whores, all of them

i mean, all of us. we live in a world of whores.

"in particular i wonder what all of this now has to do with me, and why it is that these days i find myself in such a wealth of relationships."  that was just a few days ago and today i got reason to ponder. the answers i do not have.

here i am today in my vicious little life and i get a message, not by telepathy, but carried by radio waves, from one who is intent on something or other. he claimed to be by the river and in need of something. i answered that he sounded like he needed a whore. he did not disagree, he retorted that he needed a special one. he did not say it, but he did imply that the special whore whom he needed was none other than that one inhabiting my body. it feels good to be needed as a whore.

all that i could think of was that all women are whores, all wives are women and that the trouble with the wives is that you pay for a life time. he did not disagree. but then i would continue that all men are whores, husbands are men and the trouble with men is that there is no trouble with them, they know their condition.

i have looked up every possible definition of the word whore in several dictionaries, and frankly, i like it. i am in too much of a haste to want to go into any detail about it right now. still, who has made the sexual act unchaste? chastity has something to do with sexual purity. but what the fuck is sexual purity and who made sex dirty? i concede that it is a bit sticky on occasions, but dirty?

oh, i forgot to tell you in advance, i am one great universal whore.

you strip the word "whore" of all moral and religious judgment and dogma, and you get the naked truth in its truly nihilistic sense. i love it!

as far as i am concerned marriage is just another form of legalized prostitution. on occasions i do delight in literally walking the moral high ground.

note: yes i will go into more detail on this rather fascinating subject for it is the very subject of one of my current writing projects.

Technorati Tags: cairo otaibi, ethics, marriage, moral, no ink, notes, out of context, story, whores

glorious!

i was exhasuted by the time that i turned off my mobile last night and proceeded to wind down from what was both a pleasurable and draining weekend. if i had to summarize the whole of the weekend, a few words would do it. it would boil down to being honest with oneself.

on friday evening aikido practice attendance showed all the results of the world cup, we were exactly two people. in itself it was fantastic, but also demanding given the heat and the fact that when there are only two people training, one goes from one technique to the next without a pause to watch the demonstration. then i joined my round table colleagues at a local restaurant near the university and we watched as the swiss team sent the koreans back home empty handed. riding the bike through town after this gave me new hope about the state of mind of the swiss population: they are alive after all and capable of showing emotion and joy. for once downtown was alive, and it was not with another demonstration of some sort about something or other that rarely makes the headlines of the local papers.

on saturday afternoon i sat in the garden and had a good chat with my dear legal-brains friend who is in the process of studying for an executive public administration degree while fighting some addictive behaviour. we had a sincere and frank exchange. somehow when friends are blunt with each other, it always hurts on both sides; it is not easy saying it, and it is not easy listening.

on sunday afternoon, i sat in a café while the rain poured and once more had another sincere and frank exchange with another friend. this time my friend wouldn't and couldn't be arsed about any public administration degree and somehow once again addictive behaviour is involved.

in all of this what kept returning to my mind was the incidents of a few many summers ago in nîmes and avignon when my travel companion and i one day had passionate arguments, loved each other in all the madness of carnal desire in nîmes, and then on the next day in avignon all the emotion had cleared and i was a calm cool collected being like i have rarely known myself to be. between nîmes and avignon i had decided that for all the love, passion and respect in the world and between us, i needed a change in this relationship. i put this relationship in a new context by calling it off. i gave up. i was not going to move to paris, he was not going to move to berne, and for better or worse we were geographically stuck and a long distance relationship gets to be exhausting after a few years. i have often questioned the wisdom of this decision that i took in nîmes then in that so memorable day. when i changed the context of this relationship, i also separated from one of the most wonderful men who ever shared in my life. he is attentive and respectful, well educated and polite, handsome and virile, in short, wonderful. i had a man like this in my life, and i told him to go. he went and he has come back in the middle of a marital crisis, but then it was not like he was gone all these years for we have remained intimate friends without the thrills and frills of sexual intercourse. when i thought that i was leaving this man back then between nîmes and avignon, little did i know what dimension i was adding to our continuing friendship. it makes me wonder.

in particular i wonder what all of this now has to do with me, and why it is that these days i find myself in such a wealth of relationships.

addiction is one hell of a bitch. i think of this one aikidoka whom i suspect being addicted to something that i can not identify. each time that i see him, the man is a mess; he has either injured himself, wrecked his car, or is in the middle of some existential crisis or another. as far as aikido goes, the man is a solid rock of technique and i am always very humbled each time that i train with him and feel like the lowest of all beginners on such occasions. when it comes to life outside of the tatami this man is one kind and pitiful mess that is not based on my conjectures about his state of being but rather on the discussions that we have had.

somewhere along the line yesterday when i started to feel the exhaustion of my friend's drama - yes, there is something called transference here - i uttered something about trusting the wisdom of the universe. i do. my access to it is by asking myself if i am being honest with myself. anything else does not matter.

so, it is time to return to whores and samurai!

