I don’t finish reading half the books I start. In fact, most books on my shelf keep pieces of paper or string pointing to where I had stopped.
Perhaps some might think that these bookmarks also mark certain traits: laziness/attention-deficit/procrastination. They would be wrong, at least partially. While I would definitely score an ‘above average’ mark on any test devised to detect aforementioned traits, the main reason I don’t finish the books is that there are certain passages I can’t get past. Certain pages, paragraphs, or even single phrases stop me dead in my tracks. These could be resonant or original; heartbreaking or eyeopening; genius or just genuine; but always, always profound. They force me to look up, down, or sideways, and sometimes even backwards –essentially anywhere but forwards– and how does one move forward if they’re looking elsewhere?
Every time I pick up a book I had not finished, I re-read the same passage, and, again, often, stop. Sometimes, if I put it aside for a year or two, hoping time would provide enough distance in which to accelerate–gather up momentum–to go through the block, I succeed. But even that is not guaranteed.
To this day, I have started my favourite novel over eight times in the span of as many years, but never finished.
Today, as I look forward to a twelve-hour flight, I stare at the only book I brought, Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and I wonder if I’ll succeed where I failed twice before, in 2002 and 2004. I think about the first hurdle, so close to the starting blocks, in the acknowledgments:

[Theme] c.2 The Knowingness About The Book’s Self-conscious Aspect.
While the author is self-conscious about being self-referential, he is also knowing about the self-conscious self-referentiality. Further, and if you’re one of those people who can tell what’s going to happen before it actually happens, you’ve predicted the next element here: he also plans to be clearly, obviously aware of his knowingness about his self-consciousness of self-referentiality. Further, he is fully cognizant of the gimmickry inherent in all this, and will preempt your claim of the book’s irrelevance due to said gimmickry by saying that the gimmickry is simply a device, a defense, to obscure the black, blinding, murderous rage and sorrow at the core of this whole story, which is both too black and blinding to look at–avert…your…eyes!–but nevertheless useful, at least to the author, even in caricatured or condensed form, because telling as many people as possible about it helps, he thinks, to dilute the pain and bitterness and thus facilitate its flushing from his soul…

… I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart — one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not?

from The Black Cat, a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. (audio/text — don’t do it!)

From Epicurus’ letter to Menoeceus (emphasis mine):

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he has grown old, for no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come or that it is passed and gone is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore, both old and young ought to seek wisdom. The former, in order that as age comes over him he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been. And the later, in order that while he is young he may at the same time be old because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since if that be present, we have everything. And if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward obtaining it.

I am anxious these days–maybe anxious is not the proper term–I feel like moving, but am being held back by things lingering beyond their supposed lifetimes. I could just run, and tough it up when things snap; or I could hold on for a few more days…

Earlier today, I leafed through my mental notes for the one I kept to inspire steadfastness when needed, and I found it faithfully carrying this* Rumi ghazal, The Promise,

When pain arrives side by side with your love
I promise not to flee
When you ask me for my life
I promise not to fight

I am holding a cup in my hand
By God if you do not come
Till the end of time
I promise not to pour out the wine
Nor to drink a sip

Your bright face is my day
Your dark curls bring the night
If you do not let me near you
I promise not go to sleep…nor rise

Your magnificence has made me a wonder
Your charm has taught me the way of love
I am the progeny of Abraham
I’ll find my way through fire

Please, let me drink water from the jug
This love is not a short-lived fancy
It is the daily prayer, the year-after-year fast
I live it, like an act of worship, till the end of my life

But then, a tree
Blessed not with fruits of your bounty
Will be dry wood for fire
Even if it drinks the ocean

On the wings of the Friend, fly o my heart!
Fly and look upward
For high on the peak of presence
Earthlings like you will not be let in

Others praise God at the time of affliction
You stay awake day and night
Steady, watchful like the wheel of the firmament

Time to stop speaking of the Friend
Jealousy won’t let me scatter the perfume to the wind

* translation from Rumi’s Divan by Fatemeh Keshavarz.

Vonnegut’s 8 rules for writing a short story:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

It was quiet in the field, a silent huge meadow open to the sky…the only sound: a little stream I had to listen pretty hard to hear. Lonely again. A person gets used to being alone, but break it just for a day and you have to get used to it again, all over from the beginning.

Richard Bach, Illusions.

المصرى اليوم تنفرد بنشر رؤية جديدة للدكتور أحمد زويل «من العلم إلي العالم» في خمسة أجزاء

تقع الورقة التي تنشرها «دار الشروق» نهاية العام وتحمل الرقم (١) في سلسلة محاضرات أحمد زويل في (٢٦) صفحة من القطع المتوسط، عنوان الورقة «حوار الحضارات.. صناعة التاريخ برؤية عالمية جديدة»، وقد ترجم النص من الإنجليزية إلي العربية الدكتور مصطفي محمود سليمان أستاذ الجيولوجيا والمترجم العلمي المعروف

Here are the links to the five parts as published. I also reproduce the whole text under the fold, cause who knows how long these links are going to survive.

