nothing was different, everything had changed

I know I know I know. Bloggers aren't supposed to disappear for weeks at a time but I swear I have a great excuse...

I went on a trip in the last three weeks that took me a long way back.

It's funny how our past only exists in our memories. I mean we know we lived through all this stuff, we remember it, we have pictures to prove it, but otherwise, it's non-existent. And I realized that by going back to New York after almost four years. I was nervous to go back in a way, even though I was mostly very excited. When I was 16 and I went there for the first time, I remember standing at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central Park South, looking down towards the skyscrapers I was seeing for the very first time, I thought to myself: "How can anyone live anywhere else in the world?" And I ended up by moving there and living there for two years. It was the first place I went to build a life of my own, getting my first apartment, getting by without asking money from my dad, learning to be an adult. And I got to do it in one of the greatest cities in the world. And here I was, going back to my city and it turns out, nothing had changed. My favorite Barnes and Noble was still at the same spot, my Bikram Yoga Studio still had the same schedule, the 1 train is still just as disgusting as it always was and Artichoke pizza is still heavenly. I hadn't forgotten my streets and avenues and still knew how to take the subway and buy a metrocard without holding on to a map like a tourist and it felt like I had never left the city at all. Except that I had.

And although nothing was different, everything had changed.

I am not the same 22 year-old roaming the streets of Manhattan listening to "Suddenly I see" on my i-pod. My memory of New York hadn't changed but in the present, it did not feel the same. Suddenly I saw the streets of Manhattan as too busy, too noisy, too crowded. The buildings were too big and the lines were too long. The very things that used to give me energy drained it out of me completely. I'm the one who was different. The last four years of my life changed me.

Then I went to Paris for the first time in 18 years and that was a pretty big leap into the past as well. I lived in Paris from 4 to 8 years old and I really only remember bits and pieces, but I know it feels like another lifetime. It was a time when everyone I loved was still alive, we went to Disneyland for christmas, I was carefree and spoke with a Parisian accent. Again, all I keep from those days are pictures my mother carefully put together. But I went back to our old address and the building was just as I remembered it. I actually recognized it from far as we walked towards it. The gate was still there, the little path leading to the main door just like in mind, and the smell of the wooden stairs which for some reason stayed with me all these years. And the neighbor I used to play with on the 5th floor? Still there too... Except now she has a 2 months old baby.

But Paris was also something new. It was inspiring, with its pink skies and its brasseries. I liked the creek of the wooden stairs even when it was a 6th floor walk-up. I enjoyed sitting on a green bench and watching people go by, going to the Opera for the very first time and having real discussions with people. It made me want to write in Cafe de Flore like Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. It made me want to walk under the rain (and I hate the rain) and kiss my Parisian in the middle of the street, just because.

It made me realize that the past is in my memories and the future something I dream of. The present, however, that's where I'm living.

My favorite Pizza in Manhattan

My first real apartment in New York

Where I lived 18 years ago in Paris

that little angel

I know a little angel whose birthday it is today. When you turn 13 years old, you're expected to be going from boy to teenager. Your voice is expected to start changing. Your facial hair is supposed to start growing. You're not expected to be dead.

But if I've learned anything so far in life, it's that nothing is ever as expected.

That little angel is my cousin, Philippe. He was born on May 26th, 1998, when I was 13 years old, and even then, he already looked like an angel. The type of cherub whose blondish hair say one thing and mischievous eyes say another. And those eyes, they were open to the world. Very young, he could see through anyone, and ask the right questions. I remember when he was four years old, and he saw me sad one day, and he asked me if it was because I missed my mother. A four year old boy could see my sadness better than anyone else around me. That's the type of boy he was.

You'd think a boy at 10 or 11 would be shy around girls. But not Philippe. He had them lined up, girls of all ages, and had flirtatious lines for anyone and everyone. "You've become so beautiful I didn't even recognize you!" he once said to a fifty year old friend of the family. She smiled and giggled and he had her under his spell in half a second. And he had that magical power with everyone.

He died on July 31st 2009, in a tragic, horrendous accident, that had the entire country talking. But I wont tell that story, because he shouldn't be remembered for the way he died. He should be remembered for the way he lived.

And what I learned from his life, is that sometimes eleven years can be more meaningful than a hundred. And even in his death, his presence is felt every day. I know this because I see his family, his mother, his father, his two older sisters, who are able to talk about him and smile. Who have the strength, despite what they've been through, to turn the tragic into a positive power, to take Philippe's memory and make it enduring, everlasting and immortal.

What I learned is that life is fragile. That in a split second, you're here and then you're not. The only thing you can do about it is decide how the memory of you will go on.

happiness

I have these flashes of memories that make me smile when I close my eyes.

When I was little, my dad used to travel for months at a time. It was during the war, and sometimes he had to come back by boat. My mom and I would go pick him up from the seaport in Jounieh. I was three or four at the time, but I have this vivid image of me spotting him from afar, coming towards us with his luggage in both hands. And I couldn't wait one more second for him; so I'd crawl beneath the wires, and I would run. I still see it now, and it looks like something out of a corny movie, a slow motion moment with some insanely cheesy soundtrack, of a three year old girl running and running towards her father, arms wide open, in tears, screaming "papa!"

There is a story my mother used to tell me all the time. When she and my dad were still dating, and she lived in "gharbieh" and he lived in "char'ieh" and sometimes, crossing from one part of town to another was the most dangerous thing you could do. The bridge we take hundreds of times now, the one that takes us from both sides of Beirut in a matter of seconds, used to bear the worst of the fighting. But all it took was a crescent moon to help you cross over it. You know when the moon is so thin you can barely see it? It was my mother's favorite thing in the world. And every time the moon was that thin, she kissed the people she loved, for good luck. And so one night, she saw the moon, and she wanted to kiss my dad. So she got in her car, and took the long way. Up the mountains and down again, so she could cross over to his side. It took hours, but she didn't care. When she finally arrived, she rang on the intercom (how they survived without mobile phones and internet is beyond me) and she told him to meet her downstairs, so they could look at the moon together. And kiss.

This might be the cheesiest story you've ever heard. I think it's the cheesiest one I've ever told. But it made her happy. Anytime, anywhere, if she closed her eyes and remembered that moment, it made her smile.

So many times we forget. We get wrapped up in the cloudiness of everyday nagging, tears and problems that seem beyond our capacity to deal with. But the truth is, if you close your eyes, it's full of happy moments to pick and choose from. That day at the beach with your friends, when you got tipsy and laughed your heart out. That time you got a phone call telling you you got that scholarship; you got that job; you got into that school. That second the stick turned blue and you wanted it to be blue. The first time he said "I love you;" the first time you stepped onto a stage; the first time you went out past curfew. That compliment that made you feel like a million bucks. I close my eyes and see Sunday Brunch with my best friend making piles of food for a bunch of hungover fools. I see my brother and my sister around the Christmas tree, with sappy Christmas songs in the background as we are putting up the lights and the ornaments. I close my eyes and there are so many pictures to choose from, I feel unbelievably lucky.


Today, I'm happy. I'm writing, I'm acting, I'm doing the things I love again. I wake up early and I can't wait for the day to start. And the best part is, it has nothing to do with anyone but myself. And I can smile without closing my eyes.