Write. Write because the more you cower the less you will ever be able to write. Write because no word is ever going to give the same meanings and feelings inside of you, so the least you could do is get some of this intensity out, for the sake of your own survival. Write because people need to read what you have to say when you think of the words to pen down. Sometimes it only requires one person to know we're not alone, and to know that someone, somewhere, somehow is sharing a feeling you keep within.
What you write does not have to be a wonderful prose piece; it does no even have to be by any means poetic. Poetry needs contemplation anyway and you need a simple and straightforward reassurance that you're there, you're alive, you feel like everyone else, and you carry the same sufferings as everyone else. You don't have to fight to be different in that too. At the end of the day we all experience the same feelings of guilt, reconsideration, and over-thinking. It is those minutes before sleep that also truly define us and who we are, and who we also want to be. It is these moments that let us discover ourselves within, and maybe, just maybe, do something about it someday.
Write, and I don't have to tell you about what you can write, because if you believe in Sylvia Plath's quote, you will know that everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it and the imagination to improvise; the worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. But I am not asking you to be creative here nor am I asking you to be a writer per se; I am just asking you to write. Writing and being a writer are two different things.
It is okay if you do not find yourself in writing, and it is okay if you cannot even make it to the third line. Leave it. Move to doing something else. Get back to it later. Just do not let it rust out forever.
Write, because I need you to write, so badly. I need you to tell me the words in your mind and I need to know your stream of thoughts perhaps we will find some things in common, anything in common. And I am not just saying this to make myself feel better; I am saying this as a mutual benefit to both of us. Because I need to read your thoughts if I will never hear them.
I need you to write because your words will work like sun rays to the morning, because they will shine in my soul like a magic of inspiration from an unknown source and in a sudden moment.
I need you, all of you, to exist, in the same way that you are, with a few more words to write. And you will complete me, with your words, and some of my silence. And it will be my turn soon and I will write to you. I will write for you. I will write with you and I will write about you. And then you can set yourself free, and set me free with you.
Just write.

لِمَ لا يا وطن؟

تأخذني، تأخذني إلى حيث لا أعلم، إلى حيث لا أريد أن أعلم. تأخذني إلى عالم ليس أقل كآبة من هذا العالم الذي أعيش فيه، من هذا الواقع الذي يطاردني حتى في الأحلام فلا تصبح كوابيسًا توقظني ولا تصبح أحلامًا تُمتّعني، وإنما تصبح واقعًا مؤلمًا في لذة نومٍ كاذبة واهية. تمسك بيدي وتسحبني إلى طريق ناءٍ خالٍ من الإنس ومُعبّأ بأفكار لأناس عاشوا وماتوا هنا ولم يشعر بهم أحد. تأخذني على أمل أن أستجمع قواي وأنتشل هذه الأفكار من هذا المكان قبل أن تموت هنا وحدها مع صاحبها الذي أصبح عظامًا تحت التراب. تربّت على كتفي كمن هو على استعداد لدخول معركة لا يعلم من له النصر فيها. ثم تتركني، تتركني هنا، وحدي تتخبطني أمواج هذه العواصف الفكرية التي تأبى أن تهدأ لتستقرّ في داخلي، وكأنها تشعر أنني لصٌ ليس إلا.

ثم لاأدري ما الذي جاء بي إلى هنا ولمَ لم أهرب إلى مكان هادئ يبعث السكينة والطمأنينة في داخلي بدلًا من أن أصارع أفكار العالم، وهل لي من الطاقة ما يعينني على استيعاب أفكار الآخرين مكومة فوق أفكاري؟ هل لي من مُعين؟ لست أدري.

