From the Orchid's point of view

She placed me on the very top shelve of a book case three months ago. I sat there since, quiet and gently bending in beauty and grace, my two soft petals and three tender sepals outstretched like a lion’s mane, the colour of calm light violet threaded with deep purple veins. My white specked throat enhances my blood red female lip, open and receiving.   

High on my stem, I and my several delicate faces peer down on this room which seems to be both her work place and her dining room. There's a white wooden table in the middle, every morning she sits with her laptop and printer, she types, writes notes, makes calls, drinks coffee and talks to herself. When her child is home from school, she removes the computer and printer and places two dinner plates, the little one always has milk, the mother always drinks water. She asks her child how school was, she asks her what she’s been learning in math, and whether she finds any of it challenging. The child is animated, always eager to make her mother laugh, they giggle and tell each other funny things. The child never has the appetite to finish all her food, the mother wishes she would.

On Thursdays the mother asks the child about music class and the child is more lively and animated about music class than about any other school subject, the music teacher is funny and inspiring she explains.

The mother is happy when the child is happy, the child is happy when she can make her mother laugh or get her interested about something she is saying.

They are two separate beings; one very young, one mature. One thinks that by knowing Jupiter has sixty three moons she surely knows everything there is to know, the other used to believe she knew something. One at the beginning of the journey, where the laborious distance and trying bumps can’t yet be seen, the other had seen the incessant journey and felt some of its dreadful bumps. And yet, they feed on each other’s existence; one sees what she could be in the future, the other sees what she could have been.

a gleaming pallet

There is sacredness to the mundane task of cleaning her home.

She slides the rectangle mop smoothly on the laminate floors,  

fitting it in the corners of the rooms, not an inch untouched.

The way she fogs the bathroom mirror with her warm breath to

wipe away dots left by splashed water and damp.

In repeated delicate and feminine motions her hands to and fro sweeping

Half a lemon to scrub the silver kitchen sink, letting it shine and sparkle.

In brushing the tenacious acrylic paints from her pallet she finds a secret pleasure;

soaking the stubborn colours in hot water, watching them rise, melting into one another, a haze of a multi-hued storm… a gleaming pallet, a new painting tomorrow, another chance to live.

The night

The night moved, heavy and drenched in sorrow

morning rain settled on the dark road in puddles of black ink,

shuddering with hazy red, amber and green

a tired woman shoulders someone else’s guilt; she feels their hurt for them

an abused woman sleeps on the very edge of her bed, cold, almost falling

a lonely woman breaks the fragile dry spaghetti sticks into the pot of boiling water

the moon looks into austere loveless rooms spilling its silver pool of light,

while night took its last breath.

single but taken

They still live with someone long gone

They water the memories lest they die

They take on their hobbies and interests as their own

They over use their favourite words, expressions, a gesture of the hand

They glow and come alive at an unprecedented moment passed

They can’t love someone new..

unable to cheat the ghost that lies beside them every night.

Old feelings

Old feeling come back often, as difficult and as unmanageable as they have always been. One day I’m walking down the street, singing to myself, enjoying the beauty of the sky, the trees, the birds, then WHACK! A sad memory jumps out of nowhere and robs me of everything I have; I’m suddenly small, poor, and hopeless. I can never see it coming, it’s almost like recovering from a long vicious cold, I feel fine, I feel strong, immune even! That virus won’t make me suffer again, but then it does, and there doesn’t have to be a rational reason, and there are no easy or express ways out the other side, and there are never any guarantees I won’t catch it again.

I don’t like it when people say hard and difficult experiences make you stronger, they don’t, they make you nervous, fearful, always worried what might be hiding for you behind the corner. 

My first solo art exhibition

I’m getting ready for my first solo art exhibition and I am both excited and EXHAUSTED! There is so much to do, preparing the venue, advertising, finding suitable payment solutions, and since I’m reading some of my poetry at the exhibition I’m also running around looking for equipment (a small stage, sound system, mic..etc.,)

I’m working really hard on advertising my event, as most artists probably experienced, artists are not good at marketing and publicizing themselves! It’s hard for me to tell people to come and see my work because it’s awesome, mostly because I feel I don’t have the right to evaluate my own work.

