Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer

@eldashraheb

Egyptian-Irish-American Editor and Writer (WGA West) Desperately trying to learn Spanish We are such stuff as dreams are made on.

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Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· 29d

The evaporation of a joyous day… From Lord Byron’s Don Juan (Canto XVI) #booksky 💙📚 #poetry

The evaporation of a joyous day
Is like the last glass of champagne, without The foam which made its virgin bumper gay;
Or like a system coupled with a doubt;
Or like a soda bottle when its spray
Has sparkled and let half its spirit out;
Or like a billow left by storms behind, Without the animation of the wind;

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jul 12

On Death’s ‘Laughter’ From Lord Byron’s Don Juan #booksky 💙📚 #poetry

II
Death laughs-Go ponder o'er the skeleton
With which men image out the unknown thing
That hides the past world, like to a set sun
Which still elsewhere may rouse a brighter spring, —
Death laughs at all you weep for: -look upon This hourly dread of all, whose threatened sting Turns life to terror, even though in its sheath!
Mark! how its lipless mouth grins without breath!

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jul 11

Learning that the Jay-Z meme occurred while next to Ricky Gervais. Genuinely shocking.

Jay-Z head meme happening behind Ricky Gervais

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jul 11

1 like = 1 respect for my stir fry lunch

A bowl of brown rice, bok choy and sesame tofu stir fry

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jul 10

Breakfast city over here

Breakfast:
Quaker Oats
Banana
Strawberry
Blueberries
Almonds
Walnuts
Cashews
Sunflower Seeds
Chai seeds
Cinnamon
Honey

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jul 10

He looked so good here. I miss him!

David Lynch with hair looking cool and a great simple wardrobe of black jacket and a white shirt

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jul 9

Sprinkling this image on my finger and rubbing it around my gums

The new soulless live action Disney movie getting a 36% on Rotten Tomatoes

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jul 8

Go Whiteboy, go Whiteboy, go Whiteboy, go From Lord Byron’s Don Juan #booksky 💙📚 #poetry

CANTO II
6
An Arab horse, a stately stag, a barb New broke, a cameleopard, a gazelle,
No-none of these will do; -and then their garb!
Their veil and petticoat— Alas! to dwell Upon such things would very near absorb A canto-then their feet and ankles-well,
Thank heaven I've got no metaphor quite ready, (And so, my sober Muse-come, let's be steady-

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jul 5

Made borscht to acknowledge the Rus-ification turn this country's taken in the past 10 years or so.

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jul 4

Has anybody ranked Presidents by fattest asses? This boy’s dumper has to be top 3

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jul 3

Amen brother

Review Brah looking perturbed and despairing with the question “Is there ANYTHING that isn’t getting worse?”

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jul 2

Gregg in the background. Watching, waiting.

On Cinema: New Heidecker and Joe Estevez addressing the Sizzler debacle while Gregg Turkington looks on, ominously, in the background.

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jul 1

Kierkegaard on Language, Music and Time. From Either/Or #booksky 💙📚

Language has time as its element; all other media have space as their element. Only music also takes place in time, but the fact that it takes place in time is again a negation of the sensual. With products of the other arts, their sensual character indicates precisely that they have their existence in space. Now, of course, again there 1s much in nature that takes place in time. Thus when a brook murmurs and continues to murmur it seems to have the character of time. However, that is not so, and were one to insist that there was this character of time, one would have to say that although it was there, it was present in a spatialized way. Music exists only in the moment of its performance, for however skilful one may be at reading notes and however lively one's imagination, it cannot be denied that it is only in an unreal sense that the music exists when read. It exists really only when it is performed. This might seem to be an imperfection in this art as compared with the others, whose works constantly endure because they have their existence in the sensual. Yet that is not so. Rather it is a proof that music is a higher, a more spiritual art.

