Taxi wisdom

A British guy who lived in France for a while had the following conversation in a Beirut "service" (Taxi):

Cab driver in English with a strong Lebanese accent: Why are you crying? (The guy just looked upset)
British guy (trying to speak slowly): Because I had a rough fight with my girlfriend.... she wants "la liberté".
Cab driver: Did you hit her?
British guy: non... non... jamais
Cab driver switching to French: Moi.. Je frappe ma femme chaque jour. Ici, la liberté, il n'ya pas... femme aller. Il y'a beaucoup. Allez... Toz.


True story from a trusted source sitting in the back seat.

On the edge

I sit there watching TV... or that's what you would assume. I am in fact just watching the reflection of my hand holding the remote control device for the past half an hour in the shadowy spots of the screen. I was watching the news but the news ended some time ago. What was it about? how different from yesterday? or last year? or the last century? war and peace. The formula that enslaves us but the words that we dare not name. I was thinking: everyone is afraid of war but peace frightens me to death. I know how to cope with war but I have no clue how to function in peace. You are maybe more at risk in wars but less alert in peace. The worst of all is living on the edge of either of the two. You don't dare to grab your weapon lest you are misunderstood or leave it behind lest you are shot in the back. You are that PC that someone had given a zillion instructions in no time each undoing the previous one and then redoing it until it lost track of what it is supposed to be doing. Confusion creates dysfunction. Between that and war, I definitely choose war. Just grab a hatchet and smash the PC and the TV to pieces and watch it fall apart, a reflection of your own soul.

Blackmail

Lebanese parents, mine included, desperately try to keep their children close. They try all sorts of manipulations. They know your weaknesses and they take advantage. You play the fool. You play the game. My mother's technique: She cooks my favourite food. It works.

Another small confession

Speaking of memory, having a selective memory is annoying but can be fun too. I can watch a movie and then forget all about it and then I can watch it one more time and enjoy it all over again. The fun part is that my husband who has a very strong memory watches me in amazement cry over the same scenes and wonder what will happen next and laugh my ass off at a joke that I heard not long ago. Okay, I am exaggerating a little bit here, or not.

My selective memory

I have a selective memory; no matter how I force myself to remember something I am sure I know, I know I will fail; I had never saved it in the first place. I don't remember the names of many of the people who work with me, who have been working with me for some time, I just don't care to remember their names. I can make an effort but why bother, if it mattered it would have stuck. Again, why would I? Unlike them, I live in the margin. I will never be part of their world and they will never enjoy the life on the margin.

On the margin

I have this constant feeling that I live on the margin. I do have a whole life but it's one on the margin. The margin space is huge and a whole population inhabits it. Sometimes, the feeling is so intense that I feel that I live on the margin of the margin or that I have become the margin itself, that space where you scribble missing notes, sketch down shapes of your boredom, or leave neatly blank. There, you only contemplate the solid paragraphs, the letters perfectly straightened from top and below, sometimes justified, other times aligned right or left, you know that you will never be a word in their bulky world, or even a comma, anyway you never fancy to be. You cross your arms and watch. Power is them, you know that, because they stick together and you roam astray. You dream of the day when you turn or be turned into an eraser. Then you will have all the space there for you alone, you can invade them and expand the margin, but you are convinced that all you can ever hope for is for them to allow you to keep that small space you enjoy. There on the margin, you can be a sticky note, a red mark, or a stain, but for sure one that stands out.

