Rumour has it that the world will end in September. That's when words written on paper either become official or not and reality marches millions on borders, so we're screwed either way. We can predict that things will get messy. Well, they're messy in general in this balagan of a country, so there's not so much unknown to prepare for there.The people are marching in the streets, still. Up to 400,000. Chanting in unison: העם דורש צדק חברתי--The nation wants social justice. Which sounds much better in Hebrew than in English.
"The government couldn't have asked for a better time for pigu'im (terror attacks)," a friend of mine says, after the string of attacks on the road near Eilat. "It proves the security and defense budget need to be bolstered, no lessened." Not that the government wants pigu'im--this place isn't like bigger countries. You're only half a degree removed from anyone here, at most, and the political agendas are wholly intertwined with the personal.
Everything's personal here but this generally produces the opposite effect of what it would anywhere else. We let it slide. We can pick up and go. Families are tight and never too far off. If we are lone immigrants, we make friends who become family. We are wrapped in a blanket of ourselves and we'll live and die together.
I take off for America in a month-and-a-half. My first time visiting as an ex-patriot. I'm excited to visit-that it's only a visit, and that in the end, I'll be coming home. Things are looking up: My job is great, my friends are great, I live a 20-minute walk from the Mediterranean Sea. All the little things add up and make life absolutely beautiful where before, there was too much smog in the way to see it.Recently, a friend of mine went off to find himself in America. He came back already.
"How was it?" I asked.
"Just like you remember," he said. And someone else told me "Worse than".
Aah. Just like I remember. Gilded in all its glory and decaying underneath. The greatest disappointment of my life.
Pheraps it is not all bad. Disappointment never shut me down, for all I might complain. It has been the Great Motivator to move on and change a situation for the better.
September 19, 2011
Everything looks worse looking in. Tomorrow, supposedly the world, as we know it, ends.
Plan accordingly.
Develop a good repertoire of bluegrass and old school folk.
Sing about angels and flying away. About saviours glorified in anticipation. About endless distances under endless distances under endless skies. About the end of this world and the beginning of the next.Sing about gain and loss, about clear water and about trains steaming down the tracks.
Sip your coffee slowly. Enjoy every sip. Suck the marrow out of life. Do not, when you come to die, discover that you have not lived.
There is too much weight on shoulders, passed down and down to us. It is no one's fault--and everyone's. How do you stop the spiral spin out of control?
"Darling, hold fast to your own life."
"Easier said than done. Do you think we're all just on vacation?"
"On hiatus from Forever? Indeed."
"We all have our complaints, I suppose.""Yes."
"Where is Uriel?"
"Where is relative, darling."
"Relatively..."
"That angel is on an errand. Patience."
"Is a virtue."
"You are blessed."
"With too much. My blessings are my curses."
"Then live with them."
"There is no other choice. Dying with them is most certainly worse and I'll hold off on that."
The angel bows. And I am alone.
