The Summer of Dom Perignon

Or should I call it the summer of Moet Et Chandon? It is hard to tell which brand I indulged myself with more this summer. And I know you must be wondering why I am still talking about summer when it is almost Christmas. The answer is both simple and complicated. Simple because I started writing this at the end of the summer – yes, I know I only wrote two sentences then, and complicated because I was writing it when I thought it was the end of an era – and yes, it now is.

It is the end of the free champagne era for me, for now at least. Champagne was in fact the highlight of my 2012. I attended so many openings, met so many people, interviewed some, had a crush on others, and hated the rest. The job was worthless money wise, experience wise even, but it offered so many perks on the social front.

I am not sure anymore what I wanted to say when I started writing this, but I am pretty certain I wanted to vent on something or the other. I am an innate nagger, as you must have already noticed by now. I can’t really find it in me to pester tonight though, shocking I know!

Well anyway, long story short, I have started a new job, a more challenging one on all levels so far. It is time to get serious, time to get busy and time to try and leave behind my semi bohemian life. Somehow it feels good to have so much to do. It is startling how much I didn’t know and how big is the stack of things I have never experienced before. Bye bye champagne and aloha social misery. So long two hours work days and 4 days off a week, and hello 24/7 marathon. That makes it sound a bit frustrating, but what isn’t? I have always been an extremist in any case, why change now?

I am excited. I am anxious. I am worried. I am already tired. But I want to make a plan. I want to stick to it too for once. I am even considering trying out a diet again. Useless I know; hopeless maybe. But I have to confess it has crossed my mind. I want to benefit from the situation, turn it around to fit me in all ways, as much as I can. I want to buy a car. I want to travel. I want to be independent. I want to live.

I want to live. I do. I may not have much time for it with the crazy schedule, but I promise to try. I hereby promise that should the plan work, I am going to live. I am going to have champagne with my friends for a change. I want to enjoy it. I want to pop it and smear it all over the place. I want to get into pillow fights with my girls. I want to leave the crust behind and feel fresh and energetic. Most of all, I want to get away from the coffee shop, to step away from my routine, to shake myself to do more, to feel more,  to be more.

It felt like a cinematic moment when I left the old office for the last time. I felt pretty wearing that smile around and offering it to strangers. The wind blowing through my hair and my scarf gave me a shiver, not one of cold though, but one of pride. Been a while since I felt happy, or proud, let alone both together.

As always, I shall treasure the friends I made along the way and cherish the memories, the experience and the mistakes. All of it will just fill me with more of something I already hold plenty of: nostalgia. Days that will never repeat themselves no matter how hard we try, moments that we might never be able to grasp again no matter how badly we want to, and people who leave such a mark in us that it becomes impossible not to attempt to find it in the rest of the human race. So here is to a summer that despite its trouble will remain, like all the ones that preceded it, and all the ones that will hopefully follow it, a memorable one. Rain is washing it out tonight, trying to steal its stickiness from my mind, and the winter lover in me feels like leaving my chair and walking under it, feels like getting wet, like embracing the most beautiful season of all, the most powerful of all, the most empowering of all. May those heavenly clouds accompany me and protect me in my new endeavor; may they guide my path towards the new era, the latest opportunity and the divine blessing.

A Slave of Complaint

It has been an ultra redefining week on so many levels. Well I haven’t exactly discovered anything I wasn’t previously aware of, but everything that had been happening with me or around me has reconfirmed some old theories and feelings.

I am a slave of my routine. Anything that interferes with my daily habits one way or another automatically tends to go on a blacklist that ranges between dislike, discomfort and disassociation altogether.

For those of you who don’t know me in person, here is a concise summary: I am your basic heavy smoker/insomniac with no car. That being said, it is quite understandable how a 24/7 coffee shop near home with an indoor smoking section can work perfectly well for me.

I have been almost living in the same spot for the past 10 years or so. The coffee shop itself changed, the people changed, the cab drivers even changed, but I am still the same. I come here religiously, every night, for the same experience, the same enjoyments, with the odd twist here and there of course.

