1) To start my assignments early and to turn off all forms of communication while working.
2) To blog every night from now on.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Egypt beat up my friends
A group of leftists in Beirut including some of my closest friends staged a demonstration in front of the Egyptian embassy to protest the disgusting Iron Wall. As the protesters began to trickle off the sidewalk to the street, the police jumped at this seeming violation as a pretext to pretty much go nuts. You can see here that there is a vigor that the police are beating up the protesters with that is quite shocking http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Lebanon-Lebanese-soldiers-and-riot-police-clash-activists-leftist-groups-during/ss/events/wl/021405lebanon/im:/100123/481/99be4207ff594eb0b5fe10d6ae9361b3/;_ylt=Alp19Hdh34QnK0v0QS_2sKzlWMcF#photoViewer=/100123/481/20e1db340aea48ae80de8c01bd0a8658
Thursday, January 21, 2010
bDC part II
I've moved from my wordpress blog. Blogspot blogs have always appealed to me more -- perhaps because they are more grungy. I feel like they reflect my personality more. Plus I prefer the font and I appreciate my writing more in nicer font.
Also, I felt like I wanted to recede from the limelight of my audience that consists of a few people that I hold dear. Writing is important to me but it gives me a lot of anxiety. I think I need to have no readers for a while until I've regained my voice and my confidence.
This blog will document the reflections of a girl who is trying to negotiate her way through a geographical, cultural and intellectual crossroads. I'm in my final semester and the pressure for me to find my function in this world are rising as I:
A) Near the gateway of real CAREER life, after a protracted Academic career. I've decided that my career and my contribution to the city that I'm from and love and to the region that I'm from and love will be through my writing. I learned from my aunt that one must specialize in a craft and I have decided that she is right and that this is it. Writing. And creating and improvising out of a career in journalism. By which i mean not conforming to what that career means in the traditional or prescribed sense but pushing those boundaries. My journalism will be my vehicle in this world.
B) Confront the realities of my cultural and geographic locations or lack thereof. The plan is to go back to Beirut because I subscribe to the philosophy of Ani and the believers in folk tradition that came before her: 'think global, act local'. I find the idea of globalization really confusing and inhibiting to creation and proper thought. My region has been effaced because of this. It has lost its own dynamism because it has been torn apart by rigorous neoliberal US policies. You just have to look or listen to films and plays of Beirut or Cairo of the 60s or 70s to see that there was a fertile terrain of minds that were constantly reinventing themselves socially, politically, economically through their own production of thoughts, and an active engagement with and against external influences. They were agents in the exchanges that took place in this world. Now they are mere pawns. I'd like to go back and re-center. I'm not confused about this at all. I don't think I am romanticizing at all.
I am an Arab girl who grew up in a culturally vacuous Khaleej and I really started to establish my Arab roots three years ago, through my involvement in Beiruti civil society. But I carried myself across the Atlantic ocean shortly thereafter with a heart made heavy by my sad roots that I unearthed too early. A year and a half later, I am in my final semester in DC and I still don't understand what my Palestinian Beirutiness in DC means. What it has given me and what I have lost in my absence from Beirut. But I would like to have my writing figure that out for me. So this blog and its nicer font I hope will be a place that will record my thoughts more regularly.
Also, I felt like I wanted to recede from the limelight of my audience that consists of a few people that I hold dear. Writing is important to me but it gives me a lot of anxiety. I think I need to have no readers for a while until I've regained my voice and my confidence.
This blog will document the reflections of a girl who is trying to negotiate her way through a geographical, cultural and intellectual crossroads. I'm in my final semester and the pressure for me to find my function in this world are rising as I:
A) Near the gateway of real CAREER life, after a protracted Academic career. I've decided that my career and my contribution to the city that I'm from and love and to the region that I'm from and love will be through my writing. I learned from my aunt that one must specialize in a craft and I have decided that she is right and that this is it. Writing. And creating and improvising out of a career in journalism. By which i mean not conforming to what that career means in the traditional or prescribed sense but pushing those boundaries. My journalism will be my vehicle in this world.
B) Confront the realities of my cultural and geographic locations or lack thereof. The plan is to go back to Beirut because I subscribe to the philosophy of Ani and the believers in folk tradition that came before her: 'think global, act local'. I find the idea of globalization really confusing and inhibiting to creation and proper thought. My region has been effaced because of this. It has lost its own dynamism because it has been torn apart by rigorous neoliberal US policies. You just have to look or listen to films and plays of Beirut or Cairo of the 60s or 70s to see that there was a fertile terrain of minds that were constantly reinventing themselves socially, politically, economically through their own production of thoughts, and an active engagement with and against external influences. They were agents in the exchanges that took place in this world. Now they are mere pawns. I'd like to go back and re-center. I'm not confused about this at all. I don't think I am romanticizing at all.
I am an Arab girl who grew up in a culturally vacuous Khaleej and I really started to establish my Arab roots three years ago, through my involvement in Beiruti civil society. But I carried myself across the Atlantic ocean shortly thereafter with a heart made heavy by my sad roots that I unearthed too early. A year and a half later, I am in my final semester in DC and I still don't understand what my Palestinian Beirutiness in DC means. What it has given me and what I have lost in my absence from Beirut. But I would like to have my writing figure that out for me. So this blog and its nicer font I hope will be a place that will record my thoughts more regularly.
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