منتصف الليل

مع اقتراب تمام انتصاف الليلة

سيشتعل الصخب

ويحلق طائر البهجة الفضي

فوق رؤوس المدعوين

غير أن أصواتهم جميعا

سيصاحبها الصدى

وسيتحركون كأطياف متراقصة

بطيئة

مثلما يحدث

حين يستدعون زمانا آخر

أو مكانا آخر

في لقطات الأفلام

سأكون واقفا هناك

تحت هالة البهجة

في منتصف دوار الصخب

وابتسامة مطمئنة مرتسمة على شفتاي

بينما أنظر مطولا

من دونما اختلاس

إلى وجهك الودود

- الصورة الوحيدة غير المهتزة في المشهد -

بينما يغمر الحجرة

وأتنفس عميقا

حين يصعد عطر يديك مرة أخرى

إلى رأسي

فتدور

وأنا بعد ممسك بكأس النبيذ

لم ألمسه

Silence

يا ماري- أنتِ تعرفين سبب سكوتكِ أما أنا فأجهله. وليس من العدالة أن يكون جهل المرء مصدرا لتشويش أيامه ولياليه
الأعمال والأقوال بالنيات، ولقد كانت نيتي ولم تزل في راحة الله. أخبريني يا صغيرتي المحبوبة عما حدث لك أثناء العام الغابر. أخبريني واكسبي أجري
والله يحرسك ويملأ قلبك من أنواره

جبران

p.s. Mary is the Christian name of May Zeyadeh
p.p.s. To the Mai who is named after the May, Thank You ya "sagheerati el kabeera"!

What Remains...

"She wondered what she was afraid of, losing him or losing all those things: the curtains, the paintings, the carpet. All the security folded carefully away in the drawers."

~ Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers

La Solitudine dei Numeri Primi

The title is what attracted me, I simply "got" what he meant. Then the synopsis. Then the writer's bio (Italian, working on a doctorate in particle physics, one year YOUNGER than me, his first novel, won him the top literary Italian award Premio Strega, sold more than 1 million copies). I would've still bought it with just the title though..

"Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves. They stand in their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed in between two others, liked all other numbers, but a step further on than the rest. They are suspicious and solitary, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful. Sometimes he thought that they had ended up in that sequence by mistake, that they’d been trapped like pearls strung on a necklace. At other times he suspected that they too would rather have been like all the others, just ordinary numbers, but for some reason they weren’t capable of it. The second thought struck him mostly at night, in the chaotic interweaving of images that comes before sleep, when the mind is too weak to tell itself lies.

In his first-year Mattia had studied the fact that among the prime numbers there are some that are even more special. Mathematicians call them twin primes: they are pairs of prime numbers that are close to one another, almost neighbours, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from really touching. Numbers like 11 and 13, like 17 and 19, 41 and 43... Mattia thought that he and Alice were like that, two twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough really to touch one another. He had never told her that."

~ Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers

Nour

I am awkward around children. It is true.. I always treat them like little short grown-ups, assuming they understand more than they show. Fortunately for me, Nour does act like a grown-up sometimes, or gets treated as one..

I found myself re-living a scene I did with Saif my younger nephew more than 15 years ago.. Standing in front of that small flowery bush, I ask him to pick a flower for his mother. Unlike sentimental Saif, Nour is more compassionate towards the flower than towards giving one to his mom, he tells me it will cry if we pluck it.. I say, no, this one will not, it is too small and it is okay (me and my double standards to the kid!).. and he plucks it, and I say let's give it to Mama so then he says then let's take two to her and he does so (did he give them to her? I don't recall; "we" received some disciplining comments when we went back to the breakfast table!)..

I love him because of his big round curious eyes and the eternally amazed look that I know he won't lose as he grows up.

I love him because of the way I imitate him when his father pisses him off, telling him "eih ba2a ya papiii" with those impatient hand gestures.

I love him because I watch him managing -like I did- a firey father and a down-to-earth wise mother, and I see him taking after the two.

I love him because he is the continuation of someone near and dear to me.

I love him because of his cute funny imitation of his mom seeing a dead fly.

I love him because of the grown-up words he uses after his papi using the word "3abeet" to describe a naughty friend of his.

So here is to you Nour, with your round curious eyes, and your coloring books, and your quirkiness, and the beautiful little impatient lively person that you are.

