This is my 200th entry. It's quite something to have posted 200 entries, really. I was never a dedicated (not even somewhat dedicated) ranter/whiner/writer until I had this blog.

These days I have been feeling so weak. It's not my diet, or maybe it is...I don't know. Maybe it's the fact that I haven't been going to the gym in like 4 days. It really gives you energy by taking it all away and allowing it to regenerate. Lifting my arm 2 inches feels like I just ran from zamalek to masr el gedida!
This kind of weak feeling is actually quite pleasurable, like those cliche alcoholics you find in soap operas on T.v. It feels so helpless as if you have been fasting for years. It takes away from your appetite to do anything at all and leaves you to really face the time factor.

Measurements of good and evil choices have been eating my brain-out and the less I analyze and write about it the more it eats my brains out.

My kitten spends his day playing and then napping, and then eating, and then playing,napping, eating. I wish I could do that too.

Coffee can be a savior!

Blog-writing position, candle-light and throat-ache

The best thing you can do to make someone trust you is admit all the unknowns before you state the facts!

Because the ways in which facts can be used are shaped by those variables.

When this semester is over, I will go to somewhere no one knows for a week and just Chilaaaaaxx completely. Maybe I'll have a week of no talking and no meat. I'll have a mute, vegetarian week!

My throat wouldn't let go.

I met someone today, someone I haven't seen in such a long time. I told him about the most unfortunate incident that happened yesterday. He knew who I am. He told me who I am.
So it was soothing, and comfortable.
And I munched on so many different delicious things.

I killed the spider!

I have nails now, as in girly long curved nails. They're shiny and I like them a lot.
I will get rid of them soon before i become too obsessed with them.

Ella found her yellow basket and it's a dream come true.

A friend of mine found her yellow basket cake and it's not as smooth as anyone would think it would be.

I didn't want to kill the spider, honestly. He was just getting too close to my desk, my sacred desk on which all thoughts, dreams and nightmares grow.

I want this vacation to never end, I wanna go on vacation in the Lala island where the sea never ends.
or, the ocean.

I will listen to Idir now.

Stuck

I am stuck.
I am stuck in such a way that I can only believe there are solutions and the more I try to more it hurts.
And the more violently I try to more violently it will hurt.

And so,
on the news they will say:
A woman who lived 18 years with a contact lens in her left eye.
Incredible
Amazing
Unbelievable.

She though she got the contact out 18 years ago and now they discover, the contact was still in her eye all this time.

And the story will sell.

My contact lens might be stuck in my eye. I havent found the left one in 2 weeks. I was too sleepy to see where it is, in the morning I didnt find it in the little slidey blox it sleeps in.

So, solution doesn't help with that one.


I remember the first time I sat with a psychologist in the same room. I was 6 or 7.
She asked me about my parents' divorce. I told her it was really fine, that it was better than them having to fight all the time. I told her that I see my dad as often as I see my mom. I told her that they insult each other from the different apartment doors because my dad lives in the apartment upstairs that used to belong to his mother who has passed away some time earlier.

I told her that it was really fine and that I didn't need help.
My mother was the one who told me to go to her. My mother though I needed help since she was too busy crying and feeling depressed. I was messed up, I used to lie a lot.

So the psychologist told me that my mom is immoral and that women should keep their husbands and do everything they can not to let them stray.
She told me that it was all my mom's fault.

I might have believed her. I thought it was my mom's fault because mom always seemed evil and dad always seemed like the nicer one. Still, even at the time, I knew she didnt have the right to say that.

I wanted to slap her.
She looked stupid and she wore really horrible looking glasses.
I lied to my mom and told her that she insulted her, me, my dad and the whole family.
And then I lied to the psychologist and told her that my father (since my mom is whore, my father must be a saint) told me never to speak to her again.

And every teacher in the school knew the next day.
The kid of a broken family.
The poor kid.
The messed up kid.

It was fun being scary, though.

Until this day I will continue to hate psychologists because this woman thought she was so smart but she was so impotent in many different, but all funny now, ways.

I am stuck because sometimes I fail to get her out of my head. I want the solution just to prove I can get that invisible contact out!

Mnehh

A friend of mine finally understood my fears and concerns of how the world seems to be coming to an end. I told her that I'm not too worried about global warming, I just hope that humanity survives until the day that we are all in boats screaming over coral under the sea we once called home.
She understands now my concerns about art, and feeling of responsibility towards something so vague as to be called humanity.

