Reflections from far mland

2011-12-04T01:46:00.003-06:00

i am going to be a writer. i decided on that yesterday. why not? i ran into half an existential crisis a few days ago. i felt i needed a talent. a person i know claimed she "sketched". mechanical "sketching" she said. and her drawings were portraits. painfully intricate, pedantic, beautiful portraits. where did that come from? i felt envy, jealousy maybe. she was born this way? that triggered a wave of me feeling useless, empty, boring, uncreative. but i so do long to be this mecca of creativity. but you cannot force it..creativity is either there..or is not..so i delved into the depths of my soul, consulted a few friends, and decided..that were I to have one real talent, just one, it would have to be words. I mean certainly not music. nor art. so i will try to use words, twist them, squeeze them together, gut them, poise them, hurl them at whomever would like to read..and keel over with the outcome..be it some literary masterpiece or some stunted meaningless amputated bit of prose..i will try to read..and write everyday. mostly for my own contentment, and then a llittle for an audience, hopefully a forgiving one.

2011-09-04T23:10:00.002-05:00

it's been 8 years since i've moved, she thought. 8 years. sometimes they were decades, other times they were a bright twirling second. she did the math again in her head..just to be sure..yes, 8 years. so much has happened, and yet so little. she opened the double doors that lead to the garden, paused at the top of the wooden stairs. everything was dripping with the fresh rain. the roses were blooming and shriveled up flowers she had thought were weeds had sprouted up, peeking from underneath the rose shrubs timidly, not quite sure what to make of this new world. that's great, she thought. no need to water the plants. farmer thoughts. wanting it to rain to avoid this tedious routine of everyday watering. the streets were empty, the decks were empty, and she wondered why none of the neighbours were ever sitting outside underneath their 200 year old trees. they have these solid ancient trees in their backyards, and perfectly mowed grass..i'm the only one who sits in my garden, she thought. although puzzling, it was a relief. she could sit unfettered, talk unfettered, stare into whatever spot of space she fancied, unfettered. she stared at the computer screen. she had to write about her experience as a foreigner here, it was for some article that was to be published back home. there were many things she wanted to say, but really, she never felt like a foreigner here. well maybe a few times. she looked at the red crowned bird perched on her hammock, waiting for a plump drop of water to fall onto his open beak..that's what life felt like sometimes here..like she was waiting for that drop of water..she could see it growing, acquiring momentum, collecting, balancing, almost falling, but no..she typed a few sentences, and then she found the words flowing, they were pouring out of her soul..she really liked this city, this country. she had found this irrational need lately to defend this city like it was her own, to unmask its albeit jagged edges and reveal the raw, deeply ornate character underneath.

2011-02-26T14:33:00.002-06:00

Watched 'Blue Valentine' the other day..makes you very very weary of marriage..how could two people who adored each other end up so bitter and disillusioned? scary stuff indeed..guess it's about expectations and perception?

2010-09-20T00:58:00.002-05:00

hello?
life has been whizzing by and i haven't had the urge to blog in a long time. even now, i don't have any original thought to share, just wanted to dabble into it a little. work work work. television. catching the last of the summer heat. counting the lemons on my lemon tree (and waiting for them to turn yellow, except it seems they are just green lemons). roses blooming in the fall, in the little pink alcove in the garden. barbequing, a carnivorous autumn. not much poetry. that's the price you pay when you are either not sad enough or very busy..maybe the urge to wrie will resurrect in the cold hours of winter doom. for now, happy to come home while the daylight is still filtering in, and to go outside in the morning, breathe, watch the squirrels rummaging, and sip on the nescafe

2010-03-30T00:49:00.002-05:00

she stays up at night scouring the internet. she is sleepy all day, her eyes heavy with the desire to lie down and plunge into bed, but come midnight, she is alive. her days have been encircling each other, entwining, and vanishing. easily forgettable, nothing remarkable. night is when she has a whole world at her diposal. hers, and only hers. and she speaks to the night, it speaks back sometimes. she is tired, though. tired of sameness. this hunger for the unknown, for picking up and leaving, for challenge, is back. she wonders if there will be a time when it will cease to plague her. how do people stop wondering, stop feeling like there's always more? when?

2010-03-17T01:55:00.001-05:00

there were pink buds on the naked tree today. you have to squint your eyes to see them. but they're there. yes yes yes! spring!

why not hell

2010-02-09T22:35:00.002-06:00

february is the month where your skin has been stretched so dry, your wrinkles have been sculpted so well, and your spirit has literally frozen up so much that you start thinking that hell, with its roaring fires and crackling embers, may not be so horrid afterall. nursing the fourth cold this season, i am writing this. outside there is a blanket of snow that is turning into rancid ice. inside, i wish i had a fire. i would like to roast chestnuts just to smell them. i spend my time painting the walls in my mind and watching home and garden television. there is something reassuring and so simple about their shows. i imagine backsplashes for the kitchen. then unimagine them. i visualize trees inside the house, while my plants are begging for water, scorched into a torrid brown by my carelessness.
even the patients in the hospital are in no hurry to go home these days. i despise the month of february. may it pass quickly.

2010-01-22T01:33:00.002-06:00

it's been so long that it took me a while to sign in. wow. blogging now in between twittering and facebooking is like finding a "cassette" lodged between my ipod and my cd's (and when this did happen last week, all i could think was "antique!")

i just finished reading The Road. it took me months because it was so desolate and i knew there was no plot. but today while listening to the rain outside, hoping that the roof would not leak, it was the perfect book to read. it really struck me. first that in some future this may not be fiction at all. second that the world he created seemed so real it is as though he is looking around him and writing down what he sees. while i was reading and the world he was describing being so grim and hope-forsaken i could not grasp why these people were so bent on surviving. on grabbing hold of the last figment of life, for a life of misery? is it worth living if living is solely for survival? someone did point out to me that what we do now is no different, it is also living for survival, just in a different disguise. i'm not so sure about that..partly because i'm one of the privileged non-starving ones who actually has time to ponder these questions (basically asking these questions is a good indicator that i have the luxury of time and peace on my hands that juxtaposes the adrenaline and action-driven lifestyle of someone facing death at any moment..)
but 'survival'-maybe it not just about life and death-survival can mean success, recognition, wealth, love, the opposite of what we individually and very differently may perceive as death, or death of the soul and not necessarily the body.
this is turning a little boring i guess, isn't it? it has just been so long that i haven't read a book that left something in me. his writing makes me feel like i should just stop writing. it's that great. and yet of course, here i am writing. more like streaming tonight though.
lots of questions
good night

2009-11-03T19:57:00.002-06:00

i sit in the pink pyjamas. a mug of hot cocoa from bruges has just been gulped to soothe the grating in my throat. it was rich and wholesome as only chocolate from europe can be. yummy..and i suddenly had the urge to open this blog page and blurt again. life has been whirring by with the occasional flutters. for the first time i enjoyed the fall, though. the crispy foliage and edward hopper views. auburn leaves marrying the orange ones, bullying the green ones. a pumpkin in the back of my car has spilled its rotten guts onto the smooth carpet interior and now halloween for me smells of rotten pumpkins that don't destain..instead of the wafting aroma of pumpkin cinnamony spiced lattes and scones from the coffee cartel..it is starting to get chilly now and the darkness creeps in earlier everyday, but i am dreaming of a fireplace and roasted chestnuts and hardwood floors that will be a shade between brazilian cherry and plain old cherry..and a beautifully winding wooden staircase overlooking windows of stained glass and stained flowers..a front porch worthy of a mint julep and a swing. a sun room filled with sun...yes, the hopes and dreams of a new home buyer..

2009-08-17T00:07:00.002-05:00

yesterday i took a little detour from the interstate on my way back from work. Ambushed the twirling roads, the cds in the door pockets of my car jittering, the little blue evil eye repeller bouncing, and the green hills rolling. i did not know there were hills in that area. portishead crooning. i opened the moon roof and the sun filtered in. there was lots of corn too. what was it, that sting song? fields of gold. More like a greenish version of gold. but it's true that in that moment everything was dancing...the cd's the evil eye thing my little monster of a car the corn portishead and the green missouri hills. and i did not want to reach wherever it was i was supposed to reach...i was content winding my way around the tiny road with the sun on my cheek and the wind blowing my hair straight into my mouth and my tongue trying to spit it out..one of those gargantuan "libellules" (i do not know the english word but this french word describes it perfectly) almost made its way into the car through the roof and i almost panicked but it whirred by like those little toys you buy in the supermarket, its enormous wings glinting in the distance.
i finally reached the (big) countryhouse with the elongated deck, wrinkled swimmingpool and "mowing" neignbour. i walked up, a bottle of wine in each hand, with slight trepidation because i wasn't sure why i was really invited.

self-talk

2009-08-08T00:56:00.002-05:00

for the first time in my life, i'm at peace with myself. i'm even at peace with the restlessness, i've sort of accepted that it's just part of me, the part that will never rest. the driving helped. the one and a half hours on the fat road, forced to be with myself. i used to drown my thoughts out with NPR for the longest time, but now i shuffle the playlist and listen to those budding mental conversations. sometimes they make sense, other times they jump all over, skidding to a halt when i have to stop and fill gas (usually the thought of filling gas and how annoying the interruption is drives out all other thoughts). but listening to the thoughts, instead of banishing them to some deep realm in my brain, has really helped. i know this sounds nuttish but i have come to the realisation that i'd been deaf to myself for the longest time.

