Travel Log #27

January 22, 2010
After vacation, I traveled back to Jerusalem to rendezvous with the thirty-seven OTZMAnikim for Part II Orientation, after which all of us separated into our current locations for the next three months. I headed to Yokneam with Andi and Max of St. Louis. I'll get to Yokneam later.

January 23, 2010

At orientation, we got yet another debriefing on the current security situation (I remind some of you that this may be verbatim familiar--sorry):

"It's been the quietest year in decades; we have no reason to assume the situation will change...but it's Israel. So they're apt to change. If something does happen, if you start exhibiting symptoms of traumatic stress--wetting your bed, lack of sleep, let us know. It's human. Be prepared for mass text messages warning you of danger.

"Be inside a building.

"Be thirty seconds from a bomb shelter."

There are two kinds of sirens: The warning siren goes up and down; the Shabbat siren is flat.

So much for tornado drills, right?

There's a slightly different procedure for every place we are: inside, outside, this position, that position. But we all know that hiding under a desk won't do shit if the bomb drops on top of you.

When Part II Orientation was over, all of us got on different buses, going three different directions: South, West/North, and Very North. I got on the "Very North" bus and headed to the city of Yokneam. "City", of course, is a relative term. A "city" in Israel is any area with a population exceeding twenty-thousand. That hardly goes for a town in the United States, most of the time, but like I said, everything's relative. In Yokneam, a city named after the biblical king who once ruled this area, we are surrounded by history. Half of this history has been unearthed by dedicated archaeologists and half has been left as-is because, I suppose, history is made by the men who live it and piling our own time upon the old sediment is just as well. We are history, too.

Yokneam lies in the geographic region, Megiddo, the region "Armageddon" gets its name from and the place from which the earth, according to the Christians, will initially open up and start eat all of us bewildered, unyielding sinners. It is also home to the birth of the Carmelite Order of the Catholic Church, so on nearly every mountain peak, you can find a Carmelite monastery.

Like I said, history runs deep here. This is the place where the Prophet Elijah hung out in biblical times, and where he proved the omnipotence of the Israelites' deity over the god, Ba'al, before being whisked away to Heaven, body and all. The contest was, of course, a bloody one, where the four-hundred-and-fifty priests of Ba'al over which he won were routinely slaughtered for their inferior faith in the inferior god. Elijah also happened to win back the faith of the ancient Israelites who had, as per usual, fallen into the practice of worshiping the more tangible deity, because that seemed more practical than worshiping the incorporeal "All-Mighty" God of whatever it is they were--and we are--supposed to believe in.

The point of all this is, of course, that I live in Yokneam now, which apparently lies right on the biblical fault of Armageddon. Max, Andi, and I live on a street called HaRimmon, which alternately means "pomegranate" or "hand grenade". Take your pick. A pomegranate is the officially designated Jewish fruit--six-hundred-and-thirteen seeds for six-hundred-and-thirteen mitzvot. It's pretty incredible if you think about it. About five minutes away and down a hill and by foot is the entrance to the city, at a shopping center. This is a highly convenient location not only because of the grocery store but because its parking lot serves as the city's central bus station.

Our apartment is in a neighborhood called Wadi, after the Arabic word for "dry riverbed" (don't ask, because we're in the north and there's no desert anywhere). This is considered a "bad" neighborhood in town, just like Shimshon, where we lived in Ashkelon during Part I, was considered a "bad" neighborhood. "Bad neighborhood" in Israel tends to mean "lots of Ethiopians" and/or "lots of elderly Russians. "Bad neighborhood" means "not as well-off" as the more established people (often) of paler complexion, five minutes down the street. Sounds familiar, right? But crime in Israel is much rarer than in the States (although it is on the drastic rise); people still find themselves appalled and surprised by random acts of violence; when there's a murder, or an accident, the whole country mourns. There is not the flipping of the page or changing of the channel, no "so, what else is new? Next!" that I'm accustomed to at home.

