would time dare to mimic itself?
what am i to do when i am faced again and again with the same question, that one question, to which i have yet to find an answer?
depending on the direction of the wind, it is either, sit, do nothing, do anything, or just go for a good run. a good friend of mine also knows that his could mean that we enclose ourselves in one room and that we will only again talk with each other after we have recovered from the physical exhaustion of communicating without words. there is another alternative, but i do not feel like throwing in japanese expressions into this little blurb.
horoscopes, signs, names, power and what my teacher said saturday about defense and offense: sometimes it is necessary to go on the offensive. today i just want to stop the time, and ask the engine behind the machine what on earth this is. why now? why again? why?
i just do not want to forget saturday's training. it was delicious, i like being a learner, i like asking the questions that the beginner asks. i will never forget how one day in seminar, many years ago, Hans Bethe asked the same exact question that I had. i was stunned. i remember not having the nerve to ask fearing that all would laugh at such a basic question. if i was not good, at least i wanted to look good. yes, vain i am. that is what i learned from Hans Bethe (the physicist, nobel laureate), ask the beginner's question.
yesterday i had a few hours of what i could call lucidity. it was clear to me then, this morning i still remembered it and i retracted into being a coward. why is the story that i am writing showing up in my life, whatever that real life might be.
i can only quote from a scientific paper that i was reading "such a signal detection view of the presence/absence of judgments for loose semantic relations may help to elucidate the commonalities between creative thinking, paranormal belief and delusional ideation." (complete reference available on request)
getting inside the arab mind has been like getting inside my own mind. cairo, the city, is in north africa, but it is in cairo, the city, that cairo, the writer interacts with other arabs from the gulf and the arabia peninsula. when i am immersed in the european and american cultures, i tend to forget a lot of the well being and freedom of being inside the arab mind. yes, my prince divine, i am still counting the grains of sand in arabia, and to the persian gulf i shall return soon, very soon. inshallah.
besides returning to the gulf, there is the nile to return to. they say that once you have tasted the waters of the nile, you will return. they say, they are right. i know them to be right when it comes to the nile and i know that i love the insanity of the decaying and evolving chaos of that city of mine.
sometimes i think i ought to pay my own clients for the pleasure of working with them. this week i held a little speech about seeing the shore on the other side, seeing the possibility, imagining another non predictable future, and how what communicates is what you see as possible. screw the difficulties, fuck the impossibility of the circumstances, and the lack of reason. reasonable people were never brilliant, they were just reasonable. wonderfully adorably reasonable, lovable. if you get stuck on reason, you will be reasonable, but there is nothing that is going to change, all will stay within reason, and nothing new will happen. i have been chewing on reason, reasonable, and my own being cerebral. on some days, it feels like pure schizophrenia, on other days, the lake's waters are clear and transparent, and i can see the shore on the other side and i know, without reason, that which i always wanted.
you learned somewhere along the line that being nonjudgmental is a good thing, as far as being good in an absolute scale goes, it is reasonable. you are trying this out for measure, you say that is is neither good or bad, but damn you, you do have an opinion, and you are god damn sure that you know. you don't know, and i am not to go argue with you. this is not personal, neither is fucking. when it comes to fucking most will indulge in thinking it is personal, the vain other will want to believe it is personal, and frankly my dear, it does not make a difference. when the animal is hungry, it wants food, it will eat what is nearest.
fake it until you make it: one day you discover that you have made it, and that you are no longer faking it. thus, were you ever fake?
last october you had the nerve to tell me that which you saw, your heart was open, you want to give me that which i seek. for an instant it felt like alcohol on an open wound: it disinfected, and it stung. i wanted to scream, i could not bear it. your insight penetrated my illusion, you were my muse before, you remain my muse.
"to say that i love you would be meaningless, i love all" these were the words that sent one good man -- a very good man, whom, like another good man, shares with me a passion for words and the power of literature, images, and self-expression -- into a spin. this sentence amuses me. when i first started writing in english, and before i had learned german, my english sentences had the structure of german sentences, sometimes they still do.
from one overexposed stranger to another: i love. yes, i am grateful for that which we share.