So could somebody please tell me why am I having to undergo a relatively massive change in the space of less than a week? It simply isn’t conceivable in my mind; having to go from devotedly smoking indoors 24/7 to shamefully smoking outdoors 21/7 is just NOT fair!!!! Not to mention that I have lost the place as a depot as well! I know an explanation is due now and it goes – or used to go to be more precise – like this: The fact that I have no car and that I feel lost without my huge laptop makes me carry it with me wherever I go, and since on some rare occasions I actually have plans elsewhere, but must – and I mean MUST! – come to the coffee shop before AND after the night out, I would usually keep the laptop with the staff for the duration of my plans, and then come back, retrieve it, use it and go home with it. Now what do you suggest I do with my humongous laptop when I need to go out?? And how am I to use it before leaving and dispose of it then? And why oh why don’t I get the chance to use after all my boring plans anymore??

Rant, rant, ranting I do best! I know. But in this case, I have earned the right to do it, haven’t I? I mean come on, after all those years, you chose this week of all weeks to start closing at 3:00 a.m.? What does it even denote to close for 3 meager hours when you need an hour to close down and another to open up? Isn’t it enough that I now have to sweat in the heat and shiver in the cold just because I have been dubbed as an uncivilized smoker? I ask you, isn’t that a sufficiently undeserved and uncalled for punishment?

On another note, I may have become slightly superstitious this week as well. It all started when I caught the bouquet my friend threw on her first wedding anniversary. Does catching the bouquet really mean I am going to meet someone and be the next to walk the isle? And what exactly could it mean that I caught it one year too late?

On yet another note, there has been a lot of dreaming going on. Between the dreams of my relatives, those of my friends and my own, I have been stealing cars, secretly buying cars, and attending some very fishy gatherings. I have also been misplacing my clothes and walking on red sand.

Now link the dreams to the rotting flowers, deprive me of smoking altogether, send me to bed at midnight, and drive me off tomorrow to the nut house in a stolen green Renault. How about that?

Nope, Can't Shut Up About It After All

I thought I could, I really did. I had promised myself this was going to be a battle I will refuse to take part in. But I’ve had it! I feel provoked! And damn it, I should be!

Stop trying to deny me every little pleasure I have left in this godforsaken country. Stop trying to deprive me from one of the few - and I mean few when I say it - things I still get to enjoy in the grimmest of the so called green nations.

Do you remember how I kept silent when you tore down the beautiful old buildings in my neighborhood and built your ugly centers instead? Do you remember the way I kept my mouth shut when you sealed the bad meat file as if nothing had ever happened? Can you recall the way I didn’t utter a word the day you decided to just forget about the civil marriage file?

I didn’t choose the above cases randomly. Those happen to be three of the many, many cases which were, in my opinion, used by our devious government to distract a predisposed people from much more important and relevant issues that were eating our country up, and still are.

Those subjects were magnified in the public’s eye for a given period before they lost their value. I love my memory of the few months during which you all religiously wore your seat-belts while dodging a ticket instead of an accident, just love it. I still quite enjoy myself and snicker a bit every time you pass a roadblock and buckle up 2 feet away from it, only to free yourselves again just 2 other feet ahead of the checkpoint. Sensational for a nation; hypocrites roaming the streets and pretending they want a European lifestyle, pretending their aim is to bring this country forward, claiming they are sick with the situation as it is. Shame on people who wouldn’t dare as much as flick their cigarette’s ashes from the car’s window in any other country while they take some sort of pride throwing whole garbage bags out of their houses’ windows in Lebanon. I pity my motherland when I know for a fact that only the poor and the weak will be suffering from nicotine withdrawal symptoms while the rich and the powerful will terrorize any policeman who would think of attempting to get his ticket book out in order to write them up for smoking their luscious cigarettes. Isn’t it just merely funny when you think about it?

You know I am 100% right when I predict that almost every individual involved in the matter will be on the take from bar and restaurant owners to let them run their places smoothly. You know I am more than correct when I expect a huge economical shudder due to this hasty decision. You know for a fact that while you and I might comply because we can’t afford 90$ tickets over cigarettes, Abou Koko and Abou Ahmad will simply beat down any, yes any person who might try to ask them to take their smoking outside. Funny, super funny!

