Travel Log #34

April 11, 2010
It is the day before Yom Ha'Shoa, Holocaust Remembrance Day. I am in Jerusalem and as if on cue, the atmosphere assumes an eerie, ethereal quality. The sky descends on us, misty, yellow- green. It presses in upon us, hot, humid, oppressive. "Is it fog or pollution?" I ask and no one knows. Perhaps it is something else--an effect on the physical state of the country emanating, as a reflection, from the mood of the populace.

The air is thick with angels and accusing human fingers. Forgiveness is not on the agenda but blind eyes are false justifications. How quickly the victim becomes the mirror of his own enemy when given the chance. As usual, lives are reduced to numbers, statistics. This is why I hate the way Sho'a education is conducted.

Germans are depicted as extraordinarily more monstrous than the next human. To be cruel is human. To be animal is human. To lust for blood, to hate, to denigrate--is human.

Tell me you wouldn't do it, too--no, not that you don't "think" you would, but that you wouldn't.

This story is cliche. The winner writes history and the fine lines are drawn: between good and evil, between which person behind which gun represents the more righteous cause. What is forgotten or ignored is the fact that both sides hold a gun.

You tell me who is more civil--or not.

This is linked to Germany's problem, the societal struggle that is gevalt: history proposes a dichotomous problem at the least: that of being remembered and also of being forgotten. The consequences of either take their toll on the populations affected and that reckon with the history in question.

Yet too much dwelling creates insensitivity, lack-of risks a repetition. But humanity never learns anyway.

Question: can victims and their descendants ever overcome collective martyrdom? Can descendants of perpetrators ever overcome collective guilt? Is Germany's exercise in vergangenheitsgevaltigung valid? Healthy? Because of the Holocaust are Israel and Germany more linked than the US and Israel? Emotional interconnectedness is more binding than fiscal in terms of lasting memory and the maintenance of the societal/cultural collective mythos.

Are Jews a nation of martyrs or a nation that celebrates life, like we claim? Ironic, considering Holocaust history, the way we treat it, and the current political/social situation here.

April 12, 2010
"It is interesting, darling, this human concern with grouping. Do you not all have the ultimate identity at the start?" asks the angel.

"It's part of our propensity for conflict. We tend towards hate. It is innate. So we create reasons and ways in which to do so. The easiest is defining ourselves and defining ourselves in opposition.

"It's too hard to figure out what we are but we're obsessed with it. So we give ourselves a positive label with a negative definition. To keep it up, destruction of the Other--the basest method of contact--usually satiates the need for definition. Unfortunately, the satisfaction is only temporary. Now, we tend towards hybridity. But we're still human--we're not this, we're not that. So it goes. Nothing changes, essentially."

"Is this a curse of corporeality? Your kineticism traps you in a cycle of destruction fed by...let us say...the biological instinct for the illogical, for hierarchy?"

"Perhaps it is a curse. But we escape it when we Scatter. It's actually very logical, though. Biology is all about hierarchy."

"You escape it when you Scatter. Yes. Potential realized and experienced. But I do not have qualms with my nature. I may not have potential. But I can never be Animal."

"No, Micha'el. But look how much you're missing, nonetheless."

At 10:00 a.m. this morning, on יום השועה (Yom Ha'Shoa), Holocaust Remembrance Day, the minute-long siren of commemoration sounded and the entire country stopped.

Cars in the middle of the road, people got out, stood still, hands clasped behind their backs. Not a breath stirred We all stood still. We give up one minute to remember all of those generations lost. The siren ends.

In perfect Israeli fashion, life resumes. The siren is only winding down and traffic starts rushing again. Within literally half a second, horns are honking. Welcome to Israel, Empire of Impatience. "We're going to die tomorrow, so we do things today," my friend tells me. "Don't waste time. You waste time mourning a future that hasn't happened yet and you miss today. Live to day." It's the old carpe diem again: try everything at least once. The past has been mourned enough. Take history in stride and make a new one.

April 13, 2010

Walking down the street here for two seconds doesn't just exhibit the active, conscious creation of a new history but flaunts the shattering and reconstruction of deeply ingrained myths. For instance, "The Holy Land".