صدام الحضارات ونهاية التاريخ.. نظريتان خارج نطاق العلم

الحرب المقدسة.. ومفهوم الجهاد في الإسلام

نقد العولمة.. انكماش الأمل

مشروع مارشال في فلسطين

هل ثمة وظيفة حضارية للولايات المتحدة الأمريكية؟

(more…)

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

from Ash Wednesday, by T. S. Eliot

Edeet Ravel (2004):

Look for Me felt uneventful: whatever events there were came at you pretty quick. Sudden. Surprising. With little build up. Things happened in the span of a few words. Even the question that was lingering throughout the book–the one that provided all the suspense–was answered within a paragraph.

Here’s an example from p.51:

“How did you get into photography?” Beatrice asked.
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m going to publish these photos,”she said. “Good thing I married a man who has not only a heart but also money! Now, what about your personal life?” she asked.
“Nothing much going on.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. You can’t live like a cloistered nun, you know.”
“Yes, yes . . .” I said vaguely.
“Don’t ‘yes yes’ me, dear. Are you having sex at all?”
“No.”
“Since when?”
“Four years, seven months. There was someone a year after Daniel left, just a one time thing, it was a disaster.”
“That’s scandalous. Someone like you! Don’t you miss it?”
“I miss Daniel.”
“You feel you have to be loyal to him.” It was a mild reprimand: she clearly didn’t think much of my approach.
“I can’t help the way I feel,” I said appologetically.
“Listen, dear. Would you feel it’s less of a betrayal if we slept together?”
I considered her question. “Yes,” I said at last. “Daniel wouldn’t mind. It wouldn’t bother him.”
She looked at me a little pityingly, as if I were slightly backward. “I’ll stay the night, then.”
“All right. But I’m not experienced with women.”
She laughed. “I’ll let you read the manual first.” She phoned her husband and told him she wasn’t coming home. “Dudu, my love, I’ll be back in the morning, I’m staying with Dana, poor sweet thing,” she said, smiling at me. “Don’t forget Hagari has her project, and there’s that pizza in the freezer … yes … yes … fine. Bye for now, honey.”
“He sends his regards,” she told me, putting her phone away. “So let’s have some fun.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that at the begining. But the style grew on me as the book went on. How like life, I thought. Life doesn’t come with a sound track. There are no violins or cellos in the background of your breakups. There is no orchestra at moments of triumph. No dancing music at moments of joy (except at weddings, I guess.) Certainly, there are moments of suspense, and periods of build up, but, all in all, life just happens. At least, that’s how it feels looking back on it: a series of apparently mundane happenings interjected–momentarily–by perceptually momentus events. Momentus in the sense of how much they shape life’s trajectory in the moment it takes for them to come into effect. Then, Life resumes its course. (There are many physics-based metaphors that come to mind, but there is no need for any, so I will simply enumerate them in my head to spare aching yours.)

Edeet Ravel (2004):

Look for Me–I understand–is the second novel in a triology (Ten Thousand Lovers, and A Wall of Light) about love stories in the shadow of the vivid struggles of the middle east. Certainly, this story is very much about the Israeli-Palastenian conflict–the human side of it–without being didactic about the politics, and without any claim to moral superiority.

I think it’s worth re-reading when I take on the triology (when I get around to it.)

p.179:

At least eighty cars were already parked at the gas station near the border of the South Lifna Hills. People were standing in small groups and talking, or buying coffee and snacks at the little convenience store, or using the washroom. The gas station was on isolated strip of the road; you couldn’t see any towns or cities in the distance, only neat, altering bands of green and taupe, and beyond them the indistinct mauve dunes of the desert. Near the station, scattered randomly as though abandoned or misplaced, were the usual mystifying objects, the exact nature of which no one could guess: some sort of steel tower; a cement cylinder; equipment and machines that appeared to have been designed for complicated engineering feats. I took a photograph of these unidentified buts of civilization; they captured the improvished feeling we all carried within us. We didn’t know where we were going and we wondered how we’d lasted this long on such flimsy foundations and muddled efforts. The myths we grew up on tried to compensate us, but myths were slippery by nature. In fact we were lost, walking on air, inside air, falling.
The organizers handed out tape and flyers in three languages: messages of peace printed in bold letters on white sheets of paper. We taped them to our cars and them we taped numbers on our fenders. Rafi’s van was tenth. Then the organizers gave instructions, explained the mission. I didn’t listen carefully. The instructions didn’t vary much from activity to activity: no violence, no getting into arguments with army or polics or anyone else we encountered. All interactions would be handeled by trained negotiators.