Of Chum Chum, Mostly.

I can’t get myself to start working quite yet. I have a midterm tomorrow and my brain’s tanning on an imaginary beach somewhere. I’m not worried, and that’s a good thing, or I choose to believe it’s a good thing. I found out that you can take a vacation without going anywhere, and I just spent three whole days with JD, Turk, Carla and Elliot, re-watching Scrubs and feeling grateful for my goldfish memory that obliterated the plot turns even though I watched the entire 9 seasons three times before. Oh and I found my soul mate, his name is JD and he’s a fictional character who talks to himself in a medical comedy that stopped airing. Yeah.

 

I’d like to introduce you all to Chum chum. Chum chum is my baby cactus. I think Chum chum is a lot like people, prickly on the outside and mushy on the inside, so in a sense I have a pet human subconscious. And no, Chum chum is my baby and I don’t care what you think, because let me tell you the truth about pregnancy: You’re gonna pee, poo, fart and puke in front of at least 10 strangers who will be staring at your vagina for no less than 40 hours of labor that ranks higher than being burned alive on the pain scale. You’re welcome.

 

 

You’d think somebody would tell women about that little con before  they get knocked up, but no. Life is funny that way, like for instance how you’ve always known that boobs are the answer to everything but only Femen had the guts to use it, for the first time, to women and the whole world’s advantage and you find yourself making the conclusion all over again and regretting why you never patented it. Or maybe how you invest your allowance in a Cheese sandwich griller and find out that it’s probably the best investment you’ve made in a while because happiness is two parts cheese. Another thing I found funny was how celebrated Licia Ronzulli's photos are, and how women all over the world consider her an empowering model for all working moms, when in fact, if she had been a veiled woman in our parliament, she’d be called incompetent and attacked on every level for bringing her baby to work. Admit it, it’s true. She wouldn’t have been as empowering and she would have been perceived as the living epitome of third world countries. It makes you think just how much can be different if you looked pretty and had a foreign passport.

 

Oh, and I recently found out that ants don’t accept sugar offerings, and I’m blaming their paranoia on you, vicious humans. Bad humans!

My Thanksgiving List.

• I’m grateful for my dad, who has always been there for me even when he needed someone to be there for him, and for always having faith in me even when I didn’t offer the same luxury for myself. He taught me everything I know and he’s part of all that I am today, and it’s because of his altruism and sense of righteousness that I have a hero better than all the crap they sell in Disney fairytales. My Kryptonite and the source of my strength, if it weren’t for him I wouldn’t amount to anything.
• I’m grateful for my ability to see the hilarity in misfortunes, for gallows humour has gotten more people by than history dares to admit.
• I’m grateful for coffee that has always been there for me, regardless of how good or bad the day may turn out to be.
• I’m grateful for the little things and my ability to see them wherever I turn, as little as funny online series or a good book, they fuel me when I most need it and they never bail.
• I’m grateful for my ability to forgive, and how it comes naturally to me to not hold a grudge. Even though most of the time I may have to not let people know it because it’s for the best, it’s a blessing not to have it in me to hate someone, no matter how much people may perceive it as weakness, I regard it as true strength not to let things stick on you, eat away at you and eventually change you.
• I’m grateful for all the assholes I met in life, for they taught me how to handle things the way people do in the real world, how to hold myself out there, how to be one when I need to and more importantly, how to recognize them from the head start and know better than to let them into my life.
• I’m grateful for all the friends I have, or had and lost, for they left me with some good memories that have substance, albeit bittersweet, and remind of me of the choices I have to make everyday.
• I’m grateful for all the bad choices I made, for they taught me how to be  responsible for the consequences, they made me aware of the existence of consequences, and gave me enough ammunition to recognize the good choices and make them more often, and handle the bad ones more competently.
• I’m grateful for good conversations whenever and however they may come or have come, for they’re the stuff of life.
• I’m grateful for my sense of conscience, and the fact that I now realize that goodness is a choice you make everyday and never quite turns into a habit.
• I’m grateful for my head, for despite all the nights it tortures me and all the days it beats me up, it has never let me down and never shut up no matter how little I listen to it.
