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Break the pattern.

Wadi el Rayyan Hiking Trip

The hiking trip to Wadi el Rayyan in Fayoum was wonderful. It was a visceral day of firsts. I realized that I'm at my most comfortable outside of my comfort zone, and that there's fun to be found if you're willing to jump in. Here's a time-reel!

First time at Fayoum. First time having 'mesh' for breakfast. First time hiking. 

First time sand-boarding.



First time horseback riding.

First time parasailing!

First time having a smoke on the beach smack in the middle of winter.

First time seeing a waterfall!

First time taking a felouka into the sunset.

First time hiking into a mountain valley in pitch darkness!

First time having a bonfire

And later partying in the mountain valley.

The Jerusalem Syndrome

"As long as four million Israelis and as many Palestinians are facing off against one another, 300 million Arabs and 1.5 billion Muslims are condemned to live in hate, bloody slaughter and desperation. And the rosier version: We just need peace in Jerusalem to put out the fires in Tehran, Karachi, Khartoum and Baghdad and to set the course for universal harmony.

Have our sages gone crazy? Do they really believe that sans Israeli-Palestinian conflict nothing bad would have happened, neither the deadly Khomeini Revolution, nor the bloody Baathist dictatorships in Syria and Iraq, nor the decade of Islamic terrorism in Algeria, nor the Taliban in Afghanistan, nor the angry warriors of God the world over? The sad, reverse hypothesis is seldom posed, but it is actually much more likely: Every truce along the Jordan is fleeting, as long as the palaces and streets, the majority of the intelligentsia and the officials of the Muslim world hang on to their anti-western passion. Globalization (which entails the dismantling of economic barriers but more importantly all social and mental barriers) necessarily leads to tough and terrible defensive reactions. The development of anti-western ideologies in Germany, from Fichte to Hitler, does not depend on the foundation of the Zionist state. The anti-western affect is constantly renewed in Russia, from the tsars to Stalin and on up through Putin. And it would be naive to presume that the Iranian lust for power, in search of its Khomeinistic force de frappe, uses the "Jewish question" as anything more than a pretence for a universal Jihad. Does anyone think that the green subversion, after erasing Israel from the map, will mark its success by laying down its weapons?

A hypocritical geopolitics, which ordains the Mideast as a basic pillar of the world order, has become the religion of the European Union, the belief of the unbelievers and of the doubters of the west. Post-modern thinkers have no justification in proclaiming the end of all ideologies. In fact, we are swimming in an ideological illusion and have secretly exchanged our deceptive hopes for a final battle with a fearful incantation conjuring a catastrophe to end all catastrophes, that is just as absolute. While our head swarms with surrealistic ghosts, our heart perceives, in every photo from Lebanon, the death of humankind. Jerusalem is only the centre of the world because it is considered the centre of the end of the world. Our illusions feed on apocalyptic notions.

And so every Mideast conflict is like a rehearsal for the end of days. Just look at the undefinable war of cultures, if you need convincing. And anyone taking that position is resigned to a self-fulfilling prophecy. The years of bombing of Israeli cities by the rockets of the Party of God become a foretaste of the Iranian godfather's promised destruction. And so, as Clausewitz already noted with irony, it is not the aggressor who starts the war. Instead it is he who steps in to stop the aggression. So Israel is guilty. Guilty of a collectively fomented fantasy of the end of days. From surrealistic geopolitics to delusion - just one step."

~ An excerpt from the Jerusalem Syndrome by Andre Glucksmann.

Yellow Snow

I'm freezing my fingers off writing this. Winter is here, finally. Except it's bipolar winter so I'm rocking a hoodie and shorts, simultaneously. I ain't complaining, with some luck we'll poke global warming hard enough to get some snow around here. Maybe I'll even get to build a snowman in the garden overlooking our condo. Itchy and Scratchy would pee all over it though. Come to think of it, everybody will pee all over it. Egypt will have more yellow snow than any other country in the world. Yuck.

I like winter nights. 3-5 am in particular, I wish it were always this quiet and slow. I should be sleeping; I've wanted to go back to bed ever since I got out of it. Do all days blur into one another when you're an adult? Is it part of the package?

