As We Digress: Life is Elsewhere

I do not intend to sound the least bit racist, but I'm going to state a fact that has been concerning me. There are two girls who attend classes with me who wear the niqab (or burqa), but that's not my problem, I'm pro-choice. I'm just a bit confused when one of them comes up to me and says hello. Because I only came to know their names this week, and it takes a great deal of effort for me not confuse their names so I won't offend them by implying that all women who wear the niqab are the same to me. I really do not intend to make fun of those ladies, or the way they practice religion, I'm just saying I'm confused. Another thing that bugs me is writing identical P's; I never get this right. If I want to write any word that has two P's, like apply, there's no way they're going to be identical! I want to know what an expert would say about that. But enough about school. Today I won't be talking about school, or complaining about school, or all the things I dislike. Today, I reflect.

It's one thing to vent, regardless of the manner with which you vent (whether it sounds too dark, or disappointed because eventually, you know exactly how it's going to end, but you vent any way)and another thing to be dissatisfied. One of the things that perhaps really get to me is how some people suffer from chronic dissatisfaction. I admit, I personally suffered from "understandable" dissatisfaction, simply because 4 years in college have never been a challenge in my life, except for my very last semester, and I had too much to offer to a place that didn't need me to do anything. This is understandable dissatisfaction. The dissatisfaction I cannot understand, not even remotely, is how people who have certain things that they know are good, and perhaps cannot get any better, are always looking for something else. People who sit with you in a restaurant thinking of other places they could be right then, married people who have a good thing going (I'm aware that some married couples made colossal mistakes choosing their spouses, obviously I'm not talking about them), I'm talking about the type of relationships our grandparents and some of our parents have/had, 40-year anniversaries and such, people who, whatever they have going for them at the moment, are always looking, tirelessly, for other things to do. This hollowness I do not understand. Nothing seems to fill them up, so they always look for what they don't have, thinking their happiness, or satisfaction lays there. It's like someone who found water in a desert, not an oasis, just water, and sees mirages, and follows those mirages, only to find that they were nothing but mirages, moving on to other mirages, and so on. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not for sitting on our asses doing nothing to achieve successes, or strive for a happy life, this stuff doesn't come easily, I am aware that they are causes worth living for, and causes worth dying for. I'm with wasting our lives on worthy causes, be them individual, collective, or universal causes. Hint: mirages are not causes.

Money and happiness, and the way they are associated or dissociated; I think our lives would've been different if money was measured by how much it weighs. That way, you can get more for less. I am not, by any means, a materialistic person, and the things I buy are sold by people who want to make profit, so sometimes conformity with the system is the only way to go. But sometimes I wish we still lived in a time where countries or individuals exchanged things. If I had a farm and had lots of chicken that produce lots of eggs, what's the harm of my going up to a cow farm and exchange those eggs for some dairy? Of course, the things that I need are neither dairy nor egg. They're mostly pieces I like to keep for the rest of my life, and as a legacy for my offspring, if I ever procreate. And from this, stems my need to buy certain things, things that I think will somehow enrich my life, or perhaps give me emotional reassurance. Suddenly, the act of buying things has a more profound meaning, because now it's not the urge you get to buy things all the time, it's what you want to buy and what value it adds to your life.

On a lighter note, I think cab drivers who complain about how traffic-jammed the way to your destination is are flat out assholes. If you're going to your job or class, you're also stuck in traffic, and there's a good chance you're going to be late, I wonder how it would make the cab driver feel if you start complaining about how late you are going to be, or how ugly your job or major is. People do not seem to grasp the mechanism of how things work. You do your job, I do mine, and everything falls into place. Fail to do so, and things are not only going to be out of place, but all over the place.

And for those Milan Kundera fans out there, yes, the title is a tribute to his book.

As We Digress: Food for Thought

Long days make you become numb. Those long, hideous days where you cannot stop and think of things you like, listen to your favorite song, talk to your friends, or even sleep will make you lose a shred of your humanity each and every day. Life as a bum definitely sucks, but life as another head behind a desk in an excruciatingly small cubicle isn't the answer either.

The morbidity of people around you emerges after the mask of nicety melts off their ugly, ugly faces. Only when certain things happen do those faces appear, usually they're the same moments that help you discover genuine, nice human beings.

Psychosomatic disorders are disorders in which mental factors play a significant role in the development, expression, or resolution of a physical illness. Can there be psychosomatic disorders for emotion? Just because you feel it, doesn't mean it's there.

Disappointment, and other forms of grievance, is caused by fellow human beings, not things. Similarly, happiness depends on your human surroundings, but first and foremost depends on you. Be the source of your own happiness by loving yourself, and this will all come back to you when you're the target of your own happiness; direct your happiness inwardly. If you don't think you deserve happiness, no one will strive to make you happy.

Just because you feel it, really doesn't mean it's there. Emotional psychosomatic disorders.

We strive for happiness, some people die looking for happiness, it's a cause worth living for, and a cause worth dying for.

