Lynnś Weblog

Things are good here. It was an exciting start to the week with the presidency of Lebanon finally being resolved. We both found ourselves getting emotional over the whole event. Whereas if we were in the states – I just cant imagine that elation and feeling like you can finally breathe out again over US elections. Last saturday we walked over to Bourj Hammoud for dinner. The walls and buildings are plastered with the Lebanese flag and what must be Michel Sulayman’s first official presidential poster – suit and tie in place of military uniform. Walking back home we found a large Sulayman poster taped to the wall and not glued. We nicked it along with a smaller version of it. Its not like they will be missed the city is plastered with them. The poster size Sulayman is now hanging and greeting people as they come in the front door.

Sulayman has been sworn in, Hezbollah demands were met and this scary ‘terrist’ (bush speak) organization is now a legitimate part of the government with veto power. Hows that for a cold-steel, back-of-the-hand bitchslap in the face to George and his merry band of war mongering pranksters? None of those twats can claim victory to this achievement. It was done with out US meddling.

Scott McClellan wrote a book (nice segue). After watching him lie and stammer thru white house press conferences for several years — who knew he could write – let alone embrace honesty so scathingly. And now he gets the Richard Clarke treatment from Bush and company. They can only smear him and beat their chests wailing ‘this aint the lil neocon we used to know and love’. They have yet to actually refute any of his allegations, let alone read his book. There was a bit of dialog between Scott and Keith Olbermann that was funny(?) enlightening (?)

http://http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/29/scott-mcclellan-on-countd_n_104194.html

Towards the beginning of the interview Olbermann noted a passage in McClellan’s book where he says Bush’s foreign policy view was grounded in a “philosophy of coercive democracy.” Olbermann noted, “it’s a marvelous phrase, but is it an oxymoron?”

Scotty warns that if you hear the same cage rattling over Iran that we all heard prior to Shock and Awe…wake up. The link has more of the transcript and video.

Watching the political goings on in the states went from interest (over the ‘historical’ dem race) to an inner disgust realizing I am now guilty of staring at a bloody train wreck. I wish Clinton would go away simply because it aint gonna happen for her. If you choose to ignore the laws that punished Michigan and Florida and re-instate their delegates then go for the whole thing…Be honest and embrace the republican think of ‘rules/laws? what rules/laws? we doan need no shtinkin rules/laws’

I don’t really favor either one as long as Johnny Bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran McSenile doesn’t become Dictator, King or president, whatever they are being called now. If McSenile wins (face it he knows not a damn thing about this region) it will be because Hills couldn’t let go with a bit of dignity still intact and brought division to the party.

Ahhh I went off on a tangent…

Things are returning to a normal I have never experienced here, being my first time here. Normal in Lebanon to me has been an earthquake, marches, funerals, political speeches made where the whole country seems to hold it’s breath while listening, a ragged Hezbollah tent city in the middle of downtown, tanks and soldiers, gunfire, fireworks, meeting Jibril’s Lebanese friends, drinking on Gemmayze, group dinners, relaxing, walking everywhere and enjoying the scenery…The weekend of Sulayman’s swearing in, the Hezbollah tents came down and Gemmayze was bumper to bumper cars and people everywhere. Bars and clubs that always seemed to be empty everytime I walked by are now seething with people. Outdoor patios of cafes and restaurants are no longer vacant looking. Jibril mentioned it was like this prior to 2006. Its been a very Beiruti crazed roller coaster ride since I have been here. I cant imagine what normal will be like or even if there is such a concept.

We are moving to East Beirut tomorrow. Steven and Rana found an apartment building newly built in the Nabaa neighborhood that had 2 empty apartments next to each other. So…now the mild anxiety of yet another move. Granted we fled Amman with two bags each and two carry-ons each, its the act of working under a time  limit while depending on others to stick to the schedule that slowly gnaws. It will be nice to finally have a permanent place to unpack in, unwind in, make ones own after 4 months of living in bags and trying not to scatter your belongings all over. While this place looks like an apartment, its still a hotel run by a very unbalanced hotel owner who cant make up his mind whether he wants to treat the place as a hotel or as an apartment, or he just enjoys playing mind games with all his hamsters in the habitrail.

Moving means we will be running to internet cafes to get online until we can get the apartment wired up. There may be even longer spans of silence here for the time being. I will still be in email on a regular basis.

Happy Birthday Mom and Jibril. I love you.

