Tag Archives: writing

Release (a short story)

05 Saturday Sep 2026

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To…me,

I am writing to you because when tomorrow comes, you will be a different man, and this writing will be the only record of your thinking before it all happened. I hope that by some chance, though admittedly small, you may read this and remember…

Yes, I did commit murder. In fact, I took the life of not just one other creature, but several, and despite what you may be thinking, I believe it was necessary. And justified.

Let me first explain to ease you into it. Before the act, I felt detached from life and all my surroundings, as if someone had put me behind glass doors while the world hurried along on the other side. In nature I did not feel that sense of wonder and of beauty that was central to me. Birds no longer sang but just mouthed decibels, and the sun – you know how much I, I mean we, love the sun -no longer looked happy, but just something arcing its away down to darkness, over and over again every day. For a very long time I agreed with what the doctors said: “take this pill for a bad case of anhedonia, we’ve seen this many times so don’t worry”. But it got worse and physicians had no answers. My friends fell away on by one till I was alone.

On the evening of January 8, 2067, the trajectory of my misgivings took a radical turn because of a completely coincidental thought. I happened to be in one of my very rare better moods that evening with my mind thinking my situation. I remembered part of a very old documentary about research done back in the mid-late nineteen century in the Congo, about chimps hunting other chimps. Walking in single file very quietly, they wound their way through the dense forest with their big dark eyes tracking the canopy, stopping every now to assess new sounds.  Then something unmistakably familiar breaks the silence, sending them into a frenzied rush after what ever was making that sound. A few minutes later the hunted, a monkey, was on the ground being torn apart into pieces and eaten. The narrator had said the hunt was not for food, for their main diet, fruit and nuts and termites was plentiful. There was something deeper here. It was about the hunt and it was about connecting with each other through the hunt. Running the scene in my mind, the thought hit me: what if we had a deep rooted instinct to hunt, to kill, and not fulfilling this drive made us unhappy? What if, what if, what if…..my unhappiness what due to an unfulfilled instinct?

I stood up from our wobbly couch so quickly I almost fell. A rush of excitement came over me for the first time in months.  

Then I went out, found three dogs…. killed them. I did it because something deep within stirred me to this fateful act. I did it because I was depressed so much I had to do something. I did it because my ancestors did it. I did it because it was actually normal to it, and ultimately necessary.

I sit here now waiting for prescribed treatment passed on by the judge yesterday to banish away the neurons responsible for these heinous murders. I am writing to you so will read it after you wake up. Remember, please. Don’t let them rob you of a natural instinct under the banner of civilization. You are meant to be part of the circle of life. to hunt, to form bonds with your fellow men in the hunt, to connect viscerally to your own flesh and blood by taking away that of another life. Only then will you find your roots. Only then, will you be free.

yours truly,

Me

A walk in the graveyard

20 Thursday Aug 2026

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Took a random walk through a grave yard today. I’ve avoided them all my life because of superstitious habits and horror movies I grew up with. To my surprise, felt it to be a very spiritual experience, and strangely, felt right at home or with someone familiar like grandparents or old people I’ve known for a very long time.

I walked up and down, and saw small tombstones half sunk into the ground, and saw giant ones twice my size. I stood there and wondered who these people were that one deserved a small stone and the other a large one. Also looked down beneath the stones, down below to where the bones lie and wondered what was left of them. Both once solid, one gone the other here. But even the tombstones had worn out over decades by the faithful wind and rain. The names that were once crisply etched on slabs of marble now barely readable.

I walked over to an old one more than a hundred years old, with no markings visible, and placed a hand on the smooth hard stone. I wondered who they were and what was their life like. Like me they had walked and talked once, and were important to someone. They had a story and now lie alone as a collection of bones severed forever from a universe of thoughts, memories and meaning.

There is something grounding and humbling walking amongst the dead. It made me think of my own grave, what would be written on it, and who will come to visit after a year, after ten, after a hundred. I also thought of how many graves no longer mean anything to

I was wondering why I felt at home here, peaceful and settled. Maybe because there is more truth here than out there. There is stuff here that I understand: bones, stones, and earth. There are no minds here full of gods and unicorns and capitalism and communism and wars and pride and careers and money and Instagram. Just bones and stones that ultimately fade away into the earth…

Dreaming of a better world

09 Thursday Jul 2026

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Let’s explore new worlds together. Where should we stop first? Dry Mars or cold Pluto? Or burning Alpha Centauri? None. I am interested in dreams rather than in the real. The real, while fascinating, is nothing more than a very complex though ingenious articulation of the periodic table. And on that table and the laws that dictate their mixing, I do not see a heart. And I do not see a conscience. I do not see a law that says: though must not kill. And this is why nature is not very interesting to me. On the other hand, dreams and its friend the metaphysical is where the principles we hold dear and aspire to live by, live.

I choose ‘though shall not kill’ over E = MC2 any day.

I see sparks of this dream in life, where love, sacrifice, and principles evolved to serve evolutionary interests. It’s the universe accidentally arriving at the ideal sideways, and for self serving interests that are conditional on survival: morality if it suits my survival. This is where we are at today. We have a dreamy metaphysical world where the greatest inventions ever to grace the universe exist. They reach out from that world into ours, and make themselves manifest on paper, in court rooms, in discussions, in our churches, mosques. It shows up in our primordial but heroic efforts to treat animals humanely and better yet, refuse to eat them. It shows up when a good man stops another man from raping a woman. It shows up when a people on the far side of the globe minding their own business rise up in protest for a people on the other side of the globe being slaughtered. But given how often and how quickly these fizzle away, and intended outcomes thwarted, it shows how poorly embedded these dreams are in the our minds, and ultimately in the universe. They are not stable, definition of dreams.

This is why I now believe that greatest achievement of mankind is not science, technology, medicine or the wheel, but morality and follows the right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness applied equally and fairly to all tribes. AI, travelling to the stars, a new physics, immortality, all look pale if we can’t stop humanity from slaughtering each other. As long as there exists on one side of the globe wasted food when on the other side a small bloated thing of skin and bones is crying for a morsel of bread, we have achieved nothing.

In this dream world, there is a special place with a special dream that I have. It is the most dreamy of dreams. What if we advance enough technologically so we can manipulate the universe and the laws of physics with such godly powers that we can create new worlds and matching our imagination. If that were to happen, the first and most important objective is to integrate moral principles into the universe, put them under a lock, and throw away the key. Make a universe in which ‘though shall not kill or harm’, and ‘do on to others as you would like them to do to you’ are as real as as E=MC2.

Now that is a world worth living in.

Trees of the book

21 Sunday Jun 2026

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There used to be fifty olive trees here, fifty fig trees, and fifty pomegranate trees, and we used to make a delicious paste of all three that when you ate it the world suddenly had meaning. No matter how bad things got, mmmm, that olivy, pomegranaty and figgy flavor came to the rescue!

Then they came with their bulldozers and drove through them. They resisted, but wood is no match for steel. I suppose one might say from dust life came, and to dust they return one day. It’s part of the nature of war. But there is something different about bulldozing olive trees. They represent a special place in the history of man. These are what I call trees of the book, like the people of the book which is how Jews are referred to in the Quran. These trees stand on the land of Abraham and the prophets, maybe even have roots on the very spots where they walked. And they can trace back their lineage to the beginnings of man when they first settled the fertile crescent. They, along with the mountains, bear silent witness to the first stories of the written word, of art, philosophy, of music, of religion. On a personal angle, I see them as a kind of umbilical cord connecting me, man, back to that ancient time — a continuous spiritual feed nurturing man’s soul.

They came in the night, they came in the day, they came with tanks and bulldozers. They looked right at the trees with cold eyes, and calmly, purposefully, and with a smile, drove through them.

How could you, people of the book, do this to the trees of the book?

I could have shared my delicious paste with you gladly. In fact, there were five jars in the cupboard in the kitchen of the home you also bulldozed. I would have been happy to eat with you under the olive trees, feeling the cool southern Lebanese breeze on our faces while drinking tea. I could have.

What have you gained, people of the book? What will you do with the land you cleared? Is Yahweh happy with fifty fewer olive trees?

Walls of Thought

18 Thursday Jun 2026

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Walls of thought, every morning, afternoon, evening, all day–a ring of immaterial things fencing me inside my skull though I am free to walk outside. Family, bosses, money, relationships. I tracked all my thoughts the other day, same ones pop up in the morning with my coffee, and same ones in the evening before bed, same ones in between. What I have come to realize is we spend most of our days hopping onto and off very few thematic thoughts. Maybe three or four. And that is when I thought, why? What other thoughts could I have? What if I had a whole new set of thoughts in the morning, and the evening? What is beyond these walls of thought? I tried peering over the wall, under it, around it. I tried.

How is it so that these thoughts never change, defying physics? The world around me moves outwards and inwards, expanding, shrinking, deteriorating. Physics is doing its thing still. But god damn, like a giant mountain thy stands still unwilling to move like a loyal dog till death does us apart. Sometimes they are like a silent witness in the background, sometimes right in my face, sometimes quiet but present, and sometimes screaming at me like an angry punk band.

