In a L’Orient Le Jour almanac from 1972 Lebanon, September’s page explains that the month’s name in Arabic, ayloul, is taken from the Chaldean word ouloulou which means fruit. September, the month of fruit picking. It also says that the average temperature in September in Lebanon is 25.6 degrees. “Last year, the barometer even rose to 27 degrees during the first half of the month.”
Over 50 years later and it’s barely dipped below 30 degrees. According to Michael’s, we are officially less than 100 days away from Christmas.
I’m not a craft store so I see other anniversaries coming up before The Holidays™, the annual peak of anything retail. Last week marks one year since the shock of exploding handheld devices. We couldn’t have known it then, but that was also the beginning of Israel’s full escalation/infiltration into our lives. “The pagers” was overshadowed by the two months that followed. The 50 people murdered a few days later were quickly overshadowed by the hundreds of people that were lost on September 23rd. On top of daily destruction and murder, Israel would eventually invade, scorch, and eat up our borderlands.
Piles of rubble still dot the streets of Dahiyeh like dust collected with a broom.
A year has passed, a phrase we will keep saying over the coming weeks, and, like the ongoing decimation of Gaza, we have become sedated spectators. Our president says he’s ready for peace if Israel is, whatever that means when your country is still being dismembered. They’re not acknowledging the tingle in our phantom limbs because they are still attached. But the amputation will continue. Pieces are being hacked off and the same local newspaper that printed that almanac years back is questioning if it’s a trap or an opportunity.1
Let us all rejoice and cut ribbons for a Trump Economic Zone we aren’t allowed into.
While all this bullshit continues, I stew in my own sweat. I want to go South because I want to sit under some trees outside Beirut without having to pay for it. Instead, I clack these keys next to a fountain under a molting silk floss tree in the garden of an old Beiruti home that now houses a coffee shop.
Instead, I spend in 10, 20, and 30 dollar increments in places that provide a borrowed sanctuary where I can commiserate with others or myself, where I can ask, you’re seeing this too, right?
Instead, I find comfort that my feet are on solid ground, not in a car or apartment building. As long as I’m moving through the city, I’m not imagining what’s out there. As long as I’m offline, I’m not bracing for impact.
But with the last year’s memories rising to the surface, I can’t convince myself that that’s a good thing.
POPCORN IN MY TEETH
I’m going to use this section to highlight the clip I shared the other day. It’s the first couple minutes of my unfinished film, available to paid subscribers only.
SNEAK PEEK: Buffer Zone
This clip is the beginning of the film I’ve been working on, an exclusive for you, my precious paid subscribers. This is not a final cut.
AT LEAST 10 LITTLE LINKS
To absolutely no one’s surprise, doomscrolling rewires your brain.
I’ve been listening to this playlist on loop to mentally bring in the fall foliage that we won’t see in Beirut until November. Here’s a list of words & their origins for the colors of autumn leaves 🍂
Samia Halaby giving me a boost in conviction via Munch and then The Atlantic.
I’m still making my way through this long report from Amnesty International: Israel’s extensive destruction of Southern Lebanon
“Lebanon’s Sovereignty Battle Isn’t Just Over Arms” by Joseph Daher,
Sami Zoughaib, and Sami Atallah
Vince and Lisa Anter won the Jera Award for Best Global Wine Communicator in Long-Form Video category in the aforementioned 67 Global Wine Communicator Awards for their episode, Is Lebanon the Most UNDERRATED Food & Wine Destination in the Mediterranean? My thoughts on the episode can be found here.
Like my February series, 14 days of love, loss, & longing, I’ve been considering doing a different, shorter one this October leading up to Halloween. Then I read about Michael Bierut’s design operation he led with students at the Yale School of Art where they had to choose something that “must be repeated in some form every day, and that every iteration must be documented for eventual presentation” for 100 days. I can’t imagine flooding inboxes for 100 days straight but a weekly roundup could work. What’s the project though? Hmmm. I’ll think about this some more and get back to you.
Also published (in 2013) for Design Observer is a list of horror movie posters where one caught my eye: a rare British Mandate Palestine poster for the 1933 Universal flick The Mummy.
“The number of posters printed in Palestine for the film is estimated to be a mere 30 to 40. Due to the lack of interest in the genre, as well as the rough environment, it is fair to say this poster is most likely the only one in existence.”
Known film production designer, Jon Hutman, unpacks other sets like the house from Practical Magic. I recently saw that the author of that series, Alice Hoffman, is a zio? Someone tell me this is wrong because nuuuuuuuuuuuu.
Dr Patrick McGovern, the last guest I interviewed for the B for Bacchus podcast, has passed away. His work, from academia/archaeology to the books he wrote, did a lot for highlighting the ancient wine world. RIP.
Diet Prada’s Tony Lui on entering the era of “keyword-ification”
A monthslong Prism investigation by Laura Albast reveals pro-Israel bias in U.S. newsrooms, who’s surprised?? Still worth the read. You have to read “House Arab” by Ismail Ibrahim too.
“His is a country that’s sometimes trashy, always sublime, and seemingly doomed to survive between terror and tenderness,” writes Gonzalo M. Pavés in a Criterion Channel essay on Bigas Luna, the man behind Jamon, Jamon which I watched a few months ago with bad subtitles (that only made it more fun and more absurd).
“I Wanted to Have Something to Give My Daughter From Gaza” from
Life is not like a box of chocolates, it’s like a string of beads.
If anyone else is suffering from TSITP withdrawal, read this.
I was skimming this and Ann Friedman responded to “love mushroom foraging” with “Really good apocalypse skill!! (We all need one.)” I think about this often as a writer/artist in these end times. Will I be the resident scribe/scrapbooker? What skills do I have that I’m taking for granted? Do YOU have an apocalypse skill? Drop it in the comments, I need ideas.
PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS
THE LAST MONTH OF AANAB NEWS
This is a paywalled article so I didn’t read it but the headline alone is infuriating.