complete surrender

On the table preparing me for the massage, it felt like a corpse was being prepared to its final destination, so to speak. This is how I envisioned that kind of preparation would take place. The two women, twin sisters, young, dressed in white all over, with little words, worked in total symmetrical sync, each on a side of my big body. They were listening to my body it seems, and soon developed a syncing mechanism with it: just before my hands were about to fall off the stretcher in complete surrender, they picked them up gently, oiled them, massaged them, like in a vivid dream where you are not sure if the awaken person dictated the order, or the dreamer did: did desire dictate the act, or the act that dictated the desire? I will never know. All I know is that before my hands slipped, they were picked up safely by their gentle symmetrical hands. Before I knew it, my blood Circulation was thanking them.

elegance of a diva

time to change brushes .. Time to add the fiery flashy shiny over-coat..  I contemplated my jars of brushes… with the care of a woman picking her piece of jewelry at the last stages of getting ready for a party where she would be granted the diva of the year award… I looked at those wooden sticks marked with so many erratic scars, each with a story… They all had an elegant “coiffure”… (sable, synthetic, nylon; bristle heads)

I saw her.. winking at me.. elongating her neck, the one with many stains of gold, red and turquoise. She knew I always went back to her.. for rescue.. To end the surface and mark the ending with a splatter from her bristle. She knew I knew… I slowly approached her like a dancer would pick her partner for the last dance…

where do words of a dead person go

When you die, where do your words go? Your vocabulary? Your stories, your collected metaphors, your to-be-born ideas and images and the colors you concocted? Your stamped tales and collection of Greek mythology?

Do they become butterflies suspended over your friends’ ears? Do they turn into the tinnitus of your close friends’ brains humming whispers and finishing unfinished songs and symphonies? Do they metamorphose themselves as hints to solving conjectures and unsung tunes? Dropped keys? I miss you my friend.

stop at the intro

I have heard of a little girl who only wrote the most inviting introductions to stories. She would only write her introductions on paper that she made in her studio from tree leaves and spices that she would set on a fine mesh sieve woven on the axes of her past and present. She was so cautious pouring her soul onto the sieve and mixing softly her instants onto the paper-to-be. Her story ideas would be pouring ever so rapidly and impulsively on the about-to-be-paper in such a way that her stories started in the pigments of the paper itself and was readable before and after the paper was ready and dry. It was like the harmony and the melody intensely and clearly told over the length of two measures only. Once upon a time, I went beyond the introduction, but then I stopped.

surrender

The closest feeling we must have had to a complete let go, is when we wake up contagiously sick, realize that we cannot leave our bed, and we had a pre-scheduled full day ahead of us…. Then suddenly we witness a priority shift, irreversible, and we see the important tasks dim in a second, and we see the futility of our dispensability and that our assumed heroic existence does not matter to the world or to our own existence. we close our eyes in acceptance and go back to sleep.

a term for every expression

when you struggle to describe an emotion, you are experiencing using basic language and then in a movie, you hear someone referring to the same emotion using a single (foreign) dense term that clearly encapsulates your feeling.… you get boosted by the intensity of language and in solidarity with humanity at large as if you got promoted to a trendier scale.. but wait, … you always had experienced that feeling/syndrome … be it a post vacation syndrome, or withdrawal, or postnatal depression, or menopause related moods… It is inexplicable that pain gets lighter and easier to carry when there is a term for it.

absurd dance

One day my added parts woke up, left my body and went on stage. I saw my knee part and a handful of teeth fragments dancing with a couple of lenses. They were teasing the real parts of me that they might not come back. The End

ideal toy world

My ideal world will be a workshop for toys… hand sewn..to be used in a play… also I want to make the curtains in the play and everything… I want to be excited during the opening.. and I might sing with the chorus…

joy of sounds

You know I still feel the same feeling like 50 years ago when, in our summer house in the summer, some car approaches our isolated house, driving on the pebbles and makes those slow careful crunching sounds, converging toward our isolated existence, carrying the smells of city smoke, people, civilization, sweat and heat. Slowly we become less isolated while the car becomes less city-like…a small expression creeps into  our neutral features and looks… Oh people…

real smiles

The smiles that people show to their screens on the streets are more real than the smiles they distribute to real people in their days..  

morning absurdities

When in the afternoon I read my to do list that I meticulously prepared in the morning, I ask myself, who is that person? Who jotted down those ambitious with a glittery marker? Who chose that marker in the first place? I can’t recognize the marker nor the handwriting. The excitement there makes me want to puke now.. Was I delusional? I was planning to be part of a group art expo? But I can barely tolerate the sight or voice of humans now!

