I have been wanting a navel piercing for ages now — pretty much ever since I developed a passion for body art. I did intensive research on the subject over the years and I decided that Amman was not the place to do it.

There are no professional body piercing studios in Amman, and I have met girls who went and got pierced in accessory shops on the hands of unlicensed and inexperienced people who used piercing guns on them and later stretched the navel hole with gradual increase of jewellery gauge. They also recommend alcohol to clean the wounds!

I mean the amount of pain and suffering! The health risks — infections and scars and horrible complications! That is just so not right.

So I decided that if I will do this, I will do it the right way. I went today and got my belly button pierced at Big Joe & Sons studio. I admit I was really nervous and kept wondering if I will get a scar eventually and so on, but the artist there (Brian DeMaio) was ultra friendly and he said it wouldn’t hurt any more than my nose ring or 14 earrings. I asked him a couple of questions that I had and he answered professionally so I knew I was in good hands.

It hurt, but not as much as I expected, which was a good thing of course. I was so happy when I looked at it in the mirror in the studio! It is a dream come true to some extent because now I won’t be getting any more piercings. Probably not a tattoo either, I do not want my parents to disown me.

I will write about this in more detail later on under Body Art, the category. I am just super excited now and I so love my new body jewellery — it’s a vision.

P.S: If I don’t post anything in two or three days, know that I am dead and throw me a nice cyber funeral. There is a very good chance my mother will kill me.

I’m grouping the posts I will write during my stay in New York under this category: Explorator. Some of them will be multi-category posts, which means they belong to more than one category. In this case, I will list them initially under Explorator and when they are off the main page I will go back to edit them and list them under the other categories they belong to. I will do that because usually the small box under any multi-category post does not fit more than one category title. I don’t like things to be off like that, so I will trick the system when nobody is watching.

That off my chest, I can proceed now to the story of this post.

There are three tattoo studios in the area where I live, and they are all within a five minute walking distance from my current location on this couch. I eye them from the car every time I pass by them and make mental notes to google them when I get home. I google them, they’re good places with good reviews, and I make mental notes to decide on an ink design. I decide on a design, and wonder if I will tolerate it 20 years down the road. I decide I will because it is smart and I even imagine myself telling my grandchildren the story behind it, quite possibly the story in this post.

There is no way around it. If I am surrounded by body art studios, I will have to succumb to the temptation of ink and needles. I have been trying to resist for the past week, but secretly at night I look up designs and imagine them on my skin. I am ill.

Last night was one of the most memorable times of my entire life. I went to Manhattan in the evening and walked Times Square and Broadway and 5th Avenue… The whole place was so surreal and buzzing with life and energy and diversity. I could not believe I was actually there. You know how sometimes you feel like you have stepped outside of yourself and watched things happen around you? That is exactly how I felt last night.

I really, really, really heart NY! I want to stay here…

New York

This is very similar to the Salli 3al Nabi bumper stickers we see everywhere in Jordan. It’s all religious material and somewhat the same abstract God.

Can bumper stickers bring us together?

So far, I love it here. The neighborhood where I am staying is beautiful and the house I am living in is gorgeous. The weather has been pleasant over the past three days, the duration of my stay so far. I’m generally feeling happy, awkward, bemused, or sleepy at any given time of the day.

I went out walking yesterday and I loved it. I was trying to see if I could get to a certain shop I had eyed from the car when I first got “home.” But of course I had to act smart and try to find a shortcut and I ended up walking 30 minutes in the wrong direction. You can trust I would do something like that, right? Well I didn’t feel bad at all, actually I enjoyed the walk tremendously. I love walking alone but I never get to do that in our neighborhood in Amman — it’s just not walking material.

So you can say that I found out that not all roads lead to Rome (or home).

I went to the Bronx today. It was so interesting to observe the racial texture of the people there. So many people spoke in what sounded like Spanish to my inexperienced ears, and there was a majority of African-Americans. I also saw a number of veiled African-American women, and a couple of veiled women who seemed Arab.

At least Arabs and Muslims here say Assalamu Alaikom when they see other Arabs or Muslims. Back in Michigan in 2005 seldom did they interact or even smile to me, it was so strange and offensive really. But anyway, the people in the Bronx looked very exotic. Many had tattoos and piercings, and most were overweight. The place was heavy, the people didn’t smile, and I got sad vibes all over. Oh and many drivers, male and female, had really loud music blasting through the air from their cars. It was strange, I had never seen anything like that in Royal Oak. Honestly, I was relieved when I left the area, but I’m going back some time. Later.

My next step is to memorize the walking route to the station so I can really milk my time here. I will keep you posted on that, but for now you can check out some select shots I took of my surroundings:

New York