Amertume II

If you wish someone a great time "with friends and family", doesn't it simply imply that you're neither?!

لا مشكلة لدي

أحلامي رَكِبَتْ، أمسِ، قِطارَ الليلِ

ولم أعرف كيف أودعها

وأَتَتْني أنباءُ تَدَهْوُرِهِ في وادٍ ليس بذي زرعٍ

(ونجا سائقُه من بين الركّاب جميعاً)

فحمدت الله، ولم أبكِ كثيراً

فلديَّ كوابيسٌ صغرى

سأطوِّرها، إن شاء الله، إلى أحلامٍ كبرى

لا مشكلة لدي

أتلمَّس أحوالي منذ وُلدتُ إلى اليوم

وفي يأسي أتذكر

أن هناك حياةً بعد الموتِ

هناك حياة بعد الموت

ولا مشكلة لدي

لكني أسأل:

يا الله!

أهناك حياةٌ قبل الموت؟

no you don't

You give your hand to me
Then you say hello
I can hardly speak
My heart is beating so
And anyone could tell
You think you know me well
Well, you don't know me


and -just for AN- the Michael Buble version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7k2y08dSV4

overflow

"That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid. Ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it... and my heart is going to cave in."

~ American Beauty

Jargon

cutting edge
top-notch
state-of-the-art
one stop shop
streamline
standardize
transform
calibrate
benchmark

The Beginning of the Affair

“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. I say ‘one chooses’ with the inaccurate pride of a professional writer who - when he has been seriously noted at all - has been praised for his technical ability, but do I in fact of my own will choose that black wet January night on the common, in 1946, the sight of Henry Miles slanting across the wide river of rain, or did these things choose me? It is convenient, it is correct according to the rules of my craft to begin just there, but if I had believed then in a god, I could also have believed in a hand, plucking at my elbow, a suggestion, ‘speak to him: he hasn’t seen you yet.’”

~ Graham Greene, The End of the Affair


There are little triggers that nudge our memories, calling back certain thoughts or ideas, or certain scenes to the mind. This memory came to me uninvited (as intrusive as memories are): the stocking.. I remember that specific scene from a movie, a guy taking a stocking off the legs of his lover, telling her he is jealous of the stocking because it gets to stay all day with her, and he hates the shoes because they take her away from him.. and slowly bits and pieces came back to me, and the resemblance was too much to ignore. The affair vs. the relation, with one person wanting one type and the other needing the other. There and then, I knew I wanted to get the book, and I knew I wanted to give it away when I finished it..


So there it is, a book about Catholicism, conjugal love, divine love, and promises one makes to self and to God. A story about the melange of love and hate until you can no longer distinguish one from the other. A story about the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end, and that exact moment when you just know there is no more.

equal in magnitude, opposite in direction

I don't know which is worse: to forget you, or to NEVER forget you.

Amertume

Amour indéfinissable! Dieu de la nature! Amertume dont rien n’est plus doux, douceur dont rien n’est plus amer. Monstre divin qu’on ne peut définir que par des paradoxes.

~ Casanova

missing Delirium

DEATH: Del...? That's not for eating. I think it's a table decoration.

DELIRIUM: It's nice. It tastes a bit like forever. I like the way colors taste. Except I don't like crimsons... or turquoises... especially when they put their heads into their shells and won't play. And when you break their shells to let them out, they die...

DEATH: That's turtles, dear. Or tortoises.

DELIRIUM: I think it's turquoise.


~ Neil Gaiman, Sandman series, Chapter Three: In Which We Wake

November 18: Pour Vous

Exactly one year ago, I did something I wanted to do since I joined my current work (i.e. for 2 years before that date). I walked from my office to Zamalek. It was during some hotshot soccer match so the streets were perfectly deserted, and I had an enjoyable stroll with my friend (because I wouldn't cross the corniche to take a cab).

The memory is nothing, or ya3ni not much.. The reason I remember the date is that this date (November 18) is a date I have always noted, for reasons that make no sense to anyone now, but that made some sense to me more than 10 years ago. The fact that this lovely incident took place on that particular date is the only reason I remember when it happened..

And so on that rooftop, over some shared spring rolls, a cup of Turkish coffee, a glass of tea, and a shisha, many stories were told and an interesting friendship was born. Interesting would even be an understatement!

I also remember I was freezing, but too proud (shy?) to admit it.

