Michel Faucoult

I am interested to know about Michel Faucoult, because of the reputation he got as one of the philosophes with great influence in the 20th century and more interested in him cause he was criticizing psychiatry, joining the antipsychiatry movement which reached its peak in the 1960s.....

This is a a summary of his life, as seen by me:

as a child, he wanted to be a golden fish, when he grew older he was not social, with prevailing sad mood. His colleagues at school did not like him and suspected that he is mentally ill. One day he tried to stab a student by a knife. He got a habit of climbing roofs of buildings.
In 1948, still a student, he treid to suicid be a drug overdose, they took him to a psychiatrist, but he run away before he completed his treatment and became interested in psychiatry...
He used personality tests on his friends (used mainly Rorchach), and in 1950 he visited a psychiatric hospital and criticized it...
In the 1970s he abused alcohol, and founded the FHAR (Front Homosexuel d'Ation Revolutionnair)...he was now publicly saying that he is a homosexual and he is proud of himself and raised that well known qutation (gay is pride ..or I am gay and am proude)...

Ofcoure this summary is only my summary and I only was interested in things related to psychiatry....he got other works and activities in philosophy....

My problem with philosophy

When my dear 2 friends from al Hilla city (which is the centre of Babylon governerate, and which I adore too much) knew me for the first time (ali and mwnqqithe) they were happy that the met me because am a psychiatrist....cause they like philosophy.....and what am sorry of...is that I can not understand philosophy....so I disappoint them.....

I found this book of Faucoult, Michel Foucault, for begginers, I remembered Mwnqqithe when one day he asked me: Do you know Foulcaut? I told him with a feel of pride: I got a full documentary on him in a magazin...He asked me to bring it to him...

when i bring it to him mwinqqithe told me: I said foucaoult, FOULCAULT, not cocteau.....
(and i said in my ming oh god i did not know there were 2 with resembling name)..

and inspite of buying this book for beginners to understand foucauolt i did not understand what he wanted....any way....I will read it again and write a post tomorow...

Qasiun

The first time I heard of this word (qasiun) was in a poet of abdul wahab el beyati, and I did not get its meaning, I remember that I asked someone about the meaning of the word, he was very good in arabic language but he also don't know what it means......when I visited Syria in 2005, I asked a taxi man about that big mountain in Damascus, he told me surprized by my ignorance: Qasiun.....(he looked at my face examining me, then added ) it is Qasiun....

In 2005 I was not having my camera with me...now I took this picture for that great big mountain with many homes and buildings on it....

Damascus...

Damascus is one of the first cities in the world, some say that it is the first, but as an iraqi I have heard that Ur, was the first...anyway....archeologist say that it was inhabitant by 10 000 BC.....

It got a very nice mixture of traditions....look at these traditional shops....

c'est la nuit

Am a friend to the night, to the moon, the moon is called in french (La Lune) La=the, lune=moon, and from that french word came the word (lunatic) which means crazy or mad (I hate both words, crazy and mad, cause we got to say mentally ill, and I always feel angry when my coleague asked me after work: how are the crazy people? I know he is jokeing, and he knows that I don't want him to use these words, but he like to annoy me a little, kind of friendship with little annoyment, anyway I like that colleague too much) so...let us go back...i like the night (I said) and I like the moon.....and am not so against the word lunatic, I pray that one day I can have that song again of cheb Khalid called C'est la nuit, I can remember some of its words, I heard it last time before 2003, maybe before that by years....anyway...I go walking at night in Damascus, I was not that happy, but I was calm, walking little slowly, feeling sequre, and watching where my feet will took me, anyway I was always trying to go not far from my hotel, so that when I get bored I can go back easily, so I was just around, till when I deside to go back to hotel.....

In my way going back to hotel, I saw this train, oh my god, this train I know it, my sister (whom i miss her too much and did not see her for the last year and some months) took a picture with this train somday in 2005 or 2006, in the morning, there was sunshine, the train was more clear, and she was as always smiling...

