Another lazy Sunday
and I was reading Nizar Q again...
suitcase of tears
To someone who used to love me...

Dear Madame Bovary...


"Do you know, Charles, why the clock strikes? To announce the death of another hour." Emma Bovary.






Madame Bovary is myself - Flaubert

Muffled screams from yesterday...


Muffled screams.
Coming from under water.
‘Requiem for a dream’.
But it doesn’t matter.
I just need one scream
to scatter
all the frustration!
So much blood on the news today.
‘Les mains sales’ stares at me
Jean Paul Sartre stares at me
right from the coffee table,
and knows what I am talking about.
I don’t care who did what…
Gagged smiles
not to be seen.
Eyes covered by a screen
bleached hair
tweezed eyebrows
naked body
vaguely suppliant
on a divan…
‘kassik’
glasses clink
laughter echoes
lights dim
in the shadows…

(pic: The Scream by Edvard Munch)

Some java… and a terrace.
how could you? I ask.



How could you ‘objectively’
describe music without poetry?
How could you explain a color. a taste. a feeling.
Memories could be traced on an empty evening effortlessly.
I could tell you what happened methodically. sequentially.
But how can I tell to you what I heard?

I’m trying to mend the gap
where on the floor there is a crack.
rather a ‘falaise’ you would say.
Did you do this?
Fury, and pain, after all… this.
Get your coat we’re leaving.
Yes, now.
Leave it all behind.
I don’t care how far or long.
Yes, grab some stuff to take along.

Where did your thoughts lead you?
A painful secluded oasis inside you.
I hope you are happy now.

I stayed till the end of that day
I saw it all, heard it all
Then, left. And promised to call…

Will some one say something funny?
It’s getting depressing around me!

Variation sur un theme d'un visage...



I have a good side
a bad side
and they equal each other.
If they switch like in a mirror
I am unrecognizable
If I were only good, I'd look silly.
If I were only bad, it would be horrible.
Only the balance of both my sides makes me look regular!

Waiting for you waiting for me everyday...



looking at you looking at me everyday

some day. one day.. will come.
and I will be there.
looking down from where you are.
seeing you seeing me.
up there.
No one doing you any harm
while I'm not there,
and you...
always waiting for me
right by Madison square...

(to the flatiron bldg...)

Pillow talk

I love that you hide under your sunglasses,
and put on a lot of eye shadow
You don’t wipe the rain on your glasses
and you leave your beard to grow

You’re always barefoot even when cold
You.. even in June you’re cold

In a concert you prefer the intermission
You just love the few minutes before it begins

I love that you speak while you laugh
I love that you tear up when you laugh

I love that you don’t plan your life ahead
I love that you try to plan mine instead

I love that you never finish a day without me
I love that you always wait for me

I love that you forgot how much you love me
I love that you always remind me


I love you

I love you

"But soon, too soon the lover turns his eyes;
Again she falls, again she dies, she dies!
How wilt thou now the fatal sisters move?
No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love.
Now under hanging mountains,
Beside the falls of fountains,
Or where Hebrus wanders,
Rolling in meanders,
All alone,
He makes his moan,
And calls her ghost,
Forever, ever, ever lost!
Now with furies surrounded,
Despairing, confounded,
He trembles, he glows,
Amidst Rhodope's snows.
See, wild as the winds o'er the desert he flies;
Hark! Haemus resounds with the Bacchanals' cries.
Ah, see, he dies!
Yet even in death Eurydice he sung,
Eurydice still trembled on his tongue;
Eurydice the woods,
Eurydice the floods,
Eurydice the rocks and hollow mountains rung."

A. Pope
Music: Handel (Ode for St. Cecilia's Day)

Orpheus has lost his Eurydice…

Jean Baptiste Camille (Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld)

Nothing equals his grief.
What cruel fate! He succumbs to his pain.
Eurydice! Answer him. Listen to his voice.
What suffering! What misfortune!
Fatal silence! Vain hope!
He has lost his Eurydice…

Gluck (Orphee et Eurydice)

‘Teach us to outgrow our madness’
(Kenzaburo Oe)



Must compose myself.
Must shut down my computer.
Must collect my things.
Smile.
Leave.

