The Wrap-up.

I got a long week ahead of me, a couple of simulation finals, an important meeting and classes with tons of work to muddle through, but coffee’s the silent guardian that makes sure your body doesn’t give up on you as long as your head is still up and functional.

I found an old version of Hallelujah, the cover by Leonard Cohen, and it’s making me wanna fish out the sheet and work on it till my fingers are numb, but I don’t have time for it till next Sunday, so I guess I’ll have to wait for then.

I’ve come to learn how to say el 7amdulilah, and I now get the feeling everyone was talking about that I never got before. I can sleep now too, I don’t have to read through my very boring copy of ‘A Million Little Pieces’, about a rehabilitating drug-addict, whose depressing air and very poor manner of writing never failed to send me fast asleep. I don’t need that now, and for that, too, I’m grateful.

Most nice things, and I mean really nice things, are short-lived. It seems as if that sort of knowledge works both ways too, rendering all ephemeral things nice, giving them a hue of beauty that only thrives in a time bubble. Almost like Coffee, no matter how big the mug is, the ring is bound to stare back at you at one point or another. The ‘nice’ part, however, is that now you know that it’s a part of you. A fraction of it might end up in a strand of hair that you’ll trim in 20 years, some of it will to construct that wisdom tooth coming out, some might end in a nail that you’ll bite off watching Dawn Of The Dead, a couple of sips would go into the new inches you’re sprouting, another will go into the make up of your complexion, the sugar will make you drudge on two more hours through that stubborn physics binder and the rest will be absorbed by your growing body. And you chug it down to the last sip.

‘Baby I have been here before. I know this room, I've walked this floor. I used to live alone before I knew you.’

Now that there’s no going back, and it’s all over, there are three things it all came down to. I have never been more grateful with the turn of events, I never left, and I think I might need to get used to the fact that my dad is the only who will never really leave, no matter what happens.

Some things are bought at too high a price, but I’m grateful because now I know they were worth it.

El7admdulilah.

'There's a blaze of light in every word. It doesn't matter which you heard; the holy or the broken Hallelujah.'

Cheers!

But Love Is Not A Victory March.

‘I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I learned to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come all of this way to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand right here before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.’

Of Red Bull, Cake & History.

Life Lesson #316: When you think about it, and I mean really think about it, you’ll find that the real problem lies in the fact that cyanide smells like almonds.

Life Lesson #317: Whatever you do and no matter how hard you try, in two out of three contexts on average, you’ll still be an asshole.

Life Lesson #318: More has been lost than gained on the account of right and wrong, but then again nothing has been lost or gained on the account of not giving a fuck. Which is better? Trying to find out would require a million casualties. Life, well played.

Life Lesson #319: It is always folly to invest without a dependable profit prospectus. And no matter what books say, you will always learn that after going completely bankrupt.

Life Lesson #320: 'Can you build a spaceship out of history?' - 'No.' - 'Then history is bullshit too.'

Life Lesson #321: If AIDS was god's way of punishing homosexuals, then why does god love lesbians so much? That's right, get your head out of your ass.

Life Lesson #322: ‘And the strangest thing was waiting for that bell to ring, it was the strangest start.’

Life Lesson #323: The only consolation is finding an honest answer to the one question: “Was it really worth it?” And the bad news is that there’s no answer to that question that’s not up for debate. Conclusion? The idea of consolation is the only consolation you’ll ever get.

Life Lesson #324: ‘Humans have a knack for choosing precisely the things that are worst for them.’ – Albus Dumbledore.

Life Lesson #325: There comes a time in a man’s life when the only emotional recovery he finds within reach is his Harry Potter and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book collection.

