Fathers and daughters do not share history, no matter how deep their fondness. He describes his divorce as a casual event planned to have little effect on the kids; she remembers trauma. She's a scuba diver and marine scientist; they're not sure they've ever been on a boat together. Renee Codsi is the diver and saviour of turtles; her father a philosopher. The shot was taken in his Ashrafiya apartment on a nervous night when two brothers kidnapped eight days before were found in the mountains, throats slit. Somber night, solemn connection.

a memoir of the 54 days before the bomb by Seanie Blue

 
Super typical of me that I would find myself working on three different projects at the same time while living in Hollywood and commuting to NYC. A torturous plane ride left me shaken at LAX and I resolved to quit the city of angels; a bad accident is coming there, whether on the runway, or by mudslide or earthquake or tsunami or boredom, and I don't want to be around for it. I resolved as well to compress all my activities into the most efficient production mode possible. What could I cut from my plate, and what should I keep?

Scuba Diving in Beirut was originally a story about the future of Beirut, and I'd tentatively put it into a larger project called God Died in Hiroshima. A massive bomb will detonate in Tel Aviv or Haifa in my lifetime, if I live another twenty years, since the technology will allow it and there are people who will press the triggers, no problem. But the residents of Beirut are already living under a bomb, not so much represented by the armaments of Israel but by their own shortcomings. The second-class stature of women, for example, more advanced in Beirut than anywhere in the region but still a sick joke for somebody like me. The second project was tentatively titled "Anxious Moment," and was meant to be an abstract pastiche of suicide, ecocide and homocide, a story about a killer who cannot understand whom he is meant to kill or spare, and wanders between assignments in a murky fog of intent. The third project was titled "Playtime" and telescoped my own interests about serial killing onto a series of femme fatales who feel extremely guilty about their work. Photography figured prominently in all three projects.

In choosing among the three for priority, I found myself accepting that none should live on its own at the expense of the other two, and that all three needed to be glued together by me and my odd personality. Sandie Black insisted that whatever I do needed to include my singular views of sexuality, entertainment and murder: "You're better off creating something about you creating something because nobody will believe the way you live." The other benefit from a combination would be that the three projects would transform from incomplete efforts to a single, overstuffed graphic book. The trick was to properly combine the three elements into a single continuous piece, and not let the reader or viewer be aware of any separation into three distinct parts. So a fourth binding aspect needed to be invented.

This fourth dimension would be my schedule and fears. How I live on the edge of perpetual panic about being dead and yet manage to ceaselessly look for more insights into being a human being. I cannot give up being curious, even as I know its cost is my time and existence. There is somebody with a secret in the Gobi Desert, and I must find her and write down what she tells me.

Proceed, how?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

An Example of Returning to the Past: Helen Khal

Lebanese art matriarch Helen Khal saw my drawing ability when I was seven years old and she was the art critic for the Beirut Daily News. “For God’s sake leave him alone,” she told my mother. I caught up with her almost forty years later, and this picture was taken in the Wimpy’s in the Hamra, which she insisted on going to despite my vote for hummus and tabouli rather than soggy burger. “Memories are part of the appetite, and I brought you here when you were a child, and the food is just as bad now as it was then.” We talked about art, and how I’d run into a teacher when I was 14 who basically brought my interest in visual art to a stop.
     “It happens so often that somebody’s ability is stunted by the discipline or college,” said Helen, “But art comes out somewhere else, usually, and the trick is to get through schooling without having all of art’s manifestations completely choked to death. Didn’t you drop out of high school? You’re lucky, see, because you got to keep most of your artistic urges, while other people went into law or medicine or the other social services which kill the urge to make something arty.”
     I laughed.
     “No, I’m serious; the doctor or the lawyer goes to the museum or buys my paintings or publishes your poetry, but never actually makes the stuff himself. Live as long as me, and you’ll see I’m right.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Putting the Story Into a Book

The most arresting aspect of my variousn intents the last few years has been the recurring presence of Lebanon and some mystical connection to my childhood. I would lift the beginning from my return to Beirut:

What was I looking for there? Apart from the almost unbelievable tension in the streets?

My character is on a quest backwards, into childhood, and this starts with his nanny? A German-speaking girl from outside Munich who ignited all of his sexual life and therefore a considerable part of his imagination and curiosity. When I got back to the Imperial City from my first trip to Beirut, the border officials saw the Lebanese visa and asked what my business was there, to which I said: "I went to find my nanny." The official looks up, straight into my eyes, smiles, and and says: "Did you find her?" I say that indeed I did, and he hands me back my passport and says "Welcome home, Son," even though he is perhaps a half dozen years my senior.