Her glasses were laying on the couch beside her, and cheap, neon-pink earplugs rested in her ears. Aside from the white screen she was reading from intently, she was completely disconnected from the coffee shop where she sat.

She enjoyed the feeling of muffled senses; no sight, no sound, no conversations happening anywhere outside her head.

The book on her screen was not difficult reading material. She preferred to stay away from books that made her think too much of their content. It was more intellectually rewarding to fatten up her own thoughts as she read the simple words of someone else. That’s why she enjoyed science fiction and fantasy: they were a celebration of unreality written by intellectual bad-asses. They provided just enough inspiration to get her own mind to wander.

Today, her mind was thinking of returning points.

She liked points, all kinds of them. She liked points that served as fullstops. She liked points made. She liked points in a bulleted list. She liked points as decoration. She loved checkpoints in video games. There was something so brave about points, and she liked bravery.

Points were, essentially, an end to something. They put to rest a thought, a phase, a life.

She liked endings a lot, because she lived for beginnings. Without an end, you are stuck in an aimless, numbing middle. Unlike the artificial state of numbness that she had currently placed on herself, you can’t usually control life’s numbing middles. They are the natural state between the beginning and the end, and she tried her best to keep middles short.

Today though, it wasn’t endings that interested her. Points, yes, but returning points. Ends that you could come back to. Ends that you could revisit. Ends that you could change. Ends that were not really ends at all.

She had somehow recently made the realization that life was in fact not about ending points. Humanity was in constant fear of reaching points that cannot be changed. Humanity was in a constant stage of avoiding points of no return. She hated to admit it, but she was like that too, in some ways.

But she wasn’t as smart as most people, because her love for beginnings often pushed her to forget to create returning points. She dove right in, falling headfirst into the shocking, cold hardness of the end. It was violently revitalizing; an endless cycle of dusting off and getting up, head high.

Yet from today on, she thought, it was going to be different, because she could suddenly see returning points. She was not even aware of their existence a couple of days ago! She observed people building them, playing a careful balancing game of push and pull. Oh, too much here, remove a little there, break it before it forms! She didn’t know if people were aware of the game they were playing, or if it was just instinct and self-protection kicking in.

For a second, she felt rage and hate towards the cowardly world. It isn’t about sticking to decisions, she thought, oh, no. It is about following things through to their end. It is about finishing the damn book. It is about finalizing the project to perfection. It is about completion.

Life is not about returning points, she decided, smiling. There will be no middles for her. There will be beginnings. There will be endings.

So she sat in that coffee shop, with muffled senses, trying to understand returning points.

Haruki Marukami in “1Q84″: “If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation.”

The truth behind that sentence is profound. Obviously, you can understand many things you can’t comprehend by delving deeper into the subject. Yet, deep understanding is not artificial.

I can’t understand math, no matter who explains it to me. I can’t understand death. I can’t understand some decisions.

Understanding is subjective. It isn’t about the explaining.

Anyway, I really liked that sentence, so I thought I’d share.

While going through the millions of pictures that have piled up on my hard disk throughout the years, I came upon an annoyingly nostalgic picture:

This picture was probably taken during the year 2000 in Hasa, Saudi Arabia, on one of my dad’s family excursions. It brings back many, many memories- our bi-annual road trips, abayas, the warm winters of Saudi Arabia, and most importantly, the fact that I was once the tallest Assi.

Naturally, when the boys saw this picture, they all rolled on the floor with laughter, “Inti. Konti. Atwal. Mena?”

Yes. Ana. Kont. Atwal. Minkom. Tsawaro.

Today, I am the resident midget.

————–
Originally published in July, 2005.
This post is a part of the “NotSoFar Archive Project”. After eight years of blogging, the project aims to help you rediscover old posts, as well as go back in time. Somehow.

————–

I know what I woke up craving.

1. Halawet Joben

2. Atayef Asaferi Beshta

I know. It’s creepy. I have no idea who wakes up craving so much ghee, fat, sugar, and cream. Fortunately for myself, I’m safely tucked away in Garden’s Street, with no 7alawanjeyeh anywhere near.

What did are you craving today?

I’m not sure if you happened to stumble upon the essay “A Girl Who Reads”, by Rosemarie Urquico. I fell in love with it when I did.

What I did not know though is that it was a reply to another essay on called “Don’t Date a Girl Who Reads”, by Charles Warnke.

And, wow. Somehow, his enraged angst against the readers is so much more powerful. It also has more truth to it, though maybe I should not be admitting this so openly.

I’m a girl who has always been happiest when hiding behind my books. Escapism is best served with words.

To a girl who reads, words have the power to do and undo. Words have the power to give you strength. Words have the power to help you let go. End of chapter. End of story. New book starts now.

You should read the entirety of the essay “Don’t Date a Girl Who Reads”. But I’m going to share the part that gave me goosebumps:

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

Don’t date a girl who reads.

Better yet, don’t be a girl who reads. A girl who reads expects that magical plot to unfold with a prologue, a beginning, a climax, an ending, and an epilogue. A girl who reads has long, winding debates with everyone she cares about in her head, and these may or may not be based on reality. A girl who reads expects constant inspiration, gets bored quickly, and needs a hell of a lot of stimuli.

Being a girl who reads is constant disappointment in how utterly prosaic humanity is. It is a continuously disastrous attempt at weaving in some magic into the utterly banal.

Stay away. Find a pretty girl who perfectly fixes her hair in the morning instead. Find a dull girl who is happiest when gossiping. Find a dumb girl who expects you to be her savior, her protector, her benefactor.

Find a girl who does not know what lies beyond the depressing, monotonous shit that is reality.