with Roba… [Through valleys and mountains]

Roba must be one of the blogs that I read most often… the funny part is that I teach her [!!!] at University… just in the last class I realized that I know a lot about her from her blog… and it occurred to me… that it must be nice to feel that people know you or even understand you [to a certain level] without even having the social routine of meeting up and chatting over a meal…
Anyways…
Roba blogged about our last stroll around older parts of Amman in a very [nostalgic] way… it’s worth checking out…
She even put a photo of me with the rest of the class… another thing about the internet… personal spaces are less dominate than in real life… one day you can wake up and find your photo all around the world =P

:: check out my photos of that same stroll .

intersting I ikbis

a very intersting new video/photo sharing website...
ikbis

this video features many of my students at the school of Arts and Design/JU


Click on the image above to see the video!

well it is a good laugh...
make sure to sign up and share with the rest...

flashback I de_mad reincarnated

this is something I wrote to my friends while I was living in Edinburgh dated 21/Dec/2005...
that was the first time I came to know the pond... that later on... would be one of my loveliest places in Edinburgh...

<<<
Once upon a winter morning… was she… She was feeling sad that morning… she was thinking… two of her best friends are going to change dramatically and not wait for her to share that with them… and another friend… a close best friend is simply drifting away… she was thinking… why should she go back… to a place where she wont recognize the familiar faces… where she'll be an outsider… she thought…

[[everyone is changing...everything is changing…why? why should I come back home????]]

she can't go back… cuz nothing will be waiting for her… she thought… she should decide… on that sad winter morning… she should change her course… and decide to stay… to stay where she was… yet she wasn't happy… she went out to breath clean fresh air… and just kept on walking…

[[so at the parting of the ways… I changed my mind and went down another road to explore… It was a lovely neighborhood… beautiful houses all decorated for the Christmas… lovely gardens with exotic plants… and wonderfully simple landscape… And then… I heard a water sound… and seagulls… looked around to discover a hidden pond…]]

She needed to see that water… she loved water bodies… she thought… it might help her to see things clearer and maybe give her courage to announce her new resolution to the others…

[[I dunno why does water do what it does to me… but it always do it… I really feel hypnotized by it… as if something inside of me… or part of who I am… resonate with the waves of the water… my eyes… not tired by the constant changes of the water sheet…]]

She was looking silently at the birds… the birds…

[[does a bird return to its home after seeing the world? does a bird settle? the birds... who know the value of heavens... cuz this is their home… their sight rings a bell of a hidden adventure I once upon a time did…]]

more and more things became clearer to her… she is a bird… she can't go back… cuz there is no place for her to go back… she made up her mind… yet she wasn't happy yet… she went around the lake… looking around her… breathing air as she just learnt how to breath… and amidst her wandering… she found something… she saw a sign…

[[I found a staircase...abandoned wooden steps leading up to a mountain… how I can resist… I wanna explore… and here is these steps calling me… and then… I decided to climb that mountain… cuz... everything looks different from above]]

So she went up… and when she started going up… she only stopped to look at the wonderful world down… she only stopped to let her soul catch up with her… she only stopped to make a new decision to continue going up… she knew a lot about the power of making decisions… she was training herself… and she kept on moving up…

[[And as I was going up... and everything getting smaller… my worries... my dreams... my burdens... all stayed closer to the center of earth… while I... only I... defied gravity and went up... and I dunno how much time it took me… I was so happy... I felt like am exploring some place where no foot ever stepped on... and so I kept on going up... I forgot that am afraid of heights... there were no space for fearing anything... I had to reach the top… and that is that...]]

She was feeling different… she started to sound different…

[[It is so different from up… it is so different how everything look from up… even you… or the way you look is now different…You have defied the simple rule of gravity… the rule that says… you should stay close to the center of earth… but no… I don't want to be bound by earth… by the material world… by what others think I should do or say… by my old routine… by the troubling life… no… I wanna go up… I wanna leave it all… and go up to forget about the details… and see the whole picture… to see the frame… to see what I couldn't see when I was down…]]

And so she made it… and she reached the top… and there she found a chair… a bench… another sign… she knew now she had to sit… and just contemplate what was around her… she had to breath… again… breath as for the first time… she had to look… she had to… be there

