The Joys of Nostalgia and Longing

Whispered promises.
Tearful reassurances.
Fierce embraces.
Brutal goodbyes.

He often thought back long and hard on these last few moments of a dying love story, never meant to be yet so difficult to end... of how two people so different on almost every level could find love despite all the obvious reasons not to. For what can torment a man more than what could have been; a "what if" fluttering gently in the breeze, lingering maddeningly at the edge of consciousness... the climactic final chapter in a captivating book with the last page torn off, denying the reader any sense of closure or resolution... destined to forever haunt the mind with the sheer power of doubt and possibility?

It only took the slightest provocation to trigger the nostalgic breakdown; The sound of the waves crashing on a moonlit beach on a warm summer evening; a whiff of a particular brand of rich, overwhelmingly sweet women's perfume; a half-forgotten song from ages past; a basement-floor study room at his university library... even the double chocolate chunk cookie she loved so much, mixed queerly with tobacco smoke to produce a taste whose memory somehow still made him stir, all these years later. That's not to mention the dozens of old pictures, buried in the dusty, ancient virtual corridors of old Facebook albums... hidden from the eyes of the world by outdated privacy settings, yet still available to him as a reminder of what once was. As busy as he was, he always seemed to end up looking at these pictures every few months... timidly at first, preferring to focus on group photos, but always ending up staring at the same few pictures of that one day when he'd realized that he was in love.

His friends always urged him to forget, but they missed the point entirely... he would have gladly deleted these memories permanently if he'd had the chance; but he could no more do that than he could create peace on Earth or end world hunger. They seemed to think that he was still not over her, but that was only a half-truth - a quarter-truth, even. For when he looked at these pictures, it was seldom her face he found himself staring at... it only evoked pain, a sense of betrayal, and unresolved feelings bottled up, fermenting for years until they were potent enough to make him drunk on the memory of her eyes.

No, it was always his own face he spent the most time fixated on. He could see vibrant, enthusiastic, radiant blue eyes... a far cry from the world-weary, tired, calculating eyes that now stared back at him in his bathroom mirror. He could see a clean-shaven face, unmarked by years of worries and responsibilities in the form of the coarse black stubble that now covered half his face; happy, full of hope for the future, and content with the unshakable certainty only a 17 year-old can muster that that was the start of something beautiful. He could see wild golden hair, free and untamed, glowing brightly with reflected sunlight, in stark contrast to the tightly cropped bronze curls he now favored... which in his mind was a clear parallel to his lifestyles then and now, and the light that had gone out of his life.

Yet what he remembered most of all were the days that had gone by in a haze of love-addled intoxication... Even though he'd had a lot of childish dreams, worries and fears, all of them paled into insignificance and were ultimately banished from his memory. The fact remained that when he thought back on these few months, he could not remember any aspects of his existence other than her... apart from his closest friends, who helped him through it. She was the very definition of his life, and he was too young to realize how dangerous that was.

Certainly, it would be a lie to claim that he didn't sometimes still wonder what could have been, considering the way things ended (or rather, didn't). However, what he really missed so much was not truly her, but how he'd felt when they were together... how eager he was to listen to her; to know her; to study her; to feel her; to explore her. He would wake up in the morning with the sole purpose of spending time with her and staring into her eyes for what seemed like hours in an attempt to decipher her, and he wouldn't have had it any other way. That was not the resigned, dismissive, hopeless indifference with which he went about his adult love life; that was intense, uncontrollable passion, burning red-hot and impossible to contain...

Which was why he realized that he didn't mind the nostalgia so much. Although it would almost always put him in a brooding melancholy mood, it also reminded him of what it was like to be so hopelessly, irrevocably in love that he could still feel echoes of it through the years... and although he wasn't a particularly optimistic person, it gave him hope that maybe one day he would have these feelings again.

Perhaps there will yet be other chapters in this particular book.

Wrong Decade, Wrong Species, Wrong Planet

Sometimes I wonder if my life is some kind of ironic cosmic joke.

In this mad "modern" era, I find that I'm as out of place as a democracy in the Arab world.

How can I find a place in an age where books and reading are regarded with almost universal contempt; where my favorite hobby as a writer is dismissed as an almost obsolete art-form, like tap-dancing or silent movies? How can I survive an age where the sanctity of the written word has been defiled by CGI graphics and mediocre screenplays in high budget movie adaptations... where spending a night indoors reading a book -a favorite pastime for tens and hundreds of generations of the literate- sadly now discounted as an unworthy waste of time?

