Confession #2

I hate most people

Confession #1

I'm afraid of ghosts. I sleep with the lights on and the TV on. Oh and i'm 30 and fairly balanced and i don't believe in an after life but i'm afraid of ghosts!

m'ami

l'ete prochain

promis

Another day here in Lebanon ...

Taking the long way home ..

Awesomest!



Awesomer!

Awesome!

O

And you ...

As for the present …

Those little things that lighten up your day. Those little things that keep you breathing, day after day. Your right to a hot cup of coffee in the morning. Your right to dance behind closed doors. Your right to enjoy the most eclectic playlist on your ipod. Your right to wear a scarf on a sunny day, to cross the street with arms behind your back, to step out in the middle of the day to feel the sun on your skin. Your right to be. The things we enjoy in the present. When we can’t see ahead. My right to call you by a different name, every time I see you, my right not to see you, my right to love you or hate you, my right to laugh in the face of discomfort, to walk barefoot in my yard, to get a dog. My right for a bubble bath on a Wednesday, for a cigarette before bed, for lipstick on your cup. Those little things I do everywhere. Things that resist our tolerance, that no matter how long we expose ourselves to, we still enjoy, we still feel and react to every time. Making a new friend, talking to complete strangers on a night out, remembering a dream, finding something you thought you lost, finding something from the past. Looking at pictures, taking pictures, spreading color pencils all over the floor and coloring with the kids, planning the next vacation, going on the next vacation, writing a new post, writing a poem, watching people through their windows and imagining how their life could be, movies night. To hear yourself reciting those couple of sentences you learned in a new language, to hear him say your name for the first time, to hear birds sing and know winter will come to an end, summers. Swimming in May, arranging the inside of my purse, singing my heart out in the shower, a kiss in the corner of my mouth, getting an unexpected letter after years of being away from him, wearing colors, getting a massage, better yet giving a massage, cooking with no recipe, living with no recipe …

The little things i enjoy…

February

Politicians keep provoking one another saying they’re not afraid …

Ummm ...

I am … !!!???

Dying as collateral while some figure is being targeted in the heart of the city ... Stupid way to die!!

That scares me!

The streets were furnished with gutted shells as I ran across at night to my car, locked the doors, closed the windows and drove like mad woman to get home.

Dying by a stray bullet shot to celebrate a politician interview … what a ridiculous way to die ...

Thinking about death at every turn on your way to work when you're stuck in traffic when you're out at night when you pass one of the many streets that witnessed crimes when you watch the news and at every significant date every diplomatic visit every new event unfolding ....

What a ridiculous way to live!

Words alone ...

I want to feel again ...

I want to scream and insult someone very harshly and also laugh very loudly and kiss till my lips hurt and jump like a kid and draw on the walls ... again ... I want another round, another stream of ups and downs another love that brings me to life that makes me want to dance and want to act up ... again ... I want another chance to start fresh only to mess it all up to mix it up ... again ... I want to lose my address lose my bags lose my notes forget my name and go on ... for another turn ... another time ... I want to fly ... I want to fly home ...

Hopeless ...

Six years craving a saj man2ousheh ...
What i would do for a butternut squash muffin right now!

BACK TO NORMAL

How do you tell your mom that you need to stay away, that it is what you have to do, that this time it will be for a while ...
How do you tell yourself that this is the right thing to do. How do pull yourself together and pull yourself stronger and look away ...
How do you tell that little child that you'll see him again one day ...
How do you ask a child to stop crying your name ... To stop loving you so much .. How do you ask him to kindly forget you for a while …
How do you shut the child crying inside of you ...
That inconvenient child that makes you want to stay, to give it all up ... How do you tell the child inside that this is the hand you were dealt? To keep leaving, to keep moving, to look for life away from your life …
Mama said, your destiny will lead you … How do you tell your mom that you don’t believe in destiny… that this is the weight you have to endure … the guilt of making the choice of being away from her and going back to yourself … so that you can survive, so that you won’t blame her if you miss yourself and you’ll only blame yourself when you miss her …

I think it's brutal to be ravaged with emotions this strong and to be faced with decisions this grave. I am not hiding anymore and not blaming myself for being shocked and being confused. It is sad. So very sad but we will survive this one too like we did before.

Thank you for the wakeup call!
I am already smiling again ...