Then of course the nerves kick in; what if nobody comes? What if it snows? What if people come and I don’t sell anything? Or in other words, people will hate my art.

I need to remember that all I can do is my best, there are things that are simply out of my control like the weather! And in terms of the actual selling of paintings, art is an acquired taste, there will people who will love it and others who will not.

Please come to my first art exhibition

When? Saturday 12/12/2015     from 4.00 – 7.00 pm

Where? The Herons Café, Coombe Abbey Country Park, Binley, Coventry CV3 2AB

I tell the moon

I repeat it to myself in the night unconscious like a dark secret

I tell it to the walls

I say it to the angry hurried wind every time it rushes through, aggressive and violent, flustering me indifferently

I hear it in the noisy empty chatter of people, in the clamor of my old weary heart

I whisper it to the wise knowing moon when it rises calling me to the window..

I miss him

Are you a beggar begging from a beggar?

When I was in my twenties I told an old wise man that I found life to be complex and hard, his response was: “life is easy, it’s only the first fifty years of life that are hard”. I laughed thinking he was joking but when I looked at him, his face was serious and certain.

I think about what he said a lot, especially now that I’m in my mid-thirties and after so much suffering and so much struggle, I’m only just now learning how to live, only now understanding truths and waking up to life-altering revelations that I needed to know in the beginning of my life not in .. well.. what I imagine is the middle of my life (who knows!) but that’s the thing, nobody hands you a life manual when your ten or when you’re twenty. There is not life manual because everybody else does not know how to live either, that’s why there are philosophers constantly telling us that we need to change the way we think and live and religions controlling the way we think and live and people killing each other all the time.

I don’t claim I have the answers but one radical shift in my way of thinking has done a tremendous amount of positive difference in the way I am living today comparing to my younger years, the shift is loving myself ferociously. It sounds simple and easy to do but it’s not. Most if not all of you are products of inadequate parenting, the rest (like me) have grown up in dysfunctional families, saturated in mental, emotional and physical abuse. Because our parents didn’t like themselves they couldn’t teach us to like ourselves, setting us out in a hostile world searching for someone to love us because we didn't know how to love ourselves. We grow up full of hope in finding this “other” who will love us, who will accept us, who will give us care, attention, value, validation, only to be disappointed over and over again by people who like us did not like themselves and needed us to like them, we were like beggars begging from other beggars.

But those disappointments are very useful, because what they really say is this: “you gave another person the power to give you what you desperately need and now this power is returned to you once more because no one can give you what you need but you”, life will repeat this lesson until we learn it. Life was extremely generous to me because it gave me a dozen of these disappointments. 
Realizing that I am the only person who can love me the way I dream of being loved freed me, it changed my understanding of life and love and I am grateful, very grateful for it

Radical Cleaning!

I emptied the matchbox from all the burnt out matches

I mowed my overgrown lawn, I tidied the shed

shredded my wedding photos

swept behind the fridge

organized my chaotic underwear drawer

arranged all my books in alphabetical order

threw away all the odd socks; I gave up finding their pairs.

A turmoil robbing my heart’s quiet fell into peace, calm and silence

The stars in the universe no longer disarray

The wailing of my soul began to wane.

Some souls

I reason with your shadow

“It’s been so many years.. why do you still linger?”

it sits on the edge of my bed

its back turned to me

while a weak candle flickers

on the bedside table

“The door is open, let go, so I can let go too”

it says nothing, knowing, as I also knew

that some souls have planned

their meeting long before this life time

and just when life had nothing else to offer

just when they had nothing more to lose

tormented by despair

they sought each other out, in a brutal and violent collision they

destroyed one another imagining that love was nothing but pain

spending forever trying but failing to heal.

Should we remember or forget?

In the United Kingdom Remembrance Sunday is national ritual which commemorates the contribution of British military during the two World Wars.  Remembrance Sunday is held on the second Sunday in November but due to the popularity of this event in Britain; different activities such as wearing the red poppy, gatherings, talks, television programs and documentaries start late October and last almost to the end of November every year. In Kuwait, a similar thing happens (minus the red poppy) all through the month of August to commemorate the Iraqi invasion that took place in August 1990, the sacrifices made by national and ally troops and to keep the memory of war alive in people’s hearts minds. Each country has a similar national day where celebrations and festivals take place and a feeling of patriotism prevails.