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 30

Some frankly insane notes from my novel writing process that only could make sense to me

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 27

Next up

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 26

Melville taking a quasi-break from his usual style to anticipate Joyce and Modernism writ large. From Pierre or: The Ambiguities #booksky 💙📚

From throbbing neck-bands, and swinging belly-bands of gay-hearted horses, the sleigh-bells chimingly jingle;-but Pierre sits there in his room; Thanksgiving comes, with its glad thanks, and crisp turkeys;-but Pierre sits there in his room; soft through the snows, on tinted Indian moccasin, Merry Christmas comes stealing;-but Pierre sits there in his room; it is New Year's, and like a great flagon, the vast city over-brims at all curb-stones, wharves, and piers, with bubbling jubilations;-but Pierre sits there in his room:-Nor jingling sleigh-bells at throbbing neck-band, nor swinging belly-band; nor glad thanks, and crisp turkeys of Thanksgiv-ing; nor tinted Indian moccasin of Merry Christmas softly stealing through the snows; nor New Year's curb-stones, wharves, and piers, over-brimming with bubbling jubilations:
—Nor jingling sleigh-bells, nor glad Thanksgiving, nor Merry Christmas, nor jubilating New Year's:-Nor Bell, Thank, Christ, Year;-none of these are for Pierre. In the midst of the merriments of the mutations of Time, Pierre hath ringed himself in with the grief of Eternity. Pierre is a peak inflexible in the heart of Time, as the isle-peak, Pico, stands unassaultable in the midst of waves.

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 26

One thing Melville can do like no one else is yassify a geeked out sentence. From Pierre or: The Ambiguities #booksky 💙📚

And as for the thousand inconceivable finicalnesses of small pros and cons about imaginary fitnesses, and proprieties, and self-consistencies; thank heaven, in the hour of heart-health, none

256
PIERRE
such shilly-shallying sail-trimmers ever balk the onward course of a bluff-minded man.

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 25

Melville on Silence From Pierre or: The Ambiguities #booksky 💙📚

ALl profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence. What a silence is that with which the pale bride precedes the responsive 1 will, to the priest's solemn question, Wilt thou have this man for thy husband?
In silence, too, the wedded hands are clasped. Yea, in silence the child Christ was born into the world. Silence is the general consecration of the universe. Silence is the invisible laying on of the Divine Pontiff's hands upon the world. Silence is at once the most harmless and the most awful thing in all nature.
It speaks of the Reserved Forces of Fate. Silence is the only Voice of our God.

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 23

Hegel on how absolute free will (internal) clashes with external reality, but that by this contrast the will actually reveals its true extent. From Philosophy of Right #booksky 💙📚 #philosophy

FIRST PART
ABSTRACT RIGHT
34. The absolutely free will, at the stage when its concept is abstract, has the determinate character of immediacy. Accordingly this stage is its negative actuality, an actuality contrasted with the real world, only an abstractly self-related actuality-the inherently single will of a subject. Pursuant to the moment of the particularity of the will, it has in addition a content consisting of determinate aims and, as exclusive individuality, it has this content at the same time as an external world directly confronting it! [A.]

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 19

From Herman Melville’s Pierre or: The Ambiguities #booksky 💙📚

Il.
In the cold courts of justice the dull head demands oaths, and holy writ proofs; but in the warm halls of the heart one single, untestified memory's spark shall suffice to enkindle such a blaze of evidence, that all the corners of conviction are as suddenly lighted up as a midnight city by a burning build-ing, which on every side whirls its reddened brands.

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 18

From Herman Melville’s Pierre or: The Ambiguities #booksky 💙📚

through the humbler walks of life, and whom unequal toil and poverty deform; if that man shall haply view some fair and gracious daughter of the gods, who, from unknown climes of loveliness and affluence, comes floating into sight, all symmetry and radiance; how shall he be transported, that in a world so full of vice and misery as ours, there should yet shine forth this visible semblance of the heavens. For a lovely woman is not entirely of this earth. Her own sex regard her not as such. A crowd of women eye a transcendent beauty entering a room, much as though a bird from Arabia had lighted on the window-sill. Say what you will, their jealousy—if any—is but an afterbirth to their. open admira-tion. Do men envy the gods? And shall women envy the goddesses? A beautiful woman is born Queen of men and women both, as Mary Stuart was born Queen of Scots, whether men or women. All mankind are her Scots; her leal clans are numbered by the nations. A true gentleman in Kentucky would cheerfully die for a beautiful woman in Hindostan, though he never saw her. Yea, count down his heart in death-drops for her; and go to Pluto, that she might go to Paradise.
He would turn Turk before he would disown an allegiance hereditary to all gentlemen, from the hour their Grand Master, Adam, first knelt to Eve.

