a dream within a dream- illustrated

Aya Zahran, 18, Egypt*

A Dream Within A Dream 

by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow--

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand--

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep--while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

*This is the artist's first CG attempt on Sai Paint tool. 

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Help me

"I'm an artist. It’s like I’m a prisoner in my work. My art pieces are like my confessions. Only them and I know about what goes on in my mind. And they keep my secrets."

Farah Hegazy is currently a student at the American University of Cairo, Egypt. According to her, "People today don’t know what real art is supposed to be like because they are distracted by all kinds of technology and everything else around them. They’ve reached the point where they forgot what it’s like to actually stare at a piece of art or listen to a piece of music and feel what the artist is feeling. Anything today is described as art, unlike years ago where specific things were classified as art, and not anyone can be called an artist. People should go on missions to change that idea because who knows what the world is going to be like later on?"

Powerful stuff, but do you agree?

Blow yourself away by more of her talent at www.farahhegazy1.deviantart.com

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Rejection

It’s almost as though you know it’s about to come, that suffocating second right before it finally knocks on your door. You’re expecting it, you can almost feel the pressure of the universe forcing it down upon you as it draws closer…and you try to push it back, fight it, inhibit it…just slow it down, if that’s all that can be done.

But it’s going to come anyway. So there’s a part of you that’s simultaneously bracing for the impact. Readying airbags, that just ain’t full enough. Trying to cushion the hurt, when you know that nothing can absorb that shock. Not fully. In fact, not at all.

Because no matter what you do, or how hard you try, it will strike you just the same. Just as hard. Just as cruel as it’s supposed to. How can you tell pain’s been muted anyway when it comes back rolling every split second like an indestructible current of thunder?

And when it strikes you. It’s as though a part of you’s been pushed down somewhere. It sinks. A weight falling on your intestines. Pressing against your heart. Pursing your throat. Leaving nothing but a hollowness inside. They say there’s nothingness in a vacuum, then why is there pain?

It comes for many different things. I want to tell you it happened to me for something that hurt so bad, if only I could explain it to you. But beneath your sympathetic gaze and comforting smile, I can tell what you’re truly thinking. At the moment when I least want to read your mind, I can see your thoughts plastered on your forehead.

For all you really want to tell me is, you know what really hurts the most? No, you don’t. You haven’t been there yet, you’re still caught up somewhere else, you just won’t get it. What you’re going through? It’s just a phase and it’ll pass. And you’re letting it break you?

So, I begin wishing I get there. To that point when I’ll finally ‘get it’. When maybe, at long last, it’ll become perfectly valid for me to feel the way it does. When I wouldn’t have to explain it. Or fight it. When I can just let it overwhelm me as it’s supposed to, whether I like it or not. And it needn’t be understood.

You won’t be judged. You won’t be ‘insecure’. You won’t be scoffed at for being ‘weak’…or ‘naïve’. But it’s not them and their faces that hurt. It’s not their laughter, casually cruel or unwittingly innocent. It’s that face inside of you, scorning you for your own vulnerability, that you see in the reflection of their pupils.

So you know you’re hurting in your pain. And punching yourself down inside a little further each passing moment, that strange part of you that knows so much, yet acts like it knows it so little.

How can you blame the world for bringing you down? When you do it to yourself…

Who’s to blame? Who is the cause of this? What is that fault that needs to be fixed? That blotch that needs to be obliterated? That cavity that needs to be filled?

Where can I find it? Fill it. Crush it. Bind it. Fix it. Kill it.

End it.

And let it never come back.

Where?!

- Bushra
Based on a recent conversation, true events, and things that happen to all of us, all the time.

Narcissus by Caravaggio

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Lacus Mortis

Death smiles upon the barren and the lost, 

Death pries on the souls of the hopeless. 

Death waits upon those who appreciate, 

Who realise the truth of fate. 

With grief, walk the souls, 

With anguish, they swim, 

Across the Lake of the Death 

They burn, within. 

Above, there lies, 

The sea of cold, 

Where even the most lustrous hearts 

Fail to glow. 

Below the flowing basaltic lava 

Below the wails of the dead 

is a place like none other 

is the place for those who dread 

The Truth, the Reality : Death!

-Asma Sohail

Aspiring Neurologist. Book Freak, Cat Lover.

PS- Lacus Mortis refers to "the lake of death, one of the many 'lakes' found on the moon", says Asma.

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the unknown scares me

Pictures are sad.