Concrete Proof of (In)Sanity

I was thinking recently of the reason behind all this, what I write and share here.. I am not entirely a private person, not to my close ones and not to all details, however, I find it a bit "cheap" to share deep and private emotions over a blog for anyone (not worthy enough!) to read.. I realize am a bit judgmental (cheap, not worthy, yes!)..

And this thinking led me to some conclusions.. I do like sharing, but I do not always like relating. I realized, therefore, I was doing this for me. I was doing this to have some concrete proof of my (in)sanity. Taking snapshots of my life. Not necessarily as it is but as it appears to be. Chosen recorded moments, over a span of almost 6 years now. Impressive..

A lot has changed.. Going back and reading, sometimes I don't even understand what made me write something or the other.. Sometimes I even forget that I felt this way about something or someone.

The frequency of posts is proportionate (directly or inversely I don't need to tell!) to the intensity of actions and feelings..

It is like spying on myself from outside my head. I find that amusing! The happiness, the bitterness, the nostalgia, the anger, the cynicism, and -occasionally- the temporary peace..

My concrete proof of sanity.. this time without the doubting parentheses.

تذكرة بانتحار غير مكتمل

موت ثان


حين تعثرون على الجسد
إعملوا له شاهدا من أحمر يليق
وانقشوا عليه
...ولما فرح"
...ضوَى
"فلم يخطئه الردى

..bein el gamar wel thoraya..

ودي صالحة يا صلوح يـــا شمعة القلب والروح
ومنيـــــن آجي واروح وأنا على الفرش مطروح
يا بنــــــــــــات الهنود يا راخييــــــــــن العدايب
وما ترحموا العليـــــل اللي على فرشه نايـــــــم
وافرشوا له سريــــــر ما بين القمر والثريـــــــا
وارموني في بيــــرَكُم وماورد رشوا عليّــــــــا
وماورد رشوا عليّــــا ردوا عليــــــــــا ثيــــابي
خبير دوايــا انا عندكم ولا تحرموني شبـــابــي
يـــــــا ابو محمد سعيد يـــــــا ابو المشالي تلاتة
كيف جرحك لم يطيب والعطر تحت الوســــادة
هيلا هيلا هيلا يلـــــلا آه ياسلام
يا حبيبي باحبك تعالالي آه يا سلام
اتمشى اتمشى وارجع تاني آه يا سلام
ياما سهرنا ع اللوز لاخضر
وبقيت انا املى يا عيني والحلو يشرب
طب هيلا هيلا هيلا يللا آه يا سلام
يا حبيبي باحبك تعالالي آه يا سلام
اتمشى اتمشى وارجع تاني آه يا سلام
وانا اسأل الله كريم يحنن
يا رب حنن يا عيني قلبه عليا
طب هيلا هيلا هيلا يللا آه يا سلام
يا حبيبي باحبك تعالالي آه يا سلام
اتمشى اتمشى وارجع تانى آه يا سلام
مين ف المُحبة المُحبة يعذر
غير اللي جرب يا عيني شاف العذاب أشكال والوان

~ a Tanbura folklore song, and memories of downtown

On Choices

"It will hurt less if you didn't have to choose."
"No it won't. If I will choose, it will be a deliberate choice. Deliberate choices don't hurt."


This has to be the understatement of the year.

...and in front of my eyes is this

... Il est pareil aux dieux, l'homme qui te regarde,
Sans craindre ton sourire, et tes yeux, et ta voix,
Moi, je tremble et je sue, et ma face est hagarde
Et mon cœur est aux abois...
La chaleur et le froid tour à tour m'envahissent ;
Je ne résiste pas au délire trop fort ;
Et ma gorge s'étrangle et mes genoux fléchissent,
Et je connais la mort...


~ Sappho

Colonization

Every time I check the origin label of a tshirt, jeans, or pair of sneakers, and find it's Made in Cambodia, or Vietnam, or Bangladesh, I freak out. I imagine little children with shiny beady eyes stitching up the hand-made work on that blouse. I imagine under-nourished, under-paid, mistreated women who stitch up my jeans or pair of Converse, for less than minimum wage, just to feed their families of shiny beady eyes..

Then I feel infinitely guilty for being part of this humanity. Being part of the colonization.

On a lighter note, I do not feel that when my item is made in China, because I think of it as little oompa-loompa robots doing the work.. I think of it as "internal" rather than external colonization; which somehow makes it better for me.

