Jim Morrison's Graveyard Poem

It was the greatest night of my life.

Although I still had not found a wife

I had my friends

Right there beside me.

We were close together.

We tripped the wall and we scaled the graveyard

Ancient shapes were all around us.

The wet dew felt fresh beside the fog.

Two made love in an ancient spot

One chased a rabbit into the dark

A girl got drunk and balled the dead

And I gave empty sermons to my head.

Cemetary, cool and quiet

Hate to leave your sacred lay

Dread the milky coming of the day

Terror Shot in the Face

Yes, it is the headline that took the world by storm: Osama bin Laden DEAD. Headline of the week. Perhaps even a headline that will grant Obama another 4 years in Office.

It has indeed been an emotional journey over the past decade for the USA and many of its allies who chose to wage a war against terrorism. And no one blames the US for wanting to wage a war against terrorism. Terrorism, in this case, is any act of defiance that stands in the US's way when it wants to shove democracy down someone's throat.

Osama bin Laden, son of a wealthy Saudi businessman, was a prominent figure among Jihadists who redefined Islam in the modern world, at which point Islam became synonymous with terrorism. Unjustly so, as tying any sort of radicalism to any one religion or one nation doesn't only cause an epidemic-like spread of stereotypes, but also labels millions of people as damaged goods. Bin Laden, or the shadow thereof in the past decade, was nothing but a wealthy radical who took it upon himself to shove his ideologies and beliefs down the world's throat, very much like the US. While both parties are polar opposites of each other, they stand for the same thing; they made it their ultimate goal to shove their ideologies down the world’s throat. And even with so much in common they have become sworn enemies, both wreaking havoc and causing as much damage as the World Wars did, and the world certainly wouldn't expect less of them. It was very much like a festival, with a main stage and other secondary stages; the US vs. Bin Laden vs. Afghanistan vs. Iraq on the main stage, then you have every other disaster and revolution taking place in different stages simultaneously. This is world-class entertainment.

When the US elite Navy SEALs killed Bin Laden, along with a number of his family members, the US did not just kill its nemesis, the reason behind it re-strategizing its entire foreign policy and security schemes, but it very much killed what Bin Laden stood for; “terrorism”. Bin Laden, for the past decade, has been in hiding, and has become nothing more than an ethereal figure which any act of violence undertaken by both parties cast the blame upon. By killing Bin Laden the US merely showed the world that it will find you even if it took a while, that it will kill you when it finds you and will refuse to bury your shot face so you won't have a shrine for your followers to visit. When two rivals do come to blows, the world does not expect less than a show of power as such. In this case, that is one point for the US/Obama, and none for Al Qaeda. The US earned it fair and square.

An act of aggression as such was certainly a blow on Al Qaeda, which can and will retaliate. The US is sure to be ready for that, because one cannot expect to kill Bin Laden and not face a storm of consequences. However, this event, or what it stands for, has created a perfect breeding ground for all sorts of conspiracy theories. Since it has been announced, photos of Bin Laden's carcass have been on high demand to enable the world to see the shot, inanimate Face of All Evil. When normally they would label this as graphic, now they want to see the bloodied face of Bin Laden to sleep better at night, knowing that the world is now a safer place.

Drowned in hypocrisy and double-standardism, this world does not yet know what it is up against. That ethereal figure might be gone now, but another figure shall soon materialize because the US and the world need someone to blame for radicalism, terrorism and all things foul.

Thougt in a Jar

She sat rigidly behind her desk. Her dark hair flowing down to her chest, covering most of her fair face with pin-straight locks; it made her almost ghost-like. Her eyes were black, small in size, with a glassy gaze. She had a tiny, sloped nose. Her lips were thin, and they curled toward the end.

Her small features contracted in a monkey fist, listening to the one playlist she had been given years ago, along with her job; in that gray, dreary office, with the small window. An office that was cold; rain or shine, winter or summer, it was all the same.

And on and on the music played, morale-breaking song after morale-breaking song, all she had to do, all she does and all she will ever do is work; filing, archiving and numbering. Her type of work was not conducive to creative thinking; her work, had it been a womb, would be the worst place to sustain a living soul, to nourish it, to feed it, to care for it. Her job was unlike any other job around her. She was the only one sitting behind a desk working with papers and numbers; the rest where all white-clad, administering drugs to the stupid in a futile attempt to make them intelligent. The stupid filled the place, singing, joking, screaming, laughing themselves silly. As a matter of fact, the stupid weren't that stupid, they mostly feigned stupidity to escape their responsibilities... And all at once, it hit her, "I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I can't be thinking, I can't", and she buried her face in the next paper she found, confining her thought to where the number at the bottom of that page should go. She looked at the big, depressing clock on the wall, it was nearing midday.

The closer it was to midday, the more stressed she'd become, the more edgy and sharp.

As she sat behind her computer, one with a big screen, a black desktop background and green words. Her keyboard was missing all letters save a few, but it had all the numbers. The cursor moved with her thought. The desktop was empty, there were no menus or files of any sort, thus little, or no cursor motion were ever required. There was just green text and numbers, the text she never typed, touched or comprehended, the numbers she entered on her own.

"It's almost midday," she fussed.

