“The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.”
— CG Jung
My obsession with twin selves is making more sense everyday.
Someone actually tried to map world happiness… but forgot that the world is made up of people. A real map would be filled with tiny pixels, each representing every human being, and would probably appear yellower in some places and redder in others. Read about the study here.
“I learnt the lesson of nonviolence from my wife, when I tried to bend her to my will. Her determined resistance to my will, on the one hand, and her quiet submission to the suffering my stupidity involved, on the other, ultimately made me ashamed of myself and cured me of my stupidity…in the end, she became my teacher in nonviolence.” From Gandhi the Man.
I’ve been reading up on non-violence and interbeing –which i love–in order to keep the current events from swallowing my well-being. So far, so good. I’ve been doing a lot more living in the moment and am shocked at how much time I spend fantasizing or worrying about the future. And it’s amazing how reading a news story only once a day and allowing myself to cry about it brings me peace.
To the US and Israeli governments, to Al-Qaeda and Hizbullah.
Love,
Palestine
Lebanon
Iraq
And everyone else you’ve fucked over.
PS Here are the lyrics…i know you’re sometimes hard of hearing.
Check out this amazing art blog from trumpet-player Mazen Kerbaj who lives in Beirut and is chronicling the war daily through drawings. I much prefer it to the news.
If you know of more Lebanese artists’ blogs, drop me a line.
Thanks to I Hear A New World for the tip
Evacuations
By Elmaz Abinader
If I put one child on my shoulders
thrust myself forward scrape my feet
to clear the rubble, or water, waste or shards
If I hold the small legs in each of my hands
steady the bounce of the body
against my back, keep the child from falling
maybe the water will clear relieving the palms
The bombing will die away, leaving sparks to stars
The wave will curl back into the sea
If I wait outside the harbor, maneuver
through the blockade, slip near the pier
my boat empty and available, if I pull up
in a pontoon, make room in my motorboat,
bed the floor of a barge, clear out the galley
and scour the decks I can rescue those
Who have been betrayed by the ocean
The bronchial rains and wind, the missiles covered
with messages of love and death written
by young hands and delivered by fire.
If my bus pulls up to the curb, idles–hatch
open to hold their belongings, a convoy
of SUVs with captains chairs, a panel truck
ventilated, with room for children on the floor.
If I fill my car with large families, the sons
holding the doors so they don’t fly open
the desert will cool the backs
of the border-crossers, the interstate converts
to a freeway and not a boundary;
the bridge will lift its guard arm
to a permanent fist of power.
If I can give the children my bike to ride
quickly to the shore, hold their wrists
while they walk, lift them by the waist
and half-circle them aboard the waiting vessel.
Their mothers may smile at them and
brush the floppy hair away with a sense
of miracle etched in their foreheads
If I can swing them back and forth
in play perhaps the leg isn’t blown
off, face in the dirt, hand reaching
toward where they would go, if they could.
That eyes should witness this fracture, ears stuffed
capacity; that taste should include gun powder
and burning flesh; that adding cannot continue
on missing fingers and humming collapsed into sunken chest,
that calling for ummi or baba, mami or papi, pak, ibu,
momma and poppa is drown in elements
of water, earth, fire and air turned in on themselves
that memory should include this, that memory should
hold this, that life is told with an underline of the year
of refugee, of rescue of betrayal. Earth fire air water.
If I could put one child on my shoulder, if I could
whisper into her ear the sounds of birth and budding
rising and singing. If I could replace memory with dream.
Horror with honor.
My obsession with twinning continues. At left, a building in Beirut, right, the foreign ministry in Gaza. Photo courtesy of AFP.
Here’s what’s helping me break out of my funk and actually feel happy these days:
1. Reaching out to friends (Montaigne would love that) instead of waiting for them to call me, seeing them almost every night.
2. Eradicating guilt about my sleeping patterns.
3. Watching Twin Peaks nonstop while eating heaps of donuts and drinking cups of coffee.
4. Buying a cool notebook that reminds me of the exact notebook I bought from a street vendor in Alexandria where I ended up after my own exodus.
5. Getting a postcard from Christine that says, “She looks like you in this picture, I think.” It is a postcard of a photograph of Marilyn Monroe when she was Norma Jean. Instant self-esteem boost!
6. Staying up late at night with Michalle and doing our ennegrams and the enneagrams of all our friends, and cracking ourselves up. (I’m a Four.)
7. Seeing my friend Zeina and her 4-week-old baby Zahi, who is perfect and new and uncorrupted.
8. Reading the authentic version of the Arabian Nights by Muhsin Mahdi and Husain Haddawy. It’s such a good translation, and the introduction is absolutely priceless. Also, since I am in Twin Peaks mode, I am noticing the themes of duality much more this time around. God, even the editor’s and translator’s names/initials have mirroring going on.
9. Going to Barton Springs. It’s like a baptism for all your foul thoughts.
100,000 refugees.
I can’t describe to you how painful it is for me to see the faces of little girls and their mothers as they leave Lebanon. But I’ll try: it breaks my heart; it reminds me of my own exodus at age 13 from a war; it makes me angry; it makes me want to reach out and comfort those girls; to give them the books that comforted me, to make them laugh, to make sure they will have atleast 2 friends from their old school follow them so they won’t feel alone; it makes me want to dick slap Olmert; it makes me want to round up Hizbullah and thrown them into jail; it makes me want to grab Bush by the shoulders and send him to a school that will teach him actual logic and history; it makes me want to cry, and I do. What a shame that we keep going in circles and circles, that human beings never learn. When Israel or America or any hegemonic government says it wants to accomplish something it couldn’t accomplish before, it only ends up fucking over more people and failing, again. Every single time.
