xpose taht Beirut

2009-09-20T23:18:00.003+03:00

I've moved on to a personal photo and art blog

check it out at :

www.salaamshots.wordpress.com

Philip Rizk abducted by 'secret police'

2009-02-10T01:06:00.003+02:00

please sign the petition above

corporate media

2009-01-14T19:23:00.002+02:00

in clemanceau that's the new medical center (CMC) in the background

2009-01-13T15:56:00.002+02:00

THAWRAT HUB

2009-01-13T11:08:00.003+02:00

this is from my friend Shireen Tawil's solidarity with Gaza blog 'thawrat hub'

GAZA catastrophe

2009-01-02T23:08:00.006+02:00

we have a people occupied and oppressed and a nation plentiful of arms and power. may Palestine one day be free!

in plain numbers

2009-01-01T00:47:00.000+02:00

this is a simple diagram made to explain the difference in numbers between the palestinians and the israelis.

the number of dead Palestinians has already now increased to 420

2008-12-22T00:27:00.000+02:00

2008-12-22T00:20:00.000+02:00

it's blowing in the wind

2008-12-18T17:27:00.005+02:00

i want to lay beside you

like all that we had was never gone

i want to sit beside you without feeling that void between us

i want to think of you like the person i love, not the one i've left...

how could there be so much there and yet discrepancies scattered

could you care for me, not only having to be cared for?

you're my love but never could we be together again

2008-12-05T18:43:00.000+02:00

ma3 el salaama Olmert

2008-12-05T09:36:00.001+02:00

his parting words... the nerve

she sang

2008-12-02T10:04:00.004+02:00

it was that which i heard that moved me. the sounds of her singing voice in our post colonial Beirut apartment. layed out by a seemingly sometimes neurotic Huda Fawaz turned Haddad

we sat listening to a mono recording from 1971 as she seemingly happy to hear herself continued dubbing herself live.

we witness

it was that which i heard that moved me

the sounds of her stories recounting history of Jedo Amin during world war one.

his letters attempting to interpret the state of war through the eyes ears and all other senses of a doctor...she not yet born

teta you are a charm

a pretty faced pretty voiced shaking old wrinkly lady that you've become

parkinson's disease moves you

and i am moved by you

KABOBfest

2008-11-05T00:22:00.001+02:00

check out this blog....

my brother (aka Kalash) writes for them

thoughts

2008-10-21T06:53:00.001+03:00

go to sleep on a positive note

pangea day

2008-09-26T18:13:00.004+03:00

check out this woman's concept

Pablo Neruda

2008-09-11T15:57:00.002+03:00

We Have Lost Even
We have lost even this twilight.No one saw us this evening hand in hand while the blue night dropped on the world.
I have seen from my windowthe fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.
Sometimes a piece of sunburned like a coin between my hands.
I remembered you with my soul clenched in that sadness of mine that you know.
Where were you then? Who else was there? Saying what?Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly when I am sad and feel you are far away?
The book fell that is always turned to at twilight and my cape rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.
Always, always you recede through the evenings towards where the twilight goes erasing statues.

HAITI needs our help!!!

2008-09-11T11:29:00.000+03:00

Dear friend,
Within the last few weeks, Haiti has been devastated by a string of hurricanes - Gustav, Hanna and, most recently, Ike. Many have been left homeless. Strong rain has pounded villages, has knocked down trees, and destroyed whatever little crops have been planted. The flooding by hurricanes has caused hundreds of deaths, loss of crops, homes, micro-enterprises and animals. Families are suffering from massive food shortages and lack of clean drinking water. Haiti being a smaller island country in the Caribbean has also received less international attention compa red to other hurricane-affected areas.
We earnestly appeal to you to donate generously towards providing hurricane relief to Haiti. We have a goal to raise $400,000. Your contributions will be directly used to pay for:
1. Barrels of clean drinking water
2. Non-perishable food items
3. Basic over-the-counter medical supplies (bandages, aspirin, etc)
4. Transportation of goods to and within Haiti
The relief work will be conduct by IAHV (International Association of Human Values) and The Friends of Petite Anse Inc. IAHV has been working in Haiti to train youth leaders in a reforestation project. Please visit:
http://www.iahv.org to contribute.
Thank you for your generosity.
The Haiti Relief Team
Uma Viswanathan (umav@artofliving.org)
Gerthy Lahens (gerthyl@MIT.EDU)

2008-08-09T19:56:00.000+03:00

have we come a long way?