PS: when i opened up the editor to write this post i was thinking of writing about "cybling" and somehow never quite got the curve to it...

Technorati Tags: abandon, abuse, addiction, aggression, aikido, avignon, france, honesty, nîmes, practice, samurai, scaffold, whores, wisdom

new, delete, torture

ah fuck! how am i?

just a tad in my fucked up mind, that is how i have been. yesterday i started reading and writing on a piece that promises me all sorts of ravenous delights and then i got lost in my mind. some call this normal, the creative process, but i just call it mind fucking.

a couple of days ago i ask a friend of mine if he wanted to torture me a little, he replied with the question if i wanted torture. my immediate thought was that this needed a correction, so i took action. once more i asked if he wanted to torture me, i had not told him that i wanted torture. it took some minutes and then it clicked... yes, but how do i torture you, he asked.

without any context to that little interaction of ours, you are lost in knowing what the facts are, and what could it possibly have meant then. torture, oh and how i like torture! mind fucking is one kind of torture that i can only conjecture that i must like because i end up doing a lot of it. one could say that i indulge in it.

then i realized that the kind of torture that i explained to my friend the other day had nothing with mind fucking and much more with tickling my senses and making all traces of thought disappear. right now i feel that i am in the process of deconstructing torture in some way or other. torture and choice. i am ready to give up. i give up.

i have had it with all this mind fucking activity of thinking what would be better, what priorities are, what responsibilities are and all that crap. as a matter of fact i am a bit tired of belly button contemplation. sometimes it is good to lose one's mind, or at least to let it loose for a while. after all, the mind and the intellect are not as useless and insipid as one might want to make it in the popular self-help regurgitations of spiritual salvation by self-proclaimed gurus. yeah, i sometimes read that stuff, and sometimes there is even something good to take out of it.

fuck this, it is time for going to training. i am in one hell of a fucked up mood, i like these moods: ravenous!

Technorati Tags: fucked up, mind, torture

how am i?

artful, playful, scared, evasive, reckless...

struggling with damned feelings of guilt. damned they are. my ego is throwing fits; funny, hilarious fits they are! my throat feels like a sewer and my voice is gone and is starting to come back. responsibility is nothing that i want to deal with today. fuck it all kind of mood. it is summer, and what a time to have a flu!

i am not happy. i am not unhappy. the concept of happiness is either foreign to me or incomprehensible.

a friend of mine told me today that i make him happy. i was particularly unimpressed by his revelation. i know that in his world happiness exists. in the world that we share, he is happy, and i am awed by it all and incapable of calling it anything other than sharing life. he brought me three beautiful scented roses, we had a hurried lunch, and then it was back to work. this hurried lunch was a bit about nourishment for the body and a whole lot of nourishment for the soul. we needed to talk, we needed to reassure each other of our loyalty. i was in argumentative and significant mood. this happens to me when i get tired of human drama, be that drama mine or another's. i find human drama ever so boring and draining, it nags on what is most beautiful in life, serenity. whenever i hold such deep and meaningful speeches as i held today to my friend, i always need to listen really carefully, usually there is much good counsel in them which i can use myself.

the biggest drama queen that i have ever know is my father, he is closely followed by my mother, his wife, the two form a unit, i call it the indivisible gemini. these two rejoice in being kicked in the face by life, so they do everything that they can to be kept in the role of victims. it would be pretty pathetic if it was not such a scam. whose scam? the ego' scam? well, i do not know if the ego really exists other than as a good concept to understand the human condition and its addiction to pain. which ever way one choses to look at it, my parents have their act together when it come to drama. of course, we kids have brilliant supporting roles in this drama that i insist on turning into a comedy. well, i prefer comedy, and it is all a matter of point of view anyhow. in our parents eyes, we are both failures, and our sister died as a child. my brother failed in becoming the next bill gates, and i failed in becoming the next albert einstein or marrying donald trump. your pick, we failed. my brother now has gone into einstein's field, physics, and i do what i can as a physicist, writer or just fucked up artist. i do not have a husband, much less a donald trump, and i also do not have a career that that be displayed in a vanity curio. i have collected unemployment, lived on social welfare, earned money like a mad maniac, and i keep on not having anything material to show for all the richness in the adventures of my life. fuck performance, if you are a drama queen, then performance is yours at all levels: the world is a stage and the audience is to be manipulated by your act. brilliant!

