The musings of Moos the monk

Today is my last day in Napoli, I’m leaving to Rome tomorrow morning, hopefully morning… for 3 days then back home sweet home…

I’m having fun here… It’s a really nice place, and pictures are coming soon… I just came back from the Capodimonte Museum… I got stuck in the elevator for 10 minutes with an old man and on the way back I almost got hit by a car while I was walking on the sidewalk… I got the message Napoli… you didn’t have to make it that obvious… I already got it…

To be honest today my mood is very much down… like really down there… I don’t even feel like going out though it’s still 15:15

meh!

I’m planning my own rehearsals for retirement, if you know what I’m saying… I think I’ll start once I’m back home… It’s easier that way…

I loved going to Madre, the museum of modern art in Napoli… very inspirational… also visited Pompei the oldest remaining city in the world, destroyed by the eruption of  Mount Vesuvius so a lot of the city was saved under the ashes and they had to remove almost 6 meters of ashes… and they also found some dead bodies in their last dieing position… awful… a family with a pregnant mother and 2 children next to her… also a dog… and so on…

one more thing to say…

LONG LIVES PHIL OCHS AND GOD BLESS HIS SOUL

Tonight I’m leaving to Italy and will stay there for 2 weeks… 10 days in Naples and 4 in Rome and some trips here and there…

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The is The Ballad of The Skeletons with Allen Ginsberg and Paul McCartney

Take care everyone  ; - )

This is a perfect timing for me to listen to such song… I’m currently into the music of Mohammed Mounir and the poetry of Abdelrahman El Abnody, Ahmed Fuad Negm and Sayed Hegab… well, this song was written by El Abnody for Mounir…

I’m just in love with this song…

Lyrics

When Bob Dylan meets beat poetry’s godfather and the greatest of them all, the result is stunning… an all-day-on-repeat for me…

to download right click and save this link.

Well, during the 4 performances we did with BAIA for the “Railway Children” people started getting sick one by one… one actor actually had to be replaced in the last performance… Everyone, and I say everyone got sick except me… well, not 4 days after the last show… here’s how it went…

Tuesday I started coughing a lot. Wednesday I got fever and the coughing got worse and I got headaches and hallucinations ( hallucinations section is explained at the end of this post : - D  )  Hussain offered to get me to the doctor then he got busy with work, so Talal took me instead. The doctor told me I’m 39 and that I have to get an injection to lower it, as for the asthma, yes asthma, I got kammam (the oxygen mask/inhaling machine, whatever it’s called) and the doctor sent me home with some antibiotics, yeah I also had a sour throat… I never got an asthma attack since maybe 8 years or more… anyway I go back home, do what I’m told… went to sleep, woke up the next morning (Thursday) and felt like I was burning! it was 11, no one was at home, so I call my mom… she comes rushing from work and takes me to the local clinic… The doctor tells me I reached 39.5, and that I wasn’t suppose to take the injection and the kammam together yesterday… they don’t get together well, apparently… so he orders me to go to the nurse and get an IV drip with some medicine he wrote and wait for 30 mnts… I was barely moving, keep in my mind, they attach the IV drip and 15 mnts later hell broke loose! it was so bad my mom thought I was dying… my skin blew up, my body froze and my tongue got very heavy… I couldn’t move… couldn’t talk… couldn’t nothing and was just able to move my feet… I can’t remember how long that took… the place was soooo cold and I started hitting the bed with my feet… They called the doctor and he ordered that they move me to Mubarak hospital… I can’t remember anything between that and finding myself in the ambulance on the way to Mubarak… it was freezing… and my mom was holding my hands all the time…

They take me in, my dad and brother were there, they took some x-rays, did some blood test and got another IV drip… they suspected swine flu, but it wasn’t… my temp stayed 39.5 and I was there for maybe 4 hours… it was so bad I couldn’t cough because every time I did it hurts :/

I tell you people… it was just bad… from a wheel chair to bed to wheel chair to bed… at the end of the day I got to 38 and they sent me home… 2 days of staying in bed and medication…

Then it was 2 days of fever, coughing AND hallucinations… I’m fine now… and able to type with more than one finger! just slight coughing here and there… but ashwa way way better…

Thank god my mom was there next to me or I would’ve gone crazy or something… I hallucinated a lot… my mom told me I had those since I was little… for example on Friday I woke up scared because I thought someone might steal my body parts and sell them… I couldn’t sleep for 5 hours! maybe my dreams got mixed up with my hallucinations or something… On Thursday night I couldn’t move because I was only in charge of my torso… my other body, like Voltron, was controlled by other pilots… and they refused to take me to drink water… I can’t remember on which day I tried sleeping without my head touching the pillow because I had to be careful not to squish the italian tomatoes that were being picked under my head and I had to move my head slowly… like really slowly… yeah… 5arabee6, mo? : - )

My brain was exhausted…

I was in the backseat of my uncle’s old GMC suburban on the Fahaheel’s Highway, my cousin was driving, can’t remember who was sitting in front, but I was in the back. Suddenly the sky is darkening, guess what? Alien attack!!

