Tag: birthday

by jad

New York Aura

I’d planned to get an aura photo taken upon my solar return and was pleased to see that @magicjewelrynyc did that sort of thing in a convenient location in Chinatown. Drop-ins welcome too! Alas, the only woo-woo that was to ensue was our circling the block a dozen times in the scorching heat before realizing that the location had disappeared off the face of the earth. Grand rising! We had a good laugh about that and greatly enjoyed the insanity that is Canal Street and its Canal Street bling. We also seemed to stumble upon some police raid that was confiscating merchandise, … Continue reading “New York Aura” →

by jad

MoMA, Duchamp, and a Birthday at the Raphael Exhibit

We’re in the Eternal City of Rome, but my mind’s still in the city that never sleeps—partially, because I’m very jet lagged and have barely slept in the past 48 hours, but mostly because I’ve a shit ton of photos left from our time there and it’s been way too hot to take many photos here. So I’ll be sharing some shots from the art museums we visited. This is the Rothko room at MoMA. 20 years ago, I only visited the Met and spent the whole time in the Modern Art section where I saw a Rothko for the … Continue reading “MoMA, Duchamp, and a Birthday at the Raphael Exhibit” →

by jad

Composition #2

Every time I think of Kundera I recall my favorite line from Unbearable Lightness: “In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.” And as I wrote these words, I went back to refresh my memory and was surprised to see that sentence on page 4—page 4!—of the book. Could something so meaningful to me have come so early in the text? Does that make it any more or any less significant? I’m pretty sure the man would say: both. Kundera opens his Unbearable Lightness with a reflection on the concept of “eternal … Continue reading “Composition #2” →

by jad

A Note on Climate

It’s been three birthdays since my last in Beirut. I’ve been away before—to and fro, on and off—but never for this long of a stretch. This dislocation was heightened this week as rising heat mimicked foreign climates and a dearth of AC units recalled a life of daily power cuts back home. What’s new over there, since I left, is the bottom seemingly falling out from under our national resilience, with crisis after crisis accumulating on the backs of my friends and family. The latest indignity is the now regular scene of lines of cars waiting to fill up on … Continue reading “A Note on Climate” →

by jad

A Note on Aura

I had my aura photographed as a birthday treat on Friday. That experience & this ongoing heatwave seem to be conspiring to get me thinking about bodies again. For one, I don’t like being photographed at all, which is why I wanted to have this moment in time captured in the first place—which made one of the color associations on the little info-card they gave me even more interesting, once my photo had developed: my dominant “vibrational energy” was associated with “new beginnings.” I also don’t like to feel sweaty and gross and physically encumbered by needs & anxieties, & … Continue reading “A Note on Aura” →

by jad

Radio Dis/loc/ution

x “Zayin is masculine—ZACHAR. And there belongs to this man a beard—ZAKAN. And this man is old—ZAKAYN. And this man can look back through time—Z’MAN, and he remembers—ZACHAER, everything.” MMXX is a Spotify playlist I made in/for #TwentyTwenty and @rbinbetween. x “Only he who is beaten—KATEET, like oil which has been beaten from olives, until he is—KASHER, pure and fit, shall drink. Then Kaf turns itself into a crown.” AMALGAMA is a Spotify playlist I made during eclipse season. x “There is another kind of Resh. This is the end of pretending. ROSH HASHANA, the day of admitting. Master of the universe! RIBONO … Continue reading “Radio Dis/loc/ution” →