Slim

I bought an I Pad and I should admit that it is awesome. I almost want to take back what I said about the feel of books, the smell of books, etc. Of course, my father was at awe. He didn't comment this time. Nothing surprises him anymore after the net to phone invention and the escalator! You need to see those inventions in the eyes of technology illiterates to admire them. He was turning the E-book pages and probably thinking if that device can also read his mind. Why am I talking about the I Pad? yes, the I Pad made me think that technology advances in a funny way. Devices start big and then they start getting smaller and smaller. Take the mobile phone, at one point, the smaller the phone was, the trendier. One of the Motorola phones was too small that you would think this is just the battery. Then they start getting bigger again until they reach an optimal size somewhere in between. But apart from the size, everything is getting slimmer. Soon we will carry our brain in a suitcase, a slim one, and hope we don't forget it at home.

P.S. Again the drawing is not mine.

It's been a while...

It's been a while since I last blogged. Even blogger moved to a new interface in my absence. But a lot more has been going on lately. The part of the world where I live is a pandemonium. I am not a fan of big words but pandemonium seemed perfect. In the face of such an uproar, silence seemed wise. Yet, two pictures widely circulated caught my attention lately (see below), and in these two pictures and the moral abyss between them lies our human condition. How does the human mind wander at the first sight of these pictures? Does it turn inward? Does it dwell on the metaphysical, social, moral, or historical questions? Of course that depends on a wide set of factors. Your cultural, moral, social, geographical, and other backgrounds determine your reaction. For instance, I read an article about a certain Saudi cleric who issued a Fatwa forbidding girls from sitting with or talking to their father in the absence of the mother. That Sheikh would comment on the picture by asking God's forgiveness for the woman on the left is topless!  There too, in the moral abyss between that crook and any other reaction lies our human condition.

P.S. I wasn't able to track the original copyright of both pictures, But since they are all over the Web, I deemed it safe to publish. They are not mine.

Cooking thought

Writing is an attempt at conquering time and that is exactly what you lose in the process.

At the coffee house: Motion

I am at the coffee house. I need to feel normal again. I need to see real people doing most ordinary stuff. That will help. I find a small table for two in the corner. It seemed perfect for someone like me whose only purpose there is sit and watch people. Watching others has always been a real satisfaction to me. Strangers help me regain normality. Without them I lose sense of reality. Three guys on the table across are chatting loudly. One of them is talking less than the others, but looks interested. On my right is a couple holding hands. A girl in her early twenties enters. She is wearing a short blue dress, and is looking happy. She stops for a few seconds and scans the room quickly, barely moving her eyes. She looks beautiful I realized. As she was about to turn and leave, one of the three guys calls her name. She puts a fake smile and walks towards him. She passes by my table and I saw closely that she is not as beautiful as I thought at first. Some people look better motionless. She is one of those. She will look stunning when she dies, I thought. Suddenly, the thought that all those people are not real, occurred to me. They could all be figments of my imagination. I think that if I move and reach out to that girl with my hand, she will fade away. Nothing in this coffee house seems real anymore. I need a sign, anything that defies science to know for sure, maybe a man who walks through the wall, or a lamp standing upside down from the floor up, or a rabbit in a costume ordering coffee. Nothing of that happens. Everything looks ordinary, just not real. Not to me. I pause. A sort of nothingness invades my mind. I pause. “je pense donc je suis”, is the best thing that has ever been thought, I decide. I pay my bill, is this a real bill? Is this real money? It doesn’t matter. I sip the last residues in my coffee and leave.

