"Time stands still best..

in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life."

Thanks to Brian Andreas for being a linguistic alchemist and preventing me from quoting Tom Robbins ad nauseum.


Music: Acoustic Lauryn Hill covers of Queen, Red Hot Chili Peppers b-sides.
Setting: CSA. Cultural Services Association or Cats Sitting Around cafe, depending on how you calculate accuracy


(After experiencing a friend's horror over Skype when I snatched up a kitten at my cafe, here is a snapshot of the newest scavengers...)






Skyping in arabic translates more than greetings, logistics, hamdilluh salaamas/alay salaamiks, and flirtations...the copy/paste Word growths dissect the script into child-like singularity like I dissect the meaning. This has become my marked challenge: deciphering the situations I've created by force or by quixotic tangents.

This weekend juxtaposes the perpetual identity crisis that is Cairo. As I swap messages with friends, cajoling each other with the perks of increased snarkiness (no prevarication), I consider that I’ve spent the past days embodying a much simpler, sweeter self. With that said, it’s been weeks since I’ve castigated the shadowy passerby, cab driver or delivery boy. Having been out of practice at home, I must relearn my acrimony, as you relearn freedom of flirtation after removing the sheathing of a lover. We become cognizant of our own polarity, only to flail trying to embody the right emotion when it is called upon.

My rituals remain the same. I require the gym for silent non-contemplation. I prefer to end the night embracing the sauna-like city that I inhabit, just above the shambles of a tented lot, find relief in the dust and dirt filled winds that whisper through open doors onto my clean floors and listen to soul music surrounded by candles and slow digesting food.

I returned home to a sterile and questionably stocked apartment. My reality is rarely textbook defined in the sense that I don’t view my surroundings as calculably third world. Between high rise marble buildings with spacious balconies and grand foyers exist one room homes built of scrap material, where children reach out and touch cars that bounce and swipe by them down the dirt roads. The only consistency within the city is the contradictory view from the backseats of BMWs and from atop glass walled rooftops, draped in white linens, candlelit and filled with diplomatic immunity. I uncover that my juice had been opened, some things had been rearranged. As the list of things that have been “lifted” from my ownership grows more costly emotionally and financially, my paranoia becomes more weighted. When living alone, the unforeseen noises can be measured against the age of the building, the comings and goings of others, the imagination. I’m increasingly reminded of my solitude, and I can’t help but become more vigilant. I see my current state as pre-despotic, time passing until ego and provocation entreat me to emerge more malicious than before.