My New Book

My first poetry collection is now available on Amazon. Here is the link: http://www.amazon.com/Love-Loss-Shahd-Alshammari/dp/1631358901/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1433966269&sr=8-1&keywords=on+love+and+loss+shahd

I expect that copies will soon be available in Kuwait. I don’t claim to be a poet, or a writer. This is merely an experiment, as all things in life are. Trial and error. Let’s see how it goes!

Thoughts on Salome

“The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.” Oscar Wilde, Salome. (1831).

I recently watched Salome. It was recommended by someone who knows the intricacies of my mind, my passion for words, and my love for theater. This film is an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play. Of course, I read the actual script after watching the film. It had me hooked, and definitely in love. Salome is a fiery woman, a woman who is a legend, and there are numerous adaptations, Biblical allusions, and sexual imagery. The storyline is fascinating, the dialogue is gripping, and the performance is wonderful. I only wish I could attend this play live. I believe the film doesn’t do it justice.

Filled with sexual connotations, passion, desire and death, there is a blurring of the line between love/obsession, passion and lack, madness and sanity, purity/virginity and sexual desire. There is also the idea of the body as spectacle. The play, critically speaking, is infested with the idea of the “male gaze” and surprisingly, this femme-fatale image. Salome’s double, I think, is the moon. The moon in all its seductiveness, glamor, beauty, is also dangerous. The moon mirrors Salome’s psyche and character. There is simply too much to write about and think about when analyzing Salome. I have always been fascinated with “madwomen” and women who are considered “troubled.” The Young Syrian, a character who is obsessed with Salome states: “She is like a dove that has strayed..She is like a narcissus trembling in the wind. She is like a silver flower.”  The moon here is a metaphor. The idea of “looking” and being “looked at” is also part of this story’s complexity. To be looked at is to be seen. However, it depends on who is looking. You can have the wrong person “looking” at you, and all you want is for the right person, that “right love” to look at you. You want to be seen by him/her. Salome’s passion, her tragic ending, her desire to be seen, to kiss the man she has chosen is so intense. I was left gazing at the screen, shocked, uncomfortable with the bloodiness of it all. All she wanted was his “lips” and yet it is far greater than sexual. There is a union. There is a desire to merge with the lover, with the object of affection.

I won’t ruin the entire plot, but it is highly recommended. I will be looking into Salome’s legend and hopefully dissect it even more.

Side note: it is so refreshing when someone can access your brain and soul almost as much as you can.

Here are some beautiful excerpts:

“Ah, Iokanaan, Iokanaan, thou wert the man that I loved alone among men! All other men were hateful to me. But thou wert beautiful! Thy body was a column of ivory set upon feet of silver. It was a garden full of doves and lilies of silver. It was a tower of silver decked with shields of ivory. There was nothing in the world so white as thy body. There was nothing in the world so black as thy hair. In the whole world there was nothing so red as thy mouth. Thy voice was a censer that scattered strange perfumes, and when I looked on thee I heard a strange music. Ah! wherefore didst thou not look at me, Iokanaan?”
― Oscar Wilde, Salome

“I am athirst for thy beauty; I am hungry for thy body; and neither wine nor apples can appease my desire. What shall I do now, Iokanaan? Neither the floods nor the great waters can quench my passion. I was a princess, and thou didst scorn me. I was a virgin, and thou didst take my virginity from me. I was chaste, and thou didst fill my veins with fire . . .”

And the link:

Thoughts on Character and Damage

This is yet another one of my favorite novels. Here is the link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10746542-the-sense-of-an-ending.

The Sense of an Ending. Even the title captivates. As usual, this is not a book review, but a brief commentary on how the book affects me. Yes, it’s always about the reader. Reader-response theory all the way, baby.

The writer ponders life – a major theme, but he also considers the similarities between life and literature. Of course, literature mimics life, and also distorts it. But I am concerned with our lives. Are they actually better than/worse than fiction? Here’s the quote:

“This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn’t turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents–were they the stuff of Literature? At best, they might aspire to the condition of onlookers and bystanders, part of a social backdrop against which real, true, important things could happen. Like what? The things Literature was about: Love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God.”

When I talk to people (and I love talking to people, about the deep, real, raw instances of life), their stories usually share a similar theme: a lack of contentedness. A struggle for happiness. A desire to be happy, fulfilled, but just not being able to reach that state. I have spoken to people my age, people younger, and those who are older. People who are healthy, people who are single, married, divorced, widowed – all sorts of people. And yet when I ask “are you happy?” I am usually met with silence, tears, or shock. The shock comes from my question, I think. We hardly ask. Are you happy? Are you okay? And when people do ask if you’re “okay”, they rarely ever wait for a response. As characters, as people, they have grown accustomed to a life filled with conflict and damage.

Which brings me to the second quotation, also one that has affected me greatly:

“I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not,except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions? And then there is the question on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: whether we admit it or repress it,and how this affects our dealings with others.Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it;some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of.”

We are all damaged. Some of us beyond repair. Some of us still try to find a sense of lightness. Some try to heal. Others take up therapy, others become healers, while others just disconnect entirely from the world of emotions, to “avoid further damage.” Does it mean they are ruthless, like Barnes states? I disagree. But I do wonder whether damage really lasts a lifetime. Do damaged people bring on further damage to those around them? A friend says we always need to be in a “healthy” environment, away from anyone that is emotionally damaging to our well-being. I haven’t made up my mind. As always, I am listening, observing, and analyzing. My one conclusion so far is that we are all one Psycho Nation.