In the mornings, I feel I can write a novel, start a mathematics paper, work for an art expo, lose my extra weight, clean the house… attend to my family, cook, (re)design my retirement coffee shop. But in the afternoon I can barely walk… or discern the colors of my shop’s wall paper, let alone stand and roam among the colorful tables I had designed and painted… Who is this delusional morning person… she can barely stand and move.. Her best friends are her desk, bed, laptop and series.. and novels. all people-less, seated projects. When I am strong in the morning, while reading a passage in a novel, I can see myself writing it with the author.. I can see me coming up with her conclusions myself.. is it me or her? Is it being invented now? when reading a mathematical proof, I can see myself dictating the logical sequence of thoughts to its author, total identification.. Wait is it me? am I finishing this? I could write outlines of my plans.. all of this fades away in the afternoons… afterthoughts, after energy.. after all.   

back to life?

I want to keep sewing till I feel my presence with my mom at the tailor’s on an afternoon…

a sucker for introductions

I would like to write the introduction of a new novel everyday… only the start and let it be exciting… let the reader imagine what comes later. I love new starts  with ripe juicy potentials… that make the imagination smile…I don't want to bother with the format and template and expectations of a classic novel writing. I love the starts with the accompanying melody that resonate from movies… with lights and colors… and stars flashing on the screen with the names of the writers, producers, actresses and directors dripping from the top of the screen with glossy colorful and musical fonts.. 

so what happened exactly?

When I am angry, or regretting something I did or said, I try to rerun the episode in my head, each time trying to make it more and more forgivable, that is, in my favor. I do many negotiations, bringing up past behavior, tweaking and rectifying what instantaneously became a memory. I witness the story converging to an acceptable forgiven state, as if I am not the subject anymore. But at the same time, I can see that I am lying to myself, for I am my own lawyer, so I blame myself while accusing myself. What an exhausting yoyo of perception and redemption, that leaves me confused, victim and guilty  at once. I get tired of these grey colors, and wish not to be asked to narrate the event again.. For no narration is stable … as if I saw it in so many lenses. I can defend all my images, but at the same time, not happy with winning the case.. I want to delete it all…

dreams and musical chairs

And just before you wake up, the events in your head get back in their proper place, time, characters after having hopped all over and visited equivalent places, times, characters, seasons, ages, trying to get cleansed, rerun, replayed, second chanced, maybe, purified,... but the tictoc of the morning alarm did not allow it this time.. maybe tomorrow? the musical chair game did not come to a full circle tonight

collector of stories

She worked at the reception of a hotel. As a collector of stories. People would have to deposit at every exit a story in her key cubicle… for her to savor later in her solitude

predisposed gesso

ONe day a special canvas landed on my studio’s doorsteps. The story goes that it was woven by the story fairy who loves to play tricks and spread invisible coats of magical gesso on fiber to strengthen surfaces.. As soon as the pigments of my paint landed on the canvas’ wet surface, a story was revealed…I watched the composition flow effortlessly.

coat mix up

In a coffeeshop everyone deposited their coats at the door in a big box.. It happened that all the coats were that trendy black non personal ones… one size and common size fits all. when leaving, everyone looked for their coats; seeing that they looked the same, each guest smelled the coats trying to recognize their own. They smelled of a new blended fragrance, the sum of all what was there initially.. but each guest could only decode their own aroma… when they went home, the guests each started hearing stories, giggles, laughters and gossip.. those items were having a ball acting and pretending…

chocolate vendor

The chocolate vendor waited for the customers to enter her colorful shop in order to start building stories in her head and in her notebook, her main hobby. she would try to look into the buyers’ eyes and start the narrative:  she had printed on the lacey ribbons she used for packaging, in fine print, labels to classify the receiver and sender of the parcels. “to lovers, seeking reconciliation, seeking apology, condolences, congratulations, dinners, dates, newborns, lunch, congratulations…” But her favorite was complex love stories. Her ribbons were color coded. The print on them was almost invisible. But those who did decipher it, had more stories to imagine. They saved those ribbons and sent them back with an added message. and the stories continued and traveled the world…

musical entrance

Just like the music that just picks up in a movie, announcing happy happenings, I have been attentively watching for signs in my life that bring in a good omen… Amen