A personal Pandora

It shouldn't be surprising that Pandora is familiar to me--it's easy to see how Palestine-esque it is...at least for me.

The vision I had today, a day after seeing the film, "AVATAR," was of me, kazdar-ing along Shari3 il Khala, making my way to the phonetical Il Entar [formerly the InterContinental, now Seven Arches], from where the holy world glistens in gold divinity and stretches its wary and stressed appendages before me and my companions--ready to invite us in, despite the turmoil that tugs and tears at it. It carries on in spite of it all, like any Palestinian woman, mother, or combination of the two--like Mo'at.

The vision appeared in my eyes' theater at the beck-and-call of Fadel Shaker, who was singing about the impossibility of forgetting his beloved. There is no particular connection between this song and the memories of those nightly walks--but the inspiration happened nonetheless. And it shouldn't be surprising.

A second vision places me mid-trek at the site of my make-shift playground/obstacle course: il daraj jamb il Mormon. I hear my heavy breath as I stare at the line of intruders, interrupting my run and my peace--tourists, coming to see "Israel" but leaving their footprints on Palestinian earth. "This, this is our land!!," I silently yelled at them. I hissed at them too...I'm sure I did, just like Neytiri. But they never saw my facial features widen or snarl. If they saw anything of me, it was my impatient, furrowed brow waiting for them to leave--or my red T-shirt, covering my billaphone and iPhone, and resting on the rock farther down the stairs. There were remnants of me all over those stairs and that dust and those stones—even the butterflies came to recognize me; the stains of the invaders would be swept away under a few more of my running steps—and my marks would be pressed into the land again and again, today and tomorrow, next week and next year.

But even I am not there always; even I am a visitor who lays claim for as long as she can but can't for very long. Myself in my memories is my AVATAR in my PANDORA...

...Until I make that final transition, and return my dust and energy to the place from where they were borrowed. That time will come, and I hope it will be surprising.

You don't know what it's like to be me looking at us.

I see us.

From the backs of the rounds that control my vision, an image reflects off the optical mirrors that Allah placed inside my sockets: It's you and me; it's an illusion of an allusion.

We're in a fantastic place. We're alone--save a boulder that supports my back and the hawa that holds you up with the palm of her hand.

This is our place--this is the only place where our lost love is able to be found. No demons or thieves can steal it from here. You are mine again, and mine alone. I am yours here, but I've always been everywhere else too.

It's you and me and the boulder and hawa. And it's hawa--amorous and organic and musical.

I feel every note of it in the pads of each of your fingertips as they caress my cheek--it soothes and burns all at once. You radiate your freedom to me here, a freedom that you have denied and kept from me for these past years. My face flushes and new freckles form from your glow.

You smile. My soul gasps for breath, grabbing that life.

I knew it! I've known it! I've always felt that it was still there, in the depths of your soul; scorched into the crevices of this boulder. This faith-rock holds me up to face you, and does not allow me to forget and let go.

My heart has seen your face like this every third minute of every day that I have lived in a state of awareness and wariness of love.

And it is wretched how much I love. It's a pain that I wish I didn't earn from you.

But in this illusion of an allusion--I see that you've earned it from me too.

I don't want us to leave this fantastic place. So I tear, and, thus, tear the illusion of you and me and the boulder and the hawa into my pupils. And I relinquish the rest of me to a life with closed lids so this can never be interrupted by another sight.

I see us--and I will never see anything else again.

A muse maktoob

I believe that everything has its place and its time and its significance.

An hour ago, that belief was exemplified.

I had, for several days, let the MP3 icon for Muse simmer on my desktop--untouched for no particular reason except maybe a lack of desire to listen.

An hour ago, I stared at that icon and had a completely unrelated thought: I thought about how I hadn't written anything in more than 30 days--and I thought about how I had changed during that time--I was not the same woman who had written that last post in early November.

...During those 30 days, I had pulled the knife out of my side--the one that, by my own hand, had been piercing and twisting and tearing me for several years now--wiped off the blood, spit-shined it clean, took a look at my reflection in its blade, winked, and tossed it to the curb...

But it seemed my new-found [dare I say it?!] happiness had also ripped out my inspiration.

That realization behind me, I finally double-clicked the Muse icon hoping for a new kind of inspiration. My subsequent realization: the name of Muse's song is "Feeling Good."

Muse to Reem: "Freedom is mine...it's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life...for me."

"Of course," I snickered, looking down at my freshly-polished shimmering blood-red nail, "there was no other day for this ear penetration to take place. Today was when it was supposed to happen all along."

Kol shee ilo waqto; kol shee maktoob.

:)feeling.good