ثم أبدأ في العدو، أركض وأركض بلا توقّف حتى أطرد أفكاري أو أعيرها إلى وطنٍ يصحو ويغفو على أفكار حالكة مؤلمة يقتلني بها مع الصباح الباكر حتى ظلام الليل. ولِمَ لا؟ لم لا أعيرها إلى وطني؟ لم لا أعيره بعضًا من آلامي التي تنبع من أفكاره الحالكة التي أُقتل بها على مدار عمري حتى يقتلني القتلة الأخيرة، وأموت إلى راحة أبدية.

لمَ لا يا وطني؟ فلتأخذ بعضًا من آلامي كما تقتلني بالكثير من لياليك الحالكة التي أُحبس فيها وأموت موتًا بطيئًا.

أو اقتلني الآن مرة واحدة مؤلمة فهي أفضل من ميتات عديدة بطيئة عديمة الألم.

لمَ لا يا وطني؟

ألوان النفس الإنسانية

من السهل أن تسأل الآخرين "هل صُدمت في من تعرفهم من قبل؟"، من السهل أن تجد الإجابة بالإيماء أو بنعم قبل أن يتسنى لهم أن يفكروا بقدر ضئيل، فالصدمات الخارجية سهلة التذكر ويسهل علينا أن نتحدث عنها بكل استفاضة، وإن كان منها ما يستحضر  ألمًا نفسيًا رهيبًا، ومع هذا كله فهي سهلة التذكر، واحدة منها على الأقل.

إنما السؤال الآخر المرعب هو: كم مرة صُدمت وأُحبِطت من نفسك؟ كم مرة أردت من نفسك شيئُا فلَم تُطِعك فيما تمنيت ولم تعبأ بما في عقلك من أحلام ومن أوامر. أتذكر كتاب "الضوء الأزرق" لحسين البرغوثي، والذي حدث في لحظة لا أعلم متى كانت، أن انضم إلى قائمة الكتب المحببة إلى قلبي حبًا جنونيًا. يصف حسين النفس في كتابه فيقول: " تعتقد طائفة الصوفية ( النقشبندية ) أن في الإنسان عدة أنفُس ، و لكل نفس هالة و ضوء خاص بها. الأزرق لون النفس الأماره بالسوء، أما الأحمر فهو لون النفس الملهمة و الأبيض لون النفس المطمئنة و الأخضر لون النفس الراضية و الأسود لون المرضية ( أرضاها الله ) أما الأصفر فلون النفس اللوامة ." أذهلتني الفكرة..للنفس ألوان؟ وصف عبقري للتعبير عن خبايا النفس، إذ أن الألوان كالثورة، منها ما يهدأ ومنها ما يثور على مراحل (في هذه الحالة درجات) ليفاجئنا بعاصفة وثورة داخلية لا يدري بها أحد، وقد يجهلها الـ"مُثار" عليه أيضًا.

ثم إن هذه الكلمات تدفعني للتفكير، يا ترى أي نفس تغلب عليّ؟ هل هي النفس الزرقاء؟ ولمَ لا؟ فكُل منّا له نفسه الأمارة بالسوء والتي يتصارع معها ليل نهار؟ ولكن من يهزِم ومن يُهزم في النهاية؟ من يثور ومن يصمد ومن يتحمل ومن يُثابر ويعافر؟ في هذه الحال تكون العبرة في المعركة بنفس قدر عبرة النهاية. من يأتي على عجل ومن يأتي متكاسلًا متثاقلًا كمن تسحبه قدماه من نوم عميق؟ من يأتي على الموعد.

ثُم أتذكر عبقرية من عبقريات درويش..

"فكمّ من مرة

جئتُ إلى نفسي على الموعد

لكن.. لم أجِدني!"

إن أردت أن أعطي لنفسي لونًا، فقد أعطيها اللون البنفسجي، فهو قد يرمز إلى الغرور والقسوة. الغرور لأنها لا تأتي على الموعد والقسوة لأنها تتلذذ بمشاهدة صدماتي المتكررة والمتتالية دون توقف ودون إرهاق ودون كلل أو ملل.

