And Another Thing.

If a year of continuous disappointments led to the biggest rally in the history of mankind, what would its potential failure/futility lead to?

If an unstoppable force hits an immovable object, what would happen?

June 30th, 2013

Sing It!

I like big books and I cannot lie!

You other readers can’t deny

When a book walks in with a good plot base

and a big spine in your face you get sprung!

Wanna pull out your pens

‘cause you noticed that book was dense

Reading, half-rims I’m wearing

I’m hooked and I ain’t caring

Oh baby I want an e-reader

and a meaningful meter!

My teachers tried to train me

That book you got makes me so brainy!

 

Epilogue.

Q.E.D

When life gets too confusing, drop it and read a book.

Answers never come, until one day you wake up and you realize you already have them, and you’ve had them all along, you just hadn’t matured enough to synchronize it with a suitable trigger.

Although, realizations come in gold nuggets, ones that are even more valuable than their Marvel’s Avenger Alliance’s counterparts. Those realizations will only make sense to you, and you’ll appreciate them all the more for it.

Like for instance, when Carl Sagan said that if you wanted to make an apple pie from scratch you had to recreate the universe, he was probably talking about how our grandmas are demigods.

Or perhaps how being the hand of karma is sometimes worse than being the cheek.

Or maybe how the same reason why you’re phone’s been on silent for over 4 months without you noticing is the symptom, not the cause.

Or how you may be Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter simultaneously, when all that time you thought you were Alana Bloom.

Or how you probably shouldn’t have stopped reading Storm of Swords in the first place, as opposed to how you probably shouldn’t have started A Song of Ice and Fire in the first place, a lengthy discourse that your vapid eyes aren’t worth beholding.

Or why you should’ve just shut up, because that’s the best advice you can give anyone at any given time or place, a good old ‘just shut up’ would solve all of life’s problems, because some parts of your life aren’t meant for other people’s consciousness, and trespassing on that would be problematic to the cosmic order, and cosmic order applies to your molecules as well as the universe’s, and you don’t wanna mess with that.

Or perhaps that the reason you couldn’t solve a problem is because a problem doesn’t exist, the same reason a body can reject an implant that’s installed for its survival just because it’s an alien object behind enemy lines, whose affiliation is seemingly irrelevant as opposed to its tactical strategy for automatically handling that situation. A situation that may not be a situation in the first place.

Or maybe how bodies, souls and minds are not supposed to align after all, and that’s what makes life worth living.

Or how dichotomies are always a bad idea, not just in political discourse.

And so much more, but sharing them would ruin them, because they’re mine and mine alone. I’d forgotten that most things are meant to be that way, and breaking that rule would be abdicating a right.

I can sleep now.

Lost & Found

‘Who am I?’

'You're Rory'

'As in the you're the little sheep whose best friend is an abusive cow and doesn't know anything about life except that it's around the area where there's enough clover, your Jedi is an over aged goat who's angry at life for no apparent reason and you meditate by watching your fellow pig eat?'

'Nah, more like you're the closest thing to a cartoon character who's exceptionally radiant on their own, yet who's cynical attachment to life is through the potential anger and irony of the seemingly tough, yet harmless, people you're surrounded by.'

"I can understand that people want to feel special and important and so on, but that self-obsession seems a bit pathetic somehow. Not being able to accept that you're just this collection of cells, intelligent to whatever degree, capable of feeling emotion to whatever degree, for a limited amount of time and so on, on this tiny little rock orbiting this not particularly important sun in one of just 400m galaxies, and whatever other levels of reality there might be via something like brane-theory [of multiple dimensions] … really, it's not about you. It's what religion does with this drive for acknowledgement of self-importance that really gets up my nose. 'Yeah, yeah, your individual consciousness is so important to the universe that it must be preserved at all costs' – oh, please. Do try to get a grip of something other than your self-obsession. How Californian. The idea that at all costs, no matter what, it always has to be all about you. Well, I think not."

- Iain M Banks, quoted from his final interview.