There's always room for re-evaluation and re-assessment and getting things right, but not all of us have the courage to do all of this. Actually, most of us are too lazy to fix broken things in our lives, but for once perhaps one should pluck up the courage and face things as is. Yes, the brutal truth will then stare you in the face like the scary monster you feared was under your bed when you were a kid, but this time it's real, it's materialized and your parents aren't home for you to climb into bed with them, they're not home to tell you it's all going to be alright because they know that you're the best kid out there and you'll do things and go places, although one wishes it was that easy; the genuine, unconditional love, the security and reassurance, but eventually we all leave "the nest" and fly on our own, and most of us make it.

It is a real blessing to be surrounded by human beings to whom you matter, it's something some may not quite grasp because they have never felt it, but to have someone to care for you unconditionally is probably the most priceless human type of relationship.

It is true that happiness is a cause worth dying for, but people don't die of their own accord. The road to happiness is paved with ugliness, lies, and hardship, it is no lie when people say that someone has died looking for happiness, this stuff can kill you.

Will humanity outlive happiness?

This, perhaps, is not new to you, but it certainly is to others. It may not make sense, or sound too idealistic, but that's because one needs to fully realize these truths, to have gone through a good deal of, well, a good deal of trouble (although a four-letter word comes to mind) to come to such conclusions. But the truths are laid out for you to examine and to re-examine, to see if that's what you want, or if you want something else out of life, or to see if you don't want anything out of this life, or if you want to watch the world burn, it's all a matter of perspective. Personally, I like to believe there are martyrs who die for happiness instead of wars, countries, gods or religions, I believe happiness is a bigger concept in which we find god, religion and home.

The Trip Diaries: The Time We Did Beirut - On the Way Back

And just when you think you eluded one messed up driver, who incidentally sent D 2 text messages and called her to try and talk us into going back with him, you end up going back with someone worse: he gets all kinds of gifts, clothes, vegetable and fruit from Beirut and Syria, fills up the trunk with this stuff, makes a 100 stops an hour, and talks non-stop, the Arabic expression to this would be: بالع راديو.

As we headed out of Beirut, towards Dahr l Baydar, we needed to be pacified because we were in the middle of a snow storm; the streets were filled with dirty snow that goes up to half of your wheel, not to mention the persistent and not so-easy snowfall. It was dark that morning, and the driver reassured us that he took some precautionary measures that I'm not sure I understood, all the while we were listening to the radio and the piece about that Ethiopia-bound plane comes out, and suddenly grief took over me, simply because the depressive nature of hearing about disasters which human beings are part of but can do nothing about makes me feel helpless.

Now. Smoking. The nastiest thing of all, as the driver on the way to Beirut also did; smoking in a car that has no windows open. And of course there weren't any windows opened, only merely cracked, with the speed he was going at. Smoking in confined compartments is simply a retarded and ignorant thing to do; the wish of the smoker not to die alone, but to split his death, with others, half-half (while the Cuckoo Judge would laugh).

After we left the snow at both the Lebanese and Syrian borders, we encountered lots of sunshine throughout Syria, after which, we encountered lots of rain upon our arrival in Amman. I thought, "at least I got to see the snow this winter, I've seen it, smelt it, heard it, felt it and tasted it". Although some people find snow unpleasant, I find it very pleasant, but only the way it snows in Amman; it's like rain, but it's snow. It doesn't imprison people, doesn't stop us from going out and getting on with our daily routines and it still looks like little drops from heaven. But the way I encountered all kinds of weather, from scorching sun to frost-biting snow in less than 6 hours, is just not right. The Middle East needs this one thing to top all its troubles... Global warming, let's all die of weather.

I think these trips are a healthy way to maintain our sanity.

I've got nothing more to say about this trip, except that I can't wait to see where winds will take me next time.

The Trip Diaries: The Time We Did Beirut - In Beirut

This wasn't our first time in Beirut. Well, except for D.

The charm of this city never ceases to seep into my blood the moment I breathe its air each time I'm there; it's always new to me with a strange sense of familiarity, the magnificence of it overwhelms me. And while to many people Beirut may be just another city, to me it simply is not. When you have done a bit of traveling, just a bit, you develop a way to know when a city is "not just another city"; that is, inter alia, Beirut.

The trip revolved around a lot of music. After all, what is culture? According to one source it is the acquaintance with and taste in fine arts, humanities, and broad aspects of science. I really only care about the first part, "acquaintance with and taste in fine arts and humanities". My understanding of culture came to me on its own. Having done my share of "cultural exchanges" less than a decade ago I learned to understand that cultures aren't only about customs, religion, a set of values, conventions, or social practices associated with a particular people. While it may be that, it also has a lot to do with film, music, the fine arts, and things of the like. Unfortunately, we were only taught to talk about the boring aspects of our lives that were eventually going to change as we grew older, and we didn't focus on the more artistic aspect of each others' cultures that possibly would have made a deeper impact on the people we grew up to be. Also remember, respect is key.

You know the famous saying "you are what you eat"? Well, it is about to be permanently replaced in my mind with "you are what you listen to". Having had a talk with R, someone known to roam the streets of Beirut on certain days of the week, depending on the weather this time of the year, we came to the conclusion that we define people according to what they listen to. For example, fans of a certain musician/band , make that your favorite musician/band, are always on top of the rest of your acquaintances and friends. Any how, the more I discover and rediscover music in my life, the fewer people there are on top of my list. But I digress.