Am I helping the children or the colonies by buying? Am I going to help them by boycotting? How can I change such a sad sad reality? Is "Fair Trade" a reality or is it just a label we stick on our products to feel less guilty drinking that cup of coffee or wearing that beautiful handmade item?

Jealousy

"Hatred seems to operate the same glands as love: it even produces the same actions. If we had not been taught how to interpret the story of the Passion, would we have been able to say from their actions alone whether it was the jealous Judas or the cowardly Peter who loved Christ?"

~ Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

Gypsy

I had forgotten how much I loved this song and how much it meant... Melancholie..

You come from far away
With pictures in your eyes
Of coffeeshops and morning streets
In the blue and silent sunrise

But night is the cathedral
Where we recognized the sign
We strangers know each other now
As part of the whole design

Oh, hold me like a baby
That will not fall asleep
Curl me up inside you
And let me hear you through the heat

You are the jester of this courtyard
With a smile like a girl’s
Distracted by the women
With the dimples and the curls

By the pretty and the mischievous
By the timid and the blessed
By the blowing skirts of ladies
Who promise to gather you to their breast

Oh, hold me like a baby
That will not fall asleep
Curl me up inside you
And let me hear you through the heat

You have hands of raining water
And that earring in your ear
The wisdom on your face
Denies the number of your years

With the fingers of the potter
And the laughing tale of the fool
The arranger of disorder
With your strange and simple rules

Yes now I’ve met me another spinner
Of strange and gauzy threads
With a long and slender body
And a bump upon the head

Oh, hold me like a baby
That will not fall asleep
Curl me up inside you
And let me hear you through the heat

With a long and slender body
And the sweetest softest hands
And we’ll blow away forever soon
And go on to different lands

And please do not ever look for me
But with me you will stay
And you will hear yourself in song
Blowing by one day

Oh, hold me like a baby
That will not fall asleep
Curl me up inside you
And let me hear you through the heat

Et pourtant si douce

بداركم مشمشة وبدارنا خوخة
يا شجرة المشمشة مالت على الخوخة
حاجي تروح وتجي من تحت هالطاقة
يا رب رشقة مطر والأرض مشتاقة

Imaginary Conversation

"I miss you. Come back."
"But we just spoke for one hour, and we were just together a couple of days back."
"I know. I know, but I miss *you*."
"Hmmm.. okay, I don't know what to say."
"Nothing. I just wanted to acknowledge that I missed you."

INFP

"Under stress, it's not uncommon for INFPs to mis-use hard logic in the heat of anger, throwing out fact after (often inaccurate) fact in an emotional outburst... They focus on the way that the conflict makes them feel, and indeed don't really care whether or not they're right. They don't want to feel badly. This trait sometimes makes them appear irrational and illogical in conflict situations."

lol

Do you think I can refute these claims based on hearsay?

Beurk!

So, thanks to round-eyed Nunu, I can now be disgusted in French!

how cool..

Pessimism..

Diwan Heliopolis

The upstairs cafe on a Thursday night..

A girl in her 20's sitting with 3 guys in their early 20s discussing some business or group of a sort.. I'm a couple of meters away from them so it is -as always- easy to eavesdrop. Apparently the girl represents some company that recruits salespeople who work from home and get paid only on commission based on performance by end of year, etc.. Something that sounds too fishy and slightly too good to be true.. For some reason, she is only addressing one of the guys. The other two seem like they are the guy's friends, but also like they are already in the girl's team somehow.

The guy -as all guys do- is trying to act 'fetek'. Like he is asking all the "right" questions, and what if this, and what if that, and what guarantees, etc. But it also seems he's game..

So in the middle of it all, I hear a sentence that was going to make me laugh out loud.

Girl: so, f aswa2 el zoroof, you will have 10 contacts.

Guy: tayeb, howa fee aswa2 men aswa2 el zoroof?

Girl: Enta motasha2em bardo?

I thought they called it aswa2 el zoroof for a reason..

des lettres qu'on ne poste pas

"When that anger sets in, WRITE IT! Write the letters. But don't send them. You never want to leave concrete proof of insanity."

~ Jane Fonda

Software Ageing and the Single Girl

So, while AN was studying for her midterm in Software Maintenance, she came across this one and felt it was too good to pass..

"....The software has aged even though nobody has touched it. It has actually aged because nobody bothered to touch it."

