Coffee Shops

It has to be said that the increase of the coffee shops in Lebanon is quiet trespassing the limits of normality. This noticeable issue has far more fathoms than it really shows. Such a boost in both the number of the coffee shops and the rate of the attendants raises the odds of being on the first step of Sloth’s Ladder. We cannot claim our ignorance of this infectious topic. We aren’t blind, nor deaf, and surely nor mute.
Our tendency to cope with the current circumstances lacks vital contribution and, of course, is short of eagerness. The ‘citizen’ has adopted the notions that he is an incapable creature, life is not offering positive chances, jobs are vacant but opportunities of getting any is nearly impossible, moving to advancement needs moving your body that needs effort that needs exertion and there is nothing worth all that toil as the results as previously labeled as fruitless, and we ought not to forget the last notion of finance: a penny kept saves your penny-less days.
Yet, and regardless to this ideology, one aims not to endeavor any process for changing his fact. Unfortunately, instead of getting adapted to it, one tends to accept it as it is, and lives with it. The consequences are then pretty known: longer sleeping-hours, longer wasted-time, and longer-depressive cases! And in the midst of such a melancholic state, the pragmatic solution emerges out of a sudden: Go out, embrace life, meet people, and Mingle! Of course, which place to ‘get acquainted and connected to all of that’ is better than Coffee Shops?! There isn’t. So, people would go their, thinking they are doing something important, that they are contributing to the World’s Improvement and Progress, that with their outgoing-act, the World would be a better place.
Psychologically speaking, the attendance of the unemployed and the youngsters in the Coffee Shops signifies a quantum shift in their focus from the Potential World to the Idle World. Time has stopped in their watches and clocks. Future ceased to exist. And living is only another form of not dying!!

~ An Inevitable Speech ~

[An excerpt from the script of the film: V for Vendetta]

Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine- the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, whereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone's death or the end of some awful bloody struggle are celebrated with a nice holiday. I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, think, and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillence coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well, certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now High Chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night I sought to end that silence .Last night I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you, then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot.

V for Vendetta

[An excerpt from the script of the film V for Vendetta]

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox popoli, now vacant and vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition! The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.
– V's introduction to Evey

Think!

The post today is merely a question that crossed my mind:
How many traces of evidence do you leave behind?

Cry Me a River

It's not something easy to see a man crying. The whole Masculine Figure would alter in front of the viewer's eyes. The concept of Man would shift into a different realm, which consists of purity, transparency, and authenticity!

"The Art of Reading" - Books' Rules

To apprentice the art of reading, one needs to follow certain rules, or what I call "Books' Rules". These are not obligatory, but rather they come plainly and simply as an inevitable process to reach a better reading.

The rules are:

1- Buy a bookmark with every new book you purchase.
2- Never fold the angles of the pages.
3- Never use any kind of markers/ pens/ etc, to point something out; instead, print a copy, photocopy the selection, or simply write it on a note book.
4- Don’t press your pages as you are opening them, the glue may part, and the pages will tear off.
5- Never drink, eat, or smoke while reading.

Advises

1- Read one book at a time. If you happen to be a multilingual reader, read one book from each language, they won’t interfere.
2- Try to read some consecutive hours in consecutive days. A long lapse of time between a reading sitting and another creates a grand gap of comprehension.
3- When finished, write a summary note and locate it in between the last paper and the cover.

"P" VS "B"

Between a moment in the past and a life time in the future – I simply choose the past.
Between a sound from the golden ages and a non-stop beat of nowadays so-called-hypocrisy – I surely single out the former.
Thus, it's like the return of the cub to its lioness – the mother. The retreat of the foam of the ebbing wave, the daily yearning of trees and leaves to the yawning morning sun, - I passed my hand upon and among my pens, pencils, fountain pens, and quills.. picked one, an easy going one, and started scribbling my thoughts upon a whitely-clear pad.
After the long absence of such a habit, my fingers are moving upon the plain papers with wonder and astonishment. Little they know that both my PC and laptop are damaged (thanks to a friend’s corrupted obscene photo) and are in need of formatting! Yet, I am not that annoyed, as if I am always online, or has to be continuously connected to the world behind.
Again, between a paper and a screen, I choose a paper, and naturally between a Pen and a Button, I can’t but avoid the latter.
I began writing from a long time. My first mystery story was at the age of 10. It came out as a challenge between my father and I. He forbade me to read any mystery story during the scholastic year, so, I replied, “If you don’t want me to read stories, I shall write ones”. And the trigger was pressed!
I still have the first draft of that first offspring.. It is very weird to read yourself 10 years later.. So simple life... So naïve! The moments were filled with innocence and faults.
But loving the stationeries was much before. The reason was because I did nott use to go out of the house, so, I created my Silent World, which was necessarily going to be filled with Silent Items. I invited color to my life through Crayons, Pastels, Colored Ink pots, and other stuff. I invited shapes and figures to my life via different kinds of pens with various tips. And I was skillful at the art.
Too skillful, in fact!

