We should never regret anything we did because at one time it was exactly what we wanted.

I’m eating a blue berry muffin. Softly. Slowly. Savouring every bite, feeling every sprinkle in my mouth because it might be my last delight.

Also, Muffin was the name of the fluffiest rabbit I’ve ever seen and il va sans dire, the cutest. But he had a tragic “the end”. Left by its owner, he was eaten by a wild cat.

Left by the same owner, I’m being eaten by time. I just hope my “the end” won’t be tragic as Muffin's or as a muffin.

I think we should all carry with us a list of what we want to do before we die. And make it longer if we are enough lucky to live our life. Have a look at the creative, before I die project.

Some of us think they are invincible, unbreakable and immortal. They live like tomorrow will always be there for them. And they forgot that our common enemy isn’t Satan, some kind of Dracula, the devil, or death, but TIME.  I’m saying it again, our real rival is Time. But looking now through the veil of time and the fragility of human nature, it’s also possible that only feelings are immortal.

Time can beat anyone of us, with a violent stroke, unexpectedly, swiftly. It will grab you by the throat and bring you down, in a grave.

Rest not! Life is sweeping by; go dare before you die.

Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I’m staring at a shirt I was given by an old friend, it contains a motivational quote saying “Behind you are the challenges you have met. Before you lies new possibilities. And today you choose the direction of your life” but I never thought about this from the perspective of someone who can’t tell how much time he has got.

We were like the moon, part of us were always hidden away, so lonely, so full of imperfections. But just like the moon, we shinned in times of darkness. She had so many book boyfriends. She was practically a book slut. Reality and fiction of books was only one for her.

She had always been a burning doorway and still, I was willing to walk through the fire in order to stop gambling on time, since sadness will shorten my time. I’ve walked through the wreckage of enough broken promises to know that sometimes you need to feel hurt, to feel anything at all. So bring it on, bring me into tiny pieces.

Old friend, I can hear the scream of words you are keeping trapped behind your teeth. And I fear we will stay just acquaintances. Because I can’t get you to speak. So I’ll try to make you laugh for when a smile parts your lips. All your words about desire may get free and start to slip.

I wanted to make you an offer you can't refuse. But I could only remember how fed up of Michael Corleone, Kay calmly said “at this moment I feel no love for you at all. I never thought that would ever happen, but it has”. But even after 10 years she knew that she was lying to herself and those unique words slipped from her mouth with the desperate will to trap them back behind her teeth.

However, her heart was like a romantic bundle of old love letters, worn paper, ink faded, dulled with each loving read, nothing as touchingly beautiful.

Do you remember us walking in the night in Cambridge Kings College? It made me realize that sometime the most ordinary things could be made extraordinary, simply by doing them with the right person.

What I’ve been doing for the past few months? Conscious Uncoldplaying. Because I was told that life is too short and you should never lose yourself while trying to hold on to someone who doesn’t care about losing you. And honestly speaking, Coldplay swap your happy mood to some kind of unhealthy needed sadness.

"Whatchya thinking?" a voice asks from behind me in clear, almost musical English. Turning around I find my owner. She is wearing her Jane Austen dress, a dress made of moonlight and shadow. She is pale, frightened for what’s happening to me. But I find comfort in knowing that she will have seen me before I leave this era for another period of time more suitable for my principles.

I'm laptoping you from a sacred place, in fact some special place where we learn to unfold a private quilt of our own imagination. I’m in a secluded corner of a quiet garden which leads to a forest. I’m imagining this jungle from my home window.

Below the window, flagstones leading to a fountain have tiny cracks where winter’s mosses grow miniature, moist forest marching along their tiny canyons of opportunity. Out of this window, everything suddenly seems luscious and intriguing. But she’s not there and voices are telling me, it’s for my own good.

I lost all dignity by allowing her and her friends to insult me. I was a laughing stock, a trophy you can wave, a ripped book without any value ending up in a trash, or a grave. Something enemies deserve or human rights criminal because they have nothing human left when they commit heartless homicide.

Drowned walls that couldn’t survive the swell of my oceans rest in ruins while my fins propel me through adventures yet to be explored. I am the seeker of new and admirer of different. Will you follow me to this new era?