Fascinating how women are just like software..

The End of the Affair

"The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belong to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity."

~ Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

p.s. Can you smell the air in the photograph too?

Monochrome

"I began dividing life in absolutes... Things and people were either perfectly bad, or perfectly good, and when life didn't obey this black-and-white rule, when things or people were complex or contradictory, I pretended otherwise. I turned every defeat into a disaster, every success into an epic triumph, and separated all people into heroes or villains. Unable to bear ambiguity, I built a barricade of delusions against it."

~ J. R. Moehringer


p.s. Thank you Nerro for the stolen quote.

Si méchante

Paper Dreams escaping Surreality

Soñar despierto no deja de ser soñar, no deja de ser maravilloso.

Ma Chèvre

Few things in life make me feel as good as chèvre cheese does, one of my favorite gastronomical delights..

Crazy female hormones

Testing for pregnancy in Llamas

"Spit testing". Bring the potentially pregnant dam (female llama) to an intact male. If the stud attempts to breed her and she lies down for him within a fairly short period of time, she is not pregnant. If she remains on her feet, spits, attacks him, or otherwise prevents his being able to mate, it is assumed that she is probably pregnant. This test gets its name due to the dam spitting at the male if she is pregnant.


hmmm... Or she might be just pissed at his attitude.

As Cosmo as it gets

So, if you know me well enough (or if you are the poor guy working in Germany who gets me this from the airport every time he comes and knows that I prefer the British edition to the American one and yet never reads my blog anymore!), then you would know that I really like Cosmopolitan magazine. Not Marie Claire, not Company, not Vogue, just Cosmo (although I have previously on several occasions bought Vogue for the fashion content).

The question is "Why?".. Why would I like a magazine that 1) speaks fashion language to such a fashion-educated, yet bohemian as myself, and 2) positions men as the core of everything, even when they are empowering women, it is -in a way- to get more men.. Men magazines, on the other hand, mostly talk about gadgets, cars, and sports, and yes -sometimes- fashion and women.. but never in a way where it is imperative for their existence.

Answering this, I dont know.. I guess I just like the mindset and mood it puts me in, i like knowing whats up in fashion, and -I have to admit- the relationship articles aren't all shallow or bad.. in fact, in last month issue they discussed Female Genital Mutilation among African families in UK (never knew it was such an issue there)..

Interestingly though, I remember a few years back a guy commented that he found it really weird (and somehow disconcerting) that a single (or let's say unmarried) girl would read Cosmo, and that it would open her eyes to stuff that in our culture and community girls should not know about (namely the physical relationship aspects). Yes, Cosmo is to blame, because there isn't enough media around us to do that!

So, why blog about it? basically, because the secret I shared above was in this week's postsecret and it resonated with what I thought.. also, because it's one of the cool things I like about that crazy friend of mine but never thank him for, and finally, because it is one of the little idiosyncrasies that I have and my little shallow pleasures.

Requiem

The crucified planet Earth,
should it find a voice
and a sense of irony,
might now well say
of our abuse of it,
"Forgive them, Father,
They know not what they do."

The irony would be
that we know what
we are doing.

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.

~Kurt Vonnegut

Once upon a time in a tube

"On ne revendiquera rien, on ne demandera rien. On prendra, on occupera."

Social Networking Wisdom of the Day

"If I need to look at your pictures (and even more than one!) to remember who you are, then it was probably a bad idea to send me a friend request."

Objects in the rearview mirror are *much* closer than they appear

"You are so terribly nimble, so clever. I distrust your cleverness. You make a wonderful pattern, everything is in its place, it looks convincingly clear, too clear. And meanwhile, where are you? Not on the clear surface of your ideas, but you have already sunk deeper, into darker regions, so that one only thinks one has been given all your thoughts, one only imagines you have emptied yourself in that clarity. But there are layers and layers -- you're bottomless, unfathomable. Your clearness is deceptive. You are the thinker who arouses most confusion in me, most doubt, most disturbance."
~Anaïs Nin, August 1932 "Henry & June"

The second time I refer to Anaïs and her H&J today, but well..

I find patterns amusing.. not always good/happy, but always amusing. Same time last year I thought about patterns, and then accused myself of jumping too soon to conclusions, of categorizing, stereotyping, etc etc.