ولكن ألا يمكن أن تكون أنفسنا عبارة عن قوس قزح؟ إذ أنها ليست دائمة القسوة والغرور أو التكبر؟ لا لا، فألوان قوس القزح مشرقة، فلنقل.. لونًا واحدًا متدرجًا؟ كلما ازدادت حدّته (أي مالت درجته إلى الداكن) كلّما ازداد الوهن والألم؟ أي أن النفس هي التي تغلب وأنت تُغلب؟ ألا يمكننا أن ننظر إلى المعركة بهذه الطريقة حتى نتغلب بطريقة ما على درجات من هذا اللون لتظل لنا الدرجة الأفتح فالأفتح حتى نصل إلى الأبيض لننال صفاء النفس الإنسانية ونستحق لقب "إنسان"؟ فلنجرّب.

أسندت رأسي على أكثر وسائدي ليناً حتى لا تبعث بالإرهاق إلى أفكاري أو حتى لا يهرب ما في رأسي من ذكرياتٍ وأحلامٍ وتخيُلات. هل أفكر في إنسانيتي أم في غرور كينونتي؟ هل أحُل ضعفي أم قوّتي؟ ألم يقولوا لنا أن القوة هي عكس الضعف؟ فلماذا يبدو في أن ضعفي أقوى من قوّتي؟ أم أن قوّتي لا تكونُ إلا نتيجة ضعفٍ لا مفرّ منه إلا بالتظاهر بالقوة؟ ألم تكن أحلامي ذات ليلةٍ أمامي كالسراب؟ فلمَ ذهبت ولم يبقَ حتى السراب؟ أم هي وسادتي التي تتشبّع بكل ما أستطيع الحلم به. أيكونَ الحلُّ ألا أغفو أو أن أنسى مفهوم النوم؟ أحياناً تستيقظ في الصباح دون أن تذكر ما كان يشغل ليلك قبل حلول العتمة في عينيك. قد تكون هذه أفكارٌ تودّ الهروب منها فقط. أو قد تكون تناسيت فهُيّء لك أنها باتت في عداد النسيان. قد تكون هذه أفكار ليلة سابقة لها، أو ليلة لم تحدث أبداً. قد لا تكون أنت أنت، ولا أفكارك في رأسك. وأحياناً تستيقظ لتكمل النوم ظانّاً أنه كان الحقيقة وأن استيقاظك كان حلمك. قد تكون ألف شيء، وقد لا تكون مليوناً. هل تفنى دون أن تحاول أن تكون ما لم تكن من قبل؟ هل تستسلم لما هو أنت خوفاً مما ليس أنت حتى لا تضلّ في منتصف الطريق ولا تدرك من تكون ومن كنت؟ هل يدفعك الخوف إلى الموت داخلك فتُفضل الخوف من الحياة على الحياة مع الخوف؟ هل تُفضّل موتاً عادياً أم أن موتك بشخصية "تحاول أن تكون" هو موتك النبيل في حد ذاته؟ من أنت لتتمسك بمن تكون على أية حال؟

I feel like a stranger to my own self. Like a hater to the words I say, I don’t feel my existence within, I don’t even know what resides within. My soul is the battlefield of my words and God-knows-what resides to conquer me. I fear questions because my own answers might break me, I’m not sure I want to discover myself, not in this state of mind. For I don’t know who I am, and if I ever knew now, I’m scared it would be my label, forever, for a temporary state of mind, soul and heart. I don’t want to know me if I were outside myself. Not now at least. Not today.

How can you read words and sleep to wake up to another day just like that? I mean, how can you not let the words, the stories, the novels dwell, linger, breathe in you until you can no longer speak, read or write, or even live. Can a day pass without the effect of the words you read, on you? And what good would words be there? At the bottom of your being, breathing yet not breathing. Until their face appears on the surface, a strange being, something you cannot fathom; just because you gave them no chance to survive, to evolve.
You can't possibly want words to make sense if you just keep reading without breathing. Read and breathe in between. And give words at least half the amount of oxygen you give to yourself. Let them evolve. Let them prosper. Let them be. You. And I. And the world.

