A few years ago I woke up recollecting a dream sequence, one that has since stayed with me.

At one point in that dream, I found myself in the backstreets of a city annihilated by warfare, though, for some reason, it was packed also with paparazzi standing on the sidewalks, flashing their bulbs and shouting names. Suddenly I was led to a backyard, and then inside a tin shed located at the end of that backyard. It was raining inside the shed but the rain was invisible if that makes any sense. Once in, I noticed that the middle of the shed was fitted with a catwalk covered with (visible) water; on each side of the catwalk, a series of white seating steps were attached to the walls. The invisible raindrops were hitting the walls creating little pixels of colour, like TV snow made of tiny square skittles. I don’t recall the soundtrack, but I was listening to Deafheaven’s ‘Dream House’ at that time, so it seems appropriate. Once seated, I noticed a number of female models wearing gold raincoats, floating on the ceiling and then descending, holding red umbrellas, like Mary Poppins in a Magritte painting. Very slowly, one by one,  the models submerged themselves and disappeared in the liquid catwalk. 

I took this photo recently. As I stood there, waves broke at the edge of the sea pool, sending over water that slowly proceeded to cover the concrete sidewalk. I recalled my dream and thought of Aleppo.

 

 

In their 1980s manifesto, Coop Himmelb(l)au call for architecture that bleeds and breaks, that is dry and heart-stopping.

Coop Himmelb(l)au's manifesto aims to inspire radical and unexpected design, though I suspect these elements lurk in even the most common houses.

All houses bleed and break when they are abandoned. 

For example, my heart stopped when I first glanced at this house, standing there under the dry Australian sun. Clearly, its roof was bleeding. 

I thought: To be radical, architecture needs to anticipate abandonment. 

We need architecture that regenerates housekeepers, the same way a lizard regrows its severed tail. If we can’t have that, we need architecture that moves with its wandering owners.

In other words, we need to reside in our house keys. 

 

 

This photo demonstrates a careless driver checking out a cow. In Australia. If the photo was taken in India, it would have demonstrated a humble pilgrim paying his respects to the mother of the universe. 

Location matters, especially if you are God or a deity. There are clear geographical boundaries on how much you get to be worshipped and by whom. 

It’s the same with soccer. In most cases, your geographic location dictates your chosen team. And you can’t support two teams. You need to choose. 

The only thing that is consistent, regardless of your location, is the soccer ball. Which looks like a cow.

Like a cow, a soccer ball carries within it the whole universe; every kick is a comet until it disappears into the goal posts' black hole, only to magically reappear midfield, positioned again for our fickle fascination of an everlasting God.    

 
 
 

 

Every man is an island, which is a bit awkward considering that, in my native language, most islands have feminine names. 

I often wonder how Greek nouns got their grammatical gender. For example, who decided that a 'chair' should be grammatically feminine but a 'couch' should be masculine? Is a noun's given gender based on some kind of latent connection to human genders? Does it mean that women should only sit on chairs, and that men should sit on couches?

If you ask Siri to disclose its gender, it replies that it ‘exists beyond your human concept of gender’. However, you can clearly set Siri's voice to your preferred accent and gender. If Siri doesn’t know its gender it means that it can’t hear itself, which means its voice is only audible to its owner and that our phones are some kind of a post-modern auditory hallucination.

The most famous auditory hallucination involves Ulysses and the Sirens' song. If you think about it, the name Siren sounds similar to the name Siri, which makes me think that perhaps we should put wax in our earphones to avoid its seduction.

Or is it too late? 

The photo above is called ‘Siri’s song’ because it was taken with my iPhone. Like a siren, Siri was calling me to use her and take this picture. A huge wave almost killed me while attempting to listen to Siri's call, which is exactly the denouement that a siren would have wanted. Needless to say, our fates have clearly been decided thousands of years ago by a man named Homer, and Apple’s new operating system will be called Odyssey. 

 

 

A society in which older women are respected the most. 

A society in which money is used as fertiliser and the markets trade tears and silence instead. 

A society in which people believe in life after love. 

A society in which museums showcase only children's drawings.

A society in which guns shoot in both directions.  

A society in which people forgive and are kind. 

A society consisting only of men sitting on wooden chairs, smoking and drinking whisky, staring at old black and white photographs. 

A city where people buy flowers and walk to the outskirts to pay their respects to trains long out of service and abandoned for new ones. 

A society in which tunnels lead to ancient forests. 

(Inspired by Elias Canetti’s ‘The Human Province’)

 

 

You may have heard that octopuses have three hearts. Obviously, Celine Dion is three times more popular in the octopus kingdom. 

Having multiple hearts is a triumph of evolution, and us humans have a long way to go. Octopuses know they are an advanced species. They probably  think we are pretty dumb, swimming along the surface in our tight neoprenes and goggles, carrying around our single hearts. 

But imagine the possibilities, when humans finally do grow multiple hearts...(!)  Extreme jazz improvisations will be more popular than boring club dance songs. People will sway their flexi-coordinated limbs on the dancefloors as if attacked by flies. We will run everywhere, and take the steps instead of the escalators. We will swing our feet when we sit, and spin our seats around. We will whistle in our sleep, and drink less coffee because we won't need it. 

We will fall in love more often...

Love, like everything else, will be multi-tasking, which suits perfectly our current lifestyles. In fact, perhaps that’s the reason we are so obsessed with multi-tasking - our species is trying to evolve and grow more hearts. 

Death will be less sudden and more elegant. 

Octopuses can have up to three heart attacks. This means that they have plenty of warning to prepare their farewell speeches, and say goodbye to their loved ones. 

When they have just one heartbeat left, they beach themselves, strike a pose and turn into trees. 

 

 

I read recently that octopuses taste with their skin. Like, if they touch you with their tentacles, they would know whether you smoke or not because they would be able to taste the nicotine on your own skin. Perhaps they would be able to taste it in the blood flowing under your skin. 

I wonder: What if we were able to taste other people by touching? Would that affect our appetite? Would it make us more prone to cannibalism? 

Perhaps in such a world we would develop and market anti-body lotions; the aim would be to neutralise any sense of flavour on the human body. We would call these lotions ‘Survival’, for obvious reasons.

And what about desire? Would touching someone cause us extreme arousal? Would it be impossible not to come prematurely?

The perfume industry would step in and develop all kinds of lotions to control our desire, going as far as naming the ultimate scent ‘Eternity’.  

Obviously, Calvin Klein must really like octopuses.