When I was growing up, I attended Jewish summer sleep-away camp. Ramah Darom, in Clayton, Georgia. Common practice in the American Jewish camp world is importing Israelis as counselors and campers. One year, when I was either eleven or twelve, an Ethiopian counselor (we'll call her Z.) told us about her immigration to Israel. I'll paraphrase what she told us:

She came to Israel as a little girl from Ethiopia. Later, her parents told her what she couldn't comprehend as a child. Operation Moses, the Israeli operation begun in 1984 and continued in Operations Joshua and Solomon, brought about 36,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel (for more information on this some sites are: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Juda ism/ejhist.html, and http://www.moia.gov.il/Moia_en/AboutIsrael/mivtzaMoshe.htm).

Z.'s parents were brought to Jerusalem, with thousands of others. Needless to say, modern-day Jerusalem looks nothing like the Jerusalem of Gold they all had in their minds. Jerusalem,

ultimately, was a disappointment. Jerusalem stone was ubiquitous but not gold. And where was God? Some, surely, felt holiness, but according to Z. and her parents, most couldn't feel any sort of holy presence in the Holy City. Perhaps God was there, disguised as a man or two but no deafening voice thundered down from the heavens. What Z.'s parents found was an earthly city with just as much (or just as little) holiness as the next. So what is this "Holy Land"?

From this narrative, it is possible to say that it is only a desperate mythology that gilds hope in fool's gold at best.

Wake up call: this is the Middle East and the holiest, most disputed city in the history of the world really struggles to retain that golden image. Shitting in the street is commonplace here. Holy water doesn't fall to be blessed, if it falls at all. It's counted as a blessing to have fallen.

Despite the grime and the feces, the complex undercurrents of hate between the various sects of Jews and the overcurrents between Jews and Arabs, this city retains some inexplicable quality that I can only describe as holy. Despite the kipple, if you will, and despite the violence. (We are still not allowed in some sections of the Old City and every few weeks, we're told not to go near at all.) For what it's worth, Jerusalem exists on a scale teetering between a stressed, fragile calm and explosive violence. Holiness takes its toll but so does banality. Even so, there are more angels here than anywhere.

Travel Log #33

April 3, 2010
"What you've got to understand is that you're in a country where the whole population will pack their families into a car and drive five hours just to see one flower on one hill in the middle of the desert that only blooms one day in the whole year."

So says the tour guide, an ex-pat American who's been a Jerusalemite for thirty years.

She shows us the separation fence between Megiddo and the West Bank. A kibbutznik reminisces about the days when they could walk across the border--because there wasn't really a border--and buy spices from Jenin; about how his parents walked from Syria into Palestine, which soon became Israel.

We're with a group of college-age Americans. They joke and laugh and don't get it. I'm embarrassed. But I have to go back in a little less than three months.

Three years ago--more--I promised myself I'd never do anything stupid like changing the course of my life for another person and that from now on, I only work for myself, that selfishness is a virtue if practiced in the correct manner. I found people here, what I've always wanted and I want to stay but have to put that on hold. It's not for them but for me. They make me happy.

Time is Yokneam is over. I will miss it. I said good-bye to the children at Dalyiot. They clung to me and begged me to stay. All good things must come to an end.

On my last day of school, I went back to the gelato shop and ordered real ice cream instead of the yogurt and fruit. Little did I know it, but it became the last one for the rest of my life. But that's the price of healthy living. That's the price of life.

In the parking lots where the gelato shop is, there's a very large snow pile with children building snowmen and having snowball fights.

April 4, 2010

The snow was a mystery for awhile: why was it there? Where did it come from, in Israel, in spring weather? And why didn't it melt? I foudn the answer by asking the owner of the gelato shop: it was there because children needed to have fun in the snow. Snowball fights are an essential part of childhood. Yokneam (and other cities, too, apparently) import the snow from Mt. Hermon and replenish it every day. Hence its seeming immortality.

We are sent on another American delegation, this time, high schoolers. I am much more impressed with them than with the college students. It's the usual run-around: great food, hikes through beautiful scenery that lasts all day, the order to drink more water than the Mediterranean contains.

Back in Yokneam, I participate in a music workshop with the Israeli sperstar, Korin Allal. We became friends. She likes my music and wants to keep in touch. I write songs on-demand in three hours every week with a group of teenagers. At first they protest that I'm too old, more than seven years their senior sometimes. They get over it. I am late the next week and they cry relief when they see me.

"Thank G-d. I thought we were doomed, but you're here."

We settle into the task. Our songs are a mixture of Hebrew and English. I will never play or sing them on my own; they are a joint effort.

I become friends with them. I am forced to speak Hebrew and somtimes, to type it. Welcome to Facebook. The workshops are so good, I will return to Yokneam once they resume. I get rides with Korin. It is yet another example of not losing touch.

