Home Yet Homesick.

Of Crystals.

Come to think of it, literature is nothing but wonderful custom-crafted lies that people use to escape from or into their own aura, depending on how they carry themselves through life. And life is nothing but a chosen distraction from all the time we have in the world that otherwise would only be the death of us.

And once every blue moon you come across a person whose ability to be happy exceeds their own as well as life's shortcomings. And you realize that they're the ones who've been doing life right all along. Not by being great, intelligent or successful, but happy. Those who are genuinely amused by how a little uncircumstancial event might have taken an unexpected turn, and that idiotic happiness is the reason for their light-hearted bouncing through life, without the needless stress and grief that weighs the soul down, sometimes so much that you begin to resent everyone who’s not wandered off of the yellow brick road. But what you don’t realize is that you only resent yourself for not having that ability, and you’re projecting it onto others, whose only fault was that they were enjoying their lives.

Little by little, you’d stopped doing the things that make you happy, and have been reduced into seeking constant affirmations of your worthiness from others due to lack of regular confirmations coming from within. It’s not their fault that they haven’t stopped trying when you have, it’s your fault for stopping without valid reason. For in what better purpose could hard work be harnessed than your own happiness? After all, you’re the one living with yourself, you might as well be pleasant. If not, then you’re probably thinking along the analogy of a married couple. You’re married to yourself, what happiness does it bring you if you’ve filed for an annulment?

Think of how many hours one may be willing to put into a paper, for the sole purpose of tending to their GPA, how much more important do you think your happiness is? It is after all the GPA that counts. That rigorous meticulous work you put into the latter is a lot more long lasting and relished than the former, even though sometimes, the former will lead to the latter, in the form of little deposits into your personal bank account. Another deposit may be a good book, yet another a careful workout. For what other reason would you do something if not for your own happiness?

If an emotion like pure hate and resentment that is energy-consuming could be replaced by another emotion like happiness that is energy-producing, with little effort being that you work on the things that make you a better version of yourself, then why on earth wouldn’t you take it? Masochism is a morphed form of happiness for the crippled of soul. If you’re able-bodied, why park where the wheelchair’s supposed to?

The little things matter, and with enough little crystals you’ll cast an expanse hue on every other department. If it doesn’t work, you could always go back to your delusions of martyrdom, they’ll be waiting right where you left them, in a pile of shards that flake everything they touch.

Why, do you ask? Because what else have you got to lose?

‘Like the terrestrial crust of the earth, which is proportionately ten times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul is a miracle of mutual pressures.’ -A. Carson

Room 101

‘That is what brought you here. You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission that is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth; is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to re-learn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane…

Do not imagine that you can save yourself, Winston, however completely you surrender to us. No one who has ever gone astray has been spared. And even if we choose to let you live out the natural term of your life, still you would never escape from us. What happens to you here is forever. Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.’

Excerpt from 1984, by George Orwell.

Phantom Limbs. (IWTFY)

Oh The Beauty. *Swoons*

Because Who Needs Men When We Have Tiramisu?

Are You Readeh?

And I Looked At My Life And I Choked, From There No More Ever I Spoke.

I haven’t written anything for a while, mostly because twitter has been sapping all of my creative energy and expending it on insomniacs who care for only as long as their mouse reaches the retweet button then you’re launched into oblivion, along with any point you’ve been trying to make, and in part because of my work schedule. Not that anybody really cares, I’m pretty sure most page views never really sink in far enough into any reader’s subconscious for it to make a change. It’s not like people go through blogs to make up for their lost revelations. Writing is there for catharsis, because the obscurity of phrasing still qualifies as therapeutic against the obscurity of a bundle of unexpressed emotions or dismissed thoughts. What am I saying? It doesn’t matter.

Disappointments are an odd craft. And I say craft because they’re never inborn, but tended to. You breed your hope, and put energy into rearing it just so you could smash it at the expense of someone else’s shortcomings, if not your own. Problem is, smashing your own is a lot messier for your janitor to clean up after,  it’s a frigging fraternity initiation ceremony of the alpha, beta and kappa cross continent conference union next to the former’s ugly betty hen party.

It could be argued that disappointments are god’s way of jumpstarting your battery, or that it’s evolution’s way of slapping your ego back into our dimension. Though contradictory in the postulated purposes, they have the same effect in the bigger picture; crashing your page so you’d use the refresh button, because after all, we all know it’s impossible for you to even consider that with so many tabs on if not absolutely forced into it, it’ll undoubtedly stump your connection.