I am writing all of this down tonight not only to express my dismay over the smoking ban effective as of September the 3^rd, but also to pour my blame over a nation that is relentless when it comes to disappointing me on every possible level.

For everyone who is so ecstatic about the smoking ban on health basis, I urge you to read up on lung cancer’s relation to cigarettes. Although the two may be connected, smoking isn’t the direct or the sole cause for the sickness, and in case you aren’t aware of it yet, toxins you inhale from running cars and from highly health conservative electricity plants are much more harmful to your lungs than your friends’ smoking.

For the people who were quick to judge this ban as a “civilized” move, I would like to point out that no move, no matter how highly symbolic and effective it may be to you, can be described as such in a country that forces its gay community to undergo shameful tests under claims of “protective and preventative measurements”. May you also kindly note that, once again, this is yet another deceitful move taken by our dear government to distract us from issues that truly matter.

And to those of you whose adrenaline just notably rose up on the mention of the gay tests as not being of major importance, please do not get me wrong; this is actually a subject that advocates my cause. And you do have a right to wonder what my cause really is after all the jabbering that I just made you read through. For those who are still reading, my cause goes as follows:

No matter who you are, no matter where you are, you are entitled to act however you wish to act, the right to be however you wish to be, the right to do whatever it is you wish to do in any manner you see fit, all as long as you are not stepping on anybody’s toes while at it.

Are you a non smoker who is sick of having to inhale every “uncivilized” person’s smoke in this place? Why not call for a movement that satisfies both parties by creating smoking and non smoking corners in every place? That is a lot more refined than judging and labeling people who dare differ in their habits as uncivilized.

Actually, come to think of it, it is going to be a lot more uncivilized and coarse, harsh even, to send all those smokers to sweat under the burning summer sun (which could be a factor in causing skin cancer for all I know – since smoking can be a factor in causing lung cancer), or to freeze under the overflowing winter rain (hey, that could seriously cause lung diseases!).

I haven’t written that many lines in ages, I am really getting worked up about this topic. But please note that the upcoming sentences aren’t meant to try and draw the reader’s pity or sympathy for that matter, in any way, but governmental conspiracies and civism lessons aside, I love smoking. As I have emphasized multiple times before in this blog, my cigarette is my companion, it is somehow part of my hand, an irrevocable part of who I am, of what I represent in my society. It is hard for some people to imagine me not holding a cigarette; sometimes it is hard for me to imagine it as well. And if you think that quitting smoking would be beneficial for my health, think again. If you think that once I at least cut down on my smoking I will be running up stairs, also think again. Smoking a cigarette has kept me from going insane many a time, it has prevented me from feeling totally and utterly abandoned more times than I care – or dare - to count. My mental health, which is questionable I admit, matters a lot more to me than my physical one, which will deteriorate one way or another, one day or another, for one reason or another. A cigarette joins together the beginning and the end of any creative process for me as well. With all due respect to my fellow non smokers, try smoking and you just may – emphasize on may – become as good as I am someday :P

My Phone Is NOT Smart!!!

For most people, it comes as a shock, no, as THE shock. Some go as far as considering me old fashioned. A local standup comedian labeled everyone who still uses a Nokia – myself included - as “old people”.

May I please know why is it wrong to hold a user friendly phone that happens to fulfill a phone’s basic duties? Why is needing a phone only for what a phone is meant for looked down upon?

Have What’s App and BBM become a necessity now? It is much more fun to hook up with your friends over a cup of coffee than to break your thumbs chatting with them over a microscopic phone board, or is it not? Do make me stand corrected if you can!

And friendships aside, why would anyone in their right mind consciously make the choice to become reachable via email off of working hours?? People I am not sure I understand you! Sure you may have a few reasonable arguments, but not nearly enough to convince me!

