UBC Wiki - User contributions [en]

Course:Aftersun by Charlotte Wells

2023-12-13T09:02:38Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

Spoiler Alert: I do not think I could talk about this film without ruining it.

'''The [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19770238/ 2022 film] is written and directed by Wells.''' It is a coming of age film, surrounding what we find out is a woman retracing what would be her last memories of her father. I saw it the first time with my ex-partner at home on the projector screen and as soon as the credits rolled I could not stop crying for about half an hour. This could be understandable however. It had been less that a year before lost my favourite cousin to Covid-19 (and yes it does matter more if they ''are'' your favourite), we carried the same first name and it suited him more that it did me for sure. The year before I lost my first love, he was in Canada and I found out a month later after he "stopped" answering my messages for a month, I thought he was tired or had relapsed, alas he was gone.

The film does not relate to either story specifically but I do not think that I have seen a modern film that quite succeeded to capture grief and mental illness as well as this film does. With Wells we are invited to follow the plot primarily through home video footage and some memory recollections. Almost the entire film is set during their holiday vacation together in a resort town in Turkey. We follow her dad primarily through her child lens with other parts that felt more imagined. It is so subtle, perhaps slow. Alternating between moments of brief simple joy and hints of melancholy. There is a part when Sophie (the girl) says to her father (Calum):<blockquote>"Don't you ever feel like... you've just done a whole amazing day and then you come home and feel tired and down and... it feels like your organs don't work, they're just tired, and everything is tired. Like you're sinking. I don't know, it's weird."</blockquote>You can feel how uncomfortable this makes him feel. Makes you question why. Makes you wonder what things did we say as children that might have given our parents this kind of discomfort. It becomes clearer bit a bit what causes Calum's anguish. He had Sophie with her mother when they were both young and never stayed together. He never stayed with someone for too long and you can feel he is a bit lonely. He loves his daughter but feels like a disappointment. The story is not just what happened to Calum, it is Sophie trying to figure out what happened to him.

The second time I saw the film was with a friend whose both parents had passed away recently. I thought it would be too much for her (someone she was dating kept asking her to come with him). She talks about her grief a lot so he must have known. I honestly thought it was a little bit careless for him not to warn her what the film entails. It would hit too close to home.

She was fine, and I started crying the last 20 minutes of the film and could not stop. There was something about his depression that felt so relatable. I actually rarely relate to films that center depression. I feel them. I appreciate the content and the sentiment. But not often do they affect me this much. I did a lot of reading about the film, and it is not just the Wells is queer, she also said in an interview that almost all her characters are.

There is this theory that Calum was gay and had AIDS and that is was the trigger of his grief. I am not sure I agree to that. I do think he had queer grief though. That he watched the world destroy him and is grieving the outcome. I hope one day I meet Wells and get to ask her myself.
[[Category:Films]]
[[Category:Sadcactussometimesblooms]]
[[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]
[[Category:Song, Painting, Film, Etc.]]

Course:A Letter to My Mother That She Will Never Read By Ocean Vuong

2023-12-13T08:58:15Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

Somehow the original [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/a-letter-to-my-mother-that-she-will-never-read essay] does inspire me more than the novel does. The essay is an earlier draft of what later becomes Ocean Vuong's debut novel "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous". The novel is poetry in fiction. Beautiful. Devastating. Poetic. Captivating. Nourishing. It is also, for me as a writer rather daunting. I remember once commenting that if I write something as beautiful as this novel I would probably die happily. It is true. I also say that because I am not sure I ever would.

The essay however is more inspiring. Mainly because it is honest. It does not shroud itself in the protection of fictional narrative. It exposes itself as raw truth. I can imagine writing something like this about my parents while they are alive, but not publish it. I might however publish something like this eventually if I ever out survive them.<blockquote>I put down the book. The heads of the green beans went on snapping. They thunked in the steel sink like fingers. ''You’re not a monster,'' I said.

But I lied.

What I really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be. From the Latin root ''monstrum'', a divine messenger of catastrophe, then adapted by the Old French to mean an animal of myriad origins: centaur, griffin, satyr. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.</blockquote>What Vuong expresses in their essay is the desire for this brutal conversation with their mother that they never had. Perhaps not more brutal that their childhood. Yet I often believe that nothing feels more violent than a mirror. Essays like this are simultaneously reflective and confrontational. It looks at its audience and tell them "hey, you did this!".

I remember reading this meme that said that millennials have invented a new genre of writing that involves parents apologising to their children. This possibly true. There might be a brutal aspect to that. If also necessary. Because maybe the best way to break the trauma cycle is to put it in reverse.{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

[[Category:Essay]]
[[Category:Poetic Prose]]
[[Category:Sadcactussometimesblooms]]
[[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]

Course:A Letter to My Mother That She Will Never Read By Ocean Vuong

2023-12-13T08:56:59Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

Somehow the original [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/a-letter-to-my-mother-that-she-will-never-read essay] does inspire me more than the novel does. The essay is an earlier draft of what later becomes Ocean Vuong's debut novel "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous". The novel is poetry in fiction. Beautiful. Devastating. Poetic. Captivating. Nourishing. It is also, for me as a writer rather daunting. I remember once commenting that if I write something as beautiful as this novel I would probably die happily. It is true. I also say that because I am not sure I ever would.

The essay however is more inspiring. Mainly because it is honest. It does not shroud itself in the protection of fictional narrative. It exposes itself as raw truth. I can imagine writing something like this about my parents while they are alive, but not publish it. I might however publish something like this eventually if I ever out survive them.<blockquote>I put down the book. The heads of the green beans went on snapping. They thunked in the steel sink like fingers. ''You’re not a monster,'' I said.

But I lied.

What I really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be. From the Latin root ''monstrum'', a divine messenger of catastrophe, then adapted by the Old French to mean an animal of myriad origins: centaur, griffin, satyr. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.</blockquote>What Vuong expresses in their essay is the desire for this brutal conversation with their mother that they never had. Perhaps not more brutal that their childhood. Yet I often believe that nothing feels more violent that a mirror. Essays like this are simultaneously reflective and confrontational. It looks at its audience and tell them "hey, you did this!".

I remember reading this meme that said that millennials have invented a new genre of writing that involves parents apologising to their children. This possibly true. There might be a brutal accept to that. If also necessary. Because maybe the best way to break the trauma cycle is to put it in reverse.{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''
[[Category:Essay]]
[[Category:Poetic Prose]]
[[Category:Sadcactussometimesblooms]]
[[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]

Course:Abu Nawwas

2023-12-10T20:54:07Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

Abu Nawwas was an 8th-9th century Iraqi poet and served to offer themselves as evidence to challenge perspectives of what/who can and cannot be at this time of history and space in geography past or modern.

He is well known for his poems that Center themes of pleasure, sin, sexuality (especially homosexuality) and his wine poems (khamriyyat). “Woe to those who pray” is a direct quote from the Quran and is his form of mockery of critiques of sin and seeking pleasure.<blockquote>دع المساجد للــعباد تسكنها

وطف بنا حول خمار ليسقينا

ما قال ربك ويل للذين سكروا

ولكن قال ويل للمـصلين

Leave the mosques for the worshipers to inhabit.

