Translations: Nothing Pleases Me by Mahmud Darwish

A bus Passenger says:

“Nothing pleases me. Not the radio,
nor the morning papers,
nor the castles on the hills.
I want to cry.”

The Driver says:
“Await the arrival to the stop,
and cry alone all you can.”

The Lady says:
“I too, nothing pleases me.
I showed my son my grave,
so he liked it, and slept,
and did not bid me farewell.”

The Academic says:
“Me neither, nothing pleases me.
I studied archaeology without
finding identity in the rocks.
Am I truly me?”

Bilingual Contemplations

I am, as you could have guessed from my name, not of an English-speaking nationality. I grew, however, to speak in two tongues – Arabic and English (almost polar differences) – with near-equal fluency, such that I was once described as having two mother tongues.

Right from age 2, I went to a British nursery, up until graduating from Year 13 from a British-curriculum school. Of course, at home, the medium of communication was not English, but it was English movies that I watched and English music that I listened to and English novels that I read.

This culminated, in my mid-teens, to a very serious campaign to better my English and the art of using it, be it speech or writing, such that I might be able to articulate as clearly as possible any idea. It seemed nearly a superpower to be able to transfer information with every attachable emotion and expression to almost everyone in the world.

The Freedom of Expression

"On September 11, 2012, U.S. diplomatic missions in Cairo, Egypt, and Benghazi, Libya, were attacked by protestors, beginning a series of violent and non-violent protests outside U.S. and other Western diplomatic missions in Muslim communities across the world."

So reads the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia article, 2012 diplomatic missions attacks. These attacks were primarily a backlash of a movie made in the United States by a few degenerates mocking the primary figure and religion of more than 1.5 billion people.

As ugly as the film and the violence that succeeded it are, it brought the subject of the freedom of expression and speech back on the discussion tables, especially the accusations of double standards in the limitations of freedom of expression.

Of Ideas, Bears, Radicalism and Wolves

Often, a man's (or a woman's) head runs, regardless of intent, into a trace of thought which leads to the formation of a concept that is alien or opposite in cultural (and other) aspects, bringing said thinker to form the conclusion that is: said thought is taboo. However, once in every blue moon, someone comes along and speaks their mind out. The dynamics of such a situation can be illustrated quite accurately by a particularly strange model of a bear and a pack of wolves.

We can represent the people by the wolves; the culture, religion, tradition, etc. of the people is the bear, and the pack of wolves and the bear are about to clash. To begin with, the people must have an idea that is not so radical that is for themselves to refuse it (think of the bear being too big for the pack of wolves to consider it for a fight), and the people must not be in comfort with their customs (the bear and the wolves aren't the best of friends).

Now in accordance to hunting sequences, the first step would be for the wolves to corner the bear. For the sake of simplicity (and the killing of dumb arguments), we will say that the ground beneath them and the surface on which the bear is cornered are both 100% flat and infinitely large, and there is nothing available to be used as weapons but their own bodies.

The second (and final) step is where one (or more) of the wolves steps up. This represents the number of people that agree to this radical idea opposing the norm; the more the people, the more the wolves unafraid of being first to challenge the bear. The bigger the bear, the higher the importance of customs and culture to the people. This is the most crucial step.

In most cases, the more radical the idea, the less amount of people taking it up, and the more the chances of the wolves' attack on the bear failing. If only one wolf takes a step forward with the rest being very hesitant and the bear hits him hard enough to kill him, the entire idea is dead. If many jump, and the bear is still too big, the idea is wiped off the face of history. However if even one wolf succeeds in mauling the bear, this can open up a flood of bravery within the other wolves, charging them into attacking the bear.

Remember: It is not the radicality of an idea that matters, but the logic behind it and its consequences; its pros and cons have to be weighed. Too often humans either outright refuse the idea without considering it like idiots or jump the wagon, once again like idiots. A civilized human, in my personal definition, is he/she who does not accept or refuse an idea or principle due to the acceptance or refusal of said principal by other humans.

"My dear Kepler, what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope?  What shall we make of this?  Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?" 
— Letter from Galileo Galilei to Johannes Kepler upon the Catholic Church's harsh treatment of the of the heliocentric model of the universe

Varro vs. Reth

Today, we went to a university for a workshop (it was more of a lecture) about exam stress management. This, however, was preceded by a boring lecture of what to look in a college and bla bla bla... so I ended up half writing a fight scene. Later, I decided to complete it and, well, here it is:
 

He was in his ‘own’ chair, his favorite. His red swollen eyes, untrimmed beard, messy hair and freshly scarred left cheek told a story, as he sipped upon the powerful alcoholic drink. Mead, they called it. Honey wine, the bloody Gods’ drink… every bit as sour and bitter as it is intoxicating. He took huge gulps without care, for he was expecting a visitor.

The barn’s door almost tore open, and as the bright, nearly ghost-like moonlight invaded this secluded place, a burly figure emerged standing before it. Little over 6 feet, his width even more intimidating and a face rendered indescribable with rage, he would have scared an army. “VARRO!” he bellowed with wrath ringing in his voice, an instant before it was broken by his own crazed sprint, blind with loathe.

Common Sense

The first time I heard of the quote “Common sense is very uncommon”, I thought of it as a funny piece of truth. However, that is when it first occurred to me, who’s to say what’s right is not left? Who has the right to define logic as safe and sound? After all, logic is the basis of every science ever known, from music to chemistry, and is a list of rules and theories of the way the universe works or supposed to work, but have you ever thought that logic started with a ‘this is that’ mindset, not based on reason, but on experiment?

For example, to say that early man was probably experimenting with different vegetation to find what is edible or not, and probably classified them on a basis of what harmed him, and possibly what tasted better. But later on, man found that some foods cannot be eaten raw, but cooked, other foods served as medicine when properly used.