the stories that made me
You tremble like a flute
in his bed
half naked and delicate
His warmth a sandstorm
that wears you away
Relax You are not here
to save anyone You
are not here
to be saved
Kiss him Wake him up
(might he remember you?)
Or leave him and go
Nothing changes him
but you will peel
those sheets off
a butterfly
Or a wasp.
It wasn’t a usual summer night that year. Although the cool breeze eased the humidity, there was something surreal about the midnight sea at Ain el-Mreisseh, Beirut’s seafront. August always brings jellyfish, and they appear like plastic bags dumped by some indifferent god into the Mediterranean. But on this August night in 2004, the jellyfish glowed like grayish streetlamps in the navy blue sea. It was there he stood casting his fishing line into the dangerous depths.
The seafront is dotted with rocky footholds and baby islands on which the likes of him gather in search of solitude. But by the time I saw him, the other fishermen (if you can call them that) were already snoring. Or, as we say in Arabic, in their seventh sleep. In short, it was too late to say the man was night-fishing, and it was too early to say he was an early bird. It was the magical hour of 2:45am.
The movie Cloverfield completely devastated me.
Images of it have been haunting me since I first watched it. Sometimes, I remember some detail and sink back into the dark place that the movie took me to. This is, by far, one of the worst movies ever (emotionally speaking).
Tonight I uncovered the reason why this movie has caused me so much harm. It’s one simple fact:
Everyone that I — the viewer — associated with eventually died.
This has to be the single worst ingredient in a movie. There’s no lack of horrible movies, or apocalyptic movies. But how harsh a movie is depends not on how many people die in the movie, but rather on who dies in the movie.