In The Shoes of Another 4: Waking Up – Part I

I had this thought once, that out of the 7 billion+ people of the world, you can find one person whose back story is something you’d only hear about in fiction. Stories that seem so implausible or outrageous that you can’t believe they actually exist, but they do!

This series of short stories/scenarios will deal with exactly that. I will be posting a couple of paragraphs every other post (I hope) about a random person of the world, I might or might not have met, heard of, seen, thought of… you name it. I promise that whatever I write will not be exaggeration no matter how unlikely it may seem to the reader. BUT the world is a bizarre place, and humans even more bizarre. Note that names will be, for one reason or the other, completely made up.

What I would like from the readers, however, is to share their opinions, analyses, thoughts or even their story or someone else’s (of course remaining anonymous, if they’d wish to be). There will not be any judgement, nor bashing, nor shaming, only sincere objective descriptions of the situation each person might face in the story. Just try to empathize with the person in the story no matter how different from you they might be. Don’t judge, don’t hate, just imagine and listen.

I hope you like this.

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“Waking up” is a collaboration between M. and me. It was written by taking turns; whenever one stops, the other continues. We’ll be posting the rest of the story as we write it. Enjoy!

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The alarm went off for the eighth time. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to wake up. Yesterday, he had wasted a day, and he wasn’t planning on doing so today.

The sound of his alarm rang loudly into his ears but not his mind nor his eyes. He finally opened his eyes to a ghostly clock on the wall and his sister’s face trying to wake him up.

“I’m supposed to wake up by myself, dweeb.”

“The alarm was starting to get annoying, you know. Get your butt up so it would stop.”

“Well excuse me for trying to put a proper schedule for myself for once. Go back to your precious bed!”

“I will, asshole. I was up all night and I’m seriously exhausted!”

“Well, boohoo. Cry me a river. I’m exhausted from sleeping, how about we switch places and you see what it feels like?”

“Whatever!” she says as she slams the door behind her.

Exhausted from sleep and tired from people “understanding him”, he pulls himself lazily into the shower. He steals a peak at the mirror in the hallway between the bedroom and the bathroom.

“A bit of concealer will fix those bags up,” he blurts into his reflection.

“You’re a guy, you can’t put concealer!” Joann shouts from the other bedroom.

“Shut up and go to sleep, dweeb.”

What else am I supposed to do? It’s a good thing I’m awake to begin with. I’ll have a quick shower and hopefully get some things done today.

The hot water massages his back and it feels so relaxing. Today he’ll reply to some emails regarding work, try to figure out what to do with his courses, talk to some of his teachers and explain the situation again, and put some guidelines on how he should proceed with studying.

He should also get done with the doctor’s visit he has been postponing for so long.

There might be a new medicine or a new drug that would destroy my all-time sleepiness.

 He turns off the water and steps out of the tub reaching for the red towel. He owns a lot of red stuff; Clothes, shoes, car … etc. He does not like red though. He hates it in fact, because it keeps reminding him of his condition, yet keeps his senses awakened when in need.

He goes into the bedroom. Reaching for the closet, he grabs an ordinary t-shirt and shorts but then decides to change the t-shirt.

You can’t wear something old and torn. What if you end up sleeping in the hospital like last time?

Keys in hand, wallet in back pocket, phone in left front pocket, medical bracelet in right hand, and lucky necklace around his neck. He checks three times to make sure and heads out. He should always remember not to fall asleep.

It’s a silly useless thought, but let’s go with that for now.

A few blocks down the road, he notices that the check engine light is on. He swears under his breath.

How evil can fate be!

Even his engine light reminds him of an abnormality. He ignores.

Reaching for the keys, he opens his pharmacy door and flips the OPEN sign, even if his mind was shutting in. He makes sure everything is okay and calls his two assistants; two sweet girls who help him with his studies when he is in need.

M. & E.

 

 

 

 

When Math Meets Art: The Beauty Behind Attractors

WARNING: the following is a post about Math. Side effects include, but are not limited to; headache, nausea, migraine, eye strain, and emotional, psychological and physical stress. Lie down if needed.