At home: Motionless

I am at home, the whiteness of the walls start to weigh heavy on my chest. I decide to leave but my feet refuse to obey my mind’s orders. My body is numb. Nothing moves inside me. Maybe that’s what happens when we die. Our consciousness is still alive, some people call it soul, but our body no longer responds. Am I dead? I want to move my hand to remove the doubt, but my body remains stiff, unresponsive. Am I rehearsing the moment of my death and relishing it? Even my eyes stopped moving. You know someone is dead when you look in their eyes. You cannot mistake that emptiness that looks back at you. The whiteness of the wall filled my eyes with void. They just stare without seeing. Whiteness, rather than blackness, is void. I used to wonder what blind people see. I imagine that inside them, behind those outer eyes, there are other eyes, thousands of other seeing eyes, eyes of a whole audience, staring at a theater’s curtain that never opens. I always had this image until one day a blind guy was asked this question on TV. What do you see? he was strangely faced with answering. He said: I don’t know what ‘seeing’ means. But I thought: what does ‘not seeing’ mean? Now, I am the blind. I freak out. I want to see. I shake off the numbness in my eyes and I look. Everything around me starts to feel alive. The old radio by my side is about to jump up and start walking around the room. I can almost see it floating at the level of my eyes and say: enough of that crap. The green plant at the far end of the room is moving its leaves. Is it dancing? The small useless decorations are loosely roaming in the air. The room is no longer empty. I am no longer alone. The ground is slowly moving. It is circling around me clockwise. The painting on the wall behind me is suddenly in front of me. The people in it start jumping out and filling the room. Suddenly, I hear music, and couples start embracing and dancing. One couple has stumbled on my plant. Where am I? The whiteness is fading. The room is gradually being filled with colors, as if someone is painting the scene at that right moment. I am part of the scene. I am part of the crowd. No, I am the tip of a painter’s stroke, a marginal persona in the background. I jump and without thinking, I open the door and slam it behind me.

Boredom

Have you ever been bored? I don't think you realize what boredom is unless you have experienced that state of mind where you are standing in a busy street and you pause for a second and imagine, maybe wish, that an earthquake hits that exact spot so that you can watch. No I am not a psychopath. But most people would relate to the famous quote attributed to Stalin: the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is statistics. The death of millions is also mere News. In journalism, they teach you to tell the human story, to find that mother holding the little hand of her 6 year old child- better if you mention his age- found dead under the rubble of their home and end your news report with the voice of the father saying: he wanted to become a doctor. Or better, why not look in hospitals for that 15 year old kid who lost a leg and he would say I will never be able to play football again. That's how news become tragedy, otherwise what difference does it make to know if a hundred thousands or a one million were killed in an earthquake? Put the tragedy on the side, you will see that a very blur line separates news from fiction. Get real bored and witness the evil cells of your brain in action. In this sense, all humans are tamed sociopaths. Artists know that creativity is unleashing your darkest thoughts and emotions, setting free that beast that you always knew lives there underneath you layers of righteousness. Boredom is that drill that unearths a mass grave within your soul. Creative thinking is evil thinking, I believe. Some people tell you that they write out of an inner drive to express. Truth is they write because writing makes them feel alive. Creativity is only a result of boredom, and so is creation. I tend to believe, that if God exists, he must have created this world because he was bored.

Things to do when angry

Have you tried chocolate but it didn't work? try salty stuff (kidding). Here are a few suggestions that would definitely work:

1- Go to the supermarket and stroll between aisles. Shop if you need to, but the point is not to. Resist all the temptations, count the colors if you had to, look for expired items and ask to talk to the manager and then you get to shout at him.

2- Walk. Let's say you had a fight with your partner. Shut the door and your phone and walk. Try new streets you haven't been to before. Walk as far as you can until you are lost. Then take a taxi back home.

3- Clean the house. Focus on the areas that rarely get cleaned.

4- Call a random number and ask to talk to Sami and when they tell you that you dialed a wrong number, hang up. Then call again the same number and say: I am Sami, did anyone call me?

5- Google how to make perfect pancakes, watch the video, and then make some.

Did I ever write about PMS before? I guess I did.

