the needless update
Beirut, October 21, 2017
Changing the layout of this blog has, it seems, alienated me from ever coming back to write anything. That, and the four really angsty posts that lie unpublished in the drafts section, begging me to finish them before I start anything else. Not gonna happen, angsty, sorry!
I am drinking a very delicious coconut chai tea with expired milk, because I love to live on the edge.
This morning was spent making (a mildly bitter) chocolate cake, grinding cashew and almonds, wondering if lemon juice and coffee mix, dancing around to Yves Montand in the kitchen. Paris seems so close.
A month and a half ago, I started writing something. I once heard someone in my family tell the story of the day my dad's brother suffered a heart attack. It was tante Guita, I think. She said she could still remember, to this very day, how my aunt ran after the ambulance that took my uncle to the hospital, how she wore a red dress, a red dress whose skirt flipped and flapped, billowed in the wind as she chased the speeding car screaming, "my brother, my brother!" I've got a vivid image of this now, having no actual recollection of the situation. Due, most likely, to the fact that I would have probably been toddling my days away in our house in Ain El Mreisseh around that time. On the very same day, my dad brought my uncle's wife, a rural woman, grievous, wailing, to our house, so my mum could take care of her. My brother was only a few weeks (days?) old. I remember mum telling this part of the story very well.
But yes, this has got me to write again. Writing- I'm coming back to it. There is no other place for me to go, anyway. I try to connect to people, in, once more, a hapless search for love, a whiff of it, but failure continues to meet with my efforts. My transparency with boys never works because all the boys I meet seem confused and hardened by years of heartbreak. I have constantly heard it being said that girls are difficult to deal with, but I find that it is quite the opposite. Blessed by my naiveté, I find that I am far more likely, far more courageous to be vulnerable than all the boys I meet are ever willing to be. I have no desire to try to understand why this keeps happening. It's okay, I tell myself. I remind myself of an instagram post written by a French girl who lives with her "freckled" American boyfriend in New York (this is literally the description written underneath her instagram profile, a bit silly, but we are all silly so) where she says that love took a while to find her, but that when it did, it was glorious and magical, and worth waiting for. The thought that the unknown can be beautiful and marvelous rather than obscure and bleak gives me hope. In fact, I think that as of late, I've been really good at tossing my pessimism out the window. No need for that. I will get what I want, I know it. And love, yes, love will come, one day.
But writing. Writing. Two years ago, I wrote a liberating post about how I was not really a writer. False. I am a writer. A shit writer, yes. But a writer nonetheless.
Also, the past few months have been tough. Between attempting once more to clear the image of that stupid boy from my memory, I was going through my habitual "Sarah's cycle of restlessness" that comes without a handbook, sadly. My incapability to navigate it resulted in gross miscommunication with my boss, something she did not stop herself from making me feel doubly guilty about, later on. I resigned. But I stayed. Which seems to be a permanent occurrence in my life. I resign from a job, but get somehow manipulated into staying in it for another wee period, causing more tension and miscommunication with said (easily victimised, now saturnine) boss, before I realise that, nah brah, I really did want to resign. And I resign a second time, with even more certainty, before I propel myself into the void of whatever voids are made up of. I have outstayed my time in Beirut, I think.
Every day reminds me that I do not belong here, that my moments spent on tumblr and youtube at work are a sure sign of my work unhappiness. That this city has pushed me away far too many times. My romantic endeavours in Beirut, they have all failed. My desire to belong, to find an anchor in the city tries but fails to materialise. On the empty walls of my life, it sprays in red, illegal paint: you do not belong, you do not belong.
I have thus decided to return to Glasgow. Nadine is getting engaged in March, next year. I will stay in Lebanon until then, but go back to Scotland to do some writing. (Not that it is impossible for me to write but in Scotland. I can write anywhere, obviously. And I will be writing, whenever, wherever. But Scotland will be my writer's retreat. A gift, almost. And after Scotland, Boston. I think. I no longer believe myself when I lay out plans and then never follow through with them. Unless an invisible thread unexpectedly pulls at me from Beirut, beckoning me to stay (but I doubt such a thread exists), this time, I will do as I say and take myself to America.
But for now, I will take myself to War and Peace. Or fall asleep after reading one sentence. Who knows.
Things are looking up. I have a good feeling about my future. I must come back here to write more self-indulgence. This blog is thirsty for it. Also, I must change the misleading generic cat photo.
