Survival

Staying alive.

Let me clarify that "I am back" meant that i am back on Villages of Time. I missed writing but I didn't have time for it. Now I feel more organized and in control. Things are moving at a very comfortable pace and I feel a connection. A bird's view would have been more preferable, but beggars can't be choosers, right?

And so....I'm back! From outer space!

"Crying Shame"

By Jack Johnson, but it says outloud what my inexperienced pen can't write.

It's such a tired game
Will it ever stop
How will this all play out
Out of sight, out of mind

By now we should know
How to communicate instead of coming to blows
We're on a roll
And there ain't no stopping us now
We're burning under control
Isn't it strange how
We're all burning under the same sun
By now we say it's a war for peace
It's the same old game
But do we really want to play?
We could close our eyes it's still there
We could say it's us against them
We can try but nobody wins
Gravity has got a hold on us all
We try to put it out
But it's a growing flame
Using fear as fuel
Burning down our name
And it wont take too long
Cause words are burning same
And who we gunna blame now?

"each gate will open another"

it is sunday, a very sunny sunday. it has become a form of torture to walk the streets of beirut on sunday. it is almost impossible to get to where you're going without having elevated blood pressure, the ulcers and the cringe...why can't people stay away, or keep their mouths shut or just mind their own business? i hate to say this, but any other city in the world sounds like a haven to me now. i want to get on a bird's back and go away, get a top view of the world and remain there silent and speechless.

"l'amour ne dure pas toujours"
what do you think?

distance

eh alors?

hold me close to your heart

moving in

i think it's a conspiracy, even the weather's gloomy, it's grey and ready to explode. i thought that chopping off people's heads was something that we read in shakespearean novels and old engilsh william wallace books...what do you call such a person? someone who can hold a head of another human by the hair and cut off his head? is he a person to start with? i played all sorts of music to get out of this yellowish mood, i tried yoga and working on some leftover work from school...nothing...i looked at old photos, tried to relaugh at any old thought or memory...nothing...stealing someone's daily life is not a daily thing...you don't find it in simply any city around the world...going to the supermarket is a risk-taking "meshwar" in beirut...

ya ahla w sahla bi bayrout

color me badd

last saturday was an adventure. a useless one. i spent the whole day on the streets in a car with a friend of mine. we laughed about everything and nothing, almost had a monster work with colors on our hands and feet, had thai food and then at the end of the night, we had to wait for my cousin who was catching a "van" from the south. what a day!

my friend can make you laugh at any time of the day. you laugh at her laughing more than at what she's trying to say. she's a big bubble. she is looking for mr. right and only runs into misters wrong!

"you stare at me with an empty gaze
you turn your back on me and you search for more"

"how many roads..."

utensils of a wicked mind

what a hectic day. i just found a little bit of time for myself. i feel like a messy kitchen. so many things to wash and put away! i have a lot of ideas in my head, mainly provoked by music. most of the music that i am listening to these days are of european origin. most of them i understand, the rest they're simply healing instruments. instruments that say something without even trying, instruments that advise us without expecting anything in return. instruments that calculate for you your moods and your mood swings. instruments that paint your life with shadows, unreal but vibrant. a whole bunch of utensils to use.

the kitchen really needs some healing too.

hairy recollections

i had a very funny dream last night. i dreamt that i was at the hairdresser's with my sister, she wanted to dye her hair. it was around 8 p.m., time for the hairdresser to close. so since we were his last clients, his wife made us all coffee and invited us to stay at the salon for a short while. we all sat on the couches that he had lying around the fairly sized room, and we chatted. at some point i got up to go look through an old shoe box that had caught my attention when we first came in. i rummaged through it and found a ring that i had a lost a while ago, and i also found letters from my best friend that i had also lost a while ago, and a few random papers from my last years at SCHOOL! we're talking papers that date back to 1997!!
i don't know how to explain my dream, or maybe i do. last night i talked about my best friend with another best friend of mine and i was eying my own ring trying to decide if i like it or not. but is our unconscious this silly? what is "it" trying to tell me?

my dreams are more real than my reality.

doppio

(pic not taken by me)

i feel that i have my own body but you are my soul

i just can't get back

a simple phone conversation, a simple "i love you", a gentle voice at the end of the day, a sweet
meal, a blank look, a blank book, a new promise, a new dawn...i look around me and everything is too narrow, there isn't any room for me to exist and expand, my friends are shrinking too, no more space to mingle, and my legitimate circle is closing in. is it the effect of war? my social life? me? my messy schedule? i want to be able to stretch my arms and see the sky, feel the space and enjoy the noise again.

just dance. just sway. just move. just be.

