do a great deal of it

"You do get to a certain point in life where you have to realistically, I think, understand that the days are getting shorter, and you can't put things off thinking you'll get to them someday. If you really want to do them, you better do them. There are simply too many people getting sick, and sooner or later you will. So I'm very much a believer in knowing what it is that you love doing so you can do a great deal of it." Nora Ephron


Today Nora Ephron has died and you might not know who she is but you most definitely have seen her work. She wrote "When Harry met Sally" --need I say more? I, for one, admire this woman who is everything I want to be: a writer, a screenwriter, a journalist, an editor, a director... the only I would add to the list, for myself, would be actor. Otherwise, she had that life policy that I try to remember and apply, even though many a times I fail: know what you love doing so you can do a great deal of it. And if you love a lot things then you should do all of them. 


I find that even if we know that's the way we should live our lives, we tend to get caught up in the midst of bills and day-jobs and routines that sometimes make us forget. I know I forget to write all the time and when I remember, I'm too exhausted to do it. In the mean time though, life happens. Days pass by and there is no way we will ever get them back. So the only thing to do is get on that wheel and try, even if we fail. Even if we're scared. 


In her memory, here are some of my favorite quotes of her:

• "What failure of imagination had caused me to forget that life was full of other possibilities, including the possibility that eventually I would fall in love again" [Nora Ephron, I feel bad about my neck]

• "It’s always hard to remember love -years pass and you say to yourself, Was I really in love, or was I just kidding myself? Was I really in love, or was I just pretending he was the man of my dreams? Was I really in love, or was I just desperate?" [Nora Ephron, I feel bad about my neck]

• "Everybody dies. There's nothing you can do about it. Whether you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God. (I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections)

• "You can't retrieve your life (unless you're on Wikipedia, in which case you can retrieve an inaccurate version of it).” [I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections]

• "Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim." — '96 Wellesley commencement address

we're moving!

So I've had a great run on Blogger but it's time for me to move on... you can now follow Beirut Rhapsodies on beirutrhapsodies.com


If you follow this blog by email, you might want to subscribe again on the new page so you keep receiving the posts!

And just to wrap this up, here are some of the best comments you guys had to say about my posts!

your thoughts

“I love every one of your posts!! Seriously you make each post so relatable, and even when I can’t relate, you do such a good job of explaining how you feel it makes me feel like I understand. I almost cried in your posts about the anniversary of your mother’s death and the one about your parents’ relationship. Love your blog, I could read your posts for hours you seem like a great person who is strong despite going through so much. Love love love” On there is no merit in loving if everything is easy

“Merci, tu donnes beaucoup d’espoir. Tes chroniques quotidiennes me parlent énormément alors, s’il te plait ne t’arrête pas de nous faire sourire, et rêver avec toi.” On The next best thing

“I feel so touched by this piece. I love your writing and could not stop crying when I read this! stay strong xoxo” On Dear mom,

“You make me laugh and think as always! Awesome work. Here’s to the 200th post” On So, I called in sick

“Me ha encantado el texto. Lo he leído en una mañana un poco fría. Tienes mucha razón… a veces los domingos fueron duros. Gracias por encontrar la buena chispa de la vida. Go ahead Yasmina! Un saludo desde la otra parte del mediterraneo!” On Sundays and oranges

feeding the status quo

I've been writing on this blog for over a year and a half, and sometimes I get terrified by the fact that I have nothing to say anymore. The truth is, when I began, I wanted to find a way to push my writing and get me to write a novel, which is basically my dream.

And I thought, "Beirut Rhapsodies," well that should be fun. I had a bunch of single friends who always had some kind of story about that girl or about that guy, I thought Beirut was this endless source of fun stories that I would always be able to incorporate in my blogs. I was wrong though. After a while, stories run dry.

The problem with this city is that we live in a box. As a person of a certain social class, it is very unlikely that you ever find yourself with people from different social backgrounds. It's not like in other big cities where anyone and everyone find each other uncomfortably close on a subway ride.

In the Beirut I live in, there are clear boundaries and there are walls closing in on us. Everywhere you go, you see the same faces, week after week, month after month, year after year. Someone told me the other day they went to White and "it was the exact same people sitting at the exact same tables" as last year, and that is a scary thought. But it's true. You go to any bar or night-club or rooftop bar --because frankly, there is not much else to do-- and you know exactly who to expect. And then you have the same conversations over and over again. And when you overhear someone else's conversation, you realize that they are talking about the same thing too.

As a writer, you get inspired by other people, by places and encounters. You feed off other people's conversations, you meet someone who will tell you a story, you see something that gives you an idea. Sometimes you just need to take a walk and look at things happening around you to get creative. Other times you just want to sit under a tree in a park and read a book to get your mind flowing. But here we have no parks. And if you take a walk in the street you spend half your time ignoring the idiotic sexual purrs of every other guy passing you by and the other half trying not to get run over. And although some people try, very hard to bring some culture to this country, by opening an art center or by throwing a film festival, it is very unlikely that it will get as much attention as a new fashionista clothing store, another Lebanese designs jewelry shop, or the latest bar in town.

This is what we do here: We take the status quo and we feed it, so that it becomes more snob and more blase, more induced in that heartbreaking comfort zone and more lazy, until we do nothing but try to make enough money to keep a lifestyle we're not sure we enjoy. Our lives revolve around relationships and jobs, and for many girls, about appearance and body image. It is what makes for most of our conversations, except on Sunday when we have a family lunch and someone has the grand idea to talk about politics.

And then we say we have the greatest country in the world. We can infamously "swim and ski" in the same day and the sun is out 9 months a year. But what's the point? We're so beyond closed up there are still people who decide to cross the street when the light turns green. And it's our own fault really. We find excuses for everything: We had 25 years of war goddammit. We need people of action in government in stead of a bunch of grumpy old men who want to settle their own personal scores but we're the ones who can't let go of them and keep them in office. We don't want to learn how to recycle or wear our seat-belts before more important things in the country are taken care of, because what's the point? And it's never, never our own fault.

The bigger problem is, we act the same way with our own lives. We drown in our own comfort zone, we stay safe, we get lazy. We complain but don't do anything about it, hoping someone else will. And secretly also hoping they wont, because change scares us and we're not sure we can handle it.