The Dead Fake Society

Some people in Lebanon find pride in pretending that they do not remember your name. They think that by doing that they project an image of themselves as important and busy people. The most annoying among them are those who tell you "remind me of your name?" "of yes, yes, we met yesterday!!!". And you would be sure that when you met only "yesterday", that person had asked you all kinds of personal questions about you let alone where your name comes from and had listed all the people they know with that name (because they know a lot of people of course). Yesterday, I witnessed a conversation where a guy told another "of course, I know you, you are XX, my friend always talks about you!" I find out later on that the guy is gay. I don't want to stereotype, but I specifically asked if he was gay because of this not so common behavior among straight men in Lebanon. (Not to say that this behavior cannot be found equally among Lebanese gays).
Now there is this other category of people with whom you might have had long conversations or had coffee with let's say not so long ago or had an unforgettable fight with, or seen a million times, and then one day they pass by, throw a glance at you, a glance of "I know you", then lower their eyes and go by without even a smile. I do understand that in some of these situations, one or each of the two people would be wondering if the other had recognized them, but in most cases, it is this recognition that they find hard to admit.
So this pretentious Lebanese knows a lot of people, you included, and behaves the same with all of them. When they find themselves in a crowd but unaccompanied, you find them restlessly looking for familiar faces, and then they spot you and they run towards you, with "don't you remember me? we met yesterday". Of course you remember them but then you would say "remind me of your name!!!"

Slow motion

I was stuck in the traffic and I was stricken by how everyone around me was stupid: the policeman, the muscled guy in the black shirt, the street boy begging to wash his car, the curly headed lady leaning over the steering wheel unaware of how the horn of her Peugeot is making me want to put an end to her life. I am not going to accept that they are all victims of a bigger problem beyond them called traffic jam in Lebanon. No, that is one thing and their stupidity is something else. But nothing made me want to jump out of my car more than that stupid very old man with that stupid smile on his wrinkled face driving as slow as if he is walking on a high rope above the Amazon river, because he thinks that the slower he goes, the slower time becomes and the farther away his death.

I was waiting for the elevator, cross legged, my elbow on the elevator's edge, when I realized that I have been waiting for more than five minutes. I remember I had a rush of thoughts invading my head, some meaningful ones and some nonsense. I can't remember any of these thoughts now, all I remember is the image of me waiting by the elevator, cross legged, my elbow on the elevator's edge. I did not see myself stand there, yet in my memory I have that copy image of myself standing there and that useless memory is now carved in my head. As useless as it sounds, as stored it is in my memory to the extent that I have to write it down here so that I get it out of my system. And yet now it has become even more memorable after it has been written.

Before the age of speed, and when everything around was slow, the "meantime" had a certain meaning. Roads were not mere connecting lines but were part of the destination plan. People used to take food for the road, stop for a bonfire, or just contemplate sceneries. In the slow motion age, same as in the speed age, people invent coping systems. Here we are stuck in between the two ages, we are like that stupid old wrinkled man in the car unable to reach to nowhere and slowing everyone behind us.

Critique and self critique

I love when people say things about me (good or bad) that I don't already know about myself. It's rare but when it happens, I am impressed. One of them is that "I have the talent to change the subject without giving my interlocutor the time to react". How annoying!!! and yes, I do this sometimes.

Animal Pain

I am not so much of an activist for animal rights. Not that I don't care but that can't be among the top things I care for when so many human beings enjoy less rights than many animals. But it breaks my heart to see a dog with three legs, or an old donkey with an injured back, even a bug with crushed wings struggling to fly, or any animal in pain, more than to see a human being in pain. Maybe because I know what physical pain is for humans but I wonder what it is like for animals. Humans can make a certain philosophy out of pain, but what do animals do? what's their defense mechanism. Who do they blame? How do they unleash their anger?

The Fall

It's about to rain now. If my grandfather was here now he would probably tell me how the next olive season would be like. I say, when it rains, it feels right. Good things usually happen to me during the fall, not so much during the summer for instance. But that's not the reason why I like fall; on the contrary, it is because I like it that good things happen. Not so clear. I see. But I will find better ways to explain it to myself.

