Loneliness

It was just another hot night.

Dusty polluted air filled my lungs every time I tried to take a deep breath. Why is it that some nights feel darker than other nights? How come there is darker than dark? It doesn't make sense, but the night was darker than normal.

As I stood there, surrounded by everyone in the world, I couldn't see a soul. As I reached out, all I touched is the warm and moist air.

How can one make sense of the senseless? That has somehow become an eternal quest, a struggle I have to endure. Unlike pretty much everything in my life, this was not particularly my choice either.

Everyone is talking and smiling but I can hear no one - and no one can hear me. I get up and leave. I walk away from everything. I'm off to search for something else. To search for something that makes sense. Normally, there's sense to be made even in my most confused state of mind. There's always sense to fall back on, to feel safe with.

But somewhere along the line, I lost that safety net.

As I walk out into the night that is darker than normal, I struggle to breathe the think air. I wish I at least had a shadow to keep me company. Yet at the same time I'm savoring in the loneliness resulting from the world disappearing. Does that make sense?

I'm so excited. My excitement creeps slowly over the depression of the loneliness.

Yet there is something that I need, something I search for. Something - or someone?

Flashing lights of cars passing by, horns blazing away, a plane scopes closer for the landing. Slowly the world is stripped away from all that. They're there - but they have already disappeared.

Or I have disappeared.

Yet I want to be with someone. I want to feel her life for the rest of my life. To drink of her dream as long as I dream. I just need to get closer.

But when the world disappears - what will still remain?

I take more steps into the ever darkening night. And as it all disappears, I smile.

The less there is, the more there becomes somehow.

I've never been so alone - and I've never felt so alive

The Smirk

So life is not perfect. I have come to terms with that. We all have all kind of shit to deal with. We go through a long long day at work, go home looking forward to a good night's rest, only to be bombarded by disaster after the next.

We all have methods of dealing with our problems, some more successful than others, but we all work something out. This is how we get through life after all. The problem isn't having to deal with the problems exactly however. My main problem is having to go to work again the next morning.

It's bad enough dealing with all that life throws at you, the problem is pretending you're all right when at work. Now some people would jump and say "you don't need to pretend you're ok, everyone knows we all have our problems".

That statement is not true.

You see, as 'understanding' as people look, nobody will bear to deal with a person who shows up EVERYDAY sulky for a month or two. We're ready to deal with the occasional sulkiness of our fellow workers, but to a limited degree. Then there's the second problem, no matter how good you're performing at work, you will somehow end up being labeled as "under-performing" and will eventually get to hear a little lecture on "leaving your problems behind when you go to work" from a rather 'understanding' boss.

Bottom-line is you just can't afford to show your true feelings at work to your co-workers, even though that would be really comforting.

For that reason, people devise the perfect plan to counter this problem.

Imagine you have a horrible night (for any of the diverse reasons we have bad nights for) and go to work in one of those horrible moods. You go to the coffee machine to get some early morning coffee, or maybe you're going to pick some papers from the printer, and you get to meet a fellow worker.

That person, all bubbly and happy, gives you his most perfect smile and says "hey! How are you doing this lovely morning?!"

This is when we jump start the perfect plan into action. The smirk.

It is that beautiful wide smile you force on your face and you feel it's nearly ripping your face because it is so incredible fake but you still pass it on.

With the best smirk on your face you turn to your co-worker and go "Oh I'm feeling great today! It is indeed a lovely day!"

You mingle around a little at the coffee machine or the printer, then you turn around and go back to your room/workstation/cubicle. The moment you turn around you of course lose the annoying and face ripping smirk right away. Phew! Another well managed encounter. Now you can go back to sulking alone, in peace, happy to have managed to pull off the smirk. You can regain your energy now for the next time you're going to the bathroom or something.

At this point I'd like to point out that there is an incredibly high chance that your co-worker (the one you met at the coffee machine) was also putting on his lovely smirk. No matter how much we all 'love' (ahem ahem) our jobs, they are not exactly the place we feel all happy and bubbly in.

We all need to appreciate the power of the smirk. It is so powerful that everyone has at one stage or another practiced it. Some people get so good at it and adopt it that this is actually how they smile. These are the people you feel like you want to slap every time they smile (and don't tell me you've never felt that way!)

As a matter of fact, the smirk is being taught now! If you've ever taken a customer service training, chances are you were taught how to use the smirk by a rather professional smirker (probably one of those who have adopted it as their smiles.)