Sequence of randomness

People think more than they should before taking decisions or making choices. It doesn't matter if we are talking serious decisions or not. I mean how can you know what is serious and what is not. Take for example that you should decide whether to go to the Oceana beach or to the Lazy B. I mean how hard can that be? but you would still think hard before making up your mind. At first, this decision sounds unimportant. Wrong. How can you know? Maybe you decide to go to the Lazy B but someone who happens to be your long time sweetheart whom you haven't seen in years after a tragic breakup happens to be at the Oceana on that same day and maybe if you had decided Oceana, you would have had the chance to catch up a little and who knows maybe end up together and have a full life. You would never know that. You went to Lazy B, you thought you had a great day, maybe you did have a great day, but you never know what was waiting for you had you made a different choice. See? this decision seems unimportant, but maybe it was actually a life decision if you see what I mean. Now take this example. You have been having serious pain in your leg and after checkup you are told that you should have checked with a doctor earlier and now it is too late, you should either make an operation which has 50% of success only, which means you either get rid of the pain for good but you might also end up with an amputated leg. You have to make a choice. The decision here is obviously a life decision. It cannot be taken lightly. At first you might say, well, I would rather bear the pain, thank you, but then the pain gets unbearable and you think that 50% success rate is not bad compared with the hell you are in now. You make up your mind and head to the operation room. Now imagine, God forbid, that you end up with an amputated leg. You would spend the rest of your days, replaying the scene in your mind and imagining yourself saying, no I would never do the operation only to open your eyes and find out you did. You would close them and immerse deeper into your daydreaming hoping to open your eyes and find out you still had your leg. A leg with pain is after all better than no pain but also no leg. But again, it is there staring you in the face, or actually the fact that it is not there is what stares you in the face. Suddenly you hear a voice, that voice you cannot mistake for anything you would normally hear. It says: I will make you an offer. I will take you back to that moment when you took the decision to make the operation and let you decide again. Really? you say touching your ears. The voice continues: but on one condition. Anything, you say. On condition that when you go back in time to that moment you will forget everything that happened after, you will forget this moment, and all the regrets, you will forget that you had taken this decision before and had a failed operation. Of course, you say, a second chance, that's all I would ask for, even you end up making the same decision again and getting to where you are now, at least you had another shot, you think, and you might end up making the opposite decision this time, who knows. Now imaging if you sign the deal with the voice and you go back there but decide again to go for the operation and end up with no leg and regret it and hear the same voice again and make the same deal again and forgetting and then making the deal again and again and again like in Nietzsche's philosophy of eternal recurrence. Now, how can that decision be any more important than the one in the previous example? Even if it were, what makes one decision deserve any more thinking than the other. Think of it. Thinking more wont bring new insights here but merely more confusion. So then what makes any decision we make important? In such situations, thinking more is just making the regrets you will have later on harder. I am not saying that our lives are predetermined, you would wish they were, then why regret anything, no, on the contrary the fact that we have the choice is what makes our lives even more absurd. What difference is there between a life that is predetermined but you don't know what comes next and a life that is not predetermined but you still don't know what comes next? Nothing. So why think that hard before making decisions? We want to look like we are in control of our destiny, fate, lives, whatever. What we are actually doing is avoiding to face the truth and the truth is, there is a big difference between mystery and randomness, and what you call life is not a mystery, it is a well meditated sequence of randomness.

Modernos e Antigos

A friend of mine was trying to convince me to stop buying books and get myself a kindle, the Amazon book reader. I joked at first that I am still trying to figure out the difference between an Ipad and an Ipod. She had all sorts of convincing arguments but ones that did not appeal to me. She said you can take it with you when you travel, and you get to have 3000 books with you, weightless. Why on earth would anyone need 3000 books when they travel unless they booked eternity for destination! (For some reason, I find the name funny too, it's stupid but I don't know why as she was talking I was thinking: Kindle like Kindelegarden!) But then she said that kindle is more eco-friendly, the argument I hate most. I hate to be accused of being a nuisance to the environment. I do ignore Greenpeace volunteers who stop me on the road to lecture me about the environment but that does not make me environmentally unfriendly. I even participated during the weekend in a cleaning activity of a 0.00000001% surface area of 0.000001% of a hill that makes 0.00001% of a mountain which is 0.001% of a village that in turn is less than 0.0001% of the total area of Lebanon. I did that although I cleaned 0.000001% of the garbage in there. Back to the kindle. She also said that books bring cockroaches, that one made me laugh, it reminded me of Ziad Rahbani in film ameriki tawil. But that argument was strong, because I had promised her that I would only buy used books, of course I had lied, and then I found out that used books bring even more than cockroaches, they bring book worms (literally). Bookworms! Even Kindle freaks would still be called bookworms!

