April's Space

This is a letter written from this high school kid, Hala, from the war zone in Gaza recently. I found it on facebook.

Nah I am not scared, I can’t be scared no more! I am getting used to all that bombings around us! I’m just too worried and concerned about my people! What is going on is like a scary movie, which you should be over 18 in order to watch! But the differences are that its reality and u don’t have fun watching it as in a movie, and you don’t pick when to watch it!! Oh yeah and there is no age rule!! It’s open for all ages!! And it’s for FREE! Guess why? Because the heroes are kids, how can they prohibit kids from watching themselves but this time getting killed!!
Basically since Dec 27th till this moment, my life has been upside down! No sleeping, I just take some NAPS, if it can be called so! Our nights are days! Even though there is no electricity most of the times, we still have lights whenever we look out of the window! And here I will explain, now when a F16 plane shoots rockets, first it lights the entire area, and here we get the lights I was just talking about, then it destroys the target and right after comes the part I call “free firework” that stands for all the sounds you hear. That “fire work” part totally leaves you breathless for the next few seconds till you get your breath back not for too long because the next bombing is really soon! From here you can get the image if you are leaving in an area full of “action” just like mine! When you wake up, if you were actually sleeping, for six days in a row hearing and seeing that, what would you feel?? Still I am not afraid, it’s just the reaction of all sounds of bombings, you can say I don’t really know what I am feeling or what I am supposed to be feeling!! It’s pretty much a shock!
I don’t really think there is any nation on earth that can be stronger than Palestinians! Can any normal person imagine how bombings become normal? Like you hear these sounds, you freeze for few seconds and then you just keep going on with whatever you were doing!
For the last 5 days, I have been wondering and thinking why do we have to go through that? Why is it us who has to suffer?? And excuse my language but who the fuck are they to force us to go through that?? HAMAS is their reason and answer for all that suffering huh??? K lets see this! You want to convince me that the 400 martyrs and 2000 injuries are Hamas military? So the entire strip deserves to live in horror and terror because of the same reason? Well I would understand what they are doing if they are really targeting military! The first day I thought so because most of the martyrs were Hamas! I think they said that their target is Hamas military when they started this war so they can get the world sympathy and has enough reason to start this war because as you know Hamas is known as a “terrorist party” that was boycott from most of the Arab and non Arab governments and didn’t really have the chance to be a real government! And since they got the green light to start this war, and the media helped globalizing this goal, they started killing innocent civilians!! It was a smart move from the Israeli government to get the world’s compassion and harmony to start this war depending on this reason!! Once we got in the second day, innocents were killed!
The United States and Israel keep talking about Democracy, while they prove the total contradictory in realism! Hamas was elected as the government in Palestine, it was a total free election, even though I myself think that all the parties we have in Palestine are CRAP!! And none of them can help or do anything but CRAP and I do hate HAMAS, FATEH AND ALL THE OTHER PARTIES! Because I don’t think there has ever been a party in Palestine that cared for the people, they were all serving their own objectives But still where is the democracy and the right of vote they talk about! We are being punished because Palestinians gave their votes to this election!! As I was taught in a foreign policy course back in the US, there always should be two sides in any war: a winner and a loser! And innocent are always killed in such a war! Simply because it’s A WAR! DUUUUH!! But what kind of a war should we call it when one side got all they need from weapons, war planes, armies, tanks, and a world that cant say NO to them, this party is getting in a war with Hamas, truly they are killing everyone not just Hamas people as they claim, that shoots Quasam and Grad rockets ( they are nothing comparing to the American and Israeli rockets, just keep that in mind)notice that the furthest these rockets can get is 60 km, they are not even shot by a helicopter basically cause Palestinians has none and we don’t have any authority to have any plane, whatever the heck it is, in the sky!! And Hamas till this second is threatening Israel to keep shooting rockets!

PS: Israel declares that the main goal of this war is to stop the shooting of the rockets towards Israel,, and Hamas is still shooting rockets claiming its their response to all the killings since Dec 27th,, don’t you think that the rockets wont be stopped as long as the Israeli army is still killing people in Gaza strip and Gaza is still suffering a deep closure!!!????
Hospitals in Gaza are facing a terrible lack and shortage in all the medical aids and there are no more rooms in the hospitals for injuries to be treated!! And they still think rockets can be stopped?? I don’t get these people!

It’s hard to be unbiased and dispassionate if you are in my shoes but now I will try my best to make a clear image for the Israeli side, because you have the right to know what is going on with both sides. Hamas and the other resistant parties in Gaza shoot rockets towards Israel that rarely kill, often damage areas but always spread fear and horror. Hamas claims that this is their response to all what is going on, and it’s our right to resist when we are being killed everyday and the world just give us silence! Moreover, it’s our natural reply for the bizarre closure Gaza strip has suffered, no borders, no electricity, no gasoline, no money!! Even though there was a ceasefire agreement signed by both sides! Anyways, these undemanding rockets actually killed FEW Israeli civilians and injured a few number!! And partially destroyed some places and houses!! I am not saying that this is a great thing or way to achieve what Palestinians want but I do believe that it’s a natural reaction towards what we are suffering!! I mean in life, if u hit a little kid, he cries and try to defend himself! What if you wipe out someone’s country, what in the world you think their reaction would be?? Clap hands for you?? Say thanks?? Ask you kindly to stop and work on peace?? Huh?? I don’t really think so!!! They would feel the revenge; they would want to make the other side feel the soreness, tenderness and pain of losing people you love!! And that’s why we will never live in peace here as I think!! As long as both sides are killing, both sides would want to take revenge and it goes around in a circle and keeps going on in a non stop way! So it will last forever if heading this way!
But gosh it’s not a fair game and it will never be!
Levni, F.A. minister in the Israeli government, said: “enough is enough”! DAMNT!!! Doesn’t she think that what Israeli army is doing is more than enough?? Barak, the Israeli defense Minster, said: “it’s just the beginning and Palestinians should expect worse images in the next days!” ok dude, gimme a break!! A chief in the Israeli army said|: “you don’t mess with the Israeli army not even for a day”!! GET LOST!! They can mess with us 24\7 though!! Thanks, you made a clear point and I get it!! You know what??
Don’t you blame people on both sides for hating each other! After all that comes Levni again and says “ she is serving peace in the middle east, and the goal of this war is to make Israelis and Palestinians live in “peace” k k excuse me ma`m, I think we are not on the same page, would you kindly define what “ peace” is according to your standers??? Can you please leave us alone! Appreciated efforts but thanks just serve peace in your place! We can manage ourselves if that is your technique in serving peace!! I bet mine is better!!

Why don’t you ask why do Hamas shoot rockets instead of saying it! Why don’t you solve the problem in the best method, unquestionably it is not killing, instead of stating it! When does the strongest power on earth, USA, plan to move or do something to stop this tragedy?? What about the United Nations?? Isn’t that a catastrophe and a disaster that needs to be stopped no matter what? What about the human rights organizations?? What’s it that no one can say a word against that?? WHY?? I am not trying to defend Hamas, Fateh, Israel, or Palestine or any party or government cause I said before I HATE ALL OF THEM AND ALL OF THEM SUCK BIG TIME! I am just trying to defend people like me and my friends, whom you can call “normal independent people”, and those kids whose only guilt was that they were born Palestinians or Israelis and because of that they had to be killed!! In life I have learned to things:
1) only God can judge me,
2) You are not God so don’t you judge me!

So how can we judge and command killing people?

I am forwarding this e mail to all people I know in anywhere, there are Americans, Israelis, Europeans, Palestinians, and Arabs in my forward list!! And I truly hope that every one would take few minutes of their “precious time” and think about what they read! I am kindly asking you to take some time and think about this situation! Since 1948 we have not found a solution! Because no one bothers and thinks! Isn’t that enough to admit that BOTH SIDES ARE MISTAKEN and something needs to be fixed? Rights need to revert to their real owners and I am leaving you to make your mind up and come to a decision to know who the owners are!! You will share with me my opinion if you think that both sides have the right to exist because we are not God to take away lives and things we can’t restore!! To carry away babies from their mothers` laps!! No one can explain the reason behind being Palestinian or Israeli, so how in the world people are being killed depending on that?? Isn’t that racist? I think it’s the world and nations turn to say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!

I wish you all a happy new year, and for Palestinians I would prefer to say I wish you a SAFE new year!! Take great care and stay safe!!

WITH ALL MY LOVE,
HALA ALSAFADI,
GAZA/PALESTINE

Why do I look away when you look this way?
Why do I turn away when my thoughts echoed your name?

Why do I dream
of a long, endless journey with you
in a snowy, apocalyptic world to come

Driving around in a car,
toward the end of the world
with eternity to spend
yet a second from awake...

Will I dream, tonight

Why are we here?

Why are we, humans, the only ones on earth that ask this question?

This ultimate question of life and its purpose…why are we here?

A cat, a dog, a monkey, who are related to us closely in the genetic make up…all they have to do, is to survive…

So why are we the only ones that are born with the burden of searching for the ultimate meaning besides the hardship of daily reality?

