Yet another time the Box features a quotation on Stupidity, with a capital “S”. My motivator, and the clue behind the semi-repetition, is a comment that went unpublished, which I received today. This comment made me praise the wisdom of my creator, because he made some intelligent and some less sharp. Such a miracle when one reflects on it. Not to mention the many thanks and the growing fondness I am manifesting towards Blogger, and the comments moderation system.

I believe some obstacles exist in one’s life only to push one to give more. I have many a blockage of the sort, some more potent than others. What they serve to do is quite the contrary of what they were designed for. Therefore, allow me to be a bit informal and express my pity for the person who has been trying for around six months now to put me down. What a better way to tantalize than not to dignify a trifle with a proper answer? Let the moth that roams around a lightsource consume itself; watch as it never quenches its lust for a reward.

I had wished to receive constructive critique of a thought expressed in one of the entries. Perhaps even a suggestion for a novice topic or series. I imagined one would send off an intriguing idea, a word of advice, make that what you wish provided it is of use and essence. Any individual with a sense of right and wrong would abhor nonesense, not everyone can avoid delivering it though,that is tricky business. What makes this a passing disease is the presence of many a sensible reader, a thoughtful commentator, or a reflective friend. For those, and for the dim-witted, thanks are due.

Dear readers of Tololy’s Box, I hope for your understanding of the matter. I cannot promise that I will post no more quotations on this particular subject, Stupidity, as long as I receive such nonesense from a weakling. I hope I did not come across as a fuming voice through a blog. I am rather amused at this, it makes me scratch my head and think of better entries for the Box, if only to exhibit triumph over the “blockage”.

On Monday November 28th, I head for an HSBC building to conclude a financial affair of mine. The clock was precisely 1:45 p.m., and the weather was too hot to handle in the black leather I was in. Nothing too kinky, think not much of the matter.

As I approached the door, I read a sign that delivered explicit apologies from the management of the bank to their clients. The motives behind such a posting on the portal became clear in a moment. I walked past the first door and then I was stopped by a man in a uniform, whom I took to have the bank’s security as his profession. I did not mind being stopped, I minded something else.

The uniform man then indicated the presence of a uniform woman who was situated close by, he made some gestures with his hands, and probably with his voice, so that I understood that there is something to yet be done before I can go about my business. Again I say, I did not mind that. I realize the importance of security and I am for the freshest safety-related measures in Amman.

I got to the woman, who had a hand held detector, and I smiled at her. She carefully slid the device over my body, with focus elaborated on my waist, and then she asked me to open my big black bag. I opened the bag, expecting her to go through my personals, and possibly intimates, with care and dignity. I was mistaken. The woman literally stripped the inner folds of my bag with her hands, she made a joke about my chocolate, then another concerning the small old navy shoe that I often play with, and I was stunned at this. I smiled at her, because I did not wish to make a scene.

The woman laughed it off and told me she was “kidding” with me. I was so taken aback by the surprise of it all that I said nothing, and smiled on. In general I am not a person who welcomes such impulses of familiarity from absolute strangers, and certainly not from strangers with a hand in the bag and a joke about one’s chocolate.

I admit that now when I look back at the incident, I regret not having been to the office of this woman’s superior. I am not sure whether or not such a step was necessary, do I come too harsh for contemplating the advance?

The subsequent conversation took place a minute ago. X is feverish and Y is sleepy. See if this bit of real life chattering strikes a chord your way.

X: What do you want from life?
Y: Peace of mind.
X: How will you achieve that?
Y: Oh, spiritual tranquility, decent cash, and a lover.

The last T Play Box session ended a month ago, on October 28th. Now that I have had my dose of, well, something, I feel like playing.

One of the things that get to me the most, and just make me tick, is when someone walking ahead of me suddenly brakes. For that reason I would like all pedestrians to install rear lights, and to use them as often as possible. This kind of an “incident” happens so frequently when I am minding my own walking business at the university campus.

Most of the time it is a veiled girl, or a group of them, casually chatting and then they stop. It is also noteworthy that they like to halt their progress near, or at, stairs and/or very narrow routes. Why this happens so often, and in such a seemingly organized fashion, I have no clue. All I know is that it usually ruins my mood because I cannot understand it.

There was this morning some eight months ago when I opened my eyes with such a lovely mood. I promised myself that no matter what happens that day at university, I would not let it taint this perfect state of mind and spirit that I was in. I went to my classes, saw my buddies, had my junk food “food”, and then it happened.

I was walking, a very simple action, you know. I started from point A, and in my mind I was set to reach point B. I opened the transparent doors that so often push me backwards because, you see, I am not exactly a bodybuilder, and I trod on asphalt roads and my clothes got caught in the untrimmed bushes in ceramic pots here and there, and all was a generally pleasant experience.

Then an obstacle named “stairs” came my way and I was determined to overcome it, and there they were. Three, bigger, girls clustered around the mouth of the stairs in such a way that nobody could pass. They were talking, “Did you see how he…?” and I was quite uninterested in their conversation. I wanted to get to point B. I stopped by them for a minute, trying to emit as many mental messages as possible to inform them of my desire to walk by them and cease this forced eavesdropping. My mental station was not functional that morning, or so it seemed.

Body to the rescue! I resorted to my body language and I sort of kept moving in my place to show them that they are preventing me from reaching point B. That came short of success as well. So I figured I should use my tongue, right then and there, and I really dislike using my tongue on strangers. Most often such occasions don’t end nicely, and I could feel a bit bad afterwards.