You slip through the tip of my fingernails into a breathless city of forsaken dreams, lost in heavy-hearted boulevards.

Wading your way into every vision; you know where to find your end in this darkness - though the light of faith is always sinking within the clouds of treason.

Shaken. Frightened; you take a step into the first alley:

A different kind of sky, agitated, and screaming buildings of terrible shape carrying angry dreams of the poor, having one scene in common: a just life in the eyes of the decayed..

At ease, you carry the most horrifying and reach the end light, escaping the most saddening colors to get to a city where black is an alienated vision.

The greenness and the free air paint a pure blue sky at daylight, and a barely cerulean view at night. A sun that kisses the moon with its amber light at dusk, and a bird that sings of no defeat. A still life, a surreal piece.

But dreams? You're almost through without a thing in your pocket, only miserable ones of the needy.

while at the gates of the city you find yourself soaked in another alley, of the starving and the severely brokenhearted. You beg your feet to move, but hungry skies hold you captive, pour their nation's dreams and free you; drunk on semi-dreams, semi-nightmares.

And then you pull yourself back to me, asphyxiated by dreams and pleading for my words to say it all, to save you.

But my pencil, it shivers.

And their dreams, they hold up, for the moment to rise.

Written August 3rd, 11:53 PM.

Image Source

Face to face

I to mirror

A breathless image

Against a tired self

Words hit reflections

Like ugly songs to the ears

On the other side, life looks different

Another definition staring at me

How do you see two persons

with one reflection?

Or maybe mirrors often evoke

A personality disorder

Let me shatter the glass

Maybe I'd know which I exists

The real one or the fiction

Written 10:09 PM.

Enormous skies slip from your thoughts into my own, like a huge riddle or a mass that invades my brain and lifts me off the ground. Sir, where are your thoughts taking me? It's like you're degrading my reflections or sending them to exile, punishing me for having allowed my imagination to swim, and you preferred to rather make me soar, in your everything, and my nowhere. Happy?

I don't even recognize the colors in you, they breathe into me like a rainbow, except that I can't breathe; can a rainbow choke you into a coma? I'm not making sense. Shock me awake, please.

The upper I fly, the more depressing it gets; that doesn't happen, are we from opposite worlds?

Or maybe I'm deflecting.

I'm not making sense. I'm not making sense.

Sir, are you there?

1. Can you choose your dreams before sleep?
2. How can you guarantee the ending if you cannot even philosophize about the beginning?
3. When the sky turns amber, is it really a sign of anger or just a vague ending for the day?
4. Does not having war necessarily mean peace?
5. How is an issue tackled with silence?
6. It's really hard sometimes to distinguish words from silence, isn't it?
7. Would you judge me if I said I'd judge you by the book you're reading?
8. How many lines did you read and never felt? Or shall I ask the opposite question?
9. Did you ever wish for colors to resemble real emotions?
10. When was the last time you really, really, thought about your death?

Felt that? Read again. Simple math.

1. After seeing people like you, I'm pretty damn sure you won't feel sympathy in your heart over my death for this country.
2. Stop the whys and ask the hows, please.
3. It's a bit ironic to say that the best things I write are always when I don't write.
4. You might have learned your lesson, but you're acting upon it the wrong way, which pushes you back to point zero.
5. Insanity is bulletproof, too.
6. Let's be honest here, we'll never agree to disagree.
7. When governments disagree, only people pay the price.
8. To me, you walk anticlockwise.
9. I judge you by the book you're reading
10. Being a writer sometimes makes you wonder if you're a prisoner of words or words are a prisoner of you.
11. Sometimes things that don't make sense in this life are the only things that make sense
12. you've gotta run out of your "if only's" one day.
13. The more people you know, the more faces you will have to deal with in your own persona.
14. I don't know how you do it, but you do. You inspire so beautifully that it's so devastating.
15. The worst part about growing up is not when you don't understand people's behaviors, but when you don't understand your own.
16. Do not expect more, expect less. Or better, expect nothing. At all.