Life Lesson #326: ‘One day, humanity will conquer disease, and after that we’ll conquer aging, and after that we’ll slough off our mortal coils. No longer tied to location, we’ll spread out through the cosmos at near light speed. We’ll continue experimenting and theorizing until we’ve determined the exact limits of knowledge. At which point, nothing will remain to explore. Discovery will end, love will be dispassionate. Hope will be meaningless, art will have no purpose. Religion will have no transcendence. Having conquered our deaths, but not the universe’s, we will enter a  collective hyper-ennui and begin the slow somnolent march back toward oblivion. The only scintilla of meaning in the last waltz of Torpor will be the stillborn wish to have lived and died back when we were made of warm flesh and the gentle lapse of sunlight in the summer dusk was enough for our happiness. So in the grand scheme of things, what’s really the point of nihilism if you can’t use it to buy stuff?’

Life Lesson #327: The human psyche works in mysterious ways. Who would have thought it’s plausible that the sight of cake now sends me into a fit of tears?

Life Lesson #328: Bottled messages are the reason closure isn’t so hip anymore. They’re often lost in the tide. If it makes you feel better, think of all the radio signals in outer space that were never picked up. Someone bothered to send them so much that his efforts fired them beyond the coverage of man.

Life Lesson #329: Too much love can be almost as destructive as no love at all, if not more profoundly scarring too. The reason everyone is trying so hard not to give a shit is that loss is not something you get used to. Peace, as opposed to War, was never custom-crafted for the idealistic, but then again it has never really killed anyone. The irony lies in the fact that all wars started because someone loved a person or an idea too much, and peace was about two people deciding that not giving a fuck is probably best for all parties involved.

Life Lesson #330: Red Bull gives you wings, that’s why you crash so hard.

All I needed was a call. It never came.

Real Friends Bake Chocolate-Coffee Cakes For You On A Bad Day.

Because when everybody else bails, some obscure badass soul will come out of nowhere and make it all better. You just gotta know where to look.

Bittersweet.

Life Lesson #312: To every kid out there, I just wanted you to know that when parents told you to do the right thing at all costs, they left out the part that says but you're probably gonna be alone for the rest of your life for it. I just thought you should know that it’s one of the entailed costs before you decide to be a good person.

Life Lesson #313: 'The truth has pain in it. It has bitter sacrifice, loss. It has blood and tears and poignant moments of powerlessness.'

Life Lesson #314: ‘'They show you a place in your head where you remember why we were never meant to be alone. And you try and act surprised.'

Life Lesson #315: ‘And the hardest part was letting go, not taking part. You really broke my heart.’

Airplane Mode.

Airplane mode is a setting available on most cell phones, smartphones and other electronic devices that, when engaged, suspends many of the device's signal transmitting functions – thereby disabling the device's capacity to place or receive calls or text messages – while still permitting use of other functions that do not require signal transmission.

I wish I didn’t have to make that choice ever so often. When a pattern seems so adamant to loop every four years of your considerably short life, you start to think whether you deserve it after all. You start to project the unpleasant results onto how you are and you start thinking, hey, maybe it’s my fault after all. Maybe there is something wrong with me. Maybe I’m the one who activates it regularly, almost as if it’s a deadline that you have to hit on a certain date set on your subconsciously scheduled calendar. When you’re so flagrantly different than everyone you’ve ever met, whether or not you think it’s the right thing, you start to think that maybe you really do bring it upon yourself to be in so much pain. Which leads to the ultimate question: ‘But do you really deserve the pain?’

You’d think that after a while you’d learn, get something out of it and maybe have a firm grasp on what went wrong to try and fix or avoid it, but it’s always the same thing. And whether or not it is after all your fault, you still blame yourself for it.

Is the right thing worth it? After all you have loved, and you have been loved. The kind of love that’s so strong it’s almost crippling, the kind that has a person willing to put themselves for someone else if it means it’ll protect them and guard them from harm, even if it means it’s you that has to go down instead, and almost as an automatic response you’re willing, and that registers as irrelevant, hardly a cost to haggle down. The one that obliterates your survival instinct and renders you incapable of having it as a valid option to begin with, knowing full well that it’s not the type that can be reciprocated. The kind that makes your well-being sound like a selfish pursuit. That kind.