Now, I have journeyed north, all the way to Nahariyya, from Ashkelon. The journey took three hours. I am still waiting for Assaf. Trains pull in and out...He's here, so I go.

April 7, 2010

Nahariyyah is beautiful, miles of clear blue-green Mediterranean coast. Hermit crabs crawl around beneath the water alongside fish of many colors, little shrimps, deposits of salt. We pick up the crabs and set them on our legs. I watch as they timidly test the safety of their new environment, as their little limbs flit in and out of the shells.

The beach is a mixture of shelly sand and stretches of half-submerged rock covered in seaweed, slat deposits, and young coral. Fishermen spread out along the shore. Our feet are in the clear water. We wait for the schools of fish to crowd around them and feast on our dead skin. Here, the mutual dependency between human beings and the greater natural world is evident. In the distance lies the Israeli-Lebanese border, shrouded in a thin layer of fog. It's quiet now and if people didn't hate each other and there were no fences, I could walk across.

My train goes up and down the coast. As I wait in the stations, I make acquaintances. I am given undue attention by a number of men, who ask me if I have a boyfriend. They tell me to send him this message or ones similar: "He is lucky. If I only I were younger; if only I weren't married," etc. I am not used to this.

I befriend an Arab boy and his mother in the station at Tel Aviv University. She fusses over his wrinkled collar and his lack of a sweater. He is about twelve. We share smiles and I reach over and straighten his collar and we get into a limited conversation because of our limited Hebrew about the tardiness of the train and where it's going. I sit across from them on the ride andt he boy keeps stealing glances at me and smiling shyly. If we had a common language, we would have become friends. I tell them where to get off and I leave them. They smile and wave.

After my doctor's appointment is over, I stroll into the hospital Aroma. As usual, it's crazy busy and chaotic. For some reason, like three weeks ago, decades old shows of Tom and Jerry loop on the television. A woman asks if she can sit with me and I say yes. she tells me she's a researcher at the hospital but when I ask her for a title she doesn't know what to say. She researches the correlation between mind, emotion, and physical health: are physical ailments caused by a state of mind or a fluctuation in one's psychological state of being? Can one possibly cure the incurable with the power of thought?

I couldn't see it while speaking with her but in retrospect it sounds as if it's related to Noetics. Let her research and let her theory prove true. If cancer cells can be eradicated with just a thought, let them; if Beta cells can start producing insulin again, let them; if lungs can start breathing on their own again...You get the picture. I got her name and information. I'll keep in touch.

At home, I work on another batch of cover letters. Now, more than ever, I need a job. I have hope. Things are changing, too. Supposedly, gone are the days of the one-page resume. Now, employees want everything. I tailor it anyway, but don't stress over a page limit.

When I tell Israelis about cover letters, they don't know what I'm talking about. Here, it's all about the CV and the interview. I am already planning how I will work my return, budgeting in my mind depending on which job I receive in America, praying that there will be one. With benefits.

Meanwhile, I concentrate on the task at hand here: my internship. I have designed a project that I feel is of utmost importance, particularly today. It is directly related to why I came here: to find the truth behind the mythical conceptions of this place. What is it really like to live here, to grow up here, to think like a Jewish Israeli or an Arab? My only goal is to get as true and real a picture as possible. Coming from a background in dialogue and diplomacy, I believe that perhaps the only legitimately effective way to do this is through the collection of first-person narratives.

I strive to create a human connection, an interwoven story between people of different backgrounds who may or may not interact with each other but who harbor the deeply ingrained myths of the Other within them. I will collect the testimonies of representatives of different sects of society in this geographic region--Jews, Arabs, foreign workers, African refugees. What do these people think of each other? What do they merely assume? Why? have they ever actually met each other? What was growing up here or immigrating here, or emigrating from here and back again like? Why? My collection will serve as the beginning of a primary source database of like testimonials.

Much of my project will deal with transcriptions of audio and visual files, verbatim. I also intend to interweave them into my own narrative and couple them with some photojournalism. However, I'm working for a new documentary film company that specializes in the testimonials of genocide survivors. Some of the interviews will therefore be on film My initial meetings and correspondence with the film crew and interviewee contact for the refugees have been very successful and professional.

Of course, my time constraints by far exceed theirs as they already live here and I must return to the States. I will be beginning my interviews as soon as I can get my hands on as inexpensive a digital recorder as possible--this weekend hopefully. Then, I'll begin scheduling my interviews and finding an awesome internet cafe where I can park myself for three months for hours at a time while I transcribe, edit, write my own narrative, flip through my photographs, and edit those...and whatever else that needs to get done.

