Should I get a tape recorder and start recording all my thoughts even though I’ll probably never go back and listen to them again? Do people still have tape recorders? Is it okay to cry? Is it okay not to cry? (more importantly) How valuable is gold dust? Surely it’ll just fly away with a little breeze? Is the word chaperone of French origin? Probably. What’s the point of having a lucky number if you don’t gamble or play the lotto? (I guess playing the lotto is a type of gambling) Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Making your bed each morning is crucial. How important is it to pay attention really ?

[A guide for people who aren’t sure if boxing is cool] Boxing is really cool, not sure if you heard. The speed bag is the coolest part. When you can do that well it’s basically the blackbelt of boxing. Jump rope is sort of point of entry. When you’re bad at it you look stupid, so it’s important to be good. Good means fast and being able to do one foot and or cross your hands or spin around in circles or whatever. (Side note: do kids still do double dutch or did the phones kill that too?) Getting punched in the stomach is cool. Only for tough guys with abs, but just one more cool thing about boxing: having people punch you in the stomach as hard as they can without flinching. Punching someone in the face is cool IF you’re out the ring. By the way, you don’t look for people to punch in the face, they find you. If you’re not sure and you’ve never punched someone in the face, don’t worry about it, you’ll know when you’re supposed to. Boxing movies are cool too. Boxing is cool because boxi...

Time is at a standstill for these past few days where the night encapsulates our bodies and the trees shush out our voices. But that is all we ask for A moment of fortressed respite from the world From us.. As the loam pads our naked hearts By strange hands I don't know from where they're coming Yours fritts and mine's iron made Coz you can only be what you are You've had the heart of a star  But light never had hit it before It rather went through the ripples and folds of your brain The best designer of ambushes I have ever seen "I'm just so confused", you whisper again  for tear-stained emphasis Should I mention again That feelings are now real But no longer a reality "confused" is when you're screaming something that your mind does not yet understand

He danced beneath the fireflies On an empty road And got lost in anger But never chased yesterday He did it like a dance He did it for a while But when it's gone, you know, it's gone He's tired of being a stranger And he's miles from home Miles from mom .. While he walked the streets of his life He found pleasure in pain Found sunshine through the rain But never chased yesterday

I have been playing tunes And expected the whole world to dance on them Composing, playing, erasing, rewriting Performing.. Beasts inside me dancing I woke up off shore.. Having I been dancing with beasts again? I committed a crime last night  When I made a hole in our boat  Guess I've spent too much time with beasts No.. It was the beasts who tried to stop me From digging a hole in our boat. I think this could be the last one Jimmy But why don't you come and take this last one with me .. The calm before the storm you can hear the drop of a pin It can't get worst.. Deny my crime Jimmy Here comes the wave And we're already sinking in our depraved fears It's a made up composing lesson Never let me perform again, Jimmy ..

There’s 2 parts sometimes half and half sometimes 99:1. Momma cries at night or in the morning. He hears some of it and maybe it echoes later on. Dad on the sidelines spills dirty words that dance across the hall field settling in with the sweat on her headband. Hard to walk hard to think hard to spell Impossible, probably. For this dude it’s too hot or she’s too dark. One of them needs sunglasses cause the brightness is turned all the way to the max. All these birds are standing on a branch All these other birds are flying high I came near their nests and they flew away "Will you come back?", I say Safety's first It's never half and half.

Okay so I have recently become mildly obsessed with the TV show Rick and Morty . It’s a mean, cynical show, but it also exhibits surprising humanity and depth. I like how creative it gets; you can almost feel it building up the new generation of sci-fi references and foundations. It’s a smarter, faster, more modern and more vulgar Futurama. It is also looser, messier, and rougher than a lot of TV I’m used to. Rick and Morty addresses a desire to fulfill some special existential purpose with what I'd call an uplifting cynicism. In it, Summer(Morty's sister) finds out that she was, an unwanted pregnancy. She breaks down and wonders if there's any real meaning to her life. Morty then tells her his equally unsettling experience of burying his own body from a different reality. He concludes by saying Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die Come watch T.V? While this may be an especially dark moment, it contains a comforting message: For ...

A bell rings in the distance he hears it but ignores it at least for the first few rings. A light shines through the small crack under the door to his bedroom but he leaves the door closed is there really something in there worth checking out? There's a voice message from his mother and his best friend and his other best friend but they can wait and if they wait long enough they’ll forget about it. He sits on a riverbank overlooking the waterflow thinking about nothing at all a light rain starts to fall and he doesn’t seem to notice it he just sits and stares out toward the horizon like he’s made of plastic.

