Sunbird

I’m not built for this heat. As much time is spent wiping sweat off my forehead and thinking about money and Maggie Rogers as is spent roaming the small flat of navy and grey and black and wondering if now is a good time to turn on the air conditioner. How’s that for a sentence? That’s what it felt like, the heat. It went on and on and on. I had a few days off in the latter part of the week, so I spent the other part planning a trip to Montreal, Quebec. An uncomfortably large number of tabs in…

Avatar and SNL wouldn’t exist without Canadians. As in, the highest-grossing movie of all time and one of North America’s most culturally-defining TV shows. How this could be true and Canada could still feel like an underdog is mystical. I guess it’s to do with the fact that James Cameron and Lorne Michaels had to leave Canada for these things to exist. Let’s not forget, though, that Colonel Sanders spent his final years here. Here. I’m beginning to find a semblance of routine here. Saturday…

I rested. Watched TV, talked about football, ate an orange sherbet ice-cream, attended a book launch, outlined a life vision. Medo texted me saying he went to watch the game with the lads because he thought to himself: WWZD? A friend of a friend suggested we meet at a dimly-lit Earl’s. She has a laugh that makes me miss my aunt. I like that she moved here for romance. People often look surprised when they learn that I didn’t move here with or for anyone. A guy told me I’m courageous. I think it…

Building a life from scratch is exhausting, even when it’s so much fun. Hard to celebrate the good in case it slips and easy to grieve the bad in case it sticks. I still eat like I live in a hotel. The run club I appear to have joined pushes me to my fastest and longest run yet. A cooking book I borrowed from the library is asking for ingredients I have no interest in owning, like flour and onions. Just as I continually refuse to learn that impatiently biting into a steaming hot pizza will burn…

of Montreal have a new album out. Kevin Barnes spoke with Skye Matlock about it. I want to remember some of the things he said in that conversation. On the lyric "Surely you knew me well knew me well enough to know that I'd want to be a star in New York, not a hick in Vermont": I think it's a funny lyric, and I'll keep a lyric even if it's mean and unfair, if I think it's clever. On the song Dismissal Mosaics: That's the interesting thing about songwriting — you record the song, the energy gets…

You said you’re Egyptian, right? Yes! Well… Egyptian and Palestinian. This is so embarrassing to admit but I had a whole Ancient Egypt phase as a child. You did? Yeah. I was, like, obsessed. I begged my parents to take me to Cairo. That’s just adorable. It was all I thought about. I wanted to be an Egyptologist. You know what’s funny? That never even occurred to me as an option. Really? Yes. I remember being unimpressed with the pyramids as a child and wondering about when we would be home and…

Gua sha face massage while coffee grows to a boil on the cezve. Cezve. I have no idea how to pronounce that word. We call it a kanaka and the Greeks call it a briki. Both of those words are much cuter but the whole point of language is communication and you’ll probably recognize cezve before kanaka or briki. I don’t know if that’s true. It feels true. What I do know is that it takes four minutes for the coffee to boil in my new kitchen and I only need a minute and a half to massage my face with…

We spent summers in Egypt when I was a child. There wasn't much to do besides watch television. When I'd run out of books and my iPod was charging and I'd exhausted my brother's patience, I would sit with my family and watch TV. There were so many underwear commercials. Undershirts, briefs, tighty whities. Competing underwear commercials. Always underwear commercials. When school started again, I'd be singing the jingles but nobody would join me. Most of my classmates had spent their summers…

We spent summers in Egypt when I was a child. There wasn't much to do besides watch television. When I'd run out of books and my iPod was charging and I'd exhausted my brother's patience, I would sit with my family and watch TV. There were so many underwear commercials. Undershirts, briefs, tighty whities. Competing underwear commercials. Always underwear commercials. When school started again, I'd be singing the jingles but nobody would join me. Most of my classmates had spent their summers…

Listening to this AXWN set while I type up my weeknotes. Sorry it's so late. My lockscreen and I are still getting used to my new post-hibernation era where I’m styling my curls and wearing make-up again. It often tells me that it has no idea who I am and says it will in fact need me to enter my extremely long password. Someone saw me type it at the till while uttering a million apologies and said are you writing an essay? That’s to say, I’m getting around the town and meeting people. Nearly…