Home

I always wondered, what's home? or more precisely where is home? At times, I thought that home was not a place but a time, sometimes a person, or a thought, at others home was always here and now. My home was that spot between his shoulder and his elbow, I wrote once. Home is where you want to escape to and sometimes escape from. An ocean could be home to your eyes, a book home to your mind, and that tree behind your grandpa's house could be home to your heart. Home is always where problems seem bigger than they are but smaller than everyone else thinks. Home is that key hanging on the wall but used to open a door that no longer is there. Home is that small beach house that only exists in your dream, that you might never build but keep furnishing in your thoughts and painting and repainting its walls. This small huge planet can be your home but also that small box where you hid your teenage poems, a few memories, and your first pregnancy test. Home is always where it could have been nicer only if a little bigger, smaller, a little brighter, older, a little newer. Home is where there is always something that needs to be fixed but you never do, it keeps staring at you until you stop noticing. It is that addiction to loneliness that you call peace. For once I thought that a mattress and a pillow and that dark hallway through which my feet know their way blindly to the bathroom were home. It doesn't matter what it is or where or when and maybe who, I thought, it is where you will always go when the lights go off.

Love

The Bosphorus inspired me and somehow brought back memories of all the people I once loved and I thought that I never loved the same way. Love can be measured by depth, weight, temperature, strength, length, and maybe volume. It can be deep like an ocean, or warm like sand, or strong like metal... but the best love of all is the one that is hard to measure: a love that is as sincere as a lake.

My trip to Istanbul

I went on a short trip to Istanbul. I didn't plan it to be at the time of the parliamentary elections but so it was and I thought of asking people around who they voted for. But to my surprise, everyone took us (my two sisters and I) for Spanish and insisted to address us as such until we started saying 'Hola' right and left. At first we corrected them and said we were Lebanese until one guy answered: Oh.. lobnan... we are your Ottoman brothers! So Spanish worked better for us. With every step, we had someone asking where we are from, and it became annoying, so we started ignoring them. Then, they started guessing and one guy said with certainty: Chile! Now about my sample, I asked one guy who he voted for but he didn't understand English, so I said: Erdogan? and there he answered: Kurdish. No Erdogan! I passed by his shop everyday to say hi. Then I asked another Turkish guy and he said: Erdogan of course! And that was my sample given that for the rest of the trip, my discussion with the Turks was all about the Barcelona Football team players! Two Turkish guys also asked to know our religion, so we felt at home. Now here are the highlights of the trip, I am not in the mood for a serious documentation, so I will just jot down a few incidents that matter and what matters for me is what might make me smile and look stupid ten years from now: 1) my sister threw up in the middle of the hotel room on day 1, 2) Ataturk is a handsome guy, 3) I bought a leather jacket for 200 Dollars only to feel guilty afterwards that it was real leather (as I am trying to be animal friendly) and then I felt worse that it could be fake leather with the amount I paid! 4) Don't travel with family and expect your trip to be fight-free, and 5) of course the Aga Sofia, the blue mosque, the topcapui, bla bla bla are quite something!

Confession

One more thing about my class. I know that I was a nerd back in school and at college though to a lesser degree (but always social, let's say a social nerd). I didn't realize back then that I was indeed a nerd, in any case, I only understood the word much later. Now I admit that I indeed was, and taking a class again, I am consciously trying to undo my nerd-ish tendencies but I realized that once a nerd, always a nerd.

Boiling point

A Lebanese guy in my Portuguese class is so idiot but thinks he is funny (the worst type of unfunny people) that he annoys the hell out of me and on top of that he is a typical f***ing racist Lebanese. There is a Filipino woman taking the class with us as she intends to go to Brasil, as she said. One day, she was telling me about some people she knows who are going to Brasil and that stupid Lebanese guy overheard the conversation (although she was not addressing him in the first place) and said: you mean the house (the family) where you work? She just said no and disregarded him. I was so annoyed but knowing how typical the judgmental question is, I too disregarded him. I could have argued but my Filipino friend would have felt embarrassed and he would not have understood anyway. Now the girl could be working as a maid for a certain family in Lebanon and could not but that's not the point. It gets worse the next day when we were learning about some common food recipes in Brasil and the Filipino woman raises her hand fervently when the teacher asked who knows what "caipirinha" is? She got it right and so the guy said with a mocking tone: You cooked that today for the family for whom you work! and he laughed at his own joke, or what he thought was a joke. On that same day we had to read out loud sentences that we made up. The Filipino woman read the following sentences: Nos somos cristaos (We are Christians) and Voce sao brancos (You are white).. She too annoyed me.