We were on the way to…

*stops writing because his food just arrived*

*36 minutes later…*

We we on our way to Sabah Al-Salem, where my uncle lives, so we had to take the Messial-Sabah Al-Salem bridge. Just as we saw the bridge, a robot that has a cubic body, probably 3 meters on each side and 4 long octopus-like arms (probably 10 meters each) fell from the sky on one of the cars at the traffic light on the bridge, I saw electricity and smoke coming out of it. 2 arms had the car in a grip, 2 on the floor. Then suddenly it jumped to the sky with the car, and it disappeared from sight. We were shocked and horrified in the car. What was going on? We had no idea, and we couldn’t move anywhere else because we were already on the bridge. I was thinking that this is the end of the world, then as we stopped and the traffic light strange birds started coming from the sky. They looked like something between a crow and a parrot. Like a black parrot with a giant beak. Those birds were like kamekaze pilots! They would falls from the sky on the top of the cars and break it with their beaks, leave a hole in the car then die. My cousin takes a left to head home very fast that the cars starts spinning, then head in the right direction again. One of those birds falls on one of our tires, my cousin stops the car and we run towards the building next to the Naif chicken. Groups of people stop their cars and start running towards us. Space ships start landing on the ground, they looked like those from the latest War of the Worlds film, and I hear like a voice over in a film someone saying “Operation Destruction! Operation Destruction!”

*Think he has nothing more to say*

*Saves this as a draft*

*opens it… it’s 5 days later*

Today was our 4th and last performance of “The Railway Children” … finally some time off and no more rehearsals for a few months… just the regular weekly classes…

*adds something to the post’s title*

A few weeks ago, I finished reading Projections 12, from the Projections series, currently reading Projections 10, and the last interview on book 12 was with French director Bruno Dumont, former philosophy professor, and something he said that got stuck in my head… he said…

“I studied philosophy because it demands an intellectual outlook on the world [...] But I soon discovered that philosophy was too subjective: it lacks heart, it’s over-intellectual, and I found that it made me cut myself off from the everyday”

To a certain extent, I do agree with this… specially the “over-intellectual” part… I’m not ditching the whole history of philosophy or anything… and it’s more interesting that such a statement come from a philosophy professor…

***

This guy does really good videos on youtube… it’s my latest “obsession”

if you like this, then you should watch his other ones… I’m a fan…

This is something really weird that happened to me… a very strange coincidence, if I may call it.

3 years ago, and after graduating from KU I went to the Shuwaikh campus to get my certificate. A few days before that I got Paul Simon’s latest CD titled “Surprise” from Virgin Megastore. I was very excited to get the CD because I’ve been waiting for it to be released here, I didn’t think it was worth it to order it from Amazon.com. Anyway, I played the CD a few times… so I wasn’t into it much yet… But, and I remember this very clear, as I went inside to the campus and was looking for a parking spot track 10 played, and I wasn’t familiar with the song’s name yet, and here’s what I heard Paul Simon sing:

Well I’ll just skip the boring parts chapters one, two, three and get to the place where you can read my face and my biography.

Here I am, I’m eleven months old, dangling from my daddy’s knee. There I go, it’s my graduation, I’m picking up a bogus degree.

It’s my graduation! I’m picking up a bogus degree! Really?

I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. It was what exactly what I was thinking! The song title was “That’s Me.”

I was thinking what to do with this BA? Everyone was telling me to either go into teaching, or work for a bank. I was thinking what did I learn during these 5 years at KU? mind you I spent 2 of them studying computer science, then switched my major to my minor back then which was English Literature. You know I didn’t finish reading any novel at KU? the only novel I read was The Dead Zone by Stephen King, and it wasn’t for any of the classes. I did read the short stories, the plays and all the poetry… but back then reading a novel was too much for me. I depended, alongside a lot of guys, on sparknotes.com and such websites. I never had to read any novel in class… which somehow I’m regretting now… maybe not regret, for it is a strong word!

That’s why after graduation, I started reading as much as I can. Before getting a job, I spent the 3 months after graduation living in Starbucks Mishref reading. And oh boy what a pleasure it was… and still is, I always carry in my backpack at least 2 books, ranging from short fiction, to novels to non-fiction books. Reading became a part of my life… and that’s not why I’m growing my beard! ok? : - p

I was overwhelmed by reading books such as The Complete Short Stories by Franz Kafka, The Complete Prose by Woody Allen and 1984 by George Orwell which started my obsession with dystopia, which I guess began with watching one of my favorite cartoons “3adnan wa Leena”, known outside as Future Boy Conan. There were other books and short stories collections that I didn’t like, not hate, just didn’t like. Well, let’s not offend any fans of Paulo Coelho or Judi Picoult out there.

These years I spent in college were the years that shaped the way I think today. How I see things. How I talk? How I I I I I I I I? It’s very interesting what college does to you. I cannot stop talking about these years and what happened and how? Though I’m not sure how, because some things just slipped into my subconscious and stayed there…

Another chunk from that Paul Simon song that I liked went like this

Well I never cared much for the money, and money never cared for me. I was more like a land-locked sailor, searching for the emerald sea. Just searching for the emerald sea, boys, searching for the sea.
Oh my God. First love opens like a flower. A black bear running through the forest light holds me in her sight and her power. But tricky skies, your eyes are true, the future is beauty and sorrow. Still, I wish that we could run away and live the life we used to. If just for tonight and tomorrow.

I’m sure I did change a lot through these years, but hey! I know what I know, I’ll sing what I said, we come and we go. That’s a thing that I keep in the back of my head ; - )