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.

"But they need to worry and betray time with urgencies false and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny their souls really won’t be at peace unless they can latch on to an established and proven worry and having once found it they assume facial expressions to fit and go with it, which is, you see unhappiness, and all the time it all flies by them and they know it and that worries them to no end."

– Jack Kerouac, On The Road

Happy Easter!

 

So That’s Why.

Mood Capsule.

 

It’s an Astor Piazzolla kind of night. I’m yet to hear another composer who manages to make time stop in its tracks like he did, quite effortlessly too.

 

I’m at a weird place of my life right now, but I’m surprisingly calm, and I guess that’s all that matters, isn’t it?

 

The crows still come back to the tree where the nest used to be, although the nest is long gone, along with their parents. They don’t have to come back, but they do anyway, and not because they need it, because they want to. I think that’s beautiful. Humans should be capable of that too, but they’re not, because they complicate everything, and it is because they complicate everything that they find it so hard to feel. Feelings are no longer spontaneous, they’re triggers for things they don’t want to go through again, and they think being numb will protect them. Crows are smarter than that, they’re too free to compromise for their own protection. I like crows.

 

My pinky hurts like hell, I’ve been graphic designing for 14 hours on a laptop touchpad, and now I’m considering chopping it off to silence the pangs. Occupational hazard has never been this lame.

 

Every once in a while you come across a wild thing, and you stand in awe to behold it, and try so hard to make it part of your life, but you should have known better because it will never let you. The only way you could keep a wild thing is by being a wild thing. Such a rare commodity these days, people are afraid to think, they’re afraid to feel, they’re afraid to be, and they’re afraid they’ll do something wrong. That’s no way to live, how did we ever get here?

 

I have asthma now.

 

People should really stop dying.

 

Buddhism was the only philosophy that got it right, the only way to get out of this life whole is through detachment, you neither love nor hate, and you’ll be whole. But you’ll miss out on a hell lot, besides, who wants to remain whole if our time is limited? It would be practical if we were immortal, but choosing that when you’re gonna die anyway, perhaps really soon, is the most idiotic thing you could do to yourself next to missing out on a chance to spend a day with Erik Satie or Kurt Vonnegut.

 

Who cares?

 

I got one hell of a week ahead of me, so many midterm projects, midterm assignments and work that would usually take three weeks crammed into 3 days. The first thing I’m gonna do when I’m finally done with that will be to play piano until I can’t feel my fingers. I miss playing piano, I haven’t played in a while and I think that’s ridiculous because it’s one of the very few things that make me feel like I belong somewhere, or that I’m getting somewhere. It’s a very odd sense of comfort, one you’d naturally associate with home.

 

There’s that one bird that usually wakes up before the rest, and it would make a huge difference when he’s finally gone. He doesn’t know that, and I don’t think he ever will. I don’t think the bird understands that without its significant little tune at 4:25 am everyday, none of the other birds would wake up, and mom, dad and I wouldn’t smile in the middle of the night in recognition. Little things matter.

 

I’m lost, and I don’t mind it.

 

Nobody reads this, and it’s one of the main reasons why I like writing here. That applies to more than one department in my life right now. It’s weird growing up, you’ll never have that childlike certainty again. Never again, and most people  hate that. I wonder why. Don’t the people who are certain of everything feel claustrophobic? What’s left to live for if you know the answer to everything?

 

My hand hurts. I think I will read game of thrones now.

Respice post te! Hominem te esse memento! Memento mori.

Roll The Credits.

And who are you, the proud lord said,
that I must bow so low?
Only a cat of a different coat,
That’s all the truth I know.
In a coat of gold or a coat of red,
A lion still has claws,
And mine are long and sharp, my lord,
As long and sharp as yours.
And so he spoke, and so he spoke,
That lord of Castamere,
But now the rains weep o’er his hall,
With no one there to hear.
Yes now the rains weep o’er his hall,
And not a soul to hear.
And so he spoke, and so he spoke,
That lord of Castamere,
But now the rains weep o’er his hall,
With no one there to hear.
Yes now the rains weep o’er his hall,
And not a soul to hear.

Time travels to learn
your secret life
in your mausoleum
And Berlin
is so ugly in the morning light
but with them
I could never feel so right.

This Is My Kingdom Come.

Nerds Will Relate.

Of Our Age.

The middle east should have their own psychology textbooks, with regional updates. By global measures, we're all cuckoo.