And you’re met by an incomprehensible resistance. You’re fighting against the other person’s survival instincts, and you can’t seem to get your head around how their survival instincts are set to kill them when yours are set to die for them. How does that even make sense in the natural order of things? Why do you have to make a choice of either having two go down or just one, when neither seems fair?

That’s where the grey area comes, the one that argues that it’s their personal choice that you have no hand in and should accept. And, again, you start wondering. If it’s a personal choice, then does that mean that the protective instinct you have is wrong? Does it mean that in that context, you’ve found a loophole in the mechanism of human communication? That you’re a faulty prototype that was marketed and circulated then dropped like a hot potato and eventually, the CEO decided that retracting it from the market would mean more financial losses and decided to just leave you there till your stock has self-replenished? The update is more lucrative and there’s no sense in further investing in a losing hand?

And yet you still try to comprehend it. Is it still a personal choice when you’re tied up watching someone you love and care about so much hurt themselves? Suicide is a personal choice. If your son let you know that he was gonna shoot himself in 8 hours, would you stand back and say son, you do what you gotta do, but I certainly don’t like it?

It doesn’t make sense. If it’s wrong to go the extra mile to save someone from themselves because it entails trespassing on their personal choice, then why is it still an option in the human psyche? Why is the impulse still activated? Is it put there to torment humans? Is it another loophole that sets our world apart from a utopia? Are you a faulty prototype, a travelling soul that lost its way from the chivalric medieval eras? Is it only tolerated when put in the context of a parent to their child because it can’t be avoided but ostracized in lesser forms of relationships like a friend or a loved one? I don’t get it.

And when you’ve done everything you could against their defense mechanisms, you’re left to handle a conflict with your own. You can’t get yourself to stick around and watch them hurt themselves because it’s too much pain, and leaving would cut off your own air supply, because you loved too much. And it seems cruel. It’s cruel that you have to make that choice ever so often. And you always do the same thing, because it is no longer a choice. You willingly obstruct your own coverage, and you no longer have signal, hoping that it would cause the least damage and leave you pseudo-functional.

Flight mode –other names include airplane mode, offline mode, and standalone mode – is a setting available on most cell phones, smartphones and other electronic devices that, when engaged, suspends many of the device's signal transmitting functions – thereby disabling the device's capacity to place or receive calls or text messages – while still permitting use of other functions that do not require signal transmission.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama doing a traditional Hawaiian ha, or exchange of breath, with a student from Kamehameha Schools who performed at welcoming ceremonies on his arrival on Oahu, Hawaii, on April 13, 2012.

Growing Up Is All About Getting Better At This:

Shattered Windows & The Sound Of Drums.

It’s been a good day, even tho  it started off on the wrong leg with almost 40 hours of no sleep, big shit poppin’ and lil things stoppin’.  The kind of good day that comes with a hue of sadness and inconsolable disappointment over battles you’ve lost.

Eid was great, with an animatedly chuckling  family, a couple of close friends and inhumane amounts of cholesterol-choked food. It offered this pause that comes with priority of quality over, well, life, you know the kind where no matter what important shit you’re doing, you always stop everything and enjoy eid gatherings, and despite an awful strain of weeks.

And I daresay you come out of it with a thing or two over the coffee you’ve made in the middle of the night even tho you had to sleep because you felt like it, with the laptop on the window ledge and your dad sleeping right there against a pillow looking out because he couldn’t get himself to sleep on a day off.

Life Lesson #304: You haven’t been loved if you haven’t spent Eid at an Egyptian home.

Life Lesson #305: There are still good people out there. Somewhere.

Life Lesson #306: You haven’t been truly heartbroken if you haven’t had to see someone you care about fuck up their lives irrevocably and nothing you’d say or do mattered. And you haven’t been truly broken if you’ve never found it in you to stop trying anyway. Whoever said that with great love comes great sorrow was not rolling high on hormones after all.