And I thought I’ve seen it all.
In my line of work, I dealt with the crazy, the intense, the insecure… I stroked egos, reassured weaknesses, guided the unsighted…
Being a scientist is a lot like being a social worker…
I think today I’ve reached a new depth though.
Or was it today?
When was it that I grew so accustomed to madness?
Mine, theirs?
I act professionally, in all that I loathe about this word. in all that is pretensious about it.
After all I am the master of pretending that all is fine, that I am fine…
No time to stop. Let’s move on.
It’s a concert. Don’t change the program. Don’t improvise. Keep to the schedule. Keep to the tempo and move on…

A wave of the hand. A pained ‘have a good night’.
And am I a world-class loser with no talent.. or just in need for a vacation?
You don’t have to answer this. You don’t know me. You don’t judge me.
I don’t see you. I don’t hear you. ‘have a good night’.

Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix



Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix
comme s’ouvrent les fleurs
Aux baisers de l’aurore
Mais, o mon bien-aime,
pour mieux secher mes pleurs
Que ta voix parle encore
Dis–moi qu’a Dalila tu reviens pour jamais
Redis a ma tendresse
Les serments d’autrefois
Ces serments que j’aimais

Ah, reponds a ma tendresse
Verse-moi, verse-moi l’ivresse
Reponds a ma tendresse
Verse-moi, verse-moi l’ivresse

Camille Saint-Saëns (Samson et Dalila)

Only sometimes... only today perhaps.



The possibility of happiness makes me happy. but I am not happy yet. For now I just sit with only the feeling of anticipation, the potential... which could linger on for years. I know that.
Before, I was a happy 'sad person'. I had a lot of reasons to be happy, but I was not.
Now, I am a sad 'happy person'. I have a lot of reasons to be sad, but I am not.
Which one is better, I wonder...

... and I remember V. Woolf's farewell letter to her husband:

'Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.

I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

V.'

and I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been...

Pleaaaase don't pray for me when I'm sick...

Qualifications and characteristics, anyone?


It all started when my boss asked me to write my own nomination letter for a fellowship. Now, this is a recommendation letter… and I always felt self addressed recommendation letters are rather conceited to say the least.
I finished the science part, and apparently over the years I developed skills to generate project ideas on the spot… which is always good when you never go to a meeting prepared, but doesn’t help you when your boss asks you about your qualifications.
“well… uh. I have a PhD, we could put that in..”
“It’s postdoc application. everyone applying has a PhD”
“Uh, I don’t know then… what do you want me to say. I am great, wonderful, and you feel blessed and thank your lucky star everyday for having me in your group?”

“well, you’ll have to figure it out. As for the project idea. I like it, but it has to talk more to the general public, about patient care and treatment… in breast cancer”
“but seriously. when we’re working in the lab, we are not thinking about cancer as cancer. I don’t exactly imagine actual people lining up at our doorstep in order to get the finished elixir that’s going to cure them… ha ha. I mean at the end of the day, we want to do science, in a sound logical way, to answer questions that could in the long run be related to cancer…”
“yeah, but you have to put in all the stuff that people like to hear, for them to give you money…”
“Really? Saying this, I would personally feel like a contestant in the Miss America Pageant : oh, ya. Now? Ha ha ha. My talents are eyeliner and shopping, and I would like to cure cancer, end world hunger and of course bring peace to the human race.”
“well, it doesn’t help to be cynical..”

and it doesn’t help. And two days later, I am still staring at my computer, waiting for the letter to materialize.

… and then there was music.


Khachaturian, of course.
The piano concertos. A marriage between east and west. A hidden oriental nostalgia. A yearning. A melancholia. Always reminding me of Beirut. but old Beirut. that of my grandfather in fact. The ottomans, the richness, the faded pictures, the old smells, the potpourri and the mothballs. Old pianos. Small little things, and a thousand stories…
An ancient beiruty house. A ballroom, empty of everything expect a piano, an old white piano, ivory touches, and a hint of blue on the body…
Khatchaturian, the masquerade. Waltz. Nocturne. Mazurka. Romance. Galop. A Russian ball. Tolstoy. The splendor. The magnificence. The luxury. The excess. The dresses with the laces. The military costumes. And the dancing. They come together. They separate. They dance a Mazurka.
Khatchaturian, the ballets. Spartacus. The victory dance. Gayaneh. Sabre dance. Fast, stupefying. Frantic…
Definitely my favorite.