The truth is, it makes me laugh just thinking about it; how things that are so important to me might not even matter. Feelings like theatre, and/or any other form of art can make people feel more or less of one thing or a bunch of things at the same time.

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I have a biology exam tomorrow. The thing about biology is that it's too much information. I don't want to know how every cell works and how everything makes sense and completes my body- it makes me less of a piece of magic and it's ugly and boring. It seems much more interesting to think about things like "soul" than to think about "cell-structure" because "soul" can never be so set in stone and proven. Cell-structure almost seems redundant.

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My face is getting pimply.
My mother read me a quote yesterday from Eric Fromm how he thinks in the world now it seems to important to be sexy to even have friends. I understand it as a theory but I never thought that's how it worked in my head. But then again, I hardly have a definition of what's sexy. If sexy is pertaining to something I'd like to have in bed, then maybe I don't even have a definition at all. I don't think I ever had or will have those feelings. They seem to surreal and cliche to the point where they become funny.

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It's conceded of me to say but, I feel like I'm getting it much faster than people around me and it pisses me off for the reason that I like to think that there's more learning involved when I feel under-read. When I'm under-read I feel that I can learn, there's something to learn but when I'm over-read for people around me I feel so bored.
I refute to a certain friend for intelligent conversations, he makes me feel more alive this way.
And I refute for all my other friends for warmth, they all make me feel alive in a completely different way.

I understand why it is a kind of freedom to have nothing at all. Not to have nothing to lose, but to have nothing that you'd mind losing! It's like travelling light.

I haven't been using my laptop as much lately and the distance between me and my laptop is making me do all sorts of other things that are just as important and sometimes even more interesting.

The reason why I used to blog more often than I do now is because there were more things I didn't understand. In writing there's a search for meaning and/or reason and/or theory! Right now, my life seems to be more boring maybe, or maybe I just take things more lightly and I lose my desire to share so very easily. Not to share with readers, to share with the blog, to utter, to express, to write.

A friend of mine told me I should try to publish my writing--the poetry or the prose in arabic or whatever.
I just don't think I am ready to be a persona just yet.
When I read other people's books the writer is a persona, a ghost that's always there lingering and it's especially funny or emotional when I know the author of that book or have heard about him a lot because the persona seems to be fed by reality, or a certain shade of reality.
So yah, I'm not ready for that.
One day, though, I will look for publishing options.

Maybe what I'm gonna do is print this blog and hand it to a publishing house and see their reactions-- whether they think it's worth anything at all.

head.

I've been having too many headaches.
Maybe it's the glasses, maybe they're not right, or maybe it's the evil eye!
.
.
..
...
....
It's too hot for candles but I don't care. Softer light makes me feel in peace. And the flowers that I got for my balcony know that I care for them, they grow so fast, and they bloom every day. I water them often.
I love my balcony now.
It's such a getaway. It's as if I own a little piece of the street. It's mine, I can smoke in it, I can drink, I can sing in it. It's mine.
And I love candle light.


I'm stuck. I don't know where the poem should be going.
And I want to travel. I need to travel soon.

Treatise Concerning the Last Two Weeks.

It's been such a long time since I trusted my judgment enough to say that something is bullshit.
I feel smart being in theory classes. Theory is an amazing thing, you get so into it, and you think you understand all that's going on. Suddenly, you realize how stupid you are, you forgot that theory is just an attempt to add spice to some really tasteless food.

Some people will never understand that tasteless food is just tasteless food, and it should not be a part of their "intellectual" image that they say they like tasteless food.

I will never understand how anyone can enjoy "Breaking the Waves". Lacan, and other theories don't make a film like this one any better.

Now that I've read, I can safely distinguish good stuff from bullshit.

My characters move on their own now. I don't move them anymore, they do what they really want to do. not necessarily what's expected of them, but what they want...and that makes me very comfortable. I mean, you don't want to create a character that you always have to drive, that has absolutely no will power, that would be like writing your auto-biography.

I have fever. I had a dream that a friend met me when i was on my way to Hughada, and he was going to Vienna (so I met him half-way there!), and he said he was tired of this country, and that he wants to get out. I didn't ask him why.

