Day 119

Saturday May 17^th

This day was spent doing homework. First I did my art and architecture homework, then I did my Arabic homework. I have gotten quite good at reading (to myself) in Arabic. My listening and speaking skills are still lacking. Hopefully we can focus on that in the summer. Other than that, I ate dinner at the new Lebanese restaurant in Zamalek, and then watched Fight Club again. I found Fight Club a lot more rewarding this time. Before I disagreed with many of the philosophies that the movie but forth. But now I find many lessons from it that I could use to improve myself. I think one of the best lines is The stuff you own, starts to own you. I find this especially true and I sometimes find myself trying to define myself by my clothing, when in fact I should define my clothes. Also, there whole idea about how you have to hit bottom and lose sense of yourself I find very appealing. It’s the same lesson that the Esquire article I read earlier got at. Men, Americans, People are too consumed with getting that perfect coffe-table, the nice wardrobe, that they don’t care about the really important things in life. So in Fight Club they try to destroy that system that has subsumed their lives and made them into wastes of space. They really stress how you should let all the other stuff slide and focus on what really matters in life, and you should recognize that the more you live the closer you probability of survival goes to zero. This means you shouldn’t get bogged down with the stupid stuff and should really focus on what matters. So I would just say rather then destroying the system how about you get mad at all the shit that is going wrong in the world and focus your life on that. Just let all the other stuff go, hit bottom, eliminate your lower self so that you can devote yourself to the greater causes. Let go of the shit that clutters life.