Phoenix Rising

she coyly throws her sideways glance as she has done countless other times making the hearts of men melt like butter under a hot sun...the crows feet around her eyes crinkle into their comfortable pattern as her mere grin turns into a full blown smile, proudly exposing her teeth...her eyes glisten with sunlight and tears welling in her eyes...tears of life...good...bad...and everything in between....

she could have never imagined her life to have become what it is now...a woman who holds onto traditions she never felt important and embracing contemporary things she never thought she'd care much for...

she glimpses herself in the reflection of a pond in the park where she poses and senses tranquility entering into her being...a gentle breeze rustles her hair as she listens quietly to the green leaves whooshing above..she can hear their song...their words of eternal observation and is entranced in that moment...

Its a moment of rebirth...for the world around her...and her inner self...shedding her skin she leaves behind the person that she was to be captured by the artist observing her in her moment of magnificence...

slowly she rises from her cocoon unfurling her newly fortified wings... walking away from the impression she left behind...a new woman...reincarnated...embracing new life for the remainder of her days...

my melody

were i to sing these words

Unleash my melody upon your world

you would be unable to hear my harmony...

Upon your deaf ears they would fall encountering your iron wall defenses

their loving ring and chime converted to dinging clanging fury making your blood boil...

your sirens of warning would call...

giving rise to your screams of protest and fear...rising above all else distorting my plea of understanding, of hope, of longing meaningful companionship perverting my harmonious intent...

silencing my voice, obstructing my rhythmic pulsations...

As your words supersede my musical life's energy the music continues within...

Deep within...

always moving...

deeper and deeper

outside of your reach

replaced by the lifeless hum of complacent appeasement...

Wednesday

Its wednesday and the day begins like any other...I trek through the rain drenched ground waiting for the sudden appearance of my bus, emerging mysteriously from the dense fog...

Riding by i watch the fearless bicyclists bravely bracing the weather as i laugh internally at their insanity but am impressed with their dedicated resilience despite being pelted in the face with water from air and road, kicked up by the zooming traffic...

i disembark from the bus, not before a pink cheeked olive child with green blue eyes and dusty blonde hair smiles from her stroller and blows me a kiss, i pretend to grab it and place it on my heart as i caress her face and wave goodbye to her and her mother...

despite the bleak weather the Grote Markt is alive with the beating of drums and melodic singing...there is a live band...a concert...for what? i haven't the slightest idea or concern...the Dutch have an amazing spirit of celebration, humanity, and fight...i skip to the beat and smile as i recall my list of groceries...to "the souk" i go...

For someone with a terrible sense of direction and an internal compass that points due south-northish east, i am amazed that i have yet to be lost...in fact it seems that all i have to do is think or wish for the place i need and trust my gut and suddenly there it is...as if i have been here in a previous life...something holds me here...like magic and has reinvigorated my spirit...

while having no intention to shop i purchased some sprigs of fresh mint, like those i grew in my apt back home, and gorgeous plums along with my long sought after summak spice...as i prepare to pay i notice a small stack of figs...these were the figs my parents would look at and say were meant for goats not people...but after living 30+ years in diaspora they learned the beauty of appreciating the little miracles that we are granted along the way...Goats or not...a fig is a fig...and that is something i simply could not resist...

walking to class i tenderly remove the fig form the bag and squeeze its purple/green skin to reveal its brilliantly pink flesh and i proceed to inhale its scent...it smelled like sweet earth, i think to myself, and i am transplanted to the land of my grandparents and childhood memories of climbing trees and eating fruits that in our small hands seemed impossibly huge for human consumption...we watched the sun set, bathing in the warm moonlit sky and contemplating futures and dreams that only children can...

I pop half of the fig into my mouth and am overtaken with chills as each individual taste-bud is brought back to life after years of dormancy, coming into contact with the exploding pink seeds of the fig...

I'm home i think to myself, in this moment i am home...the home i built for myself over the years, the one that welcomes everyone, the one that i lose sight of as the concerns of the world and pressures to "achieve" weigh down on me...

as the second half soon follows i think...today is going to be a good day...no it already has been... :)

Fall

The leaves outside are falling. Tumbling down, cascading gently upon the wings of the unseen, undetectable winds, marking yet another cycle of life. Which one? Who knows, who cares?...

The occasional leaf makes its way into our lives, into our buildings clinging to the bottom of an unsuspecting shoe. An intrusion to our sterile environments, our desperate attempts to create a semblance of order, something, without which we seem unable to function.

Yet there it lies, a message from the outside world, crushed to dust, crumpled upon the ground. Unceremoniously left to decay until an industrially mass produced machine comes upon it removing it from sight and memory.

