Beirut on July 27, 2006

Beirut from Ain Saade



Port from Ain Saade



Dahiyeh from Ain Saade



where did the blue skies go? reminds me of the Bank Audi billboard on the streets.
fuckin war.
beirut is all fogged up. can't see anything.
is beirut disappearing? maybe it's getting bleached... we'r being erased... or maybe beirut is just an image, a photo that was badly developped; bad photo paper... bad exposure...
it has to be the photo, the image, coz i saw beirut, i was there, not so long ago... it's real, beirut is real.
or maybe was it a mirage, a hologram. reminds me of that anime Memories. when those astronauts walk into that abandoned ship where the soprano's memories are kept in the form of holograms. the guys walk into the hologram sometimes believing in it and so they can interact with the memory; and sometimes deceived by the image and find themselves walking through the hologram, only to find themselves in a swamp.
that is probably what happened to us this last year, isn't it?
The manifestations, the hollow victory, the promise of a better lebanon...
We believed in the hologram and so we lived in it, until we were drawn out of the illusion to find ourselves in a swamp.

How naïve we have been. and how utterly stupid.

Even after all of this, people still manage to be at each other's throats. yesterday on Kalam el Nass, they gathered 12 or so young "politically engaged" (at the absence of a better term) lebanese asses; they were gonna kill each oter repeating hollowly the ideologies that had been fed into their minds ever since they can('t) remember. Failing to find words and ideas to adapt to each other's comments; each and every one of them went into monologues reminding people of 20 year-old arguments, stories and idiosyncracies of their parties. these are supposed to be thinkers of tomorrow. why are we enraged that the israelis are wageing a war on us. maybe we really need to be wiped out. we have never done anything good to this land, have we? Lebanon has been good to us, and we have been the worst to it.
History repeats itself i guess. i hate this phrase. fatality...
Why are people always afraid to think for themselves?
...

———
today, it has occured to me that my survival as a freelancer is seriously jeopardized. i need to either find a job here or go outside, leave he country. the first is not only appalling in concept but improbable—the sector i work in has the most dubious future ahead. And so the leaving the country is semi-forced, unless i completely forget dreams of making it in my profession, and resort to a different vocation altogether.
So, just for the heck of it, let's indulge in planning a future to meself—+thinking out loud helps me take decisions.
If i leave the country, i can either work or learn. if i work, then i need to apply to a company—as i cannot freelance outside since i have no contacts whatsoever, and money has to be made fast, hence it leaves me no other option than the 9-to-5-hell-hole.
if i learn, i can either apply to a university or apply to an internship. in the former case, i am left clueless as for my interest in further studies; and in the latter, hell! why not? but only if it is irrelevant to my main vocation/discipline—which leaves me with a huge array of options.
Or, hey, i can go park my ass at some relative or friend's place.