2009-07-31T00:32:00.003-05:00

life is a fishy fishy deal..
that's all i wanted to say tonight, something deep and worthy of a facebook status

beirut continued

2009-07-19T22:44:00.003-05:00

there are words called out somewhere. over the rubber tires and the smell of burning tar. across the landscape of huddled balconies and bulging curtains. in the wind. they glide over the purple streets. they slide over the people, the people of beirut. those people who clank their hammers and forge their metals and melt, melt in the undulating heat. 'come back'
'come back' i hear you
the child on the scooter on the crippled sidewalk wraps his way around the bends and the stuttering sewage holes. he misses the sturdy gentleman on the phone. he slips by unnoticed, groaning his way across the sea of scented strangers and stinking sweat.

beirut 1

2009-07-07T02:54:00.003-05:00

in the car stuck in traffic. an assault of honks. they form a short interrupted octave. should we open the windows or turn on the ac. wait there's a breeze. keep it open. we are moving extremely slowly. my camera is ready and i snap one of the two disheveled men in the broken-down store. i don't know what they're selling. he smiles like a child. "look look she's taking a photo of me like on the lira". they both turn and pause. the car moves on. the balcony with rusted sinews of forged metal looks down on me and again i snap a picture. i suddenly lurch forward and grab the seat in front. "ya hayawen!" the man with the raybans and the cayenne is not glistening with sweat. in fact he looks so cool and collected while he attacks our car one more time. "wlek leik shou hal hayawen, ma byefham!"
and my little cousin presses forward stubbornly to block his way. the honks are getting louder and longer. the cars the weeds on the side of the road the dirty gravel are glistening with sweat. another balcony looks down displaying a series of white underwear, flanelles and long wailing shirts. black smoke rises. the little renault on the side coughs. a man is pushing his car up ahead, one hand on the wheel and the other pushing, straining with the swallowing heat.

connection

2009-06-21T00:58:00.003-05:00

i've been twittering like mad these days. or tweeting. now blogging. then telephoning. smsing.
why this need to feel connected? why do some feel this need more than others?
what happened to sitting there for hours immersed in a book or an article or a thought?
am i afraid of my own thoughts? can't come up with an answer, and it's too long to tweet this for feedback

poem

2009-06-09T21:36:00.001-05:00

The book said anybody with feelings can be a poet
So I decided to try my hand at it
They said it doesn’t have to rhyme
Which is a relief because that kills all
Poetic feelings that I have
They said it doesn’t have to have
Structure
Thank god because I can’t operate
With structure
So that leaves me wondering
What the hell is a poem
Other than a load of crap spilled
On a blank page
I guess I need a better ending
The end.

water

2009-06-09T01:02:00.004-05:00

what is it about water that i love? smthg abt being underwater submerged and muffled in undulations and blueness, as though the harshness of solid life has been moulded into a soft blur

hmmmm..

2009-02-06T00:17:00.002-06:00

it's been eons since i've blogged, partly because it's inconvenient to type with one hand, partly because i've not felt compelled to write at all. i would like to have some organized form of writing, to have a goal with a beginning and a begrudging end, not this random spurt of feeling jetted out on BLOG. a book, perhaps, or a novella. but for that i would need to start with a vague idea that could maybe, maybe, spawn itself into a plot. i need a plot, otherwise i might just as well publish a diary. and which insanely bored bit of a mind would want to read my diary? i am no ann frank i assure you. but i would like to put part of myself in the book though. not enough to make it tedious for those who know me, but enough for them to recognize me in it. i wish i had done extravagantly decadent acts or met insanely grotesque yet fascinating personalities but i haven't. so i will need to churn up the imagination a little..i would like to put a little beit-chabeb, a little dubai and a little beirut in it. a little religion and a little non-religion. a spat of anti-establishmentism and uber-intellectualism and oh-so-snobisme..
ideas/suggestions (even ones telling me to pack'n'leave are welcome...

they call it a propaganda war..

2009-01-07T21:19:00.002-06:00

considering there is continuous live coverage from al jazeera 24/7 and that israel is alienating journalists from gaza, all the pictures we are seeing are those of palestinian blood spilled everywhere, blood of all ages blood of doctors farmers pregnant women sleeping children old men catapulted into death. wait. and this blood has been lying under siege suffocated of basic human needs relegated to starve the land for shrapnels of food sick water and prayers for mercy
now some may say that they have brought this upon themselves, as though we are still in biblical times and damnation has descended upon them because they have sinned. their sin is that they are weak and they do not know how to be stronger, can not grow stronger in this current geometrical equation. they are being stagnated and exterminated for their "sins".
and hail the almighty, let's not forget the god-like representation we have in front of us, please, and that is Israel. equivalent to god. will judge, punish and redeem. is un-judgeable unaccountable. and of course, benevolent with all its might.
right. hail Israel!

and another one..

2009-01-01T01:19:00.002-06:00

happy new year! as usual some are happy and partying, some are sad and dying.

2008-10-19T22:28:00.000-05:00

enough enough enough recriminations.
onto a brave new world!

2008-10-18T20:30:00.002-05:00

tonight i am going out to have a blast. an absolute blast. i am going to destroy the ball sitting on my esophagus and a super-rouba shall emerge....
just so you know:)

2008-10-15T23:58:00.002-05:00

there's a single echo in the distance that echoes back to me
and lands at my feet
"tread slowly and don't look back"

2008-09-28T22:30:00.002-05:00

what will i do after the elections? there will be a huge chiasm in my life, dull and empty and boring. my daily commute will be listless, with no lipstick stories or pigs.
they were distributing mccain stickers in the hospital and i was offered one, blue and shining with a star on the i. as an alien foreigner, naturally, i refused. they insisted. all the other physicians in the physicians lounge were waving it around, looking at me in the sea of middle, like i was rosemary in rosemary's baby. i refused, me the anti-diplomat trying to be as tactful as can be, but they egged on, the blue rectangles forming circles in their proximity. and there i saw my future, bleak and desolate, with a handful of consults and closed doors, an exile, a true alien. sigh. it's a hefty dilemna.
i did not take the sticker. what's more, beetle volkswagens, being the symbol of anti-imperialistic freesom-loving hippie movements, cannot be riddled with republican mccain stickers. they just can't! so i remain and my blueberry beetle remains sticker-less, and why do i suddenly feel like the school reject?

Hotel

2008-08-29T01:28:00.004-05:00

I have an unparalleled view of one third of a radiator. It has a pressure valve which looks like it could become a geyser of water from china town. There is also a pungent smell in the corridor that has been seeping into the room despite all attempts to spray mademoiselle generously. I am particular about smells. This one I cannot describe except by saying it is like opening the pall of a putridied embalmed mummy. Embalmed with Chinese herbs that I am sure contain ma huang and strontium. These molecules have made their way insidiously into my receptors and have deranged something up there, as you can deduce from the nonsensical musings I am spewing.
I am afraid they will come and stuff me with green feathers if I close my eyes. there was a halfnaked man on the fourth floor and a door painted red saying cinco de mayo on the third. Is this how writers are born? In a room so sickly that it will infect your imagination? It's infecting me with strontium of that I have no doubt.
Good night.
-San Fran Chinese Madness

i've graduated, and so on

2008-08-18T22:10:00.002-05:00

i am out of the crunch and into the puddle. or out of the fire and into the frying pan? i don't know but suffice it to say i've moved on, out, of a 'system' and am no longer being disciplined and educated rigorously from the unholy hour of 7 AM until the next unholy hour of 7.
i was lost for the first 2 hours, looking over my shoulder for that guiding hand and acting like such a subordinate, but two hours later and i was basking in the glory of independance, seeing new frontiers and golden horizons....and so on
i am thirty....and i have just been born
*sigh of ecstasy*

does anybody still read my blog??
really?
(echooo)
really?

mahmoud darwish

2008-08-10T19:50:00.002-05:00

the voice of the resistance
the beautiful voice of a resistance -
you will live on -
your stories live on -

Bluebird

2008-06-11T14:26:00.001-05:00

Charles Bukowski - that's what prophets are made of

2008-06-03T23:20:00.002-05:00

aside from a patient having a whiskey bottle to suppress her cough in the dialysis unit, this week was a drag. a bigtime draaaag. along with chronic fatigue syndrome and anhedonia i've been having bad dreams. i'm remembering them too. the one about the flying car that made a parabolic jump and landed softly after freaking me out. also the one about somebody, somebody i'm not sure who, had his chest opened and stapled in a disturbing fashion in the middle of my dream. i'm going insane. i hate presentations.