Let’s face it, those who actually like math, and are even really good at it, can be counted by hand. I will try to explain this as slow and as simple as possible, bear with me.

During the fall semester of 2010 at University of Balamand (UoB), the SMA club, in partnership with the Office of Public Relations, organized an exhibition called “Math Visions.” The aim of the exhibition was, first and foremost, to bridge the gap between science and art, and display complex concepts of mathematics through art.

The reason I wanted to bring this back on the table is because it needs to be remembered every once in a while, and because we were proud to say that it was the first of its kind in Lebanon.

The SMA team contacted the math professor behind this genius concept. Dr. Abdulrahaman Abdulaziz.

Born on September 13, 1965, in Bakhoun, North Lebanon, Dr. Abdulaziz moved to the United States in 1989. He studied at California State University, where, by the year 1991, he earned a BS in computer sciences and applied math, and an MS in applied math. That same year, he migrated to Australia, where he undertook pure math courses between the years 1993 and 1998. Dr. Abdulaziz was awarded his Ph.D. early in 1999 from the University of Sydney, after which he returned to Lebanon and started teaching at UoB.

Dr. Abdulaziz’s passion was in the chaos theory. His Ph.D. dissertation was on attractors in the chaotic dynamical systems.

An attractor is a concept in dynamical systems whereby it consists of numerical values that tend to “evolve” in a system, that system ultimately becoming a 1D, 2D, or 3D graphical representation in space and over time. Let me help you visualize this, remember in sine, cosine, tangent, lin, log functions and their graphical representation? Sort of like that but on a much, much -MUCH- bigger scale, so much so that a graph will represent multiple points in space as well as their trajectories as they vary with each defined value.

Now that you have a very vague notion of what I’m saying – I hope – let’s up it a notch. First, you have this equation/s, correlating x, y, and z, then you have parameters that may take any value, and thereby change your points’ trajectories in space and time. There can be as many equations as needed to define the system and points, and just as many or more parameters. With each variation, you basically get a different “graph.” And of course, there’s multiple types of attractors depending on how the equation looks like, behaves, and evolves. I will not go into detail about this but feel free to search for the different types all by yourselves – maybe take some painkillers before.

NOW, the art part; I will be presenting a couple of the pieces we showcased in the exhibition along with their equations. You can also recreate, or dabble in these things, using a very simple program called Chaoscope (free for download here). Pieces were made by Dr. Abdulaziz, and all names were given by him and reflect his personal view. (If you see something else in them, then that’s a Rorschach thing, and subject to a separate post I guess).

Don’t think about them too much, just enjoy.

E.

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Image type: Lorenz-84 — Image Name: CUP

First introduced in Lorenz’s paper entitled “Irregularity: a fundamental property of the atmosphere”, this equation is a low-dimensional model for long-term atmospheric circulation. Rather than a graphical representation of atmospheric currents, the orbit coordinate are the three variables of the model. Parameters: A, B, F, G, and dT.

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Image type: Icon — Image Name: BUBBLE

The ICON equation was used by Michael Field and Martin Golubitsky to demonstrate how Chaos could yield symmetry. This attractor is an example of a two dimensional attractor converted to a three dimensional one: values of z are not used for x and y calculations.
Parameters: Degree, Alpha, Beta, Lambda, Gamma, and Omega.

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Image type: Lorenz-84 — Image Name: TUNNEL

First introduced in Lorenz’s paper entitled “Irregularity: a fundamental property of the atmosphere”, this equation is a low-dimensional model for long-term atmospheric circulation. Rather than a graphical representation of atmospheric currents, the orbit coordinate are the three variables of the model. Parameters: A, B, F, G, and dT.

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Image type: Lorenz-84 — Image Name: TRUMPET

First introduced in Lorenz’s paper entitled “Irregularity: a fundamental property of the atmosphere”, this equation is a low-dimensional model for long-term atmospheric circulation. Rather than a graphical representation of atmospheric currents, the orbit coordinate are the three variables of the model. Parameters: A, B, F, G, and dT.