So, in Wadi, on Rechov HaRimmon, I'll hear some more Russian and Amharic. I'll live next door to an (oh my god) black person. I'm ok with that. More people may wield weapons per capita here than in the US but they don't tend to use them unless there's an actual security situation. And everyone's trained to use the weapons. Everyone goes through military and military ethics training (at least that's what I've heard), but the guns, outside of a military context, are hardly ever fired, although the guns are everywhere. They're everywhere and it doesn't phase me at all. In the US, I'd spazz over them.

Our apartment, of course, doesn't have any guns, unless you count the explosive door making gunshot noises every time it opens. In any case, the light in this apartment is amazing. We can go through the entire day, until nightfall, without turning on a single light anywhere. (If it's sunny out.)

When we got here, the landlord was painting. Apparently, the previous tenants had only left the night before. They left behind six tropical sippy cups in the dish rack.

We have an oven but it's not really calibrated properly--apparently we need to turn the fan on "TURBO" whenever we use it...and the cookies and cakes still don't come out very well; we have a gas stove; a full-sized fridge; an occasional ant infestation; and some good kitchen storage space; and of course, we have a דוד (dude)--will explain later; and the apartment came fully furnished! I even got a full-zed bed. I seriously almost died of joy. Andi and I share a room and Max has a single on the other side of one of our walls. The only problem with the apartment is the acoustics--you can literally hear everything, everywhere. Between our wall and Max's room, there's an open window extending from the ceiling and down about a foot and a quarter. The landlord is supposed to come fix it, along with the washing machine (I ended up doing my laundry by hand in the sink and was reminded of my domesticity in Germany).

The apartment is also freezing! And we can't use the heat because it either spews out fumes that make me sick for a week or it blows the fuse. So, we wear a lot of layers. And at least the shower is amazing, as long as the sun is shining...which brings me to the דוד (dude).

Now, I probably should have mentioned the דוד a lot earlier, because we had them in Ashkelon, too. Axctually, they are common all over Israel. So, that brings me to what the דוד is. Basically, a דוד is a water boiler. In order for us to have hot water, we have to turn it on for fifteen to thirty minutes before using the shower (but no longer than an hour-and-fifteen minutes or else it will explode and then it's bye-bye hot water for the remainder of our stay wherever). The only problem with the דוד here in Yokneam, is that it is dependent on solar panels. This generally isn't an issue in Israel, unless we're in the rainy season, which we are right now.

And also, since it's Israel, I haven't had a proper shower since I got here in September. SO even though the water's steaming and the pressure is amazing, I can't forget that I'm in Israel. The lack of water here is so severe that we have to turn the water on, get wet, turn it off, lather, turn it on, rinse, turn it of. For a seven minute "shower" which is really a "bathing period", the water is on for a total of maybe forty-five seconds. Like I said a few months back, according to the Jerusalem Post, the country is supposed to be out of water by late spring or early summer of this year--despite the rain! Another thing about m y shower before I talk about the rain: although the water pressure is good, the hose has an issue, so when we turn the water off (which you've learned is often), we have to be prepared for the shower head to fall and smash on the ground when the pressure goes from great to zero.

But, like I said, its the rainy season. Last week, it rained non-stop for at least three days. I lost count. We shouldn't complain. We prayed for rain, right? Even so, as people die in flash floods and as water from the north overwhelms the south, it won't be enough, most likely. The Kinneret is that thirsty. So even as we suffer a deluge, we pray for the miracle of water so that its price won't have to double as desalination plants kick into high gear. We pray for the miracle of water. I'm used to that one, aren't I? I'm also aware that miracles work in both directions, so I am very careful about what I wish for. I grew up in a drought, after all. And the drought has recently ended. With a price.

Well, when I say I grew up in a drought, I mean half. For the first half, I grew up in a swamp. No need to worry about water except too much of it. Then, I moved and the water stopped coming, so everyone prayed for rain and they got it, but people paid the price--flooding, property damaged, ruined, lives lost. So, like I said, be careful what you wish for because you just might get the miracle but know that it works in both directions. You might get too much.