I'm going on a hiking trip in a couple of days. A much needed change of pace, with all that's been happening. It's got horseback riding, para-sailing, sand-surfing, volleyball and even a boat ride over the lake, then later at night there's gonna be a bonfire and a music party. I'm pretty excited. Everybody who's ever been to the area says it's one of the most beautiful places in here, but I'm taking that with a grain of salt. Well, with the right state of mind, you can have about as much fun as anybody, with whatever a place has to offer. I wonder where we'll pee tho? I hope they have facilities.
< /citygirlrant >

I'll tell you all about that when I'm back. For now, I got some relaxing to catch up on.

The Strange Persistence of First Languages

http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/the-strange-persistence-of-first-languages

The Perks Of Being An Advertising Major

Buddhism realised that achieving peace = having nothing to lose, and it's been trying to say that without actually saying that.

The ones who actually reached nirvana through scripture actually got there backwards. Which is ironic, really.

But what isn't?

Best. Campaign. Ever.

Of Lying Turtles, Coping & The Treacherous Invisibility Cloak.

Hemingway always said: "Write drunk. Edit sober". I detest Hemingway.

But not tonight.

Itchy and Scratchy are out tonight. Watching them, I felt guilty for naming them. They're too beautiful and free for that. They don't have names. In my selfish recounts, they're Itchy and Scratchy. I haven't hung out with them for a while. If I'm up for it by day break I will pack some food and pay them a visit. I don't know if they'll still be there by then, and that's probably part of what makes them great. 

Most people would look at that picture and think "oh my, what a chill night." I'd hate to disappoint you. Well, it is chilly. But what I see are three methods to run from communist brain, and the fact that I ended up here means I failed. Albeit not miserably, thanks to that blonde stud on the right.

Death and I have been going out for the past 3 weeks. On and off, but in the last couple of days it's been serious. So hitchcocking serious, in fact, that I got an ultimatum. Predictably, he gave it after taking away my last measure of control. Much like any person at the wrong end of the barrel - come to think of it, which end IS the right end of the barrel? - My head has been wandering off the commonly trodden path, into some unmarked graveyards and desecrated bushes.

Control. How very human. How utterly delusional.

Controlling thought makes writing boring. A scattered brain is more likely to get sent drinks from strangers. Strangers with stories that are often boring but blown up for banging potential.

I was hanging out with dad today. We were mad at how things were, so we bought toasted peanuts, munched and littered. It was the first time either of us littered. To us, it was a gesture of sheer vengeance. To the world, as always, no one cared. We joined their ranks when the bag was over, and the gesture died in half lives, sporadically and in a wimpy fashion, like most classy gestures do.

Perspective.

Real fucker, that one. But ever so sweet. Humans have always had a thing for assholes anyway, don't look at me. I'm only human. 

One thing, I'll tell you that, death is nothing like it's portrayed in literature or motion pictures. Death is not peaceful, comforting or sudden. Death is not graceful, or cooperative enough to prove a point and pick good timing. Death doesn't pick. Death is violent, and ugly. Death takes people out before it kills them. The person you know, and the last semblance of the person you know, is defeated and beaten out of their bodies before they die. They're wild animals, ones that aren't in the spotlight. They don't even get to die being who they are, that is beaten out of them too. Whoever told you any different in passing conversation or intimate solace really fucking cares about you and never had the heart to tell you, hoping they'd still be around when you crashed. Go drop them a nice message.

Every last measure of control you had, or thought you had, every last measure of control they had, or though they had, is taken away, without courtesy or ubiquity. It does not possess enough gallantry, or understand what that is, to try and make it fit on one relatable side. Grace is not in its dictionary, it has not been registered in its realm. It does not try to register in yours. It comes from a different dimension than the one human beings have signed their consciousness into. Blame it on human beings? They're only coping. We're beings who need things to make sense in a world where nothing makes sense. Life is wasted on coping. Coping is glamorized and stripped of its label, divided into conceptual abstracts and romanticized into notions that entail a measure of choice. But in the end, it's all an elaborate ruse at coping. You cope subconsciously, because when the horror has a major scale that transcends understanding, even coping has to be re-assigned to the subconscious. We're all helpless. And we grow up every time we get a glimpse of how helpless we really are. Even growing up is romanticized, beaten into size by consequences that prove bigger than us even though human beings, consciousness and consequences are not of the same nature. The equation isn't valid, even by our own laws, but even that slides. 