I miss you




















My phenomenal you ..
Some people we write about, some we see, some we talk to, some we miss, some we have with us, in our hearts, really we do. Like emotional armor, they're secretly with us, to make us stronger, so we go on thinking we don't miss them, thinking we'll see them again soon, to go have lunch, to go for a walk, to talk for hours and let the hurt out ..
We think next time we'll break our heart, they'll be at the door, with our filet mignon and a Foreman grill, in case we didn't have one, cupcakes from Magnolia, will make you tea with one ice cube and sit down to listen. We think the next big evening we have, they’ll come over to take you shopping but not before taking you for appetizers at little Brazil and then lunch at Meza grill and then make sure you will get the chance to ask about your favorite chef. We think they’re down the hall, every day, waiting for you to drop by, with coffee, to make fun of the people who bother them and to tell them it will be ok, and to take them out for a beer that you hide in the cold room underneath the bacterial dishes. You think you’ll be there when their cat dies, when yours gets sick, when you feel like cooking Indian food, when you feel like Russian drinks. You think you will never have a Beaujolais nouveau without them, never run away from someone at the mall without them, never try a new hair color a new dress a new path without them … And you let yourself be vulnerable .. Thinking you will never have to cry alone … and you cry for the last time in the wind, in that new dress you never wore again, when you see them leaving and you know you will never be down the hall again .. They will never take care of you when you’re sick, you will never yell at a guy who was rude to them … We will never express absolute disgust with everything and everyone around us again … and we will never dance till the morning hours in the village again …
Some people are just there for you, never judging you, never labeling you, always available when you need them, always willing to understand and forgive and let go .. And when you think you have to, even let you go ..
Amazing in every way they are and more amazing is that they think you are …
I miss you my darling ..

Misery loves company























and that's the tune of that...

powered by ODEO


Thanks for also being miserable these days ...

















Second day in a row like that and it's driving me crazy...

Alright,


So photoshop is the barbie substitute for adult females,

The end result is always the same and always looks like one of those celebrities here. There are 3 or so formats now, like templates for how girls should look like and it's absolutely scary. You end up not recognizing yourself after a couple of strokes in a software, a couple of surgeries or a couple of hours in front of the mirror every morning. What they seem to do anyway. What's the point? Really what’s the point? What do people tell that girl? She’s a step away from being a star? From looking like a star? That’s she’s the best in a bunch of girls who look exactly like her? I think it’s the same phenomenon over and over.. let’s see … we all look the same, all drive the same car, all have facebook addresses.. maybe you were right.. maybe this is what killed the blogs.. was that a phenomenon or what? facebook being the easier faster more generic version. And it just happens somehow. Not that blogs didn’t offend people before us. It’s going so fast too.. the uniformity, the conformity that people seem to crave let alone fall for .. I know people who change their phone every week. What’s the point? Now it has this, next week there’s a new feature. What does it mean anymore? you see, everyone is on facebook.. you go through selection in life for a reason, no? not that I want to avoid anyone, or maybe I do.. you can’t avoid uniformity though.. we go through childhood fighting uniforms and through adulthood fighting routine and somehow we fall into its ugliest forms. I swear you look at people’s profiles and they all have the same life, take the same vacations, photograph the same … Remember print out photos before the digital age? I know i sound like my mother but really, remember how excited you were to expose that film you had in your drawer for a while? Or to sit down and go through albums with someone. Do you go through your digital albums with anyone really? Do you really want to make customized Christmas cards when it’s made so easy and generic? Everything is becoming generic. Cheap generic brands are good but we’re becoming cheap generic samples of humanity. When you increase noise by pixel in an image to increase contrast you sacrifice resolution. It’s always easier to go towards chaos like in thermodynamics. In life though, it’s always easier to go towards routine. Why did it become so hard to create chaos? To have a different face, a different phone, to not want to watch a certain show, or agree with a political opinion or follow a life choice or a fashion trend. Everything we own we do we have done seems to lose value, to become dispensable and redundant. Are we becoming that too? Replicas? Replicas of someone’s idea of what’s creative, what’s beautiful, what’s meaningful? I cannot add another number on my phone for someone who happens to find me on msn, someone I will never call. I cannot get another invitation or notification or poke on facebook, I cannot be stuck in another traffic, another line, another ‘image’ of what I should or should not be. It’s just too much. We keep wanting to run away. Did you catch yourself writing a list of people you should call back, or pay attention to, or apologize to, did the list include a high school friend you last saw 10 years ago? I keep wanting to run away and hide from all this nonsense. Present company excluded of course. You’re my peeps. The bloggers. In fact I miss you guys. I have lost you in all the traffic of past friends and faces of strangers ….
If you happen to stumble here by chance because you have looked me up, don’t talk to me, don’t comment and don’t add me to your email list and please don’t forward emails to me, send me pictures of your babies or poke me. I don’t care what kind of vampire you are, i don't know what your name means, I don’t know what kind of bride you are, I don’t care!!!
I know I sound like a bitch, in fact like a crazy bitch..

and oh yeah.. I’M FINE!!!
Not suicidal. I always write like that. It keeps me sane and harmless on a daily basis. Don’t check on me, don’t call someone to check on me and please, please don’t ask your mom to ask my mom to check on me.. most importantly don’t send me a virtual kiss, a virtual gift, a virtual drink or a virtual flirt. Wanna help me out? Leave a bottle of vodka by my door!!
Oufff
This is typical me rambling. I feel better..