This entry and the couple of entries before it are so dry, I realize that. I have various techniques to kill my readers .

It's been a long while since I've sat in my blog-writing position. On the desk, the chair is fitting, the little chair/stand thing for my feet so they're perfectly comfortable.

Now what's interesting is that there seems to be TWO anonymous entities. THE anonymous, and IMU. One of which had sent me a text message earlier that day to tell me that he's going to comment. What's funny/strange is that I had lost my cell phone a few days earlier so I ended up now knowing who it was.

My life has been a little hectic. I mean, you can tell just by knowing that it's been that long since I blogged, me being the obsessive blogger that I am, that I haven't been sitting on my desk for more than 30 min in a long long time. It's true. I check my e-mail at wireless network stations. It's pathetic.

In the middle of all of this, I have endless reports to write about plays that I watched/will be watching. I have to write a paper about Naguib Mahfouz (they're still not over the fact that the guy is DEAD). And sometimes I catch myself sounding like a Gucci corner person.

My brother is going to be visiting very soon, that's one thing I'm excited about.

I got new AMAZING glasses. Retro as should be.
I'm working on my play, trying as hard as I can to make it a play, not a closet-drama thing. Maybe I will be a playwright.
I'm tired of not-knowing what I want to do with my life.
I watched a play that is a part of a project that's supposed to be empowering for women. I was a part of that play last year, I did acting. This year, I watch it, and I'm greatly GREATLY disappointed it's not even funny.

At this point in my life women-empowering stuff just gets on my nerves. I find myself saying things like, it's about time we get over ourselves! It's really sad that I keep finding "stands" in general rather pointless. :/

So, no I haven't stopped blogging, I've just been busy and tired (and typing too many papers)

Word Vomit

I've been wanting to blog in Arabic, but it's so hard! Full-stops and exclamation marks automatically go the beginning of the sentence, the punctuation becomes messed up and really annoying to my eye! Uuuuuugh!

I give up on all the things I would fight for. Because I'm tired. I just want to live, and breathe.

I could just try to make the best out of being at home all the time.

And peacefully.

I'm beginning to succeed in creating a world for me in my head. The imagination. And I can smile with absolutely no reason, and nod with understanding eyes to dad and say 7ader every two seconds while I'm actually thinking whether or not this and that theory applies to the "notion" of memory in Memento .

I think I'm happier this way. Not exactly happier, it takes a lot of energy to be completely absent from the person talking in front of you, but I'm not sorry. If I don't think certain amount of minutes are worth it doing this certain thing, I'm free to do something else in my mind.

More than 100 strange things that you pass by every day, and never notice.

Today I went with a couple of friends to a shop I like to buy candles. I was buying a kind that doesn't last very long. K, Well it's not like you're going to use it anyway, right, it's decoration. Me, I use them, I use every single one of them. I hate electricity, it's an ugly-ass invention, except I love it because I love my computer. lol.
He said I was sentimental, which in fact I am. It's funny that now when I think about it, when I light my candles at night in my room, I never remember that outside my room everyone is using light-bulbs! It's strange. In my room with candles, nothing outside my room really exists, they're shadows. I'm not sentimental, but the candles give my room a surreal setting.

I was supposed to meet her. I don't know how to tell her. I don't know how to tell her that I love her, but that she can make parts of me die with her eyes, when she looks at me and she blames me. However I tried to make things better, she makes me lose my faith that I can change.
My 50 year old proff. is happy with his yellow submarine that I made him, he smiles at me when he sees me.
How come not everyone is like him, understanding of small love gestures?
Well I don't have the answer. Even worse, I doubt the existence of one, even outside of my own little stupid brain-cells.

Strange how you can love someone you exchanged a couple of words with, and hate someone you've knows for years. Strange how you can love someone you've known for years, and hate someone you exchanged a couple of words with. In fact, the strangest of all is when you compare two friends of yours, one whom you've knows for 8 months, and one you've knows for 5 years, and you find that your 8-month friendship is way warmer, and more cozy.
That's when I realize that time is shit, it's futile.

Strange how when I hold my hands together, I feel as if my left hand is feeling my right hand, and not one feeling the other. It make me doubt adequacy, if these two are so similar...

