escape (quest newsletter special)

If you were able to leave work tomorrow with a year’s salary included, what would you do? That might be too much freedom for some, maybe, not enough freedom for others. If you had one year before you had to go back to the routine of getting up the same time everyday, would you use it wisely?

If you haven’t been lucky enough to fall in love, take the time to look around and see if your smile might be melting the hearts of those that are around you.

Jump on a plane and leave to an unknown destination. Fly through the clouds and never look back. Travel around the world and go to places you have always dreamed of. You might not have had the chance when you were a little younger, but time isn’t making any exceptions, you have the opportunity, take it with both hands.

Understand the world in another language. Are you a poet inside? Maybe this could be your plan of attack for falling in love. Write a poem, if it doesn’t succeed in English, try writing it in French. If that fails, well, maybe he or she might think you’re cute enough for trying and you just might earn yourself a date. Watch the stars on a clear, summer’s night.

Love the water? Ride the waves. Set foot and explore the ocean with the cool breeze pushing gently behind your head with your eyes closed. The Sun rises to greet you as the calm of the water welcomes your presence to thank you for visiting from so far away. The water appreciates your company; something you thought was rare in this world.

If you have always contemplated about getting married, no need to wait anymore. Take a lengthy honeymoon away from the rest of the world. Enjoy your company and let reality drift off on to the offset of your imagination.

When you have ran out of ideas, think about exploring the hidden alleyways of your city. Then think about running away to other cities around the world and dine in exotic restaurants. It might be foreign, but the adventure will excite you, even making you feel alive for the first time since your memory could remember.

The only problem with all this is, once the year ends, you wouldn’t want to go back to work again. Unfortunately, as much as escape seems like an attractive alternative, at least you would have broken the routine. After all, that’s the main message to this story, it might be something that stays in your dreams, but it doesn’t have to.

As published in #1 of QueSt newsletter on March 2011.
- Michael Daaboul

sell yourself (master’s personal statement special)

(How would you benefit from this course? Why are you interested?)

Master of Creative Media (Creative Writing) will enable me to explore a field of study that has occupied my thoughts and progressively, infiltrated my subconscious for a long period of time now.

(Do you have any background information or education that showcases your interest? How about proven ability? This is a good time to include it now.)

After completing my 4 year undergraduate degree in Multimedia Systems, I have tasted the narrative hunger in courses such as: Content Design Project, Design for Interactive Media 3 and most notably, Writing Angles: Popular and Professional. My burning desire evolved and grew to new heights while completing the latter. A score of 86 (HD) was achieved for this particular course, which made Writing Angles the highest scoring subject currently on my academic transcript.

(You’re applying for a ‘writing’ course, why not use some narrative to help strengthen your desire?)

Writing Angles: Popular and Professional installed a wave of ideas and concentrated my understanding of writing through one channel. The course opened up different fields of creative analysis in my mind and aided my focus to craft a series of written work.

(Why do you like to write? Where have you written? What makes your writing significantly more interesting compared to other candidates?)

I have consistently used some form of narrative in my designs to accurately deliver a story that not only engages the reader, but sends their minds through a captivating journey back in time that pinpoints moments of epiphany. I write constantly, trying to find the answers to what philosophers have been trying to find in life. It is an endless engagement to find words that bring new meaning to storytelling. A way of relating, the source of comfort, writing gives the imagination an image for a world that words orchestrated to define a motion picture to animate in a still mind. Within my writing, I strive for the same blueprint and I only need to remember that to spawn inspiration.

(Consolidate your desire! Plead for a chance to see how bright you can shine.)

I decided that I need to take the road that leads into the world of creative writing. It is not only the next level I can take in terms of increasing the magnitude of my career prospects in narrative media, but it is the next step that I need to feed my personal development in the world of writing. I feel a perpetual stream of motivation and passion that I believe will play an important role for me to advance if given the opportunity to do so.

Another requirement needed to get into Master of Creative Media (Creative Writing) at RMIT University in 2009, this time a personal statement was required. There’s a few tips to follow when you’re writing your own as I have highlighted throughout mine just above my submission. Please treat this with respect as this is the original wording, like before, I have no problems sharing this with you as long as it’s respected.
- Michael Daaboul

the offset (master’s project proposal special)

Taking a more philosophical approach to my writing, I want to explore the fundamentals of life through a different perspective. Narrowing down the essence of existence of human beings and analysing the possibilities for possible answers.

Either a series of abstract short stories or a novel based on the different emotions, behaviours and exact thoughts of everyday events and human psychology. An emphasis on appreciation and what is often left unnoticed because of the busy life routine.

This could also take a form of conversations between two characters asking questions and exploring answers about time, love, good vs. bad, various emotions, how people think in certain situations, death etc.

The novel will be a non-fiction debate over questions of life that are thought provoking and not obvious. They could spark from walking into town and viewing the surrounding and explaining and debating how all the strange things go neglected; the blind spot for everyday wanders that live there.

Research will need to be done on the psychology of different types of emotions and behaviour, concepts in philosophy and observing human interaction between social gatherings and other crowd populated areas.

One of the requirements needed to get into Master of Creative Media (Creative Writing) at RMIT University, a project proposal was needed to be submitted. This was mine back in 2009. I have no problems sharing this with you.
- Michael Daaboul

memories (this started it all special)

I have forgotten your smile, the one that took my heart and tore me apart inside; the smile that betrayed me from the start.

It didn’t have to end …

My memories of you seem so near, everything was so clear.

Those memories have all seemed to just disappear …

It didn’t have to end …

What your sad smile told me, you didn’t want me forever, that’s something I will always remember.