My Mother Fairuz

Today I go see Fairuz and "see" not only refers to sight here but it involves the five senses combined in the verb "to feel". Fairuz for me is something I breathe. This is not poetry, but I can't imagine myself born in an age where Fairuz is yet to be born or has gone long ago. This icon has done to my being, affected what I am now, and carved my mind and emotional intelligence more than any other ideology, religion, science, or philosophy has. If you can define music then I can define the feeling Fairuz inflicts on me. This feeling is a weird mixture of the fragrances of my childhood, the pain of adolescence, and the sweet and sour tastes of my days. There were days when I thought that Fairuz could be my mother. I like this theory about mothers, that motherhood could be seen on women's faces and that there are women you meet that you feel could have been your mother, Fairuz is one of them. This is another feeling that I find hard to explain. It is not in their attitude but rather in their facial expressions, in their eyes, in the age of their skin and in the pain below it. Fairuz is all of this.

Subjectively

I think that the word "habibi" is the most beautiful word in the Arabic language both phonetically and semantically. You only have to hear either fairuz or myself say it to know what I mean.

Ego confession

I can be objective but never neutral,

I am balanced in the realm of my mood swings ,

I can end a sentence that started with 'I love you' with 'I hate you',

I have convictions as static as a river,

I can change my mind every minute (now every 20 minutes),

Decisions, I take them based on the weather and the chemistry between my pillow and my neck.

I believe I would make a very good dictator.

Touched

Wine of wisdom wrote on his blog:

"I'm afraid that at some point I'll hang on to words and mistake them for life itself. The less i live the more I write - a formulae of exhaustion. I mustn't live in words; words must dwell within me."

I can't say why but these words go straight to the heart. The full post might give an answer.

Confession

I might not be modest but I am humble. I am not arrogant but vanity spills all over me.

P.S. After writing the above confession, I discovered that Jean Paul Sartre has a saying: I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm. This reminds me: if you discover something that was already discovered but which you had no idea existed or how it came to be, or if you say something already said which you have never heard of, and although you will not be credited for it and although you will still be bound by copyright laws, that does not mean that you cannot credit yourself with such a discovery. You reinvented the wheel, maybe, you were not the first, certainly, but it is still your invention.

The 20 Minute Plan

A friend gave me an advice that I think is worth sharing here. I would like to call it the "20 minute plan". He advises to plan your schedule in 20 minute partitions and every 20 minutes plan what you will be doing in the next 20 minutes in order to manage your multi tasks. I tried that although at first it took me twenty four 20 minutes doing one thing and then only half a 20 minutes eating (I spent the rest of it thinking where words go after we say them) but it did work after that. I watched 20 minutes of a usually 2 hour political talk show and I worked out 20 minutes on my treadmill instead of 40 (I have to thank him for that) and then I skimmed through the newspaper for another 20 minutes and only managed to read up to 3 articles but I assume I maybe need not read more. Now blogging should not take more than that either and if I do stop in the middle of a sentence, I trust that you won't wonder.

One of the times when Hollywood makes fun of Arabs and I laugh

I wasn't watching this movie but I overheard this part:

- The most beautiful dog in the world. Isn't it?

- He's cute. what's his name?

- Anwar Sadat. After Anwar Sadat former president of Egypt.

- Right. Because you you're a fan of his policies or...

- No because they look exactly alike.

Here the camera gets a close up of the Dog's face and you have no idea... you have to watch.

P.S. From "I love you man", movie not recommended otherwise, but you can Fwd to 39'14'' or watch the scene here.

Meet Funny Ralph

Ralph made a funny comment the other day about one of my posts: The smartest among the religious people, he said, are those who convert. "Islam is bullshit, they would say, they want us to believe that God talked to Mohamad in those revelations, that can't be true!." But it is very believable that a woman got pregnant from the holy spirit and gave birth to the son of God who also happens to be God himself and who rose from the dead to bring salvation to humanity. That, I can buy. End of quote.

Some wine of wisdom

I thought that you might find the conversation triggered by my previous post in the comments box interesting, so I am posting again here:

wineofwisdom said...

