirituality bolsters both our psyche and spirit to redefine and enrich our lives, as explained in this volume.

Most people follow the mainstream and get dissolved within the society. They simply adopt pervasive social values and imitate one another in order to pursue their ambitions and satiate their needs for social acceptance and attention. Following this popular path feels most natural, while it also maximizes people's chances of fulfilling their collective needs for pleasure, sexuality, power, and materialism. This happens at the cost of neglecting their integrity, independence, and identity, but they do not mind. This customary life structure feels the easiest to manage for most people, anyway, because they are not usually driven by strong passions other than sexuality and materialism. Besides, they are properly conditioned and trained since childhood to follow this path. Furthermore, many role models are always around to encourage and support one another within common values and norms. Yet, this lifestyle revolves around a dysfunctional structure that people have put together recklessly and accepted its norms helplessly.We should at least know the perils of living in the mainstream. What is the purpose of taking all these rigorous steps in life so obediently without questioning our rationality and objectives? Get education, find work, make money, marry, have children, buy a house, travel, divorce, etc., all mostly in vain, as if chasing this routine life structure were ingrained in our genes.

Darren Durant returns to Vancouver in 1988 after living in Te-hran for three years and coping with the chaos of the Iran-Iraq war, including nightly missile attacks. He is now determined to establish himself as a painter and find a dependable compan-ion. He had traveled to Iran after an agonizing separation from his beloved wife, Erica. Even the sacrifice to abandon his artis-tic life and work in Erica's flourishing software company as a computer technician had not saved their marriage. A particular canvas he had painted in 1985 at the shores of the Caspian Sea keeps wreaking intricate emotional situations for him and others, especially a married Persian woman who follows him to Vancouver. Bizarre events obscure Darren's efforts to heal the scars of the war and his failures in marriage and artistic career.Despite his intriguing romances, Darren grapples with the dilemma of committing to someone without getting emotion-ally hurt again, versus the prospect of ending up lonely and lunatic like his father. His lovers' competitions to monopolize him, along with plots by friends and foes for baffling reasons, further complicate his efforts to settle down.