I stop walking, took a deep breath while I look into this train, he/she/it is retired, so he is now just a piece of...of history....there was a familly taking pictures with it, I let them go then I go near the train, I think he likes the night like me, I think he wants someone to take a picture for him, not with him, to let him feel that we are gratful for his history of hard working....
When I took my second picture for his face, he looked at me for a second, then stood up like a soldier, and raised his nose in a feel of proud that a silly young man like me is taking picture for him, not with him, I think he feels better now, am feeling better now too...I will go to hotel...bye...

AL MARJA

AL MARJA is a secuare in central Damascus where many hotels and restaurants are there with also some libraries and it is near SOUK EL HAMEDIYA which contain everything....

AL MARJA in arabic means the GARDEN actually not a simple garden, but something between a forest and a garden....cause in the near past, the middle of the 20th century it was all like a forest (some man from Damascus told me).....

This big dark thing (I don't know how to call it, it is not a statue, but it is an artful sculpture work) don't by the Othmans to symbolize the intrance of electricity to Damascus....in that sculpture you can see some electricity wires and other things that symbolize that....

In the nearby there are many gardens (parks) to sit in and enjoy the looking to trees and flowers....since about 4 years and I did not sit in such a garden....I spent all the previous years in rooms (in babylon"al hilla", Baghdad, and al Mosul) just reading books and watching TV....it was a big realeve for me to sit here for sometime and act as if life is beautiful and no need to worry about....but I think it will need too much time to heal all my worries...I sat in this garden...look how the old man is taking the corner alone, I wonder what is he thinking of..

take a walk in Damascus

I was not prepared for the cold wether and the rain....I took a walk and was really feeling cold and went to AL HAMIDYA SOUK to buy a rain coat.....these random pictures from some places in Damascus...

I always like to see old used books....they are cheaper...and usually of high value....


Now am walking on the maountain KASIUN or QASEYOUN I don't know how to spell it....

This SOUK AL HAMIDIEYA.....and it contains everything....I bought a thick Syrian blues and a rain coat.....

This shop buys NERGEELA of different colours and types....

This looks like a roman/greek gate...isn't it....but next to it there is a mosque...this is because Syria is a mixture of cultures...and its History is full of many mixtures...

This is me in my new rain coat.....always there is nobody to take picture for me...so I took pictures for my self...my face seems not comfortable because of the rain and the cam also was getting wet....

My usualy lunch....

I came up with those 2 books...one for AZZIZ NISEEN, and the other is about ISHTAR AND DAMOUZI....

These shoes

These shoes accompanied me through the hardest longest trips…and I trust them like I trust a dog who loves me…like I trust a healthy liver working all the stuff silently with no complaints…it remembers me of a story a senior told us once when we were undergraduate, he told us that the liver and heart are like two wives for the same man, the heart is the young beautiful woman who don't work too much and if her nails broken she will start crying and everybody will go running for her aid, while the liver is the old not that beautiful lady who works day and night, hold the house on her head, and never complaint of her pains…but if a disease got her, all the house will crush down….
So I quit my stylish new shoes I bought before some months and took the old shoes which I bought in 2004 or 2005 I can not remember. When I tried to find job outside Iraq…I took those shoes with me and it rained on it daily…it beard my increasing weight while I wait in airports and car stations…it took me to places I never thought I would reach…and when I came back to Iraq I just put it over my closet…forgot it…when I got to go to travel again…I searched for it and found it….I was sad about the neglect it got from me…I thought he/she/it (the shoe) is upset about my neglect and a cleaning and polishing will not make it/him/her feel better…so…I took it with all its soils of old times and travels and went wolking fast….does he/she/it deserve a kiss?