One of those days ...

It's another day of mourning here and everything is closed. I still get busy on Sunday nights preparing for Monday mornings so that the very stressful day would go by as smoothly as possible. This Monday is a mourning day though and I’m even more distraught with the continuous inability to accomplish anything here with the general mood of lack of purpose and uncertainty. It’s another blurry day.. another lazy day …

I managed to clean and do laundry and the dishes and do some readings and send out some emails and analyze data and exercise and take my pills and do my grocery shopping and pace back and forth in the yard and I still have most of the day to spare so I sat down with a beer and popcorn to watch the actors guild awards.

I know this sounds weird but I’m totally heartbroken over the death of Heath Ledgers. Actually I’m writing this as an excuse to talk about that. It’s ripping my heart out. The first time I saw the news, it did not affect me really. I was more surprised and waiting to see how it happened. The more I saw his pictures everywhere the more I got upset about it.

When Daniel Day-Lewis talked about him today, I started crying, especially when he referred to the last scene of Brokeback mountain. I remember sobbing when I saw that scene in the movie. It was so real and so sad like life giving life and life ceasing at a loss. It’s so sad that he died. It’s so sad how he stopped being just like that, how he stopped existing… it’s so sad that in real life, life around him will go on after him …

I don't know why it got me so sad.

It's nobody's business really that he died or why he died ...

Maybe, again, it's the general mood of death and mourning here and my constant state of denial of everything around me and that his death is a more focused glamorized image of death ... If death can be glamorized anyway ...

I guess it's one of those days.

I don't know ...

She is not a melody but a scream ...
A scream of desire of euphoria of rage of gut wrenching pain.
A scream of disbelief of surrender of loneliness of confusion …
she was not a melody to be repeated when he lost his rhythm,
she was a knot in his throat when he decided to cry …

In the night, in the crowd, in the distance, he saw her …
He saw the shine in her eyes,
the cryptic signs in her looks,
cheated him, defeated him, brought him to life …
like an affair,
like the memory of her voice,
like it was yesterday …
and she took him away,
she took him back, to where it all began,
she summoned his past on command, yet again …
to the day she decided to love him …
weak and trembling,
her hair hiding her shoulders,
her twisted wrist hiding her eyes …
to the day he decided to love her,
to leave her, to daunt her,
to haunt her pieces of the moon on her wrist …
A piece of him on her wrist …
circles of crystals on her wrist …

To where it all began
To walks with no end,
to the Sundays,
to cities that haunted them
and books that shaped their life together
and shaped their history apart,
to her fits and breakdowns and falls at night falls,
to his anxiety in the morning that numbed him senseless,
that went away at the sight of her face,
as she smiled to him with all the tenderness
and the playfulness she possessed,
to restlessness that dissipated as she let him be heard,
to strokes of luck and misfortune
strokes of his fingers on her door,
strokes of music he wrote for her,
to the feeling of being shared
and understood, no matter what.

In the crowd,
in the distance,
she tucked her hair under her collar,
she always did that on a rainy day …
she always complained about the rain …
she was leaving …
she could never stand still …
she always ran away …
she was evasive explosive frustrating arrhythmic
like a scream
like a dream …
she always came back, to start again,
she came back in the night
unannounced unplanned invasive chaotic
like a scream,
like he had prayed in a dream …
strokes on his door, knocks on his soul …
he always took her back …
like it was destined …
silent vows, bitter taste of surrender
to her malice to her obnoxious certitude,
like a hypnotic need, like a fact,
like the pain she was in …
like the pain she was …

She always ran away …
only to come back …
Except for that night …
a life ago …
The candles were still lit …
she vanished in the night …
he had imagined her …
far away,
drinking and dancing and loving and laughing
without him,
he had imagined how she looked into the night
for him,
how she looked younger and looked older,
how she stopped eating for days,
how she stopped sleeping night after night,
how she stopped crying stopped hurting and stopped writing.
Night after night,
he had imagined her in peace and it confused him.
Much worse,
he imagined her not needing him anymore and it killed him …
life had quieted down for him …
and it was deafening …

She had her coat on,
she was ready to leave somewhere,
she pushed her hair slowly …
slowly enough for him to see the circles on her wrist …
and she smiled …

He rushed home,
played their song on repeat,
sprayed the scent that she loves in the air
and left the door unlocked …

she never came home that night …

My darling you ....
like the circles that i find .. in the windmills of my mind ...
like the circles on my wrist,
like the vows i recited to always be yours,
the vows that repeated like the echo of my time
i always find you,
i always have you with me..
saving me each day at a time
wiping my tears
and holding my shattered wrist..

