A la recherche des mots perdus

Il n'y a pas longtemps, je parlais francais et je me debrouillais pas mal. J'assistais dans un forum des langues pour paufiner mon francais, je m'occuper d'une table francaise dans une universitee ameriquaine, et en plus, je pensais en francais, et donc, dans un sens selon Decartes, j'existais en francais.

Desormais, la plupart des mots m'echape, et les seules fideles, je n'arrive point a les ecrire correctement, donc on peut dire que tout les mots francophones me trahissent mais aux niveaux differentes, soit orthographe, soit expressive. Pire, c'est la vanite pour laquelle j'ecris, et pour laquelle je m'echine a appredre des langues et les perfectionner pour ecrire. Quelle drole d'idee, je m'ammuse enorment a l'articuler!

Par consequant, la recherche des mots perdus, ne changera et ne servira a rien, comme la recherche du temps perdu selon Proust mais non pas a mon avis. puisque son oeuvre au moin a changeait ma vie meme si minimalement et indirecetement a travers "How can Proust Change your Life" par Alain de Botton.

Malgre mon doctorat en informatique et surtout en anglais, j'arrivais parfois a papoter en francais mais avec l'invasion artistique des derniers minutes libres de ma vie, je n'arrive plus a me servir du francais. Peut-etre je m'installerai un jour en france et si j'y serai lontemps peut-etre je me naturaliserai et la recherche des mots perdus sera toute une autre histoir transparente a moi et a vous aussi.

CARALHO!

Bom! Ja disse muito para hoje tambem, vou a deixar qualquer coisa para manha!

A morte do ingles

Peço desculpa ao(s) meu(s) querido(s) leitore(s) que agora precisa(m) traducotres para perceber a inutilidade e a vanidade da minha contribucao electronica. Para muitos, o portugues e mesmo cines, para outros e talvez a unica lingua para comunicar com os outros, para mim e para poucos como o Fernando Pessoa, e' uma patria, uma das nossas.

Entao, vou a escrever a mesma banalidade da minha vida seca, antes articulada em ingles, com palavras ainda nao esquecidas da minha "patria", seja portuguesa ou uma das outras linguas em perigo do esquecimento (como o meu armenho) ou do extincao (como as linguas mortas e.g. latim). Alem disso, a lingua portuguesa e pouco falada aqui e estou farto de falar sozinho.

Hoje nao vou a dizer muito mais do que eu ja disse ontem, entao vou a parar aqui.

Amanha vou a mudar lingua e escrever com uma lingua diferente cada vez ate ter que inventar novas linguas que ninguem percebe, nem mesmo eu!

Dreams, Desires and Other Things I Used to Have

Many years ago, when asked about what items I would carry with me to a distant island, my answer would be too pragmatic (e.g. computer, books...) if not foolishly religious (e.g. bible). In diaries, I kept track of these answers that lacked imagination and audaciousness.

That was until these answers started unfolding into surreal imaginations to quench simple and basic desires that I often tried to express visually but failed immensely. For example, upon my discovering the inexorable satisfaction that the avocado fruit offered in terms of variety of flavors, vital shades of green, and palpable textures, that are unimaginably analogous to women's flavors (also metaphorically), skin tones and textures, I dreamed of inhabiting an island of infinite avocado and women trees, possibly with cross-breeds amongst the two species where women breast-feed, secrete and, but not necessarily, excrete avocado products, such as avocado milkshakes, guacamole and their cousins. I can vaguely remember if that was through a dream or a day-dream, however, I additionally reasoned that pregnancy was unnecessary as women were sporadically inseminated to reproduce asexually via avocado/women trees and other Daliesque elements...

The reason I am writing this leads to the main theme of this monologue.

I have lately been self-diagnosed with a mild chronic depression termed, dysthymia (greek for malfunctioning of emotions θυμία), if any at all (athymia), and anhedonia (also greek for absence of pleasure) and along these come also nihilistic feelings, lack of ambition and desirelessness, which to my great surprise, is considered as the highest state, or the nirvana in Buddhism, regardless of the paradox of having to desire desirelessness, which was never my case anyway.

Perhaps the surrealist "gyneavocado" island was one of the last dreams or desires I can remember or label earnestly as a dream/desire. Then for a long time I was catching up with the real world and its mundane routines, research projects and mislabeled opportunities...


With a PhD about immune-inspired document classification, I feel as if I have traveled lightyears away from the gyneavocado island I have once dreamed of. The path I have chosen was definitely misleading with respect to my ideal island and I have no idea which path, if any, would have lead anywhere towards it...

Happiness in retrospect is its own termite in prospect. It is even the termite of prospection. 2004, 2006 and 2008 promised me great happiness but did they keep it? That is the definition of beauty according to Stendhal. Interesting how even numbered years of the past decade have been significantly prosperous and prominent, but not 2010. I thought I would have graduated by 2010 and that must have thrown my passion to the nadirs.

Mess

My house is a mess, it cannot accept any visitors. Same for my heart. Whoever messed up my heart had hers messed up by another victim ad infinitum. Therefore, I cannot blame anyone but my own lavish passion and restless curiosity, and I can do nothing about it as time proves more and more to me that it is irreversible.