[[am up there… in a place only few know about… this chair… resting at the top… did he ever thought that maybe one day a girl from a faraway place… a place where such chairs don't exist on mountain tops… this girl would come and it's her “maktoob” to sit and write those words… am freezing… my writing is unreadable… but… am mad… and glad to know it…]]

And subhan Allah… she started to realize through her mad state of mind… she began to realize… she started to see again… she was being happy… she was transforming… she knew that… and she respected that… it was her fate… not her decisions that took her to that specific place at that exact time… it was the grand plan that she was living in… she was part of the perfection around her… and that is when her personal wisdom rushed to her mind…

[[Who cares should I stay here or not? who knows... will I come home or not? why am worrying? why am thinking about something that might never happen… why and why? I felt stupid for trying to organize my life… I felt that am trying to control things... I shouldn't control… am worrying about stuff I shouldn't worry... after all... Allah's grace comes always to rescue us...and who knows… can I be certain? No… can I make promises? No… I just have to live my life… day by day... cuz today... am here... tomorrow.... who knows?]]

And that's when everything became clear to her… she knew then… she is just a girl… a mad girl… with simply hectic life… and she was so happy… she felt happy for the simple fact that she can not think about the future… she need not to make a dramatic decision now… she can live her magical world now… without making any long term decisions… she felt so light… she felt like a bird… and just then she knew the meaning of being a bird… and she felt how flying feels like… once she believed that she can fly… and now… she is flying…
>>>>

[upon architecture] manifesto of futurist architecture

I read this interesting Futurist manifesto in architecture written by Antonio Sant’Elia back in 1914 [!!!]… And I found myself agreeing with most of what he said…
The article is rather funny with the typical Italian honesty bashing all through the article where Sant’Elia describes architects of his times as imbeciles or stupid and their styles as idiotic…
Very interesting manifesto… this is the part I liked the most…

[[
I COMBAT AND DESPISE:
1. All the pseudo-architecture of the avant-grade, Austrian, Hungarian, German and American;
2. All classical architecture, solemn, hieratic, scenographic, decorative, monumental, pretty and pleasing;
3. The embalming, reconstruction and reproduction of ancient monuments and palaces;
4. Perpendicular and horizontal lines, cubical and pyramidical forms that static, solemn, aggressive and absolutely excluded from our utterly new sensibility;
5. The use of massive, voluminous, durable, antiquated and costly materials.

AND PROCLAIM:
1. That Futurist architecture is the architecture of calculation, of audacious temerity and of simplicity; the architecture of reinforced concrete, of steel, glass, cardboards, textile fiber, and of all those substitutes for wood, stone and brick that enable us to obtain maximum elasticity and lightness;
2. That Futurist architecture is not because of this an arid combination of practicality and usefulness, but remains art, i.e. synthesis and expression.
3. That oblique and elliptic lines are dynamic, and by their very nature posses an emotive power a thousand times stronger than perpendiculars and horizontals, and that no integral, dynamic architecture can exist that does not include these;
4. That decoration as an element superimposed on architecture is absurd, and that THE DECORATIVE VALUE OF FUTURIST ARCHITECTURE DEPENDS SOLELY ON THE USE AND ORIGINAL ARRANGEMENT OF RAW OR BARE OR VIOLENTLY COLORED MATERIALS;
5. That, just as the ancients drew inspiration for their art from the elements of nature, we- who are materially and spiritually artificial- must find that inspiration in the elements of the utterly new mechanical world we have created, and of which architecture must be the most beautiful expression, the most complete synthesis, the most efficacious integration;
6. that architecture as the art of arranging forms according to pre-established criteria is finished;
7. that by the term architecture is meant the endeavor to harmonize the environment with Man with freedom and great audacity, that is to transform the world of things into a direct projection of the world of the spirit;
8. From an architecture conceived in this way no formal or linear habit can grow, since the fundamental characteristics of Futurist architecture will be its impermanence and transience. THINGS WILL ENDURE LESS THAN US. EVERY GENERATION MUST BUILD ITS OWN CITY. This constant renewal of the architectonic environment will contribute to the victory of Futurism which has already been affirmed by WORDS-IN-FREEDOM, PLASTIC DYNAMISM, MUSIC WITHOUT QUADRATURE AND THE ART OF NOISES, and for which we fight without respite against traditionalist cowardice.
]]