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 17

Hegel with lots of thoughts on Rome From Philosophy of History #booksky 💙📚 #philosophy

PART III
THE ROMAN WORLD
N
APOLEON, in a conversation which he once had with Goethe on the nature of Tragedy, expressed the opinion that its modern phase differed from the ancient, through our no longer recognizing a Destiny to which men are absolutely subject, and that Policy occupies the place of the ancient Fate [La politique est la fatalité]. This therefore he thought must be used as the modern form of Destiny in Trag-edy-the irresistible power of circumstances to which individuality must bend. Such a power is the Roman World, chosen for the very purpose of casting the moral units into bonds, as also of collecting all Deities and all Spirits into the Pantheon of Universal dominion, in order to make out of them an abstract universality of power. The distinction between the Roman and the Persian principle is exactly this-that the former stifles all vitality, while the latter allowed of its existence in the fullest measure. Through its being the aim of the State, that the social units in their moral life should be sacrificed to it, the world is sunk in melancholy: its heart is broken, and it is all over with the Natural side of Spirit, which has sunk into a feeling of unhappiness. Yet only from this feeling could arise the supersensuous, the free Spirit in Christianity.

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 15

The gods sit back to watch the show From The Iliad 20:170-180 #booksky 💙📚

And with that threat the god of the sea-blue mane led the way to the fortress raised for godlike Heracles: earth piled on both sides, a high imposing breastwork men of Troy and Pallas Athena flung up for the man where he could race and escape that sea monster whenever it charged him hard from shore to plain.
There Poseidon sat at ease with his deathless friends who spread unbroken shrouds of mist around their shoulders, while far on the other side the gods of Troy sat down on the brows of Sunlight Hill, flanking you, Apollo, god of the wild cry, and Ares scourge of cities.

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 14

Interesting thoughts from Bob about being over 80

Bob Dylan, 85
The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It's freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control. You don't chase the parade anymore. You're an old king from some vanished country. You're harder to program. You're not rushing to become anything and you're not haunted by things that you did. You're haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would.

Bob Dylan, 85
The worst thing about being 80 is that you still want to say yes to everything, but the world moves without asking. The old fire in your heart still tells you to do this and that, but your body says we already did it. Also, nothing surprises you. It sounds like a luxury but it's not, and also you've run out of illusions. People treat you like either you've solved something or you've lost something, and you haven't. You see life repeating itself everywhere.
The really worst part about being 80 is that you find, at last, you've got an
understanding of something that might have altered everything in the past, had it come at a time when something could still be altered. When you're young you think that time moves forward. At 80 you know that it doesn't, it stands still. We're the ones that move.

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 14

A breathtaking paragraph from Hegel about breathtaking women. From Philosophy of History #booksky 💙📚 #philosophy

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
140
There is a beauty of a peculiar kind in women, in which their countenance presents a transparency of skin, a light and lovely roseate hue, which is unlike the complexion of mere health and vital vigor—a more refined bloom, breathed, as it were, by the soul within-and in which the features, the light of the eye, the position of the mouth, appear soft, yielding, and re-laxed. This almost unearthly beauty is perceived in women in those days which immediately succeed child-birth; when freedom from the burden of pregnancy and the pains of travail is added to the joy of soul that welcomes the gift of a beloved infant. A similar tone of beauty is seen also in women during the magical somnambulic sleep, connecting them with a world of superterrestrial beauty. A great artist (Schoreel) has moreover given this tone to the dying Mary, whose spirit is already rising to the regions of the blessed, but once more, as it were, lights up her dying countenance for a farewell kiss. Such a beauty we find also in its loveliest form in the Indian World; a beauty of enervation in which all that is rough, rigid, and contradictory is dissolved, and we have only the soul in a state of emotion—a soul, however, in which the death of free self-reliant Spirit is perceptible. For should we approach the charm of this Flower-life—a charm rich in imagination and genius— in which its whole environment and all its relations are permeated by the rose-breath of the Soul, and the World is transformed into a Garden of Love-should we look at it more closely, and examine it in the light of Human Dignity and Freedom-the more attractive the first sight of it had been, so much the more unworthy shall we ultimately find it in every respect.