• I’m grateful for my ability to see through people, I now know better than to let its little hints go unnoticed.
• I’m grateful for honesty, and the fact that truth hurts. I’m glad it does because it keeps me grounded and shows me everyday how succumbing to delusion is the easy way out, but never the right way and never an option.
• I’m grateful for how I turned my life around, for no matter how much it may have hurt, I now know that I chose the right path.
• I’m grateful for my utter inability to give up on things. My lack of acceptance changes things when other people give up on it.
• I’m grateful for work, it is the only straight line in life’s loopy parabola.
• I’m grateful for how I always blame myself when things go wrong, for even when it’s not true it helps me become a better person, and now I see that it’s not such a bad thing because ego has always been the one thing that had people hit a plateau and go down from there without realizing it.
• I’m grateful for piano, and the fact that now  I know there’s one at UNI and the music room is available everyday from 9 – 11.
• I’m grateful for all the temporary friendships that got me by, I now know better than to depend on another person for comfort when it’s better to turn to yourself for consolation.
• I’m grateful for change, it has kept the engines running despite all the gritted teeth grinding in complaint.
• I’m grateful for my grandma, for she shows me how age has nothing to do with having fun.
• I’m grateful for my family, they give me examples to look up to that are actually in my life, and they show me that you have the choice not to let life change you no matter what it may throw at you.
• I’m grateful for being eccentric, it has kept things interesting and it’s a blessing to know that I’m not caught up in the all singing, all dancing crap of the world as much as everyone else, it gives me a chance to step back and watch the act, and helps me decide on things that people wouldn’t give a second thought.
• I’m grateful for the internet, for it made knowledge easy to come by.
• I’m grateful for the chances I was given and the opportunities I had, they made me work to be better even though at the time I only thought they served as a reminder of all the things I’m yet to learn.
• I’m grateful for late night walks with my dad, they keep me grounded and they remind me that the world never stops turning for anybody.
• I’m grateful for all the good people I have in my life, you give me hope because it’s never easy to stay good when everyone around you is an asshole.
• I’m grateful for Kurt Vonnegut, you’ve left enough literary heritage to keep me occupied for now.
• I’m grateful for Jazz, Blues, Neo-Soul and Rap. It’s true that you haven’t managed to eradicate all sadness in the world, but you’ve managed to push all that is melancholy in one corner of the room and make it more habitable.
• I’m grateful for never losing my ability to care about someone, no matter how many reasons I was given to know better.
• I’m grateful for being impulsive, it’s given me the initiative gusto to jump into things that people wouldn’t dare to consider, and made life a hell of a lot more fun.
• I’m grateful for all the stupid things I’ve done, they’ve given me great stories to tell the grandkids and amuse me when I’m old and frail.
• I’m grateful for all the things that didn’t work out the way I wanted or expected them to, they made way for better things to come and taught me to do without a lot of things that others are wrapped up around.
• I’m grateful for logic and my sense of skepticism about the givens of life, for they have taught to me to look for hope objectively and not turn into another brainwashed idiot prancing his way off a cliff. It has made me not settle for less even when more was nowhere to be seen by actually working on making that happen rather than waiting and wishing.
• I’m grateful for my balls, even though they got me into a lot of trouble, I wouldn’t have had it any different.
• I’m grateful for all the shitty people I have in my life, you show me everyday who I never want to turn into and are a constant reminder that I’m making the right choice and that the shit that I have to go through because of it is worth it.
• I’m grateful for detachment and my belated reactions when shit hits the fan, they’ve given me the chance to think of a solution when everybody else is panicking.
• I’m grateful for the mess in life, it reminds me every day that importance is an assigned value, that nothing is a given, and that people have more control over their life than they care to admit just by the way they choose to handle things.
• I’m grateful for my insomnia, it has added hours to the day and gave me a chance to learn more and get more things done.
• I’m grateful for being content with my life, and being happy more often than not. It’s a lot more than many others were offered.
• I’m grateful that the answer to life, the universe and everything is not available, for if it were, people wouldn’t have a reason to live.