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Image type: Icon — Image Name: JELLYFISH

The ICON equation was used by Michael Field and Martin Golubitsky to demonstrate how Chaos could yield symmetry. This attractor is an example of a two dimensional attractor converted to a three dimensional one: values of z are not used for x and y calculations.
Parameters: Degree, Alpha, Beta, Lambda, Gamma, and Omega.

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Image type: Lorenz — Image Name: KNOT

A beautifully simple equation created by Edward Lorenz to demonstrate the chaotic behavior of dynamic systems. This attractor is also historically important because Lorenz discovered, while working on weather patterns simulation, one of the fundamental laws of the Chaos Theory: “the sensitive dependence on initial conditions” he himself dubbed “the butterfly effect”. Although moving the initial orbit won’t affect the shape of a strange attractor, the position of the orbit on the attractor after several iterations will vary considerably from one initial position to the other. Interesting attractors can be found with a relatively high value for dT. Parameters: A, B, C and dT.

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Image type: Julia — Image Name: MIRROR

Alan Norton was the first to render Quaternions in the early eighties. He was followed later by John C. Hart, whose code was used for Chaoscope. The inverse of the equation yields a slightly different result than the regular z = z²+ c: the set is perfectly symmetrical. Also, because iterating the equation like a normal attractor proved not very effective, the depth first tracing method has been implemented. The Level parameter defines the depth of the square roots tree. A high level (i.e. > 16) will produce more detail and won’t slow down the rendering. Parameters: Level, Creal, Cimag, and Phi

 

 

 

{Book Review} The Humans by Matt Haig

My friend beat me to the review. But, truly, and honestly, I COULD NOT HAVE PUT IT BETTER MYSELF.

E.

The Marble Machine: From Animation to Perfection

Back in 2007, Animusic, a 3-D animation company that creates visualizations of various MIDI-based music, created “The dream pipe”. Basically it was pingpong balls bouncing around in every direction. *If you haven’t watched it by now, here’s the link*

Then Intel, yes the company, sort of got jealous and decided to recreate the pipe dream in real life. So in 2011, Intel introduced its version of “the pipe dream” using an array of their finest computer sensors and processors, and thousands of pingpong balls. Although that idea was, theoretically, cool as f***, and the way it looked was just so mesmerizing, it didn’t sound like you’d think it would, majorly because of the background noises generated by the air guns that shot the balls, and the unpredictable trajectories of some of the balls (which you’d think the creators had taken into account, but they didn’t). It’s a great effort, especially that all of it was automated through god-knows-how-much code! *yes if you haven’t seen that either, here’s the link*

Queue Wintergatan. Talk about artistic creativity and ingenuity! Wintergatan is a swedish born band of musicians and instrumental visionaries (is that a term? it should be). They haven’t amassed a big following (YET!) but here’s what they did:

Allow me to tell you what this is. THIS is countless months of design and planning, and 14 months of intensive hand labour. Upon completion, and numerous testing (and alot of fails and tweaks, that’s for sure), the hand powered marble machine was ready for its debut. The released youtube video (released 1st of March) has gotten over 2 million views so far. This will certainly not end there. Expect more from these guys! *You can check their other stuff here, including the building and testing processes*

E.

My First Spoken Word

My first spoken word was performed at the Open Mic night on February 6, 2016. It was organized by Write CY at Prozac café, Nicosia – Cyprus.
I’m sorry for the way it was filmed (the place was packed). I also have stage fright and I was quite nervous, so I didn’t perform as it was intended, but it’s a start!

For more info on:
Write CY– http://www.writecy.com/
Prozac Cafe– https://www.facebook.com/prozak.kafeneio/

 

Hope you like it…

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E.

When Mental Health Meets Art

After months of disappearing from the blogosphere, I figured I’d come back with a worthwhile topic; mental health.

