Green and Gold
(100x100cm, Acrylics)
It’s as if we have letters engraved beneath the points of weakness in our bodies.
With each moment of growth or suffering —
every experience, joyful or painful —
a single letter is uncovered.
One by one, they emerge,
revealed through the strain of becoming.
And when all the letters have surfaced,
our configuration is complete.
We become the message we were always meant to carry.
I try to escape to that neat coffee shop,
where I am loudly invisible,
and I can’t wait to lay down my papers and stationery,
neatly depositing my projects in progress.
I love reaching the stage of writing those good thoughts,
the ones whose potential blooms by the minute.
I watch, almost from a distance,
as those thoughts flow effortlessly onto paper.
I just need to settle down right there —
specifically, right there,
where my mood blossoms instantly.
It’s so inviting.
Even my neighbors in nearby chairs can feel this energy.
They cuddle into their seats,
trying to soak up the creative air that surrounds me.
And I watch the flow onto my fertile stationery,
at the peak of its creative ovulation.
But won’t it all be ruined
as soon as I sense that I have limited time here?
That I need to be somewhere else after a while?
For there are no alarm clocks in Heaven.
Madame
Waiting 1
I will collect those lost, unfinished episodes
and create a picture of other lives —
lived by other people,
the way I transform patches into art.
And in the seamless creation,
I will cease to recognize the individual patches,
for they will have become something whole.
FAIROUZ
aka Turquoise and Lipstick
(sold)
I knew I would see her again.
Now I know where she spends her days and nights.
She overlooks a piano,
and sits at the junction where the living, dining, and kitchen areas meet —
strategically placed to listen to every movement,
every conversation,
even thoughts and dreams in this warm, beautiful house.
She is at the junction of life.
Her glitters still sparkle, untouched.
I had forgotten how her neck expands in fiery red,
hugging the border of the canvas.
It seemed to me that her neck had grown.
I’d heard her name had changed,
from Turquoise and Lipsticks to Fairouz.
How could she not be happy with a name like that?
She overhears. She eavesdrops.
I love my turquoise.
I’m sure her eyes were following me last night,
in a Mona Lisa style.
They’re placed just so,
so she can turn them without anyone noticing.
I love how Turquoise was part of the conversation.
I saw her.
I am so relieved to have seen her reborn last night.
I love you, Fairouz.
Angst
(120x120cm, Acrylics)
Tell me: who comes to the coffee shop for the coffee? Who comes to sit on a table in a coffee shop to be themselves?
Waiting 2
All I wanted to teach her —
the difference between us,
the names of streets, of people,
the relationships, the tricks of the trade,
the different accents,
all the things I thought I knew that she did not,
but I so desperately wanted her to understand —
she taught herself all of this
in the short interval between school and college.
In doing so,
she demystified the distances between us
toward adulthood.
The alleys between highways,
the highways themselves,
were mere dwarfs to her,
and monsters to me.
She learned them all,
and found no magic in them.
I had glorified that knowledge for no reason.
Way, way overestimated truths.
Sabha
(50x50cm, acrylics)
Leisurely writing prose after serious academic work
feels like strolling and whistling on a wide, open road,
after a long, tedious walk on a highway
filled with roadblocks and confusing signs.
Spectator
(45x45cm, acrylics and mesh)
To ensure your composition is complete, mature,
and fully represents you —
whether it’s a painting, a baked dish, a sewing project, or a theorem —
make sure you create it across the full span of your many moods.
Just as plants must undergo all seasons of development,
you’ll avoid a critique like,
“Hmmm, it’s missing a dash of… summer.”
Downfall
Sometimes, when you reassemble your preserved pieces —
cutting across a direction different from the one they were originally woven —
they suddenly fall into place.
A natural fit.
And then it dawns on you:
all along, it was right under your nose.
You just had to shift the angle.
Zmirrod
aka Raghad (sold)
I want to transfer all the paintings and compositions in my head —
and in my brushes —
onto canvas and fabric before Parkinson’s finds me.
I want to see every color combination I’ve ever dreamed of,
before my eyesight begins to fade.
I would be grateful to savor every lucid —
and not-so-lucid — argument of logic,
before my brain cells start to disintegrate and play tricks on me.
I want to do all of this before anyone asks me how I’d like it all preserved.
And — as a small bonus, if it’s not too much to ask —
I’d like the figure in the mirror to resemble,
at least to some extent,
the figure I carry in my head.
Sanayeh
It’s good to paint at different times of the light.
When it’s just starting to get dark,
you begin to lose “sight” of contrast —
but your hands compensate at the edges.
When it’s fully dark outside,
and you’re working under artificial light,
you tend to go softer on translucency,
and lean into the contrast.
It simply takes all shades of light
to narrate a painting.