Life Lesson #307: Sometimes seeing that better people exist is enough to save someone. And sometimes, not even an apocalyptic march of saints could suffice.

Life Lesson #308: You stop being a child at heart when you learn when to walk away.

 

Life Lesson #309: Nothing screams out ‘I’ve lost hope’ than an atheist praying for a friend. Giving up doesn’t come in a worse package. And seeing someone revert to an option that to them never even qualified as a last resort, is like seeing  a rundown terminally ill patient travel halfway across the world for acutherapy in that little uncharted institution in Asia he read about in one of the brochures handed out to save face when the doctor gives the ‘We’ve done everything we could’ speech. It is the saddest experience you’ll ever be unfortunate enough to behold on this godforsaken planet, so much that  you’ll wish they hadn’t ‘lost’ – for lack of a better word – against whatever believe you may hold. If you have, then congratulations my friend, you’ve seen what a person looks like when he’s completely and utterly defeated.

Life Lesson #310: You know when you have that fight with your parents where the inevitable age gap causes a disagreement that neither of you could phrase logically to the other and you call them overprotective and they quip the usual ‘You’ll know what it feels like when you have kids of your own’ line? Ironically, you don’t have to be a parent to know the full effect of that blow.

Life Lesson #311: All is well if it ends well, but what it really depends on is your definition of well.

Of Jokes That Stopped Being Funny.

I haven’t blogged in a while, but it’s not because I suddenly popped out a life or shit stopped happening. Au contraire, it was the kind of writer’s block where you back off from the damn blank post for fear you’ll spill your heart out to absolute strangers at a whiny moment and come to regret it when the Kübler-Ross model shifts – which is a technique, might I add, that most of you bloggers out there should learn.

Also, I’m re-discovering the cathartic pros of working till you’re numb – which reminds me of a friend who, on the topic of Prozac, backfired my joke by saying that they could chip me into tablets and send the Prozac line filing for bankruptcy. I would have been pissed, hadn’t she been right that is.

I’ve recently had a blinding moment of clarity that has sent most of the givens I had about life, the universe and everything into 42 shooting stars that I was desperate enough to wish upon. I’d rather not further elaborate, but a good friend says it’s something we thank God for. I’m taking his word because I’d rather not go nuts this soon before my finals. All I gotta say is that I’m at that Tupac phase of my life where I have three years of bad choices to fix and consequences to own up to and I have a feeling I’ll end up getting shot too early on at it. And I don’t necessarily hate that one bit.

I don’t know what the fuck I’m writing. Not that it matters, because neither do you.

I used to believe that being a good person is a conscious choice you make everyday, now I understand how people might wake up one morning and forget why they’ve been making that choice for that long because all those who used to remind them haven’t been around for while. I used to laugh at people who say the wrong crowd would make the most self-righteous lose their way and lecture them about strength of character, but then again I wasn’t the one who laughed last, was I?

Assholes aren’t born, they’re made, carefully-crafted and programmed into being one. And I now see why being an asshole works, and how it works, or rather worked, in this context at least. After all, I’ve learned from the best.

But that’s probably because I woke up one morning and found out that I have become one.

And I don’t mind that one bit either. But I guess that comes with the package.

On a lighter note, pun intended, I used to have this joke with my dad where instead of asking him how his day’s been, I’d check his cigarette pack and look at my wristwatch.

Then you grow up and that joke stops being funny for several compelling reasons and you start wondering what the hell happened, when you’re probably the best one to answer that question.

Problem is, after three years, it’s kind of hard, if not impossible, to retrace your tracks back to that specific point of time where everything took a wrong turn, because life’s not a videogame. You tend to be given the map AFTER you’ve lost all of your lives trying to get to the wrong objective with ‘Game Over’ flashing on your screen.

You know what the funny part is? If I had the chance to go back in time, I wouldn’t take it back. I’d go about it differently with the knowledge I have now to fuck them up the exact same way, sit back and watch with popcorn.