2008-05-14T23:39:00.002-05:00

she lilts her head forward and sprawls her limbs onto the steel-black wheelchair
"i've been gaining 3 pounds of fluid a day. i'm just so sick"

i look at her orbits her legs and poke. no holes.
"where does the fluid go?"

"everywhere"

"but it's nowhere"

"it's there i can feel it"

"you don't need the water pills. you have no swelling"

"oh yes i do. what about the weight gains????"

attending and i have one bubble of thought diffusing into the unventilated room.
"maam, forget the water pills. it's liposuction that you need."

ideal worlds

2008-05-11T23:50:00.002-05:00

in an ideal world there are no wars
in a less than ideal world there are wars of ideas

in lebanon there are only wars.

let's hope this one ends soon and heralds the birth of a new rejuvenated nation, after 2 years of this god-awful impasse.

les nanas

2008-05-05T00:04:00.001-05:00

morning existentialism

2008-04-27T23:30:00.002-05:00

i felt sick today. the first thing i thought at six o clock in the morning was that i didn't want to go take care of strange people any more. i'd much rather stay in bed because i'm the one who feels sick. why should i care about other sick people if i am sick? i got out of bed and trudged to work dragging my forlorn feet and my swollen eyes. not because i cared, but more because i did not want to be fired. (more to follow)

death

2008-04-25T10:05:00.001-05:00

How long will it take for Gaza to die? This is the first thing I read this morning while the sun is shining and the birds are singing.

spring?

2008-04-20T22:50:00.002-05:00

i'm still not sure if it's here

gum

2008-04-07T23:03:00.002-05:00

her heart stopped working all of a sudden yesterday. she was compressed and mashed and smashed into life again. it took seven minutes. she almost made it to the other side. but was dragged back by many many whie coats. and now she is awake, looking at me, a day after her heart stopped.
'can i have some of your bubblegum?'

ducking

2008-03-25T22:32:00.002-05:00

it's natural that when someone encroaches on your arena you want to defend it with all your might. and so at work i am endlessly fighting battles with the "enemy" (ie cardiology and pulmonary doctors because we, as nephrologists, are sometimes, if not often times, viewed and used as 'those who do dialysis'. but after countless "dialysis consults" the beast creeps out and i'm hardpressed not to snap that i am the dialysis nazi and it is I, only I who would deign to make the choice. to dialyze or not to dialyze. needless to say i've been losing weight over the subject. i've been trying to surmount a barrage of enemy attendings and stand my ground, which, unfortunately, is still shaky for me, a mere fellow. my attending, in a moment where he witnessed the onslaught, told me in a gentle paternal manner that i should learn how to choose my battles, for there are battles worth fighting, but many that are not. so for the greater part of the year he ducks and says yes we will we will dialyze and dialyze we will squeeze the last living lingering drop of blood as you wish, but there is this rare fragmented moment where he will simply say no.
now i am not endowed with much patience and age-old wisdom and the beast comes out many a time, especially when i'm sleep-deprived. and anyway how can you diplomatically tell someone to stick to their own turf and let your piece of the world go, because you're more entitled to it than they are. so today, and for the past 2 days, i've had to duck and say yes as you wish. and it's frustrating as hell!

serendipidity

2008-03-10T23:08:00.002-05:00

some say if chance smiles on you, then that means it's just finished frowning..(or at least i say that) but anyway, when an unexpected snowstorm lands you in a place forgotten by everything but the weather, when you are sharing meals with truck drivers in saloppettes (what do you call them in english?) which are unbuttoned before they even start eating, when all you want to do is have a gin'n'tonic to soothe your nerves and unrattle your spirits but all you get is a rusty vending machine selling coke, and incidentally, diet coke, it makes you wonder if chance has taken a sudden damper on things and decided it didn't like you. and so be it.
...and it snows like there's no tomorrow but when tomorrow comes it's as if it never snowed...
and in tomorrow you're landed in a historic cafe brimming with amesh and alien people like us drowning amidst mountains of mashed potatoes barrels of coke (with free refills) oceans of free fried food (here here move your bowl so i can put some more) and when the menu itself tells you that dessert can only be taken away or else you die from stuffedness and self-stuffing-ation then you know that Chance is choking on its laughter. and then you hear in a twisted huffing accent "hhhhot rowwwl" and yes the little man has just flung a piece of smouldering buttery bread in your lap and he flings and he huffs and he flings over the red the blue and the white. and you are in a circus of food of all shapes and huge sizes and yes you have quantum-leaped into deep-dishy-america of the 40's with all the coarse unabashed homeliness you only see on tv classics nowadays.
and YOU LOVE IT!
cheers to snow, friendly waitresses, and the good ole' american spirit

2008-03-06T00:13:00.002-06:00

"rouba's nocturnal lifestyle is hindering our communication"
-delta bravo

(i have to say, i like him very much. too bad it's the hierarchy, we could have been friends)

sorry it's an inside joke, but in my current state i wanted to share

prison

2008-03-04T00:46:00.001-06:00

ode to my sun

2008-02-27T17:50:00.003-06:00

i caught a bit of sun today. or rather it caught me as i escaped the blistering cold. right in the middle of the street i was crossing. i stopped, something i haven't done in a while. it caught the end of my ear and singed my nose that was red. i felt like the spaceship in that (horrible) movie "sunshine" whenever the glare of the sun touched the metal, and yellowness suffused everything grey.

the sun kissed me briefly in the middle of the street today. it's been eons of decades of missed centuries of darkness, recently. apocalyptic icy deserts of barren useless whiteness, not the soft beautiful enveloping whiteness but the (again), apocalyptic post-nuclear deathly grey whiteness with the crystals of salt littering the streets and scavenging your shoes to save your bones. but the sun kissed me briefly and it was worth it. it kissed my soul before the clammy darkness stole it away again. my soul, it's vanished again. nothing but ether or organic matter or lifeforms of carbon to replace it. a vaccuum of bland nothingness barely alive, alive only to hibernate, alive only to wait for the next glimpse of yellow-tinged world in whose burroughs i can melt, not even to melt, just to imagine that i can melt.

when i'm incapable of imagining something, that means it's dead to me. like memory dead. i can still imagine the stars that moved while i looked at them sprawled on my grandmother's swing. i can still imagine me rising before dawn (and for anyone who knows me that takes ALOT of imagination) and listening to the staccatto of the church bell and the rooster. i can imagine me right now falling asleep in a lecture with my head becoming the heaviest burden ever imaginable.

but yesterday, i could not imagine the sun. or sitting in the sun. or letting the sun touch my arms, even burn them. i could not imagine walking outside without thinking of walking inside. it kissed me today, though. finally.

had i been born in an earth that was still forging metal from pure fire and building mountains of gods and goddesses and pyramids in sun-filled lands, i would have believed in the god they believed in. and danced in circles and ellipses and ovals for the god they believed in. the sun. i would have been a believer.

now we ignore it. we hide from it. we slather cream to escape it. we prefer to see the world in black tones under shades of glass to hide our eyes from it. and we live in places, in sun-forsaken places.

it kissed me, and today, i felt like blogging again. imagine that..

days when murder should be allowed

2008-02-12T00:36:00.000-06:00

-when the cashier at cafeteria waits until you've weighed the salad and so on to sift through every cent of change in front of her and you get paged

-when you're paged and nobody picks up and you're paged again and nobody picks up

-when you look like shit and somebody tells you aaaaaw, you look so tired

-when you realize you forgot your white coat at home and borrow the giant dangly coat of the nurse practicioner whom you have to thank effusively every time

-when the intern giving you the consult is a smartass who wants to be a cardiologist

-when your lunch is a bag of crisps and the dollar bill is so crinkled it won't go in the damn vending machine despite the face-up technique

sprouting

2008-02-05T22:59:00.000-06:00

i want a garden. that comes with a gardener and a white raspberry tree.
i had this thought in between dialyzing dead patients today.

blindness

2008-01-31T19:59:00.000-06:00

she looks at the twist in the road behind her. it's a gnarled road, like the branch of a tree that begs for someone to put it out of its misery and wrench it off its hinges. she stumbles. fuck. she tries to keep her eyes glued to the trail in front but...that damned road behind her sweats riveting tears; tears that meander tenderly across the rotting earth. leaving moist wetness all around. why can't she fucking look ahead. she can't see too far because her eyes are weak (despite the glassy contact lenses)but there might be an inkling, there ahead, of something in the light. she's not sure. when is anybody sure? she half-smiles - "sureness" is when you let yourself become brainless. is that terrible? no. maybe not. but how can you tell your brain to become brainless? stop being such a geek, she tells herself. you are lost in the middle of, of somewhere, and you're being such a nerd. look ahead and try to reach that thing in the light. she sighs, one of those sighs that have exasperated people in the past. what if there's another gnarled twisted wailing road ahead. she steps off the trail, muddies her boots and plunges into the darkness. no trail this time, you're half-blind already, might as well go blindly now, and see what you find.
(no it's not pms. i can only write when i'm feeling something, usually when i know i feel something but i'm not sure what it is, like now. been blah for a long time, today, wow, i don't want to stop!)

