Allen

"She's so sexy. Look at her body language! All verbs!" - Woody Allen. Anything Else. 2003

Well, you know, it's one of those nights. It's one of those movies. I have always had a liking for Woody Allen, never mind that I cringe just saying his name because I'm just crass like that. Now that I've seen his latest movie, I can't help but talk like him. Again.

The thing about me and Woody Allen movies is that I don't really quite remember them. I do remember that I always enjoy them, especially the writing, the script, the dialogue, the cinematography, all that talking, the contemplation. His movies always make me feel like I am just starting my life, that I am this college student in my final years of university, at the very brink of discovery, of a journey, somewhat dark and broody as only artsy, pseudo-creative college students could be, but mostly hopeful, in that dismissing, almost arrogant manner. 

My attachment to this one is what it represents. That eternal quest for true happiness and love, that huge contrast of ideals, and the clichéd search for self. At 25, I still am not sure who I am, after thousands of blog entries and dozens of handwritten journals about myself, after numerous personality tests both medical and comical, after hours of highly self-absorbed conversation with other people and their analysis of who I am, who I was, who I have become, and who I will be, I am still lost. Everyday I am a different person. After every movie, every book, every song, every intense video clip, every blog post, every hot tv show, I am a different person, with different needs and different desires, struggles, hopes, movements, gestures.

Why is it so important to know oneself?

I have dreamed about this, this journey into Bohemia, into a foreign culture that I imagined I would enjoy vacationing in. So many of my dreams unfolded in the film, in the best way possible it could, with the outcomes I would have anticipated, had I really taken them seriously. So many of the abstract concepts that I grapple with daily, in my mind, in my privacy, in my scattered delusions are present here. The more profound the concepts, the more romantic they seem. The less profound, the clearer they become.

Love. What is love to me? I can love so many people at the same time, some of them in the same level, others more, and yet others less. But I cannot be bound to anyone. Love to me is not freedom. Love is the greatest restriction of all, with walls built within walls, against or around that person. The walls themselves don't know whom they protect, the lover or the lovee. I am always the first to say I am tolerant and very accepting of open relationships, not just when it comes to romantic love, but to all kinds of relationships, to all kinds of cultures. But in the presence of love, actually, this tolerance is completely eradicated. Where is the freedom there?

And people are so forgiving of this intolerance. Love is always justified. By it's children.

And what is this search for the meaning of life?

And the search for oneself? Why this obsession with it? Every moment I have, I sit myself down and try to rearrange my personality as I see fit. I try to draw the lines of spontaneity so that it doesn't cross over to disastrous as it so often does in my case, that uncontrollable impulse to act on every whim. Sometimes, I look at my surroundings and I see signs that I have managed to control it somehow, in the way I conduct myself, in the way my possessions sit uncomplaining in their preconceived places, in the way my every belonging is arranged in such a calculated manner. And it is at moments like these, when I see how I have succeeded in restraining myself, that I miss that chaos the most. 

So which person am I? That one, or the other?

Only yesterday I was celebrating my little triumphs over compulsion, when I had conquered a bad sleeping pattern that had gone on for too long, when I had gone through a whole night sans cigarettes. And no, not even 24 hours later, here I am, at 6.30 am, not having slept yet, and smoking that cigarette finally, for who can resist having a smoke after a Woody Allen? His pictures beg for that smoke wafting from that cigarette that you hold so close to your lips as you contemplate your next sentence structure, the next best thing.

We owe ourselves so many things, so many little explanations, so many little liberties. The trouble with this is, nobody is keeping count.

***

It's a new year. What a way to welcome it.

Here it is, for the time capsule, as per tradition.

2009 New Year's Eve

Where I spent it: At home, online. A half hour before it struck midnight, I was at Ruby Tuesday's party room, Andalus St, Jeddah for a little party Summer organized.

What I was wearing: Black skinnies, black lace shirt (same one I wore on my birthday), flats with gold buckles. Black bolero.

Who I was with: A whole bunch of people I'd been hanging out with all year, minus close friends who are away on vacation.

What I was thinking: How I could manage to sneak out of the party to go home without saying goodbye to each and every person present.

What I was reading: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, D. Adams.

What I last watched: The Dark Night

What song I loved: Heaven Sent by Keyshia Cole

Last magazine I read: The last issue of Time

Last TV show I watched: Will & Grace reruns

***

This year, there are no resolutions. See where that takes me.