Our story ...

(pic, Heidelberg, last May)

Are we out of songs to sing
for each other
Have we explored
the hidden the subtle
and the abstruse
Did I read you through
Have you prayed a different prayer
Did the years,
the turns of events,
the turns of characters
tell our story
in full
The most terrifying
The most stupefying halts
to what forever effortlessly unraveled
Have the most chilling fate
that inhabited my being
and haunted my acts
without so much as doubt
Does emptiness now prevail.
Like a tender touch on a child’s cheek
Like the ample dunes
Like the warm skies of June
My eyes will follow you through
And my heart prays for you
Do I live with you for you
Can I make it without you
Is my soul now akinned
To yours
Do I have you under my skin?





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I am so sick of dating!

I am so sick of talking about this; I won’t bother making this post look pretty. I don’t like to tell people whenever I have a date anymore. I’m so sick of having to put my friends through indulging my hopes and building me up and cheering my naïve excitement until the idea fails. Again.

You know how we all had big dreams for life growing up? How we all thought we will make it big in life and be something different? And how, as far as love goes, we all thought we will live the ideal love story? How we're all waiting for a Mr. Darcey in Brad Pitt's body? 'Sleepless in Seattle' was out and I thought he might be anywhere, just waiting for me. 'You’ve got mail' followed and we all went online. Any Hugh Grant movie makes us think he has to be in England. Then sex and the city… Oh well...

This one is too quiet. This one is too noisy. This one is not assertive enough and the other too cocky. This one is freaked out by me. The other not freaked out enough. We live in different cities. We live in different worlds. We're too different. We're too similar. We're not only different but also have different interests. Oh Fuck it.

And you know how we tell ourselves only when we stop looking we’re going to find him? The ladybugs in 'Under the Tuscan Sun' and all this crap. And every time we decide to stop looking but we still do, deep down.
Well, I am not looking anymore. I am done with dating. This is official, after all it’s in writing.

Catching up ... Sunday madness!

Rêveries a park Guell ... (II)



- Qu’est ce qu’elle est en train de faire dans le parc ?
- Elle pleure.
- Toujours ?
- Oui
- Je n’arrive jamais a voire ses larmes
- Elle pleure sans larmes
- Pourquoi ?
- Personne ne sait
- Mais il faisait nuit dans une heure
- Elle n’a pas fini
- Va-t-elle mourir ?
- Un jour, peut-être.
- C’est tellement drôle. Cette fille
- Non, tu ne connais pas sa vie
- Es-t-elle quelque chose de différent ?

Juste une femme. Elle est bonne au fond, généreuse, fière, très consciente et pleine de morales et vie, d’émotions et de cavités. Pleine d’histoires et des remissions innumérables a chaque partition. A chaque chapitre de sa vie. Sa vie, tu vois, n’existe que dans ma tête a moi. Son rendement, ça ne me concerne pas. Elle n’est pas une femme qu’on trompe. Moi seul je comprends ça et je n’abandonne jamais.

- Ne la regardes pas. Ne voles pas sa solitude. C’est juste a ce moment la qu’elle ...
- Il y a tous ces gens
- Non, elle est seule.
- Tu es drôle aussi
- Non, je l’aime
- Tu l’as rencontre ou ?
- Sur un matelas
- Est-ce qu’elle pleure son mari ?
- Toujours
- C’est quoi à propos de lui ? La façon a laquelle il l’a touche ?
- Elle manque sa manière à ne pas la toucher.
- A-t-il fait des petits avec elle ?
- I lui a fait de la musique.
- Un compositeur ?
- Un danseur … Son corps faisait les mémentos de leur vie.
- Et elle ?
- Elle a le corps d’une citadelle. Fait pour me tuer.
- Elle est blessée
- Elle a casse une vitre a son habitude.
- C’est grave ?
- Non c’est bon. C’est de la roux et pas du sang.
- Et toi ? Tu lui as offert des roses ?
- Non, elle va les détruire, certes. Ou les manger pour ne pas les voire, pour les posséder. Ou les brûler dans sa cheminée et puis détruire la cheminée. Son appartement est vide. Sauf d'une cheminee et de ses problèmes.
- C’est étrange votre rapport.
- Elle n’est pas désagréable. Simplement elle n’existe pas.
- Et toi.
- Moi j’existe pour elle.
- Elle sourit a toi
- Elle faisait ça de temps en temps. Elle voudrait que je reste. Moi je le sais.
- Puis-je l’aider ? Quelque chose je peux faire ?
- Non, rien du tout. Elle est heureuse.