One night in Beirut, with really high heels on and having done a good deal of walking around, my feet were crying, they were tired with zero tolerance to any action that may force them to do their miserable job, as does every single pair of feet in this world; having people tread on them as they please.
Later, M asks if some water or tea would be of any assistance to my misery, to which I answered: "yes, darling, just water and we'll drift off", drift off into endless sleep followed by lots and lots of midday sunshine. Of course I needn't tell you about my temporary abode in Lebanon...
Well, perhaps I need to, just to get it out of my system. It is one of the most charming places that I have ever had the pleasure to live in. The perfect-looking garden; green, old, with a hint of nonchalance. The way it looks, smells, and feels in the summer is totally different than the way it does in the winter, although it's the same, the seasons are not. The cozy interior. The cats in the interior and the exterior. The fireplace. The balcony overlooking other mountains and small villages. You get the picture.

Other than that, the trip was really awesome, it's nice to have a place to which you feel you belong. And you do all sorts of normal stuff like meeting people who go by the name Cuckoo Judge and want to shoot people and things out of a canon with the assistance of others who are ridiculously tall and study aerospace engineering, to people who resemble English chefs in Hamra. Which also happens to be the perfect place for late night walks, chats, eating skittles, and bumping into people you know. Not to mention the very charming Gemmayze where you find all kinds of cozy and very Parisian coffee places and nice little bars, crocodiles trapped in inhumanely small containers, Boa Constrictors also, friends, their news, their shopping and umbrellas, flirty waitresses, and charming hostels with charming boys in beanies... Good trip, indeed.

PS. Too much light hurts the eye.

The Trip Diaries: The Time We Did Beirut - On the Way, pt. 2

Still on our way to Beirut.

As we reached the Jordanian - Syrian border, we went to the duty free shop.

We are living a lie in the city, man.

The items we bought at the duty free cost at least double their price in the city. We are ripped off each and every day of our lives. It might actually be better for people to go to the border to shop for gifts, perfumes, cigarettes, and booze and back to the city than buy the same items at a mall, including gas expenses. I assume you'd eventually be paying the same amount of money to do that, and would probably get more stuff out of the duty free shop. Yes, life seemed much brighter on the Syrian side. But then the driver was in the car, and we'd left him for a considerable amount of time, so we decided to get a move on and finish up faster; the faster we finished up, the faster we got rid of the driver and his ridiculous self, and the faster we reached our long-awaited destination.

For some reason, once we crossed the Syrian border it was as though a time machine took us back to the 80's in a communist country. The drab buildings, the badly-dressed border people and everyone around, the miserable old trucks that omit a scary amount of fatal, black smoke, the badly placed barriers with equally bad wiring (in the case it operates electrically), and everything around us had a communist feel through and through.

Driver's machismo carries on with a vengeance; this time he puts both his hands behind his head while doing KM 110/hour and giving D a look from the corner of his eye: ARMS NOT ON STEERING WHEEL, EYES NOT ON ROAD FOR ABOUT 40 SECONDS, I mean this could only happen to us! And D was frightened, the driver goes and says, highly amused: "are you scared? Do you drive? Because you can only be scared if you drive". And that echoed in my head "you can only be scared if you drive" several times... An ignorant of the roads, driving, and all traffic rules that were ever known to man would not only be frightened, they would probably be crying because they have seen their life flash in front of their eyes. "Are you scared?"; not cool, man.

We made it to the land of Lebanon in one piece, stopping at a town very famous for its dairy... Chtoura. And boy do the cows of Chtoura have talent; major talent. Pair that talent with a nice cup of tea and... Well, you'll be having just about the most satisfying breakfast you have ever had. As we carried on what remained of the trip, up on a certain mountain before reaching Beirut, the driver pulled over on his own, suggesting that we all get out of the car while he snaps pictures of us with the stunning view in the background. I was about to criticize the way he forced this upon us, but the view was too nice to be missed. While he took a picture of our group, he also took the liberty to snap a picture of D standing alone, back to camera, in an attempt to compose something; a great photograph, or a beautiful moment caught still in a frame never to be forgotten perhaps, a memento of a trip that lasted a ridiculous few hours, I don't know...

The question remains: why D?

As we approached our destination within Beirut, the driver takes a wrong turn, claiming that he knows where exactly the place is. And wrong he was. So we asked around, got the directions, and we see this homeless guy who goes by the name Zico dance around in torn suit pants made into shorts, an obsolete blazer, a miserable beanie, and a face trodden upon by all-things horrible in life. He dances, drunken, and sings, high on the attention he was receiving. Then from his smile emerges a line of things I'd assumed where teeth at some point, and all I could think of was "what could have messed him up so?" and the driver, as though hearing my thoughts, starts telling us how this came to be... Apparently a woman much prettier than Haifa Wehbeh was behind what became of him.

I'm not sure I believe him.

PS. Hani Shaker must die.