My phone is not smart!!!! You make me feel almost ashamed to say it!!! And now I feel as if you would assign it for me to write 40 times on my FB wall as a punishment, unbelievable…

But then again, loneliness and boredom have been doing a great job eating me up lately, so maybe it is about time I joined the masses, about time I tried some new technologies, about time I tried virtually blending in, about time to and to and to…

Oh you think the magic has turned on the magician?? Well guess what, even if I could be persuaded – which I am not admitting to still, I can’t afford smart phones! Hell recently I haven’t been able to afford smart thoughts, and those are practically free!

God help me, I may actually truly be old, I more often than not feel as if I belong to a totally different era somehow, and not a cool one even! Anyway, back to subject, or maybe not, I have probably ranted enough for one day. I would have enjoyed making a funny sketch about your alarmed face expressions once you have seen my phone though, could have been hilarious! :)

Status: Update

It seems that the best stimulation for a Lebanese mind is none but war. We thrive at the mention of a weapon and soar to the sound of a bullet.

I am not totally basing this article on a random opinion; I actually have thousands upon thousands of FB timelines to back me up.

I hadn’t seen that many creative statuses in so long! It is as if everyone had a bunch of fabulous ideas and was just waiting for a relative event to publish them!

It saddens me that almost all our movies, all our independent music and book productions are war related. It is true that art forms are highly dependent on one’s reality, but our reality is much more than a few stray bullets and burnt tires every now and then!

Why don’t you get creative about, say, the beach resorts that are robbing you blind for instance?? How come you are not inspired by everyday events and simple day to day struggles? I haven’t seen a personal joke in a status in like forever, and rarely do you feel up to posting comic situations you went through or a new info you came upon. Why is that?? Are these sorts of statuses irrelevant, while the fact that we have no electricity is? Well news to you, everything is relevant and is worthy of a head scratch.

Some of you will criticize me on the basis that I rarely ever update my own status, but I have my excuse right under the arm: I write a blog! If I have something to say, then I say it here and elaborate on it, no better even, I dwell on it.

Alright, I have said my share, but since I am at it, go Italy and go Spain statuses also annoy the hell out of me. That said, it actually was a nice win for Spain tonight.

Ya Mijana!

My dear smug compatriots, I have been meaning to sneer at you about this for a while now. I shall skip unnecessary introductions and get right to the point. Arabic music is my chosen subject for tonight. I am sure 90% of you will have stopped reading already.

For those who haven’t, get ready to be taunted. Let me put it this way: have you ever been to a night club in Europe that plays Majida el Roumi or Amro Diab? Have you ever encountered a driver blasting Wael Kfoury or Najwa Karam in his car in South America? I bet you haven’t, or even if you have, then what a rare opportunity you have witnessed, an envious experience even!

People, my message here is simple: Get over yourselves and give some respect to your origins. I am not saying you should quit listening to foreign songs, I am not saying the Beatles were a fart or Bob Marley was an idiot. I am not asking you to delete Red Hot Chili Peppers from your iPods nor am I urging you to laugh at an indeed laughable Britney Spears. I am just trying to make you try and relate to a music that reeks of you although you keep trying to brush it off your shoulders as if it were dandruff.

Compadres, don’t get me wrong. This is not a shout for you to start enjoying Ali el Dik’s duo with Dominique Hourani. I am definitely not recommending petty, disgusting, or even insulting tunes. I am aware that Arabic music has been undergoing some serious damages lately, it has been stained by too many imbeciles and has been gradually - not to say totally - declining, but that doesn’t mean that our own oldies for instance, much like foreign oldies - to a difference, don’t remain actual pieces of art to this day.

What I actually have a problem with is your attitude towards Arabic music. It feels to me as if you have an internal buzzer that switches on the second you hear a Oud note or something. You are, plainly put, funny to me. You make me giggle at your poorly founded opinions and tastes.

It goes on without saying that I don’t listen to Ragheb Alama and Nancy Ajram from dusk till dawn, yet I don’t flinch at the thought of hearing their voices. Their songs are part of a popular culture I belong to, no matter how much I would have preferred belonging to another.