………………

- Pourquoi tu pleures aujourd’hui ? Qu’est ce que te peine ?
- Je pleure car elle ne pleure pas.


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Those who can’t do, teach.
Those who can’t live, write.

When dreams die ... and you ...



He saw her reflection in the glass running out to the garden. He could almost feel the breeze under the folds of her chiffon. His heart beats raced as her whimsical sous-bas screeched between her legs. He fixed his dreamy lazy looks on the back of her hair. He could almost see her smiling. He knew she waited for him in the garden. He knew the calm that waited for him in her arms. The moon was not to flirt with her that night. Her finger tips touched her neck. She had him wired with her inviting gestures. He could almost taste her wrist. His lips opened wanting to call her name but he didn't know her name. Through the darkness her reflection was haunting him. She stopped and looked towards hin. Her shadow was now a face. He could almost see the sparkle in her eyes but it couldn't be true. He almost felt silly. He felt ashamed of the moments he stole with her. He stood tall and serene. He would have left. He could have left. He cannot leave the dinner behind. Behind was a world, wine, music, life. Behind was his prison.

And behind, he remained imprisoned ...

They locked eyes by the sunset. They walked towards each other, in silence. They knew it was time. He pushed his shoulders forward and she leaned with her eyes on his hair. On his eyes. She started caressing his face with the back of her hand. He recognized that scent. He burried his face deep in her chest and he started weeping. He told her about his parents and she knew she will love him forever. That night he slept peacefully. That night he knew her calm.

Until the morning ...
Until he faded with the tide …

The wind talked to her every night. Since that night. She kept his face in her memory. He kept her scent. Every moon she walked in the garden. Every moon he could feel her smile behind the curtains. But he had to stay behind …

…In his world… In his prison …

She who planted a smile in every garden, had finally lost her smile …

Slow down child ...



Why is it that every time life catches up with you,
You close your eyes?
Why is it that you coat your roads,
With wings of butterflies?
And then forget to fly?

Do you still sing for her to sleep
To her long golden braids
Do you weep after the rain?
Does your voice still race
Your childhood betrays your face? …

Are you still the wonder that you are?
Then slow down child …

Do you crawl in bed with your Russian dolls
Do you peel through layers of illusions
Do you pray for colors
Do you still press your pace
When sadness takes its toll?

Are you still the joy that you are?
Then slow down child …

Why is it that whenever life understands you
You realize
The anchor that pulls your arms
To the tenderness of the rising sun
To the earth pulsing with Jasmine
To the whispers at the hills of the night?

Are you still the woman that you are?

Then slow down child …

The moon doesn’t lose its light …

So close your eyes,
just for the night ...

To my dear L.

Some absurdities

So near, yet so far ...

- So you’re from Lebanon
- Yeah
- You speak Arabic there?
- Yeah
- Do you speak Hebrew too?
- No!
- How come?
- …

Looking Away ...

- You haven’t been yourself?
- How so?
- You’ve been standoffish
- Oh God, this is how I come off?
- No, I mean, I’m used to you being more bubbly
- Yeah, well.. The war.. You know?
- Why? Was your family affected?

Frontiers of Dreams and Fears ...

- So you say you want to go back home?
- Yes
- And where is home for you?
- Lebanon
- May I ask
- Sure
- Is this the safest place to go to?
- …

Scratching the Surface ...

- Is your family alright?
- Yes… Yes they are, thank you for asking
- It must be quite difficult being here
- Yes it’s difficult being away from them
- No I meant being in a country that has the potential to interfere for the sake of peace and chose to stay out of it.
- *smile* oh so this is what we’re telling ourselves?
- What do you mean?
- ….

Light at the End of the Tunnel ...

- So what does Hizb Allah mean?
- The party of God
- And Nasr Allah?
- The victory of God
- And Allah..
- GOD!!!!.....
- Oh so your Allah is the same as our God?
- Ouff 7atdallo bajam
- What was that?
- Nothing ...

Fake hopes ...

- You have to go back
- I will… I’m trying to decide on when will be the best time.
- You have to build your country
- Yeah
- This is what we did after the world war
- Sure
- And look at Japan now

Nightfall ...

- Would you teach me Arabic?
- Why do you want to learn?
- I want to go to Iraq and become a soldier
- You know what you’re asking me?
- Yes but keep an open mind, soldiers are there anyway, what’s another one, they’ll write off my student’s loans. Just translate this sentence for me.
- Attack the enemy… who exactly is the enemy? Do you see now what you’re asking me? And why do you need Arabic anyway?
- I don’t know. This is what they ask for Arabic for people in higher ranks.
- Fuck off ...

‘Attention whore’
I have yet to meet the person who willingly and purposely wants to go in life unnoticed

‘Still looking for himself’
I don’t think he’ll ever find himself if he’s still looking.

‘Soul searching’
Civilizations and philosophies throughout history searched… nothing was found.

‘Born-again’
Why call it that? … The pre-religion life was not worth lumping into the same path with this one... Isn’t the path to religious awakening part of life for these people?

‘Intellectuals’
All the rest of the people are non-intellectuals? So they don’t use their intellect? So they’re all stupid?

‘Of a certain age’
Aren’t we all of a certain age?

‘Can I ask you an easy question?’
What if I can’t answer it, then what? You set me up for a big embarrassment. Why not ask a difficult question? Why waste my time?

‘All smart people carry themselves with humility’
Is that why you keep saying you're very modest?

‘The more we know the less we know’
Why bother then?

"Malgré les précisions atomiques des balances modernes, on n'arrive pas encore à mesurer le poids exact de la solitude." - Georges Raby

Until we lose someone...

Science.. What is it good for? (II)

Went to lab late ... as I usually do. Had a muffin at noon and a cappuccino for dessert. Nouga on my desk with a little note from Beirut. Pictures all around of faces from another life. A bottle of champagne chilling waiting for an occasion. And a bottle opener for the beer in the cold room. Happy hour every hour on the grass over spilled media spilled hearts and years spilling in waste of purpose. Waste of reagents and waste of days away from home. A paper in a paper out and two up and about. Printouts DVDs and release forms to some editorial capacity. Signed sealed wasted in space. Each figure is months of late hours unreturned phone calls uncooked meals lost faces panic attacks and stress amounting to severe memory loss … go figure
Panels and diagrams and pathways and lots and lots of arrows
some data to gain more to lose and many to borrow
grayscales and pseudocolor, resolution and solution and questions
but no conclusion disserting the science of dissolution
filters and reflections and substrate complexion
cells move to the right cells move to the left
drama drama drama
2000 dollars of imaging time in a month time
of cancer bits moving in a lapse of time
amounting to nothing
but beware of the font in figure 1A left panel image iii
seminars and talks and projections and attitudes and meetings about meetings
thinking it’s ok to be begging your cells to move at 4 in the morning
thinking it’s natural to microinject a 100 cells/10 minutes with a micropipette
thinking you’re incompetent if you don’t make this time
volumes of notes 2002a 2002b …. 2006
not remembering any of it …
a microscope not functioning
breath in and out .. Summon all the info in your head about the optical paths
exciter in place.. all kohlerized.. lamp aligned.. what the fuck is it?
Right lens, right objective, right phase … where’s the signal?
Filters check …. Software running…
Oh yes… the eyepiece is closed!
a new pupil walking in thinking he will cure cancer
looking down at your realism
error bars that meet.. rats that won’t eat… retreat after retreat
pubmed.. email …pubmed… blog… pubmed… lunch break…
stacks of papers that will be read … a week before I defend
a culmination of numbers that fit perfectly
and outlyers impossible to defend
paper version 1, 2, 3, 4 …. 45 …
collaborations and conspiracies
competitions and contaminations
being paid less than the rats
but they are sacrificing their lives
aren’t we too?
backing up and writing down
burning up and meting down
fucking hell …
and I’m just starting …
Am I going to cure cancer? No but I learned how to make exquisite microscopy images ....