My memories keep you near, it’s what I always feared; my memories have disappeared.

It didn’t have to end …

They have all just, disappeared.

This was the very first piece of writing that I had written sometime in 2003. Before then, I had written for assignments for school, but this was the first bit of writing I did in my own time. The writing that started my ‘mad’ hobby. 
- Michael Daaboul

72 years (tribute to the yeager’s couple special)

For 72 years I have been married to you and I said, “I won’t part with you”, for 72 years I said, “We won’t part.”

They said, “We’re old-fashioned”, we took our wedding vows to heart, ‘til death do us part.

I feel that The World had other plans it seemed, after the accident, you were put into a coma; you suffered internal bleeding and a broken neck.

If only we had stayed in that morning, it was a nice summer’s day, the heat gently passing through our bodies while we’re asleep.

You wanted to go for a drive, it was 8 a.m.

Down we went on the darkened road, the collision happened so fast, all I remember was silence and my breath caught by the scythe of Death.

I’m already dead, so I can’t explain the phenomena that allowed me to tell my story.

We were taken to hospital; we spent our last moments in intensive case. We were in the same room. We were holding hands, even though we were barely functioning.

I died later that day, but my heart was still beating on the monitor.

I said, “We won’t part”, but I couldn’t keep that promise in the end, I’m afraid no one would of been able to keep that promise, but I told you every day because I thought this day will never come.

Who would have thought 72 years would just fly by, I still felt like I had so many things to say to you, even though we were close to 90 now. I know now that you can never have enough of life.

I just wish we could of stuck around a little bit longer, I was not ready, but in my mind, I’d knew you would know this somehow.

If you wanted to know how the monitor was showing my heart beat, it was because we were holding hands and her pulse was going through me until she died a few minutes later.

Tribute to The Yeager’s couple who died on October 12, 2011.
- Michael Daaboul

into the night (tribute to jp, nz and au special)

This post is dedicated to Japan’s Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami which hit on March 11, 2011, New Zealand’s Christchurch earthquake which hit on February 22, 2011 and Australia’s Queensland flooding and Tropical Cyclone Yasi which hit on December 2010 – January 2011 and February 3, 2011 respectively.
- Michael Daaboul

Into the night we fought the losing fight and yet we stood there lost and hopeless, bleeding and wounded, we told ourselves we won’t leave them behind.

We came from all around the world to help the saints and the sinners; we were prepared to go without food looking for the weary. We were prepared to go without sleep to look for the bodies that hope had abandoned and ran away from the countries that had nothing left to believe in anymore.

We were not prepared for the unexpected and with the unexpected came the loss of life.

Towns swallowed by oceans, forests engulfed by the fires of hell and parts of the world shaken by the wrath of Planet Earth.

As the heavens looked upon the destruction, our world looked upon with horror and we told ourselves we won’t leave anyone behind.

Through the rabble and washed away dreams, the ashes rose to stain the clouds above to mask the pain and to ask the gods to hear us below. We have no place to go, we have become broken. Listen to us, with no promises, follow us into the night and take our hands and let us tell you it will all be alright, we won’t leave anyone behind.

It is too late as the day begins to bleed into the night, pulse fading, and we could be lost forever. Please, don’t leave us here tonight, we are weak, don’t leave us hidden under the debris in the cold.

We won’t leave without finding all who are alive.

Into the night you will find us fighting for the human race, we’ll make it out, no promises.

Remember to say our goodbyes, with nightly news to replay, we won’t be denied as we find those who have been lost and forgotten deep into the night.

proceeding madness (blog’s 1st birthday special)

I couldn’t hear it no matter how many times I tried to listen. I’m just not that interested, it’s not that important to me.

For years I have been listening to people that don’t make sense. I nod and pretend I know what they had just said and try to understand what they mean.

I don’t understand them and it’s not like I want to anyway. I find them brainless and annoying; they have nothing intellectual to say or have enough substance and depth for me to waste life on. I am already wasting and being depleted by life as it is and it doesn’t feel worth it and then I have life sucking parasites further adding to this drainage of life.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m choosing not to hear them or if it’s my hearing. I cringe at the thought of my ears allowing the passing of these soundwaves into my mind infecting everything inside of me.

I fear the invisibility of this thought leaving me in a state of endless worthlessness of being paralysed.

As I have tied a knot to stop the leakage of time, the stroke it caused left me without motion and the stains of the voices painted around my walls have penetrated my requiem and captured my hearing unattended in a state of my rapidly proceeding madness.

‘life is not a foreign language’ turned 1 on the 17th of March. Enjoy the belated birthday special!
- Michael Daaboul

rose land (new year special: 2011)

She rose from the ashes holding a secret. She hides in the bushes because she knows no one can keep it.
 
She was concealed at birth, sweet-smelling.  She was queen of this earth, breathing, alive and living.

Beautiful as the moon, the river butterfly would tell you that, “She rose too soon.”

Autumn leaves up far into the sky, falling alongside her withering away.

Violet flower.

She tried to free her mind talking to a Daffodil, poor old Lily was left behind. She couldn’t sit still.

Lily was hoping for new rain, that lovely spring water winter stain.

Violet asked if she could go, Daffodil replied, “She didn’t know.”

Nothing more but a wild rose; in Rose Land she had a pink silly nose. Spring shined upon their soil, as far as Water-lily would know. Rain was just enough as the angles poured forgotten Lily with brand new hope.

Violet thought about all this stuff, yearning to be sent free.

No matter how big this secret was, the flowers of Rose Land scene, is home for you and me.