There are no dead in Lebanon, only martyrs

Plumes of smoke rose over the ancient city of Tyre.
"Look, it's a Tyre fire!"
Up north in Tripoli, the third burst of triuvarian violent popped and they've now sent in the troops...it's a good thing we toured the soap factory 4 weeks ago! Ha! A giggling bounce boinks back in when significance waxes more absurd and the way seems to float higher and higher. Waxing whirling, we throw on our glasses and shiny out the radiance of Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Armenian ice cream store owners telling us with the utmost condescension that the homeless guy who sleeps on the steps of St. Patrick's cathedral in February likes that lifestyle, otherwise he wouldn't live that way.
"There are no poor in America."
The things they carry. It's bursting at the neck, the need to fight, the need to kill, the need to win. We want peace and prosperity, for it all to be over, as long as we have the power that we rightfully deserve. I think it's all just the result of the language being too ridiculous. Arabic is hard. I have to admit it. I've studied French, Latin, Spanish, Japanese, and English, and I have to admit...Arabic is a straight difficult language. Too many conjugations in the first chapter of the textbook, too many rules and minutitudes. Each country speaks a different dialect, and the politician who is actually good at standard Arabic is regaled as a true scholar. But the food is bubbly tasty.

I live with frat boys for some reason. They drink and laugh and talk about shows and videogames and Riad's penis...and Davis' penis as well. Downstairs there are sexual games and cauldron intrigues steaming and stewing between those about to rock and those just barely hanging on. Neurosis and mania with burning woks that seem to lose black paint each time we cook with them. That's what you get for buying a $3 pot.
I've gotten a lot of kisses from men at this point. I've definitely been kissed by Turks, Syrian Arabs, Lebanese, Kurds, Palestinians, and (if you include my past life) Israelis. This is a super kissy part of the world. And extremely homophobic as well.
Lessons are coming along. I'm drowning in grammar and can barely string together a sentence, but I've got this arsenal stewing away on the inside. A month of traveling through the less Anglicized parts of the region should probably help.

The part of any great change in life, when acclimation gives way to speculation as arose and once more I'm thinking of what now, where next. How? Why? And the so on. It seems to me that we as humans spend the vast majority of our lives planning for a future that we have little control over, or looking back on a pasts that's no longer real. My tattoo informs the world that I've escaped that, the Tao is the way is the present is the isness of it all. I suppose it speaks louder of hypocrisy. To dream of the end of dreams and the living the constant dream. I'm drawing blanks, shooting blanks against a dusty drawing board. Freedom. Movement. What can be, should be, joy, responsibility, self-betterment. It's that vague feeling of constantly being poised on the edge of the world. Complete these tasks, these preliminaries, and everything will naturally follow. It all builds from there. Meanwhile, days pass.

Argh! He's working for his CV! Building a resume! Making himself presentable. She's burning over approval and living up to expectations. She is young and naive, refuses to watch or hear about anything involving violence or reality, she cries at a dead cat in the street. He can't sleep unless it's perfectly dark perfectly silent. 2 billion people live off a dollar a day. How did we learn to accept that this is Ok. To be rich and miserable. To allow "the system" to continue just because "that's the way things are". Nevermind. No one wants to hear rants or mindless frustrations. But I wonder. I wonder so hard at this "way things are." Is it to just make yourself happy and try not to be such a large part of the problem?

I suspect something big is coming this summer. I mean for the world over. I think mid to late August, early September. I feel as though the world is about to change in a very dramatic way. For the better. Let me rephrase that: for the not immediately apparent better. There's something buzzing in the air, on CNN, in my stomach.

Last Tuesday's speaker said the Middle East problem will be solved quite soon and the problems will shift elsewhere. A two-state solution in Israel, peace between Israel and Syria and Lebanon, and suddenly development turns to westernization and Europe spreads to Kuwait. It's just a matter of globalized time. Who knows where and when the truth lies. Maybe the truth is a compulsive liar. But Africa and India, China, guns, bombs, the black-hole machine in Switzerland, Obama and America, an impending Great Depression, the crumbling of the American dynasty, the constant acceleration of time, suicide bombers, assassins, exploding gas prices ("Whiny Americans complaining about $4 per gallon gas to fill their SUV...don't they know how long it's been over $11 in the UK?") Meanwhile the cosmos remains utterly indifferent. Humanity its more polytheistic tendencies begins to rub the lamp harder and harder until their skin burns off, the side caves in, and no genie ever pops out. Maybe a little oil splurts out. Then it dries up under the sun. Altruistic citizens of the world equip their homes with solar panels made in China...by companies that pour the residues, highly highly toxic into the drinking water stores of villagers. And the circle of laughter continues.

Oh well. Vanity can't last forever. Nothing knew under the sun? Even the sun will die soon enough. Everything changes, everything goes. I for one am an optimist, for I don't see much of a point in being anything else. Before God was the Tao. God was born. It knew everything except one thing: what it's like to die. God commits suicide and in the dusty debris of all that used to be compact, solidified knowing, are tiny microbes of knowledge. Everything is a piece of what was once a living God, straining and crying to be reunited to the source. The source must be rebuilt. A reinvention of God - the story of the world. Paradise reclaimed with some nails and plywood. Mike suggested that the Bible should have had a bigger twist at the end. As it is now, it's kind of predictable. That just doesn't cut it for the average reader nowadays. Let's have a Scooby-Doo style demasking of the Godlike Monster...it's actually the Groundskeeper! And he would have got away with it too if it wasn't for you meddling philosophers.

A la mode!

love t