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?

La Cuccagna

I have been trying to post this for a while but the catatonic stagnation I suffer from was extremely overwhelming. Perhaps the DSM conceals a syndrome synonymous to such a level of laziness describing my current mental, emotional and physical states. But alas, the effort I might need to invest in  unveiling such a terminology might be fatal, needless to mention how vain and insane can a diagnosis of this nature be.

It was never clear to me why my home sweet home was ironically sour (no pun intended) for lack of better word or judgment. I must  have at home everything I could ask for from gastronomy to astronomy. I might not even need to dream, imagine or think for all is taken care of by the loving family. It took me many meditative hours to realize how such love can paralyze a restless soul, and make any excursion from one's oasis unbearable, until depletion. I finally understand how paradoxically devouring is the land of plenty and any attempt to escape it after a certain time results in more agony ad nauseam.  Ode to Pirandello's ephemeral beauty that is beautiful as it lasts and ode to the ignorance of my innocent childhood that is now irreversible and tomorrow more so.

La cuccagna (cockaigne) is a mythical place where people are paid to sleep and punished for working. I recommend Luigi Tenco's only cinematic appearance in "La Cuccagna" for an intimation about my nation.

On Tourism

The ill-defined term of "tourism" has often perplexed many tourists and people living abroad. More ambiguous was the question of when a tourist stops becoming a tourist in the country he inhabits.

Etymologically, for most latin languages, a tourist is one who tours or travels around. Some dictionaries nonchalantly spice the definition with being away from home and most controversially, traveling for pleasure.

In greek, an alternative synonym to tourist (τουρίστας) is περιηγητής which means sightseer, which I find interestingly tautological when I think of a sightseer being one who sees things to be seen. Natural and historical/cultural landmarks are what we agreed upon as worth being seen. Does that make a seeker of beauty that is native to many countries less of a tourist? I wonder since I no longer seek beauty specific to landmarks unique to certain places when traveling.

In arabic سائح literally means wanderer or roamer. Doesn't that contradict the very definition of a tourist who's tour is often planned before he starts touring and guided by illustrated books and internet resources if not by tour guides? I personally prefer to vagabond when traveling, inviting adventure and surprise to my random walk. A while ago, I definitely used to plan my trips and follow the flow. Things change a lot.

In some languages, the variation of excursionist is still common. Etymologically, it derives from the latin ex cursum which means exiting the current/journey. I find this definition as the most accurate for a tourist's vocation especially one seeking a vacation to escape his daily routine. In some aspects, the current routine/journey could mean home, reinforcing the definition of tourists traveling away from home.

Surprisingly for many optimist tourists, not a single language mentions anything hedonistic in reference to touring or traveling. A significant number of these innocent touring optimists end up being robbed, ripped-off and humiliated when traveling, although you might argue that their intention was none of the above. It is not easy to generalize with masochists and masochist-ish adventurers around, but in most cases, one invests his capital on hedonistic escapades.

Cumulatively, we can agree that a tourist is one who escapes his routine to wander around sightseeing, whether he likes it or not.

From my substantially-diverse traveling experience, I have come to resolve the ambiguity between inhabiting and touring a place only after having experienced both for the same place. I have "lived" in Oeiras, Portugal three consecutive summers but I often felt like a tourist when in Lisbon regardless of my proficiency in Portuguese. I lived in a dorm by my research institute and went occasionally to Lisbon. My lifestyle converged very rapidly to a routine with the few social, food and entertainment options neighboring my dorm. Vicinity to work made it almost impossible by human nature to adopt a path besides the shortest one between home and work. I must have suffered from this laziness syndrome unconsciously.

This summer, I visited Portugal for one month with the intention of inhabiting the heart of Lisbon and so it was. It took me a couple of weeks to tour/sample most nearby and en route restaurants, coffee shops, and other services. Finally, I seemed to have found my favorite restaurants, coffee shop and meeting point thus putting an end to my tourism in Lisbon (extensively Portugal) and my excursions would necessitate my departure from Lisbon or to a certain extent, Portugal. Back when I lived in Oeiras, going to Lisbon almost always promised novelty and adventure but now only the virgin peripheral terrains of Portugal might appeal to my neofilia.

In other words, I felt like having finally lived in Portugal in contrast to visiting it, although the former required much less time than the latter. I have come to conclude that living in a place is not a function of time but rather  of options and services one has to experience and select from for his inevitable routine, especially when tailoring a certain schedule imposed by a regular job.

Another factor that disambiguates between touring and inhabiting a place is that of speaking the country's language and knowing its locals and their customs. All this helps one converge easier to a bearable routine that does not require a lot of random walk, mishaps, and learning through trial and error. For instance, I claim to have lived in Italy for less than two months in more than 15 different places, since I speak the language fluently, I "lived" there almost a decade  vicariously through friends and media, and I imagined very effortlessly a routine I could converge towards in most of the 15 places I have visited.

Trans-océanique

Crossing the ocean is suddenly not as fun as it used to be! Its mysterious nature and promise of the greener grass was what defined traveling. But alas, once the mysteries are unveiled and the neighboring grass has been harvested to a point of depletion, the best one can get from a transoceanic flight is some peace of mind for effective intro/retro/pro-spection and soul searching.

While Baudelaire and Pessoa struggle for the elsewhere, Berndard praises the intra-where:

Basically, like nine tenths of humanity, I always want to be somewhere else, in the place I have just fled from....he truth is that I am happy only when I am sitting in the car, between the place I have just left and the place I am driving to.  I am happy only when I am traveling; when I arrive, no matter where, I am suddenly the unhappiest person imaginable. 

Along these lines, one can argue that Schopenhauer and co. are in favor of the nowhere. This is how in our human nature we tend to relate to places, and what are friends and lovers but places we visit or inhabit... I believe that at some point in a man's life, his well-being becomes independent of his geographic location and vice versa. Nonetheless,  man shall never stop blaming it on his location, hoping that the elsewhere that he is ignorant of will unravel joy, perhaps eternally. That is the very bliss defining ignorance that we tend to loose as we grow older or abuse with alcohol and drugs. The modern man will eventually resort to these mind altering means and more severe and irreversible ones when he is finally convinced of "the unimportance of his location" which can translate to "the vanity of his existence" with a less materialistic tone. 

Bon Voyage!

Take it easy يا عزيزي

Just before imploding with lament and lack of self-fulfillment, before being consumed by another reflection about my actual mere existence, I flashed back into my blissful and irresponsible childhood that I faintly remember and wished I could stay there forever...

I was reminded by a conversation I have repetitively had with friends. It was usually a follow-up to my laments and a compliment to my talents. According to my peer, I seemed to be doing very well. I refuse however, to let this observation indulge me.

Tomorrow, I will cross the Atlantic for a rendez-vous with Lisboa. Muitas saudades! More poetically, vou-me embora pra Pasárgada.  I will be there with a fresh mind and an open heart with my primary focus on research and my dissertation, oxalá.