wanderings of a soul

As words well up craving to surface
As silence is about to yield
As the flow irrevocably rises
As I bring myself to feel
It is always good
To acknowledge whatever is out there
To accept adversity as the essence of life's fair
True it bruises the soul
Yet from those very wounds
The spirit flutters its wings and soars
Above grudges (never did carry them, they burden my flight)
Above sorrow, for it is none but masked joy says the poet
It rises on-high
To see dancing sun rays and mischievous smiles
Crystal laughter and genuine joy
Authentic affection, relentless care
These precious treasures are all I'll bear
Upon the virtuality of this white page
My silence finally took the stage
Pouring out its very being
To an audience unseeing

time to pick up that pen again
true! it's not really a pen, nor can it be picked-up for the matter
anyhow ...
call for a "mise-au-point"
starry-eyes? still
disappointments? numerous
dreams? raging
ambitions? (see dreams)
resilience? oh yes
forbearance? time to reduce that
expectations from others? time to increase those
expectations for self? high-time to acknowledge duly earned credits!
revolts? an endless list, against letting-go, against mediocrity, against corruption, against all that which won't surface..
resolutions? upcoming I feel

small exhale for a reprise, à bientôt!   Perhaps ...

about that silence, against that silence :)

speaking about my silence as a smart way of breaking it :))
my silence is currently me
punctuated by comments that I post here and there on the blogs about matters that get to me
so much is getting to me lately that I lack the energy to write them all :D
it just takes a weight off when someone hits one of those matters so I cheer and post a heartfelt comment
it helps reduce that long list
something I came across yesterday as I was browsing along, a statistical summary- by all means a summary of our 17 year "guerre d'avant" epoch as it appeared in news media in November 1990, namely NY Times, Le Monde and Boston Globe

"... had seen 150,000 people dead, 198,000 wounded, 17,500 disappeared and a total of 3,641 car bombs ... "

17 years in one figure-full line, a count of those humans who still don't seem to have counted in our "collective memory" as Laure expressed it, as we still seem to allow that counter to keep turning, true some still count when it's politically suitable and politically in to use their deaths for propaganda, as it is so well expressed in Marc's text here below:

"La culture de la mort au Liban est tout autre, elle est démagogie, elle est provocation, elle est refus de l’instant présent, elle est l’occasion de brandir des drapeaux symboles du morcellement du pays, elle est fanatisme."

A count of people who never did count in political considerations but who counted and still do count for those who miss and mourn them, a count of people who probably count on us to learn something and make a change, to stop that destructive settlement of accounts that is finally only increasing the "numbers" on that counter, so that it all ends up being reduced into a tiny paragraph of countless losses.

Wish I could find that caricature I saw once, a few years back, probably in the Time Magazine, it was poignantly expressive, it displayed an endless memorial wall where an infinite list of dead soldier's names was engraved and the first name said to the second:
"McNamara said that the Vietnam war was a mistake ... Pass it on"

Ce monde qu'est le notre

Thanks to you Camille for recommending the book, here's part of my reaction to it

Tout comme le monde dévasté de Ludvik et Lucie dans "La Plaisanterie" de Kundera, même plus, car notre monde est aussi dévasté litéralement, humainement dévasté, économiquement dévasté. Un monde dévasté à l'image de ces immeubles dechiquetés de la banlieue sud, à l'image de ces ponts dont il n'en reste plus que le souvenir, et la nostalgie des embouteillages d'avant ...

Mais encore ....

Une autre devastation, une des plus dangereuses, comme l'a exprimé Broch: "C’est l’élévation de systèmes politiques au rang de valeurs suprêmes dans le monde moderne qui constitue un des nombreux exemples funestes de l’« absolutisation du relatif » à laquelle a conduit le processus de dégradation des valeurs." Cette absolutisation du relatif qui rend sourd et aveugle, qui encourage la rigidité tout en effaçant la tolérance, qui excise la conviction de chacun dans "sa vérité" telle qu'il la voit, sans laisser une possibilité d'envisager cette même vérité vue d'un autre angle, ou une autre "vérité" dont d'autres sont convaincus ....

Pourtant ...

Ludvik encore dans La Plaisanterie de Kundera, dit qu'il y a une beauté dans cela même qui est devasté, il n'y a même que celle la, et cette beauté est forcément "dernière", comme un sillage qui s'efface, comme l'echo nostalgique de ce qui s'est tu, les pauvres débris qui restent une fois la dévastation accomplie. Francois Ricard conclut donc, que la beauté n'advient que dans la suspension des signifcations, et donc dans l'impossibilité de toute erreur comme de toute parodie; alors seulement, la vérité peut resplendir, et l'essence de cette vérité est de demeurer, à jamais voilé ....