All of this doesn't look so good and I can sense that you will hear from me again soon when the racist temperature in the class reaches boiling point.

What's your name again?...

I don't remember who taught me this, maybe I discovered it on my own. Funny how most of my posts start with "I don't remember". It's not a blessing, I assure you. Now back to the story. The thing is that if you look good enough at people, you would see that they resemble some animal species. This is not an insult. Look and see for yourself. Ask yourself, which animal does this person strike you as? You will get the answer right away. Not all people are monkey-like, I assure you. Some people are birds-like others are lion-like or dog-like or giraffe-like. It's funny. I don't remember when I started doing that but the farthest memory I have of doing it was with my teacher in like 4th grade. She was definitely a goat-like. I assure you if she was in some kind of herd, the goats would mistake her for one of them! I still do that sometimes. Now some people strike you as such more than others. The problem with that exercise is that when I meet someone new and I gaze to find their animal match, I miss the part where those people are telling me what their name is and what they do in life and after they leave, I am left with one thought about them, like this giraffe looking girl I met today, and suddenly, I get the feeling that her name is Lara although it could have been Lamia or Fatima or even Anabella, who cares! That's how the whole story is then stored in my head: the Giraffe looking Lara I met today. You can call me crazy but some people are named Chantal but seem more like a Sawsan or are named Albert and seem more like an Ibrahim. And by the way, even when I store the real names, Nada, Rima, and Dima are the same for me, same for Rasha and Sahar... So don't take it personal, if I have no recollection of your name. They just don't seem you. This is so frustrating... and embarrassing. My memory processes the information before storage and it has a weird storage mechanism. To be stored properly, you need to have an animal look that matches your name, otherwise, you might get mistakenly stored in the wrong file and might unfortunately end up in the recycle bin after a while and when I see you again be sure that I would either confuse your name or ask you for it again but I will surely remember that you are that squirrel-looking Dana. Of course, you would never know that!

Das experiment

So I watched this movie "The Experiment", again, which is the Hollywood version of the German film "Das experiment", which I never saw but which is supposed to be better, not only because it is the original one and not American, but I was also told by trusted friends that it is, and I believe them and when I say so, you have got to believe me although maybe you already have, before I tried to convince you. In any case, the movie I saw, that is the Hollywood version, is not bad, and I recommend it even if you find the original "Das experiment", because that's the one I am about to talk about. The movie touches on the themes of human nature and God, justice and violence, power and abuse of power, and peace and war. I combine the themes in such a way so that you get the point, but in life, and in the movie, the themes are intertwined in a more complex way; so it can be about violence and God, human nature and power, justice and war. You get the point? how about justice and God, violence and human nature, peace and power? I hope now you do. That's the best way I can explain it, because otherwise you would think I am insulting your intelligence. Induction can be a great exercise. Now if you want to know what the movie is about you can go to IMDB and if you are looking for a review, this is not the site for you. But you've got to watch the movie and learn what you have always known. Oh, and it's a prison movie, if you know what I mean. I am reading this book now "the kindly ones"* by Jonathan Littell, I am still at the beginning (and don't expect from me any commentary about it anytime soon, it's a 1000 pages!), but I remember those words from the book after watching the movie: "those who kill are humans, just like those who are killed, that's what's terrible. You can never say: I shall never kill, that's impossible, the most you can say is: I hope I shall never kill, I too hoped so", and this line from the same book: "the real danger for mankind is me, is you. And if you are not convinced of this, don't bother to read any further. You will understand nothing and you will get angry, with little profit for you or for me." I added this last quote to tell you that it goes the same for the movie. It's up to you. One more thing kept whirling in my head after the credits scrolled up, that line in the movie when someone asks: "do you still think we are not like monkeys" (not the exact words I suppose) and the other guy answers: "Yes, I still do. At least, we do something about it!"... Well, I am not sure!

*English Translation. The original French title is Les Bienveillantes.

My date 9 years later...

