real estate sucks.

i go out of the country for 10 days, and comeback to see that they demolished that lovely half-house i photographed/featured 2 posts ago.

sweet, ain't it?

sheep beat ants.

a few nights ago, Rooj 'n i went to a lovely small concert. when the doors opened for us to get in, naturally, all people rushed to it, and, quite instinctively Rooj says, leh men dalna ghanam? why do we keep acting like sheep?—which is often said about the lebanese in regards to their resistance to behave orderly in a social/civic context, notably in their resistance to waiting in lines.
in an effort to joke-slash-rationalize the moment, i reminded him that there is no need to wait in line like ants; that where our ‘sheepy’ behaviour seems erratic and completely uncalled for, the ‘anty’ option was quite outside of our nature.
we are sheep. i think i've said this once before.
We tend to move together, you'd rarely find a lebanese wandering away from the flock. the lebanese like to conform to their self-set limitations and codes. they rarely want to break the system, our history proves this: we only decide to move against the current if a shepherd dog leads us out of the way into a new one.
enter the metaphor of the sheep on the cliff: a sheep throws himself off the cliff, the flock follows. yeah, we are like that.
plus, women tend to walk in our streets dangling around their asses. so that works too.
ultimately, i wouldn't want to be an ant.
why stand in a line all alone, when i can stand between a puddle of people, arms and shoulders rubbing, feeling the warmth of the bodies standing around, smelling the BO of most, inhaling deposits of experiences left behind?