Resolution

"All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle." 
St. Francis of Assisi

~

Where to start?

Unbent horizons and hollow cigarettes. Broken ties and eye-tearing smoke. Imaginary bonds and colorless daydreams. Dramatic plot twists and star-gazing epiphanies. Time-twirling questions and good music. Guest appearances and starring roles. Comfort zones and -

A new year comes with new promises and new surprises, a new you and a new me.

~

Her eyes, they spoke of words unsaid and torn manuscripts that were never read. They blinked with the sound of the turning pages of an untold tale; eyelashes that could paint fiery courage pale. Yet, the voices recurrently told me that silent songs and buried bones share an eternal friendship, that a breaking heart in a broken home is an open door to an empty room, that there is an infinite light and a single candle staring down all the darkness of the multiverse, that there is a forgotten hourglass beneath the chest with sand that smells of fraudulent heartbeats, sand that shakes to the sound of the fractured violin and its stuttering echo, both jumping the rope of this infinite loop. But when I looked at you, none of this ever came up. When I looked at you, the voices just wanted to listen.

Her eyes, they spoke of stars and constellations, scattered across our interwoven dreams.

Her eyes, they spoke these heart-pressed lines. They sailed the waters of remixed rhymes. But I was taught to trust no one, not even myself. I was taught to notice the invisible, to make long-distance power plays -with people who didn't know the power-play dimension- right before the end of the game, to lose in every damned dreadful way before I land my final strike. Throughout the years, I learned to doubt every line and definition until I forgot my own shape. I learned how to map lies on someone's face and how to lose mine in the frozen shadows of sinful icebergs that bear neither name nor memory. I swam through letters just like these until I lost sight of the shore and I never looked back because home became an array of pixels beyond a screen. There, I pulled three roses up my chest, through my trachea, and I laser-blasted them away from my eyes into 'virtuality' slipping what was left of my dreams into the pockets of blessed fictional characters. Then I filled that cardiac space with songs that wore a perfume similar to that of the crack-ridden petals that fell off.

Her eyes, they spoke of future visions paved inside the hallways of the Grand Design and old childhood swings that unknowingly operated at the frequency of the Golden Ratio.

Where to stop?

The dreamer and the dream. A candle in the mirror. Words in his heart. And music in the dark.
The dreamer and the dream. A play of light and shadow. An addiction to fiction. And a thirst for reality.
The dreamer and the dream. The truth behind the veil. A tale of myth and legend. An empty holy grail.
The dreamer and the dream. The chill upon your skin. The tears that won't come down. The fracture in your crown.
The dreamer and the dream. The broken beat within. The game of love and pain. Rays through your windowpane.
The dreamer and the dream. The mirror in your eyes. And the love in your words.
Listen.

Her eyes, they speak.

So listen to the music sitting behind the countdown.

Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

~

"Either define the moment, or the moment will define you."
Walt Whitman

Insanity

“I'll take crazy over stupid any day.” 

Joss Whedon

~

It feels as if there's a wall preventing me from expressing myself. I don't know what to think and I don't want to think anymore. So, instead of feeling this, whatever this is, I'm going to talk about it. And I won't feel anything.

He was born and raised in a country drowning in terrible feelings and poisoned ideas. As a child, growing up, he could not express what he truly felt or thought because it wouldn't be accepted. He wouldn't be accepted. And since the most essential need for kids is recognition, he, of course, didn't get any of that. Thus, a kid, he remained.

He wasn't doing well. He stayed that way until he was bruised by his own clothes, friends he would have died for. He wasn't doing well after that either. It started with 'under the bed' becoming 'in the mirror' but, eventually, he was able to see the monsters, whether actual or potential, in everyone, and everything. 

And then, something magical happened. Or, at least, that's why I hear him telling himself at night, that the world is rotten but he somehow found a loophole, that everything is linked and it all makes sense, that love and faith and art the strongest forces in the universe, and that he's one of their freedom fighters. But is he really? Or is he just a small lie in the matrix of manipulation?

So what's the problem? What's your problem? Are these your eyes? Is this your voice? Do you even have a voice? What have you lost? What have you lost? What have you become? What are you hoping for? Why the hell are you here? Why are you not feeling anything? Are you okay?

The most famous, non-technical definition of insanity is the following:

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” 

Does that make sanity doing the same thing, over and over, expecting the same result? Or is it 'different things' and 'same result'? Or perhaps 'different things' and 'different results'?

