mhmatar

I've longed for a day when my writing would mirror myself, yet I continually find a difference between who I am and what I write. As someone who resists the status quo and detests mundanity, my dream has always been to create dynamic characters—a dream I believe every writer should share. There's a pervasive desire to be different, yet we often fail to achieve this. As writers, we must embrace uncertainty. How? By trying and experiencing new things. The failure to truly 'live'—to embrace life—can lead to writing that only reflects our narrow experiences, limiting our characters and stories.

Don't misunderstand; your writing should reflect you. In my case, it should reflect me. But, if we aim to produce original work consistently, we must be willing to lose ourselves in the process and let go. This means worrying less about jobs, retirement, bad influences, and more. Letting go allows us to live a life of giving and experiencing, rather than one consumed by worry. We start to live fully. We attract positivity, meet new people, and become fearless in rejection and trying new things daily or weekly. However, if we're confined to a sunless office, constantly typing emails, inspiration will elude us.

My characters and stories are birthed outside the office and home. They represent an alternative objective truth, born from walks, vacations, and memory-making. Without acquiring these memories, inspiration remains out of reach. If we fail to dream and embrace romance, we resign ourselves to a life of passively consuming news, believing it's all we can do.

Returning to the point, I'm unsure if I'm like my writing. In a way, I wish to see myself in my stories, offering something new each time—a 'what if' question that propels the narrative into realms of heaven or hell. My characters must always evolve; what's the point if they don't, mirroring my own stagnation? I hope to change for the better, but life doesn't always follow our desires. Health might decline, or financial or emotional difficulties may arise.

So, my advice is this: Live life fully. Don't fret if your characters or stories resemble you. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. Write the stories you feel compelled to write. Just be you

You can't piss me off.

Not a chance.

Practically a rolling ball of fury,

Now a cloud that you can never reach.

A tune you can't measure.

Try to piss me off, life.

A job, so much drama and back-stabbing.

I cannot be penetrated,

like a wall of steel.

You can't piss me off,

hopeless are your attempts.

magically I roam,

Like a bird to the grand sky.

Design my words with absolute wings.

Wings that never bend.

I break the cage of oppression.

I break the winds of sadness.

I run free, can you run like me?

I write words to piss off my oppressor.

I mute my ears and smile,

I grab the newspaper and blaze it with a lighter.

I play the beats of music,

there is nothing worth it

but a life lived with rebellion and wonder.

You can't piss me off,

will you try?

New York, 2023. Shades of light echo in my day. The bus stations are full and, seconds later, empty. A Palestinian scarf wraps around three boys' heads. It's odd but liberating, like the dew drops on the front seat of a window, Like folded paper with hidden notes of a secret agent. Odd findings are usually hard to comprehend. The rebel in me wishes to undo the newspapers. Undo technology? Undo superpowers' dominance? The ghosts of the city surround me, globally identifying me as a person out of time: Out of date. But I am only different because I have a black and white scarf, With bald hair and Ray-Ban sunglasses. I should fit the world trend of belonging and unbelonging. I can read and write. I’ve seen the Mona Lisa. I’ve seen Dalí’s work. I’ve been to MOMA and to Leipzig University’s library, built in 1405. Why do I feel out of time?

Berlin, 2019. A boy harasses another child on the train. Drunk. Says things he shouldn’t have said. A pregnant wife sits next to me: and all I could do is unleash my protective edge. Unleash my armor and sword. But a baby needs to be safe, I think. Must be safe, from fists and warplanes and pistols.

World, Now. Another gunshot is heard, and I still scribble on the paper, hoping that my words never finish. Or that my memory remains sharp because I always want to remember things. Two hundred years later, I want to be remembered. I could go trail running. Sit by the lake. Cry for a few minutes but then pick myself up, imagining a wooden desk in my home office overlooking a lake. The lake is not a pond, and the pond is not an ocean. All the water is musty, and I must walk back home. “Have a safe trip back home,” the hotel receptionist says. But I’d rather book an infinite stay at an infinite hotel. Some hotels where Rumi stayed, or in Tabriz. But am I from the East, belonging to the West? Or West belonging to East? Identity crashes at passport control, and I don’t know who I am. The passport machine asks me to go back to the back of the line. Is the status of a refugee always unidentified? Even if he gets an American Passport or an EU stamp? The world belongs to who? Millions of newborn refugees and so many more created homeless, like the vanished stars seeking a place. Geocentricity proven false. Refugees roaming around the Earth in infinite loops, Does the United Nations have a name for this? Refugee what?

