On The Hidden Laws of Probable Outcome

Sometimes, I tend to see life as a train ride, you travel across valleys and plains, stopping at stations along the way, meeting new people, strangers who might become friends, and friends who might have become strangers.

What amazes me most, is how strangers become acquaintances, and how acquaintances become strangers; a philosophical loop, that explores the edges of human behaviour, and defies even the simplest rational discourse of reason, but that's one of the wonders of humanity, to say the least.

When you're somewhere you've never been before, it's like people living there were imaginary until you got there, they didn't exist to you until you really felt their existence, until you saw them with your own eyes, heard them with your own ears, even smelled and touched their surroundings with your own nose and hands, even if you knew of their actual existence through other -non imaginary- people to you. But until that moment of time, when the imaginary crosses paths with the actual, and through it, the stranger crosses the thin line to becoming familiar, until that rendez-vous of realities, the two independent worlds of existence are nothing but possible interpretations of actual being, with the influence of imagination, which shapes them the way we please, rather than the way they really are.

London, to me was an imaginary place, until I went there, Paris was as well, until I stood on top of the Eiffel tower, and strolled along the river Seine, and listened to that beautiful French music coming out of those small cafés. Even Amman has an imaginary side, as it's full of strangers, who despite their apparent familiarity are nothing but imaginary passers by, alongside my train ride, as they go in the opposite direction, to their own "somewhere yet unknown".

The interesting twist is that, even if this rendez-vous of realities turns out to be just a short stop at a foreign station along the train ride to somewhere yet unknown; life goes on, and that process of transformation: from stranger to acquaintance to stranger again, that round trip, would in turn become closer to an act of imagination, as time passes, even if it was very real -according to all the laws of physics- due to its short lifespan, and the striking example of this, is the life of a butterfly, which has a lasting effect on everything and everyone in its surrounding, but not a long enough life to prove its one-time existence, it's a corollary relationship of the purest form.

The train ride of life marches on though, taking you somewhere else, to make other strangers who still don't exist to you, possibly the most familiar people in your coming life; the one still unknown to you, to the point of it being as imaginary as that passing butterfly. Those, my friends; are the hidden laws of probable outcome; and we all, live by them.

My -that- Jordan

My way of celebrating Jordan hasn't changed much since I posted about it on the first Blog about Jordan Day last year, but this year, I'm wondering why Jordan seems to age much faster than it should, as signs of early dementia are creeping into the collective psyche.

See Jordan, isn't a cabinet position, and loyalty to Jordan, shouldn't be measured by how many government positions are held by a clan, a city, or a cardinal direction. Jordan isn't a farm, not a principality, it's not a bank or an ATM machine, not a supermarket, not a postcard, it's not a hotel, and it certainly isn't a never ending chain of intellectual experiments, I'll leave the corresponding examples to each category to your board game leisurely pleasure.

I'm still seeing those children celebrating the opening of new shiny schools on the edge of the desert with state of the art internet connections and brand new computers, but with no running water in their own homes; and yet, their minds and hearts only belong to that desert, and her secrets. I still see the little girl in a small village combing her hair into pigtails and walking to school every day, and in her sleep dreams of living in the distant utopia called Amman; and in the morning, lilies bloom in her path as it's blessed with her daily pilgrimage, and her eyes brighten up at the sight of the flag waving over her school. I still see people in transit, their belonging is subject to the fashionable -yet failed- rules of the market, and despite their apparent -elaborate- physical existence, those are invisible to Jordan, as it is to them, despite their same elaborate physical existence on its soil.

My Jordan isn't that of hesitance or denial, it's not the hollow skeleton of modernity or pragmatism, it's one that knows the value of belonging: to its past, to its present, and to its future. And those -contrary to the modern interpretations of old theories- aren't subject to special prices or two for one offers, as nature teaches us that the highest of all trees, is that with the deepest roots, and roots; go in every direction, without looking in a compass.

As it's a celebration of Jordan, I bring you a rare recording of a musical play made in 1977 about the Jordan I know, it's called Birjas; the play and lyrics are by Haider Mahmoud, and the music is by the Lebanese composer Zaki Nasif, with the incorporation of Jordanian folkloric songs and tunes, some of you might recognize a piece among them, or maybe more, Enjoy.