Judge Me if You Can

I hate the system because I fail to understand how one is expected to do something in a very specific time even if they don't really want to do it. At the same time, it's expected to be done well. It's not out of anger, it's not out of frustration. I simply fail to understand, and I become alienated when I don't understand it.
Inside these walls I have to behave. There's professor, and there's student, and there's no mixing between them. One teaches, one learns. How dumb is that? And how come it's strange to talk to them outside of class about life, and not about work? What kind of relationship are human beings expected to have from one another? Also, how can learning turn into business...?
I figure out the reason why I have crushes on my professors is beyond the Oedipus complex. Inspired by Lacan, I realized the relationship between love and knowledge...it's because I am certain that they know more than I!! hehehehe. What a strange hypothesis. I should work on it.

For a long time, I used to live on people's stories, I never had my own...or maybe I never realized I had my own stories. Until I was 17, maybe, I never had stories, I only listened to them.
I used to read so much novels, I was so eager to be in someone else's shoes. Now, I regret it, actually.
I envy my being 17, before my life started to get busy. Nothing happened when I was 17.
Then, I got so used to the drama that now, when my life is peaceful, I feel awkward.

V-Day

I always hated valentine's day, even when I was most in love. Love is to celebrated every single day it lives, not once a year. Or, if I don't have it, I shouldn't celebrate that day.
V. for vagina, and V for violence.
It's strange the one of my favorite songs is "My Funny Valentine". I think one of the main reasons I love this song is that it's hopeful, but also very sad.

Yesterday was one of the most comforting days of my life, I talked to someone dear to me, and I told that person everything i ever wanted to say. I told them everything I ever wanted to say, ever, and everything I wanted to tell them, too. I know that "them" is not correct, I just don't feel like doing the whole him/her thing, and I don't feel like specifying, either.

Not often it is in life that you find this kind of freedom of speech. Almost everything is censored. Even we censor ourselves. It's sad, and it's convenient. Maybe it's sad BECAUSE it's convenient.

It was also interesting that a couple of days ago was the first time I actually got drunk, as in drunk. I started to feel that everything goes so fast, i talk to fast, cars move fast. Life is just much faster. Over all, it's a funny experience. It's not one of my favorite feelings, though.

Far from this, another thought.
I am everything and I am nothing. Saying this sounds cliche, I know. Some people are so obsessed with one thing that they become so good at it. I am obsessed with too many things at the same time. I'm good at more than once thing, and it gets heavy. It means I am not especially good at one thing, and good at nothing. It's a sad realization.

One more cup of coffee before I go.
I started working on writing the play, I am inspired by a picture I found in Sur El Azbakeyya. The character names are not yet decided. But I decided on a couple of names. The woman in the middle of the picture is going to be called Safinaz, and the funny-looking man is going to be called Safwat, just because Safwat is such a funny name to have. The other woman is going to be called Magda because she's lame and banal, even though she's very interesting. Mnehh.

I go.

Random Facts...brainstorming.

I consider myself sincere, and people think that this way, I am concieded (sp?), and that I don't really know myself because of course I'm a big liar inside like everyone.

I'm not feminist, I'm not misogynist, either. I have very few prejudice on sex and gender. I can't remember myself saying, men do that or, it's a woman thing except jokingly.

I either stop myself from the beginning, or I get addicted. That's why I quit drinking before I start it. I'm a quitter.

Safe is nice. I respect risk-takers even though I know I'm definitely not one. I'm not brave enough, probably never will be.

I love change when it's not caused by me. I find things that just happen to be much easier to deal with, and absorb the consequences of than my own choices.

I am optimistic, but I make fun of optimisitic people. Also, I'm usually drawn to pessimistic people!

Often, my silence is not out of acting cool, nor is it because I have nothing to say...it's me not finding a point of saying it.

It's hard for me to deal with people who have a different rhythm. People who are slow in doing everything just tire me, people who are too fast make me feel overwhelmed.

I'm often doubtful of my capabilities. I find it comforting when people cut it short and just tell me that I suck, or that I'm good at something.

--The End--

Day and Night

Today was a day without light.


I slept at 5 AM, jet lag. And I woke up at 6 PM. It was a day without sun. I feel like I have been asleep and awake two days in one.

I feel like I did not even wake up from sleeping, it’s still night like I left it the day before.

I went out, had coffee with a friend(it wasnt a good idea, i still cant sleep now). I still couldn’t recognize the new day.

