tinkling of an old sound

When half awake I heard a twinkling of metallic key sound on a metallic door knob in the background, I thought it came from that cabinet in our room where I used to pile my undergarments in the bottom of a three drawer segment I used to share with my sisters some 50 years ago.

happiness booklet

When I found that booklet of tickets from 12 years ago with two unused tickets still available.. (for the lack of an expiry date)… it occurred to me that with a simple Deformation Retract I could fold time over and go with my then babies to them swings and swing some more… all the way to that last Sunday when we went to that fun park. When I went there last, I had no idea it would be the last time, or that those two tickets will remain for ever safely tucked in that booklet in my drawer, the “just in case” one day sometime, drawer.

fabric love

What is so particular about going to the Tailor with my mom and sister? What is so special about choosing buttons and tassels and ribbons at the fabric accessory store that I imagined to be huge, only to discover 30 years later that it was tiny with barely three shelves? I used to feel we were about to witness the creation of something. But not only that, it was a time out: away from the routine. I loved the tailor and the smell of her house, coffee, and perfume, and needles and relaxed atmosphere. I just loved visiting with my mom: my mom seemed to be so relaxed there. I never visited for me. I was there for my mom’s dress and suit and coat try-outs. We visited many of them. Their names were enchanting, mostly names of flowers. I had so much respect for them: they were creators, and essential elements in my mom’s life, together with the magazines she ordered. I know that if I were to go to a tailor now it won’t be the same.

grace efect

It was enough for her to softly lift with her hand a negligible strand of hair away from her forehead to feel feminine again. No need for her to read about it and philosophize and reconsider her childhood and adulthood and the effect of her academic inclination on her femininity in her adolescent years. She just swiftly tilted her head and softly let her fingers cuddle a few hairs receding them to the back slightly revolving her neck.  There is also the effect of the ring in her fingers and the low cut of her shirt and the perfume emanating from behind her ears.. the rest is pure enchantment and graceful attitude.

age compensation

Growing old is like when you start losing your vocal capacities in a silent manner. You try to sing your old taxing song that you used to be so proud of performing. But right before you get to the high note, the real test, your vocal chords silently announce the coming of some performance impotence. You navigate your way around it and you use your other faculties, be them bodily or mental to outsmart that coming of old age.. just to distract yourself and the supposed listener next to you. You make a spontaneous remix of that song and soften the peaks and curb the highs. Next time you will be skilled at this detour and your focus will be directed onto something else. Just like an older lady will get over her lack of desirability by injecting all the wit she has in compensation for her withering skin.

prolonged rituals

With time, the rituals that precede real action become longer than the action itself, and by the time you finish them you are out of energy.. you postpone starting the task though inviting... Also, you take many intermittent naps longer than real sleep itself; more like an affair that overrides a marriage. Dessert or appetizing starters flooding the main meal.. 

comforting with color

I want to defend her, be with her, that little girl from the past. When she was on that day perplexed, when she thought she was wasting her time, how I wish I could go and be with her.. and reassure her.. that nothing was wasted. All blossomed later, in the form of colors and paintings and theorems and writings and embroidered conversations. I wish she had not suppressed those fleeting inspiration moments, for fear that they did not fit within those tightened boundaries set by people around her.

happiness sensor

I wish there were a sensor that would capture happiness. If you had a child exposed to several moods: as in buttons, colors, paintings, machines, letters, computers, biology pictures, introduction of novels… what would make that person’s heart jump.. ? In my case, it would be a drawer of craft material… pastel buttons and lace and colors.. Same for the type of people we like to be with.. those who bring out a nice conversation? Those who sit in a way that suggests that time is eternally immaterial… if we relaxed forever on a swing..

fear of a blank page

And when I realized that little May would rather edit a draft rather than freeze facing a blank page, I started jotting random drafts for her, and enjoyed watching her erase with her favorite erasers, leaving marks of enchantment then brush them off again, re-marking wherever it pleased her. When she finally saw me watching her, it interrupted her pleasure. I love her and want to protect us

one last trip to the tailor

I want to get one more chance to accompany her to the tailor to try out her pied de poule custom-made woolen coat… and I want the tailor to make us coffee in her apartment that smells like cinnamon on a winter afternoon. I want my mother to go and try the coat.. and i want to say to myself I wish I had her blue eyes… and her calmness and serenity, femininity… and grace.. I want to pretend I like the coffee that the tailor’s assistant Yasmine is serving us…in her house in Ain El Mreisseh. Just one more chance..

a seventies calm afternoon

I love afternoons in a special mood.. a woman , my mother’s age in the 1970s, ironing in a room, vintage now, beautiful and simple then.. I see the vintage magazines on her coffee table, her crochet needles.  She is ironing while watching an Egyptian movie. Black and white , obviously. With a cute apron, with lace all around, that she chose carefully at the single aisled shop, recently transformed into a super shop at a mall with a million other shops like it. Nice hairdo, carefully tossed, all floating in a crisp ironing aroma. A lace cover hides the roof of the tv set. Her apartment with many side lamps is swimming in a beautiful mood, with the warm whiff coming from the kitchen, of a freshly baked cake. a vanilla mood with pink frosting, barely pink daisies.. with the title dainty all over.. Her friend will come soon to visit. She will be carrying a present: a pink box of thick polka dotted cardboard, hugging 3 pieces of pastel colored cake. The middle one was a swirl of cake surrounding a piece of a banana. As a Pink matter of fact both women had had a good day, calm, no special mood. Mood is an Irrelevant term anyway. Day to day smooth life management, no staccato in the air.. Their lives don’t resemble those of the rather wild heroines in the movies they are watching. No harm at all.

where did all the time go?