labeling.. aliquoting… tracing… graphing… counting… recounting…mounting…

Ok don’t judge me unless you’ve walked a mile in my shoe … or my lab slippers

The last cartoon reads "mirror mirror on the wall, who if she lost ten pounds and had her eyes and her neck done, and had the right haircut, could, in her age group, be the fairest one of all?"

By Roz Chast

A must watch video here

Today the park will change its colors
for you
The bridge will lay blushed
on a glittering surface
Covered in foliage
colors of your palette
The cracked branches
will broil with the rays
will Send life
drip moisture
to the veins of the earth
The green will fade
the sky pale
The lovers splinter
in calm
reinstating their vows
Gobbling down
the surging golden warmth
Before the white sweeps

Today the rain will shy
For you
The concrete will knock
On your soles
Reminding you
Of your aching limbs
Fault of the gray
Fault of the glass
A lazy saxophone
Will Warm the roads
Playing as the city changes outfits
For you
From the slick
To the earthy tones
To the drunken lights
That never fade
The lady that never sleeps

Is calling you … Is luring you
is waiting for you
as I wait too
I see her in your eyes
I hear her
hope in your voice
I feel her with your every step
And I know we’re home again ...

(Pic: Shaeri Mukherjee)

Lebanese bloggers meeting in New York

As is the case when Lebanese people in Lebanon and abroad meet, our little gathering was nothing short of eventful. I think it is safe for me to think that Lebanese people immediately click. We might not all share views on current events, share backgrounds or even love of Arak but we all relate to each other on many levels. During the July war I had the chance to meet a lot of Lebanese who live in nyc. While back then we focused on the mission at hand and related to each other on a humane level, the post war encounters with Lebanese people had been just for fun and laughter and sharing common memories and common culture. Strictly a la Libanaise, we want to forget and live. Even the most opinionated and most politically oriented among us did not venture into talks about the war and the after math. When we are out for fun we mean business.

In the course of meeting, trying to remember all the names and linking them mentally to all the blogs, sharing imported cigarettes and imported stories, sharing smiles and cabs and tips to dancing to sharing childhood memories over Falafel we again realize the common denominator that will always bring us together. For as long as we’ve lived in shelters as kids where we played with the neighbors’ kids, as long as we jump from joy dancing to raje3 yit3ammar Libnan, as long as we have Zeina we na77oul and Fairuz in our collective memories, we all carry a piece of home within us and we all speak the same language, may that be in French, Arabic, English or even Phoenician.

I still think Lebanese people are the easiest people to talk to. I think they’re the most personable people one can meet and i was very glad to get yet another affirmation of that out of this meeting.

And read more from our wonderful encyclopedic gitanes legeres here.

And here's another version by Jooj, very nostalgic here.

Another one from Hashem with a nice gift in it! here.

And it seems Maya is the only one who managed to post pictures ... of the drinks..

