On Olives and Sake

I caught the train that runs to downtown Sakae, and like every other friday night, I made my way down to Heaven’s Door. The small bar down in the basement of the liveliest district of Nagoya. To the upsetting of my perfectly ordinary friday night, the door said “Closed until next week”.

Disappointed, and quite uneasy with the fact that I won’t get my dose of intoxication with beer, nicotine, and Bob Dylan, I refuted the idea to call anyone or try any other bars, and made my way home through the big puzzle of little alleys that connects this city.

It was a very picturesque walk. I was already armed with the over coat and the scarf around my neck. The hands in the pockets. The melancholy of Pamuk’s Istanbul, and the echoes of the last two hours of Maya’s Manifesto. Tom Waits telling me that he’s “in love with a jersey girl…”. A fair baggage of painful memories, a road that goes ahead and little drops of rain pouring every now and then.

If this was a movie, this would be where all the revelations come pushing through, and driving the hero either to death or discovering his hidden success.
It was all too suited for that. All too suited indeed, that I walked into the first bar that had decent music and effectively anesthetized all these seeds of revelation.

For some reason, I have missed this article when it was first published.

2 years on, the same questions linger on.

It is easy for an idealist like me to call them off, but they are still valid questions for many the Syrians on the streets.

And if you don’t think so, just check the comment section, and you’ll see how very pressing they still are.

It has been argued, times and times again, that the only possibility for a successful coup d’etat, that can hold social cohesion through a transitional period died with General Ghazi Kanaan, who was groomed for such a move [I say that, not without much irony].

syria is the kind of place where, within minutes of your arrival, you are transported into an old, 35mm, black and white family movie state, where achingly beautiful scenes bring you back to a not-so-far-away past where life was a bit more simple and pleasures were a bit less hard to reach.

Jimmy, has a wonderful recollection of his Syria visit, with a number of breathtaking photos.

How are we, as mankind, going to treat other life forms that we might bump into in that infinite comic matter?

This question is very relevant, especially if that other life form was less developed than ours.

2008, a year that I am strangely convinced will be a spectacular one. And it started out as nothing less than that.

I’ve had a more than wonderful start for this year, I hope everybody else did too.

I’m glad I can just commit 2007 to the bag of bad memories now, and look forward to this new year.