Then I discovered that if I said something “not nice” to them, I would break the promise I made to myself earlier on in the day. “No matter what”, remember? This was one of the toughest mornings, eight months ago, when I was in a lovely mood. I lashed the girls with my tongue and in my head I hurt them even more, they answered back but hey, that’s life. Keep away from the stairs or risk my wrath.

P.S. This is a post that makes use of the �real� daily language of Tololy, being a Jordanian �young lady�. It employs transliteration, which is a method vastly used in online chats, to deliver its message. Jordanians do not speak Arabic, as in standard Arabic. In their daily lives they communicate using Jordanian, a local variant of Arabic.

You will find some English words thrown in, this I do to dress a shade of verisimilitude on the subject. Many Jordanians use English words here and there in their conversations, and of those I am one.
This entry is an experiment with the sole aim of examining the impact of using daily slang in blogging on the seriousness of the Box. That, I declare, should be interesting.

I wonder sho biseer iza I blogged heek. Halla2 ma32oul el seriousness tab3et el Box tet2assar meshanni ma 3am aktob la bil 3arabi el fasee7 wala bil engleezi?Iza bedna nettalla3 3al mawdou3 men linguistic perspective, menla2i ino el essa kteer akbar men Tololy�s Box. El essa heyye ino fi kteer nas 3arab, ma bye7ko 3arabi
wala 7atta engleezi, bye7ko eshe nus nus. Ana barken wa7deh menhom, ma3 ino I try dayman Arakkez 7akyee ya 3arabi ya ingleezi bas kteer sa3eb.

Ma beddi adayye3 mawdou3 el entry, illi howa ino ana bedi ashof iza hay el jargon ra7 tdayye3li el weightiness elli bil Box. O iza 3an djad ra7 t2asser 3al Box, lakan daroori nfakker addish bet2asser 3ala our daily messages lamma ne7ki.

Halla2 transliteration sha�3leh mawjodeh o ma3roufeh, elli heyye ketabet el kelmat b a7rof mo lal lo�3a el asleyyeh tab3et-hom. Bas, I�ve never read a blog maktoob bil hal taree2a, have you? O hada eshe ana bashofo mo healthy, la2ino iza fi fasil been el lo�3a illi mnesta3melha kol youm o el lo�3a illi mnoktob feeha, ma3nato fi eshe mo mazboot.

Two days ago, I managed to talk my father into reading Rooster the rooster. A short story previously published in its designated place here at the Box, and submitted to a Creative Writing professor. Rooster the rooster was read by many people. I read it aloud to my sister when I finished it, we were in the car heading home and I was thrilled that the tale was finished. So thrilled was I, that I could not wait to get home for her to know about it. So I started reading.

I did not use the voice I imagined I would use if I read the story. The narrative voice I used was quite different, and very unexpected. It was pretty casual though, I thought such a step would rob the story of its satire, but it didn’t.

So my father agreed to read the two papers I put in his lap as he watched TV. He asked what the papers were about, and I said “Oh, just read!”. Much to my content, he complied.

I sat on a couch close at hand, and I waited for the comments. My father, you see, has his own architecture of thought. He doesn’t always quite get the jest of what I say or write, and that makes the process all the more pleasant. I sometimes have his temper and when he fails to understand what I mean by something, I normally use this temper if my conduct is not checked.

Not to speak too long of details that contribute nothing to this entry’s core, I will proceed with the logical sequence of events. So there I was, sitting on a couch looking at my father as he put on his glasses and started reading the passages I composed.

Now he smiled, then he laughed. He threw a stylistic remark my way but I talked it away, explaining the reason behind the deliberate glitch. “But that belongs here, because…It’s all deliberate, you know what I’m saying” -”Ahhh. So you meant to say such and such eh? That’s smart” - “Why of course!”.

So went our brief conversation. The way my father reacted to the piece was amazing. It made me see, first hand, what a reader with a completely different line of thought would juice out of it. He smiled, and that was proof enough for me to feel that he was able to relate to it. That is my writer’s ecstasy.

The Box is offering three ways for its readership to stay in sync with its happenings, Tololy believes in the power of choice and does not like an overdoes of technicalities that all pretend to understand when most really don’t. I have been looking around for some ways to help my readers keep up with Tololy’s Box entries, in a timely fashion, and this is what I have come up with so far.

Should you be an interested reader, and should you wish to be informed when a fresh entry is added to its siblings in Tololy’s Box, all you need to do is feed this link into your RSS reader. For those who do not know what RSS is, and who are not exactly into learning at this point, I say: Do not despair!

Feedblitz makes it happen that once you submit your email address to its service, you will have Tololy’s Box entries sent to your inbox when an update has been made. Just click here, add your email address, and voila! Once you wish to die on the Box, you can un-subscribe in a snap.

There is always the third, and ,if I may say, dominant way to stay updated. Just visit Tololy’s Box when the need moves you.

After receiving a speedy reply from the talented Mr.Luca Postpischl concerning the beautiful pictures I spoke of in my previous entry, now I may include some of them in Tololy’s Box. I shall post one of my favorites now, taken in Venice, S.Marco Square. I urge all interested readers to visit panoramic pictures of Italy, perhaps this would spur Mr.Postpischl to take some more visual extraordinaries.

“Panoramic pictures of Italy” courtesy of Luca Postpischl

Grazie Luca e buon lavoro!