And circumambulate us among a cup-bearer to pour our drinks

Your Lord did not say, “Woe to those who are drunk.”

But He said, “Woe to those who pray.”</blockquote>His poems are full of homoerotic overtones and loud mockery of farther and religion. Perhaps what inspires me the most is not his audacity just the sheer notion that he remains to be a noted Islamic poet.

I recently found out that the Egyptian Ministry of Culture burned around 6000 books of Abu Nawwas’s poetry due to their homoerotic nature. Months later, on May 11, 2001 the Egyptian Police arrested 52 men at a queer party on a docked boat titled “The Queen Boat”, I was 12 then.

For me Nawwas serves as a testament to attempts and failures to erase queer history. But also his humorous and audacious lyrics often bring me comfort. It is hard to imagine that this was written more than a millennium ago.{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''
[[Category:Poem Composed Before 1945]]
[[Category:Sadcactussometimesblooms]]
[[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]

Course:Abu Nawwas

2023-12-10T20:53:18Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

دع المساجد للــعباد تسكنها

وطف بنا حول خمار ليسقينا

ما قال ربك ويل للذين سكروا

ولكن قال ويل للمـصلين

Leave the mosques for the worshipers to inhabit.

And circumambulate us among a cup-bearer to pour our drinks

Your Lord did not say, “Woe to those who are drunk.”

But He said, “Woe to those who pray.”

Abu Nawwas was an 8th-9th century Iraqi poet and served to offer themselves as evidence to challenge perspectives of what/who can and cannot be at this time of history and space in geography past or modern.

He is well known for his poems that Center themes of pleasure, sin, sexuality (especially homosexuality) and his wine poems (khamriyyat). “Woe to those who pray” is a direct quote from the Quran and is his form of mockery of critiques of sin and seeking pleasure.

His poems are full of homoerotic overtones and loud mockery of farther and religion. Perhaps what inspires me the most is not his audacity just the sheer notion that he remains to be a noted Islamic poet.

I recently found out that the Egyptian Ministry of Culture burned around 6000 books of Abu Nawwas’s poetry due to their homoerotic nature. Months later, on May 11, 2001 the Egyptian Police arrested 52 men at a queer party on a docked boat titled “The Queen Boat”, I was 12 then.

For me Nawwas serves as a testament to attempts and failures to erase queer history. But also his humorous and audacious lyrics often bring me comfort. It is hard to imagine that this was written more than a millennium ago.{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''
[[Category:Poem Composed Before 1945]]
[[Category:Sadcactussometimesblooms]]
[[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]

Course:Abu Nawwas

2023-12-07T06:54:16Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

دع المساجد للــعباد تسكنها

وطف بنا حول خمار ليسقينا

ما قال ربك ويل للذين سكروا

ولكن قال ويل للمـصلين

Leave the mosques for the worshipers to inhabit.

And circumambulate us among a cup-bearer to pour our drinks

Your Lord did not say, “Woe to those who are drunk.”

But He said, “Woe to those who pray.”

Abu Nawwas was an 8th-9th century Iraqi poet and served to offer themselves as evidence to challenge perspectives of what/who can and cannot be at this time of history and space in geography past or modern. He is well known for his poems that Center themes of pleasure, sin, sexuality (especially homosexuality) and his wine poems (khamriyyat). “Woe to those who pray” is a direct quote from the Quran and is his form of mockery of critiques of sin and seeking pleasure. His poems are full of homoerotic overtones and loud mockery of farther and religion. Perhaps what inspires me the most is not his audacity just the sheer notion that he remains to be a noted Islamic poet. I recently found out that the Egyptian Ministry of Culture burned around 6000 books of Abu Nawwas’s poetry due to their homoerotic nature. Months later, on May 11, 2001 the Egyptian Police arrested 52 men at a queer party on a docked boat titled “The Queen Boat”, I was 12 then. For me Nawwas serves as a testament to attempts and failures to erase queer history. But also his humorous and audacious lyrics often bring me comfort. It is hard to imagine that this is writing that is more than a 1000 years ago.{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''
[[Category:Poem Composed Before 1945]]
[[Category:Sadcactussometimesblooms]]
[[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]

Course:Aftersun by Charlotte Wells

2023-12-07T06:52:58Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

Spoiler Alert: I do not think I could talk about this film without ruining it.

'''The [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19770238/ 2022 film] is written and directed by Wells.''' It is a coming of age film, surrounding what we find out is a woman retracing what would be her last memories of her father. I saw it the first time with my ex-partner at home on the projector screen and as soon as the credits rolled I could not stop crying for about half an hour. This could be understandable however. I had less that a year before lost my favourite cousin to Covid-19 (and yes it does matter more if they are your favourite), we carried the same first name and it suited him more that it did me for sure. The year before I lost my first love, he was in Canada and I found out a month later after he "stopped" answering my messages for a month, I thought he was tired or had relapsed, alas he was gone.

The film does not relate to either story specifically but I do not think that I have seen a modern film that quite succeeded to capture grief and mental illness as well as this film does. With Wells we are invited to follow the plot primarily through home video footage and some memory recollections. Almost the entire film is set during their holiday vacation together in a resort town in Turkey. We follow her dad primarily through her lens with other parts that felt more imagined. It is so subtle, perhaps slow. Alternating between moments of brief simple joy and hints of melancholy. There is a part when Sophie (the girl) says to her father (Calum):<blockquote>"Don't you ever feel like... you've just done a whole amazing day and then you come home and feel tired and down and... it feels like your organs don't work, they're just tired, and everything is tired. Like you're sinking. I don't know, it's weird."</blockquote>You can feel how uncomfortable this makes him feel. Makes you question why. Makes you wonder what things did we say as children that might have given our parents this kind of discomfort. It becomes clearer bit a bit what causes Calum's anguish. He had Sophie with her mother when they were both young and never stayed together. He never stayed with someone for too long and you can feel he is a bit lonely. He loves his daughter but feels like a disappointment. The story is not just what happened to Calum, it is Sophie trying to figure out what happened to him.

The second time I say the film was with a friend whose both parents had passed away recently. I thought it would be too much for her (someone she's is dating kept asking her to come with him). She talks about her grief a lot so he must have know. I honestly thought it was a little bit careless for him not to warn her what the film entails. It would hit too close to home.

She was fine, and I started crying the last 20 minutes of the film and could not stop. There was something about his depression that felt so relatable. I actually rarely relate to films that center depression. I feel them, I appreciate the content. But not often do they affect me this much. I did a lot of reading about the film, and it is not just the Wells is queer, she also said in an interview that almost all her characters are.

There is this theory that Calum was gay and had AIDS and that is was the trigger of his grief. I am not sure I agree to that. I do think he had queer grief though. That he watched the world destroy him and is grieving the outcome. I hope one day I meet Wells and get to ask her myself.

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''
[[Category:Films]]
[[Category:Sadcactussometimesblooms]]

Course:Aftersun by Charlotte Wells

2023-12-07T06:50:43Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY: Created page with " {{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}} Spolier Alert: I do not think I could talk about this film without ruining it. '''The 2022 film is written and directed by Wells.''' It is a coming of age film, surrounding what we find out is a woman retracing what would be her last memories of her father. I saw it the first time with my ex-partner at home on the projector screen and as soon as the credits rolled I could not stop crying for about half an hour. This could be understand..."