Any city, in the future. Cities buzzing with life of all kinds of people. It's beautiful. Wooden houses by the lakeshore and happy retirement worry us until we get there. But we forgot to live. I don’t want to forget to live. I am still seeking a permanent place. A permanent perfume. Infinite flower gardens that shape the meaning of spirit. We confused the soul with spirit. We confused home and prison. Civilizations with error. But the child in me wants to walk permanently to nowhere. No destination justifies being homesick. I will reside wherever I am. I will find who I am. I will write (that’s who I am!) Run free? Death is a sudden lightning strike that will sweep us all. But I want to live happier; I know happiness is not the ultimate goal. And I’ll not be any happier. I’ll just pretend that food and shelter are fine. Just fine, maybe that will make me grateful, smiling at the fact that the mirror didn’t shatter yet.

Another city, time flies, doesn’t it? Is it worth it? The radio plays some music of Bach. I soak myself in the melody. I soak myself in the sun. Ocean waves and meditation. I’m a happy child at the moment. I never sought a happy ending. That’s not the goal.

Some other city, two thousand years later. No echoes or trace of anything. Anything is everything, and everything is nothing. Silence is all that prevails. We could have failed or succeeded. Won or got defeated. It really doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense as we’re heading towards the end.

The end is near. There’s always a beginning somewhere, a new start. A fresh start in some city, somewhere.

The sky is sad today.

Did we feel the warmth of goodbye yet?

I bet, life is worth it.

Time’s spent.

We get sick: pretend.

We make a life: income.

I said: life is worth living.

Extravagant memories and a cafe at night.

Eyes by the ocean and loud music.

But we want to have a conversation, 

And stop pretending.

We want to look at the sky and see it happily.

The war stops us and the news.

We’re rebels swimming against the stream.

We refuse to die. 

High: what’s fate and what’s destiny?

Low: What’s the soul and the spirit?

The airplane awaits us and the crowded airport.

The sky is not sad today,

It's a sunny day.

We will tan by the beach and soak in the sun.

There’s a life worth living.

It's by the ocean side, closer and closer to the perfect dream.

Darkness turns into day.

Music picks up again.

We speed on the highway and turn back time:

Time is of the essence. 

We will live now.

Beauty lies in the element of surprise. Leaving no room for surprise in life can lead to monotony. Any element that is bound to certainty will eventually lose its allure, for true beauty resides in uncertainty. Beauty can be measured by the number of unplanned things. Imagine if I knew it all? Predicted everything? How dull life would be. Instead, I hope that when I put words on a page and walk down the street, I'll stumble upon something new. The taste of coffee will become a fresh experience, and life will be richer because it's different. If I knew everything all the time, where would the beauty lie? Beauty is hidden in the unknown.

Cotton clouds. 

I remember when I first took the train to you.

You folded me like a piece of paper,

And scribbled.

I giggled. It was heaven.

I remember in the car we drove.

A dove flew over us,

As we were speeding.

Let’s run away from this place.

Find a place where we can be.

Shape our future like cotton clouds,

Control the hues of the colored sky.

Control nothing. 

Mind our business.

Mind ourselves.

Mind our words.

Our minds simple,

Like paper kites.

Our words a glimpse of the future lost.

Present revived.

Cotton clouds. I say hello to now:

The cotton clouds shape into dreams.

Shape into you. 

Into us. 

A lot of people will put you under the microscope, analyze, and dissect you into pieces. Don’t fall prey to being a guinea pig; make your own experiments.

10 x your charm 

Your light

100 x your hope 

Your presence 

1000 x your true you 

The light shines in your universe 

Maybe you know of love at first sight but you don’t know of love at last sight. The love that begins at day last and ends at day one. It’s always day one in love. This is not a love you’ve seen. This is a love that despite the highs and lows always begins at day one, like it’s always day one on earth, making love Alzheimer’s impossible. How can you forget love if it’s the one that every minute starts…at first sight. 

What makes love cold with time is life. Life comes in the way and makes us fall out love, but love is everywhere. It’s omnipresent. But it’s also not there. We remember it in our heart break and in the songs and memories and rain. We remember it as bitter sweet but not as chocolate and peanut butter. We remember it through the radio and our own voice but never as imminent: until we realize that it’s infinite not finite. That it never started to even finish, it’s always been there but we didn’t see it. 

This is my love words to her. Where-ever she might be. I just wish that one day she would read them. Because it’s always been day one with her. She was Mother Earth and everything, the love I’ve always had, the one I never had.  Love, this is for you. 

Her name was silhouette like sunset. On the day we met, she was swinging her white dress flying and her golden hairs touching the sky. I wished I could say it was love at first sight, life at first sight? She didn’t see me but I saw her in me like the magic hour. Who is ever to be believe that we go on a rollercoaster together and travel the world. Who’d ever imagine that our hearts will remain on fire forever even after we’d part ways? 

How can you trust an intellectual who is immoral? Satan was smart, but his egoism led him to refuse to coexist with another creature. “You made him from clay, and I am made of fire,” he said, claiming to be superior. To commit evil is an act of intelligence, but it's also an act of moral stupidity. Viewing others as inferior based on any criteria is a grave mistake. How can you have faith in a snobbish intellectual who might rule the world but refuses to consider moral compromise? I'd rather be a moral fool than a cunning devil.