There were two best friends who hung out around the corner from the school. They were drunks. Harmless ones And occasionally even helpful Particularly when the kids kicked the ball over the short wall. One day, one of the two friends showed up with a fancy suit He didn’t seem to miss his old life really. Construction started in the parking lot where they used to drink. Soon the kids stopped seeing the two brothers altogether. The shoe stores on the near street were replaced by new shoe stores. The kids from the playground got older and graduated from orange soda to coffee. Why did they build all these banks? You can only fit so many people on the sidewalk before they spill into the streets. He looks into the never ending street Nothing about it is familiar. 3 years since the smoke poured it up and the small gardens on the sides look like Europe or how he imagines the extravagant pavements of Casablanca. 3 years since he's been stuck What happened to his lif...

Okay so… I love starting off a thought with, “okay so…” It makes me feel like I’m giving off a super serious vibe and at the same time I get an extra moment to figure out what the heck I’m about to say. Casual Chadi, back at it again. Okay so, today I want to talk about the weather. Not like, the talk about the weather that every person on earth has every single day while making small talk, but more big picture. (That said, it was really beautiful outside today, like over the top perfect 11/10 everything). Big picture: I want to talk about the weather as marker of time. In some places (looking at you Rabat), the weather is the same pretty much all the time. Something about that predictability is appealing. You know what you’re going to get. It helps create lasting routines that maybe make you more productive or focused. It makes sense, I get it. One less potentially stressful thing out of the equation. In most places the weather changes with the seasons. Basically, summer is warmer an...

The school is the only thing he knows With invisible walls like the fence around the house That keeps the cats away A book shelf sits in his room, essentially empty Full of titles he did not choose In the distance There is a vague outline of the alternative He sees it one way but describes it another Harsh and gray and he can’t figure out which is right.

I love the unwarranted question mark. Sort of feel like summer Thursday should exist in the winter too? It’s not a question, but the the marker still carries meaning. I’m not asking if you think there should be summer Thursdays in the winter, I’m telling you. Like, “Wait, how does this not exist already?!” It’s an unspoken question attached to the statement. It’s Thursday but I spent most of the day thinking it wasn't. That definitely goes in the loss column. Although more often than not it’s the opposite. Oh wait, it’s still only Monday, I thought it was Thursday. When is it gonna be Thursday again? Is there a word assigned to the opposite of "inspired"? Because I have been feeling quite "this word" lately, that I might get back to the ole’ blog. Why are you feeling so uninspired Chadi? Great question! There are a few things that have turned my frown upside down recently. -  Boredom. 24/7 and has no energy to do s***. -  I haven't been reading a lot! The w...

Today I feel like I hit a little bit of a road block. The last few days really. I want to write more but I’m feeling terribly indecisive. Everything I start writing I get tired of after a paragraph or two. The truth is that I’ve been distracted. Distracted by the media mostly. I can’t stop reading articles about politics and philosophy and sports and movies and other things I think I’m interested in. The irony is that it’s important to read a lot if you want to get better at writing. Reading the work of professionals and writers you admire should inspire you to improve your craft. The problem is my reading hasn’t been very focused and that’s sort of scattered my thoughts. I did finally finish the To Have and Have Not book by Hemingway. It was a bit on the long side but I guess he’s done a lot of living and has a lot of stories to share. Although filled with vivid writing and peopled with memorable characters, the book is weak as a novel. In fact, Hemingway was on record as saying that...

When I was in 7th grade I got suspended from the football team for doing something dumb. I mention it now because it’s one of those random events that’s had a kind of outsized impact on my life. One day I was on the street with a friend of mine when he pulled a dyeing pack out of his pocket it, waved it at me and said, “look at this.” He twisted one end of the packet several times and then threw it to the ground. The dyeing sprayed everywhere. For a 12 year old boy, this is very cool. We immediately went to hardware store to get more supplies. We threw these little dyeing bombs around the neighborhood, all the while making a mess without much regard for public property. Soon we rushed back to school to show the rest of our friends. Somehow we ended up in the locker room, probably because we knew we’d be away from any teachers. I demonstrated the twisting technique neccessary to get the right amount of pressure in the little packet for it to explode properly. I proceeded to throw three...

Like one of those clocks that old people have Or young people who like old things Like that smell of dyeing and wood When you pass by a carpenter Like that feeling you get When you were the first at your class Like your younger sister’s breathing When you used to sleep in the same room Back and forth Back and forth Pissed-off Care-free Pissed-off Care-free

The fear of uncertainty shudders through the apartment that he’s been invited to for the week He’s spent the last two hours talking to a lovely girl over dinner but he can’t remember anything she said. He has been stuck in this trance for three days. Walking down the small street just off the large boulevard he peers through a dusty window and sees framed photographs of a happy family. One off them is dirty and cracked and lays flat just next to the others. The wind shifts throughout the day and thoughout the week along with his disposition. The sky is only blue for several rare and fleeting moments. It must be more comfortable in a murky grey. He wakes up in the morning more tired than he’s ever been falling asleep at night is like dying for just a few hours at a time. He has been overtaken by his own shadow seeping into the cracked pavement of the streets that carry his weightless movements. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. He looks in the mirror on his way out of th...