But the quote doesn't define the scope to the dream, why did you constrict it to Plastic surgery?

eography said...
The context of the quote, which is from "All about my mother", is a pre-operation transsexual having a speech about her looks. She does talk about her plastic surgeries (fake breasts, lip job, etc.). It is true the quote refers mainly to dreams of transsexuals to look in a certain way but it does touch on plastic surgeries which I think is a similar phenomenon. I do believe that if a person cannot come to terms with her/his looks, and if this she/he has an idea or a "dream" of how best to look like, they will be more authentic when or if they do, not only because they will resemble more their dreamed image about themselves but more because they are no longer obsessed with how their looks does not reflect who they really are. This is a long discussion anyway. And discussing plastic surgeries, beyond the "Haifa wanna be" phenomenon, or even with such phenomenon included, is not a shallow topic, it can get you to some deeper arguments touching on feminism, LGBT issues, and human nature.

wineofwisdom said...
No, it is not a shallow topic. My own journey has been one of redeeming an integrity which I have felt to be violated after my realization of how much of what I call "me" isn't really "me." Incorporated in the image of who I am were the opinions and desires of others, what I was "supposed" to be. We tend to treat ourselves as commodities and hence attempt to better those traits which we think, in turn, would better our price and value on the market. Be it the market of love or work doesn't really matter for the instrumentlization is one and the same; and treating our selves as means is an inherent part of an economy which has so distorted our view of who we are — our humanity — that we easily waste our lives in quenching the resulting anxieties — but never to succeed. For a life thwarted in growth and built on illusion can never offer genuine satisfaction.

If a person needs a certain faith or requires a certain image in order to feel good about him/herself, then that is ok as long as that person remembers and keeps the doors open for change and possibility. As long as he/she knows that the human is something different from what is being proposed(though he/she may not know exactly what the human “is”), and that it is towards that human that he/she must strive.

eography said...
"We tend to treat ourselves as commodities and hence attempt to better those traits which we think, in turn, would better our price and value on the market. Be it the market of love or work doesn't really matter for the instrumentlization is one and the same":

Well said!

It is a non ending struggle, striving to be or to look like the dream image or what people call self realization (which as you rightly said is an illusion) but it doesn't negate the fact that it does give you self satisfaction, albeit short lived. But isn't this illusory struggle that keeps us all going somewhere? We are bound (no cursed) with something called "time" that can only function in a linear way. Once you undo that, let's say when or if science finds its way to a time machine (by finding a way to making m=0 in the e=mc² formula, as someone explained to me, but that's another story), so unless we do this, we are all doomed and we will keep looking forward to things, waiting, longing, looking, wishing, and dreaming. I am not going to say that the truth lies back in the start under Santiago's pillow (as Paulo Coehlo believes), no I trust that our fate, yes fate (in a non-religious sense) is to be beaten by time. Remembering is maybe the only gift we were honoured with. But I also have faith in science.
You know, I think I will post this discussion if you don't mind.

Of Plastic and other surgeries

"The more you become like what you have dreamed for yourself, the more authentic you are." Pedro Almodovar

Freaky days

So here are my news (or some nonsense history if you are reading this in the year 2089): I am all immersed in Russian literature, Pushkin and Turgenev at the moment. I am also trying to catch up a little with Almodovar films. I met an impostor who claims he is an AUB and LAU professor, and who invited me to dinner, no to dance he said. I googled his name, and all the hits I got refer to people who died in the 19th century. Oh, that's how I met this guy. We were celebrating a friend's birthday, and as my friend was about to make a wish, I told him to wish that I get a new job. Then as he was blowing off the 47 candles, this guy approaches and starts a chat, and a moment later he is offering me a job as his assistant. Freaky but the freakier is that he gave me his "business" card, which has an msn email and a non existing address and company name. In short, I am reading books by dead people about people who die at the end and I meeting people with profiles of dead people and hanging out with freaky people who can make your wishes come true with a small twist.