Have I skipped an age? From very young to over the hill? Where did all the time go? Is there no in between?

Inconsistency is great for artists and nonlinear problem solvers.. but awfully confusing and misleading in bringing up kids..

imagined city

When suddenly everything shuts down, I fancy going to that city from mid-morning to mid-day, and pretend to walk with those vibrantly busy people,.. Since I am there, I may just as well meet a friend for lunch for soup and salad. I promise to be back in time to pick up the kids from school.. 

what if

Imagine watching a film that shows what your life would be like had you opted on that day back in 1994 for decision X instead of decision Y. The movie rolls smoothly and has magical colors similar to the ones you would artificially instill into your paintings by mixing obscure substances that wash off instantaneously into regular color of sadness ... You will be happy to have witnessed that color, though briefly..

age triumph

I figured that we get more relaxed as we grow older once we discover that there is a club for people with feelings we used to have when we were little, that we suppressed because we assumed they made us glide away from the mainstream, and hence hurt us. As we mature we find out that people have created recognized doctrines, clubs, established dogma for those characteristics that used to marginalize us; we are suddenly relieved and want to become official club MEMBERS. What used to be the marginalized sector then is the principal sector here. What a waste it has been to work at curbing those tendencies all through. All that training to suppress those feelings was a waste of time! Those who used to be the non-privileged then became the hip now. Imagine that at a high school class reunion you would observe the then popular students have turned into the marginalized women.. others, on the other hand learned how to play the game and upgraded their popularity assets. Imagine yourself watching and taking notes.. I discovered a new vocabulary where values of long acquired adjectives are changed to my advantage: I forgot what it was. I feel triumphant and happier. 

bethlehem

I imagined for a second or less that the small orange and white bus was going to wait for me tomorrow morning by this very same building to take me to my elementary school to sing in a Christmas play. I wanted to sing in that play some fifty years ago, but instead, I was designated a sheep of the shepherds in Bethlehem, in boyish pajamas. I wanted to have a different role, but the teacher said my voice was too coarse. If this were to happen to my daughter, I would commit a crime.

scent of a memory

Funny how when things are happening, we don’t know whether that moment would be crystallized in our memory, and we don’t know which shape it will take there. Which taste will be associated with it and what sensation? When will I remember it next? In which state will I be then, and in which state will it be? Which time of the day will it pop up into, and in what context? Will it be sad or happy? Is it more like a Sunday morning sensation, or will it remind us of that side walk in a different part of the world where we once strolled, and which we considered our terrain forever, that we will always have access to, but alas, little did we know. You know how it is when we wake up yet still half asleep, we get that fuzzy memory, with almost that same taste, and for a split of a second we figure that we are going to spend that Saturday afternoon in that now remote, impossible-to-reach-city, with those people we loved to be with, who only remind us of how happy we were, how beautiful, how young and single and capable and free, and above all how desired? With all potentials of a Saturday afternoon that any free person can think of.  But like me, most of those people are not free and young anymore. They might be having those same dreams right now. I wonder, when they remember what I remember; will they remember it the same way? With the same associations and tastes and yearnings?  As much as I hear consolations such as each age has advantages and each state comes at a price and so on, it makes me very sad to know that there is no return.  At least I speak for myself: I am converging to less freedom and less beauty and fewer possibilities and only more memories and stronger yearnings to unreachable states. 

Given that I know these facts, and that reruns happen only on TV, I want to get happiness in a different way. I want to feel it from inside my head. Not necessarily coming from actions and strolls and streets and people and states of action but rather from trans-actions.  You know that split of happiness that suddenly takes hold of you when you are doing a mundane activity, and then all of a sudden you change gears and pick up enthusiasm? Your receiver or partner in conversation notices a change of heart but knows not its source.  In “younger” normal circumstances I would have remembered that the rest of that day will be upper than regular days, which is uplifting. For older people, the reason could be that a beautiful memory has just surfaced. In ideal cases, inner happiness of some blissful state would have surfaced. I do want these states to be only sparse, otherwise it will be the norm, which does not cause Ups, and I am an Ups fan.

Street noise

You know when you are passing in your car through a very poor, dirty, smelly, depressing and narrow dark street that can only smell of misery… and the radio suddenly starts a fun upper of a sophisticated modern opera chant… the scene ahead of you suddenly takes on a different feel. You watch it through national geographic lenses.. you get less sad… it becomes passé, even exotic. More like a vintage-like hymn from a different century. You are not there. You are watching someone else watch it through a screen. I am not proud of this metamorphosis. It becomes a well directed modern video clip that will get applauded

assembly line of embroidered love

And when I heard her telling me that they would sit together, all women in the family to embroider that wedding dress.. I had a strong desire to create an assembly line like in a chain of love and embroider a large piece of garment while sipping tea and munching on biscuits and crumbs of fallen love with all the women in my life.. I want to embroider and surrender in lace and linen and silk and colored thread… I want to leave a signature on the back of a long dress..

rhythm lag

It seems that there started to be a slight lag between the rhythm at which my thoughts pop into my head and the rate at which they get approved for storage in my receptive brain chambers. The declined crumbs that fall out of range recycle themselves into a viscous fluid and surrender on my canvas into an artwork that resembles mine, but with colors, an offset of my regular palette.