Itchy and Scratchy are barking. I wonder what imaginary danger they rationalized into imminent threat by there monochromatic, instinctive, humanly in-congruent awareness to stop themselves from being helpless? What threat have they conjured up out of their de-synchronization with human abstraction in order chip in and survive? Life is clingy, fragile and clueless. All the forms are convulsing to fit in, none of them really do. But they can't know that. Survival instinct doesn't leave room for hard facts. Those are for free time and entertaining ideas. We exist in a nihilist bootcamp and the fittest are the hopeless romantics, they're hard to kill. They're hard to insult too; it's hard to reach someone with so many filters. They can't even be insulted properly. They're insulted within their accepted, registered abstracts, that are variations of truth that couldn't be further from the truth. They're about as close to it as incense is to volcanoes. Go figure? You don't have to, you probably already have if you walk on twos with opposable thumbs. 

Life is wasted on coping. Have I already mentioned that? It needs to be said again. We wouldn't have to cope if we never latch, and we wouldn't latch if our survival instincts got into a fight with our self-conscious intelligence and created a parallel world that has nothing to do with the tangible world that is made up of nothing but cruelty and rigidness and making fucking fire. Anything more than twos doesn't connect. 

Buildings are fucking lies. Grasp that. 

Who the fuck needs opposable thumbs anyway? I envy Itchy and Scratchy. Much like us, they don't know what they really have to deal with and are caught up in their own versions of reality. However, much UNLIKE us, their realities are much closer to the rigidity of actual reality. Not much is romanticized, perhaps, than the occasional treat and pooping retreat. 

Here's a sight for sore eyes: In trying to accept the death of a loved one, I've rejected consciousness itself. Have you seen that? It doesn't get anymore hopelessly romantic than that. Had it been BC, I would have been tossed aside as a faulty prototype at the first testing phase. Too bad I was saved. Oh wait, that's another load of bull made up in an effort of coping at a life that is horrifyingly beyond self-conscious beings in its simple, cruel chaos. Oh well. At least I get a medal at the all singing, all dancing nihilist boot camp that the source code of life is built up to compute.

This is me breaking down. Good thing no one really knows me. Who the fuck can keep up with this, let alone handle it? 

In my hopeless nerdiness, I thought the joker said it. - Or should I say Heath Ledger said it? The movies got nothing on the comic books anyway - He said: "Oh and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair." I thought he had it all going, silly me. But he barely touched upon it. The real keyword here is not chaos, it's fair. Fair is an abstraction. At its very core, it's an intangible coping prop, made up to sustain the very helix of human consciousness, was funnily enough never seen in nature or has a precedent outside of subjective projection, and is completely rootless and utterly bogus. Much like the concept of time; made up to sustain the point where mathematics was applied in physics and has no other existence outside of prepaid, stock-order, cut-to-size, made up reality. 

Wonderful character, the joker is. Transcends morality, but not nearly dangerous enough to see the actual truth. What's a few lives but another coping mechanism? Try getting your coping mechanism taken away, then I'll personally shove you on a podium and we'll talk. I'll bet my bottom dollar you'll have less than 5 characters to verbalize, and if you're actually lucky they won't be the truth. 

Consciousness is overrated. If you didn't get to that point by yourself, you should have terminated

this post at the second mention of Itchy and Scratchy. 

You wanna meet a real guru? Meet Durden, he touched upon the truth, had his entire belief system collapse upon itself, tried to fallback on capitalism, got stuck in a loop and came up with fight club. That's called second-degree coping. It's one step ahead, but it's the same god damn algorithm. That's just how much humans can't cope. 

Mine is abstraction, phrased and bent to shape by a raw feeling of loss that most are too desensitized to experience. I see the truth alright, but I'll be damned if it makes me special. I can't register it either. I'm that wedding crashed who never got invited but showed up anyway and can see everything as what it really is by virtue of the worst curse of all: Empathy. I'd sell it on eBay for 25 dollars in exchange for a Darth Vader mask, but even that measure of control was taken away from me. Was it ever given? Oops, I did it again. 