The smirk has become so incredibly widely adopted that everyone has formed his own trademark smirk. I am working hard on perfecting my own right now.

Meanwhile, let me share some wonderful smirks with you now!

Either a really bad smirker, or a beginner. Only time will tell the potential of this one here.

Priceless smirk!

Typical idiot smirker!

I don't know what to make of that smirk. It just leaves me speechless. How can someone use such a stupid smirk -and get away with it - is beyond me!

Meet George W. Bush. I personally think of him as the king of all smirkers. He's had that smirk on his face for so long, it's genuinely built into his features now.

What kind of smirker are you?

The Day Humanity Failed

It was just a day like any other day. Scorching heat - but that's normal in summer right? Mood swings from really happy to really depressed for no particular reason - again totally normal for me these days.

Yet as I snaked my way around the cars in the traffic trying not to suffocate of the smoke pollution, there was something different about me. I walked to the train station like normal but as I entered the platform to take the train from, something felt wrong. Something rotten was brewing in my head and I didn't like that.

I stood there and did what has become an enjoyable hobby of mine on the train - I looked around. I look at people mostly. There is so much to learn just by looking at complete strangers. To imagine that everyone of them has a life - an existence - just like mine, that runs regardless of mine. We'd never cross paths again but that moment could be so profound...yet that is a story for some other time.

I went over my day to try to pinpoint why I was in this mood. There was a lot of killing today. Wars have erupted all around and in other places, people were dying in much more tragic ways (such as in Darfur)

As my thoughts went to Darfur, I couldn't understand how something like that could be happening to humanity. I mean - we have had so many opportunities and time to evolve into this highly intellectual race. We have developed arts and movies that bring us to tears yet such a genocide gets a mere "tut tut" from most of us.

As I stood there on the platform I heard noise. Now I always have my iPod on when I'm on the train, I like to filter everything out and just enjoy the music. The noise, however, was coming from a song on a screen on the platform. What a horrible song! Yet people were hanging around the screen thrilled with the song...people who have not been thrilled with anything all day long were thrilled by this degrading use of art. But art is different from one person to the other. Maybe I'm just ignorant of the new arts.

Finally the train came and by a stroke of magical luck, I got a seat. It's been years since I sat down in the train, I felt spoiled and I loved it!

I got out my New Scientist magazine and began to read this article that I started earlier that was keeping me thrilled. Quantum physics always thrills me for some reason. As the song on my iPod was ending and another was starting, I realized that a couple of younger guys were making fun of me because I "was reading English". I thought about jumping into one of my stances on how science is to be thanked for all the progress humanity has made...but I didn't feel like it.

Then I realized that all those past days...I have RARELY seen a single person reading on the train. When I was abroad, everyone used to read on the train. But here 99% of the people don't. There's the occasional person reading the crappy reports in the newspaper but that's about it. They spend hours commuting in utter boredom rather than read...now there is something that doesn't make sense to me.

Something was utterly getting wrong with the human race but I couldn't pinpoint it.

I finally got home more depressed than ever. As I sat at my computer to do some quick work before I eat, I heard lots of shouting and applause. I didn't know what was going on until someone told me there's an important football match today. It's a match between the two biggest football teams in Egypt. That explained why the streets are deserted. Everyone is at their homes watching the match. That explained the miracle of me getting a seat on the train.

A football match is enough to energize people to change their lives - even if for a single day.

A few men running around a green field pursuing a ball has become enough to move humans, while the daily deaths of thousands of their own race is - at the best case - met with a shrug (usually it's completely not noticed).

That was the day - that was the moment - I knew that humanity has failed.

Darkness

Be brave, be strong
It's not easy when the sky is coming down
Please be gentle with me
There's not much I can do anymore

For you, I tried, to change the world
But I didn't count on the sky coming down
Battling beasts of pain, gargoyles of sorrow
For a change, just get out of my head

Divided inside
A witness to the war of titans
Interlocked horns in the eternal battle of me
That was never how it was supposed to be

Just let me sit back and give up
I deserve that little peace
Even mountains sway in the wind
And steel yields to the heat

The eternal battle is not over
Though the battlefield has been scarred
As I walk around I shed a tear
For a place I hardly know anymore

Broken and scathed, I lay back
This is not what I wanted to be
I close my eyes and embrace
Darkness

-Written by Breathe

Confusion Abound

They say that sometimes, when certain strongly emotions episodes take place in our lives, the world stands still.

