Reality check. I left Montreal on the 2nd of July to visit my family in plastic city aka Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The clash of palm trees, sand and skyscrapers designed like cocoons ready to hatch out a huge Islamic beetle seems more and more apocalyptic for my taste, but I'm not your average Arab. Tackiness has always been a key to being a “stylish” Arab in the Middle East, and personally, the extravagance started, as a friend of mine would say, to freak me out like Adina Howard absent of her residence. So I stayed home, and cultivated some mental fruits… The war in Iraq was over, or the bombing campaign had ceased, and we finally touched base with our family back in the once glorious motherland. The heaps of metallic rubble, my grandfather told me, replaced the children in the streets playing football. But the devastation was beyond my imagination.

Paint your self an image with no colors, write yourself a thought with no words. That’s how life developed for children outside the “free” world we live in that we sporadically complain about and abuse. I found myself one day being taken by the grasp of synchronistic destiny and went to a hospital located in Dubai, holding Iraqi youth injured during the last bombing campaign. The pictures will suffice in lieu of reality, but I felt rather selfish being able to clothe and bathe myself at will while the next generation of children die in depravation, or are left as patients, limbless. These kids were walking through their imagination, strolling past the moment before and after the bomb blast. It seemed as the reality I shared with my people was a surface truth, I hadn’t seen anything like this since faces of death volume 1 and 3 came out. Imagine a ten year old, breaking down in front of you due to the lack of abdomen cavity and two arms missing, smiling at the same time because he wants to be with his friends in Baghdad. There is no grey zone in Iraq; it’s all black or white. Now the impending holes in society are being filled with death on the American and Iraqi side, ranging from illnesses to violent happenings. Seems we never learn that negative energy in a stealth or B-52 bomber dropping itself on a social structure doesn’t fix, it resonates…. And in turn breeds itself into the minds and souls of the captured victims.

So you’re asking yourself, what’s the moral today, Mr Rogers? Does the revolution get sponsored by Nike Air Forces, Gucci sweatpants and Wal-Mart Aks ? When do we get our dues? Where’s Charlton Heston at? Hold your Horses like equestrian fetishes. The world will end when it feels the need to, so im not preaching to you the apocalypse just yet. What the future holds is truthfully in our vision, not our way of life. To unleash a possibility, the positivity must come from within; it’s not found outside our shells. These children were the living testament (no pun Hesus!) of posativity despite the lack of EVERYTHING, including the natural state of being. Now, people, I pose to you the question I was asked by the essence of existence at the moment. If we cannot run from our own creation: i.e. a global economy thriving on others poverty, then what are we to do? If we can’t walk away, then do we have to be passed across the conveyer belt of this huge hypermarket?

The magazine asked me to write something “non entertainment”, something that would spark a thought at the end of the mayhem, nudity, carnage, reality shows showing us how it shapes reality, fast food, last dues, 9 to 5’s, 85’s to 7’s, 9-11 and escapism. This is not about right or wrong, this is not about who and what. This is about all of us. If focus determines or reality, then let us click and take a picture of when life is at its most vibrant state. Let that light sift through the darkness and bring out a frame of mind holding the most vivid clarity you have ever sensed, smelled or felt. Now, grab that instant, and as kurrupt would say, pass it to the homie, now you hit it. Its either we continue regressing, or we lead our lives as a tribe of one origin, enjoying life while balancing it with positive energy and through projection towards a better us. Because we are becoming a bigger us, and Mickey Mouse taught me, it’s a small world after all.