Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to mull over the singnificance of the following poem by Thomas Gray, titled On the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes:

‘Twas on a lofty vase’s side,
Where China’s gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow,
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.

Her conscious tail her joy declared;
The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat, that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,
She saw; and purred applause.

Still had she gazed; but ‘midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide,
The genii of the stream:
Their scaly armour’s Tyrian hue
Through richest purple to the view
Betrayed a golden gleam.

The hapless nymph with wonder saw:
A whisker first, and then a claw,
With many an ardent wish,
She stretched, in vain, to reach the prize.
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat’s averse to fish?

Presumptuous maid! with looks intent
Again she stretched, again she bent,
Nor knew the gulf between:
(Malignant Fate sat by, and smiled)
The slippery verge her feet beguiled,
She tumbled headlong in.

Eight times emerging from the flood
She mewed to ev’ry wat’ry god
Some speedy aid to send.
No dolphin came, no nereid stirred;
Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard.
A fav’rite has no friend!

From hence, ye beauties undeceived,
Know, one false step is ne’er retrieved,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wand’ring eyes
And heedless hearts is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters, gold.

Normally, my parents do not let any of us children out of the house when it starts snowing. Realizing how little it usually snows, the anti-car decision might sound a bit too serious. However, a look at the humble situation of Jordanian roads, which get flooded almost immediately after rain starts falling, and at the mentality of some drivers, the decision can be seen in a different light.

I had to leave the house yesterday morning at around 11 to do something very important. It was snowing and I got to flex my new uber-chic transparent umbrella for the first time against the elements. I discovered that it is challenging to walk with a taller person under the same umbrella if I was holding the umbrella. Hmmm.

Then, after lunch, I went to the office for the last time. My managers and colleagues were throwing me a farewell party at 5:30, and I thought it was very kind of them to propose the idea. Before the party started, at around 3:30, I decided to go out to finalize some paper work and to get lunch.

It’s splendid going out in the snow. I did that for the first time in my life yesterday, thank you parents. I bought me a nice meal, cruised around in Jabal Amman looking for a place to park, and then I found a quiet street with an amazing view of Amman. The radio was on (Ahleen FM - much love) and I was in my mobile sauna, also known as Havana Brown (the car), eating and watching white descending from the heavens.

The setting stirred various emotions in me. I missed someone who played with snow shortly before she passed away, I devoured my meal with what resembled savage passion, and I felt like a child because I was so very happy to be out in the snow away from the reach of parental supervision. One would imagine I am already out of the cocoon, but I sometimes surprise myself with how childlike I get.

The party was absolutely delightful. I got introduced to people who work in different divisions in mother corporate, and I got to say goodbye to them in the same encounter as well. It was highly paradoxical, deeply entertaining, and miserable in some measure.

Farewell party, new beginnings, Havana Brown, and snow. It is that time of the year again…

À la recherche du temps perdu (part deux), originally uploaded by t-squared.

Alla ricerca del tempo perduto…

La passione è immutabile.

dust thou art, originally uploaded by t-squared.

Wishing on time…

Looking for a visual on passion, I landed in the flickr den of a highly artistic person. Click to your heart’s content:

dust thou art on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

À la recherche du temps perdu (part deux) on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

At times you find it easier to push things back in your head instead of dealing with them. Some problems and some memories have you so engaged in them that you cannot break loose. It is at this point that you shove them back, bury them deep, and look the other way hoping they will be shushed.

I think it is the fear of mental and emotional fatigue that stops you from dealing with these issues. The more you think about these problems and memories, the more strain the process generates, and the less enthusiastic you get about the encounter.

It is also a matter of pride. Your pride prevents you from acknowledging your mistakes in certain situations, and it is this same pride that stands in the way of your facing your problems. It is because you are too proud that you prefer to ignore them, instead of handling them.

Passion, the last of the desirable vices, is also a potent actor in your play of ignorance. Passion might be what triggered your actions in the past, leaving those problems and memories still demanding closure. Passion is the alpha and omega of life itself.