Travel Log #26

January 21, 2010

It has been nearly a month since I wrote a proper update. That being said, this might take awhile. Also, because I have written in abundance just not in Blog abundance, about the relevant topics, I will warn some of you now that some passages may seem quite familiar in this entry and in the next one.

I will begin with the present moment: I am home recovering from an illness caused by heater fumes which left me pretty much incapacitated for the entire week. Today is a big turning point; I made it all the way down the hill to the grocery store and back up again (with the groceries) all by myself. On Monday, I literally couldn't move. Now, I'm making chicken soup solo for the first time in my life and I've made it too salty. Good thing I learn from my mistakes.

Now, I'll back up a little bit because I never really told you about what I learned in the army. (This is one of those parts someone will find familiar.) For one thing, I learned that this part of the world really does get cold; cold and dry. The combination of the cold, dry climate with my endless parachute unknotting, hauling, etc. led to the near total destruction of my hands. No joke. I'm talking cracked skin like desert clay with blood oozing in the cracks. All that good stuff. Hand creams gets absorbed so quickly in these conditions by skin and canvas, you might as well not even have applied it. Then, there was the kitchen duty, which basically entails getting screamed at to do something you're already doing (like squeegying the floor) and spending four hours up to your elbows in a garbage bin filled with dirty dishes in dirty water--which I don't mind so much, except for what it does to my hands. Let's just mention that my army stint has been quite over for a month now, and my hands are still not completely healed.

In any case, I have learned that army food can be eaten in every kind of abundance and everyone will still be hungry because stale bread and rotten fish just don't cut it, that most of what you do in the army is wait around and waste time. Of course, here, it's all a joke in the realm of dark humor because while we're sitting around wasting time, training for 10% of it, the waiting around is waiting for the next war to start, which could be at any moment. But the night guards still get drunk on duty because "hopefully that won't be tonight" and for the other 5% of the time that is neither training nor waiting around, there's a war going on and it shows the nineteen-year-old soldiers too much of what horror is, so they drink it away. Not that it helps. Like I keep saying, if you want to compare a nineteen-year-old American to an Israeli one, you'd think that Israeli one is at least a decade older, so 5% really become 200% when it comes to working memory and what goes on just beneath the surface of their minds. It's combated with the dark humor.

Of course, I wasn't really a soldier, but I and the others on the Sar-El program looked like soldiers when we wore our uniforms, and we seemed like soldiers when we lived in bunkers, on metal cots that poked their wires into us through sheet-thin mattresses so we can hardly sleep. I don't know about anyone else, but I know that despite not really being a a soldier or an Israeli, I've noticed that I've bgun to feel like one a little bit. The reality of it is reflected back at me when I look in the mirror. There's just this look that I can't quite describe, something in the eyes...maybe disillusionment to the utmost extreme, so much that it's taken for granted. It's a societal expression here and the way you can tell a tourist from a resident (in most cases). I know I must have it down pretty solidly because when people figure out that I'm not Israeli, they're surprised.

But, because I'm not Israeli, and because I wasn't really a soldier, although I was in soldier garb, I had more time on my hands than even the wait-around-doing-nothing-time. So, in the army, I read seven books in ten days, and had more than ample time to ponder why the only edible food there are jello, packaged cheese, tea (sometimes), and grits. Don't ask me why there are grits, which clearly only belong south of Mason-Dixon, in the Israeli army.

After the army, I went on vacation and traveled around meeting people for awhile. I went to Jerusalem and met a girl I'll be working with during Part III of OTZMA for the internship, named Mollie, met up with another friend, there, too, then spent the night roaming around the Ben Yehuda Street area until around four in the morning and ran into a girl from camp I haven't seen since the last time I was in Israel. I was beyond exhausted by the end, but happy. It was fun and I met many good, new people. I also spent a day in Haifa checking out the University's English program (explained last time), and Acco with another friend.