I looked up in the sky, I looked down on the ground, I looked at the ocean, the mountains, relentlessly searching…

Finally, I realized that the ultimate answer has always been inside me…

As I stand here on earth, I can see that I am no different, from the trees around me, the rivers run into the ocean, the birds flying in the sky, being that we are all made of the same basic chemical make up…everything, in the universe, in fact, is really just one enormous constant transfer and recycle of energy and basic elements…

When I die, my physical body will break down to its basic elements again…and gets recycled back to earth-for tomorrow, I may be the snow on peak of Himalaya, for yesterday, I could be a drop of water flowing through the Nile…

So, what happens to my soul?

I believe that my consciousness will also be reunited with the universe itself…some call it god, some might believe that it’s a higher entity…for my purpose, I am calling it the universe itself…

When I die, my consciousness will expand infinitely through and thus travel through time and space…to be reunited with the essence of the universe itself.

As one single unit, I will not understand the meaning of existence…however, as this single unit learn about love and life, it brings its experiences back to the source itself. 

As I cannot separate myself from everything in this universe, I believe that humans are created...as a means of the universe, trying to find itself.

 

 

How do we make sense of the universe around us?
When there is matter there is antimatter
When there is knowledge there is inert knowledge
When there is good there is evil
When there is happiness there is sorrows
When there is love there is hatred

I looked up in the sky for insight
I looked down in the books for clues...

At the end, I finally found it within myself...
All along, the answers has always been in me...

In fact, the ultimate answer of everything...is already in all of us...
All we have to do, is the look inward...deep into our soul

 

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Talking about YouTube - 20081206 Mammoth trip
  

what begins with a dream
what sparks barren land of peace
unfolds between the random chaos of fantasies
wakens the spirit of the forest
invokes the passions of the sea
swallows both our soul and being

To my love
My long lost love...
My first and only love that haunted me for years and years of my life before...
and many many more years to come...

you are, indeed,
the person that changed my life
you are, indeed,
the turning point of my life...
you, indeed,
are the reasons that I distanced myself from the embraces of other lovers...
of their love, of their hearts...

How do I begin?
When things I wanted to say to you...
Years and years before now...
Had long been swallowed into the abyss of darkness
Dealt y the pains you have caused me...
Played by the unfortunate circumstances of youth and ignorance...

Where do I begin to tell you?
In this letter that will never get to you?
By a wound that can never heal...

How can I tell you...
That many, many years ago...
When we were both still young...
Still budding from the coming of age...
Yet already damaged by the tides of fate...

How do I tell you...
That,
I loved you...
Regardless of what others had said...or did...or done to you and me...
That,
I truly loved you...
With my young heart...
In my own mind...
I loved you... without any prejudice...without any boundaries...
Because I thought you were the only one for me...
Out of all the things that were wrong in our teenage days...
That you,
Were the one and only reason,
For me to wake up every morning

But I could not tell you back then...
Could not, and did not know,
How to utter the words of utter love for you...
And how fragile I was...
How much I needed to share with you
all the secrets that was eating me alive...

How I could have not loved another...
How I could not have betrayed you...


In the years after
How I have searched for you, my love
How the hair in the back of my neck stood
Everytime the your name was mentioned
Everytime someone from our past called

How do I begin to tell you
When all words were long lost
That I loved you...
With my very soul...
However damaged it was...

Therefore,
In this very letter,
However late it may be...
However impossible that you will ever read it...

Please allow me to tell you...
My version of the events that entails the tale of our love

How happy I was,
To have had you in my troubled youth...
Even with incredible pain that our love led to after...
Even with the tears shed from losing you in the years after...

I wanted to tell you what I could not tell you then...
That,
I loved you...adored you...and had only you in my mind...
And there was no other men...
Besides the fact that I was already broken...
Long before you came into my life...

All the secrecy and the lies that you thought was my betrayal,
Were simply a girl with very little room to spare in her heart,
Due to stubbornness, inexperience, and ignorance of the ways of love...

Forgive me, my love
For you will never know
The words uttered in silence
The words of my love for you
Buried in the alternate universe
Crossed your reality and my

That brought you pain...and thus
Came the inevitable lost of you, my lover
Which left me
Completely shattered

Long after that I lost you
I had no words besides tears
I could not even begin to tell you
Or any other soul

How I have hurted you
And lost you,
While you, ironically,
Were the only safe harbor for my soul

How I have cried,
And asked myself why...
How could I cut open my heart
And showed you...
The dark secrets that charcoaled my very soul...

But then I knew why
I knew exactly why...

I could not bear to autopsy the part of me that was already dying...