Third party note: If you've managed to get this far with complete understanding, I apologize for the identity crisis. Technically speaking, it's an existential crisis, but if you didn't get there on your own, you probably can't register the full momentum of an existential crisis and have labelled it identity crisis. If you're not sober, you'll slip to the latter, in which case I'm so, so sorry. Raised to a Tennant degree of an improbability factor of eight-million, seven-hundred-and-sixty-seven-thousand, one-hundred-and-twenty-eight to one against. 

See what I did there? If you did, you're probably tired of seeing, and would take being blind to a wife in the Bahamas with three Chihuahuas, and a goddamn Bugatti on the side. 

Whoever said poets don't measure up until they describe how bored god was after the seventh day - Was it Nietzsche? Sounds like him, he was fond of Sabbath, all sorts of Sabbaths - really didn't know what he was talking about. It's peculiarly egotistical and so expectedly human-believer type that would think god was bored after that, little did he know that THAT'S when the fun really started. A human being one-step-over on the awareness scale would rationalize, using humane idealistic standards built on harm/no harm values that god is a sadistic, abusive bastard and any relationship with him is not only abusive but punishable by law as far away as Ohio. Someone who is aware but hasn't registered the full scale of his awareness would see god himself (Level 100 would say itself but I don't want to have you choke on your own respective drinks) is a fucking coping mechanism. A true nihilist would get the hint of all that's true but remain unable to connect the dots by that esoteric romanticism that comes with all differential high-minority labels. You cripple yourselves, truly, you've come so close, faithful turtles, and failed to live up the fairy tale. Disgrace upon your gender, unreal as it always has been. 

Actuality is a true bastardo. How could a concept, so intangible, be rooted into the human consciousness with the equivalent level of reality as the chair you relinquish gravity for? It's a dichotomous assumption that reality is equivalent with actuality on the instinctive scale. Even the assignment of variables was given to variation in an attempt to save us from slitting our own throats in the first 24 seconds. Trust nothing as a given, amirite?

Here's a man with all the goddamn answers. Thing is, he isn't a man, and he doesn't even exist. But when has that ever stopped us? 

What I mean is, after all, why should you stop at that?

Why should you be concerned? Because survival needs anchors, and Grandma is an anchor. The best anchor they ever made, by accident, in an equilibrium-based attempt to destroy their indestructible selves. The best anchor that managed to get through the system after all the loopholes were automatically discarded by a hyper-intelligent machinated algorithm built to solely weed out any hope of truth or attachment that by a fucking miracle, somehow missed. It missed to create a singularity around which all the point of coincidence was built, between reality and actuality and what is really out there, and that singularity is dying. In horrible, extended agony. Fighting against a foe it cannot name, a face it cannot make out, a concept it cannot register, an importance it cannot fathom. How can life ever be the same? And yet it keeps tumbling on. Life stops for no one, not even if life depended on it to live. 

22 years old, and I still don't get the hang of acceptance. Live and learn? Learn what, internationally accepted coping mechanisms that have failed to make the universal standard, in a metaphysical context? Fuck you. Why don't you try having the world crash down on you with real-reality given particles, mass and theoretically calculated weight and then judge? 

I'll be 23 soon. If she's still around, she'd wish I'd find a husband already. I'd denounce monogamy on socio-biological level, she wouldn't understand.

Who am I kidding? Death never wiggles its ultimatums. Its ultimatum is the only ultimatum that remains an ultimatum without giving you imposable control, because life - in its dual sense - is ironic like that.

Irony, the closest we ever got to truth. All due respect to the joker, your real value lies in marvel universe, a subconscious appeal to raw idealism and shameless emotional extortion.

Dissociation. We send people to asylums for that. We used to drill their heads and now we electrocute them for it. Little did we know it was all an attempt to stop them from suspending our suspended disbelief. Wake up, if you can handle it and remain willfully awake.

Acceptance. Moving on. Never really got the hang of those. 

No. No, like we can say it. No, like we have the fucking capacity, let alone the jurisdiction, to say it. Yes is the only answer we got. We either never get to the majestic, anesthetic yes or have pre-installed delusion capacitors to allow for a yes without a system reboot. We should all be crashing. And I am crashing around the one singularity I managed to touch. Maybe there are many and they all lead to one. It would take entire civilizations crashing around their respective singularities to find that common one that unites them all. But we can't handle it. Rewind to paragraph...I lost count. It's all relative really. It depends on how slow you are. 