being a drama queen works well in our society. i remember once in college when i was trying to get out of a rental contract on campus. i tried reason, it did not work. i brought out the tears and the drama, and i was out of that contract in no time at all. it felt good at the time, i was barely twenty years old. youth is a wonderful excuse for lack of wisdom. in retrospect i do not think that it was a particularly impressive performance on my side, and yes, it did change the course of my life. one consequence is that i landed right back in europe, but then, i wanted that and did not know how to ask for it. rouse worked, the drunken ego got its way once more. that was then.

so, you tell me, why is it that when my life starts to flow in just the direction that i have dreamt about, i start feeling all this crap about guilt? this one has got me by the balls now. yes, by the balls. that is how i am now.

last night provided other surprises, it had all the qualities that i call surreal. a friend rang me up on skype, and we had a fantastic conversation that evoked one commitment that i had made to myself during a conversation that we had had long long ago. my ego has been having a few challenges, and when it feels challenged it starts to want to throw a fit or two. the call last night however was a timely reminder of all that it takes to calm my ego. it takes a caress expressed by the love and affection of one who reads through me and deep down into my being. i like being transparent, yet we both find it damned uncomfortable for it exists at that place where serenity and ecstasy meet each other.

Technorati Tags: drama queen, dream, dreams, ecstasy, ego, fluage, guilt, money, performance, relationship, relationships, resistance, strangers, surreal, surrender

greed

inordinate desire and insatiate longing: greed. i can not get enough. i am drowning in not enough. the trouble is that i have no inkling what that not enough is. i just seem to neither be able to put my finger on it, nor am i capable of finding it or inventing it.

how does that go again? i am not capable of inventing it?

fat chance!

what is invention?

monday past was the birthday of a good friend of mine living in germany, a place that he also happened to have been born in.  thanks to the reminder on my electronic calendar i could give him  a call on that day. we did the updating-thing on each other's lives, loves and overall continued issues of being alive. things have sort of calmed down on his side -- at least in comparison with how they were in march when he had visited me and we spent a glorious day just taking turns listening to each other.

my brother would call this mood i am in mania. my therapist, doesn't call it such, but then i forgot to ask what she calls it. monday was a breakthrough day in therapy. disruption of routine and preconceived notions occurred. today is the tuesday that follows that monday and i woke up with a lousy sore throat and not feeling like getting up or facing the day light. my fucked up feelings are starting to get boring!

i went back to bed after having breakfast and read a bit, dozed off and now an half hour later i feel anxious. i read disturbing material or the noise that the construction workers are making around in the garden is bothering me. i do not wish to see anybody right now, for a few moments anyhow. the monk is one hell of a bitch on occasions!

let me make this plain to you, enlightenment is not all that it is raked up to be. to begin with there are lots of people out there claiming monopoly on enlightenment and they are as enlightened as any monotheist can be, that is, not very. yes, it is not what it is raked up to be, it is the greedy rake-off of dark intellectualism. enlightenment is a bunch of crap in our day and age. you can read all sorts of self-help books on how to attain it, countless gurus will gladly collect your money and promise you that they know what enlightenment is that you too can achieved it provided you are a good soul. by the way, drugs can help here. anything that gets you out of your mind will help, drugs and insanity included. you may have to pay for the drugs, but the bit about insanity comes for free.

now, have i crossed the line? of yes, i have crossed the line. i have dared to step on the other side of the puddle of un-conscientiousness and it scared the living daylights out of me. sort of, or rather, it was a good thing that i got a good scare. nothing like the adrenaline surge of a good scare to get me going.

my life is a wonderful invention. i promise nothing.