2008-01-28T23:47:00.000-06:00

i love what i do but i can't do anything else and i love doing so many other things not just what i do does that make sense?
-exhausted.

EXODUS (Gaza)

2008-01-23T01:41:00.000-06:00

for GAZA
and for the cruelty of a world that sits in silence in front of a slow genocide.

night

2008-01-13T13:45:00.000-06:00

#12

2008-01-11T20:27:00.000-06:00

the fellow with me asked, when i told him our elections have been delayed for a wonderful round number of 12 times, why we do that.
i didn't know what to say. he asked a simple question and i was embarrassed.
and then he said sometimes you need a little democracy (!)
piqued, as i usually am when someone non-lebanese refers to lebanese politics with the same cynicism that i would normally employ, i told him, in an attempt to redeem our national pride and international standing:
actually, (arrogant laugh here), we are too much of a democracy....herein lies the problem
sometimes i wonder why i bother with such bullshit (from my part i mean)
stupid pride i guess

geiser

2008-01-10T21:23:00.000-06:00

pause

2008-01-07T23:08:00.000-06:00

i've been wandering aimlessly in my mind for the past few days. the icy winter has swivelled into a stop and melted into autumn or spring. my suitcases sprawled over the grey concrete continue to lie unpacked. the streets are dark and empty with solitude. a black disabled man on a motor chair crosses the light. i can hear the cries of the vicious crows spilling into the dusk. the moon throws a glistening chill to frame their pitch black feathers. i want to dissolve into this night and appear in another. i want to pave the crowded streets and elbow my way in.
where?
somewhere, anywhere with ghosts of my past and of my present. where the smell of the stampeded earth marries the smell of the sea. where the twists and turns of the winding roads stir my nausea, a nausea left behind from my childhood. a familiar nausea. when i feel it, i know i'm home..home, i hesitate to use it, that heavy word.
i want to pave the streets and cross familiar strangers. here all strangers are strange.
i want to pave the street from my grandmother's house to my other grandmother's house and duck my head to avoid the eyes and the hellos. i want to lie in bed and hear the church bells chime and the other church bells chime back in unison and drift back into sleep on the mattress that bores into my hips. i want to see my cousins and their children, i want to see if i've changed.
now i go back to the familiar, and suddenly, i'm the one who's strange.

acid

2008-01-07T00:30:00.000-06:00

i have an inherent dislike of people. it's weird considering what i do, but i am a misanthropist in general. there are a few whom i will always like no matter what, and can always talk to no matter what time it is, because it's almost like talking to myself. but then there are those, those that waiver and beat around the bush, those that want to prove a point, those that are aggressive for no good reason, those that take themselves too seriously, and those that are just plain unlikeable. what get to me most are those that are calculating. that hide behind a facade of smile and civility before they deliver acid while smiling gently, to leave you short of breath for words, fighting for survival. and they keep smiling and make you think you imagined the evil and that you're paranoid. and they keep this plastered composure like a second skin. and i get the urge to crinkle wrinkle it apart, slowly, just to show them that i know. or to see the wrinkles.
and then i think why bother? let them live in the plaster. because that way, they'll never really live.
(yes it's another sunday)

time out (iceland again)

2008-01-06T01:22:00.000-06:00

confession (1)

2008-01-04T23:32:00.000-06:00

she cried and there was nothing i could do about it. and while she was crying i thought about how sleepy i was and how badly i wanted her to stop crying so i could go home. i said it wouldn't hurt. she still cried. and i was even sleepier then. i lay my hand gently on her knee and whispered that it would be ok (she would come back with a tube in her chest and another in her belly), but she'll be ok. she cried some more. i wanted her to stop crying so badly but the avalanche of tears had started. and as i was thinking about more sensitive things to say so i could run home and dive into sleep, my alter-self spoke. i would be there when it's done. she stopped crying. i left the room, and went home, and slept.
and i'm a freaking monster. (she's ok and everything, but still.)

iceland (2)

2008-01-02T18:17:00.000-06:00

those waiting for action pics, hmmmmmmm. maybe we'll strike a deal?

light

2008-01-01T12:40:00.000-06:00

even in fruit..

2007-12-30T23:04:00.000-06:00

moonship

2007-12-25T21:17:00.000-06:00

holiday party

2007-12-17T14:26:00.000-06:00

i went because it couldn't have been worse than last year's party. and it was. so i went, i ate, i talked nonsense, wanted to say hi to some authorities but ended up nodding awkwardly and not being acknowledged (what's wrong with me i work with these people everyday and i can't interrupt their mafiadom to say hi!), introduced N to the crowd, ate some more, drank bland wine, and did my best to look like i was one of them. standing was the problem. walking even more of a problem. standing without a drink at one of these things is like those nightmares when you run to school naked and you know you're naked in the dream but you still run for some godforsaken masochistic reason. i grabbed the wine and cradled it with both hands and sipped at regular short intervals and switched my weight from one leg to the other to convey confidence and nonchalance and a blase attitude. but it kept eating at me that nobody from the higher ranks bothered with me. such apartheidist authorities i swear..and i talked to the secretaries the dieticians the fellows the transcriptionists the japanese Jacques Cluso researcher and the wives of the apartheidists, and still there was a wall. i stole glances at them standing in a circle of power like the free masons guffawing loudly and they had eyes only for each other. i teetered on my Eiffel Tower shoes as i walked past them to the buffet and prayed i wouldn't fall. i thought about infiltrating their circle and saying something like 'hi i'm so happy we're ALL here and i really enjoy talking to you when you talk to me' but then i couldn't make up my mind about which crack in the circle i was to breach. and since i didn't want to be the groupie with the marauding heels i decided to shovel it all into my subconscious knowing it would resurface at a later time like most things do. so i sat with the commoners like me and we talked about the hospital and the hospital and money and more money and N was probably in his own world and i tried hard not to ignore the chinese girl on my left but i couldn't help it she doesn't talk she just speaks but she is sooooo nice (like really really nice, the kind that doesn't exist anymore) and i felt guilty because i told her to show up and now i couldn't talk to her. she was wearing an oscar dress, so clearly she put colossal whopping effort into coming, and i told her the dress was beautiful which assuaged my own guilt. the table of Authority was brimming with laughter and congeniality and jolli-ness while i picked on the fat of the roast beef to find some roast beef and not roast fat. and then they suddenly disapparated like a bunch of wizards, just like they do after conference. why did it bother me? it's like being in highschool and wanting to be one of the cool kids. did i not get over that a long time ago? clearly not. so i squared my shoulders and we left shortly after, and propped my chin up in haughty arrogance and walked out unflinchingly on the eiffel shoes into the cold. then i realized how ridiculous i had been and that they're all just old, miserable black holes of fun. like this freakishly cold abyss of a night outside.
ahem. not really. they're funny actually. quick-witted smart ha-ha funny. but they don't consort with the help...oh well. we all have wounds......

2007-12-13T22:41:00.000-06:00

she stares at the computer screen. there's a ball of fire staring back at her. she inspects the photograph. it was a methodical inspection, like a dissection. there are a few armed men, rifles up. a few wailing men and women walking off the edge of the photograph and into the rubble. she notices that the photographer has included a little pink shoe sprawled on a scalded tyre. out of focus slightly were the people from the red cross, busy. in this photograph there was a little of lebanon in every corner. there were no politicians though. she took a photograph of the photograph and looked at it in her camera. in her photo of the photo, she only saw the fire. she took it again with no flash this time. the fire was still the same. it took up the entire frame, a grim yellow. she could not detail the people really because she could not even spot them next to the fire. she thought about how easy it was to take a photograph of controlled fires, of people, and of dead people. how easy it was nowadays to make headlines. she didn't feel much. but this fire was different from the others. the man that was burned alive had been neutral. neutralized, and he was neutral. neutral in lebanon is like being a eunuch. rare, and castrated by society. he protected the country less than a year ago, he had a hand in making the lebanese army the only commendable element of lebanese society. he did not dip his hands in blood from either side. and yet he burned. she wondered how long it took them to put out that fire. how many politicians and from which side made sorrowful speeches on tv, their mouth breathing over one hundred and twenty three microphones, avenging the death and denouncing evil. just before they immersed their mouth in the fluffy pillows of Phoenicia Hotel. gargling Moet et Chandon. and announcing national mourning only after the son of the burned man claimed that even in mourning there was no justice. so 24 hours later, it was decided the burned man would be mourned. she felt anger once these thoughts came to mind. she wished she didn't care. she did.

freedom

2007-12-11T10:33:00.000-06:00

ice

2007-12-08T13:12:00.000-06:00

reykjavik, agusta's cell phone camera

writer's finesse

2007-12-04T10:04:00.000-06:00

tho tempted, no longer feel like discussing politics on my blog. other people do it much better and with much more finesse. like ziad rahbani, for instance.
(it's in arabic, sorry, and there's no eloquent way to translate ziad because you lose all in the translation)

here's what he had to say

graffitti

2007-12-02T22:33:00.000-06:00

in the art museum i reached the modern art section. there were scribbles. ok. there were monochromatic "paintings" that symbolized something. ok. there were displays of trash bags. ok. there were other stuff. ok. somebody up there thought they were good enough to be art. but then i came across two empty frames. there were signs next to them. and i wondered if this was art. then i mentally kicked myself. then i didn't. so was this some artistic statement? a pictureless frame may be as symbolic as a trash bag i suppose. silence.

i 'heart' chicago

2007-11-30T12:29:00.000-06:00

the wind enters all the way. to your bone marrow. there's chocolate on the wind. i smell it everywhere. there's the vagina bldg (featured above, pls take a guess). there's the umbilicus of millenium park. there's diesel. there's barenboim. there's good food. there's pasts. mistakes. penguins in the aquarium. there's cheese bOrgers on the pier. there's a crazy street named wacker worthy of david lynch. there's people who honk for peace. and people who brave the wind that chills the bone marrow not to see the umbilicus, not to smell the chocolate, not to gaze wondrously at the vagina bldg, not to stroll hold hands cuddle along the mag mile, but to stand in a corner of their world city street with a hand written hand drawn sign to show that they know, and they care.
by the way, and this has nothing to do with chicago. i am editing this post to add this statement as i do not feel like posting another item to say what i want to say. i'm disGusted with my country.

science, or art?