Brown Baby.

Of Humanity & Lack Of Social Justice.

I was just watching the news earlier and they reported that ex-president Mubarak is badly bruised up from taking a gross fall in his prison bathroom and you see, all I could think about was ‘Man, that’s gotta suck. I mean, one day you’re president of a country, the other day you’re ousted and they’re reporting you dropping the soap on national television.’ Putting all the political dilemmas aside, the guy’s probably gonna cry for a week over this, it’s one thing taking  a fall and a whole other thing having a 70 million haters for audience that won’t let you forget it for as long as you live, it’s gotta be like being stuck on the bleachers in high school for the rest of your life. To make it clear, I’m not pro-Mubarak or anything, the guy was a tyrannical dick and all, but think about it: it’s gotta suck to be him right now.

People are so quick to judge, you know? That whole drill of actually taking the time to put yourself in another’s shoes is not rad these days. Everybody’s cozy in their own little heads and perfectly satisfied about figuring life out and shit, constantly giving people crap over not seeing it the same way they do. They always forget that there’s absolutely no way to be sure whether your way is the right way, or whether there is a right way at all. You just gotta hope it is and take comfort in the fact that it’s a snug fit, at least for you and at least for now.
For instance, there’s this really poor, deaf and dumb vagrant that lodges on the opposite side of the street I live in, and he makes a living selling random merchandise with a sign on top issued from the supposed deaf and dumb organization of the district. My college bus always drops me off where he spreads out the good old money-makers on a blanket, and I regularly gave him the rest of my weekly allowance no matter how much they amounted to because I figured he probably needs them more than I do, making sure to pick up a pack of gum to save him face and ditching before he figures out what’s happening and tries to communicate his gratitude and/or absolute scorn, I never hung around long enough to determine which he goes for. I was shortly caught in the act and called an absolute idiot to fall for a con artist and what not. I stopped giving him money, following the philanthropists’ initiative of calling myself an idiot until one day, I was waiting for the college bus to come and one of the guys at uni who was waiting with me placed the architectural model he made for his midterm project where the poor old guy sits, who went on a theatrical gesturing act worth of auditioning for Cats, moaning unintelligibly to try and tell the guy that he’s sitting in his spot. The guy took him for a maniac, held his model protectively like a newly-born baby, cradling it against his chest safe away from the mad guy  who was met by laughter and aggressiveness from all the other two-bit brats that pass for undergraduates. I tried to make the guy understand that he was merely telling him that he was sitting in his work spot and gave him my seat, and the other chicks took the hint and shut the hell up, settling on rolling their eyes back in their hollow excuse of a skull. That’s when it hit me, the guy wasn’t a con-artist, he wasn’t lying because why would he lie when it was too early to sell anything, he hadn’t set out his merchandise and didn’t show any signs of being bothered or remotely alarmed by the deafening noise that drove everybody away from the curb shortly afterwards when one of the air-conditioner ventilation boxes on one of the shops broke down, he was just a guy that fate got on his knees because the country still hasn’t found away to employ the qualified, let alone the under-privileged. I had a lot of respect for him, watching him try to make  a good life out of the little he was given, even trying to make it pretty by cleaning the tree pot in front of his spot of cigarette stubs and dusting a 5 metre-radius around the place he’s sitting with his own personal broom, even though he didn’t have to. He was human, and he was trying to make his surrounding as humanly habitable as possible, and that kind of impulse can only be produced by someone who had integrity. That poor old man had a life of his own making, he was proud of it and he wasn’t gonna let life get him without a fight. The next day, I gave him all my money like I used to, I didn’t call myself an idiot for it and I gladly walked home for two hours when I missed the bus later in the day because I didn’t have money for public transportation. People don’t see beyond their own eyeballs, when there’s so much to see. I mean, there’s this guy here who’d been stripped of every semblance of a dignified well-off life and he was still happy and had a purpose, and then there are the college brats who didn’t have any of the material covered all year on the morning of the midterm and passed out on the offer of sharing my notes for getting a smoke because although their parents probably spent their life savings to put them through college, they just didn’t give enough of a fuck. Who deserves the money? Those college brats or the hardworking deaf and dumb vagrant who probably got rejected out of every job he applied for by incompetent higher-ups that perceived any and all handicaps as a sign of retardation, all because they weren’t properly informed and/or trained and never really bothered to fill in the gaps of their own lack of education by taking the process of gathering common knowledge into their hands? It’s just not fair. Life is not fair, so many people deserve so many things that other people who don’t deserve shit have effortlessly, and hardly even use. Where’s the karma? Where’s the balance? Where’s the sense of shame that could fill in where karma and balance fell short?

Nobody has the answer to that but people can make a difference, because the money you spend on drinks and salad can very well sustain someone’s household for a week, if only you had the time to look the hell around.

Of An Underrated Hero.

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/10/they-surely-are-not-violent.html

To The Past.

Again you show yourselves, you wavering Forms,

Revealed, as you once were, to clouded vision.

Shall I attempt to hold you fast once more?

Heart’s willing still to suffer that illusion?

You crowd so near! Well then, you shall endure,

And rouse me, from your mist and cloud’s confusion:

My spirit feels so young again: it’s shaken

By magic breezes that your breathings waken.

You bring with you the sight of joyful days,

And many a loved shade rises to the eye:

And like some other half-forgotten phrase,

First Love returns, and Friendship too is nigh:

Pain is renewed, and sorrow: all the ways,

Life wanders in its labyrinthine flight,

Naming the good, those that Fate has robbed

Of lovely hours, those slipped from me and lost.

They can no longer hear this latest song,

Spirits, to whom I gave my early singing:

That kindly crowd itself is now long gone,

Alas, it dies away, that first loud ringing!

I bring my verses to the unknown throng,

My heart’s made anxious even by their clapping,

And those besides delighted by my verse,

If they still live, are scattered through the Earth.

I feel a long and unresolved desire

For that serene and solemn land of ghosts:

It quivers now, like an Aeolian lyre,

My stuttering verse, with its uncertain notes,

A shudder takes me: tear on tear, entire,

The firm heart feels weakened and remote:

What I possess seems far away from me,

And what is gone becomes reality.

- From Goethe’s Faust.

Most zealously I seek for erudition:

Much do I know—but to know all is my ambition.

That brain, alone, not loses hope, whose choice is

To stick in shallow trash forevermore,—

Which digs with eager hand for buried ore,

And, when it finds an angle-worm, rejoices!

The few who knew what might be learned,

Foolish enough to put their whole heart on show,

And reveal their feelings to the crowd below,

Mankind has always crucified and burned.

- From Goethe’s Faust.

To Memories, The Ones That Tickle.

And then I looked up at the sky and I could see

Oh the way that gravity pulls on you and me

And then I looked up at the sky and saw the sun

And the way that gravity pushes on everyone.

On everyone.

Freshman Myth Busters.

Being a fresh freshman, so to speak, I’ve come to have my expectations flopped on so many different departments that I’m starting to wonder whether Alzheimer’s is more common than I thought. It can’t be that all grownups and graduates all over the world agree to tell the same version of one universal lie to all the new undergraduates. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s bust it one myth at a time and examine how freshmen are really like..where I came from.

