I really wish you were here...
So, so you think you can tell heaven from hell?
Blue skies from pain?
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

i know i already woohued today but, this one's for you, baby boy
I was looking through an old chronicle I kept a few years back when my brother first went to college, and found a whole section on air, or wind. I like this part of it.

"The rush of air, humid and stale, thick with the scent of rain and damp is as refreshing as any spring breeze. Any air that moves and changes of its own accord carries with it a calm and peace, a confirmation of life that no air generated by machine can ever emulate. Only when the air moves by itself, scattering my hair into my eyes and my face, do I appreciate reality, not as it is defined by the media, but rather reality as few know it, and those few only know it at rare time intervals. This realization of reality is often spurred on by the most unexpected things; a content, familiar face, a patch of comfortable sunlight in my eye and often, a sudden breath of air, from nature or by a loved one's lips... It's a reality I love and adore. It isn't frightening or unhappy as so often is impressed upon us, but pure and rich..."

They say it's a night in a year, when everything goes

Today I turned 17 years old. I took an Arabic exam and an IB HL Math exam, 20 Paper 1 questions. In other words, 20 questions on everything I've taken this year and junior year, straight forward math problems. And we're done our core for math. From here to May, it's reviewing for the final exam, and Paper 2, which is conceptual and abstract, the really hard stuff. There's never been more than one question on a Paper 2 exam, and it's never been less than 30% of the overall score. Basically, these are the thoughts that have occupied my mind all weekend (minus 2:06 on the phone with California, when I stopped thinking about math, science and... well no, I didn't totally stop thinking about free will).

I know today is supposed to feel special, but it doesn't. It's just another day: I had exams. But today, people gave me things, like swiss cake rolls and Interpol CDs *cough*.

But today is special, because I checked my mail and I had all the people in the world tell me how much I mean to them. Thank you guys, it's not the birthday that's special, it's all of you for making it feel like it is.

I love you all.

plants and snails
Some middle schooler walks by Andy, 7amada, Zed and me carrying a plant. This was our reaction.

Andy: Oooh look! Plant!
7amada: Can you smoke that thing?
me: I want to pee on it...
Andy: No, I want to look at it and admire its beauty...

*Andy and I crack up*

Read more..

this is not goodbye

I've been happier lately. This vacation was just what I needed: time. I needed the time to party, I needed the time to jump around my room to The Strokes or Morrissey or Interpol or Mindless Self Indulgence, I needed the time to sit down with my brother and play Naruto until we both had tears rolling down our faces from concentrating on the tv screen for too long, I needed the time to sit down with him and watch disgusting comedy after another, I needed the time to sit down with my mother and figure things out, I needed the time to draw, sing, dance, write and most of all, I needed the time to spend with my friends.

If someone comes here and tries to tell me time is just a manmade concept and shouldn't affect us, fuck you. Don't you dare. No matter what there will always be twenty-four hours in a day, always be seven days in a week, time goes on, it's a real dimension and it marches through the three dimensions we inhabit, whether we like it or not. The only manmade concept here is the clock, the ability to track time and see how much of it we have left to get done what we have to get done.

That's a tangent.

I enjoyed this vacation so much. It meant a lot to me, in several ways and through several aspects, and though there were rough times (Laurence knows what I'm talking about) and I'm a little big caught up right now, I wouldn't change a thing about this vacation if i went back and did it again. If i could change it though, I'd put more hours into the day, more days into the week, more time to just... you know?

I'm going to miss it all when this vacation's over. I'm going to miss having the time to talk, having the time to relax, having the time to create. I'm going to miss you specifically, my personal gorgeous.

So i might be really absent. And if I am, well, don't change in the time it takes me to get back.

salad fingers


for andy.

2005

Happy New Year, everybody.

my mom came back home last night and gave me my birthday present early: a digital camera. 3.2 megapixels, 4x digital zoom, video capabilities with complete audio (poor audio, but still). expect better pictures to come with my posts from now on.

i hope you all had a raving good new year's, i sure as hell did.

woo woo!

ToTo-ology 102
Faygo is a highly toxic liquid that is fatal to the ToTo. If a ToTo imbibes said substance, its hoo-hoo will wither and die.



This is definitely fatal to a ToTo.



In case the punis gets tired or broken from overuse, a ToTo has multiple sexual organs. A ToTo is a multi-hoohooed subspecies, like an alien!



A ToTo is very sensitive to touch, but not to beating. You are much more likely to raise a ToTo's angry response by touching its hair than you are by slapping its ass. Hair-touching is a very sensual experience to a ToTo and shall not under any circumstances be undermined, elsewise a ToTo is known to scratch, bite, punch and kick in the balls. Though usually docile, adorable creatures, ToTos have been known to attack dogs. ToTos dislike dogs. ToTos dislike dogs very very much.



In a recent experiment, the ToTo has had DingDongs infiltrated into its diet. This has caused the ToTo great confusion and delight as it satisfies sweet taste buds and inflicts childish laughter at the hoo-hoo type nature of the name of this product.