There’s so much to talk about here. The subject isn’t restricted to mental states or psychological disorders, but rather extends to all sorts emotions as well. I mean that’s the point of art after all – emotions, right?

Mental health and emotional states are very controversial topics, and are still considered as pseudo-science by many. However, the current human state cannot be interpreted without taking these topics into deep consideration. How people feel, how they deal with the subjective world around them, how mental disorders are handled in an otherwise chaotic world are the basis to any worthwhile art, with so many examples that I can’t even begin to enumerate. Those who are fortunate enough to find a medium through which they can express what’s in their head -and heart- can produce some spectacular contribution to history, but those who are less fortunate are marginalized, bullied, picked on, killed, you name it. It’s our duty to break down the stereotypes, and misconceptions of what it’s like to live with empathy, or chronic depression, or schizophrenia,  or OCD, or, or, or….

But what if you gave a face to an emotion? What if you gave it a color, or a mix of colors? What if you gave a psychological disorder or a mental state, a face? A color? Both?

That’s exactly what Adel Merheb wanted to portray in his art.

Adel is a dear friend of mine whom I met during my college years at the University of Balamand in Lebanon. We’d both shown interest in the Science meets Art Club and worked on so many projects together in that club (one of which was his own personal research into the Fibonacci sequence and it’s relevance in art and nature). In fact, He is the “genius” behind the club’s logo (yes that same SMA logo on the blog).

He graduated from UoB with a BFA and MFA in Graphic Design at the ALBA, UoB north campus. His unique style is inspired from various artists including Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo, Margret Keane, Victor Boulos Haddad and Gibran Khalil Gibran. So you can really see his technique from his “muses,” which he quotes as “the combination of the concept, brush stroke, and color palette choice.” He says “[they’re] combined in a way  to give you serenity and not feel like you need to throw the canvas out the window.”

When asked about the thought process behind his paintings, he said “I always found myself passionate about psychology and philosophy, so I wanted to apply a series of paintings dealing with the raw state of mind.” The way his paintings work is to evoke feelings rather than thoughts or messages.

In my very humble opinion, Adel’s paintings need time to be absorbed, although simple in concept but somehow each piece unfolds more emotions with time. That’s how I feel at least. Don’t take my word for it. Enjoy samples from his work! (The names of paintings are provided by Adel)

Alpha Undone

Anatomy of a Lie

Ascent

Chains of Omega

Desolation

Edge of Schizophrenia

Equilibrium

Flat Note

Layers

Migraine Relief

Organized Chaos

The Scarred Queen

Thoughts

 

Note: Paintings used with permission from artist. Stealing or modifying are strictly prohibited out of respect for the artist’s work. Paintings are also for sale inside Lebanon through direct contact with Artist.

E.

In The Shoes of Another 3

I had this thought once, that out of the 7 billion+ people of the world, you can find one person whose back story is something you’d only hear about in fiction. Stories that seem so implausible or outrageous that you can’t believe they actually exist, but they do!

This series of short stories/scenarios will deal with exactly that. I will be posting a couple of paragraphs every other post (I hope) about a random person of the world, I might or might not have met, heard of, seen, thought of… you name it. I promise that whatever I write will not be exaggeration no matter how unlikely it may seem to the reader. BUT the world is a bizarre place, and humans even more bizarre. Note that names will be, for one reason or the other, completely made up.

What I would like from the readers, however, is to share their opinions, analyses, thoughts or even their story or someone else’s (of course remaining anonymous, if they’d wish to be). There will not be any judgement, nor bashing, nor shaming, only sincere objective descriptions of the situation each person might face in the story. Just try to empathize with the person in the story no matter how different from you they might be. Don’t judge, don’t hate, just imagine and listen.

I hope you like this.

