extraordinary dreams

This is a hard one to write. I told myself that in this post, I would open up more about myself than quote the Rats or use my friends' life dilemmas to make a few people laugh. It's the last post of the decade, and I want to end on something more personal.
Ten years ago like now, I was in Jordan with my entire family, welcoming the new decade in the Wadi Rum desert, near a bonfire and under a sky full of shooting stars. There was so much love and laughter that day that I thought we were going to have a really wonderful year, or ten. And let's just say it wasn't quite what I expected. Three divorces, five cancers, four deaths.
Now before came the doomed decade, I was the unstoppable kind: I thought of myself as the best writer at age 13, and wrote a book to prove it. I thought I was going to be one of the greatest actors of our times, and had started acting in plays, always as a leading character of course. There was nothing humble about me or my dreams, and I believed in them more than anything. I miss that about me. Because once reality started crashing in, I stopped dreaming. I was sixteen but thought of myself as an adult. I thought "now that I understand life (imagine the audacity) I have to prepare myself. No more silly dreams about winning oscars and making the best-seller lists. Let's go to AUB, do some practical degree about something I couldn't care less about, and lower our expectations." Wow. Really amazing philosophy of life I got there.
And every so often, I would wake up in the middle of night in cold sweats, terrified that all I was doing with my life was what everyone else was doing, and that all I was ever going to be is what everyone else was going to be. I was going to be ordinary. And that was the single thing I never  ever wanted to be.
But I was too scared of being disappointed. There are things I couldn't control, like the fact that my mother died before she saw any of her kids grow up. So in what I could control, I would make sure there would be no disappointment factor. I let all of my dreams go.
The truth is, I made a huge mistake. I thought I could manage my disappointments by lowering my expectations and that turned out to be the biggest disappointment of all. And it wasn't the lesson I was supposed to learn. Here's what I know now: Life is short. And it can take months of fighting a disease or a split second to take you away, and no one knows when.
In the last decade, I lost my faith in God and I said a prayer at the Vatican; I broke a heart, and I dated a guy who turned out to be gay; I lived in my very own apartment in New York City and somehow I'm right back where I started: sharing a bedroom with my younger sister and fighting with her about wearing my new shoes.
Now comes the next decade... And there won't be any shooting stars to make a wish to, but I want to dream again. And I don't know yet what those dreams are going to be, but the possibility of doing something extraordinary is enough.

a bazaar of pleasures

We spend so much time analyzing our feelings, decrypting situations and over-thinking everything, that we tend to forget that many of life's pleasures have absolutely nothing to do with having a partner. While it's true that there will rarely be a top three pleasure list that doesn't involve the words "love" or "sex"  , the list has all kinds of other wonderful experiences that are sometimes better than love --and sex.

So when you've got the blues, when you feel like nothing has any taste, color or scent anymore, I suggest you pack-up your bags, grab a friend or two, and fly out somewhere to rediscover the immensity of pleasures the world has to offer.

Over the weekend, I discovered the pleasures of Istanbul. I have to admit that before hopping on that plane last week, I was feeling down, blue, and overly anxious [especially about the part where I had to be on a plane...] but it was nothing 2mg of Lexotanil couldn't fix. After that, it was me piling up the pleasures one by one. Food, for one, is way up on my list of life's best pleasures, and in Istanbul, it did not disappoint! And it was nicely paired up with a lot, a lot, a lot of wine [which I never thought of as a "pleasure" but it turns out drinking alcohol really is]. Laughing with friends in a Turkish "Taksi" where he doesn't understand you and you don't understand him, where they drive even more crazily than in Beirut, and where even getting ripped off $200 ends up being a funny story.

Walking around in the Grand Bazaar, the colors of the Turkish Souk put rainbows in your eyes, and the scent of the Spice Market just make you feel like every sense you have is fully awaken. I felt alive for the first time in months, and the feeling didn't involve anyone but me.

The grand finale was an amazing massage that I wish could've lasted forever --because, I have to say, it felt better than sex. So after six days of pleasure dipping, I can safely say that happiness is there if you just look for it, and you just shouldn't always look for it in another person. Just let yourself rediscover that life is good.