2008-08-09T19:49:00.001+03:00

The 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City were the most politically charged Olympics since the 1936 Games in Berlin. Ten days before the Games were to open, students protesting the Mexican government’s use of funds for the Olympics rather than for social programs were surrounded in the Plaza of Three Cultures by the army and fired upon. More than 200 protesters were killed and over a thousand injured. At the victory ceremony for the men’s 200-metre run, Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos (gold and bronze medalists, respectively) stood barefoot, each with head bowed and a single black-gloved fist raised during the national anthem. The athletes described the gesture as a tribute to their African American heritage and a protest of the living conditions of minorities in the United States. Officials from the IOC and the U.S. Olympic Committee judged the display to be counter to the ideals of the Games; both athletes were banned from the Olympic Village and sent home. The Games were attended by 112 countries represented by almost 5,500 athletes. East and West Germany competed for the first time as separate countries. Drug testing and female gender verification were conducted for the first time.
source -Encyclopedia Britania online

2008-08-09T19:39:00.001+03:00

a blowing wind

2008-08-01T09:28:00.000+03:00

it's strengtht so thick
it's sound assaulting
i thought, as i lay there protected by four walls
four wals signifying nothing

hunched over a view so lavish and sereene

it was like those blowing winds between us...
then they'd quiet down
weeks at a time and
rumble back up at us

family dinner

2008-07-23T13:31:00.000+03:00

winds ablaze
music jeers with joy
glasses filled with spirits high
as the night turned into day

dead bodies

2008-07-17T11:50:00.008+03:00

200 vs 2

Israeli torture vs Lebanese torture

think twice about Israel and Zionist backed American media

remember the pregnant women, children and others consciously bulldozed in their own homes in Palestine?

one of SO many terrorist attacks comited by Israel regularly.

http://www.iht.com/slideshows/2008/07/16/africa/16mideast-exchange.php

if this s not a blatant example of some people's bodies (blood) being worth more than others then i don't know what is

2008-07-11T21:50:00.000+03:00

that last day of peace in Lebanon

2008-07-11T09:00:00.002+03:00

remembering brings a tear to my eye.
to think...
as i know of the thousands still suffering, still displaced from those 33 days
those still at struggle by the hand of injustice and that of silence

as i remember that morning only 10 days ago where i happened to be in the south of my country, awoken by the loudest sound i ever heard: a land mine explosion
the resonance of such a noise remains in my memory and allows for the question:
why was it put there?

breed hate?
ignorance?
a soldier doing 'his job'?
an accident?

i imagine had it been me there to set off the mine before the UN, MAG and other de-mining crews filled the south to clean our land infested by warS.
they came to remove:
the had-been destruction
the attempted deaths and the supposed marks of war.
the erasing of a people
the 'dirty Arab' only known now as terrorist and forgotten for all the discoveries and inventions attributed them

they risk their lives to save ours...even more brave than a bodyguard. they chose.
they know that what they land into every day and each morning could take off their arm, leg or wipe their bodies off this earth yet still they wake up and make way to their tents to their sites
excavators of weapons.

do you remember 2 years ago when there was still peace in Lebanon?
do you remember the people we told you filled our hotels and streets by july 11th
the excitement in the air of the newlywed couples and first time arriving husbands and wives

because i do.
i could never forget sharing these stories with you week after week
explaining 34 days of agony

only shared through sounds, deprivation and the television
because i was NOT there on the battlefield...they did not attack my home.
but thousands of others were and today they are mourning their sons, daughters, mothers, and brothers
the baby that once cried
we but our friends and loved ones, and our sea..they reminisce about the last day of peace upon them

ART in Paris

2008-07-01T05:30:00.001+03:00

min Dermimas ilkom

2008-07-01T02:42:00.002+03:00

there's a place i went to where the earth's aroma exudes by the crevices of our soles
when the sun rises and you are awoken by a land mine set off you are reminded of your peace of mind.
a place far from your imagination and near to the soil by your doorstep.
this was a home i visited from long times ago
a place ancestral to my family
hence charged with value of sorts
various forms of beauty ly within

from the traces of my great teta's footsetps to my jedo's marks on the kitchen drawers.
from Baba's plays and my amo's joys
Louisa the turtle when did she arrive?

here im riad made:
tomatoe paste,
apricot jam,
dried mint,
olives,
pickles,
teen,
sharab el tout,
bourgol,
+...
+...
all to be able to cook and make better meals...
that's natural and healthy eating if i ever heard of it;
not to mention...
the clothes worn on each one of their backs sewn by hand
then, with the leftovers, she knit the most lovely of all american style aghan blankets now faded from time's wear

yane nasheta hal mara kanet!

min Dermimas la mahal ma kintou

simsmiyeh

2008-06-20T07:57:00.002+03:00

his solemn face could not be ignored...his narrow frame
his tiny face
his crying eyes even before the tear escaped his tiny lashes

the boy was 12 at most
selling Lebanese sweetsnacks.

robbed of his childhood
robbed of his education
robbed of his proper health
and all of his pride

'my underwear is white' - an allegory

2008-06-13T16:23:00.000+03:00

an art performance by yours truly
on friday may 30, june 6th and 13th at 5pm across from costa cafe on hamra street.

a 3 part series art performance piece in which i'll be walking through the sidewalks of hamra using it's ramps as much a physically possible. i will be on wheels that don't run on an engine or motor.

equal opportunities

air earth fire water

2008-06-09T01:54:00.003+03:00

i could begin to express
i could begin to describe
i could...