Try and enjoy the beauty of songs that speak of us, even though we deny our reflected identity through them. Music is the representative of cultures, and like it or not, you distinguishably make part of this culture. You don’t fancy our music as it is? Then do something about it, revolutionize it, don’t just heartily despise it.

Oh and a footnote for those of you who will feel unconcerned with the subject since they already listen to those 20 Arabic Jazz tracks we have in our repertoire, get over yourselves as well. Ziad el Rahbani, although I casually enjoy his music from time to time, is not the master.  

Reality Check

I secluded myself – almost completely – from the world, for three entire weeks. I can’t remember why I thought this would be beneficial for me when I took the decision. I know that I was desperate for some privacy, but I am also aware that I can’t live without people around me for long.

It is true, for the first while, I enjoyed the peace and relished in the privacy, but after a few days, not even a week, had gone by, I realized I cannot detach myself from the chaos of it all. In spite of my picking up on this fact early on, I still decided to challenge myself and extended my two weeks stay into three.

In fact, after the first three days, I wrote a little tale detailing all the wondrous improvements I had been noticing about myself due to my independence. I went on and on about how I am sticking to my diet, how I miss TV but can live without it, how I am thinking of turning off my phone and many more components that I found myself truly enjoying then.

Now though, three weeks into it instead of three days, I have to admit that I cannot live without TV, that I prefer reading in the noisy coffee shop, that I am not happier, that my fear of disgusting insects cannot be abolished, that I am thrilled when my phone rings, that no matter how much I try or how hard I try to convince myself, I am just not into exercise. I am also now sure that I will not be taking my photographic skills to the next level any time soon, well unless I stumble upon a huge sum of money that I could spare too, in order for me to buy the right equipment for the endeavor.

I have been spending way too much time online during my stay here. Not that I didn’t do that before I came here, but never to this extent. Trying to get away from the people in my life led me to get mixed up with people in my virtual one. Online fun used to be just that, fun. Now it took a serious turn and I realized that drama and stupidity could follow me everywhere, even through a virtual network of nonexistent wires and abstract connections. Thus I needed this reality check to ground myself again and be more appreciative of the tangible relations I am blessed and sometimes honored to have in my real life. I am not denying that I have met some fantastic people online, and in many cases those people have become deeply cherished friends, but I am saying that I am now more aware of the boundaries and hopefully a little less trusting of just anyone.

My stay in here also proved to me how much I love drinking and exactly how much I miss it. I tried to stay away from the Jack Daniels bottle that kept eyeing me every time I opened the fridge, I really did, but when I found myself surrounded by a bunch of delightful friends for my birthday, I had to give in and have a couple of drinks, even though I am still not cleared for drinking due to my liver condition.

My birthday happened to be within the weeks of my seclusion, and hard as try, for the life of me I don’t understand why everyone was so nice to me for my birthday. I am not complaining, that is for sure, but I am stunned, seeing that I had been nothing but rude to everyone the past year. I was really surprised by everyone’s kindness and understanding towards me. I realized I am blessed with friends I barely deserve and a family I definitely don’t.

My feelings about my birthday are slightly annoying to me this year. I am starting to feel age weighing on me, although 26 is relatively still very young according to most people. I don’t like the fact that I am feeling the cold this year and that I am shivering even. I have mixed emotions about being so close to becoming 30 years old. I find myself way underachieved and can’t help but blame myself for it. This isn’t where I had pictured my life to be at this age. I should have established myself somehow by now. But looking at the facts, I am in no way near fulfilling that path. I am still unemployed. I am barely making ends meet. I am not in a serious relationship, if in any at all. I am not the best person I could be. I haven’t learned enough skills as dictated by my potential. I have indeed done the basic stuff; I have graduated, gained experience, tried being in relationships, the works, but it somehow all feels void when nothing is consistent or stable.

But at the end of the day, I am an incorrigible optimist. I could nag for another hour, but deep down, I know I still have hope for the better in every possible way and regarding every possible aspect. I just need to trust that at the age of 26 I will be fortunate again and that I will appreciate it. So here is for hope, motivation, confidence and change.