2007-11-26T20:05:00.000-06:00

almost perfect is nice.

sandwich

2007-11-20T22:52:00.000-06:00

i was pondering upon the meaning of life and such today while having (still having) a pyjama day and opened fridge door with anticipation of mixing and matching different food items into grotesquely juicy sandwich (that's how i slide my closet door in morning) but yeah. not happening. lone egg, and nutella. nothing else in that vast country.
it was an existential moment i tell you. neither of them centered, they were on different shelves, each a little off. great hungry photographic opportunity. before we go any further, no. i did not have a boiled egg with dribbles of nutella slithered across it. i closed fridge door and stopped pondering abt life because my hunger was becoming a more pressing issue. life is too complicated anyway, especially when all you have is nutella and an egg.
so i thought i'd blog mindless bloggable non-sense to distract my stomach but it ain't working
this is egg-scruciatingly egg-scrutiating so don't have any egg-spectations today
in case u're wondering what's so bad abt having nutella in fridge, well it's like eve and the apple. i'm on a try-to-resist-the-nutella-in-the-fridge campaign but when all you have for alternative is an egg. well then. poor eve, and they had the balls to blame her too! pfff.

room with a view

2007-11-18T23:07:00.000-06:00

the sea stared. she sat on the edge of the window. her hair started curling. she thought of crawling back in bed. no. the breeze the night the dark waters have engulfed her. she was the city. she stared at herself through the mist of the saltwater wind, dangling her feet into the emptiness of air. beirut.
her best friend (*one of many*) came from boston to see her once. a summer now buried under piles of pain. and of sandy chess games on polluted plastic mediterranean blueness. under a sky like no other. she told her beirut was like richard gere in pretty woman. it screws you and falls in love with you at the same time. she never went back.
the girl with the transforming hair kicked high into the blackness. the air was heavy and again she felt one with the city. some jackasses on the pavement cursed and threatened each other. they immediately evoked their mothers too. then they sat in front of the table for dwarves and plunged into the backgammon. they shared a hookah. apple. giggling girls entered the dorms. the lights of the sea flickered with the waves like a belt on fire. maybe van gogh went crazy in beirut. no. it's just like any city with a sea she told herself. what is ours is unique. it's the best. it's a nirvana. what a load of bull she told herself. the dry thought banished her pleasure with the sea. a veiled woman passed the light and dragged her child who was skipping with his shadow. the man that was there every night lit a cigarette and swallowed the girl with the tight jeans and clankering heels with his eyes. she walked faster. doesn't she know that he's one with the steel bars at the edge of the sea, with the rusted green benches that trip the roller bladers, with the crumbling rocks swarmed with drunken seagulls? he's the watcher that never moves. he's the city too. a mercedes (our taxis are called "service") slows down and slithers with the jeans girl. she walks faster and the car honks. she probably told him to get lost and the "service" roars back into the heart of darkness lined with lights. and palm trees. the city, and the girl, experience a moment like the moment after a sneeze. that refractory moment when you've just exploded and there is that blissful knowledge that there will be a few seconds of quiet respite, before the next explosion.
then the wind grew colder. she closed the large window and bolted it shut. she crawled under the covers. she didn't go to sleep for a long time.

chapter

2007-11-15T16:00:00.000-06:00

i've been sitting at home for the past 3 days. on the same chair. a phone on either side. obssessions of nutella infiltrating my thoughts. i've read all the news in the whole world. i've imagined my allergy coming back. i've analyzed everything into nothingness. i've thought of calling many people. i called only a few. i spoke with him for an hour and 10 minutes. but i was not happy with that. i doodled. i opened many many windows (internet). i read my archives all over again. i analyzed my archives all over again. i cringed at some of the posts i've written but did not erase them as testimony to how mediocre i can be. this post will be another testimony.
i'm in pain. i've been napping continuously and uninterruptedly. i have a memory and something about it scares me. i do not know if it really happened or if i dreamed it. seriously.
ok my break is over.
i think the bible took less time to write (than my freaking chapter)
time out

the better doctor

2007-11-12T00:17:00.000-06:00

she is sitting close to me, staring at me intently. i was warned about her 5 minutes ago. she has a dry right eye. she needs a special eye drop. i do not know any specials;
she stomps her foot and asserts that i'm out to get her. that there is some giant miscommunication mostly due to me. that she does not want to talk to me anymore and crosses her arms tightly around her chest. she jumps up and sits on the chair that is as far away from me as possible. she assures me she wants nothing more to do with me. she is belligerent. she mumbles
"(inaudible) is a better doctor than you"
my ears tickle and i am green with jealousy and i have to ask "who is a better doctor than me?" thinking she meant the other fellow and wanting to confirm
she turns to me passionately, purses her lips and spells out:

"J-E-S-U-S. Jesus is a better doctor than you!!!"

lol
i can live with that.

2007-11-09T12:28:00.000-06:00

i've been staring at the screen trying to come up with a title for this picture and i cannot think of anything cool. "view from a bag", "i want to be carried" and "the mother" are all i came up with so let's leave it "untitled" just like a picasso.
i was in san francisco striding across china town walking like i was walking on china because of vanity and bloody feet (new shoes, bloody feet) and i saw the child in the above photo being chugged along in embroidery.
yes i was enamored by the beautiful image and that is why i took the photo.
but when you have bloody feet that are torturing you it is natural to want to be suddenly whisked off your feet, serenely wrapped in a beautiful enclave of fresh cotton, and carried around a spectacular city while displaying tiny bits of your new shoes, no?
no of course it didn't happen, silly. but really. why do people want to grow up?
i walked in my department the other day with a lollipop. i love those red cherry lollipops that give you a tiny bit of tasteless gum in the end but are telling you that they're not over they still exist and i was subjected to many amused, puzzled, disbelieving looks. why? because. an adult should enjoy a lollipop in private. unless you are 80 and demented and in a wheelchair and then it's okay again. but there is a 70 year lollipop-less gap you have to get through first. or, calamity of calamitites, you may expire before that. think about it. maybe this should be a facebook group...

2007-10-27T16:51:00.000-05:00

Ahmadinejad is pure evil! Terror has a new name, and it's nearly unpronounceable.
Bill Maher

sorry J

2007-10-24T11:44:00.000-05:00

je sais que tu m'aimes. tu dois savoir que je t'aime. 29 ans, presque trente, et c'est tjrs le volcan en ebullition. et puis, c'est la paix et les retributions. pourquoi je me le demande assez souvent. tu as vraiment le don de me faire sortir de mes gongs. a 30 ans, c'est minable que je ne peux pas me controler. mais tu dois savoir que je t'aime. e-no-rme-ment.
j'avais tjrs crue que je prenais plus de mon pere. d'ailleurs c'est vachement faux. et voila pourquoi, le volcan. on est rigoureusement semblable, toi et moi. des creatures d'instinct. d'emotion vacillante. d'idealisme simple. de noir ou de blanc. de non-diplomacie. la non-diplomacie de l'honnetete fragile. mais aussi d'insecurite. oui, je l'admets, de l'insecurite qui quasi-empoisonne la vie avec des rictus de bouderies sauvages et de jeux enfantins.
tu dois savoir qu'en matiere d'estime, tu portes celle qui est la plus haute dans mon monde. ces choses-la, on ne se les dises pas a voix portante. mais je voulais te l'ecrire. parce que je t'estime, je t'admire, et je t'aime. au dessus de tout. barrant ma facon dechirante de te le prouver..
je voudrais te dire, mais je vais te l'ecrire parce que je ne peux pas le dire, comme de tas de choses que je ne pourrais jamais dire, que tu es une personne d'autre timbre. tu es la plus forte et la plus douce. je sais que tu m'aimes et que tu t'inquietes. et tu ne peux pas le dire car le volcan eclaterait. mais dis-le moi directement. ce qui te preoccuppe, dis-le moi sans precedent, et promesse, je n'eclaterai pas. pas besoin de cacher que tu t'inquietes, que tu m'aimes.
dire que j'aurai 30 ans et ces boutons de sensibilite stupide, ils sont tjrs la. et ces fleches de sang empoisonnes, fleches de mon sang flamboyant, je te les lance a l'Olympique, visant en pleine vitesse, pour les enfoncer dans ta vulnerabilite transparente. pardonne-moi. c'est stupide, c'est instinctuel, c'est mon instinct stupide.
je suis fiere de toi. je t'aurai choisie, oui, toi, si j'avais le choix. j'aime que tu es accomplie, que tu es pratique, que tu es raisonnable, que tu es solide, que tu es sage d'une sagesse exceptionnelle. que tu es debordante d'intelligence de vie. que tu aimes comme un enfant. que tu es si non-egoiste. c'est rare, le non-egoisme. que tu as l'avancisme, que tu as cette ame intrepide. de faire le meilleur d'un monde de morbidite. j'aime ta douceur fragile. j'aime tes yeux qui scintillent d'espiegleries et d'amour. j'aime ton rire, et, cette chose bien plus rare, ton sourire (ok c'est une blague:) j'adore ton tiramisu, et j'ai l'eau a la bouche quand je pense a ton "me7sheh malfouf" :)
je t'aime et j'ai tord de te faire de la peine. je t'embrasse.

blebs

2007-10-16T23:25:00.000-05:00

i'm possessed. i look at my skin and i see blotches. blebs. a tiny red dot i spot first. i think nothing of it. it starts to grow and stretch my skin and inflate like an angry balloon. the new tiny red dot neighboring it suddenly bumps it and they merge and inflate even more and suddenly the conglomeration of red dots have taken over and united into one monstrous entity that is infiltrating my body like an alien. i am an alien. i know how the elephant man felt. i have no control and i, yes i, am scared. it keeps coming back. i can see them now forging their path along my skin trying to find each other like long-lost lovers that are monstrous nonetheless. and i see them forming the big evil One. i check the inside of my mouth and my tongue. nothing there yet. if i see the red dot in my mouth i think i will scream. i pop another benadryl. until when. go see the doctor they say. he says. i hate doctors. they will poke me everywhere and inject my own blood into my skin and still they will have no answer. maybe tomorrow.
i told them i'm allergic to church in a cool conspirational moment. well maybe the church is allergic to me. or is it something in the air. i see another one grow now but they have become more subdued like a people on opium or patients under anesthesia.
i do it to people all the time. don't think twice. subdue them under the influence of the white coat. scowl at them for not coming to see me. i would hate to have me as a doctor. i think. the benadryl is kicking in and i no longer burn but i still look like an alien or rather like a boiling pot of stewed tomatoes. it is my own body fighting my own body. and i am watching it. until when?
i want to scratch but i will not because i want to resist the body snatcher. i will prevail in spirit and let my body mount its own revolution. and i want my skin back, please.

legend

2007-10-09T09:10:00.000-05:00

Che Guevara Tribute (Hommage au Che)
Uploaded by SlashyGuiGui

soul

2007-10-09T08:52:00.000-05:00

I want to live where soul meets body and let the sun wrap its arms around me and bathe my skin in water cool and cleansing

And feel, feel what its like to be new
(DCFC)

2007-10-07T00:00:00.000-05:00

i woke up from a stupor recently. it had been going on for quite some time. when i did wake up i thought: wow. i've missed out.
now i feel the joints i feel the creaky bones i even feel the heat hurt happiness slowly suffusing the heart - or whatever it is in the chest that makes you feel. i feel the elation i feel the distress.
distress. there's the rub.
venture out of the controlled envt, and you live.
to live. to have a heart that beats like a metronome. but more importantly. to have feeling wrap itself around the sinewy muscles squeezing blood all the way to your kidneys to your toes and take over your robotic machinations. feelings can make your norepinephrine squirm out of hiding and beat the drums out of your galloping heart. they can make it stop too. forever. and ever and ever and ever. i want to lock feeling and keep it out of my voice my eyes my clenching fist under the mahogany table. but discerning people have discerning ears and discerning eyes. Feeling infiltrates and is transmitted.
dogs can smell fear. so can the human brain.

fusion

2007-09-28T14:00:00.000-05:00

i look at myself in the pink when i'm sullen. hormones. this bldg is a reflection of the power of the hormone. on the woman, at least. men, there's more or less one hormone that's significant. the woman is a conglomerate though. of hormones that spin her like a heavy-duty rag in a washing-machine. over and over and over. so one day she's in the pink window the next in the green. the worst are the yellows where you feel something is brewing but you know it's nothing except you feel this nothing should be a something. in med terms it's like a low-grade inflammation that is non-specific and non-pinnable and infiltrates your brain and your mood. yellow is morose. fatigue and chronic sleepiness. on yellow days i understand the woman patient who trudges in demanding "vitamins" to ease the pain and boost the energy. and the more than morose mood. yellow is definitely blah-liness. that's it. no better word.
but anyway this bldg when i saw it catapulted the above similes and metaphors etc. greens are the days when the brain is so sharp and you are so quick, and you just get things. like you've been infused with a stimulant. don't know which hormone does that. nobody knows. so for a woman (and maybe am being too presumptuous here), at least for me this bldg is like my days with colours that are moods but I have more colours for sure depending on the intricate interplay of the Hormones. and this is a nutty post written on a yellow day if you haven't noticed already........ the shadow of the flags....hmmm. i was trying to come up with a mind-blowing metaphor for the shadow of the flag related to looming prospects and towering factors but the only thing i can enumerate in this yellow un-imaginative, blah-ed and fatigued day is that they were just flags reflected in the glass and they were in the way so they were in the picture. that's it.
be back on a green day.

creative soliciting

2007-09-21T17:42:00.000-05:00

ma'am, sir, ma'am,
(extends hand with upturned hat)
can u please help; i need to complete the other half of my eye-glasses..

indeed, the man was wearing half of an eye glass!

anybody listening?

2007-09-07T01:01:00.000-05:00

finally, an official accusation by the Human Rights Watch.but what difference does it make? nada de nada.

scoop

2007-09-05T00:31:00.000-05:00

i want to scoop a perfect day just like we do with fresh water and bottle it up. and let it out insidiously on a day that i would like to murder into my subconsciousness. paint silver into the black.

there are perfect days out there, the song was right.

Iowa-ism

2007-08-31T11:35:00.000-05:00

This post is dedicated to Iowa and to the joys of paradoxical things in life -
and to all those who have laughed and grimaced when I would emphatically assert that Iowa (well, Iowa City) is a hub of progressiveness-slash-liberalism-slash-cultural hobnobism-slash-and occasional drunken stupor
Granted it's Des Moines we're talking about in this article, but it's Iowa

snow

2007-08-30T09:00:00.000-05:00

i have just completed 'snow'. it took me months to read it all. months. harry potter was a one night affair, but the nobel-prize-winning-contoversy-stirring-pamuk book was a never-ending fiasco.
and now i'm not satisfied. it spread civilized desolation. not apocalyptic post-nuclear warfare desolation, just the desolation of the human soul. it predicts bleakness where there is none, yet. and where there is still no bleakness, it can still be prevented. in my opinion. maybe i'm the romantic optimist anti-passivist.
it reminded me of another snowy, or rather, icy book, that we had to read in school.
"one day in the life of ivan denisovitch" about a concentration camp in siberia. the entire book spanned one day and you read about the piece of bread that slithered its way down ivan's throat. in 'snow' you read about people's thoughts and their non-actions. what puzzled me was that almost everyone could read everybody else's thoughts too, but they still acted the way the writer told you they were going to act. maybe i have a problem with the whole chechov-ian school, maybe i just want to read a prized novel that will also give me pleasure. lasting pleasure. hope? why not. real life displays so many excerpts of pessimistic nihilism and indifference, but since it's real, there's no end yet, and when there's no end, there's hope.
this may sound counter-intuitive, but sometimes i wish literature actually emulated real life.

sunday

2007-08-26T19:14:00.000-05:00

i've decided i like st louis.

