California Dreamin'

 On my way to work, the sun shines in my face, I love it, a long stop and go drive that hurts my back, still the gentleness of the sun makes it better

The warm sun reaches out, silky, touches me, touches my frozen heart and melts the icicles that has been forming since I left home.

I think about community, friends and unfriends.

New concepts I learned here, new dimensions that I experienced

The sun touches my fragile soul, lovers’ lips caressing my wounds

California 

What a harsh place, what a beautiful place

San Francisco, my old love who teased me

Then loved me 

Then abandoned me

Then loved me again

How do I feel about you?

Amman forgot me 

Ottawa forgot me

And now here I am 

I don’t trust you

I believe in the sun though

I see your homeless children and still cry to this day. Somehow can’t get used to the idea.

You do invoke my fears and feels

I was your homeless child,

I was born homeless, 2 weeks after the defeat

But that’s ok,

Because this is how the world became my home

I chose you to be my new home

For now

I chose you ya habibti to find me inside you

For now

And at times I hate you, 

You can be so cruel 

So reckless

Your earthquakes

Your injustice

But

You were and will always be special to me

A new flavor of home

I hear you speak to me in Arabic

Funny, isn’t it

Pure intuition was you

Even though you fucked me up

I love your sun

And I’m here to stay

And learn 

And unlearn

And grow together

Play together on the beach

I walk on the sand and the ocean playfully erases my footsteps

I build bridges and dams and the sea cruelly wipes them off the face of the planet

Powerless I feel

But that’s ok, 

That’s the way to empowerment

I write things on papers and burn them

I carve things on wood and throw them into your ocean

I wait for the earthquake patiently

The earthquake that will make us all equal 

You, a strangled past and unsure future

You my first love

My first abortion

You, pure intuition

Believe me there is something in the air

Something about this place

They talk to me - the people of the past 

There is something that feels like home

And grandmas that feel like my own

I don’t have to justify this love

Or hate

Or conflicting feelings about what San Francisco means to me

One thing I know for sure, is the sun

The love of my life

I am Nobody Bint Nobody

My mother is an anonymous fallahah

My father is a simple guy, a part of the land. 

No, you won’t know my family name.

No we don’t have relatives who are famous 

But I am the people who make the history. 

I come from the village

From the refugee camp

I am not a 'professional' - whatever that means. 

I have a PHD from life and oppression

No, I don’t know where Stanford is

No, I don’t want to be part of a community that classifies me according to my religion or my family name or how much money I make

No I am not willing to climb the ivory tower of yours.

You come down here if you want the truth.

Come listen to the stories of the people - from the people

Coconut girl and the mirror

  Once upon a time coconut girl ran into a child holding a rock

The child's eyes turned into a big mirror

Coconut girl saw the mirror for the first time in her life. 

A moment of self-discovery 

She didn’t like what she saw 

She was scared 

she smashed the mirror

100,000 pieces the mirror scattered

Each one has the same picture: Coconut girl

A l00, 000 coconut girls

The child died on the cross

Went to heaven 

A whole generation passed

The 100,000 mirrors grew up mirror trees 

Each with 100,000 more mirrors with brown girls on them

Mirrors speak; I am your identity, I am your grandmother el-hajjeh, back in the old country

Look into my eyes; I’m your mirror

Erase me from your diary; you can’t erase me from your genes.

Brown on brown

She tore down grandmother's picture but grandmother still existed

The more she avoided looking into the child's brown eyes the more she was dissolving 

Living in denial is the best cure

She turned off the history 

She preached; I’m felicity, I am beige now. 

I’m the saint of all saints, 

I study people, 

I’m above everyone 

I’m exotic, 

I am hommous, 

I am tabbouleh.

I’m just another coconut girl

I tell people what is right and what is wrong

And in the meantime I uproot me

To be Arab and proud, what a combination!

Is it logically feasible?

It scares me, 

I see those pictures of my grandmothers that I burnt.

I apologize to the mirror and the children

It’s not about you 

Grandma visits me in my dream, passes her gentle loving hand on my forehead and forgives me.

My self-hatred is blinding my vision; the cowboys taught me that I am brown because I am dirty,

They invented Clorox. I washed me with Clorox so that I can fit.

I don’t want to be dirty.

Grandma visits me in my dream, passes her gentle loving hand on my forehead and forgives me.

Brown bleached girl got pregnant...

She gave birth to a brown little boy who was holding a rock

I’m a mere rusty brown link on the chain of “us's” identity

I happened to be a prime number

A second generation ya grandmother

Don’t blame me

Brown Jesus visits me in my dream, passes his gentle loving hand on my forehead and forgives me.

Some of my Soundcloud music

Infinite parallel universes

Infinite parallel universes

In superman's comics they introduced the concept of Parallel universes. First they introduced  Earth 2, which is just like this earth but in a different dimension. The same people who exist here also exist there but there is one difference: an event happens differently in one universe that produces a different timeline of events  and effects on that whole reality. For example : if the superman rocket fell in Russia not in the USA, then a very different future is created for him. Sometimes it is also a choice that someone makes, or not make, that changes how the future universe unravels. The consequences of a small change can be astronomical!  After earth2, Superman comics introduced infinite earths. The idea of parallel universes fascinates me. 

I like imaging the 'me' that is in other  parallel universes. How life would be if someone took a different choice.  I look at people like Sister Germaine, the piano teacher and how important her decision was in my life. She of course had no idea.  In a parallel universe where she accepted me as her piano student, where would I be? Maybe I would've been like Mozart!  But maybe she was an enlightened soul who knew that I wasn't supposed to be musically groomed in a traditional way. Maybe she knew I needed to have more freedom and explore new musical ways to express my talent. If I was classically trained I wouldn't have ventured in the world of audio production and expressed using audio art and other non traditional ways of musical expression.