My mother didn’t want me engaging with therapy for the same reason she didn’t like the idea of me doing stand-up comedy. You’ll just talk about me, she said. You’ll make fun of me. I promised her that I had sadder things to bring up in therapy and funnier things to say in stand-up. She’s not entirely wrong about the fact that I like talking about her. Here I am, talking about her. This subject is often on my mind when I write, though. When does someone’s story in your life – their words,…

There were fireworks on the same night a guy moved into the room across from me. It was the long weekend and people were so happy about it they were lighting up fireworks. We didn’t talk the night he moved into the lodge, or the next night. We didn’t talk until I set the fire alarm on after my shower. I ignored it because this was not the first time and I had come to accept that this was now a part of my post-shower routine. He didn’t know about the post-shower routine though, the guy who moved…

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter. Whether Mark Twain said it or not, it’s true. Here and now, it's true. It started with some packing. Lena Dunham interviews in the background. A printed transcript of a talk about the free software movement. My mother and I, eating sandwiches in her dark car. My toenails painted a shade called Flying Solo. Free as in speech, not free as in beer. On Tuesday morning, I went for an early walk along the beach. I sat on the shore, rummaging…

Letterboxd tells me I've watched at least two films a month every month for the past ten months or so, even though I never plan for it and can never recall my most recent watch. I’ve done my two for May this week: Bayn Al Qasrayn (1964) and Tiny Furniture (2010). Most people I know would watch one but not the other. I’m reading Famesick, finally. I whole-heartedly recommend it if you’re in your twenties or a woman or neither one of those things. Lena is such a brilliant observer. She makes the…

لما الواحد بيتغرب، بيكون قدامه قرارين: إمسك بهويتك بسنانك أو إفلت. اتربيت في بيت بجنسيتين و لهجتين و هويتيين في بلد بميت جنسية. كانت علاقتي بثقافتي و بلغتي مهزوزة لأنه ما كان في اتجاه موحد. كانت ثقافتي مصرية و فلسطينية و سورية و خليجية و لبنانية و أردنية و فليبينية و هندية و غربية. لهجتي كانت إشي و أكل البيت إشي تاني و جنسيات صحابي إشي تالت و رابع و خامس. التلفزيون في البيت كان دايما مشغل أفلام اجنبي و راديو السيارة كان دايما محطوط على ١٠٤.٤ - محطة الأغاني الأجنبي. الفلتان كان أيسر الحلول. ما…

I have a guestbook now. Yay. My mother and I have been hanging out a lot this week. I took her to watch what would turn out to be terrible stand-up. On the way there, I reminded her that comics are evil and would do anything for a laugh, even if it’s mock a beautiful smart woman like her, and so we should do our best not to stand out. She got a raspberry thing and I got a ginger mule minus the vodka. We couldn’t agree on where we should say we’re from if they were to pick on us, so it’s a good…

I found a section in an old journal where I was meditating on some questions as a teenager. I thought I’d answer them again. Is it possible to lie without saying anything at all? Then: Yes, of course. We have two types of communication: verbal and non-verbal. As long as there are at least two parties involved, you can say anything with non-verbal communication, lying included. You can lie with a nod, a headshake, a smile, a facial expression, a gesture. Now: Yes. We can lie to ourselves without…

It continues to get hotter and sunnier here in the Persian Gulf. This week, it’s the kind of hot that stings bare skin and turns knees gooey, the kind of sunny that overheats phone screens into darkness. It hasn’t felt like this since the time I walked to the post office in the hot of September to send letters to London and Texas. What makes the hot of April miles and miles better than September’s is that it comes with melons and mangoes. I’m not going to think about June. I’m not going to…

I’ve spent the week taking a lot of baths. The highlight was the unearthing of a new drink that has quickly become a favourite: an iced decaf rose latte. It’s like a regular iced decaf latte except there’s a little bit of rose water in it. I had stopped by Tim Hortons earlier to pick up a regular iced decaf latte. The girl behind the counter said they don’t have decaf and I said like right now? or like never? and she replied yeah, never. So, I went home and made my own. I had the wits to buy…