My friend Fady says “There is very little arab presence in New York.” So when he heard about the pop up shop attached to Blue Bottle Coffee on Kenmare and Bowery he went there to check it out. When he took his first mankoucheh bite - in this now heaven place, he got very emotional. Him and I work on different projects and ideas, we have coffee and we blab in our lebanese dialect consisting of sentences made with arabic, french and english words all together. He set up a lunch date there with me a few days ago. I ate one and a half mankoucheh and today I still feel the magical taste in my mouth.
I felt like an expat. Oh wait, I am one. Even in my own country I am considered an expat.
Home is everwhere sometimes when you have the soul of a traveler.
Home is invisible.
Yet you can still taste it.
Espressoing
A few more days
A final Hi meeting
The local neighborhood bar has a quiet time between six and nine. It is a place that specializes in coffee, beer and seasonal menus. There is just enough of each for a satisfying snack and effective buzz. After the time when the laptop lids close and before the social gatherings start -- there is a sort of twilight*. Often this time is a fugitive ground rife with creative inspiration and meditative work -- of the kind that results in personal reward.*twilight may refer to civil, nautical or astronomical variety depending on your social or terrestrial condition
A man positions his mouse on the edge of his browser window. He clicks, holds and drags the viewport first left then right. The content of a video game promo micro site responds and adapts to the available space. To the man, this is more delightful than the game itself.
A man laboriously moves his piano down three levels onto the subway platform. Classic vocals and strided chords -- he played so well I swore he was blind. Oblivious to the heat on that August stage, he was most in touch with his audience -- whom he elevated with his music.
A woman should do exactly as she pleases no matter what a man may think.
As the Dalai Lama once said, "It is a time when there is much in the window, but nothing in the room."
"No one understands me," she said. Her grandmother was silent for a minute. It seemed she was searching for an answer in the star speckled sky. "But no one understands anyone in this world, darling. We are all unique. It is what gives us a sense of wonder."