More importantly, what does that make you? Is it wrong to be insane in a mad world? What's the difference between people who talk to themselves out loud and others who keep it in? Is it terribly unusual for someone to envision their own personal world and talk to the fictional people in it? Is it okay? Is it that different from what you do? When you talk to the images in your head, of those human beings you don't truly know, these people you refer to as friends and family, when you weave this subjectively imagined world of ideas and feelings about them, is that okay?

He wasn't okay. The bridge between physical and psychological pain was nonexistent because they were both the same land suffocating under anxious heartbeats disguised in deeply distraught water-waves filling his lungs. It is also said, in my head, that to switch between sanity and madness you must learn the difference between leading your mind and being led by it. Good luck. He wasn't okay. I'm not okay either. Yeah, me neither. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry this didn't make you feel anything. I can't give you what I don't have myself, when I can't see myself. But that's okay. Everything is gonna be okay, right?

And then, something magical happened.

~

“Awareness is the enemy of sanity, for once you hear the screaming, it never stops.” 

Emilie Autumn

Awe

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” 

Rudyard Kipling

~

I was frozen face down, my nose nearing a centered hug to the edge of the pavement, and life's bare foot thundered down on the back of my head. Reddish retrocausal lightning ensued in a bloodied painting with no title. The shattered fabric of the crushed brain dyed the sidewalk dust with the dry dew of the paradoxical void - a silent story read in between the lines of cobblestone about a broken face of a soul that wrote itself off onto the empty memory of a conceptual black hole that sucked life's misstep into the razor-light mirror-like shredder I was hiding behind my eyes. And thus the only hug was that of a two-dimensional bear-trap set to the seventh Solfeggio frequency folding life's knee into counter-clockwise oblivion. The scent was that of frozen concrete melting at the touch of the eccentric lullaby of a victim of anti-heroism, an artless artist with ink flowing from the edge of his hair to the shadowy sunset of life's heel. What you heard was the melodic ink, a rhyme and a tale about the minute difference, all delicate and frail, between the hellish curtains and the holy veils, the ruptured mirrors and the punctured grails, the conceptual twist of the maze-like tails and the paradigm shift of the wind in the sails,

Adjusting.

Speak of necessary fine-tuning to the projector of meaning before the story ends, beneath the pattern that bends under the weight of reality settled on the surface of the black swamp in your hair. Speak to the night of the morning pale, the edge of colored thoughts and humid lyrics about the reconstructed taste of dawn in the tea and the Pyrrhic victory of two ends converging behind the illuminated bitter-sweetness of smoke. 

Failing.

There are no words.

Some see words as series of clawing strikes to the face of existence attempting to rip it of its raw beauty, leaving lettered scars in a light of diminished value. That's why they say that there are no words, why silence is revered in the realm of beauty.

Obviously, I disagree.

There are words. And when placed in the right way, for the right reasons, the words, presumably read at the right time, will change both you and your existence. And they will then tell you that it is up to you to change the world.

Re-adjusting.

My words often fail to make it back from the realm of metaphorical resonance. They fail to make a difference. But we are who we are and it is what it is. No.

Now, what if we could see the different scales that map the maze of mankind, the magical axis of imaginary time, and the bright light of childlike wonder floating in between the moment and the while - what happens then?

The iris was frozen in the labyrinth it holds, and life put a knife through its back.

So it poured its story of melancholic tears in the thirsty lines between cockroach mountains. No.

I found the axis set to the beat of my heart.

And I discovered that the light was made of metaphors. 

I opened the map at every turn and every curl and I kept asking myself, what do you see?

What do you see? What do you see?

I saw the map staring back at me.

I happened.

And now, there are no words.

~

"Once we realize the extraordinary power we have to compose our lives, we'll move from passive, conditioned thinking to being co-creators of our fate."

Jason Silva

Check

“Boring is the right thought at the wrong time.” 

Jack Gardner

~

Seize the moment, if you can perceive it. Wait but what if you're running short on moments? What if you have the wrong glasses on? What if everything is monochrome and you're invisible? What happens to moments that never make it out of time?

Let the moment fill you. Transform the edge of your skin into a boundless ocean of existential stupor. Write about the unpredictable high side of the melancholy before the feeling is gone. There is a light and it never goes out. But why?