I see how people love to take pictures of good moments or with their loved ones, and it amazes me, how a picture can capture a certain moment in the past and hold it forever unchanged, untouched.

I see how they think remembering those days would make them happy but for me, it’s just sad, how it’s not here no more.

I look at my pictures and it scares me – no it terrifies me, how fast I grew up, how it all happened so quickly, how the pace of time just speeds up and doesn’t allow us to think thoroughly, how I see pictures of people I used to know and be really close with, and it seems like ages ago, but it seems like yesterday too.

I’m 17.

It struck me yesterday, I’m actually 17. I’m going to Uni next year! University…

That always seemed like a long time in the future before it happens; it’s always been “What do you want to study in Uni when you grow up?”

And I’m on the edge of entering University, so does that mean I grew up? Because I don’t feel like it.

I still need my parents, the thought of losing them frightens the hell out of me and gets me down and frustrates me so bad, how am I going to survive without my parents one day?

I think of a way to make it seem like a nightmare but then it just strikes me, they have to die one day, there’s no way out, it will happen, and I’m not ready, I’m never going to be.

I think about it every night when I go to bed and it just takes the sleep out my eyes, I zone out on it during day and it makes me desperate.

I imagine the moment I get the news that mum and dad are gone, and I can’t seem to think of a way I could react except for closing my eyes and never opening them again.

It makes me want to run to them and hug them and apologize for everything, while I still have the chance, cause I will regret it someday when It’s too late, and it’s going to hurt – hell it’s going to hurt like a wound in the heart, and there’s nothing I could do about it.

I’m 17. Next up is 20.

20 always seemed like a long time ahead, like it’s never coming, 20 is the age of old people, but I’m not old, I don’t feel like I am.

And before you know it you’re married, then it’s followed up by children, and you’re a parent! A parent? Seriously?

I have to work and get money and pay for schools and medicines and have all kinds of responsibilities, because I’m a grown man. But I don’t feel like I am.

And suddenly I’m in my parents’ place and my kids are in mine, and now I’m closer to death than I am to life, but I’m not ready to die, I’m not prepared, I don’t feel like I am.

If I guarantee going to Jannah I wouldn’t mind dying right away, if I can guarantee seeing my parents again I wouldn’t mind dying right away, But I can’t, I don’t know If I’m good enough of a person to deserve this.

I think of all of this every night and day and I needed to write it down and share it, cause when I can read my thoughts and fears and put them into order, I might be able to face them.

But it still scares me, future scares me, death scares me.

In other words,

The unknown scares me.

- Abdelrahman ElGendy

According to Abdelrehman, he is "A Unique human being with different beliefs. I think highly of myself and I have extremely high hopes and self expectations. You might not like my writings but the point is not for you to like them it’s for you to read them." If you think you can handle what he's got to say, find him at: www.weirdwithstyle.wordpress.com

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Hash E-zine: Issue 1

Hearts on fire.

The rush of that first date. The pain of that love lost. The last shred of hope that kept you alive. The truth that didn’t set you free. The night you cried yourself to sleep because life just wasn’t fair. The night you couldn’t sleep because life couldn’t be better.

Hearts on fire.

The fiery anxiety, an inferno of ideas, the haste of a pin unleashed from a grenade, a finger pulled off a trigger. Ecstasy, unbridled elation, a moment of release, a burden lifted, a work of admiration, of art, love, hurt, lust, inanity and uninhibited expression. Truths untold, secrets unfolded, coded into words and images; the ghosts of inspiration that they embody, ready to haunt for the rest of this eternity.

Nothing lasts forever, happiness is fleeting and regrets forgettable. What once was is never again but the future holds what never was. The trick? To live life as it comes at you? But what if I’m not prepared? We never are, yet we survive. We always do.

                              Meet the Contributors:

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Hash E-zine: Issue 0

'Show Off' is the sample issue of Hash through which we aim to demonstrate our vision and... 'celebrate humble beginnings'. Special thanks for the artwork goes out to: Leonid Afremov - Party Clown (Cover Photo); Miss deviante, DevianArt – Grunge Mask (Page 5) ;Zummerfish, DeviantArt- Ruin and Despair (Page 14) and CassiopeiaArt (Cathrine Langwagen), DeviantArt- Valley of Despair (Page 18)

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the myth of unconditional love

I’d be writing this article from St. Tropez if I got a dollar for every time the words ‘unconditional love’ were mentioned on a cheesy eighties movie or some stupid New York Times’ bestseller involving an  equally cheesy storyline. The mere ideology behind unconditional love is naïve, unrealistic and plain ludicrous. Excuse my apparent lack of romanticism.

Before I elaborate on why unconditional love isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, let me ask you readers, out there, a simple question, what is Love? According to Dorling Kindersley dictionary, it’s ‘a passionate affectionate’. I’m sure that to you it means the butterflies in your stomach or the magnetization you feel when you’re next to your significant other. The more important word in this praise though is ‘unconditional’. What does that one mean? Well, according to the exact same dictionary, it’s ‘limitless’ or ‘not subjected to conditions’.

Here’s my question to Bella of Twilight, if Edward killed Reneesme or Jacob, would you still love him unconditionally? Would you still have the same limitless affection for him? Well, clearly not! The ironic part is that nearly every couple on television break up three episodes after claiming their unconditional love to each other, and what about the 50% worldwide divorce rate which usually involves couples who once upon a time made a vow to love each other ‘until death do us part’. It’s no wonder some people stopped believing in marriage! The only couple to actually be in love unconditionally was Romeo and Juliet and look how that ended!

Wrapping up, to quote my iconic idol, Nicholas Sparks, “Love is like the wind, you can’t touch it, but you can always feel it”. Well, guess what? The wind passes by, leaving nothing behind but a cold chill. To me, real love isn’t a mere butterfly in your stomach. Rationality and kindness, waking up in the morning knowing that you have an anchor, a reference, someone to hold on to, someone who will hold you up and right your wrongs. This is true love.

- Adam Ashraf

Adam is "as imperfect as it gets. Basically, I am always blamed for being extremely self-centered, stereotypical, obnoxious, overconfident, and above it all cutthroat ambitious." Never mind him, we assure you he's the most fab 15 year old we know of. Find out more about Osama and his musings on his blog: www.ministry-of-eccentricity.blogspot.com

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chasing clouds

A person I so happened to introduce my quirkily abominable literary skills to today told me nobody in the 21^st century has the time to read the amount of cow’s dung I write.

Therefore, after 233 gracefully-omitted words of 'just that', I'm going to heed his advice and cut straight to the chase. Better buckle up if you haven't already.

I haven’t lived very long (white hairs are a God-given gift), but through my very-short-life’s travails, I’ve discovered that most people somehow live under the impression that what makes a dream, a dream is, in fact, the so-called ‘fact’ that it is forever going to be unattainable.

It’s like…like chasing unicorns at the edge of a rainbow, simply to please yourself about the number of flowers whose nauseating aromas you’re intoxicating yourself with along the way...

The way to nowhere.

Before I point out how utterly sick in the stomach that entire analogy made me feel, I’d like to admit- yeah, some days it probably gets you sicker to wake up in the morning and realize you are chasing nothing but a rainbow…

That too a rainbow in Dubai…haha…

But here, right now, annihilating precious minutes of both our miserable existences (what else are you here for?), I’d like to share with you that divine secret about what keeps me going. You see, every day is the same old battle…as if someone put the last scene of LOTR on loop…

You open your eyes, take your first breath, re-establish your identity and whereabouts…then stand in front of the bathroom mirror and ask yourself what the heck you’re doing with your life today…

Some of us please ourselves thinking we’re off to work. Some of us feel content just going to school. Some of us pop our heads out the bathroom door and smell the pancakes mom’s cooking and convince ourselves that’s good enough to pull up the zipper and get going...

I have none of these. And sort of all of these. (I make better pancakes than mom.)

But what gets me going…and what sometimes utterly fails to do that…is the idea that I relish it. I relish it with the bottom of my heart. What I’m doing, where I’m going, what I’ll be wearing and how I’m living…

Somehow, I absolutely convince myself, all over again, that everything I do, down to the most fickle, useless chore, is part of some grander plan…like it’s all leading somewhere.

I look in the mirror, and the face I hated to see just five seconds ago suddenly doesn't seem so despicably unbearable. It’s me, being me, nothing but me, and the me I always wanted and shall always want to be come hell or high water, that makes it all ok.

And that’s my dream. That’s the cloud I chase. Waking up each day to reach that moment, whether at the strike of dawn of chime of midnight, it doesn’t matter…as long as I get there.

Writing this post right now, is part of that plan. Sharing this with you somehow, even though it feels nothing but pointless, embarrassing nonsense, is part of that ‘grand scheme’.

Trying to show you that a dream is not just a mirage…it's part of my dream.

And somehow, in some way that I cannot possibly explain no matter how hard I try, it’s all worth it. Because I’m not just dreaming, I’m doing.

-Bushra Ali

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