I then went on to spend the weekend in צפת (Tzfat) with my חב"ד (Chabad) friend from Worcester. It was great! And beautiful. Since I live in the north now, צפת isn't that far away anymore. There's something very special about the blue, mystical city, the city filled with beautiful views of mountains and purple mist, clear night skies, and golden sunsets. And no angelic voices, but thousands of stars. On ערב שבת (Erev Shabbat), a four-year-old child was lost. Helicopters flew overhead, search parties of black-garbed חסידים (Chasidim) roamed the streets, and cars zoomed by, all searching for the child. Eventually, after about five hours of searching, he was found. In the cemetery.

When I tell people I spent the weekend with חב"ד, I get mainly mixed reactions: "How can you stand it?" and "Oh, honey, good luck". It's true, I can't live like that; I can't believe with such intensity, I need to know; I can't disregard my own personal truths or the feeling deeply rooted in me that tells me that there is so much missing from their lives--God didn't just create the world, He created the whole world. They create an isolated community and that isolation breeds a fear of anyone who is different: Jews who live secular lives; non-Jews hardly exist beyond the idea of the Monster. But, undeniably, these people are happy, despite (and perhaps because of) their ignorance of the wider world. And I can't help admiring them for their faith and envying them their happiness. But I see it as a brainwashed happiness borne on the wings of a blind faith that relies too much on a man-made rendition of God.

I can't disregard Darwinian Theory because it makes sense and there is ample proof supporting it. Might I remind you that, like anything scientific, it's still a theory. But I don't see why it can't go hand-in-hand with the story of Genesis. Every day sees the creation of new worlds, after all. Genesis is an ongoing phenomenon. And carbon dating is no hoax (and neither are the dinosaurs!). But I was told (again, like I was told in the fourth grade) that I need "proof" of these phenomena's legitimacy! They're not in the TORAH!

These people ask for scientific proof and refuse to believe it when it's presented but expect blind faith to be taken as absolutely logical, reasonable, no proof needed. For me, science doesn't disporve God, but rather reinforces the probability of Its existence. Then gain, my conception of "God" varies greatly from the general institutionalized kind and I don't try to understand Its nature. I accept my Humanity and therefore, my inability to comprehend such things. Some things just are, simply or otherwise; and I am content to leave them at that. It is the one instance in which I can separate myself from the need for logical "proof" -- I'm just not going to try and convince anybody.

As you've probably figured out, I buy more into angels than deities anyway, even tough all three of us are indelibly linked across the chasm of Creation. The angels suggest a direction and we discover the way, after all. No need for faith in anything but the Self. In צפת, they were silent but the city was full of them. The air in צפת was so full of angels, of high orders, of lesser orders, that we couldn't help but breathe them in. It is a city where communion with the divine is not considered crazy, but commonplace.

"And when are we not?" Uriel asks.
"Never. But you know Humanity."
The angels laugh. Micha'el answers:
"We know Humanity, yes, with all of its gifts, with all of its blessings and curses, we know you. But as you have the ability to change, you evolve to doubt not only your guides but yourself. There are so precious few of you left who can hear us and trust the counsel. But we are creative and the language of Heaven can be translated into the shade of a tree or the path of a friend, or a stranger. The grand design is not altered although you believe yourselves to be so powerful."

In the end, I know, the crust of the earth will bend and crack and shift, but Humanity will not be a factor. Nature doesn't care about us. But what a world we've made! It is truly extraordinary. I still can't decide whether I love it or hate it but either way, I am a part of it, and I live with it. I suppose life is a love-hate relationship anyway; it all depends on the day and on the way we wish to view it.

Travel Log #25

December 23, 2009

Tel-Aviv almost flooded me out yesterday, every street inundated past my ankles within two minutes of the start of the rain. Everything, including my shoes, went straight into the dryer when I got home, and bed has never felt better.