There are different reasons and theories as to why the memory of war, pain, bloodshed, violence and brutality should remain and be constantly refreshed in the minds of generation after generation, the most common one is that we (the living) must honor those who have sacrificed their lives in order for us to survive, we are humbled by those who died for our land and freedom, we must feel a sense of gratitude for those who fought so bravely as without their courage we would not be here today enjoying our most fundamental human right, freedom.

The importance of remembering (as explained above) seems to apply only on the national level of things, on the personal level, however, we are encouraged to forget negative experiences, things such as childhood trauma, pain, suffering, abuse, violence and even grief. Such memories that provoke such strong feelings we are told, can cripple us further in our lives, lead us to depression, illness and sometimes death, therefore we are constantly told to forget them, forget they ever happened; “let go of the past” we hear therapists, spiritual and enlightened people say, or “the past is a dream, it does not exist” is another common expression in the spiritual world.

But should we remember or should we forget? I don’t have the answer for this question as I am struggling with it myself, but what I do know is this; when we are bombarded on certain months of each year with national songs, TV programs, photos, films, and logos to remember a very distant, historic war, the pain, the loss and violence that war had inflicted on society as a whole, and at the exact same time we are told over and over again to forget our own personal pain, suffering and struggle it creates inside us a feeling of smallness, the sense that our personal pain is not important enough or deep enough to remember or acknowledge, unlike a war that we may have not even witnessed. We as mourners for personal loss feel pushed back to the margins of a society that continues to care for the whole but not the individual.

Rejection is good for you.

I don’t claim to know the life of all the geniuses’ but reading in the personal life of my favourite philosophers: Baruch Spinoza, Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, I know that they were rejected by women they were deeply fond of, and in his youth Schopenhauer had been rejected by his own mother whom he loved dearly, as a result he condemned all women and questioned their competence as human beings in his writings during his adult life. Beethoven too was repeatedly rejected by women he was attracted to and for whom he had composed the most majestic sonatas, music that was endlessly beautiful and endlessly sad. The great poet W B Yeats was so obsessively infatuated with Maud Gonne, he proposed to her four times over a period of ten years, all his attempts were rejected by Gonne who continued to be his muse and the subject of his most passionate poems even after his marriage to another woman. In Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia stands a statue of Slovene’s national poet France Prešeren

staring directly at window of a house where once his adored Julija Primic lived, Prešeren was rejected by his beloved’s family due to the fact that he belonged to an inferior class. Sylvia Plath’s most powerful poetry was written after her marriage to Hughes whom she loved deeply fell apart due to him leaving Plath for his mistress Assia.

There are so many examples where unrequited love had provoked strong emotions, beautiful poetry, haunting music and strokes of genius, thought and ideas. Rejection seems to have the power to make us hurt and suffer but also to focus our negative emotions in the productive activity of writing, painting, composing or inventing. When we are rejected by those we love we suddenly turn our attention to ourselves and to our own interests and passions; all those intense feelings, all that time, all that emotional effort and mental tax we were squandering over our love interest is given back to us and we realize that we can take this immense energy and use it, really use it to create. We are inspired by our pain and inspire others by it too.

Easy

I know what is easy

Solitude it easy

Anger is easy

Bitterness is easy

Losing faith is easy

Letting go is easy

Hate is easy

Hurt is easy

Despise is easy

Despair is easy

Loathing is easy

Resentment is easy

Vanity is easy

I know what is hard..

Fulfillment.

That curious thing we call "Inspiration"

Whilst I was painting the other day my daughter who is nine years old came to watch then she asked me the simple and exhausted question anyone who is interested in art might ask “where do you get your inspiration?”

Some questions children pose entice an eternal search and incessant theories, such as the classic “so, if God created the world, where did God come from?” usually posed by children between the age of five to eight and baffling geniuses, brilliant physicists and philosophers since the beginning of time.

 

Inspiration is a curious thing. I can’t say that inspiration comes solely from the mind, because the mind is ever thinking and never satisfied, but I can’t say it is something from the soul or the body either, all human bodies are the same, and the soul remains a mysterious intangible force, inspiration is most likely what the heart sees with its own eyes and not the ones in the two sockets just below our foreheads. Inspiration is a vision which we do not perceive by our five senses; inspiration is gift nature gives to those who are patient, to those who suffer and hope, to those follow their bliss bravely without a glimpse of that light at the end of the tunnel.

