Hello from Jordan Fellow-Chillers!

I think of myself as our foreign correspondent of sorts. The man on the ground, experiencing Jordanian chilling at its finest. And let me tell you it's fine. Argeeleh (Jordanian 9amiyah word for hookah) is amazing. Comes in all flavors and locations, and definitely gets the job done.

Anyhow, just thought I'd say "hi" and offer a glimpse into my world: The pic is an action shot from a chiller cafe in downtown Amman.

Chill on,
Tony

The unseeing eye

As far as my eye can see,
It is me who I seek.
Shelley’s love of similitude,
Caught as the heart exudes,
--Till I am unhinged by a greater being.
Unmasked: she is freeing.
I walk outside my customary zone
And still I find my own.

How fucked up are we?

Just how fucked up is man,
That his actions should oft be incongruent with his feelings,
That he should so want to conceal the truth in his heart,
Even if pain and sorrow to others this brings?

PARENTS

Parenthood has many charms. And here's one more. It's a great suicide preventive in married women. So reports a team of Norwegian physicians who enrolled a million women in a study and collected information about them over the next 15 years. The married women turned out to have a lower suicide rate than the unmarried. No surprise-almost every study has shown that single women have a higher suicide rate than their married sisters.

WhErE hUmAniTY rEsiDEs

I have got to the point where I do not put much stock on blood; I weigh character more. That is why I believe my family is scattered all over the world, in every nook and cranny where humanity resides. And I am going to travel the world and find them. My children also, are all over the world. Blood is not thicker than anything, at times. In my experience and those of chillers I esteem, the blood-bond has been used to hurt, limit and abuse. Enough said.

In the name of my father

LACKING

The fond heart of absence.
Silence brimming sense
of being me, thee, she.
Travesty to see.

MUM AND DAD – THEY FUCK YOU UP OR WHAT?

So, I have just returned from sunny and sexy Tanzania where I enjoyed my time a great deal. While in Tanzania and travelling through the gem that is Dubai, I was certainly constantly chilling, and contemplating when necessary. And naturally the existential questions sprouted in the mind as they do.

“Why do people have children?” I wondered over and over again. Simple question it seems to be, but I thought long and hard and wondered whether people just want to see clones of themselves in the children, want to legitimize their marriages, want to witness a person
(or something) grow, want to re-live their lives, want to offer someone else a better life than they had?

I mean, the way some people treat their children once those children are born is almost as if they entertain the idea of a child but not so much the existence of one. I know this is a very Philip Larkin type of post but I would like to hear what the chillers’ thoughts are on this. There is just no way that EVERYONE who has children wants to have children.