Its Saturday night — rather Sunday morning 1am. The techno clubs are in full throb mode. The streets are heavy with traffic. I made a run to the all-night gas station for milk (and chocolate of course) and was pleased to see the normal insanity back in full swing. Valet guys running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Women of all ages dressed to the nines strutting their stuff, and guys of all ages wearing enough cologne that as they walk by, you choke on the fumes. Walking by Gemmayze street – street of a thousand bars and clubs — the traffic was at a stand still,  cars were bumper to bumper and people swarming all over. This is a good thing. Past week or two had to take a toll on the businesses there. That quiet, nervous tension of waiting to see whats next seems to have evaporated. Tonight Beirut finally exhaled with relief and a desire to party.

I actually am glad to see the annoying techno clubs in our little alley back in full swing. The guys who run the little hotdog stand at the end of the alley came back yesterday and tonight stand to make a killing on the club goers.

I can deal with the noise for a few more weekends, because that is all the time we have left in this place!! We move to our own little apartment in the Bourj Hammoud neighborhood the first of the month. Steven and Rana are renting the apartment next door to us. I will miss Alex and his sense of humor, but he knows where we live and is always welcome over for meals and playing dueling guitars with Jibril.

Now for a couple valium to blot out the fact that my bed will be vibrating to a repetitive bass and drum beat until 5am.

The first night of fighting also had a huge thunderstorm roll in and knock out our wifi. As of today it is back on. Thanks to everyone who sent emails which I was able to check and quickly respond to at a place that had a connection.

We are safe, although our safety was never at any time an issue – as long as we didn’t go looking for the gunfighting. Its just the boredom of being cooped up waiting things out. The fighting in Beirut has calmed down and roadblocks are slowly being removed. There is still news of fighting in  Tripoli, Sidon and the Bekka Valley last I heard. On a mini break from news. The horrors of Burma and China made the horrors here pale in comparison. Cant really wrap my brain around the numbers of dead being reported in both places, and I certainly cant stomach any news of Georgie in Israel to help raise the roof over 60 years of apartheid.

Things were pretty active earlier. We went up on the roof after seeing bright white flashes of light only to be relieved that it was lightening zapping across the Mediterranean as gun battles waged on below. After a bit we came back down and ended up watching Eddie Izzard for entertainment and to drown out the explosive sounds around us. Odd, once the dvd was over there was silence. Beirut and  silence, kind of unsettling. No street traffic noise, no sirens, no explosions, an occasional crackle of gunfire. Its only 1:30am.

Around nine or so earlier this evening there was a news story online about how 2 people had been killed — a woman and her son when a grenade hit their apartment. Another woman was killed from celebratory gunfire and several people wounded during the street fights. I believe the death toll has gone up a bit since.

Sounds like a lot was accomplished and perhaps all the brave street fighters have called it a night. They have gone home to their loved ones and are mulling over the utter uselessness of their big day. A woman and her son…Bravo. 

Please, no encores. 

We close the evening with a rather loud thunderstorm rolling in – or maybe God is just pissed off. Its been asked several times now — ‘uh…that was thunder right?’ I believe its time for some sedatives and a little prayer before they kick in that tomorrow will bring back a touch of sanity to this place.

Peace

 That song has been playing over and over in my head…a continuous loop of David Byrne.

Was suppose to go meet a Lebanese friend for a lecture on Climate Change at the AUB. That got cancelled. Not a surprise seeing how we were able to sleep with the balcony door open — quiet, none of the usual heavy, loud traffic. Was in the middle of a really long email diatribe to my favorite Dr. Dolittle and the electricity went out half way thru the rant. Then the cabin fever took hold of me and it was off to the bedroom for some pointless sniffling. With the electricity cut at 3pm it meant no watching of Nasrallah’s speech at 4pm. Convenient…?

Jibril and I decided to go for a walk.  

We stopped at the sandwich shop nearby to see if the TV was on there, he has a generator. Nope. So we hit the empty streets. We heard gunfire to the east and decided to go west and south – cant get any more north then where we are. There is a heavy presence of soldiers and tanks. Civilians were few and far between and scattering rapidly. We walked on. Suddenly walking thru the downtown “souks” things seemed rather surreal. All the glitzy over priced stores with their fancy window dressings…gaudy sequined gowns on faceless mannequins, buildings under construction – on pause for the moment. All I could think of was the actor from “Suspended Dreams” mocking the pointlessness of the ritzy glass and steel structures going up during reconstruction and asking what about the reconstruction inside the human being after surviving the hell of war.

