The Paths of life

I feel amazed every time I think about the paths that life takes inside me and around me. I will start with my body, since it is the first thing to be seen in my eyes and in the eyes of others. What astonishes me about that marvelous figure is the fact that it is a well-knitted wide net, full of connected and twisted paths, and crowded at each and every moment of my existence. Every breeze I inhale, every drop of water I drink and every piece of food I swallow, has a path leading to my inside and outside. As for my bl

ood that consists of red and white blood cells, ask me not about the paths they follow; going from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. 

Cold and warmth have their own paths as well as sickness and health, tiredness and rest, sleep and awakening, sorrow and happiness, pain and pleasure, dissatisfaction and satisfaction, anxiety and serenity. Every idea and desire and every movement and halt, owns its own paths. Are there any other paths apart from my eyes, my ears, my hands, and my nose that can capture the outside world and engrave it deep inside my mind with it forms and colors, sounds and touches, smells and tastes? Here I am, liking some of them and disliking the rest.

If you contemplate the paths that human beings follow, you will find that all of them lead to the same target which is survival since no one takes a specific path seeking death; on the contrary, every time a human being chooses a path, he aspires for life. Haven’t you seen a spider spinning strange and bizarre webs? Every thread of this web is a path conceived by the spider to catch insects for food in order to stay alive. It never spins a web to entrap itself and die.

Mikhail Niamey -

Translated from Arabic into English by Nardine Suwaida      

China Acrobatic Circus..

It’s the 26^th of June 2013, and we are 2 days away from celebrating my Nomad Forms’ birthday.

What a better place to accompany Eclectic Wanders on this beautiful day than attending the China Acrobatic Circus.

We took the 19.00 bus from Beirut Central District heading to the theater at Beiteddine Palace, a 19^th century Lebanese house, which also transforms into the Lebanese president’s summer presidential palace.

“The China National Acrobatic Troupe was founded in 1950. It actively combines tradition with innovation. It not only preserves many traditional programs, but also integrates acrobatics, music, dance, drama, Chinese kungfu into acrobatics to create many new productions such as "Chinese Soul", "Legend in Wonderland", "The Legend of Magic", "Top Acrobatic Class", "Spectacular Acrobatics", "The Star Dream" and "Splendid". Till now, the China National Acrobatic Troupe has won 48 gold medals including Golden Clown, President Award, Gold Magic Prize, etc. in various international and domestic competitions. Until 2008, it has visited all major cities in China and set foot in more than 115 countries and regions in the world. Its spirit of learning, improving and developing acrobatic art has won high appraise from all over the world”.

The above briefing is how Beiteddine Festivals describe their hosting show. However, we, Nomad Forms, describe something else.

We saw music, we heard dancing, we felt acrobats, and we clapped on their beats. Some say it is breathtaking. We say we kept grasping on to our breaths as not to let them go and omit one scene, because we could not.

We witnessed the love of obsession, and we observed balls circumscribing boneless people. We perceived anti-gravity transfiguring in front of us- women climbing downwards on posts, men flying amongst swaying posts and bodies warping helicoidally on each other.

It goes without saying that the show was china in its acrobatics, in its legends, in its reflective colors, its royal yellow and revolutionary red. We travelled to china for 3 captivating hours and returned back home carrying happy sceneries and memories to share with you, writerly readers of our blog.

 

Une lettre ouverte à Salvador Dalí

Cher M. Dali :

 

J’ai lu presque tous vos livres. J’ai acheté un grand bouquin qui contient tous vos tableaux que je ne range jamais dans mon bureau. Je vous ai même cherché parmi les pages d’autres auteurs… je vous poursuis partout… Obsession ? Je ne sais pas. D’ailleurs, il me faut beaucoup de poésie pour vous révéler l’importance que vous avez pour moi.

Toutefois, ils m’ont averti que vous étiez fou. Et d’habitude la folie est comme le sourire, contagieuse. C’est faux ! Vous n’étiez guère fou. Mais pire. Vous étiez un homme qui essayait de se faire passer pour un fou et qui a fini par devenir un « Pervers polymorphe retardaire », comme vous le disiez vous-même. Oui, vous étiez plus qu’un fou, vous étiez malade. Sans que vous le sachiez, je me promenais avec vous dans les zones les moins éclairées de votre pensée. Je connaissais bel et bien les dangers de vos impulsions ; car c’était moi ce petit être qui se manifestait dans tous vos œuvres. J’étais votre Dullita que vous vouliez jeter du haut du Moulin de la Tour. J’étais l’ombre de Gala, qui luttait jour et nuit pour tuer les démons qui habitaient votre tête et votre corps... Mais malgré tout, je ne peux qu’apprécier la richesse de votre imagination, votre intelligence intuitive, et votre liberté folle, pleine d’élan de la nature et de spontanéité. Grâce à vous, j'ai appris à davantage comprendre mon moi secret, qui cherche à toute occasion à s’échapper du normal, de l’acceptable, de l’admis. Grâce à vous, j’ai osé porter mes os au-dessus de ma peau, me raser complètement les cheveux, pousser une moustache, porter mes chaussures sur ma tête et marcher toute nue dans les rues.

Sans doute vous êtes en train de lire ma lettre avec ce regard tyrannique et un air de plus en plus orgueilleux, mais vous avez tout le droit. M. Dali, vous possédez le don d’inspirer, et pour cette raison, toute l’Humanité vous doit beaucoup, y compris moi-même.

 

 

What i Call Poetry

I call Poetry, this emotion

Rowing against the stream of time

This darkness with big

Wide open eyes

This ocean of passion

Where i swim endlessly

Poetry is that nocturnal sun

This cursed song that

Vibes and dies in my throat

It's were the bells of

Provocation toll back and forth

I call poetry

This denial of light were

Synonyms become antonyms

Provoking the forbidden

Steeling the sense and the non-sense

in a sort of adventure

O Words

Sweet blasted words

you shall be the light of a new day

the dim light of new eras

the blinded eyes that

have seen more than they should see

the deaf ears that

Have heard more than they should hear

The broken arms that

Embraces all the love and all the passion

Evading the universe of fantasy

the phantoms of hazard

in their torn shrouds

the mythical beauty

That went by same as

Immaculate waters in once upon a time

Eternal spring

Yearning for Home

We gather fern which springs up here,
Why not return? now ends the year,
Why not return? my heart feels dear,

We left our loved ones to fight the dust Now we are pressed by hunger and lust My heart is burning,
For home I'm yearning,
The war not won,
We cannot rest.
Consoled by none,
We feel distressed.
Still, how gorgeous are the cherry flowers, And how great is the lord of ours,
Long, long the way,
Hard, hard the day.
Lord hadn't left me here,
Alone to shed my tear;
Though Hunger and thist,
Had pressed me the worst,
Yet, soon shall end,
The sorrows of my land,
And people will stand,
No weapons in the hand.
But when shall it be?
Who knows.
will it ever be?
Lord knows.