Woodie Allen and Orhan Pamuk

Books talking about death

In his film, ANNIE HALL, Woodie Allen acts the personality of an obsessive personality who loves to read books about death, and his philosophy about life is that life is divided into the horrible the miserable…
At the beginning of the film he and his girlfriend, Annie Hall, reached the cinema after the film had started before only 2 minutes, he became so upset and decided not to go into the cinema, because he cannot be not perfect, his girlfriend told him that they did not miss anything but the title and names of actors which are in Sweden, so she wanted to go into the cinema, but he can not, he said something like: " I cannot, I got to be very accurate, cause am anal" (by saying anal he refers to the Freudian term of anal personality which is now replaced in psychiatry by the term obsessional)…by that he reminded me of the novel am reading these days of Orhan Pamuk who seems very accurate in describing and seems obsessed with circumstantial long sentences of ongoing description, something shared by many new writers like Rachid Bou Jidra...

After 2 hours the entered the cinema to see the film from the beginning which was title "the sorrow and the pity" talking about death and again I remembered the book am reading of Orhan Pamuk" the new life"….

While Woodie Allen was in bed with his new girlfriend (another one) he suddenly jumped out of bed and start talking about a political conspiracy which was not clear and that remembered me again of "the new life" of Orhan Pamuk who talks about political conspiracies but doesn't make it clear….

Woody Allen likes films (like Othman the main character of Orhan Pamuk book "the new life") ….Woodie Allen said in the film: "acting is like visual poem" and if you read the new life of Pamuk you will see how many times the words (film, cinema, screen, TV, actors) repeat themselves in an obsessional way (on page at the beginning of chapter 6 of the book contain 9 repetition of the word (film) and some screen and cinema words also)…

One actor in Woodie Allens film tell his girlfriend: "do you know how I want to die?.....turned into pieces by wild animals" and that reminded me of Othman the major character or Pamuk book who want to die in a severe train accident…

In the film another man told Woodie Allen the he wants to die by a crush in car accident….and Woodie Allen answered him: If you finished talking I have to go to the planet of earth!!

When Woody Allen entered a party full of thinkers, writers, philosophists, and others, who were talking about theories, he went alone and opened the TV and start watching a rugby match, then a woman came to him surprised that he left all those people and came alone in that room to watch TV, he told her that because rugby is more physical and it is better than the mental masturbation her guests are doing, and mental masturbation is a term which means intellectual activity that serves no practical purpose usually as a run away from the fact of the body need of sex (and aggression) and then Woodie Allen pull the lady and ask her to do sex be cause it is physical…and that made me think (is Orhan Pamuk "the new life" is mental masturbation?)..

All the film was about being physical….Woodie Allen tell a joke in the film….saying that when he was at school taking an exam on metaphysics he was fired from school because he cheated by looking into the soul of the near by sitting student…..

Orhan Pamuk

The New Life

I was very eager to read Orhan Pamuk, but I did not find any of his novels in Mosul but "The Snow" and it was very thick, typed with small letters, and the man in charge of the library was not kind, actually he was boorish, so I quit from buying it….

In Syria I found the novel "The New Life" and its title and the words written on the back and the shape of the book and typing of letters were so convincing to make me took it with me to bed that night….

I start reading about 9 p.m. till about 1 a.m. continuously with only some sips of water and some poses when I remembered myself in a state like reading Rachid Bou Jidra, with his obsessional long breath taking concentration exhausting never ending sentences as if all the novel is only one long sentence.

The second day I keep reading and missed for the second day taking the bath I planned to take so my hair became greasy and dandruff found its opportunity to gather with the words gathering in my mind….
The words: (death, kill, book, TV, film, screen, radio) keep repeating themselves in the book…in the novel….like an obsession…but the thing I did not like the most is the too much talking about Turkey and its places and names making the novel not that symbolic for everyone but the Turkish….
Orhan Pamuk was upset when in Egypt there was no Turkish translator so he got to talk in English and he said something like that Arabs and Turkish got many things in common so speaking in English makes me (him, Pamuk) sad…
Orhan Pamuk seems interested in his countries history and changing society…when he writes he keep telling you details….it is a novel and it got to contain details…but he does that in an extreme way…for example he even describes the street his main character walking in having a gun in his hand and planning to kill another character, by giving us the number of the shops in the street, type of shops, and it was all closed (being closed is enough I think), and whether there are lights and their color and the trees…all these detail while we are waiting for a killing to occur…
He seems to enjoy writing, writing with a lust, slowly with great patience, like sipping hot hot coffee from a tiny cup that will always give you the impression that you are still thirsty for more….when he wrote…he meditate while smelling the aroma of the ink passing from his pen which I think he like a lot and took care of…(am just imagining)…while he put his word he treat them like small creature of his invention made them dance in changing complex harmonic Turkish traditional/new age symphony….