“You do not need to leave your room.

Remain sitting at your table and listen.

Do not even listen. Simply wait.

Do not even wait. Be quiet, still and solitary.

The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.

It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” Franz Kafka

أنا و ظِلالُكَ

أحاولُ أن أجادلَ ظِلالُكَ مستميلة ًعطفه

 لقد مرّت سنوات طويلة، لماذا تُصِرُّ على البقاء؟

منزوياً على طَرِفِ الفراش، يُديرُ ظهرهُ إليُّ بينما ترتجفُ شمعة وتحترقُ في احدى الزوايا

لا أبواب ولا أسوار تمنعك من الرحيل..

أودُّ لو.. تتخلى عنيّ، كي أقدرَ أن.. أتخلىّ عنك

مُعلناً بسكوتهِ و تجاهلهُ لي أن محاولاتي قد فشلت من جديد

كلانا يعلم أن بعض الأرواح رتّبت لقاءها في حياة أخرى سابقة قبل بدء هذه الحياة

ولما استنفذت هذه الدنيا عطاؤها، وما أن علمت تلك الأرواح أنها لا تملكُ شيئاً لتخسره

صارت كل منهما تبحثُ وتنقِّبُ عن الأخرى، وفي اصطدام عنيفٍ مدوٍ جامح

التقت، متحديّة كل القوانين والأعراف، و دمرّت كل منهما الأخرى ميقنة أن الحب لا شيء سوى ألمٌ وعذاب  

تقضيان الأبد باحثتان عن البديل من دون أيِّ جدوى 

masturbation

not understanding why she was told not to

not understanding why she was made to feel shame

she dared to climb on top of the kitchen counter

open the forbidden cupboard, stand on her tiptoes

reach her hand for the jar of honey she was warned not to taste

she struggled to loosen the tight lid, when she finally cracked it open

all definitions of need, intimacy and desire had changed.  

Once upon a previous existence..

When I was a flower I knew. The bulb that contained me understood too. Perfect, wholesome and intact I was beneath the earth, there was no such thing as worry, haste or fear, everything in the infinite universe was there to help me grow, a specific amount of soil covered and nurtured me, an efficient cloud passed over me punctual and calculated in its provision of rain, the sun also watched over me. There was no hurry, there were no expectations to meet or mistakes to make, all I had to have was faith, then when the right moment came, I rose, lifting my head from under the ground, I did not compete, it did not matter what colour my blossom or how tall my stem, I did not compare my blooming, my development, or my beauty to other flowers. I flourished, the universe continuing to supply, support and sustain me without me requesting, needing or asking. I thrived, there was never a doubt where I belonged, never for a second a fear of the future, a sorrow from the past. I was attached to nothing and yet I was one with everything.

I saw that I was as indispensible as the moon, as vital as the trees that were wise and mighty, then when the right moment came I faded, I withered as majestically and as gracefully as when I first bloomed, I went back to my soul keeper, the bulb, I was perfectly folded once more, whole and intact all my features, purposes and reasons stored in my little cocoon nothing was lost, safe and sound I lay under the earth until my time comes again the following spring.

My therapist, the bathtub!

My therapist is excellent at what he does, he’s a great listener, he’s empathic, honest and compassionate, he’s (as far as I know) nonjudgmental, he’s thoughtful, understanding and genuinely funny! ‘Bonus’

So why then, despite all these advantageous characteristics, do I dread my sessions with him?

When I speak to my therapist I feel as though I am indulging in a warm bath, I feel relaxed, calm, I feel understood which makes me feel safe, warm and fuzzy on the inside. Talking to him and receiving his approving and sometimes perhaps less approving but still understanding nods soothes me, it pacifies my troubled mind, it gives me the peace and quiet I crave, that quiet of mind which to someone like me can be rare. Then our weekly hour is over and it’s time for me to go, the stepping out of my warm soothing bath into the cold, clammy, harsh and hurried reality, into a world not so compassionate, mixing with people not so empathic or understanding to my needs leaves me cold and alienated, my peace suddenly stripped from me, my quiet of mind robbed and I am ‘again’ making my way in the crowds of silent, stern, rigid faces and attitudes that rarely nod approvingly to me. I gain and regain so much of myself when I speak to my therapist, but I also (temporarily) lose a little, I lose an emotional agility which has for so long helped me survive the falsehood and cruelty of everyday life, it takes a kind of shifting of gear, a new adjusting and a fresh accepting of what is.