I can't even begin to describe how excited I am about this--and to be working with reliable people whose activism actually reaps results: tangible, clear-cut results that can be seen and felt in communities and individuals. This is exactly the kind of grassroots work I have always wanted to do and now that conventional diplomacy is barred from me because of my lovely new health condition, I don't have to make the choice between conventional and grassroots diplomacy. It has been chosen for me. Perhaps really good things do come out of terrible ones. Eh. it could be worse...Much worse. And in life, in general, I am happier than ever. I have everything I have ever wanted. Unclear though the future may be, I see one. And that's enough for me.

Travel Log #32

March 20, 2010
Rule #1 after testing glucose and shooting up with insulin and watching the carbohydrates: never go barefoot. So no more toes curled in the sand or mud squeeze between them. Luckily, I usually don't like bare feet anyway, and I don't make it to the sand or mud very often.

Also luckily, I wear finger picks, which won't exacerbate the millions of little pricks that are already beginning to collect on my right hand. My left hand, I'll leave alone because even though I have to give up some of life's small pleasures (like sand and bare feet, for instance), guitar is not one of them.

If I start singing out loud right now, people will probably glare and complain about the crazy American girl in Room 2 in the Internal Medicine ward. But I can't help it. It's my only real form of catharsis. It has been my shoulder to lean on, my enveloping symphony.

Now, for the first time ever, maybe, there is a real shoulder for me to lean on, with real arms attached to wrap me up. I'm not used to it and a large part of me fights it, warns of delusion, of yet another overwhelming loss, screams accusations of "stupid fool!" at me. And the other part of me lives in the moment, relaxes into it, lets somebody love me before it's too late.

Sometimes, there really is a rainbow above me. Maybe hard to see sometimes, but it's there. Even if I have to imagine it. What's real in the mind is what's real--to the person containing the thought.

"If you wait long enough, wishes do come true. Perhaps not the way you imagined them. But they solidify."

"Maybe. Or maybe they come true for a little while and fade away. Then you have to wait again..."

. . . .

"'Or maybe they come true for a little while and fade away.' Listen to you own words. You have waited and expected nothing. Behold what has come."

"And believe it? Didn't you tell me that there was nothing for me?"

"Take what comes and expect nothing."

March 25, 2010

Once upon a time a little girl knew that life was short. She faded in and out of visions, her body was a time bomb. But at the end, she finally learned to let somebody love her--it's only too late after you stop breathing.

"Uriel," she says to the angel, "nowhere's ever safe. Can't run from my body or my mind, right?"

The angel bows. Then angel loves the Little Girl.

"Is this all that Time has been? A test leading me up to this point?" she asks.

"Where would that be?" asks the angel.

"Where I can feel, physically, the ebb and flow of Eternity. The way I must count my existence as nothing short of miraculous."

"You have always known this."

"But I never owned it. Now I do."

"And you turn your back on the wish of ending. Don't you remember your own desperation? The desperation of a child with a life gone wrong. What you did not know then is that while yet you remain a little girl you have, indeed, grown up. You have grown up like children are meant to, but you did not think of the possibility of childhood wishes being granted. The answer comes and you revoke it."

"Because Forever changes. Not all is dark anymore and if it is, I have learned how to make my own light. I have learned how to see in the dark, how to make pros of cons, good from evil. But nothing good lasts for long, does it? So I revel in the moment."

"As you must. As you do. Yet you have always been closer to us than others. It is why you choose Life over Eternity, although the latter is what all of the Living receive in the end."

"Am I very close now?"

"Mortals are always very close. You know how to cling to Life, with one eye on G-d."

The angel smiles.

"On the mirror?" says the girl.

"And on the world with all of its aspects. Good and bad, you understand that the greatest love comes of an equal hate."

"Can you give me that hate again, just so I can feel the love?"

"Open yourself and perhaps it will comes on its own."

"I am trying."

"Yes. Little Girl, you are." The angel pauses then says: "How does it feel?"

"Good. But different. I'll never find that again. But they say it's different every time."

"Yes. They say it is..."

The Little Girl reaches out to the angel that loves her and gives it, again, the Humanity is has been cursed against for just a moment. The angel shuts its eyes.

"I must not, Little Girl, for I am a Seraph and you are of Mortal flesh."

"And you still have the propensity to fall."