1. Man, college life is so promiscuous, I don’t even remember how many people I slept with..on the bus ride home. I never even got their names before I crashed..head first into the window trying to dodge their strangers’ shoulders. It all happened so fast, one thing we were sitting there thinking passionately about..what our moms cooked for lunch, the next thing we’re both wallowing in deep..zombie-like slumber. Well, we all know what they say about experimenting..with sleep positions in passenger seats. It’s good to know just how far you can bend..your neck without breaking it.
   
   
   
2. That thing about the freshman fifteen, they were right with the number and wrong with the sign. You don’t gain the freshman 15, you lose them trying to find your way around campus and later back home after you’d unfailingly taken the wrong bus for the umpteenth time.
   
   
   
3. That thing about freshmen being annoying, they’re not; they’re just lost kids, except that none of them has the balls to be a full-fledged Peter Pan.
   
   
   
4. Being a freshman doesn’t necessarily mean you’re broke and up to your ears in student loans. However, you come to learn that’s how it should be when you see how it is when it isn’t. I’m not going on a hate parade against rich kids here, I’m talking about normal kids whose parents gave enough pocket money on some sort of personal fit to even the odds that have them comfortably afford two drug dealers and still have some left over to buy lunch.
   
   
   
5. You know a freshman when you see guys lying about getting laid trying to get laid, and girls lying about eating that chocolate crepe in the deserted hallways to buy a 25-pound salad that they eat in full sight of everyone. Those same girls will later economize on water bottles and not one will have extra toilet paper or even a tissue in the ladies’ room, which brings us to the next point: the only useful appliance in the ladies’ room are not the toilets, but the mirrors.
   
   
   
6. That shit about freshmen being at their highest stimulated point of intelligence while struggling under stress, it’s not true. You’ll notice how it isn’t when you see that the only reason the Red Bull stand got any audience was because the subs were cranking with music, and the only reason the MUN booth was noticed for the first time in two days was because it was strategically placed next to the Red Bull stand, and gave away free food. Follow the glittery fedoras, come to the liiiight.
   
   
   
7. That alley were the cool kids hang, it’s not where the cool kids hang. The cool kids know better than to hang where the cool kids should hang so the other uncool kids can’t find them. And by god can they hide, I’m starting to think there are uncharted nuclear shelters on that campus that only a Marauder's Map could find. Hell, not even that, it would be hidden the same way the room of requirements is. The only difference is that you can actually find the room of requirements when you really need it, and if you really need to find out where the cool kids hang, you never will; for the same way a dog can smell fear, a senior can smell a freshman, and as it turns out, barking dogs do bite.
   
   
   
8. You’re not a freshman if you haven’t had at least two fights with college professors passionately over meaningless shit that neither of you cares about but will continue to pretend to care about just to piss each other off because that’s, THAT’S, how it should be. When you pack hormonal teenagers who never knew the meaning of freedom with overqualified college professors who never had a big break and are lamenting their lost lives by overestimating their own mediocrity in an institution that neither cares about your education nor gives enough of a fuck to follow through with the faction of the rules that it doesn’t profit from, which concern you, that’s what happens.
   
   
   
9. Saying that college days are the best days of your life is like saying test drives are the most fun you’ll have driving, gotta love them traffic cones. They’re only fun because you still don’t have enough hind sight to shed light on your own bread crumb trail yet.
   
   
   
10. Sure, you’ll know what you wanna be when you grow up, that is if they ask you that question when you’re 6.  It won’t even take a couple of seconds of hesitation, you know straight up, in all clarity, what you want to be when you grow up. Graduating from high school, you’re still fired by hormones and you feel like you can take over the world, but not quite sure how. Choosing a major, however, is another story, you pay a shitload if you wanna switch majors which makes it slightly impossible for you to change your mind without being homeless. Graduating from college, you’ll be back at square one.
    
    
    
11. None of the courses you’re taking will have anything to do with the major you signed up for during first year, but by the end of first year you’ll be required to choose a major now that you’ve been oriented with the subjects covered. Go figure.
    
    
    
12. And just as you are required to know courses that you don’t actually need to know, you’ll be deprived of other courses that you need to know about. After all, how do you know what you need to know from what you don’t need to know? You should only know what we think you need to know, that’s why they call it higher education, and you’re too short to decide for yourself.
    
    
    
13. Here’s the thing about college, the worst thing you can do is to date someone from college. However, if you can manage to do that, the world will bow down in reverence. You see, every chick comes out of school uncontested thinking that she’s the hottest broad ever popped, and every guy comes out of high school thinking nobody can know he was the nerd if he can emulate the jock who bullied him, which will be easy since he already knows every little move he makes in textbook detail. The result is predictable; there are less rejections in the Bronx penitentiary than there is in college.
    
    
    
14. And after your parents put you through college with the money they’ve made between the present point and the time they graduated from college..
    
    
    
15. ..you get into college only to realize that you could have skipped high school altogether and nobody would have noticed..
    
    
    
16. ..and then you graduate from college and jump into real life only to realize that high school theory applies to college too.
    
    
    
17. And in thinking you can get ahead of the pattern, you’ll go down the same road your parents paid so much to air-hockey you out of, just so you could stay in the same road the three of you want. Proof? This sentence will only make sense to you if you’re a college student/graduate.
    