How can I
Admit
To anyone...including you, my love, who adored me back then...
When I can't even look myself in the mirror...

That a part of me...
Was already dead...

So you see my love...
Forgive me...

For I could not told you that I loved you...
I just couldnt tell you...
I just coudlnt love anyone...
The way you loved me as a whole...
When my heart was torn
In the struggle of my own evils...

At the very end,
At the end of the burning candle,
As I breathed the last words before I closed my eyes,

Brings my whispers
Across time and space
Beyond this chaotic universe

That you will hear
As the night breeze caress your face
That you will finally hear my call

The way I long for your touch
The way I remember you in my dreams

The way I whisper your name,
Again, and again in utter silence...

With these last breath of words,

Good bye,
My love...

10.04.08, Sat...me and Michelle, Jen, Scott, Jasmine, went to El Porto for some surfing actions...the ocean is as beautiful as ever...the water is cold...very cold...summer is definitely over...
Michelle actually stood up on the board for a second too!
The wave was pretty big for us that day...
but we stuck out and surfed until it started to drizzle a bit...
summer is almost over...
still 2 months away from snowboarding...
which means we got 2 more months of icy cold water surfing time...but it's all good if you ask me...

Had loads of fun...
what more can a girl ask in life?

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10.4.2008, El Porto CA

what do i have to do?
what do i have to do to make my life worth while?

for now,
it's surfing in the summer and boarding in the winter

so satisfied...

never in my life have I been feeling this way...

so happy and content...
and looking forward to the next surfing day...

what have i done to be this lucky?

when most people in the world are so trapped and unhappy...

that i can find something I love...
that i can do something I love...

I got a new surfboard!!
ya!!
hahaha
I am so excited!!
can't wait till i try it out this weekend!!

Surfing just gets better and better each time!
I am having the time of my life!! wohoo!!!

Manhattan Beach has always been my favorite...long before I discovered surfing...

When I was 13, I arrived in LA from Taiwan...Between ESL classes and crazy, jealous school girls who stabs me in the back daily, and parent's constant fighting...my parents used to make mandatory weekend family days...vegas, big bear lake, the beaches...

Manhattan used to my favorite mandatory trips...because I can actually roller blade away from my parents for a few minutes...

I used to roller blade around on the strip, and look at all these people on the beach...

All these people.. not a care in the world...having fun...actually having fun--without any yelling, arguing, and feeling sorry about the state of poverty and unhappiness that my family was going through...

I used to tell myself...one day, one day, if I can just make it to my 18th birthday...I can leave all the craziness behind and have a normal, peaceful life...

Well, that 18th birthday has long came and gone...and I am happy to say that I have made it, and having a great life so far!

I think it's amazing that I can stand here, with the soft, warm sands of Manhattan Beach between my toes and my surfboard  in my arms...

I stared into the ocean...and look into the past, the present, and the future of my journey...

I tell myself this at this moment and I will remind myself in the future whenever I feel sad- That I have came this far...

So far from the 13 year old girl who cried herself to sleep every night and prayed to god that she will never wake up...

I tell myself , that from this moment on, I shall always live and love every moment of rest of my life like it's the last second of my human life, because I know for a fact that all the darkest hours in this life time is in fact in the past...

And I shall, never, ever, look back...

After all, the ocean will wash away ur tears...the ocean will bring back new life to your dull, tired eyes...

We are all part of a bigger cycle of life...and therefore we can all let go of all the little pains of our own lives and look at the bigger picture...that we are all here on earth as humans for only x amount of time...

So, we can choose to live either in sadness, or happiness for the rest of our time...it could be 40 years, 10 years, or 3 months...

It is all in our mind...

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manhattan.jpg

 

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http://tmcn3a.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pyZa5cMjPNUZt-jVeV50GZQvWeSibGFp5dYAZmgAd2z8DAEkMclpvrRNNspgkEoZnc-qJdpUI_Z8

Found a new surfing partner, my new friend Jasmine!
we went for the first time last Sunday and we are a good match...
pretty much at the same sucky level now, so hopefully we can advance together!!
I love my board...
my next board, is going to be 6'10 x 22x 3 fish...
ya...i cant wait till the weekends...

i am thinking of fun board and long board size and also fish shape

in fiber glass or poly

long board and fun board:
width is 22 inches
Thickness: 3 inches
Tail Shape: Square Tail
Bottom shape: Single V-Concave

9'4
8'2
7'6? maybe?

fish shape:
width is 22 inches
Thickness: 3 inches
Tail Shape: Fish Tail
Bottom shape: Single-Double Concave

7'6
6'4
5'11? maybe?