The cursor started moving frantically. "Must. Not. Think". "Cannot. Think". The cursor wouldn't stop. Out of nowhere, files of her thought appeared on the desktop.

Hate.

Alone.

Smyle.

Gray.

Dark.

Happi.

"Stop showing, stop."

Repetitions of her thoughts appeared in files, each file contained, in excruciating detail, everything to know about every single thought; where it came from, how it came to be, why it came to be. And she was starting to lose it. 3 minutes to midday. The cursor wouldn't stop opening each of the files, and pointing at each of her thoughts at that moment, and changing them as she changed her thoughts along.

They sat in the corner watching that screen, it was with frenzied speed and determination that the cursor moved and showed files of its own accord. All in black and green. Thoughts, all in black and green.

One minute till midday.

The cursor was moving so fast, jumping from one thought to another, her forehead broke out in hopeless sweat, she started crying frantically. She held the keyboard and tried to break it on her head so no more thoughts are typed into the big screen. She knows they save them, second by second, they save her thoughts and put them in jars, so one day they can put them in one big pool and drown her in them, drown her in her thoughts, thoughts she knew she wasn't allowed to think in the first place. She was a natural rebel.

Midday.

They were there, the faceless ones clad in white, they shut down her computer and forced her off her chair, she was beginning to regret provoking her mind into thinking. Now pills and electricity. Lots of electricity.

A feeling of tranquil resignation swept over her. She doesn't frantically fight them off anymore, the white-clad ones. She knows if she does they would hammer her head and later giver her a barbecued piece of her mind for keepsake, so next time she nears thought, she would know better.

But little peace of mind did that give her. They still come to get her midday, everyday.

She knows that next time, nay, she is sure, they won't come to get her next time. She knows that she will have lost her mind, all of it, in barbecued pieces and her thoughts will all be in jars, safe and sound until they decide that they must drown her in her own thought. All she has to do until then is work with her numbers, broken keyboard and depressingly black screen. Happi thoughts.

Thoughts.

Wrong she was, again.

As We Digress: It's Complicated

We may wake up tomorrow, and hate the day before we know what it has in store for us; maybe we haven't slept well the night before and just do not feel like getting out of bed (when we absolutely have to), maybe there is something that has been preoccupying us for the past couple of days, maybe we really are not up to "it" on this particular day. We may have a million different reasons for why we may hate a day before it even begins, and sometimes we're right about it.

It sometimes hurt when you discover that you don't even know yourself anymore, or when you think that you have become a person you would despise, or that you have become selfish, careless and apathetic. And just as often times you discover that you have not changed, but you merely learnt how to compartmentalize all the emotion, all the real, genuine things that make a human out of you because they may be misinterpreted in a million different ways, and you just cannot afford that kind of misinterpretation in today's corporate world, which seems to be taking over social life as well.

Human suffering is probably the primary reason humans come together. It is just shocking when you see yourself in an imagined mirror reacting to human suffering. Just when you think you'd reached the peak of apathy, you are utterly humbled back into humanity by sharing the suffering of those around you in their darkest times. Then their pain is your pain, their tears are your tears, their loss is your loss, and a shared fish never has bones; grief shared is lessened. And once more, and in this entry, humanity takes one point for beauty.

Grief is one of the most, if not the most, difficult emotional upheaval we can ever encounter. Grief, of course, is caused by different reasons, depending on what means [a lot] to us and what means less. It is vital that we remain strong and positive in times of grief, as opposed to being morbidly optimistic in what may be the darkest time of your life. That's just flat out mad. I find people who are morbidly optimistic, rain or shine, unbearable be around; how do they come up with so much energy? I cannot possibly keep up with the morbidly optimistic ones, just like I cannot keep up with the chronically dissatisfied. I like people who are rightfully optimistic, and rightfully dissatisfied, because it ceases to be a matter of who they are, and becomes a matter of how they react to things happening beyond their control; someone who deals with all kinds of dismaying/happy events in their life accordingly strikes me as a more balanced, grounded someone. Someone who finds a way out of the darkest time in their life [not by being morbidly optimistic] strikes me as a highly creative person worthy of your time and energy. But I digress...

To those of you who watched The Omen (the yuppie one from 2006), there is a scene where a jackal gives birth to a baby human or something of the sort; tonight the sky looks as menacing and unpredictable as can be, and it looks like its belly is about to burst open and excrete gargoyles and bats and the sort of things you'd see/read about in a Halloween movie/book...

I don't know about you, but after one, worthy emotional spill, and one long, productive, utterly bittersweet day, receding into the warm womb that is my bed is all I want to do, heaving a secret prayer toward the sky that asks, relentlessly, for plenty of simple things.

The blog has spoken.

RYG: If It Were a Kid, It Would Be a Second Grader

This short, but timeless list was given to me 7 years ago on a CD for my birthday. You will notice that there are only a few tracks, but alas, the rest never worked.

This is a tribute to T, and the good times.

1. Shimmer (acoustic) - Fuel

2. Seven-Nation Army - White Stripes

3. Estranged - Guns n' Roses

4. Innocence is Over - Dandelion Whine

5. فرحة - محمد منير

6. يا للي - محمد منير

7. Street Spirit (Fade Out) - Radiohead

8. Annie Dog - Smashing Pumpkins

9. Disarm - Smashing Pumpkins