Letters and Numbers

I've called myself long time ago a: "CC", a Collector and a Counter, simply because, on one hand, I love to collect millions of things, and every little item has a certain appreciation and a special gist to me; whereas on the second hand, I am helplessly unable but to count and number everything I owned, own, am going to own, and will own in a perfectly organized and arranged Journal. So, you can imagine how many lists I do possess!
It never occurred to me though once that the numbers may hide a specific latent meaning, but after reading my friend's post "777", I went back to my Book of Lists and surfed some columns. Strangely I discovered that I own (480 CDs) and (240 DVDs), which is the exact HALF!!
I thought a lot about this issue.. this coincidence.. but nothing came out with me except that one is the half of the other and both can be divided by number (3), which has a special connotation and attachment to my upraising, but then, that is another story!!

Trapped

Have you ever felt that you are being trapped?

Have it once occured to you that some moments of complete liberity could be signs for long tournaments in imprisionment?

It happens that I usually donot feel that I am in a cage, whether it was silver or golden; but recently, things are changing. Matters are taking different moulds. And my idea of living under the ultramundane sky as a free bird is slightly getting mutated!

Could it be Time, the hidden instrument that is suffocating our breathes with its fast leaps?!

Could it be the tenatative sensation of security or the unfathomed feeling of obsecurity?

I can never regard Time as a hideous

Extracted Replies

Because no one has answered my short, humble question ... I ran a quick survery and collected variable answers... they were not as I wanted... they were just the right answers...

And they go like this:

• "One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love." - Sophocles
  


• "Attention is the most basic form of love; through it we bless and are blessed." - John Tarrant
  


• "We love because it's the only true adventure." - Nikki Giovanni
  


• "Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away." - Dorothy Parker
  


• "Love is friendship set on fire." - unknown
  


• "Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing." - Goethe
  


• "To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia." - H.L. Mencken
  


• "Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it...It really is worth fighting for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more." - Erica Jong
  


• "Sometimes love is stronger than a man's convictions." - Isaac Bashevis Singer
  


• "Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness." - Oliver Wendell Holmes
  


• "Maybe love is like luck. You have to go all the way to find it." - Robert Mitchum
  


• "Love stretches your heart and makes you big inside." - Margaret Walker
  


• "Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale... Love loves; this is its nature." - Howard Thurman
  


• "Love is like war: Easy to begin but hard to end." - Anonymous
  


• "Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other." - Rainer Maria Rilke
  


• "Where love is, no room is too small." - Talmud
  


• "Loves makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place." - Zora Neale Hurston
  


• "Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." - Mark Twain
  


• "Love is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day." - Nicholas Sparks
  


• "To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven." - Karen Sunde
  


• "A love song is just a caress set to music." - Sigmund Romberg
  


• "Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit." - Peter Ustinov
  


• "Love is like a violin. The music may stop now and then, but the strings remain forever." - unknown
  


• "Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence." - Erich Fromm
  


• "In the final analysis, love is the only reflection of man's worth." - Bill Wundram, Iowa Quad Cities Times
  


• "Love doesn't make the world go round, love is what makes the ride worthwhile." - Elizabeth Browning
  


• "Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is a thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Roumania." - Dorothy Parker
  


• "To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down." - Woody Allen

A Question

I am just wondering.....

Is Love Expensive?!

Synchronicity

• 
  
  "Many things happen to us in life that are fraught with meaning. Amazing coincidences that become turning points in the road. Happenstance events that suddenly become pieces of the puzzle of our lives. Put them together, and you may find an answer to why things are the way they are. Soul Moments is a wonderful collection of such times..." --Gannett News Service

There is much meaning that lies in this comment. At least, it makes sense to my life. I keep changing things and people, and I keep choosing the same things and people over and over again!! They are them but in different masks. They are them but in different forms. They are them but in foreign languages!

So, this only validates the saying that states: "You can never hide from yourself, for wherever you go, there you are!". And our tastes conduct us in a line. We think that we are changing it, we think we are outsmarting ourselves and others, but in fact we are only fooling all, and mutating truth.

Days of Lore

About long ago periods where life seemed to be simpler and easier we scribble.
Of eras when money was plentiful, resting in our palms with peace, earned by ease we write.
For those passed moments, those tranquil and nonviolent, still jiffies we push the pen to paper, or here, the button to screen.
And for the days that we were able to extract some hours out of our daily routine, and take a break, a coffee-break we explore.