It is snowing today! SNOWING!


Since the wave of ‘life and death’ has swept the blog community, I was trying to pitch in and talk about it as well… but all I could think about today is that snow… not rain, SNOW!!
And here I am sitting at my desk seething… staring out the window, praying it won’t stick to the ground. Remembering a time when I actually liked the snow. And wondering how I reached the point where for me snowflakes are nothing more then disgusting dandruff pouring down from somebody’s disgusting skull!

Is motherhood hormonal?





Yesterday someone told me that she got a special something to hold milk from flowing out during the months of breast-feeding.
But that’s not all. She said that oxytocin, the hormone that induces lactation is the main regulator of this process. Even thinking about the baby would increase the levels of this hormone, and induce lactation on the spot, and “I don’t want milk to be all over the place during the day”.
In fact, it turned out that oxytocin is not only the lactation hormone, but it was also dubbed, not so long ago, the love hormone… and “may influence our ability to bond with others”.

How much of our human relations are hormone-driven? And is maternal love so intense because it is… well, hormonal?

RENOIR'esques reflections from last year...





The game of light and shadow, the color, the theme, the characters all appeared like a Renoir, done and abandoned in one moment at the park...
I was luky to see it after only one year!

Still holding on to the fence you think?

THE CIRCLE OF LIFE?


My brother: did you talk to your parents?
Me: no, not lately. Did you?
My brother: No, I’ve been trying to call them for two days but the lines are bad.
Me: (yeah, right) well, in case you talk to them, tell them that I’ve been trying to call too, but couldn’t get through either.
My brother: what? I’m not going to lie on your behalf.
Me: Oh… well, just say that I’ll call this weekend.

I’ve been trying to call Beirut for 2 hours now. No luck. Maybe my brother was right, and the lines are not so good. Are they?

And as usual I start running scenarios about why my parents are not answering, calling, or in anyway trying to make contact after two weeks of disconnection.

For a second I fear that something bad happened to them and that my brother either a) doesn’t know because he’s off to somewhere in California, or b) he knows but kept me out of the loop to ‘protect’ me from the heart breaking news. I immediately ruled out b when all the episodes that he threw on my head at one time or another flashed through my mind.
Then, I think that my parents probably gave up on us calling every week. Again, not probable, they are the most irrepressible people when it comes to their sons.

Well, maybe, they moved away, changed their names and address, and abandoned their sons and their previous life altogether… actually, come to think about it, it does sound romantic, two retirees well in their 60’s dropping off and moving to some sunny place, well, Lebanon is sunny enough, but I was thinking Turkey where they will open a pub next to the beach, he’ll work at the bar and she’ll work at the cash register… It’d be perfect. I would be happy for them. I love them so much I guess that even if they decided to move on without us, I would approve, and be happy. I don’t know about my brother though… he has more of these ‘fear of abandonment’ issues, I believe, never got over the time when they ‘lost’ him in the market place (well, in fact I don’t give him the chance to)…

Would they like to do that, my parents? I wonder.
Everyone talks about children moving away from parents, and parents trying to hold on to them. No one speaks of parents taking distance from their children (and rightfully so).
I don’t want to give the wrong impression about my family. They’ve been the best and I wouldn’t change a thing (well, maybe a thing or two but that’s beside the point).
The point is that people from my corner of the world expect parents to be conforming to a certain stereotype, especially after a certain age. Mine do but only to a certain extent. They do perform the worrying, providing and the whole bit roles with world champion’s finesse, but they also have their own world. A world that’s not accessible to their sons. A world where they are young and in love, and didn’t have children at all!
The intra-familial dynamics are not very traditional among us. There are 4 people in this family. The parents who love each other more than they love the kids. The older son who loves the younger son more than the parents do and more than he does the parents. The younger son who loves everyone equally… well because he can and because he’s the younger after all…

Ah, it’s my cell phone. ‘Mom-Beirut’ is flashing on caller ID, and Turkish March is filling the room (it figures)… My heart is 'gleeful' like a child's. After all, some things never change no matter how much we do…