    
    

The Missing Piece.

What they don’t tell you is that seeing the good in people is not about seeing the good in people as much as it is about how people aren’t strictly good. There are no good people, but there isn’t one person in the world who’s managed to eradicate any and all trace of goodness in them, just yet.

It may be the saddest alteration of a glass half full, but then again, if you’re thirsty enough, you wouldn’t notice the first bit.

The World Would Be Easier.

‘The world would be easier if the homeless were all just lazy and all they needed to do was just get a fucking job.

The world would be easier if evil were a real thing, instead of just confusion, misunderstanding, miscommunication and misplaced desire.

The world would be easier if you could just be happy for what you had, while you had it. If you could eat memories like flowers to keep your heart alive.

The world would be easier if comfort didn’t rest on the backs of the broken, if your swimming pool was dug by soft hands that never worked a day in their life.

The world would be easier if we all just got rich and famous and we were all each other’s #1 fan.

The world would be easier if it were an automatic.

The world would be easier.

But it isn’t.

The world is hard because it requires real human effort to make it turn.

The world is hard because you may wake up today but not tomorrow. And yet no one will accept “fear of death and a futile existence” as a reasonable excuse to miss work.

The world is hard because you will have to fight for the things you love or worse, fight the things you love.

The world is hard because the things you love will kill you.

The world is hard because it was made that way by thousands upon thousands of hard men and no one wants to admit we have no idea why we’re doing the things we’re doing anymore.

The world is hard because it’s hard to forgive and even harder to forget.

The world is hard and you should just give up, right now. Just lay down and die. Nothing will ever be easier.

But, you don’t.’

- I Wrote This For You.

Perfection.

‘Yet you still value the things you’ve lost the most.

Because the things you’ve lost are still perfect in your head. They never rusted. They never broke. They are made of the memories you once had, which only grow rosier and brighter, day by day. They are made of the dreams of how wonderful things could have been and must never suffer the indignity of actually still existing. Of being real. Of having flaws. Of breaking and deteriorating.

Only the things you no longer have will always be perfect.’

- I Wrote This For You.

Substance.

‎'I am a part of the part that at first was all, part of the darkness that gave birth to light, that supercilious light which now disputes with Mother Night her ancient rank and space, and yet can not succeed; no matter how it struggles, it sticks to matter and can't get free. Light flows from substance, makes it beautiful; solids can check its path, so I hope it won't be long till light and the world's stuff are destroyed together.'

- Taken from the speech by Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust.

Midget Pains

Of Rambling, What Is & What Is Easy.

I’m not sure how or why I ended up here, and maybe one of these two will have an answer if I let go, just for once, but I don’t work that way. I’ve always resented it, but never could change it, although somehow I’m grateful for it, because it has protected me like nothing and no one else has, or will. I hate it and I love it, sort of like the same relationship one might have when they’ve been in prison for too long and have come to depend on the confining walls for survival, as if they’ve somehow become part of the wall, and the wall has become their very being. That’s why they can’t leave, because if they do, they’ll auto-exorcise.

Do we really have a choice? What’s a choice? I used to tell myself that one has a choice with everything, he just chooses not to call it a choice when the stakes are too big, or when it requires too much effort on his part. I used to believe that acceptance is proclaiming defeat. I used to ridicule how a person is willing to put in that effort if he had to but not if he so wished. But think about it, do we really have a choice, in anything that we are, have, don’t have, want, need or resent? Or are we just making it harder on ourselves? I still believe in those things, the only difference is that now, I’m willing to question them.

Why is it so hard for me to give up on anything, no matter how trivial? It can’t just be the inner child whining a little too loud for too long. Why do I never stop fighting? The right phrasing would be this: Why can’t I stop fighting? Why is acceptance of all things as is the hardest endeavor for me when it’s the go-to solution for everyone else? Am I wrong? Are they right? Are the last two questions really the same?

I’m rambling, that’s progress.  It’s the beginner’s level of letting go. I usually get to this part then I somersault back to square one. I’ve been trying to look through my coding and see where the loop is, but it feels like I’ve gone all Zaphod Beeblebrox on myself. Smart, a little too smart. I never really got past the restaurant at the end of the universe so I don’t know whether he’ll eventually unlock the part of his brain that he’s hidden from himself, and now it feels like reading the books would unlock an achievement. Funny, how the mind works, or rather, malfunctions. Do I have to get past the restaurant at the end of the universe to find out? Or rather, would getting past the restaurant at the end of the universe help?

I’m tired of people apologizing to me. Just like I’m tired of verbs. Verbs are the root of all problems, you know. They report the action, and actions mess things up. No theory ever got anyone into trouble, not anyone who wasn’t Greek anyway. Theories are intelligent, they’re the nouns of life, but they’re cowards, they’re inanimate and frustratingly stationary. They never take risks. But where have risks got me? A better place, sure. A happier place? No, that would be too easy.

Now you see, if I weren’t me, I wouldn’t think inanimate stationary states of being are frustrating. And oddly that’s the one thing I’ve never regretted, I’ve never regretted being me, with all my blunders and train-wrecks, I’ve always been satisfied in who I am; rough around the edges but always preferring straight lines. I stumble around the rubble every once in a while, but then again it’s a building site and rubble is good news.