Sometimes I do wonder about such days, and I remember how I used to think that something alike is going to accompany me for the rest of my life. For I used to argue that I am the Man of Choice and I am the Man of Selection, it happened that I turned to be the total opposite.

There comes in a life time some moments where you let it go. You feel the rush of a certain idea, you get all excited about it, jolting you where you are standing, jerking you out of your own stability and tranquility… but alas, moments like these are a true alarm of a long dejection. Glumness attacks you. Sadness overwhelms. And the one thing you feel is apt to be done is forgetting and moving along.

Nevertheless, I keep fighting and struggling to attain forcelessly the Days of Lore. They ring in our ears a never-ending bell, which echoes millions of mini-voices, transcending our pessimism into another elevated state.

And such a subject, reminds me of an excerpt from the famous song for Mary Hopkins, "Those WEre The Days", which says:

Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose

For we were young and sure to have our way.

Frustrated from Enthusiasm

There is a paradox that I am daily living. Usually, a teacher should be happy to see that his students or most/some of his pupils are enthusiastic and have the eagerness to go on and learn. But such feelings are not hitting me. I try hard to be happy for their own will of learning, but it is a hard smile that one that is drawn with artifice. I just picture them ten years later, with many disappointments, lots of hardships, loads of mishaps, and tons of desperation. It is not out of a certain lunatic unreasonable infatuation in melancholism, but rather a systematic and objective reading of their future.

They say "Man is nature". I correct and say "Man is Environment". And to my bewilderment, I kept demanding to discover what is really messed up with their milieu. It is a thorny road, easier said than done.

Their own upbringing is void, filled with confusion, disorder, and most of all noise. What can one expect of such a setting?! The rise of Man and his own fall doesn't flicker from a single item. It is a unity of many factors, grouped together to create a dilemma, leading into a traumatic predicament. Thus, seeing them there, sitting with opened big eyes, raising hands, fighting to answer a question, hoist something eerie within me!

Am I being overreacting? Or is it a strange premonition?

From Frederick to Alicia

I have ran a Character Quiz to discover the suitable Enid Blyton's series for me.

I was expecting to be caught as a Five Find Outer's maniac ... or The Famous Five ... or even The Secret Seven ... But the result stunned me, although most of what the analysis described IS TRUE about me.

So which Enid Blyton Character am I?

It wrote:

Congratulations! The results are clear:
You are ALICIA JOHNS of the Malory Towers series. Bright and quick-witted, things come to you easily and you enjoy life to the full. You are brimming over with enthusiasm and ideas and you have a daredevil streak, which makes life fun for those around you. You don't always work as hard as you could but you still manage to achieve good results, and an element of competition will always spur you on to do your best. Impatience is your downfall — you are so quick yourself that you easily become irritated with those who are slower. Try to bite your tongue and give people more of a chance!

I have always lined my character with Frederick Algernon Trottoville, my both infatuation and passion ;-) ... Could I have been mistaken?? Could Alicia be the real Character Synonym to mine?!!

The issue deserves a Test!

~ Of Trifle Things and Polices of Life ~

I have been extremely occupied lately that I did not notice what I am missing. It happens to me much often to focus loosely upon one person or one subject or one object and neglect all the others.

An observation with some scrutiny to the matter, turned out that I am a very selective man. I hop round things like a grasshopper may do.

I do not like to keep the noisy company.

I try as I can to avoid negative people.

I deliberately choose the laughter not the tear.

I strive to draw the smile upon misery's visage.

I like the Art of Change, and wish to excel in it.

But,............

Er........... just if there is no BUT in life ... such a joy stinger ...

But, no matter what one does, there is always the trigger that holds you back.

Surely, it is not going to be a propelling fist ... but rather a minor obstacle that without it, life may become too trifle!

Right In The Mood

The greatness of love is that it forms a new realm for the lovers, circulating them with abundance of happiness and merriment.

The greatness of love is that it creates a new vision in the eyes of the lovers, opening new horizons to grasp life with all of its own diversity.

And my recent life is witnessing the most wonderful LOVE that a man can desire or wish. The thanks goes right to my partner who is trying to enrich my existence with extreme hues of passion.

But what led me today to stop and write ... was not the fact that I am in love, nor that I am passing through a wonderful experience ... In fact, what stopped me was a simple question asked by a taxi driver, who, while driving his car, gave me a peripheral look and murkily asked me whether I was happy or not? The answer was there.. on the tip of my tongue.. similar to millions that I am daily having contact with.. but I didn't utter the words.. the words that he was awaiting.. instead, I smiled and softly shook my head, saying that I am flying in my own world of happiness, and the image of my partner filling my mind, and the memories that we managed to create together became vivid in my insight.

The problem in humans is that they do not appreciate the graces that they are passing through. It is their duty to express the most forms of gratitude and decorum. One has just to be right in the mood.