Travel Log #22

November 20, 2009

My expectations have been left in the dust; This country has exceeded them by far. For a while now, I have been trying to find a word that conveys what I feel and I have concluded that one does not exist. However, one comes close, if we define it in my own terms. The word is "safe" and I know that probably sounds crazy, but it's true. I feel safe and protected and I do not feel alone.

Perhaps that is what I mean by "safe"--I am surrounded by people who do not have to hear a story of pain and worry of life lived on edge because they understand in the truest and most legitimate way possible. It is their story, too, and I don't have to explain a thing. That understanding is the starting point and it begins with a glance.

I just passed through security to get on the train and the guards were surprised to find out that I'm not from here. But perhaps I want to be. Why? Because everywhere I go, I meet incredible people without whom I cannot imagine the rest of my life. I make it a point to make them crucial pieces of my life. En masse, they return not only empty words, but actions.

I leave Ashkelon for the army in about two weeks. Like Worcester, I am not too pleased with Ashkelon on an aesthetic level. It is what lies beneath the surface that counts. My family here truly makes me a part of them, includes me in the good the bad, and the ugly. And believe me, it can get ugly. But I choose it and they choose me. And the good by far outweighs the bad. My personal relationships with each of them are precious to me and I cannot abandon them.

B's younger brother, Benny, helped me break into the music scene in Ashkelon. I played at a bar/restaurant in Afridar (a neighborhood in the city) called Hanassi. On the menus, there is an Israeli Uncle Sam pointing. He wants me. "Hanassi" means "president". Benny has also helped me meet with people connected to the music business, got me an audition, etc. I have also been playing for other people and have been hired twice. Thanks to Benny, I am known in Ashkelon. That's what good friends are for. He is 32 years old, divorced, hunting for new companionship, and has three children, aged 7, 4, and 2.

B's husband, N, is a rabbi, a psychotherapist, a scholar, a kabbalist, and one of the nicest, calmest people I've ever known. Of the entire family, I met N first. It was he who invited me over for Shabbat, which started my entire life and involvement with the family.

There are five children of whom I've met four. The daughter, A, is eighteen years old and is in the United States, probably permanently. She is about to be officially engaged. So young. I know. But that's the way it is here. And age is different here anyway. And eighteen-year-old is an American twenty-four. At nineteen, push it up to twenty-seven. At twenty, to thirty.

Anyhow, Moshe is the oldest at twenty-seven, is married, and has one child who just turned a year old, Bat-Tzion. Yossi is second at twenty-three, is married to Miri, twenty-two, and they have Ze'ev who is also a year old and four-and-half hours older than Bat-Tzion. That's right. Hours. I spent a lot of time with Yossi, Miri, and Ze'ev, helping to paint Ze'ev's room, hanging out, making dinner, just talking. They live about a ten minute walk from me.

Next comes Hershey, at twenty, in the army, opposed to relationships (for himself), and so dedicated to his job that he complains about getting time off. Then, of course, there's A., in the States, and then Kobi, who just turned thirteen and had his bar mitzvah last week.

November 21, 2009
To make Kobi happy, I have sacrificed my thus far absolute refusal to partake in facebook applications and have become a diligent player of "Happy Aquarium". "It's a nice game," Kobi insists, and constantly asks me to "check" for him. I steal coins from the virtual treasure chests and virtually feed my virtual fish in their virtually clean tank that I constantly virtually clean.

With B., I sit and listen and she listens back. I go over early on Fridays and help her prepare food for the hordes of people who are forever milling about the house. Of course, I'm not usually one for domesticity, but the conversation detracts from the monotony of peeling eight thousand vegetables and actually makes it quite enjoyable. Or perhaps I am changing.

The thought of children has always detested me. Of course, when I'm in the midst of them, all is well and I love it. But the prospect of children? Disgusting. Until now. Now, there is Ze'evik and there is Bat-Tzion, and even older children like Benny's, and I love them even though they drive me crazy.

I see Ze'ev the most and miss him terribly when I'm not with him. Miri facetiously asks "Do you want one?" and to keep up appearances I say, "No. Absolutely not." And then to temper that I say, "At least not now," which is most certainly the truth. But I play with the babies and I laugh with the babies and I hold the babies to sleep. There is something quite special and calming in those actions, and the notion of building a person up from nothing, from a clean slate, is a realization of hope. But I think adoption is more up my alley, because I couldn't bring myself to damn someone I love so much to exist in a world such as this one. i can do my best to shield those already here from this place that rolls without reason and that sails on chaos; I can do my best to show them how to ride.

"You have already borne us many children, darling," says the angel, Micha'el. "They ride on the air and on the seams between the worlds of linearity and Eternity."
"Do they have hearts like me," I ask, "or are they cursed to Holiness like you?"
"They are not human, so no hearts. Yet they are not angel, either, so no curse of Holiness. They are somewhere in between."
"Like Uriel. Are they subjected to your discipline like him? Is it my fault?"
"No, darling. Your children are somewhere in between the lines of thought and flesh. I am of thought and you are of flesh, and what you produce is a product of us both."
"And what about what I want?" I say. "What of my wish?"
"I have told you," says the angel. "You must accept what you are."

And half of me struggles and half of me rests.

I am once again caught up in my own dichotomy.

As Nasikh once wrote: "No two days pass alike in this world; There is no garden that could avert autumn". And so, too, none that could avert spring.

The world, I know, is not pretty; but it is also what we make of it. I desire beauty and thus, alongside the terror and the chaos that is this world, alongside all that snuffs out life as if it were nothing more than the blink of an eye, I see beauty. I create beauty. I incorporate it into myself and love the world completely, for without the darkness, I could not comprehend the blessing of light and I must not take even that which seems most inconsequential for granted. Life is short, after all, and I do not let it pass by. I cannot, despite the fact that it must always be lived alone.