Benignly awaiting its ultimate demise it attempts to remind us of the greater order, one that has long existed before us and will continue to do so after we become nothing more then phantoms of the past. An order so much greater then the individual and so interconnected that it impacts each of us if only we would take a moment to notice…

Will no one stop with me just a second to breathe in the fall of creation in preparation to be born anew?...

Night & Day

It's those tricky hours before I go to bed, all alone, that the floodgates open and I'm reminded of all the people no longer in my life yet forever in my soul. The images of their faces flashing before my minds eye...

Immersion in my everyday life and worries is the only thing that closes the curtain before them, so that i may project the images of here and now and an inevitable future that will only include their image as it is forever captured in a time capsule. Dreaming up what has become of them, a privilege i am no longer entitled to know...

As much as i say i've let go i never have and all those nights and days i blamed them have now become self blame. I cant really remember why i severed such ties except that I (not them) had become such an unstable, acidic person that all i knew was to cut out and start anew. Some would describe it as turning over a new leaf but such a description is too benign for how i felt about it. I tore the already tattered pages of those books, spat on them, drowned them in gasoline and then lit them, weeping a silent eulogy while inhaling the burning stench of my inner peace. With no trace but the ashy residue of their faces, that no matter what i do i can't nor want to wash away, i'm reminded of my long term emotional embattlement...

I destroyed those relationships, and now i exert my energies to remind myself of all the horrible things they did, forcing me to undertake the actions that i did. Such concrete truths have become untruths, lies that i weave to convince myself of the justice of the so called necessary evils i committed for the sake of my self preservation. While in hindsight it was necessary, it was never for the reasons that i had convinced myself...

And it is in these hours that i am flooded with their images, the tender moments, the laughs and hugs, welling the tears in my eyes that cling weighing down the incandescent silky strands of my web of untruths i've spent years constructing. Leaving me exhausted, wanting nothing more then to reach out to them. Stuck between the "reality" i've conceived over the years and the "reality" that is now true, one disproving the other...

As night turns to day and day to night my moods continue their eternal dance. Like sun and moon doomed to forever dance around one another, following in the others path. Longing to meet yet seldom doing so, for if they do darkness, blissful darkness, will be all that remains to the detriment of one another extinguishing life as they know it...

Croatia Day 6: The Last Night...

8-28-07

Staring upon a solitary star I wonder how many generations before me and how many after will look upon this very star and cast upon it their wishes, dreams, aspirations...

How many this very night?...

There is an interesting harmony that exists in this town. It's as if the sea rose upon the shore receding and depositing its sediments to create the structures closest to the shore. Meanwhile, the trees and vegetation higher above grew out of the ground gently pushing upwards creating simple stone homes. Remnants of the trees work can be observed by the jutting branches, the root cracked walls, the larger than life trees dwarfing the humble dwellings...

Enhancing the atmosphere, music is constantly playing in the background. The old men singing a cappella, the music school playing scales, or the sporadic live jazz band playing in the town square...

Sounds of laughter fill the air alongside the meandering murmurs of fish in the sea...

Croatia Day 5: Word Found...

8-28-07

I dip my pen into an ocean of ink, words cohesively collect themselves around its tip hungry to be received and expressed...

Linking together, formulating ideas, expressing themselves as autonomous yet dependent parts of a collective whole...

Only together do they have strength, power, inspiration, motion, color, form, structure, texture...

Drip, drip, drop the words come from the raging depths of my minds ink ocean, choosing their time and appropriate manner of expression...then they still...avoiding my pen's now over exhausted, broken tip...

Croatia Day 4: Brac

8-28-07 (Sitting on the ground in front of Hotel Palaca)
This piece was inspired by a book called Iraq: Under Siege

Waiting for things unknown violent images passed before his closed eyes...Various scenarios that could have been his life if but the slightest twist of fate...

Would he have had the same aspirations and dreams? Strengths and weaknesses? Would he live his life teetering between stability or forever falling looking for anyone or anything onto which to latch on?...

Would he find love? Be loved? Look onto others and find within them the things others could not love?...

Would he have even lived long enough to develop complex ideas, thoughts, arguments? Or would his life have ended cradled in his mothers arms as she fled only to find a "no entry" sign ahead and billows of smoke behind?...

Meditating in his cingular spot the images continued...

Croatia Day 3: They didn't come...

8-26-2007
In transit Korcula to Hvar

Why didn't i say anything? That's the thought that consumes me at the moment. No matter how far i go i am continually reminded of the issues that plague our society, and the ones that continually infiltrate my life...

As i stood there laughing in a moment of hysteria in which my travel companions and I joked about being lost in Karbuni. We had concocted these absurd stories about the reasons explaining off our unforeseen detour. Consequently we relayed our story of saving an ailing goat and returning it to the local village, after which it was only natural that they would throw a celebration in our honor....