What scares me is this, will I question this too?

Why are easy things cursed? It can’t be another little life joke, now can it? It feels that a foreboding air lingers around all things easy. But then again that also comes with the package, I wouldn’t feel that if I weren’t me.

Which gets us back to the main point, the one that started this post, do we really have a choice in who we are? Surely, what we have, don’t have, want, need or resent are what makes us who we are, but if I’m questioning the choice in the elements, doesn’t it follow that I question the outcome?

I don’t like rambling. And it makes sense that I don’t, because rambling doesn’t work in straight lines. Straight lines aren’t easy. It all fits. In fact, it’s such a snug fit that it’s making me question if it was the work of man. Or man’s choice.

Of Loops, Cycles & A Sad Truth.

Oh the irony, the sad irony called the cycle of life. You'd think it'll get creative after a while, but it doesn't. Luckily for you, that is. For what’s worth, stop complaining about the monotony of life. Trust me, if it were indeed ever-changing, judging the rate of evolutionary progress you’re exhibiting, you’d all be dead by now.

It’s a sick joke, I’ll give you that, but you have to admit it’s true. If it weren’t a cycle, if it weren’t mundane and holding a certain air of plagiarism, there’d be nothing to look back on and maybe draw some survival boons from. Even then, some people don’t quite get there.

I’ve also noticed how most, if not all, good people are rendered rather heartless by time, and that’s the only way it can make sense, if you really think about it. I mean, it goes against nature to be giving, hence the only compromise they can make without losing their inherent goodness is by acquiring a shield, that little defense mechanism that parses their code into something that wouldn’t kill them. You see the logic behind the metamorphosis goes as follows: The person goes through enough crap to prove his straightforward goodness to be impractical, the person believes that change is immoral and is stuck in an impasse, hence the psyche does a little tumble and solves the puzzle: There would never be a problem if the person never cares in the first place.

And that’s usually how they’re made, that little psychological loop that sets things straight. Cycle, loop, it seems like the go-to solution for everything, no? The same way round shapes take up the least energy, and how if every centripetal and centrifugal force on earth disappeared, all elements will curl up into a ball to .. survive, for lack of a better verb.

If you give it some thought, you’ll see that the only change people see in life wouldn’t be really change if they lived past 60, or 80, and even then, they start to see the cycle and things stops seeming new. Ever wondered why your grandma’s an undercover shaman? Or maybe how your dad managed to install those wondrous dadoscopes that save years off your calendar? It’s because they’ve seen it all, and it didn’t really take them that long to see it. That could only be possible if life is a cycle. It would also explain my theory that if it wasn’t, half of us would be dead by now, that is if they existed in the first place because half of our predecessors would have died before us trying to figure out how to live day in and day out.

That’s also why the biggest mistake anyone can make is thinking that they outsmart those around them. It’s a true mark of an idiot to believe that they could get ahead of the pattern, just because they’re under the impression that they see some things that others don’t. It never occurs to them, however, that seeing things doesn’t mean they’re right, it’s highly probable that others have seen the same things and had enough common sense in them to disregard them on the spot for being oh so damn moronic. Common sense, I may add, that wasn’t bestowed upon the aforementioned eponymous evolutionary at hand.

Funny thing, life is. A child’s play, maintained by the ingenious mechanism of growing up and losing that child-like clarity. Remember how easy things were when you were a kid? How the line between right and wrong was 60 feet tall and unmistakable? You don’t think you were less of a human back then, do you? I daresay you were more of a human, and got chipped off along the way. And if you weren’t chipped off, you'd malfunction and life would need to give you a proper pounding just so you’d lose the extra weight you’ve reared round the edges, rough you up a bit so you’d be flexible enough to get through the hole that it really wouldn’t care enough to customize on  your behalf. You’re not supposed to stay whole, that’s called incompetence, in the most pragmatic of canonical logistics. Proof of which is how the most successful at this life game are malevolent to the core, because only by being incredibly flexible will you reach the ultimate yet natural destination of malevolence. It’s against nature to be kind, it’s against survival of the fittest. Goodness is being morbidly obese, in that context.

Either way, you’ll be made heartless, because as much as I, you, or anyone would like to differ, sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side. But I may be wrong, and I hope to be, but I’m usually not. God knows I wouldn’t like to believe that the perfect outcome of life is turning everyone into robots. Even apes know better.

"Ecrivain raté, destin raté. Comme j'aime ce mot, 'raté'. La destinée humaine ça conduit comme ça, en ratant. Et de ratage en ratage, on s'habitue à ne jamais dépasser le stade du brouillon. La vie n'est que l'interminable répétition d'une représentation qui n'aura jamais lieu."

Of Old People, Debates With Old People & Getting Lost.