Iain M Banks Died, June 9th 2013

I just found out that Iain M Banks passed away on the 9th of June, 2013, about 2 minutes after I found out he had been diagnosed with terminal gallbladder cancer. What’s more, I found out about his death through an irrelevant blogpost that held wrong information about his cancer, as well as how he took it, blotching in some vapid sob story about how he’d decided to give up writing to spend his last days with friends, family and a new girl when he’d actually packed up for a busy summer with another culture novel in store that never made it to our dimension, and a late romantic proposal to a coworker asking her to be his widow.

I don’t know what’s more infuriating; how this never got enough exposure and the world didn’t skip a turn or how people didn’t honor him enough to properly publicize for his death, so much that I had to find out about it by sheer accident. Or perhaps it’s reading his last interview (read here) and seeing how much potential he had in store or how he took it.

It’s all so infuriating.

The world lost a genius, for god’s sake, acknowledge it! It’s disturbing, how someone like him could just leave our world unnoticed, and not be nearly appreciated enough for all of his pent up, as well as produced, works.

I am too pissed to properly express myself.

Happy Hugh Dancy Day!

Just look at that smile, look at it <3

June 19th is Hugh Dancy’s birthday, which means that today is going to be a great day. If one June 19th produced such gorgeousness then its progeny will have huge shoes to fill. If your great grandpa took part in producing such work of art,  then it logically follows that you’d spend your whole life trying to do something as wonderful. Nothing bad can ever happen on a June 19th.

My Spirit Animal.

P.S. I’m allergic to cats.

P.P.S. Judging my luck, it would make sense that my spirit animal is a cat.

P.P.P.S. It would make more sense if it were grumpy cat because it will try to kill me and like it.

Chaos?

If you can escape in your head, you wouldn’t need to escape your head. There can be all sorts of worlds in there, parallel adjacent and loopy. People can’t exist if you don’t allow them to and people can exist who no longer do and people can exist that aren’t people and people can exist that never were. All the possibilities inside your head couldn’t be calculated by a permutation known to the intellect of man, you can get lost there all you want to as soon as you know how to find your way back, and if you have nothing to go back to then I guess you needn’t even worry about that.

Let there be a world where all are homesick, and neither knows the other exists. A world where Babel happened on an individual level rather than tidily on imaginary lines of maps. Let there be a world where all are kind because they don’t know anyone else is there; they’re kind not out of choice, but out of trying to make their own company bearable.

But no, I’m not good at this. That’s no different than real life.

Let there be a world where there are coffee fountains every where, a world where there are coffee beans instead of soil and the birds never sleep, are always chirpy and drop dead every 72 hours of caffeine overdose.

But no, that wouldn’t work, they’d cause an epidemic and everyone would eventually die.

Let there be a world where people daydream for a living and live in their daydreams, and form families and loved ones by the rare occasions when their dreams overlap in nature and desired comfort.

But no, that’s not fair. Where’s the choice in that? And people would be forced to lose their families and loved ones without prior notice if they dare dream differently.

Let there be a world where everything makes sense, where numbers and formulas work out people and politics, functions work out relationships and interactions, permutations cause the necessary number of accidents required to reclaim cosmic order and integration resets values when they get too astronomical and eventually keep their world grounded.

But no, that would fail because people would never know what it’s like to get a useless lottery ticket, bet on a live horse race or experience an adrenaline rush. They’d never fail so they’d always fail, by always winning and never knowing what it is.

Let there be a world where people never grow up, die or procreate, a world of eternal youth where nothing wilts or expires, nothing is outdated and the concept of time isn’t paired with the dreaded concept of its consequences.

But no, how would people be alive if they didn’t have the ability to destroy? How could they properly love if they had an annoying aeonian wall of skin and an eternity put on hold between them? What would it matter to live or to love if they couldn’t accidentally or intentionally destroy it?

Let there be a world where people are clones, they all think the same way and they all feel the same way. The entire race is propagating on the same wavelength steadily towards the unknown.

But no, that would backfire a couple of weeks in when they all simultaneously PMS or three weeks in when they simultaneously fuck. If they survive both, they’ll die four weeks in when they panic about getting there too quickly.