Some people handle disappointments better than others, some feel psychologically obliged to switch ISP’s altogether. You can’t help that, you can only hope to sometime learn not to place someone else’s expectations before your own well-being, no matter how important that person may be, because even though you may not currently realize it, but you may have been hiring a nanny for your own only to bathe in the glory of someone else’s falsely high expectations of you since you don’t really have to work to prove or moot those. The fact that someone is enough of an impressionist to think that you’re something more or less than you are doesn’t mean you should believe it. I’m not saying it’s not fun, but it won’t do you any good if not actually add in harm on the long-term. So? They’re disappointed. Fuck em. You’ll never be back as you were, good riddance. Are YOU disappointed? Now that matters, because you can’t afford to wait till you’re ‘back as you were’ with yourself. Unless you had Voldemort’s powers of soul partitioning. I daresay not even then, because his soul was not whole enough to counter the expelliarmus spell of an undergraduate with the the charm knowledge of a 10th year, and you can’t possibly think it’s a good long term plan for your soul to be wedged, let alone dislodged, by another’s disarming spell.

Or you can give up on expectations altogether, live your life with no disappointments. Might as well hire a basement and invest in a yearly subscription of Cheetos, playboy and a faster internet connection. Oh and while you’re at it, tell your friends to go easy on the pepperoni, because trust me, the only social life you’ll be getting will be with the pizza delivery man and e-bay shipping staff. Don’t worry about your career either, I’m sure the 2o cent per article rate will go up once you’ve sent 50+ years on Helium.

We Are Basic Lies.

‘It's Better To Burn Out Than To Fade Away.’

Family <3

Etla3 Ya Hassanein!

Fine, fine. I’ll grow up. Sheesh.

Being a kid may be the toughest job in the history of man. You’re shoved into this world, with zero experience and plenty of liabilities, and you’re asked to turn into a human by a certain deadline.

Tick, tock. Grow up little fuck.

You end up having less moral consciousness through the first decade and a half than a challenged poodle and  ignoring the one you have in the remaining half, much like one would a zit that they can’t pop out or pat properly.

Then, out of the blue, you’re a certified fraction of the population who’s about to have their own car, go to university and have a life, when the truth is, you’re just an old kid, you still get lost in your own neighborhood, make the stupidest mistakes on a daily basis and have absolutely no idea how to be a grown up other than maybe looking a little more serious doing everything. You lose the luxury of being excused when your experience fails to be up to par, the tolerance of people who choose to look the other way when you show their expectations into a dry wall and the clarity that comes with being young enough not to see everything in HD.

Much like Spiderman, you’re left with superpowers that make grownups go jelly and the motor functions of the aforementioned jelly, coupled with the prospect of your life crashing face-first into a brick wall on the slight off-chance of doing it wrong, you’re suddenly made into a desk clerk who’s been assigned more office hours during power cut, left to fill in the high-tech gadgets’ shoes at the price of losing your own job if you don’t get those 23423469762343 files proofread and  handed in by 5 o’clock.  Cheers buddy, power cut time. Now work your ass off if you wanna keep it.

The irony lies in the fact that you were supposed to pick up the required experience for that having the emotional capacity of an ape for a quarter of your life, of a Bulgarian cockatoo for another quarter, that of an ancient, 1st generation computer for another and a, surprise surprise, an ape again for the last quarter.

Makes you think of the popcorn theory again, doesn’t it? And you get the mental image of a whole extraterrestrial audience laughing their ass off at the poorly cut, edited and produced show that is your life. I am having trouble juggling a senior year with a social life, how the shenanigan am I expected to add in a couple of more pinches here and there? You go from not being allowed to leave a 30 metre radius around your building to driving across the Nile, commuting on a 2 hour drive to university every morning, not to mention the couple of errands here and there during and afterwards. You’re left with organizing, managing and directing a life through paperwork, other people who don’t know shit about what they’re doing and very fucking bad traffic.

Fuck this shit, I want my mommy.

Of Marshmallows, Marshmallows & More Marshmallows.

My dad, roasting marshmallows on a knitting needle in front of the heater and a good movie. And just so you know, my dad roasts the best marshmallows on the planet. Be jelly, bitches.

MMMEEEEEERRRRRRYYYYYYYY CCCCHHHHRRRIIISSTTTMMAAAASSS!

It’s Gonna Be Mine And I’m Gonna Call It Stan.

My Baby Is Growing Up.

