Trouble in the land of the lotus eaters

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In Homer's Odyssey, Ulysses and his men spend ten years lost at sea on their way home after the Trojan War. One day, they land in the realm of the lotus eaters, whose inhabitants subsist on a flower so intoxicating those who consume it lose all sense of purpose.

Those who ate the honey-sweet lotus fruit no longer wished to bring back word to us, or sail for home. They wanted to stay with the Lotus eaters, eating the lotus, forgetting all thoughts of return.

Who knows what the lotus eaters were trying to forget? There is a certain comfort in letting go of reality, focusing only on the hedonistic pleasures of life, even if it means ignoring the omens of impending catastrophe.

Lebanon has often felt to me like this mythological land of lotus. Life in Beirut can sometimes seem so easy, an oasis of carefree festivity mere kilometers away from the unrelenting Syrian conflict. For some, obliviousness is a survival instinct after having experienced the trauma of war and its consequences up close. Many foreigners are also seduced by Beirut's heady insouciance, its levity in spite of everything. Beirut can feel like the eye of the storm.

The Thesis Paperwork Zombie

Artistic rendition of the paperwork process
(Source)

Working on my thesis mainly involves mustering the motivation to plow through volumes of theory on inclusive citizenship and feminist praxis (Note to self: memorize what the word "praxis" means).

But in addition to the properly academic work in this endeavor, I must obtain the go-ahead from my university's institutional review board (hereafter known as IRB) to proceed with the interview portion of my research.

After contacting the IRB, I was told I needed to fill in a 17-page form in order to get the green-light for my research. Seventeen pages of exhaustive, detail-oriented questions, some of whom I am sharing with you here, in a worldwide exclusive, along with the answers I wish I had had the guts to write.