SPACES: Laala Kashef Alghata
Our first ever video entry comes from a lovely poet from Bahrain who’s currently studying in Scotland. She’s also known on Tumblr as distantheartbeats.
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SPACES: Laala Kashef Alghata
Our first ever video entry comes from a lovely poet from Bahrain who’s currently studying in Scotland. She’s also known on Tumblr as distantheartbeats.
Ninety-five percent of the time I am so grateful that I’m not in love with anyone, that considering the mess life is I’m working it alone and don’t have to take anyone else’s feelings into consideration, etc.
The rest of the time I want to be in love. I snap out of it pretty fast, but when someone leans against me as we watch a movie, or a friend slips into bed with me to take a quick nap (that is not a euphemism), I wonder what it’d feel like to do those things with someone I was in love with.
As I said though, it never lasts very long. I rely too much on independence and freedom to fuck up without impacting anyone but myself and I’m too much a child of estranged, divorced parents to think that relationships cure anything. You fix yourself first.
After probably the roughest situation I’ve ever had to go through in my life so far, this is exactly what I have been thinking about these past few weeks. I’m a product of two people who have lost all sorts of affection for each other and the past month made me realize how important it is for me to get myself together first before I consider starting yet another relationship. Like Laala said, life is messy enough as it is.
(via distantheartbeats)
A few years ago, when I was 18, my family and I went to the Lake District for just over a week. We rented out a beautiful chalet right on the water of Lake Windermere, and we just spent it without phones, computers, internet, etc. We walked around the fells and hiked up paths, did some mountain biking and rowing, and took leisurely cruises around some of the lakes. It was a lovely little holiday.
On one of the cruises, we met this couple. They were about 85 years old, and were taking what they called a second honeymoon. They were with us for most of the day, and I just fell in love with them. They were still so in love, so happy and so cute together, after more than forty or fifty years together. And when I say cute, I mean cute- they leaned their heads against each other, whispered in each other’s ears, teased each other, and generally just acted like a couple in young love. The wife teased her husband about his “reckless flirting” with me and said he’d “always been good with the ladies”. He’d recently had a minor stroke so I helped him on and off the boats and up slopes and stuff, and he always winked back at his wife as he took my arm.
It made me so happy to see them, and to see that people can be happy together after that long.
So Zet asked me to write a story in ten minutes for the debut issue of her magazine, Witness Our Youth. Go download the free PDF of WOY. You won’t regret it.
Reasons Gilmore Girls is awesome #178: Rory has a Dave Eggers poster up in her dorm and is reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I have never wished to be a TV character other than Rory.
(I have, however, wished to be a million characters in books).
I want NEED that poster and that hardcover edition of AHWOSG that Rory’s holding. (I have messed up my paperback copy already.) And Alexis Bledel’s piercing eyes.
Now, please.
Dear Laala, thank you so much for this wonderful postcard. I also appreciate the meaning behind your choosing this particular title. I’m glad you love Dave Eggers, too! It is now my new favorite bookmark. :)