I fell for your thoughts, the way that you said my name, how you used to make me speechless. I ache to be inside your mind, hear the whisper of every thought, get lost in your deepest desires. I want you lying down next to me caressing the soft curves of my face, running your fingers down my back. And thoughts of smeared lips, carved bites, moans, play like a movie in your mind. It was in the press of your lips and the touch of your tongue where the poem of love and other mischief was written.

We should never regret anything we did because at one time it was exactly what we wanted.

I’m paying attention at the colour of my tears, they no longer are transparent, they are RED. I was told that red is charged with emotion and promise. Red speaks for heroism and bravery, honesty and patriotism. Red is also the red badge of courage, redcoats, the thin red line, red sails in the sunset, and a jolly red nose. My love may be like a red red rose, my sins, as well as my politics, may be red. Red is also red tape, red ink, red wine, red lips, red blood, red earth, red barons, red barns, red hearts, red thoughts and red herrings. Red means anger, fire, storms of the heart, love and war. Even women can be scarlet. More than any other colour, red is loaded for action.

And there's a music I want to listen continuously with my sister, because she was the only one who could find it for me.

When you and I were forever wild

The crazy days, the city lights

The way you'd play with me like a child

Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful

Will you still love me when I got nothing but my aching soul

I know you will, I know you will

I know that you will

Will you still love me when I'm no longer beautiful

From The Great Gatsby movie – Young and Beautiful by Lana Del Rey

--

John Green’s book “The Fault in our Stars” is being adapted into movie, and it talks about my condition without knowing it, except that I have no one to love anymore. So like the fault in our stars, I’m also a grenade. One day I will blow up and makes lots of people suffer. Who are those people? My family. They know that you don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world but you do have a say on who hurts you, so they agreed to suffer because of that.

I’m not a Nicholas Sparks character that will read you a Notebook or letters written to a Dear John

Nobody is interested in your sorrow, unless you can make a joke or a poem out of it. Funnily, I don't seem to be angry, at least not yet. Funnily too, things run on quite nicely and evenly around here as long as I'm busy.

But bear in mind that love is not blind, it is retarded. What about lust? An optical illusion? OMG! I think I’m the one lost there. I don’t make sense anymore. Have you ever driven home and then wondered how you got there? That’s how much I’m lost. Suitcase of regrets. Briefcase of hope. That’s what I’m carrying around.

Recently one of my friend told me that my crime was that I loved a woman with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here I stand. Heart like a four-poster bed. Heart like a canvas. Heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street. Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else. Perhaps you were right Mr. Faulkner.

Time is short, and passing, in this world that’s all we’ve got. I’m twenty-six and I’m not, she knows, I hope, trying to pass on to her, bearded, distant, the blame for the shape my life has taken, denying responsibility.

That day when she offered me to come to her place, I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane. John Green – Looking for Alaska.

Tiffany’s ring was waiting in my bag. I was told they were the best for engagement. And I waited for her like a fool at the train station on my birthday. A birthday which has for guest solitude, anger and strangers. And I was left with no explanation and a ring waiting to fit in a finger… the best fingers she would say. But not good enough to build bridges. The silence wasn’t so bad, till I look at my hands and feel sad. Because the spaces between my fingers are right where yours fit perfectly.

I’m not a Nicholas Sparks character that will read you a Notebook or letters written to a Dear John, so don’t expect me to do such sacrifices again when you can’t even do a quarter of what I did. And I take comfort in knowing that even when things are being taken away from us, a new world waits, to be discovered, in an upside-down place.

Everything seems so far away at glance and I guess because it is and we sit trying to figure out what fences we have to jump, tunnels we have to crawl through and all the crazy shit we think would get us there as soon as possible. We are all headed there, somewhere out there, and though some never make it, it’s meant for us to get there. And maybe the long road is the best road. If we fly there by shortcut what was meant for us to have may not be ready or we may not be… after all, what’s made in the oven always taste better than what’s made in the microwave.

