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

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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.

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

"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.