I have flown to far away places. I have meditated long hours. I have prayed and cried. Made friends and lost them. Seen wars begin and end. But darn these thoughts, they are still there. Do they not get tired? Run out of energy? Are they not mortal?

Black turns to grey as my autumn arrives. Deep lines etch themselves on my face along what used to be plump wetlands, and joints creak and crack under the slightest pressure. I can’t even see the face of my lover well, and yet, they, thoughts, like a cock show up everyone morning, crowing. I see, hear, feel them better than my flesh.

I imagined myself a mental mechanic the other day, a career I invented just for them. A dismantler of thought. I tried to undo them from the inside out by examining meditatively — looking intensely, calmly, passively, distantly, turning them around this way and that. I thought a reductionist approach could work. It didn’t.

So I give in. I will give you my time, lie with you, stand and walk and live with you. All I ask is you, now and then, let me peek beyond your walls at other thoughts. Let me see what’s beyond evern for a minute. The rest of my time is yours.

Trees

16 Tuesday Jun 2026

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Trees, ultimate mothers, they cast their green nets at the sun all day toiling, to harvest every drop of light, and with a secret hidden gentleness carry it like a child, one photon at at time, one electron at time, down rivers of physics to make sweets for you and me.

There there, always there, all day while we rove around our world killing, living, loving, hating, cutting them down, raising them up.

There there, always there, witnesses to armies coming and going, to sun and moon, to wind and rain. No legs to walk on, eyes to see, no ears to hear, just hands reaching out for light as if in prayer.

Sometimes I feel like they want to run away, at odds with their roots dug in, deep, branched, strong. They pull up, roots pull down. Where do they want to go? Away, away from something as if? Moving upwards into the heavens, moving downwards into the underworld, one side a lover of light, the other of darkness, One side an extrovert, the other an introvert.

Trees, embodiment of patience and resilience, attenders of their own funeral every year. The winters come harsh and murderous bullying them into nakedness and solitude. Naked are their branches, dead their children. But the memory is there, I can see them holding on to the ghosts of leaves around your branches not letting go. Through snow they hold on, along with their brethren and sisters.

There, there, waiting, until.

Oh the joy they show when spring finally arrives. How bright green supple leaves spring forth eagerly from awakening branches, ready to make sweets again. Nature welcomes and celebrates them with a well rehearsed play of frolicking butterflies, singing birds, buzzing bees, and gleeful hearts.

Trees, there there, always there.

It

16 Tuesday Jun 2026

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It, is something I feel but don’t see. It, is always with me everywhere I go, sitting right there on and in my chest like it owns me. It is the push to get me up to make tea, and the pull to sit back down. It animates my legs towards a girl I like, and lights the fire in my loins. It’s the most potent friend I have in the world that I have never seen, will never see.

I am aware of It, always. It’s the silence that I carry and the chaos lurking beneath. It’s the eyes behind the eyes, looking, watching from a distance but in an instant right there with me, eyes wide open and glaring. When I meditate it comes forward and sits with me on the mat. I look at it and see a fuzzy nebulous thing always escaping analysis.

It, is faceless, egoless, all accepting.

It is the first and final mystery.

It, is the the last thing I will feel on my final blink.

Not very optimistic

19 Sunday Apr 2026

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I am not very optimistic about the future of Lebanon, of mankind. The land of olives and pomegranates lies in ruins at the hands of the chosen ones. Chosen to kill, chosen to destroy, chosen to ensure they remain the chosen ones.

The whole thing will blow up even more before it ever calms down again. And when it calm comes, it will be an empty land on blood-dried soils. There will be no olives to harvest because they would have uprooted them all. There will be no birds singing because all the fruit trees and all the flowers would be gone, dead from heavy sprays of glyphosate. Only the sun rising every day, smiling on a land with no one to smile back.

The mountains from a distance will always look like mountains from the past, unchanged, but up close will tell a different story.

I wonder what stories these lands hold from ages past?

The stench of death and heavy black despair fills my nose even from Chicago where I live and write. I can smell so much rot it’s hard to describe. They are going in with bulldozers and teams that rig entire villages and blowing them all up from the root to the sky. This vileness fills my nose, my soul. Evil manifest.

I do believe pondering is the gateway to sadness, especially the universe. I mean, if the universe started as a big bang in a violent explosion, then doesn’t that tell us something? Isn’t this why the universe is not screaming? That’s because the evil is imprinted in the fabric of the universe, coded in the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Satan is the universe manifesting in hurricanes and tornadoes that destroy what in a short time ago was created by the forces that make things and life.

The world began in war. But it will end in peace– when everything is so far apart nothing can harm anything else. But that is a long, long time from now.