Tag: looking back

by jad

Bus Map at the Biennale

I’m possibly jumping the gun with this post, but I’m too emotionally invested in this improbable happening to stop myself, so the communications strategists will have to forgive this sentimental old immigrant so far-flung across the globe—in a week, that modest proposal that took over my life for the longest time over a decade ago, first as @busmapproject then as @ridersrightslb, is being featured in the “Atlas of Popular Transport,” a compendium and exhibit organized by @mit_lcau & @civicdatadesignlab at @labiennale. One of the most exhausting periods I’ve ever fought through will be one slim chapter of a global story … Continue reading “Bus Map at the Biennale” →

by jad

The Red Thread

The other day, I shared a post I’d made 5 years ago as part of a writing challenge I’d given myself in 2020 called Twenty Weeks of Gratitude. It was a memory of project I worked on in 2015, which had roots in prior work I’d started 5 years before that, so you can imagine how everything might feel like a lifetime ago. Like a door that keeps revolving in a half-forgotten dream, or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream, etc. I recorded these videos when these threads unexpectedly came together while I was in Lebanon … Continue reading “The Red Thread” →

by jad

My Heart Sees It

Someone asked me if my dad’s roll of Kodak Advantix film had been used, and I was certain it hadn’t, so imagine my heartache seeing these frames come back from the lab. This is my baby sister when she was still a baby sister. That’s the balcony at our old place; the same balcony she took her work calls on when we hung out at the same place when I was back there in January. It looks different now. So do we. I didn’t expect to see these photos so quickly. I didn’t expect to feel the way I do … Continue reading “My Heart Sees It” →

by jad

The Windmills of my Mind

My sister found and sent me a picture of a single-serving carton of the chocolate milk we both grew up on and it looked exactly the same. This set me off into a slow moving spiral of sappy nostalgia, like a wheel within a wheel, you might say, a mood that I was already in this morning, having just finished a roll of film that was in my dad’s Kodak Advantix camera—a roll he’d loaded some decades ago but never used. So now I’m sharing these random moments I’ve collected around town; quiet moments in the noise. I found my … Continue reading “The Windmills of my Mind” →

by jad

Irreducible Squares

This wasn’t where I went to the first mass protest in my life, but it was the very first one I went to consciously and after agonizing about what to do. We were all caught up in the mess of affairs, but we were not all parsing them the same way, and the pressure of choosing the right side of history felt visceral at that young age. I don’t think I’ve admitted this to anyone yet, but I cried the night before, frustrated by the contrasting narratives I was scrambling to absorb in order to understand what is to be … Continue reading “Irreducible Squares” →

by jad

Ghosts in the Frame

A few hours after I shared about wondering if it was time to nag the lab for my scans (it wasn’t), I saw them in my inbox, much earlier than the turnaround had promised. Spooky… Because there’s something inherently ghostly about seeing film come back weeks after having already processed your experience of a place digitally, especially when some frames are similar while others are not. It’s like the sedimentation of memory itself; every re-telling is another exposure on the film of your mind: hazy, layered, and re-imagined. I came to this spot because, to me, it represented my father, … Continue reading “Ghosts in the Frame” →

by jad

Back in Seattle

What’s that line making the rounds lately? Photography is just time and light? Lebanon is generous with at least one of those. And now I’m back in Seattle where light is less abundant, but I have more time to think. Home is where you’re welcomed back. That’s the thought that’s occurred to me since returning. No need to complicate things more than that. Simply noticing the “welcome home” to “welcome back” ratio (something like 4:1) and appreciating the flux. I’m home when I’m welcomed back to Lebanon. I’m home when I’m welcomed back to Seattle. I say this in a … Continue reading “Back in Seattle” →

by jad

Lebanon: Day 1

We went up to my hometown yesterday. I wanted to visit the different spots my dad liked to visit – a pilgrimage, of sorts. He didn’t have the strength to take us around the usual places last year, but I’m glad that our last and only excursion together before he lost all capacity to move was back to the land of our fathers. A strange land with surrealist characteristics, but the only place on God’s black and red earth that will never call me a stranger and always welcome me home. I joke about how I came back to bring … Continue reading “Lebanon: Day 1” →

by jad

New Year Feelings

I don’t have big feelings coming into this new year; there’s mild trepidation about all that’s brewing over the horizon and slight excitement about that as well. Hope mixed with anxiety, worry mixed with determination, all swirling slowly like leaves at the bottom of a teacup. I’m still taking small sips. This time next week, I’ll be having coffee in Beirut. The same low-frequency sensations are pulsing through my body as I think about that. It won’t be a vacation; I literally have no plans. Just a big question mark; just to be present. I’m trying to settle in that … Continue reading “New Year Feelings” →

by jad

32 Days

I didn’t want to mark a month, busying myself with the various “protagonisms” of the day, broadly understood. But now, 2 days later, the feelings are catching up with me. I’m thinking about all the arguing we’d be doing after the apparent “shattering” of the axis; he’d be telling me not to fall for the propaganda and I’d be insisting that he’s missing my point. I hear his voice in every cringe opinion I listen to among my new-found comrades so wrapped up in their “position in the imperial core” that they forget what it actually means to be “internationalist.” … Continue reading “32 Days” →