في الأيام العاصفة

في الأيام العاصِفة

تهبُّ أُنثى الرياح بجنون

متمردة، عاصية، ثائرة، غاضبة

بعد سكوتٍ وقنوطٍ طويلينِ

نَثرت وبَعثرت كل ما كان كامناً

 فكَّت جدائل سخطها

نَبَشت آلامها وأفشت عن أحزانها الدفينة

لا شيء حقاً يموتً

في الأيام العاصفة

كل الرغبات والأمنيات القديمة تتساقط من فوق الجدار التي

أحسنتُ بناءها لتحميني من الأشباح

كلُّ ما اصطنعته من هدوءٍ وسلامٍ تبعثر في الرياح

أغصانُ السنديان ترتجف ضحكاً، ساخرةً مستهزئةً بي

أنثى الرياح تهزُّني ، تُعنفني باكية: "لا فائدة من دفن الماضي.. لا شيء حقاً يموت"

On windy days

On windy days

lady nature is raving

delirious in her rage

all is brought back to the surface

she had been quiet for too long

letting loose her wrath

ploughing old hurt and buried grief

nothing ever really dies

On windy days

old nameless yearnings fall and shatter from

walls I carefully laid to keep my haunting demons at bay

all my hard earned peace and calm tossed in the wind

the tree shakes in hysterical laughter at me

on windy days lady nature reminds me

that the past remains, no use in burying the dead

nothing ever really dies

The Cancer Scare

Love is the one delusion man refuses to deny, death is the one truth man refuses to accept – Arab proverb

There’s nothing quite like a cancer scare to remind you of your mortality, to put you back in your place, to highlight your fragility and smallness, to emphasize what you’ve been denying to yourself; that death can strike at any moment regardless of age, physical health and well being. Cancer likes to laugh at your naive wishful thinking when you convince yourself that cancer is something that only happens to other people.

I went for my cervical screening every three years since I turned twenty five, turning thirty four in October 2014 I was due but kept putting it off for months, sheer laziness and tired old excuses: “there’s never enough time”, but something inside me nagged, so I went and got it over with, I hated it, feeling so exposed and invaded like that, the mere thought made my whole being shrink and shudder, but my mind told me that it had to be done. The nurse told me what I already know “if you don’t hear anything within two weeks you’re fine, if we do find anything we’ll contact you”. Two weeks later, there it was, the envelope shoved recklessly through the letterbox as if it was nothing, as if it was just another commercial letter from a utility company or state agent full of false and misleading promises. I held it up in my hands, deceivingly light, deceivingly white and innocent, marked private, confidential and containing important information by the NHS. My heart sunk, my mind panic-stricken and hysterical managed in a fraction of a second to produce the most dramatic ending of my life, how I will be extremely sick and bed-ridden from now on, how I will lose all my hair and die, how my daughter who has no one else but me will have no one. My heart tried to calm me down, wait, it whispered, we haven’t read what the letter says yet, don’t panic yet, not yet. There were so many ‘not yets’ whirling in my mind, I haven’t seen her all grownup yet, I haven’t seen her graduate yet, I haven’t been there for her through her dramatic teen years yet, her college graduation, her driving license, her wedding, her first baby… and me.. I didn’t travel to all the countries I always planned to see yet, I haven’t read all the books I want to read yet.. there were so many not yets!