This time I see them again, I can sense the air, and I find it cynical, this "self defense against self defense" as it was called by the other. But there is nothing I can say or do about it. Complaining, commenting, requesting, confronting, it won't get you any where. Ignoring, avoiding, denying, well it might get you nowhere, but it will get you there with the remains of the day, and the dignity..

Cute and sort of childish how I sound so serious and mysterious.. I need to go back to being the Scheherazade of storytelling... and I do have stories to tell.


--------
مرايتي يا مرايتي

راح أحكيلك حكايتي

قوليلي انو أنا

أحلى وحده فيهن

أنعم وحده فيهن

شوفيني وما تشوفيهن

--------
my space doesn't look like mine anymore! the color scheme and the post style, the pictures and the lyrics.... but it feels more like mine than it ever did.

Delusional Promises

مسكتيلي إيدي ووعدتيني بشي ثورة، كيف نسيتي؟ كيف نسيتيني؟

!ومشطتيلي شعري وبعتينيي عالدوام، كيف بتمشطي؟ مشطيني

L'insoutenable légèreté de l'être

I have a confession.
Sometimes I feel an incredible lightness by letting go.
This is not the confession.

I deny this feeling and this lightness, for fear it might mean I can finally float, and I stick to an illusion and claim it my reality.
This is the confession.

I find it unforgivable when I am denied this fear.

-------------

"I've met another man. He's the best man I've ever met. He's bright, handsome and he's crazy about me. And, he's married. There's only one thing; he doesn't like my hat."

The Castle in the Pyrenees: of love and coincidence

"Le Château des Pyrénées" by René Magritte

"Can we make a solemn promise to delete every email we send each other after we've read them? I mean straight away, right then and there, and that naturally means no printouts either....We will step outside time, leave what we call ‘reality’."

~ Jostein Gaarder, The Castle in the Pyrenees

For Steinn and Solrun, the Internet is their reconnection, the means by which they rekindle what was lost so long ago. This is probably the seventh novel I read for Gaarder, and I am again captivated by his storytelling, by his views on the universe, our footprint on the planet, and definitely on love. I get lost inside the stories within stories. I am still in the beginning, but I know it already got to me.

and then she tells him (referring to the painting above):

" But perhaps you're blind. Perhaps you're both narrow-minded and short-sighted.

Do you remember that Magritte picture of a huge lump of rock floating above the ground? I think it had a small castle on top. You can't have forgotten that picture.

But if you'd witnessed something similar today, you would certainly have tried to explain it away. Maybe you'd have said it was a trick. That the rock was hollow and filled with helium. Or that it was supported by an ingenious network of invisibly pulleys and wires.

I'm a much simpler soul. I would probably just have raised my arms to the boulder and sung out my 'hallelujah' or my 'amen'."

...and thus speaks the emotional to the rational. They are lovers who were separated by space and time, meeting again -by coincidence or some universal masterplan- after 30 years. Trying to understand each other, trying to understand what drove them apart.

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"It's strange to think about now. That was before I believed in anything. But only just before."

To Remember

Listen to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tnkk-gkEuxc for more context.

(picture from http://kelk.tumblr.com, beautiful calligraphy)

Maruzella

"Tu fais battre mon coeur plus fort que les vagues quand le ciel est sombre. D'abord tu me dis oui et, tout doucement, tu me fais mourir."

venetian blinds

Yes, please, put your UGLY brown venetian blinds on all your villa's windows. Please. Because the villa's tasteless architecture isn't ugly enough, nor is its ugly yellowish beige color. They really needed those BROWN blinds to complement their ugliness.

Thank you.

(Dedicated to the villa on Orouba street close to Rue Roshdy Pasha)

Plus retro, tu meurts

This is now officially my sixties retro "living room".

Why? Because I am -as I always say- nostalgic to what I never had.

child's play

I changed my blog background and now it looks like a children's book (snap shot below for future reference)..
I do not like it, but I don't like any other options..

Help and comments are appreciated.

Merci. (also did you see the nesting screens -recursion- in the snapshot below? so cool, and I actually took the time to do it!)

On Wise Women, XML, and Signs (and maybe other matters)

"Every girl should have a nice boyfriend and a nice bag. If you don't have a boyfriend, you should at least get the bag." ~ A Wise Woman.

