عن النوستالجيا

How many songs that remind you
how many inside jokes
how many streets
how many words
how much loneliness
how much self-soothing
how many falls
  
does it take to kill you?

The Mirror

via here

She narrowed her eyes into slits and told me that I'm not invisible no matter how much I want to be..that all these frail trapped lines will surface whether I liked it or not. She said that when the storm breaks loose, I'll be on my own.

and I told her that it didn't matter.

I lied.

Point blank

A while back I thought one could write about anything, you could pour your mind and soul onto paper and let go. I have come to understand that it's not true; you can't write about things that change you, if they truly did change you. You can't write about how people shake your core without them even noticing. You can't write about moments of recognition or those seconds when you greet your ghosts. You can't write about those moments when time simply stops. You can't write about the great or little things because simply your understanding won't confine them, let alone words.
well of course you can translate them to words, but you won't do them the justice they deserve..or may be I'm not good enough to reconcile between two different currencies. Some things are just unequal.

Fear..patriotism..sirens..selflessness...surrealism..coffin..cameras..gloominess..heroes..injuries..responsibility..saline..the suffocating kid..empathy..convulsions..help..smiling faces..fainting girls..resistance..purpose..emotions..and lots of tear gas.

I wrote a pathetic draft about the four days I spent in the field hospital in Tahrir. I wrote about how God answered my prayers by letting me experience this..the impact. I want to write about how life seems so insignificant. I want to write about that invisible thread I'm crossing quietly, how it will change my life.
  
..but it is not enough.

Flames

via here

Bare words, snippets of tunes and cold were spinning in her head, chasing each other as a sport. It was too familiar, like a vague dream you can't quite put your finger on.
she waited and would have waited if it wasn't too familiar. If it wasn't too painful to be let down again.
the worst thing about a jump is the fall. Do you know how it feels to drift among skies then find yourself lying face down on the ground? It shatters you.
she has been ricocheting in between the clouds and earth for so long and it's too familiar she doesn't even remember it.
the wait disintegrates one's soul..she doesn't want any of it anymore.
she'll bear with the withdrawal symptoms like every time and brace herself with her own hands.
she'd lie still till she becomes an atom of cold air, or better yet she'd keep tumbling and meet the fresh soil at last.

And she will break her legs.

This post is dedicated to Noor because she keeps nagging me to write and I love her :)

101

It's very simple, simpler than we make it. It's a dot that we extend to a loop.
no amount of it's gonna be okays or ughs will suffice anymore.
I won the world in the lottery and people at Roulette and the randomness of it all still doesn't make sense.
Oud music..family fights..good old Cairo..that terrible headache..the same pretty vicious circles..the horrible loneliness..people watching as if I'm some caged animal --come to think of it; I kind of am.
it reminds me of Cairo traffic to a great extent.
I don't want to be sensitive, but it's not the first thing that I want and can't have..and it won't be the last.
don't you dare think I believe in anything anymore. Don't you dare expect anything from me.
I'm a freaking broken record on repeat..and I puff waves of indifference while I'm at it.
I think I'll go back to drugging/bracing myself with Fairouz and retreat.
It's very simple..I won't struggle.
Winter is coming.

The Impossible?

via here

The world is spinning.

I am pretty sure I'm making it all up, as always. I think I gave in to woven threads of imagination long ago, and I just keep clothing myself in make believe thoughts over and over again.

silence is cruel, we brew dwelling resolutions and carry them out in our own special way..the silent treatment is not a treatment to begin with, it's a punishment and a cure.

and forgive me if I am not sure we know why we're trying to cure or punish ourselves, but at least listen to me before you throw me into the prison of silence.

Yes, maybe I'm so very stupid. I'm also so very tired.

we laugh it off, when everything stops making sense; we laugh it off. 

  

You're the world, you just don't know it yet. I do, and I'm going to regret it.

P.S. This post happens to mark the 100th entry on this blog, and I don't have any idea how that happened :)

The Tenant of Time

here

I see you standing there, one foot in the deep ocean, one foot on the white land. Your tilted head, your strong gaze towards the sky and hair everywhere in between. I sense your paper thin fear, the intricate veil. You're torn in half.

your intertwined feelings are enough to fill thousands of books, nobody will ever get what they're about but they'll be taught nevertheless. They're so simple..yet so hard to weave.

I want to shelter you from yourself, put out your conflict with a blanket; but I fear you'd drift away like the mist into the colorless space.

I don't know how to gain your trust, fiery as you are, it's hard to get closer or stay away.

you start reaching to the clouds and spreading your arms to no avail, you still don't get off the ground, past the layers.

you know the directions, you got the map of the moon engraved in your palm; you know them so well but you refuse to take a glimpse. You could be a lot of things and it scares you to death, I can tell by one look in your eyes.

you long to your thousand faces, you want to chase them and offer them a homeland in my face.

I will give you all the time there is...to be, but time is tricky. It dodges our constant attempts to seize, deceive or live it.

Your thoughts rush in streams to the sky offered by air particles to the sun, they burn and you sigh. I try to catch them with my bare hands.

the life we're living in doesn't discriminate, we will have our shares of beauty and pain. I will look at you and claim both.

we're both dazzled, you'd step into your mighty waves and I'd dig my little graves.

But I know the ending of the story beforehand, I know it so well; you'd eventually slip unnoticed and leave me wondering what went wrong.

There's nothing wrong. It's just never enough.

  

Disclaimer: I'm dedicating this to Basmah Aref, because her encouraging words helped me write again. (even if it's total BS, that is.)