The ToTo is notable for inventing more terms and phrases for sexual encounters than should be legally possible. Most prominent are hoo-hah and wiki-wiki.

[No image available at this time.]

Much like the comic book heroes of old, the ToTo has a singular weakness that renders it incapable of eating OR hoo-hahing. This is the common household product that in layman speak is referred to as 'cheese'.



In conclusion, be careful of where you touch a ToTo and what you give it to eat and drink. To win a ToTo's favour, it is advisable to give your ToTo froghurt, Pepsi (not Coca Cola) or choclate custard. A ToTo will also take doughnuts from nice Catholic boys.




This is a ToTo, this is me. Take it or leave it. If you take it, take it all and if you leave it...

Save a ToTo. Screw abstinence.
Save a ToTo. Go on a diet.

one of those days

here's a really sad day.

for the first time in a long time, i did NOT wake up at 4 this morning just to desperately try to get back to sleep only to finally fall asleep an hour at least later. i slept right through it all and woke up at five to my cat, licking my eyelids in protest, as if saying "hey, we've got a ritual here, you wake up at 4 and you're so bored and tired you brush me for half an hour, then feed me and clean my water. you can't sleep. wake up and carry on with our ritual." black bastard.

at 7 in the morning, i woke up to the sound of my mother, yelling over the phone, "i will not inform you or anyone else! if i feel like going to lebanon for new year's i damn well will!" she's going to lebanon for new year's. i think it's lebanon at least, she didn't say when i asked. but yeah, basically, i'm getting kicked out of the house on wednesday because that's when she's leaving.

at 10 in the morning, my brother woke me up. "fayoor, why aren't you in school?"
"it's right between christmas and new year's, why do you think i'm not school?"
"oh. go back to sleep, sis."

by then i couldn't go back to sleep, and so i got up and started working on lunch for the family. the phone rings and rings, but i don't answer, i never answer the house phone (ask andy). finally, it bugs me so much i pick up. it's my uncle waleed. his daughter diana is in the hospital again. she's got a fever of 40, blood PH 8.6, she literally cried herself unconscious.

noon, my boss calls and needs me in for an emergency. i tell her i'll be there as soon as i can. i'm already thinking, "emergency my ass".

at one, my mom is back home from work, i tell her about my boss and uncle waleed, and we decide we should probably go visit diana in the hospital. we have a brief lunch, i get dressed, and she drops me off at work while she gets some stuff from sultan (giant supermarket type place).

i get to work, and the big emergency is with contracts that i had printed out about two weeks ago. i show her that they were on her illiterate, good for nothing secretary's desk the whole time and sit down to type out a speech that i'd put off the last time i was there until my mother was done shopping and came to pick me up.

my mother absolutely has to go to the salon to get her eyebrows done, and i figure, what the hell, i could go for that too. so we do, and the women botches up my left eyebrow. great.

we're finally ready to go to the hospital, but first, let's stop by aunty badriya's and make sure she doesn't want to come along. guess what, she does want to come alone. so i jump into the backseat and try to get some sleep except my mom's playing a sermon by a saudi arabian bedouin really loudly.

we're at the hospital. diana's eyelids are literally purple and her lips and scarily blue because she hasn't stopped crying in hours. her mother, aunty alexandra, has also been crying, because the doctors don't know waht to do with her daughter. "she needs sodium bicarbonate!" she cries, "why can't they just give her the sodium bicarbonate?!"

when we drove my aunt badriya back to her house, my mother again just had to step inside for a minute to see 7asoon, my baby cousin. i spent 3 hours trying to be civil around fa6ma, the oldest cousin in that particular household, while she watched kuwaiti soccer games and flipped through the arabic music channels. i tried to fall asleep, but i couldn't.

we finally left and stopped by a bakery where my mom spends half an hour making a purchase. they didn't even have a doughnut i could munch on while i waited.

we left the bakery and just as we neared my house my mom pulls into city centre, the ghetto mothership of the city. she shops for 7ajj, i trail behind her, tired and sleepy. i just want to go home and collapse.

just to gild the lily, everytime i got in or out of the car i hit my head on the roof of the car. you do the math and tell me how many times that is.

and now that i'm back home, done with the dishes my brother left in the sink from when he had lunch, done with two piles of laundry, i can't fall asleep.

but that's ok because i got a phone call from shannon crying about how big bad myla hit her in the face. so i called myla, we had a nice talk, the end. if shannon thinks she's going to drag me into this shit, today of all days, she's even more stupid and more french than she seems.

i'm through. i don't feel like anything else for the rest of the night.

love

it's amazing what you can forgive just by seeing a familiar, loved face. it's amazing what you can never forgive, just by seeing it happen right in front of you.

it's amazing what you can forget just by spending time reminding yourself why you loved someone. it's amazing what you can never forget because of how often it's rubbed into your face.

it's amazing what you can deny while looking into the eye of someone special. it's amazing what you can never deny to somebody you hate.

it's amazing how easy it is to fall in love with someone you hate. it's amazing how impossible it is to hate someone you love.

all in all, love is a pretty crazy thing, no matter how old it is. all in all, it's all just amazing.