Thus spoke the wise woman, and then got that handbag! So, the wise woman has left, to "pursue other interests" (as they call it in my Company -with a capital C- when someone is leaving), conquer new horizons, and all that.. and she left a void, left me missing her unbearable lightness of being (that is a good book by the way). It was only 7 months ago when were sitting at the very same spot I am sitting in now. It was four of us, new year's was near and we were discussing the passing year, making resolutions, thinking/wishing/hoping 2010 will turn out better.. This wise woman was also the reason behind the upsurge in my internet/computer usage in the past year, she was my media supplier, my fellow stalker, and my puzzle partner. And yet, we were not "committed" to each other. We were free, we were light, and GOD were we boring sometimes! but we still had a really good time; getting coffee, trashing the world, giving each other advice we would never follow, and just silently enjoying each other's company.. So yeah, I kinda miss this freedom of not having to make up excuses, of offering what you want to offer, no pressure.. If each person had ONE sign, one attribute, that would be their sign, hers would be this lightness.. and yes it feels more than 3 months since you were gone (yalla you got your own paragraph eskoti ba'a!)

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Back when we were doing our graduation projects, there was a certain professor who had introduced XML course to our curriculum and was teaching it (yes it was still new, doesn't matter you know how old I am anyway!). So one of the funny idiosyncrasies this guy had was that in almost EVERY graduation project presentation he asked the question "why didn't you use XML for this?" So yes we get that you're trying to promote "your" new technology and popularize it, but seriously, why don't you rather pay attention to what's being said and ask more relevant questions. The reason I mentioned/remembered this was that it related to a subject I am rather fond of discussing: "false ego". We like to believe in , even to indulge in, our importance, our meaningless value, that we would practically blow up our nothingness into something big... "you cannot believe how busy I am" or "let ME tell you how it's done" or whatever.. and in a place like this, it is very easy to lose track, and to get trapped into believing you really run the world (well, not me, I just make sure those who run the world use reliable systems :)) but you get the point..

Sometimes I feel like some people REALLY do need to be shown the Total Perspective Vortex. Just get a glimpse of how little and insignificant everything is, in the big picture.. I am not saying that one should not do, DO, but don't lose focus.. all accomplishments, all troubles, all frustrations.. really what are they in terms of a big picture! and I do need to remind myself of that occasionally too.

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Moving on to more important matters, signs.. We are all -at least me and everyone I know- haunted by signs.. Paolo Coelho said that when you desire something so bad, the whole universe conspires to help you get it. But sometimes that's not true. Sometimes you do desire something really bad and all the odds are against you.. And yet you wait for this thing to happen, and moreover, you want the universe to agree with you that it is the right thing! you're not satisfied with the universe thinking otherwise, so you try to somehow force the idea that the forces, destiny, fatalité, or whatever you call it, they are all wanting you to get it, and it is also part of convincing yourself... "He called me right at the moment I was hoping that he does, it must be a sign", "I didn't find the other cheaper kind, it must be a sign to buy the expensive one I want", and so on..

But then what about bad/negative signs? What about the fact that you thought about him for a whole day and he didn't call? or that the shop that sells that expensive thing was closed, and so on.. what about all these negative signs you discard on a daily basis, thinking they are nothing but roadblocks..

When faced with a "bad" sign, we either

1) discard it as irrelevant, or
2) take it as a test to how much we want this thing, so we fight destiny and we hang on with all our might, because we interpret this as a challenge, or we falsely correlate it with something we did wrong ("this roadblock came to punish me for my impatience/disbelief/misbehavior")


and we wait and wait and wait for a glimpse of hope we can call a "sign".


So, yes, we are obsessed by signs. We give them different names, it can be our gut feeling, our horoscope, our tarot, or even the result of our istikhara prayer. It is still a sign. And we still wait for it. And we still interpret it the way we please.

Message from the Universe: I am secretly on your side, but it doesn't mean I will always want what you want. You do not know what is good for you. Look at your track record, then look at me. Do you really think you know better? You do what you can, and you hope for the best, but if you want to look for signs, then really look for signs.

You can go to sleep now.

To the 28th

So I took a cab to my hotel, I tell him the name of the hotel and is about to say the street, so he says "oui, numero 28" I say yes..

We get there, he smiles and looks at the meter, finding it amusing that the meter made 28 francs too! and then he goes blank for a moment then goes like "AND today is the 28th! wow!"

I tell him it's a good sign, to which he replies "To 28!"

here's to people who see signs in everything.