...but

to do would be like stoping a river from flowing
it would be like stopping a bird from flying
it would be like a sky where the clouds never formed again
the sun never shone

to do so would be like an embryo growing with no womb
it would be like the child without play and the elderly without care
it would be like the passing of time with no moon
it would be as if the trees lost their branches
the soil its brown
and the flowers color

it would be life without breath and earth without water

to do so would be like mountains without a peak, a valley with no depth
it would be like a bush that had no shape
it would be like a dessert void of sand and the ocean with no fish

to do this would be as if water were ablaze, the earth were flat.
it would be like we were never ONE!
to do this would be an end

what is life with no love?

lifeguard

2008-06-08T10:16:00.000+03:00

the lifeguard in jiyeh said that we can't go too far out into the rough sea becasue he would not be able to rescue us because he is from Dahiyeh and we are women.
WHAT THE FUCK?

lahme

2008-06-08T00:04:00.002+03:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al1PgunFWtc&eurl=http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=641040315&share_id=16818196515&show_add_comment

NO COMMENT...but makes me want to stop 'not eating' meat

2008-06-02T10:13:00.000+03:00

dance

2008-06-01T21:29:00.002+03:00

to Dance to the beat of the drums is to love the sound of the waves. it is to speak the joy you create within that light inside you. it is to scream against the soft spoken and to walk along an untreaded land. it is to be wild and free again. it is to love unconditionally because it is SO easy to love (that which has no ability to love back). it is to swing in the sweetness of life and pick up magnolias on the way towards an end. it is to laugh in the face of fate and to sing in the presence of death. it is to express. it is to laugh. it is to feel like you have never felt before. it is to glow. it is to appreciate. it is to improvise. it is to enjoy every moment of ones presence while it is no longer there. it is to understand. it is thinking without having to think. it is to react now!

to dance to the light of the moon is to be healing with nature
dancing frees the spirit

to dance to the rhythm of your heart is to flow

in Beirut

2008-05-30T10:43:00.000+03:00

Monday, August 14, 2006

In BeirutIn Beirut,there’s something, like that, just like that…Stuck in the air, printed on the walls of small roads,Dripping little by little from the trees right after the rain…There’s something that makes my foreign friend drive recklessly and ignore the traffic lights. Something that makes him tell me about some of our places. Places that I haven’t had the chance to see and colors I couldn’t understand. He starts understanding the difference between mjadarra and mdardara, he starts talking politics, he loves Fairuz even when he doesn’t understand a word she says. He starts building a house in the mountain, where he would spend the rest of the summer. And sometimes, so many times, he would get carried away and say: “Us Lebanese will never learn…”In Beirut,there’s something that makes him love her more than i do…There’s always a shortcut road that takes you to the sea. There are always cameras taking pictures, fearing that the eye would forget, fearing that the heart would drift…There’s a road built just to carry your dream, while you walk, not knowing where.There’s something in people’s eyes, like a question, like the old buildings, like an escaping look, like the ruin.In Beirut,there’s a secret that you don’t know until you’re at the airport with your bag… until you’re estranged stranded in young cities, one after the other, forever longing to your crude city, the city where “the difference between the darkness and the light is one word”… And you miss the familiar chaos where the cars park on sidewalks and people strut in the middle of the streets… And forever, for as much as you hide away, you’re haunted with the fever of Beirut, and you know the illness is part of you and you know that she will never leave you.In Beirut,There’s something bigger than me, and bigger than you. There’s an April that never ends. And a place, a place that, whenever you lose yourself, whenever you fall, whenever you hurt, you come back whispering the letters of its name once anew, in Beirut.In Beirut, there’s something, like that, just like that…Stuck in the air, printed on the walls of small roads,Dripping from the trees after the rain…Eve

2008-05-29T09:04:00.002+03:00

Haifa vs. el Sayed

OUF!

if there ever was joy

2008-05-29T01:09:00.003+03:00

3 men on top of three men's shoulders
holding hands dancing

men, close
to each other as they're non-existant hips sway tot he rythms of Nancy an the other guy that everyone was holding posters up for.

men in rows...
dancing
singing
smiling.

a few women spread about

children on shouldrens...
watching

among the people...of Lebanon and Pahalstinie. if i ever saw joy it was tonight

'aint no sunshine...