The Ottoman Empire

On 1918 and with the end of the second world war came the end of four centuries of the Turkish occupation of Lebanon and many nearby countries. A more neutral term like colonization comes to mind when I think of our gastronomy that was evolved thanks to the Turks. Regardless of the of term adequacy, I fear that 1918 was not as effective as it seemed about ending the Ottoman colonization and I am not arguing about the cultural, linguistic or culinary influence that it had already made to a certain extent. I am talking about the active invasion of our local media, common talk and even unique identities by Turkish soap opera. The Ottoman Empire is alive and kicking, it is streaming Bollywood of forbidden love stories that are scarily addictive. I am not exaggerating, I am describing a daily experience of solitude when my whole family is gathered in front of the TV between 7pm and 8pm to watch another episode of forbidden love. My solitude is aggravated when the whole nation is petrified for an hour every day by a Turkish soap opera and animated during the day when talking about it as if it were the holy grail. It is said that television is something the Russians invented to destroy American education but my lament is too faint of a sob to be heard, it is overwhelmed by the volume of Television and ignored by generations of couch potatoes. Our poor nation is in constant search of distraction and oblivion after all the wars it survived. Perhaps the miserable lives of our friends the Turks could bring consolation to our souls. Perhaps we can experience vicariously the forbidden love that we cannot live nor dare wish for. If I were asked to give a title to the play we cast on stage every day, it would be "Distraction Ad Mortem" were soap opera is only one minute scene in a theatrical piece about and by mankind.

Infinitely Minute Self-portrait in a Minute

Ineffable I thought I were until I acquired "nothing", "zip", "nihil" and the like, in every possibly interpretable and uninterpretable sense.

Beyond description was my auto-biography until I learned that in an instance of time, whether alive or not, I can be lesser than one of my facial hair follicles that I claim to own but cannot control neither in terms of location nor of orientation.

NON SVM QVALIS ERAM and it is vain to ever define one of my selves or a snapshot of my continuum.  Vainer it is when my complex compartments are functionally superior to my existence. I feel nothing more than a supplier to aimlessly functional organisms with limitations and expiration dates that I cannot even read.

In this infinitely minute self-portrait I say nothing about no one in not more than a minute.



Avec le temps tout s'en va...Leo Ferre's self-portrait does my protrait justice equally.

Black Friday

It is that time of the year when you feel obliged to buy things you do not need to impress friends you do not have from stores that do not care. How are you welcoming black Friday, America?

Tell me how ephemeral is your enjoyment of another gadget or dress when compared to that of merely eating, staying warm and going to school for some people? Or are you too self-indulged to perceive happiness?

Nonetheless, consider the story of stuff that cost so many lives and miseries whenever reproduced for consumption and consumed for reproduction. Do you really need that n^th terrabyte for $50 or m^th dress for 40 when sickened by all n-1 terrabytes and m-1 dresses and prospectively eventually you will be by those last two?

Think well before you proceed to the checkout and Happy Thanksgiving!

-gamy

My windowless room in Lisbon is irrelevant to the topic of this communication and would require a fully dedicated study of its own perhaps with a psychological analysis of previous survivors.  In fact, that could be an introduction to a series of posts about this mystical house that I have unawarely visited a month ago when my colleague inhabited it but all that I will spare for another procrastination. Instead, I will discuss a more existential situation that is induced from this very house of mainly windowless rooms and unexpected visits -- I will discuss marriage!

Last week, I find myself sharing this house with two married couples. Suddenly, my unbearable lightness of being (in a windowless room, to add insult to injury) is united and aggravated by four additional unbearable lightnesses of being, particularly in the form of unbearably being together or coexisting.

Slamming doors, screaming spouses and sobbing wives is nothing compared to the psychological feeling of guilt  induced either by being single and not sharing the agony that these couples are going through, or by being around and thinking I might be suppressing their natural instinct and behavior that could have easily gone to the extent of homicide without me.    
   
In other words, I am somehow unconsciously and involuntarily transported from agamy to bigamy and sometimes tetragamy (polygamy) skipping through monogamy, and the possible benefits of getting a passport out of all this mess, Gamoto!

El Viaje Del Elefante

I went to a FNAC bookstore in Lisbon to buy myself a book, or a train/plane companion, as I like to call it. I suddenly remembered how much I wanted to read Saramgo in his native language when I could only find him in French, a couple of weeks ago at a bookstore in Lebanon. My excitement was soon to vanish from my face and melt into a disappointment as the price tag became legible ---19 EUR? And I thought 17 USD was a ripoff for the French translation but I must have known too little about ripoff. Anyway, the book seemed pretty bulky and heavy for the amount of literature it contained, especially, when to my surprise a much lighter alternative edition of the same book came to compete for my decision making and anxiety. The alternative edition offered the same story for only 9 EUR, but in Spanish! Suddenly, I thought of how much I need to improve my Spanish dismissing the whole point of wanting to read Saramago in Poruguese. I could hardly justify my economically biased turn of events that gave Saramago -- may his soul rest in peace -- the unanticipated role of a Spanish teacher simply because learning Spanish happens to be cheaper these days or at FNAC. Or was I subconsciously thinking of reading Saramago and learning Spanish at the same time?