Just a sign

"أعطيني علامة تقول إنِو الحنين بيزول"

~ From a friend's prayer

the smell of you..

Where I work, there is an expression we use: "smell of the place". We're always talking about how to improve the smell of the place and who did so and so to the smell of the place, etc. Basically, it refers to the overall office environment and not necessarily to its smell.

So anyway, a couple of days back, on a day off, I had an errand to run downtown that didnt take more than 30 mins (the system was down!) and so, at 9:15 in the morning I was in the street, nothing to do, book in bag. I head over to Korba, have the cab drop me some 3 mins away to take a short stroll. While walking I suddenly get the feeling of what if I am in a foreign country. Another city, another place. No worries (somehow just changing my location puts me in a carefree mood), and just here to have fun. The weather was amazing so it helps this little game of make-believe, which in turn would help my mood. And so, while walking, I take a deep breath, establishing that I _am_ there.

And then it hits me, I realize what's wrong with this place! It's the smell!! I haven't been to a lot of places, but in this morning chilly weather, they all shared a certain "smell", a certain freshness, that we lack. Even Hong Kong, the smelliest place I have ever been to, it had that freshness!

The air here is HEAVY! Almost melancholic. That is definitely it! That is why it pulls you (me!) down.

Oh Cairo! How I would love for you to change your smell!

I still choose to make believe..

The Girl who sees Colors

Prologue

One day, I text a friend of mine that I want to write a story, but what shall I write about. He replies "write about a girl who sees colors when there aren't any. She sees building facades red and green. And cars as cartoon creatures. And flowers talking to her. She doesn't see the ugliness of life."

I instantly fall in love with that, and feel half-jealous that I was not the one who came up with it, even if I was the inspiration for it. So, on several later occasions, when I need some entertainment and/or support, I text him asking to tell me what the "girl who sees colors" do.. and that's what I get.

The Girl who Sees Colors: Random Musings

what would the girl who sees colors do now? Blow soap bubbles and observe them as they fly up towards the ceiling and stick to it, then give fruit to other smaller bubbles like raisin grapes?

The girl never saw herself. She doesn't know how she actually looks like. And for this reason, she never gets old. People only get older when they look to themselves in mirrors. She only sees others and knows herself through their stories.

The girl, when she's sad, she takes a pile of white paper, coloring pens, and a pair of scissors. She sits on the dining room table, facing the window, where the sun sheds its rays. On each sheet of paper, she would draw a butterfly. Big butterflies for the big concerns, and small butterflies for the small concerns. She would then start coloring them: she would paint in hot colors the ones that are noisy, that speak a lot, and in pale colors the ones that do not speak much, but who are hiding deeper inside her head. When she's done coloring them, she would slowly start cutting them with the scissors. As soon as she's done cutting a butterfly, its wings would start clapping, as if they were waking up after years of sleep. Then it would fly immediately out of the window, heading back to where it came from, behind the sun.

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Just a random cross-section in a perfect world.

Hello World

... have i really skipped 2 months without writing anything here? thats a first..

Hello Cyber World, miss talking to you..

I promise to keep in touch very very soon.

Dear 2009: Retrospectfully Yours, N.

"Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?"
"Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
~ Alice Adeventures in Wonderland


So, to begin at the beginning, what would one say? One would start with a cute funny story, a nice and light anecdote, something to lure you in to come closer to the labyrinth.. once you're in there, one would tell you deeper, more intense stuff, and then one would let you go, hoping you walk away having cleansed your insides..

Dear great wide void of the Internet.. I have promised to write.. I said I would write about 2009, I said I would talk about boyfriends and bags, and I said I would talk about many many other topics.. but for now, let us stay at the beginning, and the beginning here being 2009..

When the year was coming to an end, as a group of friends we decided to meet a couple of days before new year's to curse 2009 with all that it brought us, and share frustrations and aspirations. And _my_ response was what is UP with everyone and 2009! I mean seriously, I didnt hear anyone with me when I wanted to curse the daylight out of my 2008 for instance, so why are you coming in 2009 -a year that actually wasnt all that bad for me- to curse the year?!?!?!?! (with special dedication to those who would recognize the "?!?!?!" pattern ;))

Anyway, this was just a teaser, because I have promised to write something before Jan ends!

Thank you for listening Internet!

Oh, and Google, I still luv you! xxxxx

N.