I had a great day today. Despite all the factors that c0uld have trumped the utilization of that adjective, today was actually a great day. Despite the fact that we got stuck in traffic for what eventually added up to 7:45 hours, the other fact that I just happened to get my allergy in the middle of a traffic jam with no allergy medications in reach and having to accept the fact that I may show up for my best friend's graduation ceremony with a swollen lip and a bloated face had it not been for my dad stopping by a pharmacy and popping me full of pills, another that I was struggling with wavering network signals to be there for a friend who was breaking down on the other end of the world, and another that my efforts were misinterpreted for being the devil’s advocate and cost me even more than I initially expended, and finally the fact that I was screwed up for the work week, even if I take out sleeping, eating and living variables out of the equation and replace them with work constants. Today was a great day, because of little things. Little things that amount to great things, because what a lot of people don’t understand is that it’s the little things that matter because their cumulative effect is what makes big things momentous. Little things like getting a bone-crushing minute-long hug that lifts you off the floor, like sharing one of the most important days of another’s life, like getting that sparkly look from your dad as he tells you that you look exceptionally beautiful today and even though you know it’s probably because he’s biased, it still makes your heart go bum bum, like the realization that your dad is the best dad in the world for cancelling work and commuting for something that’s important to you, like wearing heels because a friend made you and ending up with a lot of other chick props that make you feel like a tranny who can’t feel her toes but you still do it because you promised, like cheering your lungs out for someone even though you may be too shy to even speak out in front of a handful of people any day of the week, like seeing your best friend’s face flushed with that lively red that comes when she’s fighting back tears so they wouldn’t ruin her make-up, like getting an adrenaline rush when you finally find that familiar graduation gown that has you dropping your stuff all over the place and ruining pictures, like seeing her mom’s proud face, like being there and seeing the factions of real-life footage that cameras don’t capture in that little cloud that exists when family celebrates, like seeing the tilted-graduation-cap-kiss photo in the making, like seeing a person who’d usually bite people’s heads off postponing work due tomorrow to be there for her sister and being all shaky as the lens flickers to regain her composure in its time capsulated shutter seconds, like the gratitude that floods in when you see your dad taking three desert roads to get you there, like the awesome feeling you have when you venture walking in el haram street in a tiny dress and heels to get a sandwich, like the revelations you make through a friend’s non-existent verbal restraint that are not limited to stories of pet homicides, like knowing for a fact that missing your own prom intentionally now makes sense because Fairmont or not, your priorities are straight enough to realize that it’s all about whether or not there are people there who care, and last but not least, the little tingly pleasure you get when you know that you’ll only remember the little things in a packet of a blurry big pleasant thing for the rest of your life.

Against every odd, today was a great day.

Why Me? Why This Now? Why This Way?

No wonder God doesn’t interfere, because apparently it’s just as the old saying goes: “Maynoob el m5alass ella ta2tee3 hedoomoo.” When you interfere, you’re blamed for the shortcomings of all parties. When  you don’t interfere, you’re blamed for your own shortcomings. What’s right? What’s wrong? What’s altruism? I’ve been told never to put forward more than I’m offered, time and time again, but apparently that’s a lesson that one has to learn on their own, through trial and error. Sometimes people keep ignoring the error messages; enhancing their pop up blockers until they’re kept safely within their blissful folds of oblivion. However, bliss never lasts, even though oblivion may. Oblivion has proven its survival abilities for centuries on end, it has outlived dinosaurs, faith and most virtuosos. It has thrived on the abilities of its agent pop-up blockers around the world, fucking the silence out of its little ally, bliss. And mind you, bliss doesn’t mind as long as it feels good. So tell me, what’ve you got left if you’ve been robbed of both bliss and oblivion? Because I gotta tell you, trial and error has proved that knowledge is power, and power in the wrong hands is destructive. Power in the hands of those who’re not used to handling it, are used to abusing it or simply never got used to using it, that is. Knowledge doesn’t like to be manhandled, it also doesn’t appreciate being kept in the dark. Unlike bliss, it doesn’t mind if it doesn’t always feel nice. And unlike oblivion, it is painfully straightforward and waits for no one.

Time and time again I’ve learned, the hard way, that nobody gives a fuck. That no matter how much of yourself you expend, when people are put on the line when they have to choose between themselves and someone else, it is no longer a choice. They’re automated by survival instincts to self-preserve, and fight-or-flight is initiated. Oblivion and bliss work hard to ease the ego blow and put knowledge’s calls and pleads for an urgent meeting on hold, so knowledge leaves in a copy of its resume and proceeds to more potentially promising employers. After all, it waits for no one, does it now? And sometimes, when you finally realize that you’ve missed out on such great work experience, knowledge will only come back when given an impressive offer that will leave you almost bankrupt, and hoping to god that knowledge’s hard work down the line will make up for your lost investments and raise the curve. Oblivion and bliss might be infuriated that you gave up on their services after all those years of loyalty put into your corporation, but they’ll leave you behind for a less hostile working environment, more lucrative employers and better long-term benefits, sapping it all out of your inebriated recommendations on their CV’s. When you’re unable to employ knowledge again because it’ll no longer have you, oblivion and bliss are more than glad to buy your soul and use the loopholes in the contract to be double, triple and sometimes multiple agents.

Nobody gives a shit. Granted. Altruism is a masochistic form of slow suicide glorified into a long-lost principle by sheer idiocy and perfectionist myths. A fallen ideology, rejected from utopias for hogging resources only to be blown out of proportion and sold to societal rejects in the black market, taking everything you’ve got with almost no guarantee as to the quality or perseverance of the product, protected by its no-return policy and the fact that you’re not legally apt to demand a refund or a more suitable bargain for your damages. Hence ironically promoting its one deadly revelation that could very likely put it out of business had the human race been faster to realize it, being that you’re out on your own, that it’s a one man game and that when it gets rough, everybody bails. Including your own sponsor. Especially your own sponsor.

Set churned. Lesson learned. Page turned.

How Every Guy Should Look Like.