Lynnś Weblog

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 🙂

Saturday we got a late start on our planned excursion. It ended up being Steven, Rana, Ray and me for the day. Ray is heading back to the states early May, while Jibril and I hope to make Lebanon our permanent home come hell or highwater. It was nice to indulge in being touristy and taking pics for Ray to take back with him. Although, he too being a hard core traveler since retiring from the military, now wants to make repeated visits back to Beirut, he caught the Leb bug also. We began our walk by hitting The Martyrs Place and snapping pics of the war ravaged statue (the pics above) before heading to the Corniche, making stops along the way. Steven wanted us to see this empty lot filled with toilets which he and Jibril see daily on their walk to work. They assumed since a building was going up next to the lot the rows and rows of toilets (looking somewhat like a weird Arlington cemetary) where getting prepped for installation. Of course we took a few pics and milled about. Suddenly a woman appeared asking if we were with the press, which I thought funny cuz we looked like dorky tourists. She chatted us up and explained the toilets were actually a public installation called ¨Haven´t 15 Years of Hiding in the Toilets Been Enough?¨ They were in the process of setting up a stage and hanging posters for the opening the following day. During the years of the civil war people spent a lot of time hiding in their bathrooms if they couldnt make it to a safer spot. The installation runs from 4/13/08 to 4/27/08 and is being sponsored by the Lebanese Association for Human Rights. It opens tonight with some live music and live testimonies of memories from everyday life during the civil war, given by those who lived thru it (I copied that from the brochure she handed us). So now we have plans for tonight. Lots of events will be going on thru out the span of the exhibit and its just a few blocks down from us.

From there it was the Holiday Inn that is quite a graphic and haunting reminder of the countryś history. I was surprised we were able to get so close to the building to take more pictures without being told to beat it by soldiers or security. Steven was the tour guide explaining the history of every stop we took. Right around the corner was the sight where Rafiq Hariri was assassinated. You could still see the damage to the buildings in the near vicinity where his car blew up and the patched up road work. We stopped to pay our respects at his newly erected statue. Then made the stop at the Hard Rock Cafe for group pics. It seemed appropriate if not a bit too sentimental after actually seeing the spot where Lebanon lost Hariri.

From there it was hitting the Corniche and walking the length to get too Pigeon Rock/Rawsheh Rock. It was a great way to relax and enjoy each others company, people watch, and stop and stare out at the Med while enjoying the cool breeze and quietly contemplating this city and country which I would like to call home.
Right before we hit Pigeon Rock the lure of an ice cream stand was overwhelming and we all took a moment to indulge. It was then off to Pigeon Rock to take some picks. I was a bit disappointed with the timing of getting there with the sun shining right behind the rock, so maybe another day if I can get up early enough, steal a camera and get it so the sun is behind me coloring the rock. Once we hit the Rock, took pictures and hung around a bit Rana and I called it a day and headed back to the apartment and the guys hit Sabra for groceries. Needless to say we had yet another incredible meal prepared by Chef Rana along with her homemade custard desert. I dont think she knows how truly blessed we all are now that she is here.

Iĺl write more later after we go see the opening of the exhibit tonight. Should be interesting and heartbreaking hearing the testimonies…

Friday night. We had another big meal compliments of Rana. Chicken and rice soup, fattoush, a rice dish with pine nuts, and home made baba ghanouj – simply divine. This is the first time since having left the states where I feel like I am gaining weight. We took more pics but …do you really want to see nothing but pics of food and people eating like they have been starved for days on end? I will save the media storage space for pics of being out and about. Big plans to go out tomorrow afternoon as a household group — whoever can get up at the designated time of departure has signed on. Going to walk the Corniche, see Pigeon Rock, loiter around Hamra, hunt and gather for next weekś meals and take pics. I am now in possession of Kenś camera.

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This is just an attempt at playing around with posting stuff and getting youtube videos on.