In the name of change

Why is change so scary when it is supposed to be exciting and healthy

I never believed in sudden change since my whole system of beliefs revolves around cumulative and progressive steps that lead to a solid outcome, to a fact. The rules of nature, the rules of science, the rules of life. I never expected that events would shape so promptly that change would be tangible and almost painful. It seems though that at certain junctions in life, and even if you fight it with all what you have and what you know, change will hit. It seems that even some medical outcomes follow a very timely fashion in a very short constant period, to the extent where you almost see the change and feel it and can even time it. It seems that age does matter and I’m not sure if it is our inbuilt social and psychological perception of age that dictates how our behavior should reflect our age or if it is the other way around, but it’s there. Denial is there too, so is fear. This new road I call the road home, my new operating system, a new culture, my sister’s new hair color, a new job, a new emotion ... Life will not stand still for me, not for a second, and why should it? We live … we die … everything in between is changing as we are evolving. At every junction, you embrace a new role, a new pattern of behavior and you pass your old craziness and irresponsibility and need for adventure down, to new minds, to new hearts.

I heard a couple of young students talking in the hall,
- I think working abroad is much better than here. At least you’d feel you’re working towards something.
- But it’s far from family and friends
- Yes but you have to compromise …….. blah blah ….

Right. That conversation.

Even when I am not a mere observer and I am asked to be part of that conversation,

… So how was it for you? Why did you come back? Why did you leave in the first place? Did you cry at first? Did you miss it here?

I either feel too exhausted to talk about living away, too hurt that I am assumed to be done with it, or unworthy to answer since I ended up not knowing anything anyway.

Right now I seem to be stuck in between two eras. I have not grown into the stiffness I need to acquire to be accepted as an adult and I cannot keep up with the kids anymore. It is true. It happened! I cannot keep up …
I want to come home after a long day at work. I cannot keep all the names of the pubs in Jemmayzeh straight. I cannot wear high heels to work. My body did change and I cannot wear that skirt anymore.

That skirt …

Damn I looked good in that skirt. You know what skirt … The one you can’t wear anymore because now you actually weigh something. Because your metabolism every five years gets closer to that of a polar bear. That skirt that made him chase you (if you think this is dull, you obviously did not have that skirt).

I have replaced clubbing most of the nights with quiet evenings at home most of the nights and I have tucked that skirt in the back of my closet forever.
I have not grown into a prude yet. I am resentful when I see the young girls prancing around in their skirts. This has to be a good sign.
They look good though, in their skirts, dolled up for their guys, all fresh and loud and in your face, dropping their Martinis after a couple of glasses, and I look good, with my shy hair cut and my overstuffed purse.
Not quite the suitcase yet, not over denim yet … I still do cuffed trousers with pumas.

Maybe even the most tangible the most scary change is only a small step forward, maybe it is gentle after all, it is progressive, it is cumulative … like nature should be, like my shy hair cut, not quite the shaved head, not quite the up do.

Life will not stand still. Not for me, not for anyone. We have to keep going forward and better do it while loving the new operating systems, loving the new generation and while gracefully smiling.
The freckles that add up on my face at the first sun ray and hide back all winter, leave a new one every year. A new constant one. One that I lose track of anyway the next summer. One that reminds me to wait for the summer, all winter long.

Those smiling lines that are increasing, only increase because we have more smiles under our sleeves, those hips are wider because they loved more and those eyes deeper with the weight of all the blissful days in the backs of our minds.

I love my freckles, but that skirt will stay in my closet … For warmer days anyway, behind the doors, maybe, for him ... It will always fit ...

She said life seems to be gray …

Unforgettable, she broke the silence,
she came back from a midnight of sorrows ..
From a world far from her innocent laughter,
far from her grace,
her black hair still tender, still the same,
crowning her delicate face,
her erring looks hold candor when striking.
She talked about yesterday,
about the days of our age,
our age that always seemed to be lost
between two wars, between the times, between two generations
an age of innocence that does not belong anywhere

... Widows behind the dark glass,
Colors that melt in a grim horizon ..
We were not born there,
We were a generation of middle children, never belonging
We left our pride and self-indulgence and even silly dreams
We left vanity and rebellion
and we matured our way into total indifference

Do not let my past mock my present, do not pain me
Keep the memories locked in your eyes, in your heart,
I see them, i know them, i lock them in my heart ...
Keep quiet dear friend,
Do it for me
Be gentle ...

A generation of middle children
All wanting the attention, all loners all wanderers,
all cold hearted and all terrified
all living in gray …
Not quite brilliant stars, not quite happy …
Not quite in love

She said life is gray
And she said that is ok …

Go, old friend …
Go,
The year I see you, the moment I see you, again one day,
You would still be in my mind … dreams ago, a life ago … a moment ago …
Go so that you come back in the summer
When I come to life, when we might all come together
And be loners together, and be outsiders together…
Go and come back
It’s ok …