Mohammad Shehata
  • HOME
  • PODCAST
  • BLOG
  • STORIES
  • PAY ME
  • ACTING MATERIALS
  • UPCOMING
  • CONTACT

BLOG

I am going to tell you a bunch of lies here.



Plates And Water

2/19/2021

 
plates_and_water.pdf
File Size: 51 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

I've never looked at a plate without wanting to smash it. It terrifies me how quickly water boils. I never understood why. The men who understand women are the most like women and that's why women want to stone them. This may have been more true in the fifties. That's it! That's my problem! I'm stuck in the damn fifties! Everyone has already trivialized the conclusions that drop into my skull with the bolt of epiphany. Epiphany--remind my self never to use that word again.

Why do people talk about music? I've always felt that the music one listens to is a matter of which the utmost privacy is called for. People should only share what they masturbate to. We're ok with people sharing their private parts on the internet, but not their private thoughts? Ha! No such thing as private parts! No such thing as private thoughts! What is even exciting anymore? Why do I always get this raging urge to send a random person a facebook message or email when I am writing in my notebook?

I don't want to read books about colonialism and genocide anymore. I almost slipped on black ice yesterday. Zion. The Ummah. A classless society. None will shake the shackles off without replacing them anew. But is that so bad? To make a hell out of trying to make a heaven? Is that so different from eating ourselves? I mean this in that eating ourselves is the most natural thing. The earth eats itself. We're all just part of the earth's self-regulating system. The killer and the killed are both honorable. Honor! Ha! Now that's a word. What does it mean? Should I google? Ok. No, no no, I keep doing that. Ok, what does that word, honor, imply?

Nine-year-olds are being disemboweled in Gaza. My neighbor is hungry. If nothing has been solved, how can you say there can be no more new ideas? I mean for one to simply say something original! My mind is just parts of other minds. I've stolen their parts, public and private, and made them mine. Who was it that took my parts so early on? So that I would feel like I have to do that? Best to avoid politics in your writing because no matter what direction you're coming from, it's all propaganda anyway. Personal is political. I am thinking about two people I know have used this term. Three now. One I want to be, another I want to avoid, and a third I want to fuck. I've thought about what it might be like if all of them fucked me out of hatred or disgust or desire or compassion. Well then, ok, must we get so personal? Well, ok, I won't get personal! I won't get political! What's even the point, then? I'm not bemoaning this, it's just an interesting problem.

I hate the idea that anyone would say, "there should be a moratorium on books." People think they are smart when they say this. "Oh so many books already we need to pause and really understand what we have." They think they are sensible. So what if books keep being made even though there are already so many? There isn't any less chance you aren't going to read the books you already want to. And why would you think there is anything to understand? One more book! Oh there! One more mystery I will never comprehend! How is that not exciting to you? When the sun is overthrown, and when the stars fall, and when the hills are moved, and when the camels big with young are abandoned, and when the wild beasts are herded together, and when the sees rise, and when souls are reunited, and when the girl child that was buried alive is asked for what sin was she slain, just because you are quoting verses doesn't mean your writing is more dramatic! Are you quoting the Qur'an? Or are you quoting Marmaduke Pickthall? What kind of name is Marmaduke?! and when the girl child that was buried alive is asked for what sin was she slain... I wonder how many Uighur Muslims think of this verse as they labor in camps in China, a place where I am told a girl child gets slain. A place that has brought us perhaps the world's most impeccable and disciplined technical and spiritual traditions. A place that may be the only legitimate threat to the enslaving capitalist hordes. But I have only been told these things. Does anyone tell me the truth? 

​And when the girl child that was buried alive is asked for what sin was she slain... are we going to bury all the girl books because we prefer the boy ones? Are we going to bury all the boy books before we bury the girl ones? Why don't we send boys off to war anymore? Oh that's right, it happens right in their living rooms now, where the girls are at too. I know why women know more male authors than the men themselves do. Language is a drug, but the author can't rape you while you're on it; you have to be the one to let him inside.

Comments are closed.

    Archives

    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020

    RSS Feed

    Photo by Hillary Goidell taken for Anniversary! Stories By Tobias Wolff and George Saunders for Word for Word at Z Space
  • HOME
  • PODCAST
  • BLOG
  • STORIES
  • PAY ME
  • ACTING MATERIALS
  • UPCOMING
  • CONTACT