Let there be a world where all forms of life are omnivores, where all sentient creatures feed without bias or prejudice, without sentiment or lack thereof, a dynamic equilibrium following a constant function with equal mathematical losses on all sides involved. A perfect symmetry of survival and equal odds for all.

But no, that would annul the concept of family and pets, of homes and siblings and of recreational activity. The young will never have a dog for the same reason they never had a baby, and the old will never go into gardening for the same reason they never dated. That would mess with their odds.

Let there be a world where people had a life span of one-week and they knew it, with no chance of regeneration or redemption. They were born to die and had no other purpose, they deserved no more than they were entitled and their quotas were equally rationed.

But no, that wouldn’t work because one or two will decide to take everything down with them in a final evening of odds. Soon enough, the world will be consumed and the later generations will come into nothing, a certain life of nothing instead of a possible life of some things with odds of nothing.

Let there be a world where all forms of life could effectively communicate, with no bridges in notion or gaps in progress. Each species climbed their respective evolutionary ladders at the rate allowed by their world’s timeframe, that is constant for all.

But no, they would spend millennia discussing their rights, millennia trespassing each others’ and all the while trumping each others’ progress so that the only constant in a world of variables, being time, is invalidated.

 

I guess the only way this world could feel less chaotic is by realizing how its chaos is peculiarly durable.

True Story

I met a homesick alien who taught me how to build worlds in my head, and we were alone together but never lonely alone.

Caffeinate!

Time dons quite the kaleidoscopic perspective to things that were once too painful to acknowledge.

Friendly Update

Fairytale?

“Once upon a time a woman never got married, but had many fulfilling relationships, a job that kept her comfortable, an apartment that she got to decorate just for her, and hobbies that stimulated her mind. The End.”

One Day, I Will Ride Next To A Panda.

Forrest Gump.

I don’t know about you, but I generally find people incredibly confusing. This has always been the case, although lately it has come to be a problem because of increased exposure – although it is worth mentioning that the aforementioned increase in exposure is not my doing, god knows I’d do anything to stop it as soon as I know what that is that I should be doing to get to the desired results – but a matter of growing up and being in college and what not. A lot of times, I find myself thinking I probably shouldn’t have done that, even though it made complete sense in my head then later produced explosive results. Then it hit me, people don’t make sense, so trying to do something that makes sense won’t make sense to people.

Following that logic, it became even more confusing to figure out what to do on certain occasions, because logic is counterproductive and it’s not exactly as easy as pretending everyday is opposite day. Which brings us to our next conclusion, not only does logic not work, the opposite of presumed logic is equally dysfunctional. That’s when I found myself in quite the conundrum, and in a desperate attempt of damage control, I tried to directly treat the problem by eliminating the cause; being people. Turns out that’s not all that easy either, if not impossible. Eliminating pressure works with chemistry, not people. Fixing denominators works with maths, not people. Where does that leave us? Right where we started, with some modification; I generally find people incredibly confusing, and I haven’t the least idea what to do about that.

You see, you can’t work it out on paper. You can’t jot down the preferred outcome and design a plan of action with variables and constants and a function that forms a pattern, because people are full of variables and absolutely no constants that would help form a pattern. What’s more, you can’t even see those variables half the time, and in my case, not quite understand them when they’re out.

I’m not going anywhere with this. I would if I could, but I don’t know how to.

What I do know is this though; I’m not compatible.

You see, I’ve come to the funny realization that when it comes to people, I’m quite the Forrest Gump. That’s why most things backfire only when they involve human specimens. I got no problem with texts, facts, numbers and written things, but this whole interactive organic Neanderthals walking on twos with emotions and choice and thought and background and a gazillion other things adding to the ever-changing bio-blob that is a person, this is usually how I take it:
















And this is usually how I react to it:



And this is usually how it turns out:



The one difference is this; it actually worked for Forrest Gump in the end. Be it luck, providence or sheer karma that steered things in his way, it eventually worked.

Some More Little Things

Dad's cure to my loopy biological clock; an organic alarm, ready and set from the night before.

The Little Things

 

Oh nothing, just my father spontaneously getting up in the middle of the night to brush my disheveled teddy bear. And people wonder why I love my dad.

Religious Harassment.