2007-08-23T00:42:00.000-05:00

*sigh*
life is good..like poetry..

mammonism

2007-08-18T07:45:00.000-05:00

last night my eyes were bursting, my head was screaming, and there were people around me everywhere. but before that happened, i was subjected to a conversation. i would love to write more about that but i can't in the presence of googliness and googledom. my future would be at stake.
so my head screamed. my nose, sinuses, etc were pounding for a way out of that sickly head.
actually they're echoing now.
with all the commotion and the glittering CWE hacking itself around me, i (once again), detached. you know, the out-of-body thing. it was not boredom, not indifference, and not the company. no, it was the stress, i think. stress can do peculiar things to a person. so i let my head scream, my sinuses call out, and floated up. it was not the alcohol either, by the way, i only had one drink. i saw myself in conversation, in oooh mode and then in aaah mode. i was a little taken aback by how much i was talking, come to think of it. there was no stopping me, oh no. no wonder my head screamed. i saw the moustached man cradling his beer in the corner. in my country he would be a spy. here, he was just lonely. but his moustache looked so suffocating in this heat! whoever came up with the idea of a moustache, really? we all take it for granted, but the moustache was created for aesthetic purposes and conquered the Old World at one point.

so i've been told to focus in my writing, and i'll try. where was I? yes, the moustached man with the beer in the corner. the fountain underneath the terrace shivering under the moon. the music floated up with me and my out of body self danced with the killers while my incessantly talking grounded self kept talking. schizophrenia? we're all schizophrenic and normal. as long as we control the switches. there was an atmosphere of slurring. of swaying. a boy asked me for a cigarette (i smile here because that was very mrs robinson-ish) and my friend handed him one. the girls he was talking to looked like all the other girls on the terrace. he was trying hard. he sweated. i blinked and saw my palm extending towards the palm reader. he said the same thing he says every single time, but maybe he knows because he reads my blog. i look for the lebanese man that is always found there, with his bracelet, on friday nights, after his coffee from the cartel. tonight he's unseen. then i remembered why i had floated up. so i left my palm in the hands of the crowd and i thought about the conversation in the afternoon. he had become tired, so tired. disillusioned too.
mammon is the god of money and he has been talked about in literature. mammonism, money worship. and that is what mammon does to a man. disillusionment. he is tired and he needs help, me. mammon would certainly help pay my bills, my superfuous extravagance, my ubiquitous accidents of life and fate. but where is the kidney (i'm not crazy, i love the kidney). where are my dreams?
i finally saw the video wael sent me. she was a lawyer and she is a photographer, now. she said she likes to take photos of people that tell you about a place. she also said she had been to all seven continents. she looked so happy. few people look happy, and by that i do not mean 'not depressed'. i mean happy with happiness mirroring in the camera lens from their eyes. i need to grow up, i told myself. be practical with practical goals practical routes. or route, rather. but as i grow older i relaize that i cannot grow up, that i am one of those people stuck in the dreams and sins of their adolescence. and i floated up to think quietly about the looming notion of giving myself up to mammon, and about growing up. most people do it.
doctors earn some of the highest salaries in this country. occasionally they help people. i know, i'm so cynical, but i am becoming disillusioned too. so i floated around the terrace of people, around the girl posing in front of the fountain, around the Plaza that towered over the terrace before the glint of the moon, and i decided it was time for an eclipse. today i need to think that i am in control, i push the wheels of my life, along the unknown serpentine of a road that i will trace. so i will turn my phone off and think. and write.

fiction?

2007-08-13T23:05:00.000-05:00

reality meets fiction in the brain. they fret and fidget like two devils in a cage. outcome? fiction.

she looks over her shoulder into his eyes. she sees a glimmer of what she'd been hoping to see. secretly hoping to see. she does not tell anyone. a secret is a secret. the eyes look away once they've noticed that she's noticed. when they look back at her they're glazed again, with the look of studied blank polite indifference. her mind twitches painfully. it was her imagination - but no- it was not. he does what she does. all the time. she veils admiration, she sweeps it away from her eyes from her mouth from anything outwardly visible. and wears safe polite friendliness. but eyes speak out on their own, sometimes. she's faltered and he falters now. she lets her dark eyes settle over, into his blue ones. books describe moments suspended in time. they say everything around you fizzles into background noise. but she felt the fat beads of sweat meander down her neck. she felt the humidity heavy around her. she saw the smoke emanating from her cigarette. it made its way towards him and spiralled into his smoke as he took another puff. he makes her want to smoke because it's sexy to smoke. a cigarette. she thinks about how ridiculous how ridiculously ridiculous that is. how she pretended to fumble with his lighter until he took it from her, cranked it open in one fluid motion and met her halfway, crossing fragments of conversation to reach her tilted neck and slanted eyes. now, she looks at him, armed with her cigarette. she lets him see that he puzzles her. she asks him with her eyes. he responds briefly into hers. she feels him leaning imperceptively in her direction, ever so slightly. she is sure she got to him. people rarely talk without words unless they are mute. that was not a joke, they really do not. for her a beautiful poem does not need words. words have a way of breaking poetry. he glances at her, stuck. she sees that he's struggling his shyness. he stubs his cigarette while looking at her still. she feels she is on the hills of a western movie and could have sworn somebody spat a piece of chewed tobacco at that very moment. and yes, her heart sped and skipped. she had been so sure it would never do that again. never, and she had told everyone who was close to her, had asserted in dramatic overtones that her heart had been baptized into steel.
it skipped again as his eyes were silent with something, maybe a silent question as they gazed at her.
the fact that her heart did that funny little beat, scared her.
she broke the silence with a word.
'what?' she threw at him.
and he responded with words.
she saw herself scolding herself, shaking her head in exasperation. she did not understand. no, she did. that funny little beat had really scared her.
his words, of course, were polite. 'excuse me?' he said.
behind his veil, there was a hint of understanding, though.

evil

2007-08-12T22:56:00.000-05:00

sweat's pouring out. how can the thermostat say 74 while the sweat is pouring. missouri summers. nothing is working. the new funky hoover, not. car lights, not. earring, lost. futon, stuck. white pants, stained. my mind, not. inspiration, evaporating.
energy, negative. definitely negative.
the evil eye. do i believe? dunno. deep down i do.
or maybe there are days like this, filled with frustrations and damnations and busted machinery.
tomorrow is another day
and did i ever mention, god is in the details?
nevermind!

farms etc.

2007-08-04T15:49:00.000-05:00

the country i think. farm-ing-ton. reflections-from-farm-ing-ton. is this an inside joke among the gods? or is it an otherwordly message sweeping across the universe to help my free will decide? is this the marriage of free will and pre-destiny? is it my feeble attempt to make something of what should be nothing?
a trip to the countryside. not little cookie-cutter rural Walmart america. the real countryside. with crookedly swaying oak trees, cherry blossoms, mulberry pathways, bursting rosebuds and swiveling sycamores. a pond in the backyard of every character home. a hospital employee as a self-appointed area guide. he missed one home-owner but gave me the middle names and grand-daughter names of every single splatteringly rich human with a home on any piece of land in the area. thrown in the beige leathery interior of a chevrolet truck, AC blisteringly cool, we circled the picket fences around houses towering with affluence and steeple roofs, staring into huge facades of shimmering glass reflecting the grazing heat of melting grass. cows huddling in the sun. horses tehthered next to crumbling barns reaching out to the open depths of tantalizing waters of an unnamed lake. 200 millionaires and 4 billionaires. life is choice. land is what it's all about. they chose this land. more millionaires than doctors. we are on a winding road gliding into a forest of sun rays filtering through the perfectly aligned branches of fir trees. i heard scraps of mancini knowing it was all in my head but i did not care i continued to hear it as we crossed the tunnel of thick trees stretching their arms upwards in a gesture of stoic patience. how patient are trees. puppets of soil sun and water. i would not be a good tree. across the railroad track and highway 67 lay the historic 2 street-ed downtown that is being stripped brutally of its identity to be trampled into a hub of shopping malls, kohl's and, it's official folks, starbucks! he said it with a broad grin that showed the chipped tooth in the right lower quadrant of his mouth. as I was young and easy under the apple boughs about the lilting house and happy as the grass was green dylan thomas said but the discrete charm of quiet solitude may grind me away into nothingness into a unilateral paranoia of civilization. no it would not do. the city and its mad streets are made for me. i will close eyes under shadowy branches of country trees, i will rake my naked arms across bristling pastures of gentle grass....maybe two days a week. max.
no. i want to run to my car in lurkingly dangerous nights. i want to stumble upon unknown movies in a shopping mall. i want to sauce magazine restaurants and google map addresses. i want to live in the shadows of buildings with names. and hear their whispers. i want to watch the cows and the horses. on my screen with commentary.
enough. i want to call friends and meet at the pool right off the edge of the highway. i'll figure out a way. that's what a friend, whom (if you're reading you'll know yourself) i will dub FC (fortune cookie), told me. i believe him, but i have no choice but to believe him, really...