I tore the envelop and read, my hands shaking, they found some abnormal cells, but this doesn’t mean I have cancer, it only means they need to do more advanced tests to see whether there was potential that such abnormal cells can be cancerous, the letter said “try not to worry” and provided me with a date for further tests at the hospital two weeks from this day. Two weeks! For two week I will live in this fear, in this turmoil, not knowing, imagining the worst, and waiting, just waiting… my mind wallowed in its pathetic self-pity and victim-hood “I’m going to die, I have no one to talk to, to run to, no one to comfort me and stand by me, I’m no one’s priority…  and my child, my child will be lost without me” it cried and wailed day and night. My heart was strong, it kept repeating “not yet, it’s not time to panic yet, not yet..  it might not be cancer, and if it was, they’ve detected it early that’s a good thing, most cases detected early have very high success rates… it’s not time to panic yet, not yet”. The day came, I drove myself to the hospital alone, my child at school clueless. I wait, I get called in, the doctor is a man! “this is going to be awful, I thought”, I am so stiff and terrified while he examines me, he tells me to try to relax, the two nurses try to help me relax but it’s no use, it’s painful and awkward and everything is spinning, the room, my had, my heart is thumping with pain and compassion for me, I think of my daughter, my life, my divorce, my depression, my horrible unloving parents, my loneliness expands, it inflates into an ugly violent ogre and swallows me whole. After the doctor took some cells, I am told that I can dress and have a seat in the waiting room while the tests are run, my legs are shaking, my whole body is cold, stiff, the pain between my legs. I sit silently in the waiting room, head down, I feel the tears welling up in my eyes, the lump in my throat, I feel exposed and invaded, I want to cry but I try to push it back, “at least they will tell me now, at least I won’t have to wait for the results” was my only solace to myself, my mind kept on showing me more gruesome, terrifying pictures of how I will die, my heart kept repeating its mantra “not yet, not yet, not yet”. I was called by the doctor again, I went in,  my legs painful and tired, he asks me to sit down “you’re fine, there’s nothing to worry about, the cells are not cancerous, I will send my report to your GP, you don’t need to do anything, but please keep going for your screening every three years”, I nod, exhale in relief, my tears welling up again, I thank the doctor with so much appreciation and gratitude. He asks me if my husband or partner is here to drive me home as he can see that I am a bit shaky, I sigh and tell him that I’m fine and leave. I drive to Jori’s school it’s already time to pick her up, my heart beating “not yet, not yet, not yet”

الجري صباحاً

صحوتُ قبل طلوع الشمس

فتحتُ الباب، آذِنةً للنهار وللحياة بالدخول

نسيمٌ عليل بارد لم تلطّخه زفير السيارات ولا أفواه البشر

هدوءٌ مريح مُخضّب بحفيف أشجارٍ تتمايل بشجن

أخذتُ نفساً عميقاً، ملأتُ رئتايَ بأنفاسِ الفجر العذبة

شعرتُ بكياني يتفاقم، بروحي تتجدد نشاطاً وعافية

دمٌ غنيٌ، غزيرٌ شديدُ الحمرة تدفّق متفجراً في عروقي بشغف

بدأتُ على مهلٍ

دقاتُ قلبي متناغمةً تماماً مع أنفاسي

أوراقُ الخريف اليابسة بلونها الخمريّ تتهشّم تحت أقدامي

شقّ الضوء الظلام، فرأيتُ كيف يهدم الله الدنيا لِيُشَيِّدها كل صباحٍ من جديد

رائحةُ الفُرصِ الجديدة كقطراتِ الندى النقيّة متلحفةً بوريقات الزهور

كانت الرياح في البداية صديقتي، تحثني لأُسرِعَ، فاستجبتُ

شرائطٌ خفيّة ناعمة تراقصت حولي دفعتني بقوةٍ للأمام كأرواحٍ ودودة

رَحَلتْ عن الدنيا منذُ زمن تُراقِبُني بحنين مستمتعةً بحيويتي وحماسي  

استدرتُ قاصدةً العودة فتآمرت الرياحُ ضدي تسحبني للوراء

صفعاتُها الجافة القاسية انهالت منهمرةً على خدي

انحنيتُ برأسي ناطحةً هبوب الأرياحِ بعزمٍ وحزم

شعرتُ بِرِجلايَ تخورُ قُواها، أنفاسي قصيرة ومتتابعة، قلبي المجهد

يَضُخُّ بِمشقةٍ أكبر مُحاولاً اسنادي وابقائي

كما في الكابوس المتكرر، أُحاولُ الجريَ من دون جدوى، رجلاي بِثُقلِ الحديد تخذلاني

نبضُ قلبي يُردِّدُ مُسعفاً اصراري: استمري..استمري.. استمري..