{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

Spolier Alert: I do not think I could talk about this film without ruining it.

'''The 2022 film is written and directed by Wells.''' It is a coming of age film, surrounding what we find out is a woman retracing what would be her last memories of her father. I saw it the first time with my ex-partner at home on the projector screen and as soon as the credits rolled I could not stop crying for about half an hour. This could be understandable however. I had less that a year before lost my favourite cousin to Covid-19 (and yes it does matter more if they are your favourite), we carried the same first name and it suited him more that it did me for sure. The year before I lost my first love, he was in Canada and I found out a month later after he "stopped" answering my messages for a month, I thought he was tired or had relapsed, alas he was gone.

The film does not relate to either story specifically but I do not think that I have seen a modern film that quite succeeded to capture grief and mental illness as well as this film does. With Wells we are invited to follow the plot primarily through home video footage and some memory recollections. Almost the entire film is set during their holiday vacation together in a resort town in Turkey. We follow her dad primarily through her lens with other parts that felt more imagined. It is so subtle, perhaps slow. Alternating between moments of brief simple joy and hints of melancholy. There is a part when Sophie (the girl) says to her father (Calum):<blockquote>"Don't you ever feel like... you've just done a whole amazing day and then you come home and feel tired and down and... it feels like your organs don't work, they're just tired, and everything is tired. Like you're sinking. I don't know, it's weird."</blockquote>You can feel how uncomfortable this makes him feel. Makes you question why. Makes you wonder what things did we say as children that might have given our parents this kind of discomfort. It becomes clearer bit a bit what causes Calum's anguish. He had Sophie with her mother when they were both young and never stayed together. He never stayed with someone for too long and you can feel he is a bit lonely. He loves his daughter but feels like a disappointment. The story is not just what happened to Calum, it is Sophie trying to figure out what happened to him.

The second time I say the film was with a friend whose both parents had passed away recently. I thought it would be too much for her (someone she's is dating kept asking her to come with him). She talks about her grief a lot so he must have know. I honestly thought it was a little bit careless for him not to warn her what the film entails. It would hit too close to home.

She was fine, and I started crying the last 20 minutes of the film and could not stop. There was something about his depression that felt so relatable. I actually rarely relate to films that center depression. I feel them, I appreciate the content. But not often do they affect me this much. I did a lot of reading about the film, and it is not just the Wells is queer, she also said in an interview that almost all her characters are.

There is this theory that Calum was gay and had AIDS and that is was the trigger of his grief. I am not sure I agree to that. I do think he had queer grief though. That he watched the world destroy him and is grieving the outcome. I hope one day I meet Wells and get to ask her myself.

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''

Course:The Prophet: Khalil Jibran

2023-12-07T06:25:22Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

I must have first encountered my parents' copy of the prophet when I was 11 or 12. I used to scramble around their library when I was bored, I would often find books they acquired in the 70s and 80s when they were more liberal (socialist?) and interesting. Less religious texts, sometimes sexual, if rarely what would be considered blasphemous. I found this book and I thought it would fall into the blasphemous category. It was annotated in french which indicates it much have belonged to Geddo Youssif, my maternal grandmother's brother. He was a retired judge, the head of the Egyptian Preliminary Court. He was handsome, everyone used to take about how handsome he was, and how unattractive his past wife was. My sisters feared her. I have seen him but not his past-wife. She was gone before I came or before I could remember.

I scramble around the book and was small (a preference) and the hard cover under the paper sleeve was purple (another preference). I remember flipping through the pages, I do not think I really read it properly until I was 18. I was more fascinated about the idea of the book then than the text itself. Including how an Arab can write a book in English and only in English (that was new to me). The speculative (did not know the word then) of the writing. The captivating verses, it was my first time reading prose poetry. Those wisdoms that are full of insight and possible anarchist compared to my more disciplined formal teaching of language and poetry.

Did I mention I also had a Sheikh that taught me to recite Quran? I knew better that to tell him about Gibran. Back then I though I found something that no one ever knew of. Later, a few months after discovering the book, and in genuine earnest, while having an argument with my father I recite these verses to him.<blockquote>Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.</blockquote>I drew them like a sword in a duel and my father just kept laughing. He could not stop laughing. He kissed me on the forehead and left the room.

I stole the copy later and kept it. I still have it in my apartment in Cairo (technically in Giza). I plan to bring it along next time I go there.{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''
[[Category:Book of Poems]]
[[Category:Poem Composed Before 1945]]
[[Category:Poetic Prose]]
[[Category:Encountered Before Twelve]]
[[Category:Sadcactussometimesblooms]]

Course:A Letter to My Mother That She Will Never Read By Ocean Vuong

2023-12-07T06:23:28Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY: Created page with "Somehow the original [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/a-letter-to-my-mother-that-she-will-never-read essay] does inspire me more than the novel does. The essay is an earlier draft of what later becomes Ocean Vuong's debut novel "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous". The novel is poetry in fiction. Beautiful. Deviating. Poetic. Captivating. Nourishing. It is also, for me as a writer rather daunting. I remember once commenting that if I write something as be..."

Somehow the original [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/a-letter-to-my-mother-that-she-will-never-read essay] does inspire me more than the novel does. The essay is an earlier draft of what later becomes Ocean Vuong's debut novel "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous". The novel is poetry in fiction. Beautiful. Deviating. Poetic. Captivating. Nourishing. It is also, for me as a writer rather daunting. I remember once commenting that if I write something as beautiful as this novel I would probably die happily. It is true. I also say that because I am not sure I ever would.

The essay however is more inspiring. Mainly because it is honest. It does not shroud itself in the protection of fictional narrative. It exposes itself as raw truth. I can imagine writing something like this about my parents while they are alive, but not publish it. I might however publish something like this eventually if I ever out survive them.<blockquote>I put down the book. The heads of the green beans went on snapping. They thunked in the steel sink like fingers. ''You’re not a monster,'' I said.

But I lied.

What I really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be. From the Latin root ''monstrum'', a divine messenger of catastrophe, then adapted by the Old French to mean an animal of myriad origins: centaur, griffin, satyr. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.</blockquote>What Vuong expresses in their essay is the desire for this brutal conversation with their mother that they never had. Perhaps not more brutal that their childhood. Yet I often believe that nothing feels more violent that a mirror. Essays like this are simultaneously reflective and confrontational. It looks at its audience and tell them "hey, you did this!".

I remember reading this meme that said that millennials have invented a new genre of writing that involves parents apologising to their children. This possibly true. There might be a brutal accept to that. If also necessary. Because maybe the best way to break the trauma cycle is to put it in reverse.{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''
[[Category:Essay]]
[[Category:Poetic Prose]]
[[Category:Sadcactussometimesblooms]]

Course:The Prophet: Khalil Jibran

2023-12-07T05:18:45Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

I must have first encountered my parents copy of the prophet when I was 11 or 12. I used to scramble around their library when I was bored, I would often find books they acquired in the 70s and 80s when they were more liberal (socialist?) and interesting. Less religious texts, sometimes sexual, if rarely what would be considered blasphemous. I found this book and I thought it would fall into the blasphemous category. It was annotated in french which indicates it much have belonged to Geddo Youssif, my maternal grandmother's brother. He was a retired judge, the head of the Egyptian Preliminary Court. He was handsome, everyone used to take about how handsome he was, and how unattractive his past wife was. My sisters feared her. I have seen him but not his past-wife. She was gone before I came or before I could remember.

I scramble around the book and was small (a preference) and the hard cover under the paper sleeve was purple (another preference). I remember flipping through the pages, I do not think I really read it properly until I was 18. I was more fascinated about the idea of the book then than the text itself. Including how an Arab can write a book in English and only in English (that was new to me). The speculative (did not know the word then) of the writing. The captivating verses, it was my first time reading prose poetry. Those wisdoms that are full of insight and possible anarchist compared to my more disciplined formal teaching of language and poetry.

Did I mention I also had a Sheikh that taught me to recite Quran? I knew better that to tell him about Gibran. Back then I though I found something that no one ever knew of. Later, a few months after discovering the book, and in genuine earnest, while having an argument with my father I recite these verses to him.<blockquote>Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.</blockquote>I drew them like a sword in a duel and my father just kept laughing. He could not stop laughing. He kissed me on the forehead and left the room.

I stole the copy later and kept it. I still have it in my apartment in Cairo (technically in Giza). I plan to bring it along next time I go there.{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''
[[Category:Book of Poems]]
[[Category:Poem Composed Before 1945]]
[[Category:Poetic Prose]]
[[Category:Encountered Before Twelve]]

Course:The Prophet: Khalil Jibran

2023-12-07T04:47:05Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

Course:The Prophet: Khalil Jibran

2023-12-07T04:45:50Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY: Created page with "I must have first encountered my parents copy of the prophet when I was 11 or 12. I used to scremble around their library when I was bored, I would often find books they acquired in the 70s and 80s when they were more liberal (socialist?) and interesting. Less religious texts, sometimes sexual, if rarely what would be considered blasphemous. I found this book and I thought it would fall into the blasphemous category. It was annotated in french which indicates it much hav..."

I must have first encountered my parents copy of the prophet when I was 11 or 12. I used to scremble around their library when I was bored, I would often find books they acquired in the 70s and 80s when they were more liberal (socialist?) and interesting. Less religious texts, sometimes sexual, if rarely what would be considered blasphemous. I found this book and I thought it would fall into the blasphemous category. It was annotated in french which indicates it much have belonged to Geddo Youssif, my maternal grandmother's brother. He was a retired judge, the head of the Egyptian Preliminary Court. He was handsome, everyone used to take about how handsome he was, and how unattractive his past wife was. My sisters feared her. I have seen him but not his past-wife. She was gone before I came or before I could remember.

I scramble around the book and was small (a preference) and the hard cover under the paper sleeve was purple (another preference). I remember flipping through the pages, I do not think I really read it properly until I was 18. I was more fascinated about the idea of the book then than the text itself. Including how an Arab can write a book in English and only in English (that was new to me). The speculative (did not know the word then) of the writing. The captivating verses, it was my first time reading prose poetry. Those wisdoms that are full of insight and possible anarchist compared to my more disciplined formal teaching of language and poetry.

Did I mention I also had a Sheikh that taught me to recite Quran? I knew better that to tell him about Gibran. Back then I though I found something that no one ever knew of. Later, a few months after discovering the book, and in genuine earnest, while having an argument with my father I recite these verses to him.<blockquote>Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.</blockquote>I drew them like a sword in a duel and my father just kept laughing. He could not stop laughing. He kissed me on the forehead and left the room.{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''

Course:Angelus Novus (1920) by Paul Klee

2023-12-07T03:50:57Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

CW: Suicide

In the spring of 2022, specifically in March I woke up, perhaps too late in the day, to the news that a friend had ended their lives. Our friendship was brief or just starting and I have some doubts that either of us would have strictly labelled the other as a friend per se. Not for lack of affinity or taste for one another rather it was just a budding friendship and within the context of Cairo social politics, a friend is rather a complex and heavy thing to weigh on something. Regardless, I came to learn that beyond the game nights at our beloved close friend and assumed shared politics and values I came to learn more about our affiliations and commonalities. Specifically our shared trauma, that was actually assumed being part of the Tahrir Revolution generation, but also our shared life (struggle?) with mental health.

After her death a friend of a colleague of hers published an article in the obituary section of the Egyptian Independent online editorial Mada Masr. The article involved an email correspondence between them titled "[https://www.madamasr.com/en/2022/03/29/feature/society/a-new-tradition-of-care/ A New Tradition of Care]"<blockquote>"I finally decided to take the initiative and see how you feel about this when I was reading a text by Walter Benjamin for class. In the text, called “Illuminations” in a chapter called “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” I came across this:

“A Klee painting named “Angelus Novus” shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

I read this and my heart stopped."</blockquote>Oddly enough it is the writing on the essay by Benjamin that proceeded to haunt me onwards after reading this. As it does now more than ever. So much that it inspired the introduction to a long essay I submitted (incomplete) to the 505P Introduction to Creative Non-Fiction course. What does it mean to produce work while the world is ending? What does it mean not to? How can we, and here I mean "I", ask of ourselves to write, learn and practice while so many terrible happenings are occurring around the world? Not the world but right at the border of the country I just came from. Even as the genocide, queerness, racism and personal history came to life in my writing through this course and others the lingering feeling that "it is not enough" is more the overwhelming. It feels understated no matter how much I try to state that. "The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed." lingers with so much truth. What if ending the suffering is not enough? What would the angel of history have us do? In her correspondence she writes:<blockquote>"and it seems this is a time when we are all, the lost souls, ten years later, and after more than a year of the world slowing down because of Covid-19, are awakening to this realization. Can we make sense of ourselves in separation from this “moment.” For those who were there, can there be a life, an existence, being in the world that is not haunted by 2011? None of us had answers, maybe hopes to figure things out but that was it."</blockquote>I recall at the beginning of the Covid-19 Pandemic my therapist reminding me how much I worried about the world always moving so far ahead. How now that the world "stopped" this could be my chance to "catch up" or even better give myself the break that I deserve. Yet even then when broad statements like "the world will never be the same again" and "the earth is breathing" were paraded around online news outlets and social media posts I knew this to be a ruse. That this stoppage is merely like the 5 days truce, just enough time for some Black Friday shopping (did anyone really care about the amazon employees then?) so the bombing can start once again.{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}
==Categories==
'''Add categories here'''
[[Category:Song, Painting, Film, Etc.]]
[[Category:Sadcactussometimesblooms]]

Course:Angelus Novus (1920) by Paul Klee

2023-12-07T03:49:51Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY: Created page with "CW: Suicide In the spring of 2022, specifically in March I woke up, perhaps too late in the day, to the news that a friend had ended their lives. Our friendship was brief or just starting and I have some doubts that either of us would have strictly labelled the other as a friend per se. Not for lack of affinity or taste for one another rather it was just a budding friendship and within the context of Cairo social politics, a friend is rather a complex and heavy thing to..."

CW: Suicide

In the spring of 2022, specifically in March I woke up, perhaps too late in the day, to the news that a friend had ended their lives. Our friendship was brief or just starting and I have some doubts that either of us would have strictly labelled the other as a friend per se. Not for lack of affinity or taste for one another rather it was just a budding friendship and within the context of Cairo social politics, a friend is rather a complex and heavy thing to weigh on something. Regardless, I came to learn that beyond the game nights at our beloved close friend and assumed shared politics and values I came to learn more about our affiliations and commonalities. Specifically our shared trauma, that was actually assumed being part of the Tahrir Revolution generation, but also our shared life (struggle?) with mental health.

After her death a friend of a colleague of hers published an article in the obituary section of the Egyptian Independent online editorial Mada Masr. The article involved an email correspondence between them titled "[https://www.madamasr.com/en/2022/03/29/feature/society/a-new-tradition-of-care/ A New Tradition of Care]"<blockquote>"I finally decided to take the initiative and see how you feel about this when I was reading a text by Walter Benjamin for class. In the text, called “Illuminations” in a chapter called “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” I came across this:

“A Klee painting named “Angelus Novus” shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

I read this and my heart stopped."</blockquote>Oddly enough it is the writing on the essay by Benjamin that proceeded to haunt me onwards after reading this. As it does now more than ever. So much that it inspired the introduction to a long essay I submitted (incomplete) to the 505P Introduction to Creative Non-Fiction course. What does it mean to produce work while the world is ending? What does it mean not to? How can we, and here I mean "I", ask of ourselves to write, learn and practice while so many terrible happenings are occurring around the world? Not the world but right at the border of the country I just came from. Even as the genocide, queerness, racism and personal history came to life in my writing through this course and others the lingering feeling that "it is not enough" is more the overwhelming. It feels understated no matter how much I try to state that. "The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed." lingers with so much truth. What if ending the suffering is not enough? What would the angel of history have us do?

In her correspondence she writes:<blockquote>"and it seems this is a time when we are all, the lost souls, ten years later, and after more than a year of the world slowing down because of Covid-19, are awakening to this realization. Can we make sense of ourselves in separation from this “moment.” For those who were there, can there be a life, an existence, being in the world that is not haunted by 2011? None of us had answers, maybe hopes to figure things out but that was it."</blockquote>I recall at the beginning of the Covid-19 Pandemic my therapist reminding me how much I worried about the world always moving so far ahead. How now that the world "stopped" this could be my chance to "catch up" or even better give myself the break that I deserve. Yet even then when broad statements like "the world will never be the same again" and "the earth is breathing" were paraded around online news outlets and social media posts I knew this to be a ruse. That this stoppage is merely like the 5 days truce, just enough time for some Black Friday shopping (did anyone really care about the amazon employees then?) so the bombing can start once again.{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}
==Categories==
'''Add categories here'''

Course:CA Conrad - Ecodeviance: (Soma)tics for the future wilderness

2023-12-07T02:27:59Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

In my apprenticeship with CA Conrad I was drawn to their powerful style in writing. The visually stimulating concrete structure in their poems. And mostly utilising their (Soma)tic rituals as a prompt and indication to my poetic practice during this year and beyond.<blockquote>
====== “One morning I made a list of the worst problems with the factory, and at the top of that list was "lack of being present." The more I thought about this the more I realized this was what the factory robbed my family of the most, and the thing that frightened me the most, this not being aware of place in the present. That morning I started what I now call (Soma)tics, ritualized structures where being anything but present was next to impossible. These rituals create what I refer to as an "extreme present" where the many facets of what is around me wherever I am can come together through a sharper lens.” ======
</blockquote>Right now as I am writing this with an avalanche of deadlines weighing upon the shoulders of my brain, I cannot help but agree more with CA. It was the fear I had; as I explained to my colleagues during the invitation of my apprenticeship with them. I came here to the program to write. Half of the writing I did was due to deadlines. The other half because I did not know what else to do but write it down. However, with a genocide occurring across, with across being too close to home I do wonder if this is not the factory assembling again and again. Yet as people pray to gods for salvation all I do have is poetry and this term I was grateful to have CA guide me along this trying and terrible months. In a world that keeps trying to sell us consumption and distraction Conrad challenged me to stay in the present. The extreme present they call it. I jokingly added during the week of my invitation that I am not sure Conrad and I would ever be friends. Assuming they would ever want to either or that we would ever meet. The process of the apprenticeship was extremely intimate. Reading through Ecodeviance I realised how we share many things. We both appreciate absurdity; if perhaps I, understandably so, take myself less seriously that Conrad does. It was consoling knowing that another poet (am I a poet?) remains haunted by all the horrors around them. How everything parallels and interlinks for them. In [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/159864/from-listen-to-the-golden-boomerang-return-5 "Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return"] we experience them drawing links between the HIV pandemic and COVID-19, and here in Ecodeviance they end the book with a ritual involving cleaning a crystal, speaking to it, burying into a hole in the ground and what is close to a dreamscape ritual. This is the poem that came of this ritual titled "GRAVE A HOLE AS DREAM A HOLE":<blockquote>'''OBLIVIOUS IMPERIALISM'''

'''IS THE WORST KIND'''

is ''ho-bo''

short for

something?

i just got

called one

someone

recently said

"HEY your nails

are beautiful but

the rest of your

outfit is just okay"

glamour is my

great love but its

too expensive and

too much work

my beautiful

glittered nails are

my HOMAGE to GLAMOUR

every time I hear an interview

with a fashion model talking

about HOW HARD her job is

walking up and down the runway

up and down

so much walking

i become very tired in my

vicarious glamour fatigue

and I must nap

everyone around

the world knows

america's real

fashion statement

is bullet holes

every single

day we

spray the

arab world

with bullets

sometimes in

the faces of

babies we

don't have

special

little

bullets

for the

baby

faces they

have to take

our adult-sized

bullets right in

the middle of

their little

crying baby

faces BLAM take

THAT BABY it's

american

fashion."</blockquote>Perhaps part of the objective of remaining in that extreme present is that the past is already and still happening.

Perhaps CA and I could be friends after all.

{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''
[[Category:Book of Poems by a Living Poet]]
[[Category:Sadcactussometimesblooms]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Course: CA Conrad - Ecodeviance: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness}}

Course:CA Conrad - Ecodeviance: (Soma)tics for the future wilderness

2023-12-07T02:22:28Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY: Created page with "In my apprenticeship with CA Conrad I was drawn to their powerful style in writing. The visually stimulating concrete structure in their poems. And mostly utilising their (Soma)tic rituals as a prompt and indication to my poetic practice during this year and beyond.<blockquote> ====== “One morning I made a list of the worst problems with the factory, and at the top of that list was "lack of being present." The more I thought about this the more I realized this was what..."