the passage

2007-07-31T23:56:00.000-05:00

my first fortune cookie read: your future will be harmonious
my friend's fortune cookie read: your friend is about to reveal an exciting secret to you
my second fortune cookie said: soon you will share a moment of glory
the only reason i ate a third fortune cookie was because i love the taste of that wooden sweetness that stays in your mouth after chinese food.
can't remember what it said, smthg about a passage and it ending well
i think

flame

2007-07-26T21:25:00.000-05:00

there is a flame that burns from your inner intestines to the bony concrete of your ribcage to the imperfect symmetry of your shoulder blades. why do they call them blades anyway. as i was saying, the flame. it simmers most of the time but once in a rugged blue moon it rears its beautifully ugly head and summons my inner demons they could be angels to move me. i like to think of it as a volcano that erupts and the flames lick its falling edges into fiery molten oblivion until tomorrow - when the liquid fire is immortalised into stone, again. what is she raving about another post about the disjointed detached scattered almost-ideas in her brain. no i think i have it. there is a concept that is forming in my mind i am trying to sculpt it in the myopic eye of my mind but it slips away like dew on waking petals. stravinski in my ear and monotonous salsa in cafe speaker not helping. i will make it thru stravinki (i missed an s) and not give way to my playlist again. anyway, the flame. are you following? follow me but i don't know where i'm going. especially today. the flame. do you get these moments when you're grasping your future in your mind and it all looks so easy. then you lose it. the flame burns the edges of the cold mist around the lethargy the translucence the murky rings of water engulfing the every-day and somehow creates solid stone from fluid abstraction. the sky's the limit he said spoken like a true american but he's from congo the flames consumed him long ago. the sky of a farmland what sky is he talking about. the flame is burning today and i see the outlines maybe it will open a wardrobe door into an evil land. but even the evil land with eternal snow had the burgeoning breath of sun melt it into goodness, at the author's discretion, one day. i am still gibbering abstract nonsense am i not? where is my mind way out in the water see it swimmin' they said.
ok. i'm talking about rising passions ambitions emotions that mushroom you. a flash of a flame of a passion of a moment that you want to stay. and you know it won't. but you want to keep the fresh scent of the memory of it like a hint of a perfume of a person that is no longer there. trust me he said. keep smiling he said. should i trust a person who tells me to trust him?
what flames eat him i wonder? the clinking devouring flames of green dollar bills that may eat my wandering passions too. no no no the flame of me my flame will be mine it may burn me but it will be mine. my passion my ambitions my bleeding sweat of bleeding years. my melodramatic flame. my ideas. my ideals. let them engulf me burn me, as long as they burn!
oufff!

plastic fantastic

2007-07-24T01:14:00.000-05:00

because we were sheep in another life
read about how plastic spastic me7n-astic we are in this bbc article about a novel endeavour in lebanon

2007-07-21T21:47:00.000-05:00

a voice quivers in my left ear
and strums its way undulating to my - it bypasses the curls around the bend first - right ear
fairouz
fairouz pulls the elastic around my heart
pulls the curtain before my misty eyes
i hear the past
i hear the bells
it hits me like a wave
that second when i'm drenched with understanding that swings by me
one second of infinity
thoughts rush in
and leave

a few things

2007-07-21T01:08:00.000-05:00

a few of my least favourite things:

injecting vit d or anything else for that matter into the unsuspecting belly - and sometimes a more unsuspecting bladder - of rats (never knew rats could be cute and white i thought they were all about black biting viciousness)

excuse me's 5 miles away

morning smiles and cracks about 'driving the elevator' (gimme a break!)

japanese guy with blumbering english vocab of 10.5 words announcing to the world that today rouba was a little "under the weather" (in prophetic proportions! did he get hit by an apple while watching my fair lady?)

the 'where i've been' and 'hence where you should go' diatribes of the new-worldly types

drug reps (but i really really like their brownies god forgive me)

the creepy lady who crosses the corridor outside my lab and leaves a trail of cigarette smoke and her eyes tell me 'i hate you all' but i don't know why and nobody knows her name and what and what about her

stuffing my comforter into the duvet bag (i call it sleeping with the enemy)

talking about finding a 'mamsa7a', the lebanesey equivalent of towel to wipe the floor, but it has to be ugly and grey chafey and amenable to squeezing. if walmart does not have it despite its border trades then it does not exist in the US and that is the end of the matter really i can use a sponge or two sponges as runner-ups mom PLEASE (love u mom)

pounds and inches and feet and fahrenheits

feet (the ones with toes)

preformed hot chocolate with tons of sugar to make it irreversibly repugnant

tofu in all its forms and metaphysical transformations

did i mention waking up early? well yes that mostly with the repercussions of it on my daily activities (or lack thereof)

enough bitching, going to sleep

a squeeze

2007-07-19T00:30:00.000-05:00

i'm in a bit of a squeeze. i'm looking for a job. cv lies listless, incomplete, by my side. need to rave about myself where i've been what i've done and with whom. my life open to office strangers, going once, going twice, still going twice..it's hard to talk about yourself to people who expect to hear you talk about yourself. to split compartmentalize dissect, and worse. to summarize yourself. sell yourself in brief roman-type-lettered bulletted black ink on powdered paper that will stop short of sounding the trombone to announce you. and no matter how embellished your future has become through sweat and sweat the transient missteps (steps, for anyone who knows what i'm talking about in the medical profession, haunt you forever) of the past still have to sit there, at the forefront, refusing to be budged.
yes. the cv is one of those sticky places where you cannot erase your past and not only that, but you have to splatter it shamelessly everywhere, too.
cv = masochism = self-prostitution in black ink = arrested development = forced conformism = waste of too much ink = paper aristocracy = dehumanization
paper still lying in same incomplete mess staring venomously. *feed me*

dogville

2007-07-16T17:17:00.000-05:00

this is my neighborhood cafe. where everyone i know, or don't know, hangs out.
this is also where all the dogs in the world hang out. the ones that are not in my building, that is.
they are the most unfriendly nasty little creatures ever. the more they bark the more they're petted. the day i took that picture one twisted devil of a black dog was showing his teeth and gnarling and salivating and almost chewed my, ummm, my behind. and everyone around him was beaming with appreciation for some cute factor i failed to see. grrrrrrr.
this is where they will take over the world. just you wait. and despite all propaganda and peer pressure i will not be subject to guilt over being a dog-hater.
why can't dogs hang out with dogs and men with men?
efffffft.

now what

2007-07-15T02:40:00.000-05:00

there comes a point in life when decisions levitate and lurch around you when you want to be floating in the numbness of limbo but no they are relentless like the wind that seeps underneath the tightly sealed door of your bedroom and finds itself under your covers to glance a chill of awakening on your skin and disrupt your dreams. the chill wind is here. deal with it. damned decisions. the hell do i know where the wind will take me in 10 20 30 years. my weekends i want. my time alone i want. my time to take my time, i want. city life i want. visas be f---ed. cows i will not live with and corn i will not breathe. i cannot sleep because of that one day. the day i may wake up and look at a place i've slept and worked, and want to get the HELL out of. don't want no cabin fever.
where shall i blink wipe tears start smiles in the next 5 years?
the path what path will take me i have to carve it but i am tired and my roots are aching.

addictions and sleeplessness

2007-07-13T16:05:00.001-05:00

"Nancy Drew meets Philip Marlowe, and the result is pure nitro. Why is Veronica Mars so good? It bears little resemblance to life as I know it, but I can't take my eyes off the damn thing."
Stephen King

istanbul (not Constantinople)

2007-07-11T23:22:00.000-05:00

i'd give my indigo converse shoes to go back to you and have your fresh sour yoghurt with someone at hand to sprinkle powdered sugar with every bite i take while i lean over the sticky ramp of the ferry that is crossing the blue bosphorus, exotic Asia on one side, rich Europe on the other. and with every passing mosque at your shores i think it is either the Sultanamet or the Sulaymaniyyeh for the domes are all about polished fairy-tale Gaussian geometry and the minarets shoot up menacingly into your sky all in the same mysterious fashion lending a thousand and one flavour to a city of a thousand and one nights and i tried very hard to avoid cliches at this point but i found that i cannot come up with a better description myself so i'll leave wiser older probably more original souls describe this fascinating simple exotic crass sexy narrowminded delicious floating divided almost forgotten city in the belly-button of the orient
more to come once life settles down a little

Viens J't'emmene au Vent

2007-07-10T01:58:00.000-05:00

headlights

2007-07-09T01:03:00.000-05:00

my old vaccuum cleaner was an accidental inheritance from an ex. it has long since paid its dues but remains a colossal structure that rolls on wheels and has a formidable neck and a voice equivalent to pavarotti's in the vaccuum world, but like a dying star that expands before it dies and sheds amber-ish sparks yet is grayish cold and quite useless at its center, it has more bark than bite nowadays. so rather than continue my weekly charade and parade of the ghost of my vaccuum cleaner (heavy ghost) across all various surfaces of my apartment including the spectrum of different height carpets and rough vantage points and sharp swerving corners that are left with even more dust post- than pre-vaccuum era, i decided to walmart it and buy a new one. of course it had to be a hoover since it is a truth universally acknowledged (in lebanon) that any vaccum cleaner is a hoover and vice versa by definition. hence all other brands are vaccuum-wannabes and have not been officially embraced as real vaccuum cleaners, just like tissue and kleenex, or pads and kotex for that matter. among the hoover family there are those that have been more naturally endowed than others and hover in price and attitude over those that look syndromic or have no personality, shrinking away on the bottom shelf groveling for somebody to snatch them off their wheels. i went for the one that was named after a fast plane (mach 3) - or was it a men's razor - anyway some fast and sleek instrument that grazes fuzzy surfaces. it also looked fun and so blue.
today hoover was still in box after a week of incubation in the still fresh walmart carton, and then he was unleashed onto the dusty terrain.
and upon flipping the pages of the long and winding instruction manual, i came upon a chapter entitled "headlights"
what is the world coming to?
i'm still looking for the chapter entitled "flying"