Byzantine debate

How boring it is to discuss existential questions with someone who believes has all the answers. An old friend paid us a visit yesterday, and I ended up telling him that those questions do not disturb me in the least, on the contrary they are a source of joy for me. I told him that those are questions to be asked not answered and that I am not in the least interested in finding answers because all answers he might have started from asking the wrong questions in the first place. Of course, he could not believe why I would argue with him if he could put me at peace only if I had an open heart and accepted the ultimate truth he "discovered". Yes, discovered, because this guy witnessed an immense metamorphosis that in itself is much more worth looking into than finding how the universe came to be. He was a normal guy, let's say, of course in his own understanding he was bad, immoral, and evil because he used to tease people (imagine how wicked!) drink (alcohol), have extramarital sex, and cheat on girls. The metamorphosis started with him quitting smoking and alcohol, then fasting, then going to the mosque, praying five times a day, and then as I discovered yesterday when I opened the door, not shaking women's hands. He put his hand on his chest and looked at me with a huge smile of shame mixed with all the complexity in the world. Later on, he asked me if that was insulting, I said no, and of course I lied. I also learned that he also tried to grow a Salafi beard but his beard failed him. He could not believe how I could go on with my life, a meaningful one, without having answers to all those big questions, that when I told him that questions matter much more to me than (ready-made) answers, he said that my life is absurd and hence why should I be living? He even seriously said that humans are created to worship God. That brought back an old memory of a nun whom I asked once at school "why did God create us" (the Why question) "was he bored?", and she said "so that we worship him". "Why, I said, does he suffer from any kind of inferiority complex?". I wished then if she had said" yes, he was bored"; that would have at least enriched my creative thinking. Now that guy, said that life is created unfair on purpose so that fairness is restored on the last day!! I did recommend few books but honestly I shouldn't have because I truly believe that some people need to be left at peace. The conversation was triggered by him not shaking my hand (I had planned to kiss him on the cheek). He was interested when I recounted the anecdote of the cat and the man in the room and the ball coming inside from the window (the cat would follow the ball and the man, unlike the cat, would go look where it comes from): the cause effect and the mind limitation theory. But all he could conclude was that he was no cat. It was very peculiar to remark that in such useless debates, it is the non-believer who sounds to be on the defence only because you wouldn't want to have such a debate if it includes right and wrong answers. If your answers are smart enough to be in the form of questions, you are beaten from the start. That's why if Imam Ali was right at any point, it was when he said that famous phrase "never had I debated with an ignorant but been beaten but him". I love those debates to be honest, but I truly wished yesterday if the guy sitting in front of me was ِ Al Ghazali or St. Augustine, or even Mohamad Hussein Fadlallah.

Wake up early

Morning feelings are always the truest; they carry traces from your sub-conscience. Night feelings are illusory; they carry the traces of your alter ego.

R.I.P Me

If, no when, the war breaks, I want to have lots of reserves of wine and cigarettes; one to help me survive so that the other can kill me. I don't want my name to figure among innocent casualties. They can write on my tomb: Nicotine killed her. May she rest in peace.

My mental blog: Subscribe now

From the moment I wake up in the morning, and while I am brushing my teeth, sipping my coffee, and driving to work, I am mentally blogging. Posts rush to mind every time I look around. If I saw a baby, I mentally blog about how we are born with the inherent thought of inevitability of life; if it rains, I mentally blog about how you cannot enjoy the smell of the first drops because you cannot open the car window lest dust blows in your face and eyes; if I am sleep driving to work, I mentally blog about my bodily productivity clock. Then, the moment I arrive to the office, and open my blog to scribble down all these stupid thoughts, my emails start popping up and by the time I finish the urgent stuff I have to deal with, I can't even look at the screen let alone post "today was another day crossed off the calendar for nothing". Now, here I am ending this post without even getting to the point because I have to rush to a stupid meeting.

Weather Forecast

The sky is cloudy, but the clouds are empty.