In my apprenticeship with CA Conrad I was drawn to their powerful style in writing. The visually stimulating concrete structure in their poems. And mostly utilising their (Soma)tic rituals as a prompt and indication to my poetic practice during this year and beyond.<blockquote>
====== “One morning I made a list of the worst problems with the factory, and at the top of that list was "lack of being present." The more I thought about this the more I realized this was what the factory robbed my family of the most, and the thing that frightened me the most, this not being aware of place in the present. That morning I started what I now call (Soma)tics, ritualized structures where being anything but present was next to impossible. These rituals create what I refer to as an "extreme present" where the many facets of what is around me wherever I am can come together through a sharper lens.” ======
</blockquote>Right now as I am writing this with an avalanche of deadlines weighing upon the shoulders of my brain, I cannot help but agree more with CA. It was the fear I had; as I explained to my colleagues during the invitation of my apprenticeship with them. I came here to the program to write. Half of the writing I did was due to deadlines. The other half because I did not know what else to do but write it down. However, with a genocide occurring across, with across being too close to home I do wonder if this is not the factory assembling again and again. Yet as people pray to gods for salvation all I do have is poetry and this term I was grateful to have CA guide me along this trying and terrible months. In a world that keeps trying to sell us consumption and distraction Conrad challenged me to stay in the present. The extreme present they call it.

I jokingly added during the week of my invitation that I am not sure Conrad and I would ever be friends. Assuming they would ever want to either or that we would ever meet. The process of the apprenticeship was extremely intimate. Reading through Ecodeviance I realised how we share many things. We both appreciate absurdity; if perhaps I, understandably so, take myself less seriously that Conrad does. It was consoling knowing that another poet (am I a poet?) remains haunted by all the horrors around them. How everything parallels and interlinks for them. In [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/159864/from-listen-to-the-golden-boomerang-return-5 "Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return"] we experience them drawing links between the HIV pandemic and COVID-19, and here in Ecodeviance they end the book with a ritual involving cleaning a crystal, speaking to it, burying into a hole in the ground and what is close to a dreamscape ritual. This is the poem that came of this ritual:<blockquote>Is ''ho-bo''

short for

something?

i just got

called one

someone

recently said

"HEY your nails

are beautiful but

the rest of your

outfit is just okay"

glamour is my

great love but its

too expensive and

too much work

my beautiful

glittered nails are

my HOMAGE to GLAMOUR

every time I hear an interview

with a fashion model talking

about HOW HARD her job is

walking up and down the runway

up and down

so much walking

i become very tired in my

vicarious glamour fatigue

and I must nap

everyone around

the world knows

america's real

fashion statement

is bullet holes

every single

day we

spray the

arab world

with bullets

sometimes in

the faces of

babies we

don't have

special

little

bullets

for the

baby

faces they

have to take

our adult-sized

bullets right in

the middle of

their little

crying baby

faces BLAM take

THAT BABY it's

american

fashion."</blockquote>Perhaps part of the objective of remain in that extreme present is that the past is already and still happening. Perhaps CA and I could be friends after all.

{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

'''Add your content here'''

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''

Course:CRW501P-003/Presence - Brittany Howard

2023-09-21T23:36:10Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY: AHMEDALMOGHAZY moved page Course:CRW501P-003/Presence - Brittany Howard to Course:Presence - Brittany Howard

#REDIRECT [[Course:Presence - Brittany Howard]]

Course:Presence - Brittany Howard

2023-09-21T23:36:10Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY: AHMEDALMOGHAZY moved page Course:CRW501P-003/Presence - Brittany Howard to Course:Presence - Brittany Howard

{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

''“Come what made''

''I have you today''

''And I dont want to more”''

Her songs read as poems. Her voice is both blue and kind, like the way a friend garbs your hands and holds them through troubles. What I love about Britany is how she captures grief then pours it our of her heart and right under your feet. Like she is telling us here is my pain, you deal with it. Or here is my pain tell me you do not feel the same. This is a song about love and loss. About loving a moment knowing you will lose it, or visiting this moment in memory knowing it has been forever maimed by it ending. My ex-partner once told me that she is inspired by the loss of her sister. I believe that, I never really searched for confirmation. The feeling is enough. I remember first hearing it and feeling this typical clutch then stab into the chest from the pain of loss, but this time you choose to feel it, to relish the knife twisting, to hold her hand and twist some more. Because this much pain can only come from love.

''“And I dont want tomorrow''

''It promises or its aches”''

There is also joy somehow. Perhaps joy from comfort. From camaraderie. From knowing that someone will hear this and know someone else is there with them, it their loneliness and their pain.

I found out about the death of the first person I loved a month after it happened. They lived away. In Canada ironically. It was a year after Covid-19 started. They informed me of their second diagnosis months before, we kept a habit of sending long voice notes to each other. A month after them breaking the news I confessed that I never stopped loving them really and they did the same. More than a month before their death they gave me news that they are close to remission or perhaps that is what I chose to understand. But when the lag between my message and his response stretched further than what became usual, I did some digging and digitally broke myself the news. There is no real evidence of our relationship, none of my friends ever met them, we dated so briefly, then became friends and then they left. The only thing I have is this long string of voice notes that I kept listening to on repeat that morning and crying. Inconsolable. Perhaps to this day.

''“By doin' nothing, I noticed something''

''I don't want no more''

''And I've always wanted more''

''Of just about everything”''

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''
[[Category:Sadcactussometimesblooms]]
[[Category:Song, Painting, Film, Etc.]]
[[Category:Song]]

Course:Presence - Brittany Howard

2023-09-21T23:35:37Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

Course:Presence - Brittany Howard

2023-09-21T22:50:17Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

Course:Presence - Brittany Howard

2023-09-21T07:56:15Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY: Created page with " {{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}} ''“Come what made'' ''I have you today'' ''And I dont want to more”'' Her songs read as poems. Her voice is both blue and kind, like the way a friend garbs your hands and hold it through troubles. What I love about Britany is how she captures grief then pours it our of her heart and right under your feet. Like she is telling us here is my pain, you deal with it. Or here is my pain tell me you do not feel the same.This is a song ab..."

{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

''“Come what made''

''I have you today''

''And I dont want to more”''

Her songs read as poems. Her voice is both blue and kind, like the way a friend garbs your hands and hold it through troubles. What I love about Britany is how she captures grief then pours it our of her heart and right under your feet. Like she is telling us here is my pain, you deal with it. Or here is my pain tell me you do not feel the same.This is a song about love and loss. About loving a moment knowing you will lose it, or visiting this moment in memory knowing it has been forever maimed by it ending. My ex-partner once told me that she is inspired by the loss of her sister. I believe that, I never really searched for confirmation. The feeling is enough. I remember first hearing it and feeling this typical clutch then stab into the chest from the pain of loss, but this time you choose to feel it, to relish the knife twisting, to hold her hand and twist some more. Because this much pain can only come from love.

''“And I dont want tomorrow''

''It promises or its aches”''

The is also joy somehow. Perhaps joy from comfort. From camaraderie. From knowing that someone will hear this and know someone else is there with them, it their loneliness and their pain.

I found out about the death of the first person I loved a month after it happened. They lived away, it was a year after Covid-19 started. They informed me of their second diagnosis months before, we kept a habit of sending long voice notes to each other. A month after them breaking the news I confessed that I never stopped loving them really and they did the same. More than a month before their death they gave me news that they’re close to remission or perhaps that is what I chose to understand. But when the lag between my message and his response stretched further than what became usual I did some digging and digitally broke to myself the news. There is no real evidence of our relationship, none of my friends ever met them, we dated to briefly and then they left. The only thing I have is this long string of voice notes that I kept listening to on repeat that morning and crying. Inconsolable. Perhaps to this day.

''“ By doin' nothing, I noticed something''

''I don't want no more''

''And I've always wanted more''

''Of just about everything“''

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''

Course:Abu Nawwas

2023-09-21T07:31:31Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

دع المساجد للــعباد تسكنها

وطف بنا حول خمار ليسقينا

ما قال ربك ويل للذين سكروا

ولكن قال ويل للمـصلين

Leave the mosques for the worshipers to inhabit.

And circumambulate us among a cup-bearer to pour our drinks

Your Lord did not say, “Woe to those who are drunk.”

But He said, “Woe to those who pray.”

Abu Nawwas was an 8th-9th century Iraqi poet and serve to offer themselves as evidence to challenge perspectives of what/who can and cannot be at this time of history and space in geography past or modern. He is well known for his poems that Center themes of pleasure, sin, sexuality (especially homosexuality) and his wine poems (khamriyyat). “Woe to those who pray” is a direct quote from the Quran and is his form of mockery of critiques of sin and seeking pleasure. His poems are full of homoerotic overtones and loud mockery of farther and religion. Perhaps what inspires me the most is not his audacity just the sheer notion that he remains to be a noted Islamic poet. I recently found out that the Egyptian Ministry of Culture burned around 6000 books of Abu Nawwas’s poetry due to their homoerotic nature. Months later, on May 11, 2001 the Egyptian Police arrested 52 men at a queer party on a docked boat titled “The Queen Boat”, I was 12 then. For me Nawwas serves as a testament to attempts and failures to erase queer history. But also his humorous and audacious lyrics often bring me comfort. It is hard to imagine that this is writing that is more than a 1000 years ago.{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''
[[Category:Poem Composed Before 1945]]
[[Category:Sadcactussometimesblooms]]

Course:Abu Nawwas

2023-09-21T07:30:38Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY: Created page with "دع المساجد للــعباد تسكنها وطف بنا حول خمار ليسقينا ما قال ربك ويل للذين سكروا ولكن قال ويل للمـصلين Leave the mosques for the worshipers to inhabit. And circumambulate us among a cup-bearer to pour our drinks Your Lord did not say, “Woe to those who are drunk.” But He said, “Woe to those who pray.” Abu Nawwas was an 8th-9th century Iraqi poet and serve to offer themselves..."

دع المساجد للــعباد تسكنها

وطف بنا حول خمار ليسقينا

ما قال ربك ويل للذين سكروا

ولكن قال ويل للمـصلين

Leave the mosques for the worshipers to inhabit.

And circumambulate us among a cup-bearer to pour our drinks

Your Lord did not say, “Woe to those who are drunk.”

But He said, “Woe to those who pray.”

Abu Nawwas was an 8th-9th century Iraqi poet and serve to offer themselves as evidence to challenge perspectives of what/who can and cannot be at this time of history and space in geography past or modern. He is well known for his poems that Center themes of pleasure, sin, sexuality (especially homosexuality) and his wine poems (khamriyyat). “Woe to those who pray” is a direct quote from the Quran and is his form of mockery of critiques of sin and seeking pleasure. His poems are full of homoerotic overtones and loud mockery of farther and religion. Perhaps what inspires me the most is not his audacity just the sheer notion that he remains to be a noted Islamic poet. I recently found out that the Egyptian Ministry of Culture burned around 6000 books of Abu Nawwas’s poetry due to their homoerotic nature. Months later, on May 11, 2001 the Egyptian Police arrested 52 men at a queer party on a docked boat titled “The Queen Boat”, I was 12 then. For me Nawwas serves as a testament to attempts and failures to erase queer history. But also his humorous and audacious lyrics often bring me comfort. It is hard to imagine that this is writing that is more than a 1000 years ago.{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''

Course:The Desert Garden, North Coast, Egypt

2023-09-21T06:50:30Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

I do not remember the day but we must have discovered this place one day on April 2020. It was right at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Upon losing one more battle with madness by friend, my past partner and (I) somehow decided to pack our belongings, take our pets (2 Dogs, 1 almost feral cat) and take off to occupy my family’s deserted summer home by the northern coast. And by “we” I mean they my friend. As the coast shores soon became banned for civilians, they were also quite difficult to monitor. The resort towns of the coast stretch across almost 100 Kilometres (I will not convert this to miles, do not test me) and while there was guard presence on the shores it was limited in man power. Accordingly they relied on the resort town security to oversee that the few residents mad enough, or clever enough to be there this time of year are not to inhabit those shores or swim in the irresistible Mediterranean turquoise waters. So we would alternatively linger by this little plot between our resort town and the neighbouring one. Hence staying clear of the jurisdiction of our security team and by they time a guard reported us to their station we all knew we would be long gone already. It must seem childish now that I think of it but we were bored and the whole world was either bored or dying. So the desert garden was our purgatory.

I visited my family’s beach home and that space and its perennial plants was well flattened and commercialized.

Later the garden became the central theme in a writing project titled “A Home at the End of the World”. The space so alien to us, since usually this natural floral habitat is usually systematically flatten for more sandy, beach goers worthy, plant free terrain, regardless of our awareness the what we are seeing is the native flora in full perennial bloom. It existence, and us experiencing its presence, was another indicator of irregularities in the human impact caused by the pandemic. The rest of it I believe better belongs in the essay, which I hope to finish during my MFA.{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''
[[Category:Places]]
[[Category:Sadcactussometimesblooms]]

Course:The Desert Garden, North Coast, Egypt

2023-09-21T06:45:24Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

I do not remember the day but we must have discovered this place one day on April 2020. It was right at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Upon losing one more battle with madness by friend, my past partner and (I) somehow decided to pack our belongings, take our pets (2 Dogs, 1 almost feral cat) and take off to occupy my family’s deserted summer home by the northern coast. And by “we” I mean they my friend. As the coast shores soon became banned for civilians, they were also quite difficult to monitor. The resort towns of the coast stretch across almost 100 Kilometres (I will not convert this to miles, do not test me) and while there was guard presence on the shores it was limited in man power. Accordingly they relied on the resort town security to oversee that the few residents mad enough, or clever enough to be there this time of year are not to inhabit those shores or swim in the irresistible Mediterranean turquoise waters. So we would alternatively linger by this little plot between our resort town and the neighbouring one. Hence staying clear of the jurisdiction of our security team and by they time a guard reported us to their station we all knew we would be long gone already. It must seem childish now that I think of it but we were bored and the whole world was either bored or dying. So the desert garden was our purgatory.

I visited my family’s beach home and that space and its perennial plants was well flattened and commercialized.{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''
[[Category:Places]]
[[Category:Sadcactussometimesblooms]]

Course:The Desert Garden, North Coast, Egypt

2023-09-21T06:39:51Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY: Created page with "I do not remember the day but we must have discovered this place one day on April 2020. It was right at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Upon losing one more battle with madness by friend, my past partner and (I) somehow decided to pack our belongings, take our pets (2 Dogs, 1 almost feral cat) and take off to occupy my family’s deserted summer home by the northern coast. And by “we” I mean they my friend. As the coast shores soon became banned for civilians..."