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Sometimes, neither words nor pictures can do justice to a story. Erez Sitzer was taking a trip in Japan and this is what he wrote about his experience:

“I was searching for a train station. The kind you rarely see; small, countryside. We found it, and by chance, found something else. Someone else. Miyako, the station master. I watched her smile at each exiting passenger. Then, noticed her wave at the departing one-car train. Then, surprisingly, she continued waving. she waved until there was no trace left of the distant train. No one witnessed her, except, well, me. In that short span, my love and wonder of life was renewed. When i spoke to her later, she said at first she felt so shy, and hardly waved at all. Slowly, over time, she began doing something she neither needed to do, nor imagined she ever would. So, this is Miyako, master of a tiny station in the middle of nowhere japan who attends to every train and passenger that passes by.”

His video soon gained so much attention it was incredible. People felt something they couldn’t explain, a feeling of awe, and of empathy that you can’t describe.

Miyako has so much innocence in her that you can’t help but emotionally connect with her.  In a way, Miyako is an example of how people come out of their bubble, bring small joys to the world, and imagine a better world even if no one around them does. I really can’t put this into words because, well, just look at the smile and that perseverance…

E.

Video of the Day: A Story of Life Through Death

All I have to say about this is: mesmerizing!

Share and enjoy!

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An Angelic Debate

This poem was a collaboration between me (E.) and my friend (M.) over 5 years ago. I remember we were bored one afternoon and decided to do this.. Enjoy!

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A tale set in divided lands,

Where forces never seem to join hands,

Two angels opt to seek a middle ground,

To merge all the fighting forces found.

Both discuss in a harmonious voice,

All the virtues of life and the sins,

Where everyone has his choice,

And here is where the story begins;

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Look, dark angel, at that man,

He can do everything he can,

He’s the human who’s supposed to be,

And now it’s time to turn to thee.

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Behold, shining angel, behold

At wars, death, and hell

That, from that same mind, unfold,

And into deep holes, everyone has fell.

Thou eyes yet fail to see

The massacres, murder and misery.

Thou tongue utters happiness,

Yet I, for one, see not but utter mess.

So speak and be convincing,

How smiles are not merely shrinking.

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Happiness comes from no money or gold,

Happiness can never be bought or sold,

Even in massacres, murder and misery,

There’s always a glimpse of it to see,

Or feel or even hold in hand,

If you truly, its meaning, understand.

Look at the world, what do you see?

I see the world like it should be,

Look at that colorful lovely nature,

Oh mighty God, how he drew that picture,

Can’t you see the wonders floating around?

Can’t you hear the music wherever it’s found?

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What music, that, which you speak of?

It’s all chaos, that’s what I hear;

Hurricanes, storms and thunders from above,

No note, no rhythm that is clear.

Fires flame, blaze and devour,

Don’t you see that destructive power?

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Life is both breath and death,

Both chaos and harmony,

Both God and Seth,

So why fight? Ain’t it silly?

No matter what life may give

Go ahead and just live

No rhythm, no music that is clear,

Because my angel, you’re not willing to hear,

Life speaks to you in many ways,

As long as there’s continuity of days.

No matter how many times you feel sad,

Or how much life becomes bad,

I admit this is part of living,

It’s just a matter of listening.

Two angels opt to seek a middle ground,

Now we admit, it is found.

Hand in hand, no more divided,

All has become one,

A middle ground, so enchanted,

Is newly born in this infinite cosmic bun.

And so ends a tale,

Hopefully, becoming reality,

Seeking a better will unveil,

A life, full of clarity.

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Light angel by M.

Dark angel by E.

But Not A Teardrop

But not a teardrop nor
A waterfall
Can subdue the burn my heart feels
As it misses your breath, your touch, your smile.

And not a teardrop nor
The whole words in this universe
Will remove the agony of the thoughts of feeling you
Spinning restlessly in my poor mind!!

It aches to miss you, my love!
It aches to have the thought!
It aches to even think of ache itselfﾅ

A choice holds us prisoners,
And I wait on eternity,
And dream upon the stars,
That when the choice is made,
We both find what our hearts desire
For they have stopped beating,
Our thoughts, in confusion.

Patience, my love!
We shall find the beat someday,
It will clear up someday!

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(December 27, 2011)
E.