I can still bet that she would have laughed to my lamest jokes like: why can’t a bicycle stand on its own? Because it’s two-tired. Or when I stupidly say that he’s not Coldplay. He can’t FixYou. Facepalm. But she won’t laugh anymore because her grumpy side overtook her double faced sense of humor.

But now I guess some what ifs are happier than ever afters. So I hold on to your unique promise and I’m not saying you have to meet me. I’m just wishing one day you will. It's called being nice, ever heard of it? Don’t worry, I’ll keep carrying out a random act of kindness with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for me. And you will.

So today, I vowed that no matter how corrupted or commercial I was to become as a lawyer, I would always put the simple love of humanity before all. And I’m tempted to ask if He can give me eyes that see the best in people, a heart that forgives the worst, a mind that forgets the bad, and a soul that never loses faith.

I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye. Yann Martel – Life of Pi. And you will regret the chance you didn’t take. So the tragedy of life is clearly not death but what we let die inside of us while we live.

And I would like her to always remember how heartbreaking was the end of December.

By the beginning of October.

PS: For the past few months, I was often asked indirect questions such as “You are not writing anymore, are you?” and I was fed up of answering to curiosity and gossips. Actually too many issues were drowning me. So I had to take a break from writing. And I’m sorry for it because I know that once you start writing, you should not stop. So here I am.

Everything in life is temporary. So if things are going good, enjoy it because it won’t last forever. And if things are going bad, don’t worry. It can’t last forever either.

To become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine, that is a curse. A pundit shrap. Now we don’t have these passionate disagreements anymore, where we both had the same problem, both thinking we are always right. The monster-reader she was, "stuck a bookmark in my heart and walked away". We reached that milestone where I have to traverse a desert for days and days while holding a glass of water, and though I may die of thirst, I shall not drink. Because you were that glass.

So she did far worse than killing me, she hurt me, and she intends to go on, hurting me. She left me as I left her, as she left them. Marooned for all eternity at the centre of a dead planet. Buried alive. But of all the souls I met on my journey, she was certainly the most human. She was seductive, endlessly fascinating, but eternally elusive. I could imagine marrying someone like her because she wanted someone who will not leave, no matter hard it is to be with her, and I promised to follow her into the dark. While she would have been my priority, I would have been a mere option.

We should have known that forever is a long long time. And time has a way of changing things.

For the past few weeks, there was no phone, no internet. Just me, a carpet and a direction. Now I’ve been staring at my phone waiting for its light to shine because she was that light. I smiled to myself, content. But it was only football scores notifications and David Beckham retirement. Facepalm.

I’m writing from my orchard where branches sway and creak with yawns of awakening. Slowly, petals begin to fall. Until the air is full of petals sighing. Soon my kitchen garden has a thousand petals scattered over it, contrasting the brown soil with soft reds. Like rose petals at a wedding. Our. An occasional wayward raindrop slid off a branch and struck me in the face and I felt ridiculously happy. Tears came. It’s not sadness, it’s a simple breakdown, because tears do not show how weak you are, they silently display a feeling that you have been strong for too long and today I’m tired of fighting. Car je croyais assumer cette blessure à jamais ouverte.

But she was my light, my water. 
Someone bright, not to alter.

In the old backyard, I can see rocks surrounding a small tree. Each one is in the form of an independent brick or a ball, and yet they nestle and cuddle with one another for support. Each has an upper side that reflects the sky and a mysterious dark underside. These rocks have been partners for so long they have grown toward one another and are blended by their mutual mosses and lichens. So I end up curled in a foetal position in the middle of my garden.

Light, water, mosses, lichens. Sounds like ingredients for a one syllable word heavy as a heartbeat or for a sort of traffic accident of the heart - Diane Ackerman. Or for the L word pour une éponge jamais essorée. Mon coeur. (comme si j’en avais un).

For long, I tried playing up the melodramatic aspect because it’s easier if you make the end of your relation funny, put on a mask, and act like it’s not bothering you. But a total fiasco. Today, I can just go to her grave and whisper that “mieux vaut mourir incompris que passer sa vie à s’expliquer”- William Shakespeare.

