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.

Not exactly about ping-pong

Someone once told me a joke, that is probably the silliest I ever heard but ironically one I never forget. It is exactly its silliness that makes it all the more meaningful. That's how the joke goes: one day a boy asked his father, what do you want for your birthday, and the father says, I want a ping-pong ball, next year, the boy comes with the same question and heard the same answer, and the following year, and the following. Every year, the father answers that he wants a ping-pong ball, until one day, when the father was on his death bed, the boy comes again and asks his father what he wants for his birthday, and again, the father says, a ping-pong ball. Here, the boy finally spits it out and asks, but father, all these years I have asked you what you wished for your birthday and you always said you wanted a ping-pong ball, but why? So the father says: because...because... and he dies, before he could finish his sentence. The joke is not funny but absurd. The absurd as skillfully explained - or shall I say preached?- by Albert Camus and others, I find one of the most fascinating theories or philosophies. That exact "why" is what keeps humanity buying ping-pong balls knowing damn well in the deepest oceans of their souls the futility of their quest. What ties them to this futility is a notion of an illusory answer they think they have deep inside but they find incommunicable, instead, they cling to their instinctual and invented desires and the philosophy of avoidance, of blindness because seeing is terrifying. Imagine yourself in an out of body experience looking at your own life, at any normal day of your life, and you will definitely form a very distinctive notion of yourself than the one you had until that moment, when you were still looking at yourself inside inward. That experience is so terrifying that one prefers to curl inside that bubble that is the self, where questions with no answers seem much more convenient to live with than the terrifying answer(s) to the big 'why' question. But there is also all the maturity and clarity of the world in that blindness. The ping-pong ball joke is funny in this sense. You might burn all your brain cells in thinking but maybe the answer is right there in front of your eyes, as bright and blunt as the sun. Life is probably not more than a joke, it is at best a ping-pong ball, but definitely one worth a shot.

Price tasting

This is a very cool study: In a blind taste test, volunteers were unable to distinguish between expensive and cheap wine. That refers you to one of my earlier posts. But I assure you that many Lebanese would swear on their grandfathers graves that they would score better in such a test!

Just a thought!

Only art is worth paying for. Everything else, and I mean everything, should be free for all.

Warning: Information technology decreases sexual activity

With the fast and vast flow of information reaching us -or us trying to catch up with it- the world doesn't seem to be moving any faster and our brain, eyes, and ears have not yet adapted to this fast evolution as of yet. Maybe few years down the road, kids will be born with four eyes and four ears and probably 3 brains, one for news information processing, another for work related matters, and the third for everyday tasks (how do we eat? how to start a car, where did I leave the key, who my wife is, etc.) Some women will be born with six hands, two for doing the dishes, two for handling business, and another two for carrying the baby and massaging their back pains. For now, google reader is all we got. The funny thing though is that with the wide spectrum of topics and variety of stuff out there, stuff that you think you are interested to know, you end up needing yet another filtering system to filter your google reader. Aha, filtering, the key word in all of this mess. From there on, all zeros in to how big or small the filtering holes are and you will be surprised how much less you know the more information you get. Because the more information you get, the less you are inclined to read. If you are persistent enough, maybe a genius -or a loser, some might argue- then you might end up covering the top headlines, some titles here and there, or just focusing on one thing, one single topic, one single issue, to master. Otherwise, if you are lucky, you are just jack of all trades, master of none. Imagine, how ages ago, people in remote areas, that's when they had plenty of time to do nothing, used to converse:
Man 1: So, what's up?
Man 2: Nothing much, I heard they are still fighting up north, but that was last year, haven't heard anything since... Did you hear what happened to our neighbor who stole the eggs?.. AH! yes, you were there, anyway.
Man 1: So... it was nice seeing you, I will see you again in a while.
Man 2: Yeah, I might have sex with my wife in the meantime.
Man 1: good idea.

Pioneers

Today I heard a Lebanese owner of a beauty center say this on the radio: "because we Lebanese are the pioneers, we are always the first in everything especially when it comes to beauty, I make sure to bring to Lebanon everything that is trendy outside (i.e. the West)." So this smart woman is saying that the Lebanese are the best copycats and that is for her a source of pride. That is so much like that stupid guy who said that if everyone signs, he will be the first one to sign, or that smart Lebanese politician who said to his supporters: bring down the sectarian regime and I will be the first one to step down.

P.S. The Lebanese national anthem it seems is stolen altogether, music and lyrics!!! That doesn't come as a surprise to me.

The sectarian anti-sectarian protests

A closer look at the anti-sectarian protests reveals a sectarian division among two movements: Those demanding abolishing political sectarianism, with the pretext of being realistic, and those demanding total secularism or laicism, with the pretext of going all the way through. Both positions stem from sectarian considerations rather than secular convictions. My take is that sectarianism is not the problem, it is rather the symptom. The malady itself is yet to be diagnosed or understood, it shows symptoms very similar to those that appear in stupidity and if not treated early on it can be deadly. Experts named the malady "ignorance". The malady is highly contagious and those protests are ineffective vaccines to which the body adapts quickly and transforms into an even deadlier virus. In the absence of a cure, I recommend prevention, abstention, and if you can't hold yourself, then protection.

The infamous Roumieh Prison: get inspired

I have been inside Roumieh prison a few times (visiting that is) and I never felt more in danger inside than outside those thick high walls and wires, or to put it better I never felt less in danger outside than inside the prison. People outside are no more free. It is inside a prison, that the highest forms of humanity can be seen with bare eyes: Regret, vengeance, solitude, rancor, anger, hopelessness, but also a lot of pride, are the walking spirits there. I never understood why cellphones, TVs, and internet -why not?- are prohibited inside. It is not a man deprived of his freedom you should fear but a man stripped of his dignity. That's what you learn from the big masters. Get inspired:

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today. Albert Camus

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. Fyodor Dostoevsky

In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism. All this stuff you read about men yelling and screaming, beating against the bars, running spoons along them, guards rushing in with clubs -- all that is for the big house. A good jail is one of the quietest places in the world. Life in jail is in suspension. Raymond Chandler

Casa de los babys

I stumbled on this movie, which I also liked very much. I like it when I put anything in the DVD player expecting some trash and I am proved wrong. This is one of the movies that force you to reassess your life, values, and principles and reconsider both your rosy dreams of bringing a baby of your own to a beautiful world and your dark fears of bringing a baby to a world full of horror and injustice. The movie remains in the gray shades of life and ends abruptly... same as life or "anything else" as Woody Allen would say (another great film).

Rather the Invention of Evil

I watched today this movie "the Invention of Lying". It is not a great movie but the idea behind it is sharp although the movie fails to take it to the extreme. The movie takes you to a make believe setting where saying the truth is the only way of life and where you basically cannot say or think or imagine what is not true, where fiction does not exist, and where you don't know what isn't. The word "lie" has no place in this world, it simply does not exist, because it cannot be, or as the movie puts it "to say something that wasn't". The movie poses as a comedy although it hardly makes you laugh but it gets you thinking: in a world where truth is absolute, where the lack, or in this case, the absence of truth does not exist, what you lose is more than emotional and creative thinking, and more than the pursuit for happiness, and much more than the philosophical quest for some meaning, what you lose is freedom. It is evil not righteousness that sets you free after all.