2008-05-26T09:43:00.006+03:00

there was a touching performance that i was lucky to watch last night at a theatre space on hamra street called masrah el madina. it was called a 'corps perdu' which means 'to a lost body' in French. it was about a man who was killed as a bystandered during one of the nasty bombs that assassinated him here in Beirut last year. many here were terrified by these nasty random explosives that went of one after another and are still disgusted by what took place.
the performance was touching, moving, heavy, intense, vivid,and absolutely BEAUTIFUL!
the man which this performance speaks about was passing through a region of Beirut when a bomb spontaneously went off. he was living in London apparently and decided to come back to live in his Lebnan and soon after his arrival was killed... there was a touching vigil heald at the end of october for him just after the tragedy ... we were all in white and carrying candles walking from Biel through downtown beirut. may yesterday be a trully new page that will slowly bring prosperity to the entire region. khalas ba'ah!

http://www.blueandjoy.com/blog/?page_id=343

2008-05-25T13:45:00.001+03:00

2008-05-25T13:39:00.000+03:00

PHALASTEN

2008-05-25T11:23:00.000+03:00

i am standing in my underwear where everyone around me is staring
i am walking up the staircase to my house and going in though one of the windows
i am told that a christian who enters the 3rd most holy site to Islam through a special door is making sure to wear a cross or carry a bible with him to war off negative Muslim presence
i am walking in West Jerusalem worried that i might be discovered
i am angry that next to the entrance and by the whaling wall there is a 'third temple' and that THIS is why people still hate each other in my part of the world...it's religion and a fight over land that has all been imposed by a brutal occupation
i am wondering what it is that consists of the world tears when it comes to hizn ala phalastene
i am afraid for my child who suffers often from symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome but doesn't actually have PTSS
i am SO SICK of hearing the lies, half truths and untruths disseminated by the world's media

i am really just tired now
i am really just frustrated
i am really just so sick of having to constantly justify my existence through a piece of paper at checkpoints
i am really just unhappy about the world's relentless negative attitude towards the Palestinian struggle
i am really just disgusted
i am really just TFEH!
i am really just willing to throw myself in the sea
i am really just ready to give up a fight BUT how could i when we 'exist to resist'

i am shocked that a wall much larger than the one in Berlin is built and not a soul was able to intervene
i am finished with the idea that my door has to remain open at all times so that a 17 year old soldier can come in just to fulfill his IDF requirements
i am paralyzed by qualindia checkpoint
i am still in disbelief about the extreme imprisonment of Qualquilia
i am feeling that time has been wasted in crossings between Palestine and Egypt
i am grossed out at the idea that there is an israeli cultural center 'in um el douniah.' oxymoronic
i am going ONLY to return to my homeland as a Palestinian going back to my home...viva al-awda
i am fakhera bi watani yalee ba3ne MA shifto wala mara
i am happy to know that the nakba was finaly recognized but sad to know it took 60 years for it
i am BLaH!
i am about to loose it

i am khallas i am done

I AM PALESTINIAN

THIS IS PALESTINE

today

2008-05-21T23:59:00.001+03:00

these are the kind of days that life is worth living for

a dream

2008-05-14T09:29:00.006+03:00

have you ever been inspired by a dream before?

i mean an actual dream that you woke up so happily to... not an amazing goal or aspiration you've had for your life.
this morning i woke up feeling like there was a better place than the Lebanon we are now living in...i remembered the rest of the world and it's beauty. it's diversity and joy. the colors it finds to fill us up with love, peace and tranquility. i felt hope in a time of drakness
i had forgotten to remember how there is beauty to the fullness of life everywhere, and how now we are being deprived of that as a hijacked peoples currently basically being taken hostage by whatever hating forces be present (because they are many and don't let the media fool you into believing that it's 'this devil that starts with the letter H').

in my dream i arrived to a house...and upon my setting foot within, felt that there was something different and special about it. immediately i was greeted by my friends who lived there. it was my first time visiting them and i had never seen these people before in my (real, non-dream) life who were particularly colorful and vivacious people surrounded also by a unique, funky and colorful setting. we sat down in the living room where there were cages in many places often and usually void of animals. I LOVE ANIMALS, btw! with time slowly these animals they had in their home began to appear one by one.
there were giraffes (without their spot shapes), donkeys, dogs, felines (also without their spots so i couldn't tell what they were), seals, and other animals. the thing is, that they were tiny...each was about the size of a tall mug maybe. they never seemed to overcrowd one place of the house but, they were so sweet and all over the place, always together in their families or groups as they may be in the wild. segregated actually, which i guess speaks parallels to this wold we all live in...being also animals ourselves. it was a little wonder where they actually co-existed in this place all together with maybe 3 humans living there with them. it didn't even smell in the house at all! i don't remember recognizing a scent of any kind.