Nine years ago, I went on a date and in my pocket, I had 10,000 Lebanese Liras only. At the end of the date, I was embarrassed. I have to mention in passing that on that particular date I was everything except myself. I was rather the exact opposite of what I really am and one example is that I accepted that someone pays my bill. Ironically, I married that guy nine years later. If I were him, I wouldn't go out with me again ever, but for some reason and despite his shock and that he too barely had enough money, he did and ironically, he was the guy I would marry nine years later. The story doesn't end here though; on our 9th anniversary, I invited him on a "date" and I said that I will make it up to him and invite this time, but for some reason, this time too, I open my wallet and I find 10,000 Liras only, no more, no less. My eyes went square and I had a very weird smile. As my date (my husband) shook his head and reached his pocket, I realize that I have not changed, maybe, but this time around I had a credit card! Sometimes, I do worship my credit card!

A feel good post?

So what is so exciting about achieving a goal? is it the achievement itself? or the challenges you overcome along the way? The harder it is to reach it, the more you are likely to savor it (my father would rather say, the more you are likely to appreciate it, but that's beyond the point here) and the bumpier the road, the more you enjoy the arrival (after you throw up!). You don't enjoy the obstacles or the challenges while you are at them, you only do in retrospect. You know all of that and you cannot disagree. I do. I wouldn't mind an easy accomplishment and I would make sure to enjoy it equally and be thankful that it came the easy way. I wouldn't mind winning the lottery for example. BUT, the real achievement, or shall I say project, is defying your own self into going beyond your own potential, that sounds lame now that I hear myself saying it, but it is true. That is the only challenge that you would enjoy winning over only because no one but you know what it cost you. Such achievements are usually the ones you hardly notice and rarely congratulate yourself for.

Diaries

When I was young, or let's say younger, my sister somehow found the secret place of my diaries. She spent hours reading through, stacks of papers, letters, and notebooks, randomly squeezed inside other piles of papers, some were dated others weren't. She had to rush through them to get the best parts before she gets busted, sometimes she just searched for her name. For days after, she had this weird smile on her face when she looked at me. Then she confessed. She said she couldn't hide it anymore. She told me. I got mad and I shouted and went all crazy at her. Not only did she invade my privacy, going behind my back like a thief, but she now knows my darkest secrets, my deepest feelings, things I never dared say out loud even to myself. My anger was beyond description. But, something inside me rejoiced. She found my diary interesting! Looking at those diaries now seems like an older (though younger would be a more accurate word here) version of me is talking to the 'me' I have become. In some parts that younger version makes me promise to always believe in what I believed in then. I am glad I no longer make such promises. I'm sorry old me, that's a promise I can't keep.

Get busy living

I can't decide why "Shawshank Redemption" is such a great movie! It's beyond good, it's magnificent. This is a movie about freedom, hope, and friendship, simply about life, certainly about life in prison but surprisingly more about life outside it. "Get busy living or get busy dying".

What if?

The most complicated notions are best explained in the most simple words. Ask kids. Ask them about freedom, love, hope, pain, justice, you choose. They give you easy answers but ones you wait for inspiration to put into words. "All grown ups started off as children", the great man behind the "little Prince" said, they just forgot. They grew up; they had to behave like grown ups. That's what they have been told. That's what they believe. Then they just got used to it. They could no longer think simple. They now think that thinking simple is not thinking big. Kids know that it is the little things in life that matter. Today I woke up in a bad mood, for no reason at all. Maybe, I had a bad dream. But all day, because of that mood, I have been thinking about my life, and asking all those questions that start with the evil "what if"; What if I need to go away? what if I need to change career? What if I need to get better use of my time? what if I need to change goals if I had any? What if I did this and what if I didn't do that? I knew that I was asking the wrong questions and I knew that I wasn't really looking for answers. I was just thinking like grown ups. Later during the day, I craved for ice cream and it was in that cup of ice cream that I found the answer. All I wanted was ice cream. Freud might have had a different opinion but I know better. Kids know what they want right away. When they want ice cream, they just say so. When they are happy, they smile, and they might even laugh. You might think they confuse laughter for happiness. You are wrong. They know better.