Narrating our ridiculous story a man, that following this event became known as fat bastard, says to me, "Well given your Middle Eastern background it's no surprise that you wouldn't pass up an opportunity to carry a goat"...

I was taken aback...we all were...i couldn't connect the dots. What did this have to do with that??? Suddenly time stopped as realization hit me, my heart began to burn as the rage in my being resurfaced...a feeling that since the beginning of this adventure i had not even thought about...a feeling i hadn't even realized i was free of until it was there once more...It seems that fat bastard was inferring from his comment that since Arabs are stereotyped as being simple shepherds and farmers, and shepherds are further stereotyped to fornicate with animals, then it would only be rational to follow that i being an Arab myself would also be of a farming/Sheparding background and would naturally never pass up an opportunity to take advantage of an unsuspecting animal when it came across my path...

The moment to react, to respond was gone. He was no where even near me when i finally came to...and i here i sit boiling to a point of incoherence at the expense of an ignorant asshole, who finds racially and ethnically motivated jokes something of humor...

Even the pristine tricolored waters of the Adriatic, the waving leaves of silver and green of the well groomed olive trees, the scent of fresh grilled tuna, the company of friends, none of it can take me back out of the context that i was so unceremoniously thrust back into...

Perhaps i am meant to live the words i write. I wanted to encounter people with opposing or different views and i definitely have. But does that mean i have to subject myself to some ignorant man's rantings?

Why no words came, i don't know. All i know is that they didn't come...

Croatia Day 2: Meeting Backroads Group

Day 2,
8-25-2007 (I wrote a lot of stuff on certain days)
As i encountered my backroads group i now think about that idea even more; "cant' we all just get along?" The answer quite simply is, No. But we must try make some sort of attempt to communicate, to stand in our own shoes but see with the other's eyes.

How could i have ever been the person i am without travel, without putting down my own barriers and allowing myself to become absorbed in the other. Retaining my form but changing my essence. Maybe im being presumptuous or maybe that's why im so keen on latching onto people i dont know. My social norms tell me that to do so is unacceptable, its needy, desperate, and others simply dont know what to do with it. While that may be good and true, why should it stop me from trying? I only know how to be myself, a self that would not exist were it not for others...

The self can only continue to evolve so long as its environment changes. While many focus on the material environment to derive inspiration and self reflective thought, i also like to look into the internal changes of myself and others. Tapping into the wisdom of adaptability collected by others that they willingly impart. I learn myself through others, not that i mold myself into what they presume i should be rather by discovering their choices and justifications of those choices it helps me either question myself or reinforce my ideals and values.

How does one get close enough to others? How do you get past such barriers to a place of mutual connection? Is it only something instantaneous or can it be cultivated?

I almost think it would be more important to focus on the cultivated (if they are possible) since they force you to open and train new aspects of yourself as you are exposed to new views that will either reinforce your own for the same reasons or it will provide you with insights you have never considered since you've actively surrounded yourself with like minded individuals.

How to accomplish this goal?

It's one thing to become absorbed by like minded individuals but how do you lay down your weapons and listen to those whom you share opposing views? i cant say whether or not im ready for that as much as i want it to be the case...

Croatia Day 1: Dubrovnik

8-25-2007
Dubrovnik,
So many preconceived notions. All it takes is one glance and it's easy to understand why people would want to fight over this land. An "untouched" jewel of a land. Vast coast line, clear turquoise, aqua, marine blue waters and in a world of commercial interests its no mystery that people would want to claim it for their own.

On the same token if you want to escape the influences of the modern world all it takes is a 10 min cab drive to the grad (old city) to re-enter a world long forgotten. A time in which buildings and roads were constructed from nothing more then stone and national security consisted of a big "un-scalable" wall (i guess some things haven't changed). But this city is not without its blemishes. Recently renovated one can yet see the scarred buildings and the jarring marks left by rocket shells and bullet fire, modern technology, a thing that has no regard for distinguishing friend from foe, innocent from guilty, valuable from valueless. Rendering everything in its path useless, people damaged, burned, hurt, forever changed. This place, the air about it, the people, the scarred buildings it reminds so much of Falasteen, my ancestral land, will my people ever find peace?

After seeing such beauty i am yet again forced to ask what is it about the human condition that makes us so callous, so willing to commit atrocities in the name of "beliefs", "rights". Can one truly embark on such a self righteous journey and hope to have retained enough of their original self to come home to? Do we not have a responsibility to the earth, or environment, or do we justify the long term effects of our selfish battles by arguing that its in our immediate best interest, because we have ownership over something? How can we even be arrogant enough to make such an argument when none of us retain anything after we die? I am plagued by these questions, to which i will never have answers....