I’ve learned, yes,  just not in the conventional definition of learning.

Oh well.

Because Nothing Else Matters.

What All Food Should Look Like.

In response to theories of evolution; it’s 2012 and you can still rule the planet with the right set of mammary glands.

Proof?

..I rest my case.

‘Nothing is true, everything is permitted. The wisdom of our creed is revealed in these words. We work in the dark, to serve the light. We are Assassins.’

Mercy Kill.

Today, I came upon the realization that my automatic reaction to puberty is nothing short of this:

Needless to add, it wasn’t pretty.

Because, you know, it wasn’t a mere subtle transformation as it is with all the hormonal zombies that recently acquired the functioning ovaries, ‘woman’ noun and dubbed suitable by the most recent form of the dying ritual of sending a teenager all on his own into the jungle and asking him to bring home a butchered gorilla to assert his manhood. It was a full blown mutation, in full throttle, with the appendages and the sticky goo coming out of the mouth letting out little, though amply voiced, graaaawrs.

It involved slaughter.

And three innocent casualties whose only fault was being at the wrong place, at the wrong time and inconveniently sitting with their ears angled towards the, formerly latent, explosion.

It’s a little funny how people call it a mercy kill; it’s become so common as to acquire the social acceptance of a posh downtoning Merriam-Webster-certified term.

It’s humanity going: ‘Oh well, I guess that can’t be stopped, might as well make it a thing so when aliens land in 5012, they think we had a grip on things and all. Coin that shit in the books.’

It’s evolution going: ‘Kill all the pussies, and make the surviving minority carnivorously man-eating, in any meaning of the word that qualifies. Make them bitches think it was my idea.’

You know, this whole chick thing, yeh, I don’t buy it. It wasn’t a great sight to see myself being a chick, you know, concentrating on actual semantics and shit.

Shortly afterwards, the whole I’m-a-dude-at-heart thing started getting more attention than it should. False advertising works best I reckon. They started begging for that shit to come back. The same ones who debated the tranny theory with a passion I never knew possible away from an ‘eat all sushi you can and you’ll get it for free’ buffet.

The kind of passion you see on a morbidly obese American male on seeing a ‘Fried chicken wings, 387 flavors' ad.

I now know why this whole ‘wiping out humanity and start it again on a clean slate’ scene stopped at around 14 BC. God knew better, because by then, they were more than qualified to finish themselves off and like him in the process. You see progress right there, changing the attitude from ‘flood them bitches’ and ‘torch them hoes’ to ‘get me some popcorn, she got a tight grip on his spinal cord and he’ll be oozing pudding anytime now.’

Chicks survived the same way Chihuahuas do, they have admirable tantrum phasing, you’ll fear it no matter how small and harmless it may look as soon as you realize just where it can bite you.

Dudes survived the same way that rat in an anaconda's death vice, he’s oblivious enough not to know that they feed every two weeks to warm up and start cuddling themselves into the hug that will irrevocably throw their spine out of alignment.

Evolution didn’t leave males defenseless tho, it gave them a couple of pointers, shoved them so deep into their subconscious that they wouldn’t know it’s protecting them, because if they did then chicks would know too. Subtle: ‘Girls who like soccer are hot.’ and ‘Man, she actually watches Top Gear. I’m proposing next week.’

Yes, you got it right, they’re protecting themselves by looking for dudes. Or the next best thing.

Shitty day, just like the former and prolly like the next. I now turn in with the hope that tomorrow has more hours, less events and enough coffee. Good night, loathsome humans.

Also, kids got totally scammed. I don’t like growing up.

Of Senioritis.

Disclaimer: If you’re a fan of good ole consistency and/or not given to rants, this post is not for you. Mind you, the comment box isn’t, either.