How can an aspiring guitarist and rock music-fan still survive in the age of Justin Biebers and Nicki Minaj's, where all musical scales and skill are out of the equation; to be replaced by cold, synthetic noise, auto-tune, and baring enough skin to qualify as soft-core porn? How can a man who fails to understand the enjoyment an entire generation derives from getting dressed up to stand in a group of hundreds of  sweaty, energy-drinks-and-sex-hormone-fueled, drunk teens/young adults, vigorously convulsing in place to the tune of irresponsibly loud, repetitive dance "music"; hope to maintain a social life when everyone else is so radically different?

How can I find a place in this age, where we've been taught -by the unprecedented level of ultra-consumerism humanity has embraced- that if it's broken, you can just throw it out and buy a new one? In a world where our capitalist, growth-driven economic system has somehow managed to allow a small portion of humanity a life of luxury they could never have imagined a few decades ago; while simultaneously dooming the rest of the undeveloped world to share the bill for environmental destruction and global warming, how can we claim to be "civilized"? Are we so narcissistic that we can't see our impact on the world beyond humanity as a species? How can a pacifist environmentalist participate in this charade of "progress"and "development", knowing full well that we cannot sustain this and that sooner or later, humanity will have to stop fighting for made-up reasons and start fighting for food and water when they're all but gone?

How can I find a place in this age where the same consumerist attitude has inspired short-lived meaningless friendships, to be disposed of and replaced at the first disagreement/when we're bored? No longer do we have life-long companions, but a few casual visitors in our lives who we spend time with when we want to and ignore when we don't. The age where a friend was a rock for you to lean on in your hard times is over... friends are now a mere audience to show off to on Facebook and glare at your smartphones somewhere vaguely in whose vicinity when you do decide to "spend time together". How can a well-meaning loyal friend find a person who truly cares about them and does not secretly wish them ill, in this nightmarish, cynical century?

How can a hopeless romantic hope to find his soulmate, in the age where devotion is extinct; emotion is dismissed as weakness and romance is viewed as cheesy... where trust has give way to suspicion; pride to humiliation; passion to lust; love to logic; sincerity to manipulation; chivalry to "equality"; jealousy to indifference? Can we not see that ordering a hook-up online on an application is proof enough that we have lost our humanity? How can a living relic of a bygone age where love was cherished and nurtured for decades still hope to find a meaningful connection in an age where you swipe left to banish a person from your life, for the crime of not looking attractive enough on their display picture? In the age of "Last Seens" and blue check marks, how can we hope to foster intimacy rather than mistrust? Gone are the days of passionate mail correspondence and chests of old letters kept in the attic; to be replaced by these soulless attempts at creating artificial connections where there are none.

How can I find a place in this world, where religion is blamed for all of humanity's problems when it is clearly humanity's greed and politics that pit us against each other and enforce this us VS them mentality upon us? Why can't we all accept that there are other people who have different beliefs and perhaps worship a different God, or don't believe in a God at all? How can a man who views his religion as a moral framework to maintain his integrity, beliefs and principles hope to avoid being cast as a regressive simpleton who does not have the mental capacity to comprehend atheism? How can a truly peaceful person accept being viewed as a villain because of a global wave of Islamophobia, driven by the actions of a few uneducated extremists who were never taught real Islam?

Even in food, I find no respite. In an inter-mingled, globalized world, a man who strives for authenticity would find it increasingly hard -to name just a few examples- to find truly Italian pizza in an age where Pizza Hut is the most recognized "pizzeria" in the world; where truly authentic American cheeseburgers are giving way to fake, pseudo-fancy "gourmet" burgers with weird ingredients and weirder tastes. Real food has given way to fast food; and where meals were once important social activities where we bonded and discussed our daily lives; they are now little more than choirs... something to get over with so we can pay attention to more "important" things. Humanity is being fed slop in a trough, and it seems that very few people have noticed, or care.

In short, the old-fashioned and traditional no longer have a place today. This is not to claim that my beliefs and preferences are necessarily the correct or moral way to live; this is simply my own realization that I most certainly was not born in the right era. Moreover, as I take a look around and see all the conflict and hate being promoted instead of peace and understanding, I find it increasingly hard to call this world my own when I fundamentally disagree with almost every aspect of our existence.

This post is an acknowledgment to any/all like-minded individuals who might be reading this. Although we are a dying bread, there are still some of us left... take solace in that, as you go about your lives and try to conform as best you can to this unholy horror of a life we share.

You are not alone.

Also if you're a hot girl, hit me up some time.