Time is a strange phenomenon.

The Coming Back

So, after asking a couple of people in a form of a mini-survey...turns out that I am alone.
I am the only one who comes back to Cairo and feel as if I never left.

Maybe I didn't stay abroad for as long as most of them (5 different people).

I am happy to come back. One day, I'll go back to New York, it's such a pretty city. I am happy to be back here, though.

Me and Gogo went around in the streets of Mohandeseen doing nothing, being crazy and natural high. Poor Gogo is so ill.

I was thinking of creating another blog, journal of whatever. This blog has been getting many many readers. But I dont know, I belong here...my blog feels like home. It's strange. I try to change the way it looks sometimes, and the color-scheme but I can't. It looks as if someone had redecorated your whole room that it doesnt feel like your room anymore.
I really love this space.

Funny thing, I have readers that are not Egyptian. I look at the little map thing and it makes me wonder. The idea is nice, though. Someone in..I dont know what, Greenland, has been reading an entry I have written.

There's no punch-line for today.

ليه يا بنفسج

مزاج ليه يا بنفسج!

في يوم م الأيام فكرت ان أنا زي البنفسج اللي بيتكلم عليه دة. في يوم م الأيام كنت كدة فعلا، باحاول قد ما اقدر اني اهدي كل حد في أزمة. و بعدين اكتشفت قد إيه كنت بانسى نفسي ساعات، وبانسى أنا كنت عايزة إيه.

أعتقد اني ف يوم صحيت و قررت اني مش هاعمل كدة، و هاقول لأ. و بقول أعتقد لأني مش فاكرة اليوم دة أصلا. بس أكيد موجود لأني متغيرة.

فيه وقت من حياتي كنت مقتنعة ان أنا كدة وصلت لمرحلة عجيبة م السلام النفسي، و طبعا مع الحوادث اللي حصلت لحياتي، اللي ترتب عليها اني اخسر الاحساس دة، بقيت اشك انه موجود، أو كان موجود في أي صورة م الصور (سواء ف حياتي، أو ف العموم).

الغريب اني ساعات باحس ان التفكير في الحياة ، و في الأسئلة و الإجابات مضيعة للحياة نفسها! زي المقارنة بين ان الواحد يقرا عن خان الخليلي و انه يروح يتمشى هناك!

بعد الشامبانيا، أي "أطروحة" ممكن أعملها دلوقتي مش شرط يكون ليها أي أساس منطقي.

"اسمع و قللي مين اللي قال معايا آااه

إسمع و قللي مين اللي قال معايا آه

بقولها وحدي لوحدي،

و الأسى هواه.

ليه يا بنفسج بتبهج

و انت زهر حزين"

So Much to Do So Little Time.

I have so much to do in so little time!
I have to read more philosophy. I loved reading philosophy (when I did). It was brain-scrambling but it gave me more to think about, in less time... If I had read Kant's ethics eight years ago instead of four, it would have saved me a lot instead of rationalizing ethics with my own effort.
He sums it up, one has ethics because one is free to do everything. And therefore, the law is of the rational thinking.

And then, I stop reading philosophy and I stumble in my daily life. And I stumble. And I don't know where the idea of morality came from. I had forgotten.
Being me, I forget the most basic things, and hold on to the very details of events in my life. That's being me.

I have so much to do in so little time. I have so much to think about and resolve before it's too late. I feel that the years get shorter. I get older. I need to feel safe before I die. I need to feel as if my eyes see in more than one direction, or else it's wasted time. And after that, comes the nothing.

My life is the time for me to make the choices.
I die, and then people make them for me. They burry me, and visit me (maybe), and talk about me in a certain way (maybe). Or forget me.

Sentiment with which 2006 left me.

Most people try to think of the new year. It makes me wonder why we don't spend the new year's eve thinking that now we are one step closer to death!!! If death didnt exist, though, time would not exist. Humf, I'm not getting to a point, here, am I?

2006 has left me with this:
- A mixture of strong love and strong hatred to complete strangers.
- Endless doubt and questioning of my belief- system.
- Even more doubt in the slightest possibility of communication between certain cultures.
- A few symptoms of depression.
- Constant re-evaluation of the whole motif of happiness.
- Hatred for dogma, and dogmatic attitude(s).
- Intolerance for pretentiousness of different shapes.

that's all I can think of for now.