Those are some thoughts written on twitter, I thought I'd save them just for a memory :)

1- Questions that will free you might have answers that will imprison you again.

2- Not everyone talks in words.

3- Black is not always a color.

4- Sometimes you write a thousand words to explain one meaning that everyone else failed to explain, too.

5- Dance with your shadow; it's the only way you'd make peace with your true self.

6- You'll get angry with the wrong people, you must someday.

7- Your brain is a double-edged weapon.

8- Have you ever given something without truly, truly, wanting something back?

9- The only way to risk being you is to risk not being you.

10-Sometimes it's best to shut up.

Before you finish your statement

I was already choking in mine because

you couldn't let me say the truth.

And I stumbled as you thrive

in defeat

Sooner, you'll be like the wind that blows with a famous aftermath. Your shouts will be heard from a distance yet not when you're shoulder-to-shoulder with humanity. Sooner, your words will be devoid of breaths. And you'll forget, you'll forget that oneday they saved you. Because the next day, they killed you.

Sooner, you'll raise your head up high and find infinite nothingness above you, and then you'll remember that you used a whole constellation to make wishes that never attained to beating. You'll wish you had freed those dreams for someone to at least grant them half a life. You'll want to grasp them dead while their echo would still be pulsating. You'll just wish you'd done something. Anything.

Your ideas will melt beneath the impulsiveness of sentences and the rigidness of indifference. And you'll be sleeping on pillows of simple-mindedness, suffocated by blankets of clichés. You'll pretend, but pain will always manifest itself on your empty shoulders, heavily.

Hear me. Words will prove themselves dominent over you, when once you had them and the power of silence. And you'll weep words, bleed silence, but you'll never learn until you unlearn and teach yourself the right direction of your wind.

Jan.18th. 2012. 12:11 AM

I need a brave holder of words -

Words that crumble inside my pen

And never survive in my notes

Because

Maybe I've got the world-saving line

With the incapability to keep it beating.

Just maybe.

They run in the depth of your being

And disappear in the shallowness of life

Until they are a

Shadow

In your core.

A ghostly grayish being

And happy, they linger.

Here

Pour my thoughts over for me, for I cannot bear their breath in my ink. But write them down carefully, don't slip because they might kill you, and save me. Don't slip because their echo would be so immense that the universe will have to bury them in your depth, and the emptiness in my soul would never return so I can write again. (Or let you write for me)

Yes, I'm selfish. I don't want to be the writer of my own destiny because it hurts. It hurts to feel yet it hurts to be numb. I cannot bear the sound of my words, they feel too ugly for me, they don't feel like they're mine, but I'm the only one that could possibly create them -- oh denial, save me or kill me.

Write my words for me because I don't want to be part of my own history, I just want to forget it happened so I can dwell again in the cave of security away from the tidal waves of agitated oceans.

Instead I'll dance. I'll dance until I can no longer stomp my feet and touch the ground. And I'll sing there about victory, I'll sing but with a low voice so that monsters won't resent me. I'll sing alone while you'd be busy writing the words that I once thought would save me, or you. Or us.

And I'll unravel my silence every time you're near, I'll unlearn so I can learn the same lesson again. I'll forget so I can remember again and never have to feel the same. But I won't write.

I won't write because my words in your hands say more than I can write. Perhaps my ink was burdened with my too much weakness that it faded away in time.

Please write it down for me, because you write it perfectly, and I? I cannot be but the shadow of your words, which are mine, and I, while you portray, fade with the frailty that took over me.

Author's word: Please note that I haven't been great with inspiration and words lately. This is a half general and a half personal piece.