This is a moment. Can you read it? Can you feel it? Is this your voice or mine, your mind or mine? Are we sitting on a bench and having a conversation or are you just messing with my head? Who are you, anyway? And why would you put a comma there? Where? Where are we? And why doesn't any of this make sense to the suffering?

Who cares, anyway? I'm not unhappy. I'm content that I understand how and why things are the way they are. I'm happy because I have had the chance to meet wonderful people in my life. I care about moments because they're kind of all I have. Moments either symbolize the start or the end, though they usually appear masked as whatever's happening in between. 

Nothing's happening in between. It's all a game. But people matter. No, they're just figments of your imagination. No, they're real and it's my duty to take care of them. Society is a ghost concept - you know that. I'm starting to feel that you're the only ghost here. How can you lie to yourself when you know this is all an illusion? I'm not lying to myself; you're lying to me and it's a DELUSION - for the most part. We've been having different versions of this same conversation for years - isn't it time to get over this mundane schizoid monologue? Isn't it time for you to tell me about my real fears and insecurities? Well played, old friend. You're not my friend - you're that nothing in between.

The melody is on repeat. It's always the same note, and almost always the same dialectic on that shore that tells the waves to call it Horizon. Hope and delusion, justice and evil, recognition and selfishness, love and despair, freedom and basically anything that stands in its way. The waves are set to the same old playlist. And none of these people can tell their waves from someone else's. They're all confused because they've forgotten about the light shining down on everything, every moment, every moment.

Some think that life is about turning the duel inside into a duet. Others believe in a third, secret player hiding in the audience. Some people are cold and hungry. Others have died on the highway of trying to figure this whole thing out. Some are born with superpowers they can't see. Others hope they won't die before they get the chance to make them see.

The moment is gone but its echo lives on. In art, in memory, in the quiet commonplace distance that exiles most kind words and that other one, that terribly loud one with the broken road at the end of which everything becomes calm and still, when you find the heart you thought got crushed in between this breath and the next.

Moments come and go. But you are here. You're right here and people change people.

Moments come and go. But I'm here with you, in the undefined meta-level that only meta-levelers understand. We're sitting in the numb paradoxical void of metaphorical euphoria. We're sitting on a bench - with nothing in between.

Seize the moment, if you can feel it.

Your move.

~

"Time is an illusion."
Albert Einstein

Revolution

To whom it may concern,

I live in a country called Lebanon. I live among people who preserve a rare kindness in their hopeful eyes. All these people were once kids with beautiful dreams, dreams that were stolen along the way by a ruling band of thieves.

It turned out that those who were supposed to protect the voice of the people had managed to make us forget that we actually have one.

Now if you think you still have a voice, keep reading.

This is for all the things that never die, for those who once died for this country, each in their own way, though they now look at us and wonder how they are more alive than we are.

Know that this is not a poetically hopeless eulogy.

This is a call for a Revolution.

It certainly isn't coming from its future leader because I am nobody. And these words you read, you read them with your own voice and not mine. But perhaps, you will share this. And perhaps you will write or draw or sing your own call for a Revolution. Perhaps you will talk about it with your friends and they will talk about it their other friends until the future leaders of this country hear about it and wake up. They will wake up and unite the Lebanese youth under the name of a new political party that doesn't judge individuals based on their religion or how much money they have. Perhaps it could start as a think-tank whose nominated candidates would win in the next elections and change everything. Maybe if each one of us expresses their own revolution in their own way on social media and/or share their friend's, the idea will become a movement, and the movement will rewrite history.

So if you truly have a voice, start talking.

Do something.

Whether it's for the lost ideals of freedom and justice or for the people who suffer everyday, it's really all the same. What matters is that we must take our country back.

My revolution starts now.

When will yours?

Sincerely,
.

Becoming

“Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.”
Eckhart Tolle

~

M + 7i = 71

Solving a problem usually starts and ends by finding the value of an unknown variable. In order to find the missing element, ordinary techniques require you to put all the known values on one side, and the single key to the problem on another (It's usually X but in this case, it's M, for multiple reasons). Then, you must calculate how all the things you know are related, and your problem will be solved. If you have two unknown variables, you need two equations. If you have more, good luck with the recurrent headaches and whatever drugs you take to make them go away. In my equation (seen above), I have made enough progress to get the number of unknown variables down to one. I figured out the value of M a while ago and now I am left with the lovely imaginary unit i. The latter allows you to move from the world of rational numbers to the realm of the complex, all the while knowing that it's all a play in your imagination.