It’s grandma’s birthday today, shopping for her birthday gift turned out to be quite problematic, because what could a 74-year-old possibly want out of life, really? Few things are truly new when you’re 74. We’ve had a lot of suggestions, ranging from therapeutic pillows to massage therapy gift certificates, a book full of crossword puzzles, a pair of medical shoes or maybe new seeing glasses. However, I’m yet to think of a gift that wouldn’t inevitably incur this reaction:

It’s such a long time, 74 years. I’m almost 20 and it feels like I’ve lived forever. I like old people, they’re like babies, except with better conversational skills. You’d think conversations with old people should provide enough material for revelations that could give you a brain stroke just trying to process them, or maybe go down in textbooks as one of the steps you have to go through to reach ultimate enlightenment, but you can’t help but notice how they’ve somehow transcended the concept of boredom. They’re never bored, or amused. They’ve reached this state that scholars have yet to coin in their latest dictionary updates. I wonder what it’s like to be 74. Oh well, I guess I’m gonna have to wait it out.

Speaking of new things, I’ve recently been watching hip-hop dancing tutorials, trying out this new amalgam of having fun and staying fit, and it’s proving to be way harder than it looks. The most logical conclusion would be that I’d lose half my current weight before I effectively learn how to shuffle, but that’s definitely a win-win I suppose. For someone who has the physical coordination of a zombie and looks like she’s kicking invisible gnomes to death trying to shake it, looking on the bright side does help sometimes.

I have a fortnight off from uni for Adha, and I find it depressing how every time I talk to a friend, they’re always resenting the fact that they’re gonna have to spend it with family. I mean, being visited by the ghost of Christmas honesty is one thing, and intentionally catching a cold to stay home and get out of family dinners is another. I’m not gonna pretend that they’re always fun and I’ve somehow stood apart from my angst-writhing generation, but then again family gatherings aren’t that bad. They’re enjoyable, with a little effort. And in most cases, it’s one of the few occasions when family remembers they’re family, if that makes sense.

I still haven’t quite found my feet with the whole university life, I've only adjusted in the sense that now, I know how to avoid whatever it is that I wish to avoid without necessarily sticking out of place. It also helps to think of people as moveable objects who have stories. If you’re lucky, the stories are mostly funny. However, I haven’t met anyone that I’d let into my life if I could help fight them off with a baseball bat and a Taser gun. The exchange students would vouch for that, the German ones hold the record of getting out of a conversation in less than 2 minutes. It’s admirable.

I got lost again, this time it was in el Nozha el Gdeeda with five strangers for two hours shortly after the bus got caught in a traffic jam in an uncharted territory that had a building site on the right side and a desert clearing on the left. There was nothing too special about it other than the fact that I had to run every two minutes to catch up because power walking with tall people doesn’t work, and fighting for midget rights in the middle of nowhere with absolute strangers  is counter-productive. I know what you’re thinking, how hard can it be to get on the right bus for once? If it helps, I’m a freshman with zero knowledge of maps.

I got into another debate with the teacher, this time it was about how I thought none of the newspapers stick to the general format that’s being taught in our textbooks. She got a little defensive when I suggested that the only surviving conformists to the true essence of journalism are independent newspapers, but then she turned the argument around by saying that the only thing that’s differs independent from government newspapers is that they’re biased to different sponsors. That led us to argue how she claims that newspapers are still the best form of news today if they’re all just brainwashing the public through different filters, and the only thing I got out of that debate is that now, I understand why I’m not fitting in; it’s not because of my ideologies, it’s that I have any.

Priceless :D

The Boogeyman.

It’s a quiet night, one of those slow nights that one would feel bad about wasting by sleep. However, I admit I should have known better than to pick up ‘Clash of Kings’ for light reading before bed. Although I wouldn’t be too hard on myself, because regardless of my better judgment, I’ve already lost the ability to fall asleep on cue, but apparently that comes with the package. According to a friend, growing up is when kid you gets used to feeling ripped off.

I used to be scared of the dark, but then I had my first job interview and well, kids, the boogeyman's real. I must admit though, it felt good..in retrospect. Don’t be mistaken, a couple of more minutes of probing and I would’ve shat my pants right then and there, but walking out, after I’ve gone through the excruciating process of thinking of all the questions I could have answered better if I had a better reign of my wits under life-draining fluorescent lights, and after my memory of the incident had conveniently warped itself into a good-cop-bad-cop scenario, it felt rather pleasant. I felt..big, kind of like how Tyrion Lannister feels on his borrowed destrier. The term ‘happier than a poodle on stilts’ comes to mind. Walking out of there, I probably looked like this:

It’s odd how the past month has been packed with so many firsts, almost as if I’m a toddler again. First time visiting campus, first lecture,  first fight with college professor, first college-boy crush, first time using public transportation, first paycheck, first time getting lost in Cairo alone, first time reading a map correctly, first time stopping a cab, first job interview, first migraine, oh so many firsts. Do people ever run out of firsts? I wonder how it feels, to run out I mean. Does it feel satisfying or depressing? Does it feel as gratifying as crossing out all the items on a checklist or completing all the objectives and milestones in a videogame? Or does it feel like your time is up and you start to wonder how it went by so fast and feel ripped off? I guess I’ll have to wait it out.

It might be a little too early for this, but I already miss a stupider time when I had less memories and experiences and more tummy for ice cream.

Of A Bleep Called You.