Cities of guilt and chaos, cities of anarchism and ignorance. Cities of you, cities of me, with too many feelings that are our own, only our own, alone. Selfishness.
Rivers that carry words; awash, words that can no longer resemble us. Words that can no longer fly in our lands carrying freedom. Nothingness. But they are not trite, we're the archaic. Ageism.
Seasons don't change. Wait, they do, just not in our colonies. Everything is the same here. Today is a replica of yesterday, and a mirror of tomorrow. You think our lives are a déjà vu? No. Repetitions.
You're not hallucinating. You do not even exist. You. You're the remains of your dreams, the remains of your memories, if there were any, in the first place. You're the figment of their imagination. And you don't know who directs the puppet show, because you just can't see above when you are the puppet itself. Despotism.
You ride the wave yet you can't be going with that flow, because you ride their wave. You talk but only from their dictionaries: We live and we learn and we obey and we support and we die. You die. But those who live forever, are never remembered. And you who live, don't die. Manumission.

Discolored sentences
Cross bridges between you and them,
And the traffic of words is
Unbearable to deaf ears

(The nonexistence of you)

They, long ago, burned down bridges
That could lead to you, or
Maybe they feigned they did,
Yet you believed

(The age of the diseased)

And they reigned their own colonies,
With rules on walls of
Your nonbeingness,
And papers of their ego

Oh, fever of the self



Written 12:57 AM. 11.16.11

Note: This was supposed to be talking about Solipsism (Yes, the philosophical concept) but it somehow took a kind of a political direction.

Sometimes you don't know whether silence would be more hurtful than words or the other way round. You just don't know if that silence would be decipherable or would it leave you mystified with too many thoughts soaring, sometimes none of them is even close to reality. You just think. And think.
Sometimes words are unnecessary yet you find yourself saying anyways, in fear of what? Nothing, probably being accused of apathy or indifference. Does it matter? deep down inside it really does, but on the surface you’re all confident nothing’s worth it. Don’t worry, we all have those insecurities and the need to be loved with our imperfections, no matter how perfect we try to act.

My current situation with life makes me too burdened or blown to speak, I can’t write (don’t mind the fact that I’m writing now), my poetic life has become this ridiculous way of expressing before all those huge events happening lately, you know? It’s like whatever you’ll write and whatever you’ll feel is just a tiny bit of dust and ash that the world doesn’t need. So you prefer silence. This time silence is heartfelt and true, however, until when are we going to keep out words because they would add nothing to the world while they could add something to an ordinary person that might run into our words.

Is there something more than words to this world? Oh yes, patience. I think patience with prayers is a great, holy escape that makes everyone feel relieved at heart. You know, the older we grow, the harder it gets with patience; it’s like a harder lesson everyday that you cannot seem to understand, yet life doesn’t wait for you to get it, it just passes you by, and you either hold on to your patience, or you’ll never, ever, get it. Only Allah does.

I have been reading so much recently, in bed or at my office at work, cross-legged and comfortable, with the most terrible psychological aches ever; the ability to read and feel yet the inability to really feel or get involved in something that would be of any use to the country. I do understand that we all feel this way, that’s exactly why I’m writing this, to let you know I feel for you and ask you to smile because I know you feel for me. It’s just that we need patience, whether with words or with silence. I know that we have a terrible attitude when it comes to waiting, but if only, if only we knew the reward of what’s happening. At least daydream and smile.

I’m not really trying to cheer you up because I can’t cheer up myself, I’m just expressing something we all are feeling at the same time – and it might not be the same for you as it is for me, but I want you to know that this will pass, it has to; nothing lasts like this forever, impossible. So no matter how old you are, how strong or weak you are, no matter your religion, your race or your stream of thoughts or your feelings, at one point, you feel me and I feel you. And this is a test for patience, a test for life.

Shine on so the sun can rise again underneath your feet.