Changing the layout of this blog has, it seems, alienated me from ever coming back to write anything. That, and the four really angsty posts that lie unpublished in the drafts section, begging me to finish them before I start anything else. Not gonna happen, angsty, sorry!
I am drinking a very delicious coconut chai tea with expired milk, because I love to live on the edge.
This morning was spent making (a mildly bitter) chocolate cake, grinding cashew and almonds, wondering if lemon juice and coffee mix, dancing around to Yves Montand in the kitchen. Paris seems so close.
A month and a half ago, I started writing something. I once heard someone in my family tell the story of the day my dad's brother suffered a heart attack. It was tante Guita, I think. She said she could still remember, to this very day, how my aunt ran after the ambulance that took my uncle to the hospital, how she wore a red dress, a red dress whose skirt flipped and flapped, billowed in the wind as she chased the speeding car screaming, "my brother, my brother!" I've got a vivid image of this now, having no actual recollection of the situation. Due, most likely, to the fact that I would have probably been toddling my days away in our house in Ain El Mreisseh around that time. On the very same day, my dad brought my uncle's wife, a rural woman, grievous, wailing, to our house, so my mum could take care of her. My brother was only a few weeks (days?) old. I remember mum telling this part of the story very well.
But yes, this has got me to write again. Writing- I'm coming back to it. There is no other place for me to go, anyway. I try to connect to people, in, once more, a hapless search for love, a whiff of it, but failure continues to meet with my efforts. My transparency with boys never works because all the boys I meet seem confused and hardened by years of heartbreak. I have constantly heard it being said that girls are difficult to deal with, but I find that it is quite the opposite. Blessed by my naiveté, I find that I am far more likely, far more courageous to be vulnerable than all the boys I meet are ever willing to be. I have no desire to try to understand why this keeps happening. It's okay, I tell myself. I remind myself of an instagram post written by a French girl who lives with her "freckled" American boyfriend in New York (this is literally the description written underneath her instagram profile, a bit silly, but we are all silly so) where she says that love took a while to find her, but that when it did, it was glorious and magical, and worth waiting for. The thought that the unknown can be beautiful and marvelous rather than obscure and bleak gives me hope. In fact, I think that as of late, I've been really good at tossing my pessimism out the window. No need for that. I will get what I want, I know it. And love, yes, love will come, one day.
But writing. Writing. Two years ago, I wrote a liberating post about how I was not really a writer. False. I am a writer. A shit writer, yes. But a writer nonetheless.
Also, the past few months have been tough. Between attempting once more to clear the image of that stupid boy from my memory, I was going through my habitual "Sarah's cycle of restlessness" that comes without a handbook, sadly. My incapability to navigate it resulted in gross miscommunication with my boss, something she did not stop herself from making me feel doubly guilty about, later on. I resigned. But I stayed. Which seems to be a permanent occurrence in my life. I resign from a job, but get somehow manipulated into staying in it for another wee period, causing more tension and miscommunication with said (easily victimised, now saturnine) boss, before I realise that, nah brah, I really did want to resign. And I resign a second time, with even more certainty, before I propel myself into the void of whatever voids are made up of. I have outstayed my time in Beirut, I think.
Every day reminds me that I do not belong here, that my moments spent on tumblr and youtube at work are a sure sign of my work unhappiness. That this city has pushed me away far too many times. My romantic endeavours in Beirut, they have all failed. My desire to belong, to find an anchor in the city tries but fails to materialise. On the empty walls of my life, it sprays in red, illegal paint: you do not belong, you do not belong.
I have thus decided to return to Glasgow. Nadine is getting engaged in March, next year. I will stay in Lebanon until then, but go back to Scotland to do some writing. (Not that it is impossible for me to write but in Scotland. I can write anywhere, obviously. And I will be writing, whenever, wherever. But Scotland will be my writer's retreat. A gift, almost. And after Scotland, Boston. I think. I no longer believe myself when I lay out plans and then never follow through with them. Unless an invisible thread unexpectedly pulls at me from Beirut, beckoning me to stay (but I doubt such a thread exists), this time, I will do as I say and take myself to America.
But for now, I will take myself to War and Peace. Or fall asleep after reading one sentence. Who knows.
Things are looking up. I have a good feeling about my future. I must come back here to write more self-indulgence. This blog is thirsty for it. Also, I must change the misleading generic cat photo.
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