Not that I am precisely a guru in telecommunications, but I heard that the satellite responsible for the slow internet connection I am suffering from is called Hashem 1. So in the true spirit of post-modern civility, I am writing Hashem 1 a small note:

Please, get well soon. I cannot work, I cannot send e-mails, I cannot talk to friends and foes, and I cannot finish downloading the new anime I want so bad - because you are ill. We the people beg you to get well soon.

Originally, this post was a list.

A good fellow alerted me to what seems to be a coincidence or a phenomenon, call it what you want, and I decided to change the format of this post.

I do not wish to write things personal, but in the light of my current oscillating mood, I will jot down some thoughts for my future reference.

I hate ends and endings and I do not like the approach of a new year. As far as I am concerned, there is nothing jolly about a new year. As far as I am concerned, it will take me at least five months to fully understand that a new year has begun.

My cat is in early heat. He is loud and smelly and I made the mistake of not fixing him. It is December, is he watching kitty-porn?

It has been a long, long time since I last danced. Now somehow I remember the 2005 new year’s party. Ah, good times, bad times. Just itched in my memory. Who cares, yeah?

Some 2006 people were awesome. Most were just not that awesome. Rejects! - return to HELL whence you came! I sometimes wonder how can some people live with the knowledge that they are who they are. It makes me sick really.

Most Arab singers cannot sing. I am one of them. I made the mistake of sending an old George Wassouf number in my voice to a friend overseas. This friend advised me to keep my day job. I am still hurt.

I am a junk food junkie. My mother hates this, among other things, in me. Her only solace is that I have not, to her knowledge, done anything crazy this year. I find the latter notion amusing.

The world is an unhealthy place to be. For that purpose, I prefer to live in planet Google Earth. Minus the trouble. I will launch Google Tololy one day.

Why is it so difficult to find the perfect white shirt in Amman? I am on a mission impossible, a quest, a hunt… for the perfect white shirt. I would like one that fits. I am not two people, why do they make them so gigantic?

Wars are all around. This makes me sad. It does not help in restoring my lost faith in the human race. I believe in extraterrestrial life and now I have more reason to do so. The perfect man is not even a man, it’s an alien.

Stop reading this post. It is personal. You must unlearn what you have learned - Yoda.

The Italian Embassy in Amman organized two concerts for the Quartetto di Cremona, an Italian group of four founded in the year 2000 and composed of Cristiano Gualco (violin), Paolo Andreoli (violin), Simone Gramaglia (viola), and Giovanni Scaglione (cello). The first concert was on the 18th in Zara Expo while the second was held on the 19th in Mount Nebo.

While I only managed to be present at the first concert, on the 18th, I am positive that the setting at Mount Nebo was spectacular as well. The music performed by the Quartetto di Cremona on the 18th included pieces by Mozart, Verdi, Vacchi, Boccherini and Puccini. Now you may enjoy listening to classical music off records or CDs, but being in the presence of this intense of an emotional and artistic state is truly unmatched.

The performance of the Quartetto di Cremona left nobody in doubt of the group’s exquisite talent. I have personally been brought to tears and then elevated to a surreal realm of pleasure during the concert, and I enjoyed every second beyond description. I cannot but thank the Italian Embassy for organizing the two concerts and for inviting me, and I thank the Quartetto di Cremona for sharing their talent and their spell-binding music with a Jordanian audience.

I truly hope that the Italian Embassy would bring more Italian musicians to town, and I hope more and more functions are organized to promote the Italian language and culture. However, I am not entirely sure of the type of audience in the first concert. The people present seemed to be embassy officials, but one can never be too sure of that, now can one?

During the concert, I met an old friend of mine whose name you ought to remember quite well. Ilyas Dorzi is a gifted pianist and composer that will soon organize a concert of his own. I will be announcing the concert once the date is official, but this is one person that will have people fighting over his autograph in no time, watch out, Amman!

Now feast your eyes on images taken from the concerto on the 18th: