45 years ago the Lebanese civil war started.
It lasted until 1990.
You can find plenty of info on those 15 years on the Internet.
One month ago I started my confinement.
I am not so confident on how long it will last.
You can find some info on those 31 days – and the upcoming ones – in the lines below (and in the other posts of these diaries).
After the first days of excitement and novelty, I’ve been steadily adjusting my seat in my new state of mind: uncertainty. I am quite uncertain about everything. From “when and how this thing will end” to “what should I be working on now?”, passing by the inevitable “will I ever see my mother and father again?” This last question is a rather old one, that I ask myself each time I say goodbye to my parents when leaving Beirut, but it has a new dimension in the actual situation. In the past month I had enough time to ask myself most of the questions there are to be asked. In the future what will change is the number of times I have asked myself each of these questions.
The good news is that I am happy to be uncertain. I grew up wanting and trying so much to be certain about everything that it is a relief to be able to admit to myself that I am not certain about anything these days.
Or maybe I am certain of one thing only: I cannot stop working. I think that keeping myself busy is for me part of staying sane in extraordinary situations. It allows me to channel my focus on something else that the crisis itself. Or to channel the crisis differently into my brain. To make fuel out of it. And in this sense, I feel it has always been easier for me to work in reaction to something than from scratch.
This said, it is becoming more and more difficult to know what to do. I have so much time ahead of me. Free time! The most precious thing I always looked for. There is no single thing that needs my full attention at the moment. And still, I am constantly under pressure. There is the pressure to show something, coming from the multitude of things happening everywhere on the net; there is the need (the urge?) to do something or to be in representation; but everything is eclipsed by the feeling of not wanting to lose this time and to make good use of it. How should I use it? That is the question.
Today, I read the first post of these diaries and it felt like written ages ago. As expected, we adapted quickly to the new situation. But I was glad to see the link I made between the world as we knew it until then and the one on its way. I feel that would like to push this idea further by working mostly on projects with this linking potential. I already have a list of possibilities but I still need time to see how and when they are ready to be. Meanwhile, I will continue working on the past as it was and the present as it is – I’ve never been a big fan of the future. I will continue publishing old and newer works, together with the drawings and music I am doing especially for these diaries.
And to accompany this anniversary text, I cannot think of a better than excerpts from the third chapter of my ongoing graphic novel Antoine; this chapter revisits the first three months of the Lebanese civil war through the eyes of my parents, and links together many stories, many pasts.