it's funny, now awake it makes me think of Lebanon. i feel often like (no offense to the Lebanese that are reading this PLEASE!) we are a bunch of savage and wild animals living here, but in this case without care for one another just each individual to themselves. now, i know that often times this is NOT the case but it usually feel like it, honestly (see blog entry rude). in this dream the animals of various species and families were all living together with the humans but in their own little sub-communities. couldn't the Lebanese and the people of this world do the same? how hard would it be? coexistence and the acknowledgment of other species (in our case races') presence. but is it that hard to live side by side in peace and stop with a continuous repetition of cycles of fighting, violence and war? if genocides and atrocities have occurred between Turks towards Armenians, and white South Africans towards black South Africans, Israelis towards Palestinians, and Americans towards Vietnamese, Japanese, Iraqis, Afghans, and whomever else received their deadly weapons in aid to use them in force towards those they oppressed and many others then also do the Lebanese impose war and violence over and over on one another and each other...what do we call this? like when a mother eats her young or a sacrifice takes place over and over but this time not for the gods that were once believed in but for what the aggressor's party feels maybe the betterment of the place where they live, maybe even for the betterment of this world. you can watch this. how naive and how ignorant...we must cease this hate. may we learn from our fellow mammals, reptiles, birds, and fish. such a disgusting place we've come to live in it sometimes feels.

i must have been affected a lot by a nice artist named Gregory Colbert that i read an article about the day before the dream and who's website George and i really enjoyed afterwards-BEAUTIFUL!
http://www.ashesandsnow.org/

2008-04-30T13:49:00.001+03:00

rude

2008-04-17T10:09:00.006+03:00

they stare and they laugh...they jeer and they frown...they push through as they desperately make their way to the front of the line, traffic, bar or whatever it may be. their loud, neon lit large boat-cars and fake noses protrude into the setting of an otherwise formerly familiar place...the elders wonder and they talk of this sin unfolding before their eyes. what happened? they ask in disbelief of the vulgar and obtrusive lifestyle their younger and sometimes fellow Lebanese display as they pass by...as though an 18 year long civil war did NOT take place in the country they call home. It was never like this before they say. what happened to the civil code, civics we used to learn at school and now....?
they cut in front of you without a word of regard and they squeeze between you as though you had not been there for 30 minutes already waiting...because after all is life not a long wait to the end...to see how, why, where, and when...we wait often and always. life waits 9 months in justation, we wait for time to heal, experience to teach, and for age to explain...min shouf as they say in a place that has endured time in a most unique fashion. places demolished and rebuilt like history was rewriting itself over and over time and time again.
the service guy has the nerve to charge you a second service ride for the block and a half that he knew he would have to drive you before you accepted to rest on his plastic covered seats underneath a sheath of white leather...IN A TAXI? be ashamed of you own blood you bala zok, we'ih, jahsh, wahsh, and every other negative word connoting an immoral human being. hehe and who am i to judge? yes in Lebanon everything is possible. take Zoo York and add a few loose monkeys and donkeys around here an there and you've got Beirut...our streets are also numbered but nobody pays attention.

i thank...

2008-04-15T00:48:00.000+03:00

God for the suffering brought to life with its beams of joy

HIStory

2008-04-09T17:28:00.005+03:00

what is the story, where did it come from, and why is the word derived from his story? he told stories of the past and the anecdotes that the elders would recount over generations were and still are valued. they were often repeated and shared through a man. he was the vehicle ... the form of these stories' disemination. then it became his journal and his letters to loved ones and corespondenses. but how about the rest. the children the women, the poor and those who weren't writing the books and recounting the stories...they were there too and they had a part to play.

it was said while i was at school that 75% of what we read was false. maybe that's because the man who was toiling the land and the millions of those who built the cities that we revel about daily and praise the architect for, never get asked a thing about anything. the guy who put together the house be it made of mud, tin, wood, brick, concrete, wood, or steel...do you know his name? the men who are to thank for the fruits in your basket, the veggies digesting as you read this and the butcher who cut the meat this morning. does anyone ever take them into consideration and ask them how things are going in their lives? what did their ancestors live? if the masses of such people were heard our stories would be very different.

how about the second half of the world's population? where were the woman... in Troy they played a part. isn't it only fair that since the world is made up of 51% females and 49% males the story would be ourstory?

morning cries

2008-04-08T00:15:00.001+03:00

I could hear a baby crying early this morning. It wasn’t near but a distant sound. I could sense when it stopped or shrieked or even continued to annoy it’s neighbors with something we once all knew best. The Buddhists believe that there are significant reasons to why we are born crying. Suffering at its onset and the life comes out with tears into a world of service towards gratitude.
It has been scientifically said that women have a tuned ear to hear a baby crying in the middle of the night and the ability to be woken up by it. Otherwise, would so many of us have been feed at instinct’s need or changed once nature called.