This happened today at uni and it thoroughly pissed me off.

 

I was sitting alone next to the side entrance of the free clinic where the interns come to practice. It overlooks a construction site on campus so it’s hardly populated, and doctors occasionally come out for a smoke.

 

There I was, enjoying Ayn Rand’s We The Living and a smoke, when I was startled by the company of a patient. She was an elderly woman wearing a black abaya. Without any greetings or pleasantries that would warn me to her existence, she was leaning onto me, inches away from my face, and the following unedited dialogue took place.

 

هي: إنتي إزاي بتشربي سجاير وإنتي بتقري المصحف؟

أنا: حضرتك مالكيش الحق تقوليلي أعمل إيه

هي: يعني إيه؟

أنا: ده مش مصحف حضرتك، لو سمحتي إتفضلي

هي: ماهو لو كان أهلك حاجبوكي مكنتيش مشيتي في الحرام

أنا: حضرتك إزاي تدي لنفسك الحق تكلميني كدة؟ لو سمحتي إتفضلي

هي: تلاقيكي قبطية ماهو أصل كلكوا كدة

أنا: *عليت صوتي* لو سمحتي إتفضلي

 

Now let me tell you what’s wrong with this scenario:

I honestly don’t know where to start, perhaps that she gave herself the right to go up to a stranger and tell them how to live their life, or maybe it’s the sight of a woman smoking that Middle-Easterns just can’t get used to and almost always relate to promiscuity, or maybe it was the violent religious discrimination, or the fact that she thought all Christian women are whores, or that she thought that all women who smoke are whores, or that she thought all women are whores that need to mend themselves and become human beings, or the fact that she thought all Christians are depraved and immoral by default, or the fact that she thought there’s nothing wrong with parents forcefully veiling their children, or the fact that she thought forcefully veiling another person is the solution to depravity, or viable in the first place, or the fact that she thought depravity is synonymous to smoking, or the fact that she thought depravity is a given for all Christian women, or the fact that she thought the bullshit she was spewing was virtuous, or had anything to do with values, or is remotely related to any religion or moral code. Maybe it’s the fact that she couldn’t imagine a woman reading a book that wasn’t the holy Quoran that had her assume the English book with a colored cover was in fact Quoran, or maybe it was the fact that she invaded a complete stranger’s personal space and filed accusations based on their assumed religion, or the fact that she thinks anyone who is not veiled is a whore, or the fact that she perceives my very existence as a mistake that she is bound by religion and society to set right out of her own precious time, or how the way her society taught her how to understand Islam allows her to behave this way to another human being, or how she thinks that’s what Islam tells people how to behave, or how she insulted me on every fucking level possible for a person to be insulted and verbally violated, and last but not least, how she genuinely believed she did absolutely nothing wrong.

 

I don’t know what to say, I was bound by the difference in our ages to respect the elderly, but I have never been thus insulted in my entire life. I am no stranger to the societal difficulties and the unwanted tags that come with being a smoker, I am aware of how this fucked up society perceives the sight of a woman smoking and I have been harassed over it before, but maybe the combination of discrimination against women, Christians and smokers in the span of less than 2 minutes was too much to bear.

 

I am a free woman, and there is nothing that anyone can say or do that can change that. I am not a walking vagina, I’m no less of a human being for being a Christian woman who smokes, none of these three give anyone the right to think of me that way. I am not a whore for having a vagina, I am not a whore for smoking openly and for fuck’s sake I am not a whore for being Christian.

Mark it.

Quand je vous aimerai?
Ma foi, je ne sais pas,
Peut-être jamais,
peut-être demain.
Mais pas aujourd'hui, c'est certain.

L'amour est un oiseau rebelle
Que nul ne peut apprivoiser,
Et c'est bien en vain qu'on l'appelle,
S'il lui convient de refuser.
Rien n'y fait, menace ou prière,
L'un parle bien, l'autre se tait;
Et c'est l'autre que je préfère
Il n'a rien dit; mais il me plaît.
L'amour! L'amour! L'amour! L'amour!

- Extrait de Carmen, L’amour est un oiseau rebelle par Georges Bizet.