When the Heart makes sense and the Mind does not...

I lay my head on my pillow and breathe.

I hear my insides rising and falling, and my heart beat gets louder, and louder, and I start to distinguish the words... "Believe in me. Believe in me. Believe in me." Over and over and over, a perfect way to lull someone to sleep. Except the gears in my mind are clanking and turning and twisting and it's loud and distracting and tiring.

1+1=2
5+2x=15 makes x=5
heart+faith=hurt

and the lull of my heart is drowned and my head hurts and it all equals fear and disappointment and sadness and insomnia.

I have faith in you Heart. I do. Give me some strength to ward off the demons of my consciousness. Give me a sign, a faint promise.

Then again, that's my mind talking. The need of proof. Force of habit I suppose, or a defense mechanism against hurt that it has calculated to come about faith in my heart. Am I that damaged? Have I been metaphorically beaten within an inch of my ability to give myself this gift? To have faith in faith?

I would like to be free. And sometimes I am, I am free of my mind, happy with my heart, not in a world of expectations or results. They come later, and the wait could drive me insane. No, I find myself happy in the existence of my heart and its words in the present.

I try to strike the balance, it's not an easy one, and it is tiresome.

I should stop asking for anything. Only then will I get something.

Genocide 101

I found my cross.
Remember my Jerusalem cross? I found it a couple of weeks ago. It was chewed up, the wood gone, the metal crumpled (yes, it was my dog being patriotic).
Now I look at it, and feel it has become so as a foreboding sign of what was to come. The cross Jesus was on (refer to 'Jerusalem on the Shore' post) crumpled in the face of the violence that has been unleashed on Gaza.

A whole people quarantined by the Israeli government like animals, but that's to say the least considering that animals get better treatment than they have gotten these past months. Shut off of food, power, any decent form of health care (sorry did I just list the basic human rights?) left to starve and weaken and get sick and get more and more angry, just to end it with carpet bombing of the whole area, killing and killing and killing, just this time faster and more efficiently than before.

It is the kind of thing that begs no words. I've seen this happen over and over, the Grapes of Wrath, the second Intifada, Qana, the 2006 War, the Gaza Massacre earlier this year, and now this. Same images over and over, one becomes desensitized at the sight, but it doesn't make the feeling inside any different, or easier.

In fact it wells up, and adds up. And it becomes harder and harder to believe in faith, and justice, and good. Definitely harder to believe in good.

It happens over and over.
There's a saying in Arabic, "التكرار يعلم الحمار" - "Repetition teaches the donkey"
Well whose the donkey here? And what is he being taught in fact? Are the Palestinians donkeys? The Lebanese? The Arabs? And on what basis?

And what are they being taught? To be civilised? Or that the only justice in this world is the justice of power? That some people are more important than others? Four legs good, two legs better?

No. This is genocide 101.
They're being taught genocide.

Except they're on the wrong side of the stick. And apparently, to pass this course, you must be 6 feet under (if you're lucky enough to be buried, and not scattered or deformed beyond recognition).

I'm ranting. And I don't want to anymore. Words are useless here. This is a question that no longer begs an answer. It begs action. And will. And justice.

My brothers, my sisters in Gaza.
I haven't prayed in a long time. I'm not sure I know how to pray.

But tonight, I'm praying for you. A wordless prayer.

Neither/Nor & Both. But rejected.

my first attempt at making a comic for a collaborative comic/zine in Beirut called Samandal Unfortunately it was rejected. I'll try not to give up...

Back story: This comic refers to my leaving London after living and working there last year (despite my great attachment to it) to come back to Beirut. It is completely made out of scratcher board, please click on the images to see enlarged.