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 13

You really get to appreciate Hector when you see how relatively outmatched he and the Trojans are. The Iliad, 15:312-332 #booksky 💙📚

That breathed tremendous strength in the famous captain.
As a stallion full-fed at the manger, stalled too long, breaking free of his tether gallops down the plain, out for his favorite plunge in a river's cool currents, thundering in his pride-his head flung back, his mane streaming over his shoulders, sure and sleek in his glory, knees racing him on to the fields and stallion-haunts he loves— so Hector hurtled on, his legs driving, his knees pumping, spurring his reinsmen once he heard the god's command.
And the Argives wheeled and gave ground quickly.
Think how dogs and huntsmen off in the wilds rush some antlered stag or skittish mountain goat but a rocky gorge or shadowed forest gives him shelter-they see it's not their lot to bring that quarry down, their shouting only flushes a great bearded lion ramping across their path, suddenly charging them, scattering men and packs despite their lust for battle-so up till now the Achaeans kept advancing, close formation, stabbing away with swords and rugged two-edged spears but once they saw tall Hector attack the ranks again they wheeled in terror—hearts collapsed at their heels.

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 12

Hegel on Individuality in Nation-States. From Philosophy of History #booksky 💙📚 #philosophy

Free individuals are sacrificed to the severe demands of the National objects, to which they must surrender themselves in this service of abstract generalization. The Roman State is not a repetition of such a State of Individuals as the Athenian Polis was. The geniality and joy of soul that existed there have given place to harsh and rigorous toil. The interest of History is detached from individuals, but these gain for themselves abstract, formal Universality. The Universal subjugates the individuals; they have to merge their own interests in it; but in return the abstraction which they themselves embody-that is to say, their personality—is recognized: in their individual capacity they become persons with definite rights as such. In the same sense as individuals may be said to be incorporated in the abstract idea of Person, National Individualities (those of the Roman Provinces) have also to experience this fate: in this form of Universality their concrete forms are crushed, and incorporated with it as a homogeneous and indifferent mass. Rome be-

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 11

Sorry, I was referring to the Jeff goldblum Jurassic Park gif

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 11

From Hegel’s Philosophy of History #booksky 💙📚 #philosophy

History in general is therefore the development of Spirit in Time, as Nature is the development of the Idea in Space.
If then we cast a glance over the World's-History generally, we see a vast picture of changes and transactions; of infinitely manifold forms of peoples, states, individuals, in unresting suc-cession. Everything that can enter into and interest the soul of man—all our sensibility to goodness, beauty, and greatness
—is called into play. On every hand aims are adopted and pursued, which we recognize, whose accomplishment we desire
—we hope and fear for them. In all these occurrences and changes we behold human action and suffering predominant; everywhere something akin to ourselves, and therefore everywhere something that excites our interest for or against. Sometimes it attracts us by beauty, freedom, and rich variety, sometimes by energy such as enables even vice to make itself in-teresting. Sometimes we see the more comprehensive mass of some general interest advancing with comparative slowness, and subsequently sacrificed to an infinite complication of trifling circumstances, and so dissipated into atoms. Then, again, with a vast expenditure of power a trivial result is produced; while from what appears unimportant a tremendous issue proceeds.
On every hand there is the motliest throng of events drawing us within the circle of its interest, and when one combination vanishes another immediately appears in its place.

Abe El-Raheb / Editor & Writer@eldashraheb· Jun 10

The Iliad, 7:488-499 #booksky 💙📚