Is Lebanon really going to sink into civil war again? As we walked Jibril mumbled a couple lines from Leonard Cohen’s “Waiting for the Miracle”…’Lets do something crazy, something absolutely wrong…’ OK, lets continue to walk then. Barely anyone out. Official looking black SUV’s occasionally zipped by, the odd taxi beeping to see if we wanted a lift, and of course the guys on mopeds. Again lots of soldiers and tanks, roadblocks everywhere. We walked thru some cramped neighborhoods and found a corner shop with Nasrallah speaking on the telly and planted there for the gist of the speech/press conference. I don’t understand Arabic but I think I can put on a pretty good show of pretending. After we headed out Jibril gave me a summation of the speech. We decided to head back in case there was the stupid act of celebratory gunfire. Don’t want to be out in the open when the bullets come back down.

We were definitely in an area I wouldn’t want to be in once the sunsets. Roadblocks and neighborhood militia guys with walkie talkies hanging out, waiting, anticipating…Keep walking. Nobody gave us a second glance. Gunfire is becoming less sporadic, more constant and close by and new sounds are being heard. RPG’s, and a couple explosions further south. We got to the Hezbullah campsite and were told rather nicely there was no cutting thru their turf. We crossed over a blocked off bridge occasionally stopping to see where the fighting sounds were coming from. Got back to the apartment without any real hassles and have settled in.

I have to say I am not panicked, not jumpy just rather depressed. The soldiers faces are all young, the faces of the guys on the streets – young. Has reason hightailed it out of this country thru some blocked off road? Do people really want to suffer thru more of this insanity? And right now, if you said maybe it would be wise to go back to Amman and ride this out I would laugh at you. I don’t want to leave Lebanon. Perhaps working thru a depression leaves one with a fatalistic streak in its place…

I have been told I am a glass-is-half-empty person, lets try a glass-is-half-full on for a moment. The only good thing that can come from this is…The two Techno clubs that throb the apartment all weekend long until the wee hours of the morning will be closed. The only thing that will vibrate the beds now will be the occasional mortar shell going off nearby. How’s that?

Fisk has some fun facts about the current situation.

http://http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fisk/robert-fisk-lebanon-descends-into-chaos-as-rival-leaders-order-general-strike-822840.html

Well….attempt 18 at Lebanese presidential elections came and went. Downtown was closed as politicians milled about, just could not muster the requisite amount to accomplish anything. Maybe attempt 19 will be the charm…Again I ask …after living under Bushes for more years then I care to admit I have to ask…is a president really necessary? I mean as long as you dont have Darth Vader as the second in command…Eh…stepping away from politics…

I actually wanted to write this because after taking a small pharmaceutical to quell the constant hum of anxiety and paranoid whisperings I relaxed into a few moments peace and gratefulness. Moving to yet another country (did I say moving? Bolting is more like it…), going thru the whole settling, adjusting, acclimating…whatever, has had its moments of WTF have I done yet again? There have been obstacles from day 1 of this little adventure of mine/ours. We have surmounted quite a few of them, are given a small moment of breathing space (a ray of light) before the next shit storm hits. Silly/funny the little things that bring about the realization I have a lot to be grateful for. Early this morning thanks to Meebo, I got to talk a bit with friends from the Jordanian office I worked at whose name I shall never mention again. I miss Lina and her investigative work and how she never missed a joke and talking movies with Khaled. It was nice to have contact with both of them. I read an email from a dear friend who is all up in arms trying to nurse a pigeon back to health, and I love her madly for letting me live vicariously thru her. I miss having animals around. Then a quiet relaxing afternoon talking about relationships with Alex, later in the day sitting with Rana trying to spelunk thru my dark memory recesses to help her with her chemistry studies and showing her how to pull up web pages that will assist us tomorrow when we actually sit down and try to make sense of her studies. My husband strumming guitar (Alexś generosity in loaning Jibril his sweet sounding guitar while he is off traveling as of tomorrow — still not sure about the gift of the Camel puppet) while we go about kitchen duties (I basically clean and Rana does all the major work). Ranaś husband Steven negotiating visa BS for us, the overall vibe of all the roommates pulling together…Friends and family stateside keeping in touch. Yes, we face a few shit storms on the near horizon but knowing my priorities and what matters to me is that little ray of light. We have a hell of a lot more here then we ever had in Amman. Lunatic landlords are a blight everywhere.

I wish Alex safe travels, send my warm regards to Savannah, and bring back scones!!! Time to go back in the kitchen and help Rana with yet another incredible meal. This moment right now I am ever so slightly medicated, relaxed, happy and grateful. Lets not think about tomorrow and the blathering blood lusting animal I could be.

