يا حنونتي

رجعت من البلد من فترة بعد زيارة قصيرة

تقبّلت التعازي بإمّي وزرت قبرها

كل يوم بالليل إقعد لوحدي وإبكي

كانت تصحا كل ماتسمع صوتي وتسألني إذا بدّي شي

حتّى وهيّ بعز المرض

ليوم اللي سافرت كانت ماتنام الليل إذا كنت مرضان

ماعد إسمع كلمة الله يرضى عليك

ولا حدا بيفيق الصبح ويصلّي ويقرالي سورة الواقعة مشان الرزقة

ياترى عم بارثيكي ولّلا عم برثي حالي ياحنونتي

ياترى المائكة اللي عيّنتهون لحمايتي لسّا شغّالين وللا أضربوا؟

كل يوم باتصل بالبيت، مافي جواب، لا حياة لمن تنادي

عم باستنّى معجزة ... بركي بترد عالتليفون وتصرخ من الفرح كلما كانت تسمع صوتي

حبّك وحنانك إمتد من الشام علي مدى الأرض والبحار لأمريكا

لمّا ودّعتك ودّعت حبي للحياة اللي بعرفها

ودّعت عيلتي وبلدي وأهلي و كل أحبابي

اللي كانو عايشين معي بحياتك واختفو لمّا رحلتي وتركتيني

بكرة بيجي سخيف بيقللي حاجتك... إنسا وعيش حياتك

بتأسّف إنو ماعرف متل حنانك وحبّك

بيتنا تسكّر وهجرته الحياة، حتّى الزرع الي زرعتيه مات

بس الغريب إنّي بسمعك عمتحاكيني كل يوم

كلمة الأرض والسما ترضى عليك بسمعها كل يوم

إشتقتلّك ياإمي، قد ماكنت مشتاقتيلي بحياتك

بيبقى كلمة واحدة بدي قللك ياها

أنا آسف ياحنونتي

آسف على كل شي طلبتيه مني ومالبيتو

آسف على كسر خاطرك بتغرّبي

ياحنونتي

Mom

She was my guiding light... my knight in shining armor... my greatest inspiration...the greatest love I'll ever have. She brought me and my brother and sister up all alone after my dad passed away when we were still in our awkward years. She did it all with the minimal retirement salary of my dad, barely enough for one person and never asked anyone for anything. She taught me how to be strong and how to keep going when all the odds are stacked against you. She loved us endlessly without expecting anything in return. She always cried when I called her and told me how much she missed me. I called her two nights ago, and she could barely speak, I could barely hear her voice over the noise of her oxygen tank. She didn't want to hang up, but instead, she struggled to talk and hear my voice.
Last night, she passed away.
I'll be home soon to visit your grave. Please forgive me for not making it home sooner.
I love you mom. Rest in Peace.

The Longer I Run

Inspiration has escaped me with all my travel the last few weeks, but I wanted to share this beautiful song and its lyrics with everyone. I hope you enjoy.

When my blood runs warm with the warm red wine,
I missed the life that I left behind.
And when I hear the sound of the black bird's cry,
I know I left in the nick of time.

Well this road I'm on is gonna turn to sand,
and leave me lost in a far off land.
So let me ride the wind till I don't look back,
and forget the life that I almost had.

If I wander till I die may I know whose hand I'm in.
If my home I'll never find
And let me live again.
The longer I run then the less that I find,
selling my soul for a nickel and dime,
breakin my heart to keep singing these rhymes,
losing again.

Tell my brother please not to look for me,
I ain't the man that I used to be.
Cause if my savior comes could you let him know?
I've gone away forward to save my soul.

Nomad

I'm sorry if I've been away for too long. I'm back to my nomad life of travelling and living in a different hotel every week. I wish everyone the best till I'm back. Peace.

Too Much

So we got hit with 3 feet of snow. Do you know what 3 feet mean? If a man's average height is less than 6 feet, then most of us will be submerged to our belly buttons or higher in that snow. Last few days, my feet are always cold, heart is barely ticking, and my car is slipping and sliding all over the road. I haven't seen the sidewalk in 4 days. Noone here dares to walk outside. Schools, government, Congress, airports, and some shops are still closed. I ventured out Saturday, the first day of the storm. Other than two other vehicles whose drivers were as crazy as I was, and a few snow plows, the streets were all clear. Layers upon layers of that thick white powder covered everything, streets, sidewalks, cars, houses, trees. All colors blened into black or white. It was like the earth was hit with a snow nuclear bomb, and only a few of us survived. Three or more lane highways and roads turned into a one lane alley narrower than the alleys of old Damascus. As if this all wasn't enough, it started snowing again tonight. We're expecting another foot of snow.

Last month I wrote a piece about snow and how wonderful and fun it can be. Here I am again getting tired of it. My theory always was that cold weather is easier to go through than hot simmering weather. You can always bundle up and dress warm for the cold weather. The heat can be unbearable when you have to venture out no matter how light you're dressed. This definitely is a different kind of cold. Blustery cold winds, freezing moisture, and confinement are ingredients of a lowsy atmosphere. Simply put, too much of a good thing, way too much.

I took some pictures while driving today. Enjoy.

I went out again this morning after the second storm hit us and took the pictures below.

Fear

I came home two nights ago to an empty fridge. Haven't gone grocery shopping in a while, I decided to head to the supermarket to get my meat, cheese, milk, fruits, and favorite Ciabatta bread. It took me a while to find a place to park as the place was packed with customers. It seemed odd as it's usually not that busy after 7 at night. I finally walked in to find the shelves almost empty. It looked like this nation was going to war the next day, and everyone is stocking up on food for weeks to come. I picked up some stuff and headed to the check out counter. While waiting in line I overheard customers talking about the upcoming snow storm we were supposed to get. Three feet of snow ( About 1 meter) are supposed to hit us Friday and Saturday. Ahhh, that explains it all. I haven't had a chance to watch any news last week, so I was glad I decided to stock up. Here I am, stuck in the house for 24 hours without being able to even move my car out of the garage. Looking outside my window, it seems that I'm stuck for at least two more days here. I decided to start writing and bore you with some thoughts.

Ask any macho man out there what he fears, and the answer would most likely be "nothing". If that person was religious, God will be his only exception. Most of us feel like they fear nothing and we cruise through life with that belief. Alas, fear controls our lives in more ways than we could ever imagine. Fear controls our world and our mindsets as humans. It is built into our brains. We live our lives fighting our fears. I, like many others, feared not making it in my homeland, so I decided to migrate to the U.S. The fear of running out of food drove out the masses to the supermarket before the storm. Wars, natural distasters, bad economies, and uncertainties drive prices up and cause all kinds of choas in our markets.

Any economist out there will tell you that fear is the biggest factor in world economy. Fear of war in the Arabic gulf or Iran would drive the price of oil way up, even though it may never happen. The price of gold has recently gone up because people and investors are uncertain about the stock markets, currencies, and realestate. Gold seemed the most guaranteed commodity to keep its value. Fear of this, fear of that, fear of unemployment, fear of death, fear of clowns.... and so forth. Life still goes on.

Franklin Roosevelt once said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" How true? Fear can be healthy and can lead us to making the right decisions often, but controlling our fears is the key to living a happy life. " The key to change, is to let go of fear" Can we? We sure can let go of some fear, the bad and unreasonable kind, we sure can't let go of it all. Fear is here to stay, and our job is to control it and use it to our advantage.

Change

"Change is Good" or is it now?
Most people never think of how different they've become over the years. We grow, and change, and our needs and wants change too. Our dreams and wishes take completely different paths from their starting routes. Looking back at my earlier days and what I wanted in life, I'm amazed at how different I've become, and how my dreams have turned around to the oppsoite direction. I have achieved most of my earlier dreams and wishes, and now I'm running back to where I started. Whoever said "Be careful what you wish for, it might come true" must've been through the same stage I'm going through in my life now.

Back in my teens and twenties, I used to think I was the skinniest person alive. I used to eat like a horse and never gain a pound. I used to pray to gain a few pounds, but to no avail. Now, I want to lose ten pounds and get back that flat stomach I used to have for a long time. It took me a few weeks to lose 5 of those pounds, and I'm still working on the rest.

Before I started my twenties, my greatest dream was coming to America. The idea used to consume my day and night dreams alike. My dream came to life when I got my visa. When I left the embassy that morning, I felt like I was seeing the world with a new set of eyes. I was on a plane for the first time a month later. Two decades have passed since that day, and my dream has turned around to coming back to where I started. We humans are funny creatures. We keep going around in circles. Our lives can only be understood going backwords, but we can only live it going forward.

I watch movies every now and then. I love a good movie with a touching story. The other day I watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. After travelling and being away for a while, Benjamin comes back home. He says: "It's a funny thing about coming home... Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same.....You'll realize what's changed is you" . That could be mostly true. Things that seemed normal when I lived at home now seem odd. Simple behaviours such as driving, crossing a street, or smoking inside a public building never bothered me when I lived there. Now, they are constant reminders of how lagging behind we still are as a nation. Oddly, in the last couple of years, I feel our society and morality have taken many steps backwards. I'm an avid reader of Syrian news websites. Lately, I've been reading about crimes that were unheard of before. A brother killing his sister with the encouragement of the mother, a group of 4 young men taking turns raping a 10 year old child, bastards selling meat and food that's not fit for animal consumption to the public, so many murders and theft stories that compete with the level of ugliness known to crimes in the western world. Are we just aware of those crimes now because of the explosion of the internet use? I doubt it.


Change is good if it mostly means going forward. Positive change is what everyone looks for. I long for the day that I see us picking up good habits and using them to further ourseleves and society. It always seems we are evolving backwards in changing for the worst without gaining any grounds in technology, science, morals....etc. I hope we wake up and tackle imporant issues that plagued us like pollution, lack of good planning, and securing a better future for our children. At the rate we're going now, they are standing to inherit a hell of a mess that will keep us from going forward for decades.


I hope.

" The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams" Franklin D Roosevelt

A Picture is worth a thousand words

Tight space

MaDonal? Must be a new company. I've seen those golden arches somewhere before though

No comment

Taking showers in his case is redundant

I wonder how many non-arabic speaking patients he has

Chicks stop here? No wonder they're smiling

Hmmmm, just wondering what language that was

It's " BrsteeG for BARTYS & WEDEING"

What a prestigious name

24 Hour instant coffee?