You want sense? You can't handle it. If you can see it at a time of your life when you're still capable of feeling, while having vigil of the actual source instead of the ego-stroking, pattern-conjuring habit of intelligent mortals, you'd kill yourself. And that goes against survival instinct. Coincidentally, they both go against the truth.

Take your pick. Do you really have one?

Keep up, bitch.

Young people are really hard to kill, you probably already know that. What you don't know is that it's all a ploy, and it goes back to something as meaningless and weightless as goddamn survival instinct, in case you got hipster lingo dangling off your amygdala. Unsightly scene, if you can sincerely see.

Consciousness truly is a tragic misstep in evolution. Too bad the only insight, the one true-to-(insert omnipotent sanity prop) concept handed down our generation was an advertising added-value in a washed down, ratings-oriented mid budget script, assigned to be uttered by a Rust Cohle, who was unfortunately after a yellow god just to set you off track. 

Improbability factor of eight-million, seven-hundred-and-sixty-seven-thousand, one-hundred-and-twenty-eight to one and dropping. I'd give up if I could. Believe me I've tried. It's just that non-diluted inert gases are harder to come by than plastic bags and I'm not that big on brain damage. 

But I am out. I turned in anyway, a long time ago anyway. Grandma was just a rude awakening. 

Even that is ironic. 

See? Patterns are there. Sense? Not so much. That was a coping mechanism too. 

Miracles? The only miracles we're allowed have to do with a klutzy average between  overpriced gadgets and gravity. Even miracles are a lazy concept; the least sincere delusion of them all. Whoever made up that didn't even try. And he wrote a whole book; one of the bestselling across the history of humanity. 

Good night. Rest assured, even the goodness bias is a coping mechanism. Try to sleep knowing that.

All Hallows' Eve

They say pets take after their owners, and my gadgets take that too much to heart. For instance, My laptop is a lot like me, my pride and joy, the gaming monolith I call za3faran, doesn't like to talk about its feelings or ask for help. One second I'm watching Modern Family on my laptop in the bathroom because I slept 18 hours more than I should have and it messed up my sleeping/studying schedule, and the next it just dies on me. Don't do that, laptop! Just tell me you need power, it's not like I'm gonna hold back.

I am, I am gonna hold back. Za3faran knows me too well, bless its processor.

Freak outs aside, I'm having my first senior-year induced panic attack, airing from my shell of solitude that is the can. Hello and welcome to the screening of the first senior year panic attack. Nice to have you all, take a seat. And on to our first show, we have a WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING TAKING AN APPLIED ARTS COURSE I CAN'T FUCKING DRAW.

Senior year is turning into a real roller coaster. Pressure has taken on a new meaning; no assignment is just 'that assignment', and no midterm is just 'that day I have to wake up early then come home and recover with a 7-hour sitcom marathon', everything is fallout boy: Nobody leaves a baby in the corner level. All freak-outs are can-worthy, not just every other freak-out or the occasional 'what the fuck happened last night' freak-out like it used to be. Good days.

Midterm mania is a whole other breed of midterms week too. If Frankenstein had a baby with abou regl masloukha, their devil spawn love child would be senior midterms week. I dread to think what finals would be like. Good thing I got support. Meet my best friend Wilson, the coffee thermos. He's been there for me so far and I got a feeling he won't let me down. He cheats on me with a sleazy pack of luckies every now and again, but they let me watch.

Halloween was a blast tho. Let it be known that on the night on my first senior year midterm, I was out partying. Plot twist: I still did great. And that's what I would like to call a win for evolution. This nerd has evolved, baby!

But has not quite shed its skin, given that I went as a white walker. 

I win Halloween.

And of course, the morning after.

"This droid is in power-saving mode. Please do not voice 

commands for another 47 minutes. Bleep."

Some pictures will never see daylight, as per the holiday tradition. I'll come back later with some juicy details and half-assed anecdotes that'll fly over most of your heads, but now I gotta run. I got a midterm slur this week that I know next to nothing about. Wish me luck and a full-limbed escape.