I count to ten when I’m nervous. I also drink warm water. I also read a short surah from the Quran. Sometimes it gets too nerve wrecking I just look up and hope for the best. Divine intervention.
Sometimes it works… sometimes the wait seems endless.

Am I still waiting?, asked the wooden boy.

Lately, I just flip a coin and see what happens, bet on shit that I proudly can-not-get. The interpretation of a chance outcome as the expression of divine will… Touché.

I’ve busied myself lately with absolute randomness. A little Economics with Astrology on the side. Opportunity cost: Cost in terms of forgoing alternatives. It’s all about guns and butter, isn’t it boy? The avoidance of a conflict of interests which results in NO DEAL. It is always about guns and butter no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that maybe in a few months a new and improved third alternative would come your way.
But what if the guns seemed more appealing, closer to your heart, more fucking right?
What if…?

I’ve been travelling for the past few… I’ve been to new places, met new people, old friends, hooked up, partied and danced and laughed; but a name kept chasing me like a shadow. Suddenly, everyone bears the same name. Or perhaps I’m… just… pretending.
But the name chased me still, the color kept painting me leaving behind a trail of dried blood like rust you can brush off your coin collection… but you don’t. It adds value to a coin that was once worth a pint of milk.
The voice kept ringing in the deepest water of the same swimming pool I sunk myself in one year ago, calling me names, listing my regrets.
The world is not the same. My world… is missing what makes it revolve.

They say that it’s healthy to try hard, to move on, to give yourself a second chance… I’ll mark this chance the one millionth. But what if after all the trials, the attempts, the forward steps and the forgetting… you find yourself still there? What if you realize that it’s all been pointless, that your target keeps moving further away every day until the big ass cross turns into a dot that you can barely see, that you can’t feel?

What if you realize that the only traumatizing change that you’ve accomplished is the fact that food doesn’t taste the same, that your thirst for the better you can no longer be quenched? What if you find yourself no longer interested?

I shrink. I put on a mask shaped as a coin and toss myself up in the air and wait for my mind to settle and pray to God for an answer, for a reward.
Do I fucking deserve it?
Would it be more pleasing to land on my fucking head instead? Would all my troubles be over?

Would my troubled mind be at ease, finally?

I watched the eclipse the other day and wished that they were there with me, but they weren’t. I stared for about an hour waiting for a miracle to happen when my world gets painted pitch black, a fresh start, a new memory… but then again, it was merely an eclipse… and by the time it was over, along came the realization that… there is far more distance to run.
Where to?

Or perhaps I’m just escaping it.
Either way… I’ll settle.
I swear to God, I’ll fucking settle. Anything…
Get it off me… before it burns me into ashes.

I learned a new diving trick last week. I blow all the air out of my lungs and push myself into the depth of it all, then I cross my legs and sit at the bottom of the pool: Lung practice. I can hold my breath for a minute and a half with full lungs and for 37 seconds on empty ones. Pretty good for a smoker, I believe. It’s in the second right before you begin to fight your way back up that you begin to realize that your solid world can melt, that your indestructible walls can break, that your heart can shatter.
And so I practiced sixty four times. Feel your lungs collapse. Listen to your heart scream. Realize.

I realized what’s been missing. It was never about discovering myself. It’s about recapturing my true essence. The essence that I’ve left behind in my self-created, hypothetical pool. I’m the one to blame. I miss my soul. I can feel the dried blood blocking my throat. I can taste its chalk marks at the tip of my tongue.
Fuck it… I don’t want to post.
What if the earth rotates? What if the planet revolves?
Night… day… then it’s dark again. What’s the fucking point? When does it all end?
All I can do is wait for these lonely nights to be over for the one millionth time and hope that by the time I wake up the coin will have touched the ground.

Breathe…

August… huh…

I can’t believe. I seriously can’t believe. Mid third quarter of a strange year. I still am not sure whether I want 2008 to end or whether I want to freeze it where it stands and stare endlessly. Oh well… like I have a choice!