And _z and Arch's versions here and here

Occupation 101

A very powerful documentary that aims to reveal the truth on the situation in Israel today. The two makers of the movie Sufyan and Abdallah Omeish are two brilliant independent film makers who happen to be brothers and also happen to be very young. The project took 5 years and the idea started when they both went to Israel for a visit and witnessed the very disturbing reality of the occupation. The film gives a very valuable background for the Israeli Palestinian conflict aiming to clarify many misconceptions about the issue, which is due either to the manipulation of the corporate media or to mere ignorance of the historical facts leading to the current situation.

The documentary describes Palestine before the end of WWI where Muslims Christians and Jews peacefully coexisted. It reminds us of a time when Jews flourished in Arab land during a time of strong anti-semitism in Europe. It discussed the initial immigration of Jews to Palestine leading to 1948. Very powerful footage shows the massacres and the atrocities that led to the displacement of the Palestinians like the massacre of Deir Yassine and shows the subhuman conditions in which the Palestinians had to live as refugees to our day. It clarifies the illusion of the peace process in the Oslo years which incidentally were the years when the Jewish only settlements doubled. The illusion of the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza which led to the dismantling of only 2% of the settlements and left the people in Gaza in a large jail under complete economical and physical control. The film mostly reflects the reality of the occupation in Gaza and West bank today and draws a compelling comparison to Apartheid Africa using witnesses, footage and interviews with experts (Noam Chomsky, Amira Hass etc... ).

The strongest take home lesson was about the poverty and the humitialtion as well as the terrifying conditions that the Palestinians live in today as refugees on their own land. The land confiscation and the intimidation that aims to ethnically cleanse Israel towards the makingn of a Jewish only state. One study showed that Palestinian children (I think the figure was 80 % of) have completely lost the will to live. A heartbreaking interview with a 5 year old child (who is so outspoken and smart and would remind you of your own child) sheds the light on what these children go through. In her very simple words she describes her fear of the militants, her broken toys, the way her clothes smell like gas. The unemployement in Palestine had gone up to 70 % and most families have to live with 2 $ per day while the Israelis get US aid on an average of 500$/person a month. A footage also shows the discrepency of the economical situation in a Jewish settlement contrasted with a Palestinian ghetto next door.

A picture is worth a thousand word. I can not start to describe the feelings of absolute helplessness of a mother taking to the director about her fear to her child’s life. Her children’s fear to go to school thinking mom and dad would be dead by the time they go back home. The tears of a father telling us how he was humiliated in front of his children at a checkpoint. A mother describing her struggle with the IDF as they were demolishing her home and she ran to save her baby who was still in the house. Many many examples of christian and muslim families who live under the oppression of the israeli occupation.

A woman in the audience stood and told the directors that she feels so ashamed because she wasn’t aware of what is taking place in Israel. She was crying …
Go see the movie … the least we can do is to educate ourselves and people around us …

'OCCUPATION 101' is out!!!


I have linked this trailer before but the movie is out.. Go see it..
Harlem International Film Festival: Occupation 101:Voices of the Silenced Majority

When: Friday, October 6, 2006, 8:30 PM

Where: Johnson AMC Theatrecorner of 124th Street and Frederick Douglass Blvd. (8th avenue) New York , NY 10011

What: Film Screening - Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority Sponsored by: Harlem International Film Festival

DETAILS: Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority -Directed by Sufyan Omeish -2006 / 87 min New York Premiere / Palestine, Israel Synopsis: Unlike any other film ever produced on the Palestinian Israeli conflict - "Occupation 101" explains the situation in a comprehensive manner and gives audiences a complete context in which to better understand the Israeli-Palestinian encounter. The film depicts the root causes of the conflict through Israeli, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, American, and Palestinian voices that are rarely ever heard through mainstream media outlets.

get ticket here
Film website here.

I can never forgive you ...

Would you forgive me for that?

(picture by Wilfrid Hoffacker)

All
Things
Get worse
More every day
More so every year
Every attempt of healing
Breaks down in rage seething
Poisoning the world blinding hate
Every new hope new brick new light
Goes up in flames leaving more reasons
More reasons for the same legacy to persist
New reasons for blame for blindness for apathy
Every failure goes well to be written in history pages
As a disaster another attempt as another date another place
Another fancy number for our children to fight for and remember
Another trick to keep us going and fighting dreaming of awakenings

Of a sudden rise of reckoning … Of dignities revolting after such long slumber… Of people for people …. Of love to love … Of a brotherly hand … Of power to the worker… Of a colorful world but a color blind heart … Of a silver spoon in the ghetto … of tolerance … Of a blue collar and a platinum card at a lunch table … Of spreading love instead of oil cables … Of spreading medicine and knowledge and wealth and safety for all and for everyone … Instead we crumble in a state of absolute ignorance and our little hearts get darker … Instead we parade our power and stall and rip the hope out of children’s eyes … Instead we stall for truth and for justice and we crawl in our holes of greed … We poison the atmosphere and belittle facts and ignore people’s needs …

We’re ruthless to the penniless and the powerless and we’re proud
Overconfident and overstuffed and we’re whores for crowds
We lead the earth and its population into sure obliteration
We foresee doom upon doom with each inauguration
We substitute hard work with mere manipulation
With less smart minds and more smart bombs
Less bookstores and more tanning salons
Less health care and more hair care
Less art and more bleak reality
Less love and more money
Less woman and more
Plastic and aquarelle
Money for apparels
Isolated citadels
For loneliness
Reinvented
In an ipod
A nano
Femto
All ….

Will just get worse

The failure to launch policy

(pic: Just Another Day at Huwarra Checkpoint: Journalist Beaten, 10 Men Detained)

The foreign policy of the United States and Israel has been very consistent. They use the same techniques over and over irrespective of the country in question (which country they occupy). It had consisted of false flags to rally the international street against the Arabic street. Divide and conquer, “Israel may want to cultivate alternatives to Arafat’s base of power” as mentioned here. It also includes psychological and physical torture en masse. The physical part we are we aware of and the psychological pressure is an old war trick that was even mentioned in the Bible. American troops blasted hard rock music on the streets of Iraq in residential areas to terrify the people, the sirens in Gaza and flyers dropped and threatening voice messages used in the Lebanon war are other examples. In a state of long occupation, the economical, social, physical and psychological pressures implemented on the Palestinians paved the way to the survival-induced divide. This is explained in Amira Hass’s article here.

Hasn’t Iraq been an example to the failure of the custody excuse? What surprises me is that people’s shortsightedness has not allowed them to attempt a more comparative approach to the matter. Instead there is a hidden tone of racism with the acceptance of the fact that Palestinians are fighting each other as if it’s almost expected that this is what Arabs do. We still act disappointed that another attempt by Rice to solve the mid-east crisis had failed. We still swallow fake attitudes from the so-called moderate Arab states and watch them ‘pressure’ the American government to implement the two-state solution. The last 50 or so years have witnessed an exponential increase in technology, awareness, leisure, mass communication medical and scientific development yet in the world of politics people are still savages that need to be controlled and policed and advances only serve to destroy. The divide seems to serve on several axes for the elite to conquer and remain in charge.

more for Hass's' article,

"The security forces of the Palestinian Authority - in other words, of Fatah, or in still other words, the ones that Mahmoud Abbas is in charge of - are hiding behind the genuine distress and protests of public employees who have not been receiving regular salaries. And they are doing so despite the fact that everyone knows that the failure to pay salaries is not a managerial failure, but is above all due to Israeli policy.

These forces were dispatched in order to sow organized anarchy, as taught in the school of Yasser Arafat. And why is this, too, an Israeli matter? Because those who dispatched these militants have a shared interest with Israel in regressing to a situation in which the Palestinian leadership collaborates with the appearance of holding peace talks, while Israel continues its occupation and the international community sends hush money in the form of salaries for the Palestinian public sector"