Mona

“There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral - immoral from the scientific point of view.'
'Why?'
'Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here ofr. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion - these are the two things that govern us. And yet [...] I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream - I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all maladies of medievalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal - to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. [...] We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. ... The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.”
― Oscar Wilde

“مش عايزة ورد ..
الورد فيه تغريبة تغري بالحنين ..
وأنا غربتي أوسع كتيير منه
والحب مش إعلان مؤقت بالحياة ف بوكيه
ويومين يكون دبلان..!
.
مش عاوزة أغنية ..
كل الأغاني كدابين
.
مش عاوزة جاوابات توسِّع المسافات كمان
.
مش عاوزة وعد بشيء جديد
ولاشيك أمل .. من غير رصيـد
.
مش عايزة ف اللحظا دي غير ..
غير إحساس ضروري بالأمـــان”
― مي رضوان, الشنطة البمبي

“Even the earliest silent readers recognized the striking change in their consciousness that took place as they immersed themselves in the pages of a book. The medieval bishop Isaac of Syria described how, whenever he read to himself, “as in a dream, I enter a state when my sense and thoughts are concentrated. Then, when with prolonging of this silence the turmoil of my memories is stilled in my heart, ceaseless waves of joy are sent me by inner thoughts, beyond expectation suddenly arising to delight my heart.” Reading a book was a meditative act, but it didn’t involve a clearing of the mind. It involved a filling, or replenishing, or the mind. Readers disengaged their attention from the outward flow of passing stimuli in order to engage it more deeply with an inward flow of words, ideas, and emotions. That was—and is—the essence of the unique mental process of deep reading.”
― Nicholas Carr, What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

“أَبْحَثُ عَنْ أُغنِيَةٍ تَصِفُ قَلْبًا فَارِغًا لِلتَوّ
تَشْرَحُ اكْتِمالَ فُقدَانِ الثِّقَةِ
تَرصُدُ الدِّفءَ الـمُتَسَلِّلَ مِنْ الذَّاكِرَةِ
حِينَمَا يَصطَدِمُ بالضَّيَاعِ

أُريدُ أَنْ أَغْسِلَ ذَاكِرَتِي
وَأَترُكُهَا تَجِفُّ فِي شَمسِ العُزلَةِ الـمُخِيفَةِ
أُريدُ أَنْ أُوَاجِهَ عُزْلَتِي وَلَا أَحتَرِقُ

سَأَخْلَعُ رَأْسِي
قَلِيلا
وَأَتَمَشَّى
بِرَقَبَةٍ مَقْطُوعَةٍ
ونَازِفَة
.......
2011م

...”
― غادة خليفة, تسكب جمالها دون طائل