It cried and cried and cried and cried at 8 am. Perhaps a biological clock as we now may know on days when our alarm was not set to 7:15 am because it was a labor day but still we rise.

I felt him move and listened to him breath. I though of the possibility of the baby being ours and the idea of me getting up at night, not a budge by the man. The man. What could I say that has not been said and repeated time and time again?

I thought of the possibility of his hard thing entering my wet and dark hole and conceiving yet another life into this overpopulated, underfeed, and uneducated place. I thought of the possibility of being called Mama or Mom, perhaps even maman… HA!

I couldn’t help but think of the disservice I would be doing to the world by bringing yet another life into it. Remembering the countless times I heard the phrase good seed or pure breed. Because your enemy may think himself a better breed my friend. I could only feel a praise for China and it’s strict and regimented ways for this once in my life. One child, and one child ONLY!

success

2008-04-07T15:09:00.000+03:00

in Paris today a demonstration of great success took place. these are the FEW times when a leftist progressive celebrates. a massive protest of 'free tibet' supporters blocked the road that the olympic torch bearers were supposed to be running on. good work! keep it up...i'd be there if i could...but always in spirit. may they'll see an even more intense response (though PEACEFUL!!!) in San Fransisco.

another Monot

2008-04-01T23:21:00.001+03:00

This past Sunday i went to Monot, a district in Beirut well known for the nightlife that sprung up there in the mid-nineties. I was surprised and happy to find something that put a smile on my husband and my face. In a large parking lot we found a group of men playing cricket. As this is not a common recreational activity in our country, i was for the first time experiencing what baseball must have been born from, being played right there in front of my eyes. Their shirts said Sri Lanka Criquet, and it was such a pleasure to see this spot transformed, even if so temporarily, into a place of leisure activity rather than the ordinary exhaust filled standing lot that it normally is.

Ethiopian's at Peace

2008-03-31T12:18:00.000+03:00

The day started out as a most calm, serene and melodious church ceremony. it was attended in Badaro, a district of Beirut with my cousin Anne. I had never seen such a lovely site of people, mostly women, before. It seems that in Ethiopia it is tradition to wear a long white veil/scarf on the head and upper body of the figure while at church...this we may call their sunday best. never had i seen such a beautiful sight.
it was like a sea of white with brown undertones. had the gaze been coming from in front, the perspective of the unseen priest behind a curtain, (or other member of the clergy) colors and brown would have predominated the scene. but it was the sound which was the dominant overpowering part of it. the women would repeat after the voice behind the curtain in unison. their natural unintended harmony created one of the most spectacular sounds my ear has ever known. at one point recognizing the word 'salaaam'. but most pleasant, it must be made clear, was the welcoming nature amongst the sea of those WE were foreign to. as we three stood at the entrance of a church, we were hesitant until one lady said come, and we followed her. she lead us down the center aisle wanting us to go all the way to the very front. we said thank you wisperingly and were satisfied with our places were we stopped, awkwardly next to another lady who did not look Ethiopian and seemingly the only other one like us in the crowd. another lady informing us with discreet eyes and hands when to be seated and when to stand. babies as well as women cried making a tear well up in my eye. maybe the woman behind me was sad, missing her homeland or who knows...there could have been a number of possibilities raising such emotions.
it was spring equinox that day and the time had been moved forward an hour so the masses seemed unusually gathered outside still slowly making their way into the over crowded and only Ethiopian mass Lebanon has ever seen.

since 1951

2008-03-21T11:30:00.001+02:00

the Tibetans have suffered an occupation from the Chinese government imposed by Mao. They had been forced into signing an agreement that implied military occupation on them within the Southern region between India and China which used to contain the highest mountainous peak known as mount Everest. if you're a movie type i suggest that you watch Seven Years in Tibet or Kundun which both explain (the first even more)about the situation in Tibet with the Buddhists and the Dali Lama. As a teenager who happened to attend a school only 1 block away form the Chinese embassy in Washington DC every Friday morning as my father was driving me to school we would pass a lady protesting with a Tibetan flag this (also asking the Chinese government to free the next Dali Lama. My father, who used to be a lefty liberal type attending anti-war rallies against what was happening in Iran and Palestine at the University of Wisconsin with my big (then baby) brother on their shoulders, would each time honk for her in support of her cause. i, a naturally born progressive revolutionary (for reasons i WILL NOT go into right now) would always be so excited and happy that he did that after only knowing the little details that he knew about the situation and had explained to me. now i can say that she was a most dedicated woman who wanted what the Tibetans all around the world are being seen at face value for....a FREE Tibet.