Today, I'm in a place I've never been but that feels comfortable: a university. I have searched a lot of places all over the world for a combination of professors who might be able to collaborate with each other and me to aid me in my research and my work. Of course, my standard is ridiculously high (Clark, which no one can beat). And of course, the only place I have found mythopoetics is the Clark. But I can carry Wallace Stevens around and perhaps enlighten others. Or, I can at least explain to them my focal lens and hope they can find it within themselves to help me study the language of conflict through a mythopoetic lens so that I can demonstrate the power of fiction as a most real reflection of reality. Monsters jump off the pages and they mean something--I attempt to decipher the meaning--and I bear in mind that monsters jump off the pages because they jumped out of people's minds first, and they began as a story that turned into a myth, which in turn became the Supreme Fiction.

We shall see if this department amounts to anything. Toronto also seemed good, but I have yet to make it there in person. The search for the perfect graduate school proves more difficult than I thought; and while part of me itches to return to school, most of me wants to work. In the best of all worlds, I will be able to to do both. Schools costs money, after all, and I hate being in debt. Once I get a job, I might suck it up and live in another crap hole for awhile and pay off as much of the loans as possible. I don't like the fifteen year plan. I want to get it down to five. Fat chance, but here's to hoping. Thus far, my hand has proven correct, if we want to believe in palmistry: I have gotten everything I have really wanted ambition-wise; the right schools, the right programs, the right internships and scholarships and jobs. It wasn't easy--isn't easy--I've kicked and screamed and worked my ass off the whole way.

But, like I said, the hand is right, if we want to believe in palmistry (which I don't), because alongside all that good luck is anothe rline that no one else anyone has encountered has seen. It parallels the first line and it counters it. Perhaps it is bad luck, or perhaps it is nothing at all since palmistry is a load of crap. But if it isn't, perhaps it isn't any of those things; perhaps it is representative of choice. We all have a choice, I know I have mine, and we must keep life in balance.

Over all, I have had a plan for myself within the monolinear labyrinth of life. I pretend so well that it is all under control that most of the time, I almost really believe it. I get other people to believe it. Really, though, I'm just like everyone else. I have no clue. My tactic to survive the raging ocean? Go under the wave when it's about to break and come up for air in between. really, I have nothing to complain about. After all, I have Seraphim all over me and they are always on my side even when the days are as dark as night. They remind me not to get too bogged down by human society's trivial bureaucracies. In the end, it will all pass and what seemed important in one moment will be revealed as wholly insignificant in another, particularly if we pull back just a little bit.

I am happy with my life. I have done well for myself so far. I have accepted that some things will never come for me, that I won't ever share a lot of my joy or any of my sorrow with anyone tangible. I'll share it theoretically, like this, as a character speaking from a page. People are more privy to connection with those who aren't real than with those who are, anyway. At least I have this medium. Some have none at all.

Travel Log #24

December 20, 2009

These days I feel like we drink up war like water; we pass it through--in and out. I tell my own story for once and a nineteen-year-old soldier looks at me and says, "I'm sorry. This story isn't jarring to me." That's the point. It isn't and that's the reason my friends here are Israeli. I don't hve anythingon them. They get the point without it being made.

I'm still upset. "I love my country," I tell her and she says, "Which one?"

"The United States," I reply. But then: "I love both, but the United States is..." I can't finish the sentence. "I can write this better than I can say it," I say. The United States is where my roots are, firmly planted. It's where my dreams are, it's where there's at least a dichotomy, at least an illusion of being free, and absolutely all the potential of so many American Dreams. "It's an easy life. No worries," she says. I raise my eyebrows. No, not so easy, I think. I list some reasons why.

"And you think we don't have that here? We do. We have it on top of everything else. War, politics, settlements, illegal settlements, drought."