"You are not only of Man. Nor of angel. There is something of you that is neither. It disrupts the Scattering. The nature of an angel is not meant to be altered. Your existence allows the impossible. You create of me a Man of no flesh and bone. And if I fall, I will be gone for a long time. Again. Only longer."

"Because they'll keep you away again?"

"Yes."

"But you can't change what you are. Maybe you're in between, like me. An angel and cursed, but infused with the Human like I am of the Point."

"I must leave you now, my Little Girl."

"Come back to me. Cover me."

"I promise," the angel says and then is gone.

But the Little Girl knows that promises are meant to be broken, so she turns around and forces Uriel from her mind and finds her own sources of light.

Travel Log #31

March 15, 2010

'Tis the Ides of March. But other than taking note of the date, poor, ambitious, assassinated Caesar is not on my mind.

The temperature has climbed to the low nineties, although the weather reports that we'll be back in to the fifties in a day or so.

This is our last week at Dalyiot and I can't believe it. Part II went by so quickly. Now, I have to figure out how to pack and store my stuff again for the two weeks of break. Most likely, I will put most of it in a closet in Kfar Saba and bounce between there and Ashkelon for the duration, and perhaps a little bit in Zichron, which I haven't been to in nearly three months. Things will be different when I go back there.

Of course, now that my time in Yokneam is almost over, I am finally beginning to meet people and make friends. Just in time to leave. Well, Tel Aviv isn't far and I will hopefully be able to make it here on Sundays for the music workshop with Korin Allal. I have not mentioned this, but have been participating in this workshop for about three weeks now. Korin is one of the most famous Israeli singers out there.

We are put in groups of up to four in the workshop, given some kind of musical parameter, and pump out a song or a partial song in two hours. The third hour is presentation. Korin supervises and devises the lesson.

Meanwhile, I have been returning to a poetic mood, re-reading old poems, immersing myself in a lake of language where I feel at home. E.E. Cummings tops the list but Dylan Thomas is stuck in my head with his brilliant and most famous villanelle.

The nightmares continue regarding my return to America. But I must go, if only so that I might return. I must return. Here is the love of my life.

What drew me here, I now know, was only bait. I am no longer interested in it but it served its purpose. I spend my whole life tracing the origin of myths, including those of my own creation. I follow them because I believe that beneath every myth there lies a true story. Sometimes, though, the true story is also a myth and being a mythopoeticist, I believe in it willingly.

Yet mythologies are what layer over memory and memory is what consumes people all too often. Memory is the story we get lost in but I would like to hope that people can move beyond the essence of their memories and that the memory merely affects the shape of a person and does not become them.

I fear that my memory of Israel will become mythologized. There is no way to protect my memory from the dust and adulteration of myth. I finally find something that I can put my faith into and it is doomed, betrayed by circumstance. So I enjoy the present moment and deal with the consequences later.

March 19, 2010

The light coming through the blinds is something for which to be thankful. The world hasn't exploded and I've woken up to see another day.

Last night is was discovered that my body is its own worst enemy--more than a time bomb, it consumes itself. I am acidic, and glucose is out of control. I didn't even feel it.

Now I'm sitting here alone in the hospital ward because there are no rooms for me. If I let myself relax, I'll break down and I can't do that. Not now. Now when I have to be strong for not only myself but those who care about me.

Despite the news, I remain high on life, as always, although the ups-and-downs are crazy. My back holds the reminder that life is precious and when things seem terrible, they may very well be, but there is always another angle by which to view it.

The world is beautiful and I intend to remain in it in my mortal form for as long as possible.

My Seraphim have finally arrived, and lesser orders have gone for now.

"Only what you can take, Little Girl. Yet we are here," they say together.

"Is it really almost the end?"

"You have a Will. And you know that ends are only beginnings. We have sent you a gift, Little Girl, and you have pursued it. What are you thinking?"

"You are talking about the boy, aren't you?"

The angels nod. I say:

"You know how I think. I want it to be real. I want to trust completely. And I'm trying because you pointed me the way. Everything in the Prescient Dream came true. But how far does it go? And I'm afraid, because everything really good always comes at a definite end.

"I know I wished, when I really was a little girl, to die, because there was nothing and there was no one. What does a ten-year-old know?"

"A lot, darling," says Micha'el. "You let us save you. Over and over again. Life was seen as a gift because you wished it so. We only point the way. It is up to you to follow. At ten, you understood the Point of Time. You understood the language of Divinity. You understood what it meant to live. And you did. For we never really did save you. We merely aided in the saving of yourself."