Readers should be noted that I’m writing this post sleepless and inebriated, because waking up three hours into a good night’s sleep after staying awake for 23 hours only to get doped off of the wrong allergy medication, conveniently after you’ve ingested a generous portion of coffee, is an epileptic combination I should patent to being a Rory. And mind you, by rules of equilibrium ruling the universe randomly, justly, and having considerably small odds of perishing, there can only be one Rory.

Also, I can’t feel my head. And I like it. It’s growing on me.

It’s the end of the week, at last. As usual though, it will only go out kicking and screaming. What’s with getting academically raped, random incompetent freaks taking the consensual bit out of hiring and, well, overall weirdass people. The whole goddamn country is having trouble getting a job and I wake up to find myself employed. Don’t get me wrong, I actually wanted the job, I was just under the impression that I have to apply first. Oh well. I guess I’m just that awesome.

A friend once said that she liked marketing because it was evil; convincing people and probing at their subconscious to put their money in all the right places, which happen to be all the wrong places, making her feel like a charismatic villain, only a tobacco roll away from another Clint Eastwood. Well, I can now honestly say that I know what she means; and I’m hooked.

Not quite the opportune timing.

Along the lines of volcanoes shooting chocolate fountains and garden gnomes who gave up on your backyard before you were enough of a failure to know they could actually do that, I flunk two exams; the only two I sat anyway. I get through puberty as a straight A-student, without having flunk once in my life, and I manage to do it two months before the biggest finals I may ever have to sit. I don’t even know what to say to that. Except, well, fuck.

They call it senioritis.

I call it White tea.

Coffee stands in a corner, with its grin setting the smoke swirling into its own pseudo halo and your conscience seizing back into its iron clad enamoration, takes you back into its loving bosom and says bitch, get sipping, I don’t have all day.

And you take it, like the vampire you are; cold, stale or plain crappy, with gratitude.

On an unrelated note, I love my father, with a passion. The kind of father who takes two months off, promising to sleep when you do and wake up in time to your schedules, just to sit there with his newspaper and coffee and support you through the last 80 days that could make or break your future, is nothing I had the luxury of seeing walk this earth any other place on this godforsaken planet.

Dad, you get a shout out.

In Case You Were Wondering, That’s What Genius Looks Like.

Beauty.

Sappy Late Night Nothings.

It’s a beautiful night. I’ve been working ever since I woke up, and for some reason, I blanked out for two hours. I did absolutely nothing, and it felt..it felt like nothing, which in turn felt great. The weather is beautiful tonight, painfully chilly, and very ‘there’. It got me thinking about the last time I just sat up to watch the sunrise. It’s been a while since I did that, I liked to stay up late at night just to see if I could tell the rate at which the sun comes up, and yes I mean the actual mathematical rate, and I always miscalculated it, which in turn made me stay up late the next night, and the next night, and the next night. I’d make my mug of coffee and watch old plays and feel like a grownup. Sometimes I’d bring my blankey and cuddle into a ball on the desk in the balcony, so my sky vision is panoramic. I’d pretend there’s no ledge, and no gravity. It’s the kind of cold night that fills your head and nostrils with its presence, stops your weary head and compels you to hear its whooshes, and only its whooshes. It doesn’t leave room for any of your worries, and it consumes the illusion of time, warps it, replenishes it, extinguishes it, makes the time tunnel take all sorts of tumbles and turns, bringing you back and forth like a copper boomerang in an AC magnetic field, lost, controlled by a random pattern that can neither be pinpointed nor formulated into an equation. It tricks your head into not registering memories, since you can’t really feel time, or acknowledge it, and you’re free of time, remembering and being. The cold gives even the intangibles presence, it somehow freezes your feelings over so you don’t get emotional sickness, and things that used to hurt are only ‘there’..and they don’t hurt anymore,  it makes you aware of how many things are ‘there’, and somehow, with so many things that are there, there’s no room for anything else. Not even you. And it feels..splendid.

The kind of night that sounds like this:

We’re Half Awake In A Fake Empire.