Am still in the last pages of the book, but I get little bored so I went to the bath and washed my hair with the antidandruff shampoo twice for a long time….I will swallow my boredom and finish the novel to see what can happen….

in the morning

This is the view from my balcony in the morning....this sequare contains in the middle a famous traditional HAM'MAM, (public bath) in which Duraid Lahham (ghawar el toushi) one
of the famous comedians made his well known series...

Thank you Reazan

In the bus to Damascus, a young man below 25, above 20, wearing military clothes, with a red eyes surrouded by black/blue halos, with short yellow hair not so much tidy, came and through his body on the seat next to me saying "salam" while he sighs as if lastly he through a large heavy wight from his shoulders where he was carring it for sometime....he was really tired...during the first several hours I did not talk to him but just noticed the tiredness he is struglling tring to keep his eyes open....finallly I thought that he need somebody to start to talk to him so I cannot remember what I asked him, just to let him speak, and he was happy to give me some long answer....I think it was about the time we need to reach Damascus....he answered...then added some additional information...then another....so I asked again...and we became friends....I told him that I want to go to an area in Damascus called AL MARJA sequare where some hotels are there and he promissed me to show me the way when we reach Damascus...after talking he went into deep sleep for few minutes....then he woke up but seems more tired...he was not at all confortable in the chair he is sitting...I thought he needed a bed...
Finally we reached Damascus....Reazan (my new friend's name) declares....he told me to go with him ....to follow him....Ihe told me that we gonna take another bus to al MARJA...I asked whether his way is also to AL MARJA..he told me that he must take the bus to AL MARJA to reach his house which is on the way..but he added that he will come with me to AL MARJA to show me the hotels and to help me not being decieved by large prices...he asked me if I have any idea about the prices...I told him yes...he told me that some hotel managers when see a stranger give him a large price so I got to be aware...I thanked his advice...and told him that he need not to come with me to AL MARJA and that I will ask the driver to let me down on AL MARJA...he said OK....when we intered the bus he pay the price for me and for himself....a kind of arabic generousity for the strangers (Reazan was Kurdish not arabic), cause strangers are regarded as guests so they pay for us...I said : please Reazan don't do that let me pay the price of my seat,...he answered me by puttting his hands on my hands preventing me from taking my money from my pocket and he payed...this is the usual polite behavior of people from arabic countries (Reazan is kurdish,I say that again) to show their respect....he telll the driver where to let me down and in few minutes he told me: Bye bye Sami...have a nice trip...and just open the door and go out....I missed him...he made no intros for his sudden leaving...so thank you Reazan...cause I had not the opprtunity to thank you in real...i thank you hear in my blog....
I reached AL MARJA, found a cheap simple hotel, with a balcony on the sequare..I go to the balcony and took these pictures... I love the night more than any part of the day...I love..I adore the song of Cheb Khaled "c'est la nuit" which mean "this is night" or "this is the night"......I love how the lights appear in my low resolusion camera....I love those people living at the night...on the edge...on the secret...near the trash bin of big cities...they know about the city more than the people living the mornings only...
Cars still running in the far streets...the main ones...but in the nearby streets car are taking their nap...and silence is better for my ears...
Some stong lights are here and there....

It was cold...I went back to the room....it is a very small cheap simple one...see my bed and bag...

I took these books from my bag and felt how much am silly to bring them with me...am i supposed to read psychiatry now...am i that bookish...how silly....
I went out to buy these....some 3 or 4 cigarettes made me felt better with the sips of Pepsi..

I turned off the lights and look on my room's door...above it there is a small window...and some blakc dot....concentrating on that dot made me go into deep deep deeeeeeeeeeeeep sleeep......