My husband just performed Wallace Shawnś The Fever for a handful of friends in the apartment. The Fever was meant to be done in living rooms for a small handful of people. He sat in a chair in front of us and read from the book, and from memory, (he actually did this in a production in Amman at a lounge like place that has a living room feel from memory.) I was graced with a performance by him once prior to this in Amman. I was the sole audience member for a 4am show in our apartment. I always start off with a gosh-thats-my-husband-doing-a-reading to being consumed by the power of the play and his performance. He pulled off the same effect again tonight. It was pretty much the same thing when I was first in Amman sitting thru 2 weeks of rehearsals for Antigone where he played Kreon. I think the play has more power NOW being out of the country (for me at least) where the pampered american begins visiting 3rd world countries and coming back to the consumption based society of the states and slowly cracking up from his visits realizing there is no answer to poor vs rich. His reading was good although more subdued then the late night reading in Amman where he let loose and scared the crap out of the Egyptian apartment custodian who happened to be washing cars outside near our open window.

Jibril had moments where I was riddled with goosebumps or wanting to bawl. I will sadly admit that I was overly concerned about our guests and getting the evening started with his reading. Once he started I was sucked into to his presentation and really not giving a poo about the rest of his audience. Its easy for me to forget this man is an incredibly talented actor. On a daily basis he is my husband, we have our usual daily moments of making each other crazy. Tonight I was reminded of this manś talent. Moments where he would choke up, or shout out with emotion in his reading I had visceral reactions. A simple straight reading with the correct emotions at the right time is all you need. This doesnt need to be over produced.

This is the link to the text of the play…

http://www.wischik.com/lu/senses/fever.html

Its monday night and there is little going on which is nice. Things are quiet. Weekends have been hell sleep wise unless you have some of ¨motherś little helpers¨ to aid with sleep. We are graced with a weekend techno club at the end of the alley where we live, and over the past couple weeks some brainiac had the brilliant idea to compete with yet another techno shit club in the basement of our building – which to me is about as enticing as walking into the house in the Blair Witch Project. We live on the 4th floor and have competing techno bass thumping and vibrating everything in the apartment until the wee hours of the morning. I am reminded of childhood vacations where the motels had the beds where you fed a couple quarters into a box on the night stand the bed would vibrate. Dont need no quarters here, the beds vibrate for free, sadly the childhood awe is long gone though. My famous dirty looks have no effect whatsoever on the bouncers. Must be losing my touch or being written off as old and unhip and there fore easily ignored — these damn kids today!! The guys keep talking about going down and getting their promised free drinks — bribes to keep them quiet about the noise. I just dont get it…Why would you want to go to a place with friends where conversation has to be shouted or mimed? Maybe if I was loaded to the gills on Ecstasy and/or acid and whatever other designer club drug is out there now maybe I could understand, but them days seem to be over. Gimme a nice quiet, low key pub anyday and I guess a steady supply of Geritol.

This quiet low key evening is lulling me to sleep…Which is a good thing, I am now too tired to ponder why Alex would gift Jibril with a camel hand puppet — for me to poop on!

I just added Meebo to this thing and have it up and running. Its on the bottom of the left hand panel. It should enable/allow live chat thru the blog site without having to download anything on anyoneś part. Not sure if it leaves offline messages or not…More trial and error…

meebo.com allows you to have all you different chat groups on one system without having to load anything, such as yahoo messenger or msn.

We shall see how it works.

Finally all the pics are posted, you should be able to access them off of the Flickr link on the left hand side.

Last night Alex and I went to the free film showing of ¨Suspended Dreams¨ at the 15 Years installation. For more info on the installation you can visit the artistś website http://www.nadasehnaoui.com/index.php

Another article on the exhibit here http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2008/04/lebanon-artists.html

The film ran 50 minutes and centered around 4 Lebanese people who lived thru the civil war. I couldnt find much information online about the movie — this link was the best I could find http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/sus.html

Thankfully they showed it with english subtitles. It opened with Fairouzś ¨Li Beirut¨

English translation cobbled together from elsewhere online:

Li Beirut – To Beirut (to the tune of The Lonely Shepherd)

A greeting from my heart to Beirut
kisses to the sea and to the houses
to a rock, which is like an old sailor’s face
She is made from the people’s soul..from wine
She is from his sweat…a bread and Jasmins
So how does her taste become? A taste of fire and smoke

Glory from the ashes to Beirut
My city has turned out her lamp
From the blood of a child carried upon her hand
She shut her door, and became alone in the sky
Alone with the night
You are mine, you are mine
Ah Hug me you are mine
You are my flag, tomorrow stone
And a travel’s waves
The wounds of my people have blossomed
And mothers tear
You are mine, you are mine
Ah Hug me