De ces pauvres débris qui restent...
vivement que la vérité resplendisse
vivement que toute parodie, toute erreur disparaisse
vivement que nous arrivions a distinguer à travers ce voile, au moins les contours de notre vérité, de notre Libanité comme tu l'as appelée Islander

Laissons cet oubli réparer tous les torts de la guerre d'avant comme l'appelle nadche, sans pour autant lui donner le pouvoir absolu, afin que nous puissions renaître de nos cendres, renaître Libanais avant tout, et aller de l'avant, tout en nous rappelant ce qui a causé notre dévastation, justement afin de ne pas y retourner à nouveau. Portrait si bien exprimé dans "Le progrès" de Rania, post du 14 Aout, 2006.

No Can Do

I can't settle for 1701 just because it stops the shelling
I can't settle for half measures after a lifetime at war
I can't be asked to survive anymore, I want to live
I can't accept Lebanese people who do not stand in utter solidarity against Israeli crimes in Lebanon - Through that I can sort of understand why Lebanese blood is considered "cheap" when it's "cheap" to certain Lebanese people themselves
I can't understand how the Association for Civil Rights in Israel condemned some of Dan Halutz's acts in Lebanon, while some Lebanese sort of try to justify them (http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE180072006) (part 2 Deliberate destruction or collateral damage)
I can't understand how throughout the war whoever mentions Syrian occupation is a Sionist and now whoever revolts against Israeli attacks is Syrian
I can't understand how we haven't managed to grasp that whoever so much as throws a stone at our country could not be an ally
I can't understand how some parents insist on transmitting the past war hatreds to their offsprings
I can't understand how still nowadays, when a political leader says it's bad, his followers echo it's baaaaaad
I can't understand fanaticism
I can't bear to see other countries settling their accounts at our expense
I can't stop all those revolting thoughts from eating me up
I can't just idly stand by
I can't bring myself to leave this country
So much I can't do eih? :(

Oh and one more can't

I can't lose the faith and hope that somehow we'll come through, that our dawn will break and the sun will shine for all Lebanese.

Beware! Landmine area!

"Let us be true
To one another!
For the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."

Stanzas from Mathew Arnold that seem to voice an ultimate cry for unity in Lebanon,
Unity so that we may be heard as Mr. Ghassan Tueini expressed in yesterday's editorial, so that the shadows cast by the 1701's ambiguities as he said, don't engulf us all.
Lebanon seems like a huge landmine area, where leftover souvenir bombs of Israeli aggression shred people to pieces on a daily basis, where failure to unite is another enormous landmine that could lead us all to our doom as Mr. Tueini put it.

Everyone seems to agree that it is impossible that Lebanese people fight each other again,
Yet we don't seem to have found the adequate formula whose major component is tolerance.
So we are, again as Mathew Arnold put it in his Grand Chartreuse

"Wandering between two worlds
One dead and the other powerless to be born"

Let us give our new world (by no means the new M.E. promoted by the US) the power to see the light. Our hope, and God knows hope there is, it expressed itself in the solidarity demonstrated by the people for the people, our hope is then that we base the foundation of the new Lebanon on this genuine reaching out movement. Let it be our pass to a safe harbor.

As Ghassan Rahbani put it, "Only forgiveness will build a nation". Let us forgive so that we can rise above the ruins and debris, above political and ideological affiliations, above religious beliefs to be just Lebanese.

Creative silence .....relentless persistence

Silence is often more expressive than words
A public square with a crane in the background, but in germany this time.
(pics of the germany manifestation (lebanese people lying on the ground covered with lebanese flags, in public square, in train stations, I sure hope they'll upload this time, otherwise till a future blog)

To all of you silent workers of the Lebanese Diaspora,
To all of you people who make a difference, who don't give up
To that person on his faraway island who refused to sit idly, who refused to give up when all means seemed impossible for the medical aid he had gathered to reach lebanon, who had phones ringing in France, Switzerland ... until there was light, until his ship came through
To that person in Belgium whose ton of medical supplies came through despite all obstacles
To all of you Lebanese people who are suffering from being away, perhaps even more than we suffer from being here at times
To all of you bloggers who communicate and promote a beautiful image of our country
To those of you who express in writing, in poetry, in prose, in graphic arts rania, ostfen, leba-none, poetryinthewar and am sure there are so many more
To all of you who have felt the same as Camille who wrote in his blog:
"Durant ce long mois, plus que jamais, j’ai habité Beyrouth tout en vivant ailleurs" www.stroobia.blogspot.com (blog that I came across by an unfortioutous stroobia this morn ;) )

I just wish to say

Thank You

So often someone's word someone's act makes a difference, brightens a day, lights up a smile on a sad face
I know for certain that many of you have been the cause of many a smile, may this be a happy thought when ur frustration at being away becomes overwhelming.