Technorati Tags: breakthrough, enlightenment, greed, life, monk, pretentious, psychoterapy, rake-off, results, scaffold, things

once again, how are you?

yesterday i walk into my therapist's office and ask her how she is doing? she asked why i asked. i answered that it was a small token of politeness and civility. something about acknowledging the presence and being of the other. it is an old worn out question, and it remains as fresh and crisp as ever!

how the fuck are you today?

well today i am left wondering about double contingency, double jeopardy, the double bind, and prejudice. i have been working on a document that i want to be absolutely to the point, and what i know is that there is not way that I am going to get it right in one fell swoop...

that is how i am. then there are the men in my life: son, brother, father, lovers, friends, colleagues and the grocer down the road. somehow they all contribute to this life, and i happen to not treat them with indifference, although on many an occasion i have wished that i could. but where are the women in my life? good question. all my life i have felt a bit lonely in this world without women, or with women bent on putting an ice pick on my forehead or stabbing me in the back in one way or another. i have a few women friends and they are precious in my web of relationships, however on the whole, i tend to be damn careful when engaging in a relationship with a woman. they tend to behave in ways that i am incapable of comprehending, much less predict, and even worse value or be inspired by. so, i have stuck with men as friends not as a rule, but as an experiential fact.

now i have a therapist, she is a woman. come to think of it, there are a couple more women in key positions in my web of relationships right now. this is damn new, and this is good.

so, a few days ago i get an email from my own mother, the master of manipulation in knifes and ice picks, and the mail is all sweet and wonderful, and i am asking myself what the fuck is going on. i cut and paste the email to my brother on skype, and we are both going "uh?"

then last night i was on the phone with a friend of mine, male, man, lover, partner in the crime of being alive and kicking, and we end up on this very issue on how to deal with such crap. my crap, his crap, or that thing that we call sharing life. all that i have learned about myself and the way to deal with other's aggressions is to meet that aggression with the same spirit that i meet the love that others give me. if past resentment, or guilt is being expressed in either aggression or clumsy behaviour, i make an effort to place myself in that frame of mind and spirit of being on the accepting end of another's love. it is damn difficult to do. it requires practice, lots of practice, and often i have failed. i have to understand none of it, even if often i can make some educated conjectures as to what is going on. still, most of the time human behaviour remains an incredible adventure ready to give me a surprise or a shot of adrenaline any time.

kindness between lovers seems obvious. kindness between enemies does not seem obvious. can you meet the ugly expression of past history with the same spirit that you meet the love of another with whom there is no past?

so, how am i?

damned if i know, but i am here and my feet are beginning to touch the ground again. i like the taste of change, it is like ecstasy, it is frightening.

Technorati Tags: acceptance, aggression, behaviour, being, change, choice, compassion, ecstasy, man, woman

the monk's silence

it has been a year to this month since I have practiced karate on a regular basis. on special occasions i have in this past year showed up for special training or katas but regularity has been missing. meanwhile one of the places and our dojo have been renovated following the past floods in august, and i have dealt with a depression.

yesterday evening i was back to our tuesday evening training.

before i became aware that what ailed me was what was then diagnosed as a depression, i had this fear of such conditions. you could call it the fear of drowning if you are not a swimmer. then i was thrown into the sea of what my psyche was spewing at me and i had not choice than to either sink or swim. unglorified and unstigmatized depression is nothing else than another of nature's ways of challenging one's survival skills. it either does you in, or it makes you strong. but what tips the scale one way or the other? damned if i know!

whatever life is, it is something about death. at birth, there is one certainty, it is death. then after that bloody and violent mess that we call birth, the big scam starts. they - the powers that be - sell you happiness, education, money, wealth and greed. they sell you this all wholesale, and you end up believing a whole lot of crap. you will believe in capitalism, nationalism, judaism, catholicism, islamism, socialism, and a whole lot of isms and non-isms that are hollow, shallow and truly pornographic in all declensions of human perception.

what is a depression other than one of one's body plea to deal with traumas whose time has come? traumatic experiences vary in breath and intensity, and our sensibilities do determine the extent of that trauma to some degree. it is however our basic psych that first absorbs and deals with the traumatic experience. the mechanisms with which our psyche deals with such experience are varied and it are nothing more than one temporary storage mechanism for pain. we call this coping. humans are plastic, beautifully plastic, malleable, receptive, and responsive. we cope in a myriad of ways with an environment, social or biological, that is nothing less than complex. for all the generality and fertile creativity of the psyche, eventually it begs to be dealt with. depression is one of the ways in that this need manifests itself. it is not pretty, it just happens.

i am not yet certain that yesterday was my return to regular karate training, but for whatever reason it felt right and it felt like i have missed it. i returned home with my body totally unimpressed by the effort. given that i have not trained or jogged at all for over a week due to being out of the country for a few days, i was surprised at my own energy level. have i dealt with the bigger chunk of the emotional clutter that brought on that depression last year?

this monk needs silence. these are precious days and with each breath i am again reborn.

Technorati Tags: depression, fluage, karate, life, monk, psyche, silence, wind, zen