this anxiety is fear.
i did not know that it could feel this way.
fear...
fear!
how very foreign you are to me!
but why do i fear my wishes?
why do i fear my dreams?
why do i fear my desires?
am i any less than any other, so much less that i would have no right to my own insanity?
i have forgotten all
who was i then?
i feel the fury i feel the tempest i feel the storm i feel the furnace i feel the intemperance i feel the compulsion i feel the insanity
the morning hours are here and almost gone, the muse visits. now it is the muse and the angel embracing and disavowing all existence.
obsession.
this is still the place of abstractions. you are the reader and you are the inspiration. this is for me, this is for you. you are a muse across the border, you are a loyal friend, you are dear to me, you are my family and you are my life. your face changes, our lives go on. some go and leave memories, other linger and share precious moments of just being here.
fluage remains the only active blog with the voice of cairo otaibi. i still need this one here while i am busy in the background furiously writing that story that has had me in its grips for a couple of years, and that has me now waking up at four in the morning just wanting to write. i still do not know if i can or if i will succeed, i just want to. i have no choice but to write it. prose is rare here on fluage, and when it is prose, it is very abstract, but then... that is the noise that i like producing, abstract noise. when i began writing fluage i knew that i had embraced a journey and that i would tunnel through to another side unknown to me; you all have been the midwives of this tunneling journey of mine. within the past four months my being got accelerated through the tunnel and all my resources were absorbed in the process. it started while i was in another european city, a city that in the past had spoiled and pampered me with both creature comforts and successes that i had yet to understand. when i returned there four months ago, i returned as "the poor artist" who slept on her cousin's home office floor and used public transportation for the first time in that grand place of glory and tradition. yet, the unexpected manifested itself. it was a good space to be, i was with family and i felt at home. there were a few questions on my mind, and i wanted clarity as to what the answers were. i started asking, and i started making some of you uncomfortable.
home, being at home has been a rare feeling with this creature inhabiting my body. i have rarely felt at home, and i have felt at home everywhere in the world when i am in touch with my own being. yet, before i could ever become conscient of it, that feeling has much too often drifted apart and i was left all over the place and no where, homeless and orphaned. this journey now has taken me to that place of being conscient of home and who i am. you all knew already who i am, i did not. i had hopes and i had dreams, and i have worked adamantly at getting here, and i was clueless and blind, deaf even.
one of you had a gentle boldness, and you were not about to drop the ball. you told me how you saw me, you repeated it, and you did not know that i did not know, but you were sure, and your words were those that i could barely discern from what i thought was noise. i have heard noise before, and i have learned to be weary of noise. while i could barely hear your words, it was the rest of your being that finally transmitted the message. the words just barely got through, but your being, that i fully got and i found myself at a place that i barely knew, it was home, it was me.
one of you! how can i dare write such generalities when you are so very precious? how can i dare? just last night i wrote to you and i told you a whole lot about me, all that you already knew. where was my concern for you? don't i know that you are there busy in the joy of your own dreams? i know, it does not even occur to me to question it. you are sharing your dreams, that i know.
freedom. my first poem ever published was about freedom, it was also my first publication and i was barely fourteen. i have long lost a copy of that poem and i do not remember the name of the publication, the byline read my original name and i was just another girl full of energy and life. i climbed trees and run for miles, swam in the ocean, and made a whole lot of people uneasy for girls are just not supposed to be that way. i built soap box cars with the boys at the seminary and i was not interested in kisses or boys for that matter. i had a dream, it was freedom.
somewhere between then and now something happened. they call it traumatic experience. i have suspected for years that one traumatic experience happened when i was fifteen, but its core and its pain have eluded me and most of therapy until just now. in a way it is as though it was only now that i was ready to deal with this part of my life, first there were earlier experiences that needed to be reprocessed and accepted. i have wondered very far from my self and my home, i have travelled far and wide outside the confines of my being to return now to that being and to find myself very humbled by the magnitude of my own existence. oh, what a ride indeed!
i am here. there is no distance between you and i, there never was. grateful i am.
fragility, insecurity, doubt, and the whole of what makes us imperfect, makes you and i so alive and real.
the ideal, the dream, the utopia, and all the wonderful constructs of abstraction and fiction, those too are real.
i just do not want to confuse the physical reality with the abstract reality.
we talked and i smiled my mask, i talked a lot, and what i want most is to share silence with you. i love the words, i live with the words, and with you, why would i need words?
there is no argument, no reason, and no wisdom that will make you cross that bridge between us. silence is the bridge, and it needs no argument, no reason and no wisdom.
my invitation is sincere, you embracing it is more than i have expected. i expect nothing, i am ready for all.
between the muses and the angels, i am already in paradise.
falling
secrets. our secrets. desires, none. all.
goethe was there, rilke missed it. it is just a place: rocks and water
i was talking about you, you were the one with whom i was talking.
we do fall in love with our own delusions.
in hallucinations, we see perfection in insanity we disconnect and call it reality
that you are an angel is not known. that you are named after one is very well known. that angels are nothing but a figure of speech is perhaps not everybody's understanding of the concept.
just on saturday when walking with one of my cousins from the cemetery into town after a family funeral, i was approached by a man whose face seemed familiar. i could not place where i had seen his face before. our dialogue was a play in misunderstandings. the man approaches me and tells me that he heard that i was the daughter of so and so. i, never being too serious, much less at a funeral of a very old and very dear family member, and certainly being in an environment where i have lost touch with the culture and somewhat irritated that i was being addressed without a proper introduction, then just responded in kind that i had heard the same thing, but that i certainly could never be sure. the identity of one's father is somehow always a matter of faith, or else it needs hard-core scientific proof. the man addressing me was rather confused at this point, and i really was not fully engaged in the conversation. eventually i realized that the man did not share my sense of humour and tried to clarify the situation. my impression is that he remained unconvinced. whatever the interaction was it reminded me how language and humour are so very culture-context dependent. after this little dialogue and once the man was at some distance, i asked my cousin who he was. then it made sense, then the whole conversation made sense. the higher world of ignorant intrigue and the wonderful way that misunderstandings propagate in a small community became very apparent to me.
contention and misunderstandings are easy. each one of us creates his own reality populated with his/her own truths. perhaps it is the many hours of silence that we have spent together, or it is because you have dared to caress my ego and the certainty of what is a non-personal interaction that makes me think of you whenever i find myself unsure. i chose you as a teacher, you do not force your teachings on me. i have chosen you as a muse, you do not force inspiration on me. if you were an illusion or a delusion, you would be the most empowering of all illusions and an absolute truth.
