Waking up is a gradual process. It seems so much like coming back to life.

I feel like Snow White. Or perhaps Sleeping Beauty waking up slowly, eyelids fluttering gracefully open.

I remember Renee. Renee was my room mate and always stayed up late regardless of it being a weekday or weekend. So on the days she had early morning classes, her alarm clock would ring like a foghorn and she would sit bolt up right with a stunned look in her bloodshot eyes. Would it sound smug of me to say that I was already washed and dressed and getting ready to go to breakfast? Perhaps then I was still in bed, under the covers and looking at her with annoyance as she battled going back to sleep.

But do you know what I really feel like? Right now I feel like having some really tangy, lemony tabbouleh. Mmmmm

My mouth is watering already as I imagine the sour taste of lemons. What a wonderful thing memory is; at least we can recall happy moments, delicious moments too and not those points in time that are black splodges in our mind.

Speaking of tabbouleh, I can never think of it without remembering a certain young lady, let’s call her Huda, who spent hours cutting greens to prepare a bowl for her then fiancee soon to be short-term husband who wanted to have some “prepared for him by her hands only”. I always have an image of her sitting at the kitchen table chopping away and then of them eating in that same kitchen when he visited her. Of course that kitchen was only ever in my imagination, an image firmly placed in my mind the day I heard her tell the little story; naturally Huda is no longer a young lady but because I have not seen her since, she will remain forever young in my mind. Lucky woman.

As I lay in my bed, a princess awakening perhaps, thoughts jostle their way to the forefront of my mind as though saying: Me first! Listen to me! Here, over here! I hear a declaration that medical doctors should not run for parliament; they should practice their profession and not meddle in politics. Thoughts jump to one of the little stories I am writing and I think of her and how she should not contact him anymore. Because deep down she knew he would never return. Little poems then start to flow and I am having trouble getting a hold of every word because on another level other ideas are coming through. If I open my eyes, to the harsh glare of the morning sun, they will be gone.

I think of the phrase “ugly as sin”. It’s been on my mind. Have you ever seen an animal that was as ugly as sin? Have you ever seen a person as ugly as sin? And then have that animal turn out to be the most endearing, lovable animal you have encountered? Or what about that ugly as sin person, who suddenly becomes attractive in his sinful ugliness? (Hmm, yes I know I used “his” and not “his/her” )

In the phrase, ugly as sin, sin becomes a positive, desirable description. Sexy even.

“Even” reminds me of Snagglepuss.

How fascinating the mind is: ugly takes me back to the somewhere in the early 1990’s; walking up the steps into the Burger King in Salmiya and seeing girls with very black ugly as sin eye makeup. This was long before Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp - can you feel my heart pounding through the web page?) - before Avril Lavigne too.

I remember once writing this poem, I wonder if I can find it now; it was about slipping off clothes and walking naked along the shore but the real meaning behind this poem was a desire for change.

Can I not unload these burdens?
Can I not shed my skin?

Can I not walk into that shop
And come out with a new costume?
Can I not go into that salon
And come out with a new look?

Can I not unbutton my shirt
Step out of my jeans
And walk barefoot
Naked
And free
Along the beach?

Free me.

Sometimes we see the light so to speak even in the pitch dark. As I lay in bed last night, in the total darkness of my choice, shiny lights of positive realizations descended upon me and I spoke out loud to myself: You are so very lucky and have every thing that you want. Stop looking for what you already have.

And I was out.

Heaven’s to Murgatroyd!

Exit stage left!