But I guess numbness is the mark of our age, we’re a generation that can only truly feel anger and lust. Some feelings died with their terms by the turn of the 18th century; feelings like remorse, gallantry, chivalry, integrity and infatuation. We’re all tripping. The first heartbreak tempers the heart to real life; if you still believe in fairytales by the second then you’re either a hero or delusional. If you feel safe in  your head, you have won the 21st century. Can you still feel your brains swirling in their cranial slums?

 

Life is a funny thing; you have a moral code and you have a survival instinct, they both have a set of compulsive self-imposing rules that follow their own laws, they’re both unstoppable forces, and they’re opposites. People are supposed to go through life, and somehow manage to walk on the edge of both, without snapping one and rebounding to the other. People are blamed if they’re frayed because although they can’t control most things that stretch that rubber band, they’re still responsible for them. You’re responsible for what you’ve been offered, or rather what’s been ladled onto your plate, even though you can’t control half of it, first of which is if the rubber band is in fact a thread. Funny, for creatures of fate and kismet.

 

All vices are a form of escapism, in truth. All virtues are a form of depersonalizations. It’s all about either lying to yourself or running away from it. And when you’re incapable of both abilities, both virtues and vices remain neutral, in the same room, both hollowed out to their identical helix, meaningless and at a complacent state of unnatural peace.

 

They don’t write that shit in textbooks, but then again, introspection isn’t something that is glorified in our age either. Prolific is taken for granted, and the quality – or lack thereof – of all that’s ample is dismissed.

 

World, I get it now, I get what the hype was all about. I also get why the world is fucked up, I get why everyone is confused, it’s because there are no boundaries. People, everyday, are bombarded with so many choices, ones they' weren’t wired to make and ones they can’t make, and the availability and numbing constant exposure drown individuality to a distant hum. Those who hear a buzz are the extremists. That’s why people let go of who they are; it’s because that’s yet another choice they were forced to make that’s not in their books. No one is taught how to handle that, few are given guidance as to how to handle that, even fewer listen when given, and most would rather lose it and find it for a living than decide once and for all only to pay for it for the rest of their lives, whether it’s a good or a bad decision.

 

It’s the same idea as placing circuits in parallel or connecting them in series; in parallel connection, with no chosen path and no particular stand or feeling on the matter, the same amount of energy goes to all, sometimes contradicting, departments. In series connections, it’s given all to one thing, with tremendous intensity. The pros of parallel connection is that if one is cut off, by means of fate or incompetence or whatever it is the decides the stream of things, the rest go on unaffected until that fraction of a bigger thing is repaired, but it never goes as far as that in series, that pumps it all the way and jumps in with all its might. The cons of the series connection is that if you put all of your eggs in one basket and drop the basket, you lose capital and profit; you lose Everything. However, if you put that extra work to shelter it and keep it going, even if that feels impossible at times, it can go so far.

 

It’s simple, in theory. Too bad life is practical.

 

Everything makes sense in numbers, but life is not a matrix; things don’t happen in binary so there’s no longer right or wrong. The binary feelings are rendered useless, the binary thoughts are dubbed extremist, and if binary feelings fuel binary thought, you probably won’t live past 50 without destroying half the population with every fart and groan. This all may have worked out in a different time, an older time when black and white footage sufficed, a time when anyone showing symptoms of sensory overload was institutionalized, not greeted left and right with a nod or a shrug. Our time is looping in on itself, in its mad frenzy and there’s no stopping it if it applies to you, or should I say if you apply to it?

 

I should write more often, writing things on social networks, other than making you lose rights of publication –which blogs do too by the way, but that’s not the point – also short-circuits an idea that could have became something huge if watered, fertilized and tended to, so to speak. The potential of that is lost because no one gives a fuck, and we all so want them to. It wouldn’t be the first time something great is lost to an instinctive urge; Adam and Eve set the precedent. I think that’s what the Adam and Eve story is really about, and that’s why it was used to start things off. It was meant as a metaphor that sets the theme of life for what it is; you lose great things for urges that are put there for your own survival, yet in order to achieve great things, you have to ignore your survival instincts and risk everything. It sets the theme of life to how two contradicting things can be simultaneously true, they can both make sense in the same time tunnel and space continuum. Such is life.

 

What do you do when you have no urges, impulses, or codes? Everything, and nothing. Again, such is life.

I Love Elephants.

Highlight of My Whole Fucking Week.

 

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/03/26/violent_clashes_erupt_after_Egyptian_student_sit_in#.UVHbtFe9Ws0.twitter