Still I wish we could talk. But I know what she did was for our good. Burning the bridges because Melchizedek must have preached her that ce que l'homme ne veut pas apprendre par la sagesse, il l'apprendra par la souffrance. So sit still and look around, “cause if one day you wake up and find that you're missing me. And your heart starts to wonder where on this earth I could be. Thinking maybe you'll come back here to the place that we'd meet. You'll see me waiting for you on the corner of the street. So I'm not moving, I'm not” moving on. Even if she won’t be where we met or will never come to Paris.

Pour que tout soit consommé, pour que je me sente moins seul, il me reste à souhaiter qu’il y ait beaucoup de spectateurs le jour de ma mort et qu’ils m’accueillent avec de belles paroles mais surtout qu’ils me pardonnent et qu’elle me pardonne.

How am I supposed to smile when you refuse to?
How am I to live when you have ceased to?
- ZT

A Love Witness

When Dad’s shoulders were the highest place on earth and Mom was your hero…

Out of the corner of my eyes, I can see a large black old suitcase wide open waiting for me to fill stuff in it, or maybe waiting for me to fit in it. So I tried it, I folded my knees and stayed in it for a while. I felt like I was traveling back to my childhood where my Dad’s shoulders were the highest place on earth and my Mom was my hero… But I think it’s time for me to come out from that suitcase and leave behind me memories I want to burry forever. Of course, not such sweet memories. But of her…

A new destination to visit is calling me. Expectations are filling my head with good intentions. But wasn’t I supposed to live frugally on surprise and expect nothing? I’m not sure anymore.

Surprising, shocking and drastic changes are expected. I wish to enjoy the travel like Malcolm X did for its first time, feel the freedom, the peace and the universality of the mankind. To be one with all nations, tough it’s better to be part of all nations puisqu’il est commun de faire partie d’une nation, mais avoir l’opportunité d’embrasser plusieurs nations, là il s’agit d’un luxe que très peu de gens peuvent s’offrir.

It will be a new start, a new commencement, a new beginning… a resurrection. All my sins will be cleaned. I’m given the opportunity to restart everything, to rewrite every chapter of my story, or at least correct all the erasures. Or rather than turning the page, I can just throw the book away.

Then I’m asking myself what if I want to roam the world and learn of all of its people… but end up not belonging to any of them? What does that make me? A crazy guy who need psychiatric treatment? No, because most of the revolutionaries were always standing alone for their rights at the beginning, and then people would have joined them, so thank you Nelson Mandela, thank you Martin Luther King, thank you Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and thank you Albert Einstein. I’ll stay one of the craziest human being on earth and I’ll gather all nations around cultural richness; though diversity is a cultural asset.

I often cry on matters that go beyond xenophobia, racism, homophobia, terrorism… I cry on poverty and how people ignore it, how people give more importance to a mere problem of a society running after its own happiness. How can you be happy while your neighbor is starving to death, and you just slam the door on his face?

I was 4 when I was told that something like poverty exists, without really understanding why it exists. On a random day, my mom and I went at a charity to give a big bag of rice of 10 kilos for kids living in Somalia; I still remember the smile of the volunteer who leant at me to thank me while putting its hand on my head without realizing what I did. I felt like I met a Somali kid and made a new friend, I felt like its happiness was my happiness, I felt like what was mine, was ours, I felt like there was no boundary, no nationality issue, no religious concern, no xenophobia… a simple help. Is that what you call humanity? Putting aside everything and share whatever you can, a smile, a hand shake, a hug, a talk, a meal… whatever you can.

I've tried frustration, anger, disappointment, tiredness and misery, and they all work to a degree, but joyous satisfaction and a sense of élan work best to stabilize your happiness compass. So here is seven steps to happiness: think less, feel more; talk less, listen more; judge less, accept more; watch less, do more; complain less, appreciate more; fear less, love more.

And I will leave you with a poem I once shared.

When clouds of pain loom in the sky,

When a shadow of sadness flickers by,

When a tear finds its way to the eye,

When fear keeps the loneliness alive,

I try and console my heart.

Why is that you cry? I ask

This is only what life imparts

These deeps silence within

Have been handed out to all by time

Everyone’s story has a little sorrow

Everyone’s share has a little sunshine

No need for water in your eyes

Every moment can be a new life

Why do you let them pass you by

Oh heart why is that you cry?