For example, the moment you meet the person you love, time does stand still. I believe in that because sometimes, you'd meet that person in the strangest of places and instantly you'll get a strange tingling feeling. That's how it feels when time stands still.

Bad feelings can also make time stand still. When you hear about the death of a loved one life actually stands still. You feel like you're thinking about how life will be without that person, the truth of the matter is, you ARE living life without that person - maybe in a different reality but it's happening. Time stands still, you live that life and then you come back and pick up from that moment.


For me, however, something very different is happening. Somewhere - somehow, life stood still...and that's it. It's stuck somewhere and I just drift along in another life. It is that moment that I gave up and lost control of my life. I lost control of what was once - in my opinion - the most controlled life anyone can ever think of.

I have known for a while now that life is just not all rosy. For quite a while, things haven't been going the way I wanted them to. Partially, that could be because I didn't know what I wanted.

Ignorance is bless

Yet now I'm not ignorant anymore, the effect is not what I expected. I am not more focused and my vision is not clearer.

I'm more confused than I ever was before.

How can you make sense of things if you are not allowed to see the future and you only get one shot at life. It would've made sense if the choices were clearer or if the variables were less...but as it stands now, it may just be too overwhelming.

Walk On

excerpt from an old Frank Sinatra song

When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark.
At the end of the Storm there's a golden sky
And the sweet, silver song of a lark.

Walk on through the wind, walk on through the rain,
Though your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart,
And you'll never walk alone.
You'll never walk alone.



What an inspirational song. Thank you Sinatra. Those were the best days...

This part of my life is called "catching the train"

Some people call it the train, others called it the subway and others call it the underground. For the sake of familiarity to myself however, lets call it the train.

This part of my life is called "catching the train" and I bet you that it was tougher than most parts of Chris Gardner's life (if you don't get this, go watch Will Smith's Pursuit of Happyness, it'll do you a world of good)

Now this is, to many people, a rather normal step they take everyday to get to work or when coming back or whatever. But the train here, in Egypt, is a TOTALLY different experience.

I am one of the lucky people who got a car when they were 18. It was not the newest car, but it is a lovely car. So when I decided to take my lovely 14 years old car for serious service, I knew I will be stuck with the train for a while. "It's all right" I thought. "How bad can it be anyways?"

Well, back then I didn't know the answer to that question. But now I can safely say: Really really bad.

Mind you this is not my first time on the train. But I guess when driving has been your sole mode of transportation for 7 years you tend to forget what public transportation can be like. That, or the train has grown much much worse than I remember.

So to make a long story short, I went to the train station, I got myself a ticket and went through the checkpoint and was standing there waiting for the train. It was late. That is not a problem in itself, but as I wait, more and more people kept gathering waiting for the train. I was unlucky enough to be standing in the front with a mass of people behind me.

Finally the train came.

On the ground, there was a green arrow pointing towards the train. I knew by my amazing instinct that this meant this is the door I use to get ON the train. I smiled at myself for being smart enough not to stand on the red arrow pointing away from the train (which I deduced in my eternal smartness was where you got OFF the train)

So the train comes to a screeching halt and....all hell breaks lose.

You know when you were young and you played tug-of-war in school? It was a fun game. But I always thought that everyone enjoyed tug-of-war except the rope. It probably never enjoyed tug-of-war. That is me, always considerate of other things - even if they are inanimate.

When the door to the train opened, it was something similar to tug-of-war, except instead of PULLING, it was about PUSHING. And I was the rope.

There were tens of people trying to get off the train. At the same time, there are tens of people behind me trying to get on the train. I was sure I'm standing on the green arrow but...I guess that didn't matter much. Amidst the chaos, I saw that the same thing was happening at the exit of the train marked with the red arrow.

They couldn't even agree to allow each other to pass. Each group, the exiters and the enterers, as I will choose to call them today, kept pushing as hard as they could. I really wanted to get out of it at that point. I mean, I remember thinking I can just take the next train but that was not an option. I was the buffer being pushed in the middle. I'm glad I didn't fade out, but I do remember the air becoming extremely thin. I was doing incredible effort to breathe.