the whole world is jealous

2008-03-11T21:51:00.002+02:00

"Everyone wants to eat like an American on this globe. But if they do, we're going to need another two or three globes to grow it all. " - Daniel Basse of AgResource, a consultan in Chicago

HAHAHAHA
HEHEHEHE
HOUHOUHOU

how sad is that...right, so we all wish we could be getting fat asses from McDonald's and Burger King's animal fat fried junk that's pumped with chemicals and hormones (watch Super Size Me) so that by the age of 45 we can barely afford any of our medical bills (remember that the US is the only 'western' country in the world that does not have a socialized healthcare system, watch Sicko) and have to start getting hip replacements and kidney dialysis. it's a sad and sick place

Obama for president!

international woman's day - a global visual

2008-03-11T21:48:00.000+02:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7285141.stmncy

MARCH 8th

2008-03-08T14:14:00.000+02:00

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY to all women of the world!

Carlos Latuff

2008-03-06T09:57:00.000+02:00

some amazing cartoons related to the disgusting crisis in Gaza now:

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/03/03/brazilian_cartoonist_carlos_latuff_creat

“The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.”

2008-02-28T09:22:00.000+02:00

Take up the White Man’s burden—

Send forth the best ye breed—

Go send your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need

To wait in heavy harness

On fluttered folk and wild—

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half devil and half child

Take up the White Man’s burden

In patience to abide

To veil the threat of terror

And check the show of pride;

By open speech and simple

An hundred times made plain

To seek another’s profit

And work another’s gain

Take up the White Man’s burden—

And reap his old reward:

The blame of those ye better

The hate of those ye guard—

The cry of hosts ye humour

(Ah slowly) to the light:

"Why brought ye us from bondage,

“Our loved Egyptian night?”

Take up the White Man’s burden-

Have done with childish days-

The lightly proffered laurel,

The easy, ungrudged praise.

Comes now, to search your manhood

Through all the thankless years,

Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,

The judgment of your peers!

Source: Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden: The United States & The Philippine Islands, 1899.” Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Definitive Edition (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1929).

the naturalist

2008-02-21T07:31:00.001+02:00

February 16^th 2008

This morning…
As I gaze at the hairs protruding form his chest, a nest reminding me of the nature of our existence. A beauty often denied the owner, forgetting of our savage nature. Reordered and institutionalized by the technology and construct that surrounds our everyday existence; this the reason for which we are great and ‘far superior’ to any of the other ways of life. Be it the humble Buddhist or the simple bushman, Native American or aboriginal. Our ego is what has driven us to erect the highest tower, to make the greatest discovery and to be the best that we can strive to be. But are we not forgetting what we came form. Who our natural selves have now become? The man in the cave, the woman picking and gathering goods for the survival of their own. Since we have proven the fittest…for but now that is. When one day the forces of our world will once again remind us of our roots. It will be too late once we’ve remembered and we’ll be moaning and grinding in our haste, a crude and naive suffering. Denial has always been at comfort with the masses as we know how ignorance is bliss and we crave comfort in front of a warm fire.

But the buildings and the massive highways and the erect shuttles, trains and fast cars. Have none of them been the reminder of what we deserted. This desire for more money and bigger spaces is for what? How did it feel to be the Homo sapiens? What existence did he leave behind and to where have we taken it? Homo Sapiens Sapiens the later of which has caused such destruction. Overpopulation, disparity, too much food but not enough full bellies, religious disdain, political might, now the environmental plight.

It’s a pity. We have in the mean time lost so much. Innate sprit, bond with the earth, the naked body, the beautiful space, animals alongside us, and now? We compete with our surrounding nature trying to revert the harm our ancestors handed us, but not on a silver platter. Greater is the man who has sat in his place while minding others and preserved life than any man who has climbed the greatest mountain or achieved …

Technological destruction, hospitals=survival, chemicals & weaponry=death…where else are we heading

spider

2008-02-21T07:29:00.001+02:00

Have you ever watched a spider get around…on a tiled surface? It’s especially beautiful.

Watching the legs move so fast…eight of them just scrimmaging….for something but you don’t know where or why and what there is that’s so interesting to its sight and other senses that it seems SO excited to make it … somewhere.