Taurus

Where do they get their voices from? I wish I had a nice voice to sing and take you away on a trip. I want to spread my arms and watch them grow into wings, I want to reach out to you and find you there, I want to speak out and surprise myself, I want to wiggle my fingers and produce piano sounds...a million sounds in your mind, a million voices in my head.

Try out:
Katie Melua

healthy pyramids

When I teach the present simple tense to grade 6 students, I ask them to give me examples of their every day life. They give me the classical examples: I wake up at 7 am, I have breakfast at home, I go to the movies in the weekend....stuff like that. When it's my turn to give them examples of my own daily life, I disappoint myself. My examples are even more mundane. Then, I force myself to think of the more special moments in my days, and this is what I finally realized. I realized that in every bus ride, or taxi ride, every time I'm having breakfast, every time I am enjoying my cup of caffe latte, every time I have the time to write down my to-do-list, every time I enter a classroom and every time I am not talking, an event takes place. On my way to school I look at everything that my eyes go past, I look at old buildings and wonder if they belong to my country more than I do, at kids waiting for their school buses, I try to observe how morning drivers drive, I stick my head outside the window to smell the aroma of croissants being cooked, I try to keep track of the faces of people that I see every day and I also enjoy the only moments of peace that I have before my long and noisy day begins.

Early morning hours are the richest and most fulfilling hours of the day.

My 'pen' has gone dry. I try to write what is going on in my head, I try to find the right words for the right emotions, but I fail. There is so much going on inside my head, inside my heart and just behind my eyes. Most of the times though I feel numb. I don't feel emotionless, but I feel blank. I remember things, but they invoke no feelings in me. I remember faces, but they somehow don't stand out, but the only thing that is always vivid is my memory of scents. Clean, personal scents come with a feeling of warmth.

(Is it wrong to get attached to food?)

photos on display

If we can laugh, our heart-aches disappear!
Our minds become freed off tensions and stress;
If we make others laugh, they lose their fear,
And become dear, starting to us caress.
Dr John Celes

a dream come true

my cousin, with whom i am very close friends, has recently had a baby boy. she has always dreamed of being a mother, and feared not being able to conceive. 2 years into her happy marriage, she finally had her dream completed.

mabrouk ya a7la mama!

i miss you so and can't wait till i see the little angel.

"banana pancakes"

now that i have hurt my knee and i have to keep it propped up in order to easy away the pain, i have time to write whatever on my blog.

i finally decided to join a gym. i am known to hate gyms, i can't stand the idea of spending time on a machine that doesn't move or take you anyplace. but i was motivated by my 'untoned' figure and the fact that the gym is very close to my house (i just have to cross the street the walk a little bit to get to it). i became a member on a friday, and the next thursday, at around 6.30 p.m, i was taken to the hospital. i hurt my knee while doing some moves in an aerobics class. athough i hate going to a gym, but i love sports. i walk a lot, LOVE to cycle on a real moving bicycle. i also in-line skate and swim when i have the chance. i would love to have the opportunity to be able to take up a sport professionally. anyway, not to digress too much, at the hospital, the doctor decided that what my knee went through was a sprain and i had to rest my leg and take the medication prescribed: anti-inflammatory pills. now more than a week into the injury, i'm still stuck at home, knee propped up and free time on my hands. i haven't gone to work for a week. somehow, somewhere in my brain, i feel guilty for skipping so many classes at school and i feel terribly sorry for the teachers who have to replace me.

how am i spending my time?
i have gone back to a novel i started reading a year ago and stopped having time for. it is called IN THE EYE OF THE SUN by AHDAF SOUEIF, an egyptian writer. i like the novel because of the rich background that it has, and because of the character of the main character, asia. asia ( pronounced: as-ya) is an egyptian girl who is not so egyptian, yet not so english. it is difficut to summarize what i have read in the book, as the book is 790 pages.

i am also using the internet more often. i have sent emails to people that i have recently unwillingly ignored, and i am actually reading the forwards that i usually delete before reading.

oh and on the day that i injured my knee, my cousin gave birth to a baby boy. so i am using my free time now to talk with her about her new baby and to look at his photos.

one drawback, though, for being stuck at home is the december sun outside that i'm missing and the fact that i have to buy gifts! i can't even ask my sisters to do it for me, because the gifts are for them!

now that you've read my most recent post, click on the link to the novel above and read it. it's quite interesting.

p.s: banana pancakes can only be part of the kind of breakfast that is brought to one's bed.