Short story for Grown ups

...and so there was this man who had everything he wished for in life, he was rich and successful, he had a beautiful, smart, and loving wife, a nicely furnished house with a backyard, and all his friends adored him. One day, out of a sudden, something happened to him and changed his life. As he was crossing the street, a speedy car almost hit him, he caught sight of it at the last moment and evaded what could have caused him his life, but as he was moving away he tripped into a muddy hole. "Fuck, Fuck, Fuck!!!," he said as he looked at his dirty suit. All could have worked well for anyone in his place but for our man the unexpected happened. As he walked back home to change his suit, he ran into his neighbor. "What happened to you?" the latter asked. "I, Fuck, stumbled, fuck, in, fuck, a hole, fuck, a car, fuck, almost, fuck,....", and so on. He could not stop saying the word "Fuck" after each word he used. At first, he didn't realize, but the more words rushed into his mouth, the more "Fuck"'s he heard himself saying. His neighbor was already long gone when he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and started all over again, but to his surprise, more of the "Fuck" involuntarily spilled in between his teeth. He thought that he maybe needed to sleep and everything will be normal again when he wakes up. He didn't greet his wife at home nor did he answer all her whats and whys but rushed straight to bed. When he woke up few hours later, he could think clearly without any Fuck but would fail every time he whispered a word to himself. Days passed by and our hero had tried every possible cure and treatment to no avail. Doctors failed to understand or explain what was going on let alone to cure him. At first no doctor could reach the point to allow him in until he wrote down his problem on a piece of paper and erased afterwards all the unwanted "fuck" words; he had to leave a few though for obvious reasons. But all in vain. Speech therapy was useless as well. All readings and googling were futile. Priests kicked him out of churches. He could no longer pray anyway, not even in his own bed. His wife left him, he lost his job, he had to sell the house, his friends no longer wanted to hang out with him. He started recalling how it all started, trying to understand for himself what had happened on that day. He grew desperate by the day, and he even went to that same spot where that car had almost crushed him, he tried to get himself ran over by a car, maybe he would regain his life, but all cars stopped and shouted a "Fuck" at him and left him like a wreck in the middle of the road. He then could no longer take it and decided to die. He bought a gun, loaded it, put it is his mouth and pulled the trigger but the bullet did not go off. "Fuck", he said then the bullet went through his head and brains and the echo of the word "Fuck" could be heard miles away for years afterwards.

P.S. Alternate ending: The gun jammed three consecutive times. "what the fuck! Fuck this fucking gun" he said and he renounced the idea of killing himself. Years later, he found a job in Hollywood where he still works to our days. His name was Joe Pesci.

The magical flower: A short story

Once upon a garden, there was a flower but it was different than all the other flowers; They were all yellow but this one was special; it could change colour every morning. It also had a secret: every time it changed colour, one flower in that same garden had to die. All the flowers in the garden would rush to shake off their sleep in the morning and check what colour their idol wore that day. None of them ever witnessed the colour change process. All they saw was glazing red, white, or purple petals glowing under the sun, but they also found every day that one of them had perished overnight. None of them thought the magical flower had anything to do with the deaths and they blamed humans. They all thought that their flower was beautiful, some were jealous and others believed it was cursed. One day, the flower decided to be yellow, just like them. The next morning all the flowers woke up and looked for the magical flower only to find it dead. Rumours on the cause of death spread as fast as sperm, but then suddenly, silence. Normal life picked up quickly and they all had one thought in mind "it's been a long time since it last rained."

P.S. In case the story did interest you in any way, and you are thinking that this is a bad ending, here is an alternative one:

They were all shocked by the death of the magical flower and they decided to hold a funeral next morning. The time was set and they agreed to have it in the same garden where they are all gathered anyway and since it wouldn't be logistically possible to hold it elsewhere, so that was not a problem. Next morning, everyone wakes up only to find they have all turned black.

You still don't like it? How about:

Next morning they all wake up ready for the funeral. Suddenly, two little boys arrive and were startled by the scene of hundreds of well aligned yellow flowers and they decided to surprise their mother with a big bouquet.

Okay enough: where is the rain? this is affecting my mental abilities.

Yuck...

Jordan tomorrow: I hate it!!