guilty

I have been feeling very guilty about alot of things lately. one: I didnt get anything done as far as collecting visual evidence for my thesis as I had promissed my advisor... I havent written the conference paper that I will be presenting in Thailand later this year which was due last week... I didnt visit my fathers family.. I am not sure what I actually did for the last two weeks. I also feel very guilty about partying too much which is very hard not to do in Egypt these days especially here in cairo.. its a bit strange to be smoking up hash, drinking endless bottles of stella, dancing in a zamalek apartment with other egyptians, americans and english friends and speaking with this tattooed lebanese guy half high about (kus um el arab) complaining about the bombing of beirut, cant help but feel guilty.
when I was in Siwa on my last day I met these two police guys, one was a handsome young mohamed who is being trained by this amazingly masculine big true egyptian named Youssef. I was very very turned on by captain youssef who was swimming in one of the siwa natural springs in his underwear and came out of the water .. couldnt help but stair at his wet underwear. o man. anyway, we had a great time talking about everything from politics to sexual adventures and how horny he is.. very interesting conversation! anyway, I felt really guilty to hear that a guy like him who is completly content with his situation, only makes about four hundred pounds a month!! which was what I spent in a day and half in Siwa! it just didnt make sense to me. ofcourse he was the usual happy egyptian making almost nothing but for me to even start speaking about how much I spend a day compared to how much he makes or anyone like him makes a month just makes me wanna .. well not do anything, I just feel guilty.

after coming back from siwa I went for two days with my cousin ahmad to his house and farmland outside of Tanta in the delta.. it was great to be in whatever is left of the egyptian countryside and meet his family from his father's side. I loved his father more than mine and i love him like my brother/lover..
I had so many great conversations with family members who are enjoying the simple life, planing their own everything in their own garden, eating together out of big plates.. it was great. but again I heard so many things that made me feel guilty.. guilty to be american, guilty to spend so much money, guilty about doing nothing to maintain egypts tresures...
one guy complained about farming in egypt today... it is a known fact that we now import wheat, which is a very sad fact, but I didnt know that we stupidly exported our high quality cotton seed so that the USA can grow egyptian cotton on its soil and therefore fuck up the cotton industry in egypt. I didnt know that we import seeds from the US which are only good for one planting meaning they dont produce fruit with new seeds which means we would be constantly dependant on importing US seeds...ofcourse we stupidly agreed to use US chemicals in farming which means the food here is begining to taste like nothing but look good just like in any american supermarket. this all sounded so sad coming from a man who grew up in the traditional farming environment and witnessing this huge transition and loss of our agricultural tradition. also more and more buildings are being built on precious farm land. I just feel guilty.

last night was henry's birthday so we had a party for him in Saima's apartment, it was all very sweet. I tried not to feel guilty.