النص رقم ١: مئات الأميال تسجلها وقفات البيبي
The memory of the road trip, the registry of every mark of time and place, starts to fade as soon as it happens. New seconds are born as those deemed old die. Pictures, videos, notes register interpretations of the experience and just as we step away from the event at the speed of 80 miles per hour it is past, retold, deformed, inaccurate and archival.
addiction highlighted: coffee
القهوة
Taken pictures and recorded videos, seated, behind the car glass. Opening the window would have caused a typhoon in the car, or a hurricane: loud and strong winds. The computer is out of memory. Are the pictures really saved? They are already dying, or maybe dead. Slowly becoming obsolete. The moment is really alive only at its exact birth, and as a matter of fact, it is hard to really ever live the moment for by the time one is aware of it, it is already gone.
The highway goes on and on. Hundreds of miles marked by cow production channels from shit perfumed to grease consumed. Hundreds of miles marked by miles. Hundreds of miles marked by time. Hundreds of miles marked by hunger. Hundreds of miles marked by pee.
sing along abdulhalim hafez
قارئة الفنجان
Endless desert space across the new mexico landscapes meeting a dome like sky gave me butterflies. Space. Emptiness. Fullness. Airconditioned box separation. Sometimes it is so beautiful that we giggle. Rocca Family abstract adventure. Green. Red. Blue. Dust. Breeze. Large trucks.
is this a gay arab bar? بار للأحرار
nothing competes with fresh popcorn
In search of new/other ways of being
البحث عن طرق أخرى وجديدة للوجود
خلص جلي بيكفّي. مين قال الكنباية بالصالون والصالون بنصّ البيت. ومين قال ما بيسوى ما يكون عندي بيت. تكرار. جلي. بالليل والنهار. بيتوتيّة. ترويض. ملّيت. والحزين رح يموت. عم بيموت عشان كنباية بالصالون. عشان يحط راسه ع المخدة وينام. بيت. استحيت. يا ريتني اعطيك البيت بس مش هيك مش هيك. وما فيني، ومش كرمال عيونك أصلا مش شايفني، إلّا إنّي أترك البيت
Ooppss! Forgot to queer our home. Our couch is in the living room where the living room is designed to be. It is so dangerous that in our struggle to be queer we joined the structures that designed us as queer to start with. Too lazy to push the boundary of queer, escaping the tsunami of normalisation. Lazy. Mundanity. Domestication. Suffocation. (boring).
(I am not about to deny the sweet and the cozy and the comfortable and warm, especially not when many of this human population can only dream of a couch in a living room with a roof on their head. Stuck. Between blessed and committed to changing the world. Fuck my couch. I know you want it. Somehow I cannot give it to you, rent control, the rule, the law. But I want to piss on it.)
The Rocca Family wants to try to be without a living room for a while. Or maybe a-fifteen-minute-living-room-in-the-rest-area-on-highway I-10, every once in a while. To queer our home. (oxymoronic?)
The Rocca Family shall take to a relative road. We want to catch up with family members, stay with friends, and bond with strangers. We want to work. Take pictures, make videos, write and perform. We want to eat, walk, sleep and drive in new places. I want to play. I want to take a path alone. Beautiful spaces. Strange residencies. Awkward silences. Imperfect coffees. Tired. Afraid.
smoked salmon. veggie burgers. chicken burgers. boiled corn ears. chewing gum. labaneh. cheese. soda water. green peas (did not really work). edamame pods. carrots. vitamin c. cucumbers. tomatoes. strawberries. nuts. energy bars. crackers. rice crackers. sugar free lozenges. baked tofu slabs. dried fruit. green salad leaves. stir fry beef-meat chunks. boiled potatoes. avocado. bananas. pears. apples. small milk bottle. blue corn tortilla. hummus
Put my head on a fluffy new pillow, white sheets, deep sleep with a friend. A rest stop. Dinner in the kitchen and beer.
In investigating Family, the Rocca Family looks at domesticity, at couplehood, at friends mixing up our names, at home ways. A road trip might clear the mind, take away the clutter, provide the space, the lack of space, the un-coziness of space, to shake off some of the obsession with cleaning and discussing dinner plans.
The diaspora to the surface. The Rocca Family are immigrants, refugees, Palestinians in the diaspora, a cat from the shelter. Home is always fickle. Is always momentary. Even with the artwork is on the walls. Even with a family doctor that knows our std history. Even with a library card.
In search of home is my home.
Fuck home.
Friends are home.
Home is where the cast iron skillet is.