Brown and small not so big and bulky but stout and simple. Those daddy longlegs never did it for me, these just look odd. cool to look at while there, standing not doing anything. Still. i mean come on…imagine that, running around with those long appendages, trying to get by everywhere…you’d be so fragile and imagine trying to runaway from your prey…say a cheetah or a bear or crocodile for that matter. Oouuh!

Running like mad is what Madelaine, my little four year old cousin was doing tonight before going to bed. I especially enjoy hearing her make night noises before she falls asleep. Sometimes I think she’s in there for hours playing on her own before she actually tries to rest her head. It’s cute. Definitely a place for her imagination to soar… just before dreaming, how perfect!

September 14, 2006

who?

2008-02-21T07:27:00.000+02:00

It spreads like wildfire. As though someone just came and started the biggest rumor in the 8^th grade class about a boy that was discovered in the girl’s bathroom. They did it again everyone says, ‘can you believe it’. Here we go! I’m so sick of this ‘daily routine” as it is described by the CNN correspondent who knows herself is spreading false accusations about our country on international television, making a mockery of us. Now even more than before all these ignorant fools listening will believe that this country is falling apart and then we will have even less tourists next summer. And then the economy will go through yet another one of it’s infamous Lebanese style crises. Thank God it has not become a daily routine…the assassination of these people…the politicians that no one seems to find the place in their heart to be proud of these days.

Spring 2006

2008-02-21T07:26:00.000+02:00

January 1^st, 2006

Ana bide shee…

Bas shou hal shee ba ma3rif.

So this is it…my 30 second update…

From Beirut Lebanon. I’ll start off by telling you that the situation here could be better. We could have been eating our own shit which we’re not at least bas the political situation only seems to be diminished a little each day. I would like to make a note of Israel’s bombing that hit south of Beirut on Wednesday. This attack was in response to 3 rockets that were launched from Lebanon into an Israeli town…Not hezbollah this time but some mysterious force some dared to call al-quaeda. it ended up being the Palestinians admitting. on the same day a judge was attacked in the full brightness of daylight while jogging after already being treated more than once. Then on friday night a Syrian official, former minister of exterior current parliament MP fleed to France to tell the story of what he knows in regards to Syrian involvement in R Hariri’s assassination last valentines day. This was a very inconvenient time for his confession as my friends and I were planning a trip to Damascus the next day which inevitably was canceled. This all comes less than a month after popular and powerful parliament MP and editor in chief of the main newspaper here Al-nahar was assassinated when a car bomb detonated as his car was passing it by on the early morning of December 12^th. Instability I say…but compared to the rest of the world how much more unstable are we? might be a difficult one to answer. The world is balancing on the tip of a needle. And the US, I mean how unstable can we get!?!

from before

2008-02-21T07:24:00.000+02:00

My decision to come to my native country was one that i took soon after the events of March 14^th which are now proudly referred to as the day the Lebanese claimed their Independence against Syria and Freedom. I was very much moved last Valentine’s Day on February 14 2005 when I received a phone call from my friend Charlotte. She was calling out of concern for the safety of my family. There had been a massive bomb that exploded and killed a honorable man. Rafik Hariri was had been the Prime Minister of Lebanon for the ___previous years and he was taking a year of down time to reconsider his stance and political agenda for the region. HE was coming from the downtown region that we was responsible for rebuilding, called Solidere on his way back to his palace. This philanthropist had invested billions of dollars into rebuilding the country and was known for his charitable contributions to the poor of the country, be they scholarly, financial, medical or otherwise. His money did buy him his power, tough, unfortunately. He was in fact never able to see the completion of the biggest mosque in Lebanon where he is now buried, near to which stands a memorial to him and 6 others, his body guards and the former minister of economy (akh ya Baba), also killed during the attack. As I walk home from a long day at work and a diner meet I pass by the blaring Koran being sung in the tune so melancholic it brings tear to my non-Muslim eyes. I am touched by the way in which there is never a moment that I pass this site without seeing but a person standing, paying homage to a man so loved for the good he tried doing for his country. A place torn by 15 years of war and a sectarian government that only continue to separate its people. Christian (Maronite, Orthodox), Muslim (Sunni, Shia), Druz, Armenian, Progressive etc. Here it often feels like you must choose one or the other in order to truly feel like you fit in. One must identify with a sect in order to belong somewhere, so that they can be placed and categories. So that maybe no intentional offense is found in a conversation and also so that one knows where you stand in certain parts of the country’s framework and makeup.

February 26, 2006

2008-02-20T23:18:00.000+02:00

hello welcome...here we go
enjoy
www.photoshelter.com/user/xposephotography

OLD blog POST from early 2006

2008-02-05T12:27:00.000+02:00