The worst thing you could possibly do to yourself is to expect better, even if the odds allow it, no matter how many signs may point to it. It never ends well, even when it does, if that makes sense. You’re supposed to have a windshield, you don’t keep taking it out and storing it because you won’t get past 60 mph and you like the wind in your hair. It doesn’t work that way.  How it works, however, is you taking it all however the hell it comes and then somehow managing to remain standing. That’s how it goes, or else you’ll go soft.

Life, I’d be lying if I said it’s had ups and downs; recently it’s been morbidly invariable, a never-ending beep. The same patterns, unraveling over and over again no matter how differently you try to tackle them. And one day, you just stop trying, and it doesn’t feel any different. That’s the irony of it all, how it makes you realize, in full momentum, how insignificant you are. How pathetically insignificant, with or without your efforts against a monstrous avalanche. It makes  you wonder whether people who chose a bohemian lifestyle at an earlier point in their life went through some sort of enlightenment that you were deprived of. It’s always the same, and it will never change. People go through their own phases of anger, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance, hamburgers and ice cream to try and find a way around, under or through it, but they all come to the same point, and they give up. It will always be the same, and that’s why you go through hell and back to understand it.

And just as it slowly kills you, you’ll notice a lot of other insignificant things, like how you’ll lose the will to speak even though you may have a lot to say, just because you don’t see the point in talking when you’ll never be met half way, it’s just wasted air. You’ll stop living and you’ll exist instead, and it won’t feel like a waste because you know for a fact that nothing will ever change. You forget to eat and that’s alright, because you didn’t even notice you were hungry in the first place. You fail to remember the last time you slept but that doesn’t matter, because what’s there to wake up to? You stop reading and that’s alright, because what’s the use of all the knowledge if you have no place to share it or put it to use for anything other than numbing your cranial engines? You stop trying and that’s alright, because of all the things you’ve tried, not trying is the one thing that feels right, because what’s the point in running when you can’t see the finish line? It’s funny. It’s funny how the body and soul don’t shut down at the same time, but each of their own accord, without even taking  your permission. Yet another reminder of how insignificant you are.

Nothing matters. Absolutely nothing. Such a scary thought that people would sacrifice an arm and a leg for hope of a more digestible alternative, then accept it two limbs short of a full package. And what’s the point? Why should you fight it when you’ve got no reason to prove it wrong? Why should you look for an alternative when all the flashing billboards are pointing right at it? Just an egotistical misconception that your life has to be worth something, it just has to. But it isn’t, because why should it? Have you ever had any proof other than your own groundless frustration? Accept that, and you’ll stop being so tired all the time. The living dead are never tired, not that I’ve heard of anyway, ever heard of a zombie stopping for a drink?

What’s the fucking point?

Of Turtles & Demons.

Much like every other regular blogger out there, you come to the point where a blank post is only a portal through which terrible monstrous creatures can jump in at you from unforeseeable dimensions. I know that because I’m staring right at it, and I can see a couple of imps climbing in.

Another speed bump is that fact that as you grow up, you get a firmer grasp of the fact that nobody gives a shit what you have to say about the world, and that kind of milks you dry. Newsflash, buddy, no one will ever patent your suggestion of adding burgers and ice cream to the kubler-ross model. I know, life’s a bitch.

It usually hits when you’re thinking about what you wouldn’t like to include in, or even how to begin, a blogpost. And just as you’d think about penguins the minute you’re asked not to think about penguins, because human brains are assholes, all you’re thinking about is a way to go around it without betraying the efforts of  playing whack-a-mole with your demons.

That kind of reasoning would rule out so many noteworthy life incidents and somehow an otherwise potential-choked unlimited blank post is fighting with your better judgment for custody of the many temporarily awesome stories that will eventually be filed as junk by your goldfish memory in a couple of years. It’s fair to say that writer’s block is kind of like divorce, in the same way your inventory will always be missing a couple of irreplaceable possessions.

So life, well what about it? I realized that things don’t seem so big once you’ve jumped in. To further elaborate, I saved a turtle the other day from a bunch of senior mofos only to have the campus laugh at me for standing up for a strange turtle’s rights and voicing its severe dislike of heights and being waved around when it’s spent its 3 digit life span a mere 5 cm from the ground. On the bright side, they didn’t look so big while I was looking up at them as I kept in mind how the turtle might be feeling in comparison. The poor thing couldn’t even down my Caesar salad afterwards.

I realized a lot of other little things, like for instance how stroopwafels are the Anglo-Saxon version of good old Freska, the negotiable assumption that dragons could have just been friendly over-sized canines, how the world doesn’t offer the courtesy of walking on eggshells to cater for your withdrawal-induced irritability and will relentlessly produce more people that you’ll see with a target circle tattooed on their forehead, how you’ll never be met halfway because as far as anybody’s concerned you’re just another fart waiting to happen. Other facts include how cookies and corndogs were not made for the purpose of socializing, and no I’m not talking about Twix’s ‘not made for two’ slogan. And last but not least, how coffee-specialized cafes are the worst coffee makers in the world is not the only living oxymoron that will piss you off as a blue-collar in the making.

I’ll come back when I can make sentences. And by ‘when I can make sentences’ I mean when I stop getting the irrepressible urge to cave every person’s face in with a baseball bat.