The four Lebanese people the film centered around where two guys who during the war shot at each otherś apartment and now work together repairing the war damage, they joked about when the other would pay up for the damage of pots and pans lost during their fighting, a woman whose husband became one of the 17,000 kidnapped and never to be seen again, struggling to repair her home, raise and protect her two young sons and organized a group of Lebanese women to try to get answers to the where abouts of the thousands of family members who disappeared. A quote from one of the many women looking for answers about their missing was ´the word kidnapped burns our hearts.´ The last person was a guy who ran a theater in Southern Lebanon. He was probably the most eloquent and heartbreaking. He sat amidst the wreckage of his theater and spoke of how the piles of chairs now lying scattered, crumbled, tattered, destroyed reminded him of the piles of bodies, lives lost during the war. He spoke of the glitzy reconstruction plans with cynicism. His question was how does one reconstruct the destruction within a survivor? The film touched on the devastation to the environment. Barrels of toxic waste being sent to Lebanon for burial coutesy of america, Italy and Spain. Fishermen had to go at least 2 kilometers out to escape the garbage dump in the water killing their catch. It showed frightening footage of bombs being dropped, people rushed for medical treatment amidst the chaos (much like the scenes you can see on the news covering the US invasion of Iraq.) Of course there was mention of Israeli atrocities…Sucking up the water of the Litani River for their own use, shelling and maiming 5 Lebanese children – the oldest being 12 who were innocently swimming in the Litani. How the Israelis left a lamp behind, some children found it, tried to light it only to have it explode. The vicious laying of land mines, these Isaeli atrocities are of course just a drop in the bucket…america needs to stop going against UN Resolutions with regards to Israel. I am not going to soap box here, and if it seems I have I will stop now before I really begin to rage on.

Watching the movie which was made in the early 90ś and seeing the precarious situation the country is in now makes me wonder if I have fallen in love with a terminally ill patient. Sadly, unlike the opening night event there was only a handful of people that showed up on a cool breezy night to claim a toilet seat and watch the movie. The film makers held a question and answer session afterwards.

The opening night was pretty moving also. A good crowd showed up, the music by Ziyad Sahhab and his ensemble was beautiful. Afterwards microphones were passed around the audience and people spoke of their experiences. Thankfully I was standing near Alex who needed no prompting to lean over and whisper translations to me. We signed forms stating we agreed with the presentation, received free tshirts for doing so. Were offered to sample the great food spread. Finger food and this beautiful woman making handmade bread on the spot and then others filling them with goat cheese, rolling them up and handing them off to who ever passed by. The pics we took of the opening night are posted on Flickr.

The free 3gś of media space on WordPress has been quickly devoured by what has already been posted. I have added Flickr on the left side which is a photo sharing thingy thru Yahoo. With Flickr I should be able to load as many pics as I want and make them accessible to those who find this blog of any interest. As I said earlier this is meant for friends and family – to keep everyone updated on what we are doing, see the stuff I prattle on about in emails…There is no agenda other then that. Kind of obvious no?

Until now the most I have ever done with photos and computers is load them onto the hard drive, do some basic playing around with them on photo software and emailing them out — so this whole online photo-sharing thing is new to me. I have done my best with the blog privacy options to keep it from being publicly searchable and I am trying to do the same with the Flickr photos. I am doing this mostly because the photos have been taken by Ken, Steven, Alex and myself. The roommates have been beyond generous by giving me their storage media to load all pictures onto my laptop for this blog. I feel protective and responsible for the content of stuff that is not directly my own. Your asking why is she going on about this? Well…if anyone has problems accessing the photos on Flickr and find they cant live without seeing the photos 😉 put a comment on the blog or email me and I will tinker with it.

Last night we were at the ´15 Years is Enough…´ toilet exhibition. It was an incredible, interesting, surreal and heartbreaking presentation. Between Alex, Jibril, Steven, Rana and I we had 3 cameras going. Lots of cool/fun pics I have to go thru, and I want to go back tomorrow for another event, talk to some people and get more info to do the show justice when I sit down and try to relay the experience on this bloggy thingy.

Last (but so very far from least) of all…

SHIRLEY O!!!! I WISH YOU THE HAPPIEST BIRTHDAY. KNOWING YOU HAS ENRICHED MY LIFE IN SO MANY WAYS. THANKS FOR THE ENCOURAGEMENT. I LOVE YA S.O.!!! XXX

*****UPDATE: The O.C.D. kicked in and there are pics posted on Flickr now. They may be semi sloppy at this stage and out of context and not properly credited. O.C.D. burns me out…patience and things will be neatened up within 2 days. PROMISE 🙂