I can't compete with her but I know it isn't a competition and I also know that if it were, we'd be tied. Why? Because life might be easier in America, easy as a life in a doll's house, easy as a life where people get by on credit and designer love. Knock on the door and it's empty. Raise a crucial question and the answer is apathy. Look for yourself in the mirror and the reflection is fragile as wet papier-mâché, melting and soggy, with a form undetermined. On the surface it's all smiles, sweet tea,and air conditioning. Physical comfort. We are the experts at the material world, so spoiled we don't even know what we have. So spoiled we don't even know what we're missing.

Turn around and step foot in a different land; there are no smiles, there's no water, and we have to deal with the smothering heat. Annihilation is a real threat. More responsibility and blame are borne on this country's shoulders than any other. But when the questions are asked, the answer isn't apathy, it's as many arguments as there are people in the room, or more. There is no doll's house; there's a bomb shelter and its smell still lingers fresh on the people's scents. Knock on the door and history answers you. Look for yourself in the mirror and try to find the person you lost the first time you put on that uniform, the first time you fired a gun, the first time you fired blindly because if it's a decision between me and everyone else, the trigger finger goes all giddy and chooses everyone else. Not me. Look for yourself in the mirror and and try to find the person you lost when your best friend didn't come back instead of you, when you had a vision plastered so permanently onto your brain, it's all you can see and you remembered so much you forgot.

In America, we no longer have the draft, but we still have an army, and coming from Georgia, sometimes it feels like we do. Boys come back different if they come back at all. They look in the mirror and "home" doesn't exist anymore. Then the press wonders why the percentage of suicides rises. High schoolers get inundated with cherry blossom propaganda: "Support our troops. They give us our freedom". The problem is, those high schoolers grow up and they still haven't looked one inch beyond their noses; they have no inkling of what their freedom really means, no idea of what it really is. "Freedom" has become an empty word, slandered by rhetoric. We have squandered it for pictures of places far away and never take the time to understand them.

It upset me because we've become so free we have no idea what it is from which we are free. Our liberty has made us arrogant, careless, gluttonous. It upset me because I love my freedom and I understand the price; I want to share the meaning of it with those, who like myself, were born in America. I don't fit, so I look elsewhere, but I don't fit there, either. I want to reverse the image of "American"="Stupid" and "loud" and "rich" and "apathetic". I want to represent the American Dream. And then I look at those around me and most of the time, I cannot answer for them. They are the reality and I am the elusive figment of my own imagination--and I go up in smoke. The smoke is ephemeral and then it's completely gone. I can't represent because that representation would be a lie--I am outside of the mainstream. On the other hand, though, it wouldn't be a lie at all, because I am, unquestioningly, a product of America, "Made in Brooklyn".

I am an American chameleon: I can fit the mould of anywhere, but I know who I am underneath. I am patient; I can wait forever to find what I'm looking for as long as I never stop searching.

In the meantime, there are orange trees that line the streets of Rehovot and I've picked my share from the grove at the Weisman Institute. The juice is delicious and runs down my hands. I endure the itching. Leaves come off in my hand with the fruit. If I don't get anything else out of this, I'll have gotten Jaffa oranges, and taste is one sense I can never wholly share with anyone else.

"Let it pass," the soldier says. Let all the burdens pass.
"But others come to replace them," I counter. "So what's the difference?"
"Let those pass, too. Then, your heart will be light. At least for a little while."
"I can't. I can't stop caring."
"Don't stop caring, just let it pass."

It's different from apathy. It's a talent acquired from living without unheeded freedom.
I can't let it pass. Caring is holding on for me. I understand the difference but I like it my way.

"There's a prize at the end of the tunnel, Little Girl," says Uriel.
"Good. I'll keep my eye on it."
"Share the delight of the orange with me," begs the angel.
"Some things, my dear, you have to let pass. Not like water, in and out, but like burdens. One nature cannot become another. Right?"
The angel smiles and for a moment, I feel weightless. The angel carries my history for a little while and then the play goes on.