So why are you so sad? Do you wake up every day to the buried thought of having failed at resolving your equation? What known constant continues to escape your sight? What unknown variable continues to pain your mind? Are you reading some crazy person's words to escape your worries? Do you fear that you've become a monster or a fraud underneath all these masks? Do you know what part of me is writing this and which part of you is reading it? Did it cross your mind that it is you who is writing in blinks while I am only a voice inside your head? Do you think power makes us stronger and love, weaker? Or is it the other way around?

Why are you so sad?

Identity may be the brightest highway to an empty darkness. It could also be a narrow path that your demons are not allowed to take.
Love may be coagulated blood pretending to be a red rose with two colorblind mockingbirds bathing in its scent. It could also be at the core of every honorable truth in this very dishonorable reality.
Purpose may be ridden with losses that will take with them parts of your heart. It could also be the only way to protect the people you love.

So Identity asks you who you are now and who you want to become.
Love follows up and wonders who you want next to you when all your dreams come true.
And Purpose waits for your answers with either a frown or a smile.

So why are you so sad?

Are you broken beyond repair? Do you feel like you're a stranger that no one truly knows or appreciates? Is your ego part of the constants or the variables? How many lies do you tell yourself before you go to sleep? How many truths can you not say out loud even when there's no one around? Which do you distrust more, your heart or your mind? Do you miss that person that used to be a part of your life? Do you wonder if they miss you? Can any of these questions really make a difference?

To each his own illusion, passion and poison and to hell with all these words I write about their interwoven ramifications and imaginary equations.

Conclusion. Talk is cheap and actions speak far louder than words. So dear reader, stop being sad and make better decisions for a better future. Logic never fails.

~

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 
Love never fails"
1 Corinthians 13

Maps

“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
John Green

~

One of the moderately hidden patterns of life is that a person often says that people never change right before he or she changes into someone very different.

Take a bowl of family problems. Add three spoons of trust issues and half a cup of self-esteem. Mix well. Drown them with a few drops of an over-complicated history of disinterest and seventy-one milliliters of unfinished business. I don't know the rest of the recipe but I recall that the whole thing has a very peculiar taste of emptiness.

So yeah I don't know why you want me to write about myself. But here goes nothing.

I usually dislike it when people call me weird because it reminds me of how I always fail to belong. Most of my recent problems stem from my tendency to transform everything I feel into ideas and concepts because it's far easier than processing feelings. I enjoy using song lyrics to think when I get bored of my daily recurrent thoughts. I would like to own a chain of restaurants one day. When I run into people, I try to envision how they used to look as children. I believe that true love happens only once and that it never dies. I also believe that friendship is more important than blood, that randomness does not exist and that society is a phantom concept. The contents of my head usually belong to one or more of five different sections: P, M, C, D and I. P stands for psycho-social, M stands for metaphysical and I'll tell you about the other three when I see you. In any case, let us call the PMCDI map, I-Map for simplicity. This I-map has a shadow counterpart for raw feelings called the L-map. The latter, however, does not contain sections because my heart happens to be indivisible; it's all or nothing. Anyway, the L-map contains songs, a number of unforgettable memories, fictional characters from stories and TV shows, people I know, people I used to know, and, of course, you.

The two maps are quite honestly worlds apart. And yet, in between the two lies a different kind of map, one of infinitely powerful links, that sometimes allows the dimensions to converge in moments of pure beauty. Two of four walls in my room and my beloved ceiling refer to this special map as the M-map. And though I'm not sure whether the M stands for meaning, magic or metaphor, I'm good with the name.

So in summary, I guess my being can be reduced to three maps: I, M and L. I know it might seem very boring now but when I draw them for you on paper with all the main theories, numbers, names, symbols and songs, you'll see how your initials happen to mark the treasure at the heart of the M-map, how the I-map shuts down every time we kiss and how the L-map almost beats out of my shirt when you jump to hug me.

I hope this wasn't too weird or too disappointing. I hope to be good enough for you. And I really hope that you will be smiling somewhere in the next thirty seconds.

One of the moderately hidden patterns of life is that no matter how much I change, I will always love you.

~

"Everything will change, but love remains the same."
Gavin Rossdale