.

.

لو تأملنا الحال قليلًا لتفهمّنا أن العزلة لأجل تقويم الذات وتجديد الصحة وإصلاح النفس ثم العودة إلى حياتنا دليل أوضح على الولاء والحب أكثر بسبعين مرة من حضور المرء بعلّاته في كل وقت. إن حبي لك يتجلى في أنني أنا بخير، لكي أكون خيرًا معك، وأن أكون سليمًا معك، وأن أكون راشدًا معك. فإذا لم أكن بخير وصحة واتزان، فكيف يمكن لحضوري أن يكون تصرّفًا محبًّا؟ أيّ حبٍّ يمكن التماسه من كون المرء في حالة تقهقر في نفسه وبدنه وعقله؟

There’s nothing a man gets of greater worth
Than a good wife, but nothing’s colder than
A supper-saboteur, who’ll sear her man,
Though he be tough, without a frying pan,
One who will serve his old age to him raw.

— Hesiod's Works and Days

حرفيًا: اللي تنغّص العشة على رجلها

بالأبيات الوراها يشبّه المشيب كأنه أكلة، فيكول بما معناه:
Even though her man might be tough, yet she serves "old age" to him without even frying it in the pan.

On Being Bilingual
Ideas come in seeds; some in English, others in Arabic. I find it hard to grow English seeds in Arabic soil and vice versa. Sometimes I'd think of something and it'd come up naturally in Arabic. When I try to express it in English, it feels strenuous and out-of-breath, as if I'm hastily translating a text that I haven't formulated too well. There's a division of labor among languages too; Arabic is aphoristic, assertive, dense, oratorical, ornamental, intimate, and emotional. It's for intense feelings and big ideas well composed, and well thought through. English, on the other hand, is pedagogic, simplistic, analytic, translucent, explanative, elaborative, experimental, and lends itself easily to jargon and technicality. Generally, an Arabic text is like a painting. An English text is like an infographic.

I'm quite aware that this is a subjective issue influenced by what I read and heard in each of those languages; philosophy, science, medicine, and art I learned mostly through English, while poetry, rhetoric, love, hate, honor, ethics, history, and religion I learned mostly through Arabic.

An artist is only as good as the audience he attracts.

.

It's an ancient Roman statue that's said to depict a Gallic (Celtic, French) chieftain killing himself after he killed his own wife, to prevent them both from being captured by the Romans.

لا يَخدَعَنَّكَ مِن عَدُوٍّ دَمعُهُ
وَاِرحَم شَبابَكَ مِن عَدُوٍّ تَرحَمُ
لا يَسلَمُ الشَرَفُ الرَفيعُ مِنَ الأَذى
حَتّى يُراقَ عَلى جَوانِبِهِ الدَمُ

— أبو الطيب المتنبي