Today, a car killed a bird in Beirut

Today I witnessed for the first time the moment of death, unexpected death; It was a bird. One moment he was alive, the next one he wasn't. A split second shattered the bird in pieces. It was nothing like bird hunting when you aim, wait, and fire, when you expect it or rather cause it, as awful and criminal as this is. This time it was different. For some reason, the bird was right there in the middle of the road, all tiny and alive. There were very few cars, and he somehow chose that spot. When I looked and saw him, and before I was able to utter a word, a car drove fast, for a moment, I thought that he managed to fly, then I saw him turn into feather and blood. It was a bird and I saw him die. I was there when he died, and I have the duty to honor his memory. No one probably cares, the driver who killed him probably has no idea of what he did, and most of you think that this is no news, but I was there and I saw it, and so it is my obligation to tell the world that today a bird was killed on one of Beirut streets, and it was a tragic death.

Familiarity

Those eyes are my accomplishment, I thought. I can't explain how but I know that I see there traces of my own doing, scars I must have caused, and depth that only I know how to stroll through. Sometimes, I see there a reflection of my own soul; I see a happy soul and I feel that it is thanking me. Those eyes owe me their spark and their perceptiveness. Those eyes, his eyes are my masterpiece.

Warning

No one warned me and I do not wish you what happened to me. I am one of those who believe that you better learn the hard way than take an advice for granted but you do not want this to happen to you, so here is my warning: all of you women out there who use eye liners, if you have bought a new eye liner pencil and if it still all new and long, don't get too close to the mirror. So there, I warned you.

Misunderstanding

When you ask the Valet parking guy, how much you want? and he answers: as much as you want, what he actually means is: you can pay me more than the known rate! If you take it literally and you try to pay as much as you want, he will say: but I don't have change!!!

Noise

I could hear my thoughts in my dream. They had a voice, my own, and it was too loud that I wanted to tell them to shut up. It was like I was lecturing, or preaching, only I wasn't. I didn't see myself in my dream, there were only floating thoughts with a voice, a loud one, and my own. One of the thoughts was: How can I hear my own thoughts? I don't need to if they are already there, and why do they have a voice? and why is it my own? and why don't you just shut the F*** up? and since my inner hearing sense was so alert, why couldn't I be listening to some classical music now instead or a stand-up comedy? I did actually throw a few jokes but I didn't laugh. Then I woke up and it was noisy outside too.

Moods

I am not thirty yet and I feel that I am ready to retire in a mountain house with my books and a garden I take care of, where my grandchildren come to visit from time to time, and I can follow some of the Syrian-dubbed Turkish series, why not.

Expressions

A sad half-smile is more powerful than a tear and a tear is more meaningful than a sob but anger is the truest form of emotional expression.

Note to self

Next time someone comes to me with a problem that starts with "I saw on my ex-boyfriend's Facebook page a 'like' from some other woman" and ends with "what shall I do", I will answer with a serious wise tone "read your horoscope". I must remember that.

The real revolution

A 10 year old boy living with his father and younger sister was leading a miserable life; his father was cruel, old-fashioned and authoritarian. He never granted him permission to go out with his friends and his friends could not come over to his house. He did not allow him to play or do any of the things that he loved and if he saw him making any movement he didn't like, he would beat him and lock him in his room for days. The poor boy had nothing much to do and his only resort for some fun was to tease his younger sister. Sometimes, the boy wished to beat and torture her but was too afraid of his father, so they played the 'master slave" game. She was always to be the slave. The father didn't mind the game as long as they were quiet. The poor little sister had nothing to do either and at the end got used to the game and with time even thought that it was not bad. One day, as they were playing the 'master slave' game, they heard a noise down the street, they ran to the window and saw a kid from the neighborhood running in the street and being chased by his father who was running like a crazy man with a huge stick and threatening to kill him when he gets hold of him, but as he was too fat and too old, he could not run as fast as his son, and then suddenly he tumbled, his head hit the ground and he died instantly. The young boy saw his father dead, took a deep breath and started screaming: I am free, I am free! The kids on the window saw that and wished they were in that boy's shoes. They head straight to their father's room and saw that their father had also been watching from his window. It is very hard to imagine what happened next. Many scenarios could have happened. The father could have thrown himself from the window. The little boy could have pushed him over the edge. Or he could have said; father, you should allow us some more freedoms. The father could have locked his kids in their rooms and starved them until they begged for pardon. The fathers in the neighborhood could have come to the rescue of the father, or others from farther neighborhoods could have poked their noses into this mess. But come to think of it, what options does the little girl have? Now imagine if the kid running the street was rather a girl.