Finally the 2 groups were able to break through each other. Only one problem though. For every 1 person who got off the train, 4 got on. In a matter of seconds, I found my face stuck to a wall and I was lucky to have 2 feet on the ground. I sooo didn't want to be here, but I was pushed by an incredible mass of people.

The train started to move, there was very little air to breath but...it was moving...I was on my way home. I mean, it's only 13 stations to go right? Only problem is 2 stations away was the most popular station on the whole line...

At this point I would like to make an observation. When I was in school, I was told that gases are easily compressible, liquids are barely compressible and solids are incompressible. That piece of information is wrong. I can finally disprove it. Solids are actually compressible.

The train was completely utterly full. Now, when I say full it doesn't mean there are no seats or there are many people standing. I mean there is absolutely no air inside the train cuz people are crowded so close that I literally had my face stuck to the wall because there was no space to move a single inch.

When the train stopped at that station however, at least - at the very least - 15 people got on the train. How is that possible? That's easy. Humans are solids, by the old wrong rule, they are incompressible. Apparently, humans ARE compressible, I saw it, they were able to compress 15 people into a completely full train. Like any compression attempt this requires tremendous pressure. That came in the form of 2 people outside the train who were helping push the extra people into the train from outside. As the doors started to close they couldn't because people were still stuck there. So with some effort and alot of heaving, those 2 good people were able to compress the extra people in.

That didn't affect my breathing directly, I mean, there was no air to start with. But now, besides having my face stuck to the wall, I also had someone's elbow stuck to my chest and I lost ground. There was no place to put 2 feet down anymore, that was a luxury. I only had one foot on the ground. The other was in the air.

Did I mention it was an extremely hot day? Did I mention the temperture was 36 degrees Celsius? I probably forgot didn't I? Well, it was that hot. And people were sweating like crazy and...well...lets just say that at least 95% "forgot" to put on their deodorant in the morning.

11 stations later, I struggled to reach the door. This was my exit. This was finally my chance to get out! There were 2 other people getting off the train. I readied myself and as the door opened, I had to endure the reverse tug-of-war game again - but to a lesser degree since it is a less popular station.

As I walked out into the scourging heat - I absolutely loved it. It was hot, humid and stinky...but I absolutely loved it. Anything at all (maybe excluding Hell itself) would have been better than the train!

When I get my beautiful car back I will treat her better than my best friend!

A dream

So last night I had a strange dream - and strangely I don't usually dream - so this came as a surprise.

I dreamed of...an onion.

What a bummer. I waste my rare dream on an onion. Well it's not really so, onions are actually quite peculiar and special.


For some people, life is a rather simple A-B journey. This is really cool. You get a few hurdles and everything along the way like everyone else. But it's always clear. You start at A and you want to end up at B. You might end up at B or you might not, but that's not really important is it? You still always had your eyes on B.

For others, however, it's not so clear. They start at A, and then go towards B. But on the way to B they see C - and it looks so damn interesting. They change to C. Halfway there they remember something they wanted from B so might change direction again. This is usually complicated further when D, E, F and a whole lot of other letters show up as well (after Z, there's always unicode to use!)

For the first group of people life is in sync. It's like knowing the future - but knowing a single future. Everything is streamlined and chances are they will end up with something normally nice. For the sake of my dream, we'll call that thing fruit. They'll end up with an apple or a strawberry or maybe a banana.

For the second group of people life is a hectic mess - and some of them love it that way too. They don't know the future - but they can end up with a gazillion different futures. For those people nothing is guaranteed. It's all tidal and uncontrollable. Some of them actually do end up with fruit - but usually they are more exotic such as a pineapple or a kiwi. Alot of them don't end up with that. They end up with...an onion.

When you say onion, must people's initial thought is "tears". Cutting up onions is a tedious job that many hate. But the secret is seeing the other side of things.

Medicinally, onions rank among the top plants ever. They can cure and help in so many cases it's amazing!

Then there's the awkward moment of sticking an onion into your salad. The onion usually feels out of place amongst all the colors of the salad. The truth of the matter is, they would never get along without the onion. Think of the onion as...the facilitator. Personally, I always wanted to be a facilitator. Little work and lots of praise. The onion, sadly, doesn't get those privileges, only gets the hard part. But it is, as far as I'm concerned, a job well done.

Think of a caesar salad. Where would it be without the onion?

Well, I'm a caesar salad :)


Then there are the layers thingy...but Shrek can explain that much better than me. He is, after all, an ogre :)