I do not remember the day but we must have discovered this place one day on April 2020. It was right at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Upon losing one more battle with madness by friend, my past partner and (I) somehow decided to pack our belongings, take our pets (2 Dogs, 1 almost feral cat) and take off to occupy my family’s deserted summer home by the northern coast. And by “we” I mean they my friend. As the coast shores soon became banned for civilians, they were also quite difficult to monitor. The resort towns of the coast stretch across almost 100 Kilometres (I will not convert this to miles, do not test me) and while there was guard presence on the shores it was limited in man power. Accordingly they relied on the resort town security to oversee that the few residents mad enough, or clever enough to be there this time of year are not to inhabit those shores or swim in the irresistible Mediterranean turquoise waters. So we would alternatively linger by this little plot between our resort town and the neighbouring one. Hence staying clear of the jurisdiction of our security team and by they time a guard reported us to their station we all knew we would be long gone already. It must seem childish now that I think of it but we were bored and the whole world was either bored or dying. So the desert garden was our purgatory.

I visited my family’s beach home and that space and its perennial plants was well flattened and commercialized.{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''

Course:Youth (2015), Dir. Paolo Sorrentino

2023-09-21T06:22:32Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY:

{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

'''Youth''' is a film written and directed Paolo Sorrentino, also known as the filmmaker of The Great Beauty and the Netflix film The Hand of God, this was my first introduction to the writer/director and accordingly starting my own little fan club of his work. What I love of the film is that of how it confronts one of the notions that plague most people’s existent the most: Aging. The choice of setting, an Alpine Swiss Spa for the extravagantly wealthy and absurdly famous, with visible but not directly identified familiar characters like the Dali Lama and Maradona. The film is centred around Fred Ballinger, a composer and conductor who despite his retirement is being hounded by the Queen’s emissary to conduct one of his “Simple Songs” for Prince Phillip’s birthday.

“Queen's Emissary: Why exactly do you find the monarchy endearing?

Fred Ballinger: Well, because it's so vulnerable. You eliminate one person. And all of a sudden. The whole world changes. Like in a marriage.”

Through the film you are introduced to characters of his life and fellow residents at the spa hotel. I have personally watched this film one too many times that I can quote several bits of it by heart and introduced it to several friends, quite persistently. There is something so charming and humorous yet surprisingly morbid which I think matches perfectly with the choice of topic and title. This grumpy aging artist who, quite unamused by the process of enduring life, yet somehow without any clear desire to end it, is at this spa for the same reason he does everything else now, because he is used to it.

The film inspired my first writing project “The Simple Poems”, which is based on the composer’s songs of the same name.

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''
[[Category:Films]]
[[Category:Sadcactussometimesblooms]]

Course:Youth (2015), Dir. Paolo Sorrentino

2023-09-21T06:21:16Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY: Youth (2015) Film

{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}

'''Youth is a film written and directed Paolo Sorrentino, also known as the filmmaker of The Great Beauty and the Netflix film The Hand of God, this was my first introduction to the writer/director and accordingly starting my own little fan club of his work. What I love of the film is that of how it confronts one of the notions that plague most people’s existent the most: Aging. The choice of setting, an Alpine Swiss Spa for the extravagantly wealthy and absurdly famous, with visible but not directly identified familiar characters like the Dali Lama and Maradona. The film is centred around Fred Ballinger, a composer and conductor who despite his retirement is being hounded by the Queen’s emissary to conduct one of his “Simple Songs” for Prince Phillip’s birthday.'''

'''“Queen's Emissary: Why exactly do you find the monarchy endearing?'''

'''Fred Ballinger: Well, because it's so vulnerable. You eliminate one person. And all of a sudden. The whole world changes. Like in a marriage.”'''

'''Through the film you are introduced to characters of his life and fellow residents at the spa hotel. I have personally watched this film one too many times that I can quote several bits of it by heart and introduced it to several friends, quite persistently. There is something so charming and humorous yet surprisingly morbid which I think matches perfectly with the choice of topic and title. This grumpy aging artist who, quite unamused by the process of enduring life, yet somehow without any clear desire to end it, is at this spa for the same reason he does everything else now, because he is used to it.'''

'''The film inspired my first writing project “The Simple Poems”, which is based on the composer’s songs of the same name.'''

==Categories==

'''Add categories here'''

Course:CRW501P-003/“One beach-colored. One brown. One Loved. One Loved a Little Less.”

2023-09-14T23:00:54Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY: AHMEDALMOGHAZY moved page Course:CRW501P-003/“One beach-colored. One brown. One Loved. One Loved a Little Less.” to Course:The god of Small Things

#REDIRECT [[Course:The god of Small Things]]

Course:The god of Small Things

2023-09-14T23:00:54Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY: AHMEDALMOGHAZY moved page Course:CRW501P-003/“One beach-colored. One brown. One Loved. One Loved a Little Less.” to Course:The god of Small Things

I actually remember the day I bought the novel, I must have been back from London for the summer. Which meant I was 18, at the Diwan Bookstore branch in Zamalek. I was not that aware what a Man Booker was, only that is was a best selling book with an award. I used to still buy novels often on the grounds they were in the New York Times best seller list then. Later I would chose a quote from this novel to honour the death of the first person I ever love, perhaps I could not think of a better writer to appropriate their words at the point when mine seem to have failed. I was aware however shortly after finishing this novel how much it was lingering with me in many other ways.

There are novels you start reading and are unable to stop for their gripping story telling or thrilling events, with Roy I would linger at pages, the vividness of her metaphors and refuse to leave, if for a while.

There is something about the way Arundhati twists syntax and rearranges vocabulary to reach the meaning she desires that remains to this day for me as a true guide on to how to dismantle and decolonize language. It was also the first time I ever read this type of poetry in fiction. She is not afraid to sound absurd while clarifying that she is serious. For the 10 years thereafter I followed Roy’s writing through a random path of digital devotion of a sort, her non-fiction writing, the political, the criticisms of power (“and the paranoia of power”).

When her second novel ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’ was published, I bought on kindle since I could not wait for the book to reach the shelves. Then gifted a copy to an intimate friend when the copies finally reached the same bookstore I bought the first novel from. And when they were done reading it I stole it and eventually brought it with me here to Vancouver.

“But what was there to say?

Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief.

Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.”

― Arundhati Roy, [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_of_Small_Things The God of Small Things]

==Categories==
Arundhati Roy, Novels, The god of small things, Inspiring Authors

Course:The god of Small Things

2023-09-14T06:15:31Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY: /* Categories */

Course:The god of Small Things

2023-09-14T06:09:51Z

AHMEDALMOGHAZY: Created page with "I actually remember the day I bought the novel, I must have been back from London for the summer. Which meant I was 18, at the Diwan Bookstore branch in Zamalek. I was not that aware what a Man Booker was, only that is was a best selling book with an award. I used to still buy novels often on the grounds they were in the New York Times best seller list then. Later I would chose a quote from this novel to honour the death of the first person I ever love, perhaps I could n..."