- Javed Akhtar



Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for - Hammerskjold

It is those days where you want to stay numb, unconscious in your bed waiting for a mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from a stranger, un bouche à bouche. I’m laying in bed in the opposite side like someone left dead, a dead body shot which fell down on the bed. I started to write this post half asleep with all my clothes on after a boring party where I got the syndrome of how-to-feel-alone-in-a-crowded-place.

I’m still thinking of us, I can’t get over her, I can’t move on. MOVE ON? How can you use such small words for such a big step in your life? I can still remember how the wind blew hard on our destiny and we swirled around each other like snowflakes refusing to melt on the floor. But at the end she melts and I’m still swirling around despair this time not love anymore. I did something so wrong to her that I could not have argued that it was unfair had I been required to pay with my own life. So I chose isolation for myself, a timeless place to pay for the time she wasted for me.

She must be hating herself for knowing that I’m not worth so much sadness, that such an outlay of mental energy is entirely wasted and useless. But she feels it anyway, and she cries in the shower or into her pillow or anytime something reminds her of me.

I can imagine her walking by shops and offices on the sidewalk, going somewhere or maybe not going anywhere in particular, feeling like the music in her ears is a soundtrack to her sadness. This song makes her think of me, that song comes close to capturing how lonely she is without me. She isolates herself physically because she feels so isolated inside, surrounded by people, she is still alone, because she had been abandoned by that one person who made her feel somehow less alone. And the syndrome of how-to-feel-alone-in-a-crowded-place made a new victim.

I want to scream out loud “leave me alone” to thoughts, memories, friends, family, acquaintance and you… but it’s useless. The pros and cons of isolation started to blow up in my skull, in my cranium, in my crâne. I want to restart my life, éloigné du monde et du bruit, away from faces I don’t want to see again, from places I want to forget, to run away from sweet memories I once loved.

From an unconventional point of view, being alone is a very beautiful thing as long as nobody is obstructing your vision, a complete panoramic vision. Contemplate the beauty of nature, listen to birds, learn from animals, observe the flow of water near a river, responding to every mood from tranquillity to turbulence, and meditate, meditate and meditate. Donate yourself to this lively world, where anything can happen, including lots of moment of chance of estrangement, excitement, or surprise.

Most of the time, we fill our days with ongoing connection, denying ourselves time to think and dream, we turn off our brains,  giving us less chance for flights of fancy or for brain light bulbs to turn on. Tout notre mal vient de ne pouvoir être seuls : de là le jeu, le luxe, la dissipation, le vin, les femmes, l’ignorance, la médisance, l’envie, l’oubli de soi-même et de Dieu – Jean de la Bruyère

However, as human, we may often be solitary in our world, in our own bubble, but we need not be solitary beings. Isolation is important in order to re-set the compass of our souls, but only partial and limited-time isolation. Because those who make the choice of full isolation estrange themselves from one of the great gifts that of also seeing our marvellous biosphere through the eyes of others. Interconnection and empathic knowledge of our human family are the high-flying flags of civilization. And we must admit that it cut off the opportunity for normal, human social interactions. I can’t deny that isolation in the nature allows us to think freely but it reduces our chances for social pleasantries or small talk with strangers. 

And honestly, on the few occasions when I've tried total isolation, I've grovelled my way back to the company of others because I always recall what Jack Nicholson once said about the perks of staying alone for too long, it gives him inspiration to write poems about suicide, and strangely it made me laugh. So don’t go for a long-term isolation because it will only lead you to a slow descent into madness, not so slow for some person. Quoique nécessaire, la solitude demeure mortelle lorsqu’elle est trop longue.

Further, there are principles, laws that I apply to myself. They're not like the law of gravity, which pretty well guarantees an apple will fall on the head of a Newton who sits under it, but following them, bring a balance in my life and isolation can be an option but not the best one. So bye bye isolation. I’ll be okay. Just not today.

There are worse things than

Being alone

But it often takes decades

To realize this

And most often

When you do

It’s too late

And there’s nothing worse

Than

Too late. 

- Charles Bukowski