I saw this episode of Def Poetry Jam a few years back on HBO and this guy — Mark Gonzales, blew me away with this spoken word piece ¨As With Most Men,¨ it has always stuck in my head, and you gotta admit nice t-shirt too. So here goes…I promise I wont go nutty with posting all sorts of yourtube stuff.

Enjoy… 😀

Or the alternative title ¨The Gimp is Slowly Becoming My Bitch¨. The Gimp being free photo software – not me being politically incorrect. Its 7am and I have been up all night along with Ken, both of us jacked into to our laptops. This is Ken by the way. He is from NYC and has been traveling for a couple months. Egypt, Syria and of course Beirut. He is the apartment kick boxer, photographer, short story writer and intern journalist at the Daily Star. You can find the link to the Star on the left (Lebanon News). Search his name to find some of his Daily Star articles ¨Ken Changpertitum¨. He is responsible for most of the pics posted now…That is until I nick his camera hahaha

Here are some group shots, I am pretty sure all are surrounding Ranaś dinners. Our little ex-pat family get togethers.

We move the couches closer to the little table and gather round. I know its the little details that will keep you all coming back for more! L to R Ramon, Alex, his girlfriend on holiday in Beirut for two weeks Savannah, Jibril, and me. Yes its blurry but the only one we have of Savannah and kinda fun, blurry or not. Or maybe its just my eyesight going due to lack of sleep. This could very well be a sharp, fine detailed pic… This (below) is our lovely newlywed (to Steven) Rana who is looking to get an internship for nursing at one of the local hospitals and also a genius in the kitchen with local fare. We no longer eat pasta or rice with canned vegetables, aka: prison style slop, Rana is cooking healthy stuff and chopping up salads like Fattoush (my all time favorite) or Tabbouleh (better then any I have had anywhere).

This last one (a Ken B&W art shot) we may use for her portfolio when we try to sell our idea of getting Rana a cooking show on FoodTV. Here are a few more group shots, of course dinner gatherings… Alex: he who speaks the Queenś English, also quite fluent in Arabic, studying comparative religions and conflict resolution, currently going to the AUB, enjoying an after dinner smoke. Our future Diplomat in Training, a future Friend in High Places…

L to R Jibril, Steven, Saleh, and Alex.

A Weekend gathering. Below is L to R Rana, Steven, Jibril, and Ray

enjoying after dinner conversation.

This above shot was a Ken shot from Ken and Rayś Excellent Adventures in Syria this past weekend. Ray is the honorary 7th roommate. OK…2 more for now. These are Steven shots…I couldnt pass them up. Enjoy…

Nice Steven shot of the sun setting near Pigeon Rock. Hopefully we are taking a field trip there this Saturday and I am planning on absconding with one or both of the digi cams and going nutty. Below is a shot of the famous scar of Beirut, The Holiday Inn, next to The Phoenician Hotel…

OK…Just a quick word on Linux operating systems…Fun to work with, free, a damn near infinite source of free software like The Gimp which I was playing on all night with the photos. I cant say enough good stuff about Mandriva, and Sidux which I lost when the laptop crashed. Yes, I did mope and curse ALL the operating systems, pouting is over and I am in love again with all that is Tux. Break the chains of Microsoft and check out any of the Linux distros. Lots of flavors to indulge in. Viva Tux the Linux Penguin!!!

Check out the links to the left for more info…There is free support galore online, and in Linux magazines at any store that sells PC mags. They usually come with cdś/dvdś with the latest live distros. Thats how I got Mandriva — a magazine and my highly talented, actor/journalist/writer/english teacher/acting teacher, infinitely patient, long suffering, computer hacker, all around genius/husband, Jibril.

K…its 8am and I really should crash for a few hours, wake up and do some online work, and TGIF… Cheers!

I nicked these from Creative Commons for a little instant gratification on the posting of the pictures desire. I should be doing some work but…distractions are always welcome.

This is the breath taking Pigeon Rock

About a 30 minute walk down the Corniche

from home.