Holding a higher ranking position at work taught me so much about myself. It taught me that although I was always appraised on bringing about a high level of team spirit, I do prefer to go solo, even when I’m now required to lead a team of people into a successful upbringing of whateverness. It’s the only key that I wish I had. It’s the only key that so many of my friends, family, and loved ones never managed to obtain. There’s something about me that is just keyless. Like I locked myself up 26 years ago and threw the key into a dark waveless sea.

I hate pairing up with friends in multiplayer games. It’s always me against the world… I do it with a big ass smile on my face and when I win… I don’t cheer. I don’t gloat. I just unplug and leave.

I couldn’t care less… even if I end up lonely and confused.

This week I realized why I was always loved by my managers. I was always the type that finishes up their work then look around to check if they can help others out with theirs. It helped me learn many things unrelated to what I do even though it wasn’t easy. I never left the office without making sure that everything was safe and sound, that all drawers were locked and that everybody was satisfied about what they do. I never did any of that seeking a better year-end evaluation. I just did it because it felt right.

Again with the right and wrong speech.

Now that I am technically a manager, my subordinates never help out. They do what’s required of them. You can order them around, ask them to bend over and sing the national anthem, but they would never do anything just for the sake of helping out. I find myself helping them out instead, getting overloaded, stressed out… and again, I find myself the last one to leave the office. My corporate days are fucking numbered… at least in this country where people only know how to follow orders perfectly in order to get mid-year BONUS.

Four plus months to go… Can’t I just hibernate for a few? Oh well… I guess there are much, much more secrets for me to discover about myself, to osmosis-ize out of my locked brain and learn and love and hate. I fear the things that I don’t know about myself.

Fuck it… I’m done venting.

Now where’s that offshore recruitment website?

Seems like forever since the last time I was angry at anything. I’ve always blamed myself for my fuck ups, but never ever was I hesitant to search within my own reasoning for a cure for whatever mess I find myself buried underneath. My trails never bore convictions like ‘They did this’ and ‘They did that’ no matter how easier those would have made me felt.

But I’ve had it…

Egypt prevails as always. No matter how hard you try to cope, survive, and adapt, the sweet tunes of something different always returns to haunt your ears, reminding you of what could have been.

To cruise through the streets of Cairo with friends, family, and loved ones is bearable; almost fun to point at things and situations and laugh… and feel sorry for things and people and try to make a change whenever possible. To endure Egypt alone though is hard. Everything’s the same. Every day looks familiar, smells familiar, tastes familiar… and that aftertaste you’re left with late at night right before you shut your eyes and drift off to a better Egypt is excruciatingly painful. Everything feels like a set up; like they’re all out there to get you. Everybody is a fake somebody else. I try to cover their faces with my hands to look beyond, but all I feel is their masks merging into my face, fucking it dry, camping like goose pumps on my skin. Everything is a result of an unpublished political statement. The truth is each of us bears their own politician setting an infamous example of themselves, setting rules, crowning themselves kings and queens. We are born to take advantage of this land, aren’t we?

I demand my locusts. I await thy plague. Give me my 1967 back.

Let it all burn.

Whine, whine, then whine a bit more. It won’t make any difference, but at least you’d have said something to your surrounding walls.

The new trafficless traffic law, the orderless custom duty charges; 10% my ass, the unavoidable taxes, the stoned poor and the ridiculous rich, the wasta and the cheap soccer team, the dark fumes filling up my lungs, the morally grey population… I can’t take it.

And the downer it gets… the number the air makes you feel.

Ladies and gents… allow me to blah endlessly.

Oh fuck it. I am done.

I… am… out. My dream of serving my country and the purpose that I’ve grown inside for the good of a better home… I have lost my ability to give a fuck.

It’s been a wrecking streak of surprises, these past few years and… well... I must have outgrown my playlist of numb patience that has only led to my weakness and giving in to circumstantial hatred towards everything that reminds me of what it’s like to just fucking be.

Just… such an unusual word.

I am my very own corroded mess and nothing will ever change that.

10:21 And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt.