Memories, Stories, Lives, and Years

Today I woke up tired (aka after a sleepover). I went to visit the Museum of Fine Arts with my friend and every time I heard the date, I knew there was something I should be remembering.

And when I came home, I realized.

A year ago today, I came back to America from Israel.

That's it, now it's been more than a year, more distance between me and that past. I don't know why the concept of the year is so significant to me in this respect. I don't know.

Part of me is a little bit sad. Part of me is just confused. It's odd - I gave my friend a notebook of mine to read, a notebook that included a chronology of the last months in Israel, and I haven't read it in a while, and I don't remember much from that part. Time goes by and I don't remember.

But looking back, perhaps Israel's changes were just as great in magnitude as the changes I went through this past year. A lot happened. I just - yeah. It's been a really weirdly crazy and wonderful year.

Really, I suppose I shouldn't try to attach additional meaning to certain parts of my life, because all of it is important. And sometimes I wonder - what if the events I don't remember too well affected me more than the times that are replayed in my mind?

A life, in my not-so-long experience, is like matter. Comprised of tiny bits that can be dissected into even smaller and smaller ones - and mostly empty space. The space between the molecules, the atoms, the hadrons, the quarks. And that space is important. It's what makes the matter hold its shape, what defines it. Because really, matter is just an exception to the vacuum (it goes the other way too - the vacuum is an exception to matter). A life is not just the memories. A life is all the spaces in between too. All the short, sweet moments saved deep inside a mind and all the stories.

We are little bits of improbability, floating in space, wanting understanding. I am not one to say what is or isn't in the spaces between. Perhaps it's things I don't believe in. I don't know. But that's what I try to find out.

Closing Time once more

Tomorrow we are returning to America after being here for ten days. Dang, ten days is short. Too short.

I didn't realize how much I missed this place until I got here. I feel free. I feel that I'm doing enough. It's nice to feel adequate again.

Today I bade goodbye to many of my friends and much of my family. (A fuller description may follow.) It's very strange. Honestly, I really don't want to go back. America is work and the weight of obligation and constant insanity in comparison with here. I'm going to miss it so much.

But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that you can't dwell on where you aren't. For the next few hours I'm here, and then I'll be somewhere else, and that's that. No point aching when there's nothing to be done.

So now that I've been sufficiently restored, and now that I've gotten my crazy back, I think going back is gonna be okay. I'll learn, I'll work, and then I'll come here and feel better. I suppose this will be my natural cycle from now on. And I guess that's okay.

Wish Tree

On Saturdays there is nothing much to do in Tel Aviv, because it's all closed. So this past Saturday we went to the port of Jaffa.

Jaffa's port is relatively active in terms of boats coming in and out. It also has several restaurants, galleries, and a posh indoor market. And interesting graffiti.

Anyway, there was one gallery, in which there were Instagram pictures by residents of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Those were actually pretty cool.

In the corner, there was a small tree (or a large bush, I'm not sure). A lot of little notes were pinned to the branches, and according to a nearby sign, it was a wishing tree.

I approached the tree and began reading wishes.

"Love"

"True love"

"One who will really love me"

(I am reminded of this quote by Hank Green: "We are all differently broken, semi-functional, rusted-out love machines.")

"Happiness"

"A good year"

"A good life"

"Health"

"Joy"

As I peered between the branches, I was struck by the similarity. People put down their basest wishes, and thats ultimately the same for humans.

I don't know what I would put down. I wish so many things. Narcissistic things and world things. I wish I were better at doing just about everything. But I guess everyone wishes that. So many wishes - which would I write? Maybe that's why others put down their simplest wishes - it's too hard to decide on the complicated ones.

Finally, I came across a blank note, pinned among the written ones. I don't know whether or not it was a mistake, but there was something so true about it. An unused sheet of white paper is a fresh start - a clean slate, if you will. I think that's what we all want, and possibly what we all need.

After looking at the final wall of pictures, I followed my family outside, under the white sky, blank as a fresh sheet of paper.

Poems and Thoughts of Israel

It's nearing one a.m. and I just spent the past hour and a half finishing a book of Hebrew poetry.

I don't know.

I've been wanting to finish it for a while, and now I need to reread it because I'm so tired that I'm not sure what stuck and what didn't.

But what did stick was beautiful. I really like this book, almost as much as Hazel loves An Imperial Affliction.

But I suddenly thought about going to visit Israel - this Wednesday as it happens - and I'm terrified as hell, honestly. How different will it feel? Will my happiness fade again? Where will I be after going back to that place?

I've forgotten so much, honestly I have. I had forgotten, until today, how the streets in Tel Aviv connect and how it felt to be there and being away from my friends and everything. It hurt, and I think I forgot that a little. Suddenly I remember all these things from the evening I got this book of poetry signed and how good I felt that night, and being close to my family, and having Hebrew all around me.

I'm kind of alarmed at how much this trip crept up on me. It was always kind of in the near future and all but never really this close. In seventy-two hours I'll already be there or close at least. It's scaring me. Deja vu to this time last year, before I changed.

But how much did I stay the same?

I don't know right now. I don't know anything right now.

One Year

Yep.

I realized today that it's been exactly one year since I went to Israel for six months. Which I now classify as one of the hardest, but ultimately one of the best, experiences of my life.

I really do think I changed immensely in Israel. I became aware of the strangeness of my life, the differences between cultures and languages, and the benefits of free time. I also learned enormous amounts about myself and my relationships with other people, and how much things can feel amazing or horrible, and how much things can change with a difference in outlook.

There is a quote from the declamation piece I am doing (it's J. K. Rowling's Harvard commencement speech from 2008) that goes as follows: "You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity." I think that really embodies what I learned: even as I moved away, my friendships remained. As time went on, of course, I forgot a little who they really were, but I came back and we were still friends, for all that each of us had changed. "Such knowledge," JKR continues, "is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won." Yes, it hurt like hell, leaving here. Yes, I suffered enormously at times. Yes, there were times when I was going practically insane. But I learned so much. About myself, about others, about the world. Different places really change how you think and feel. I really believe that, even if I don't seem to have changed so much, I am a different girl than the one who embarked on the most terrifying journey of her life one year ago, in many respects.

I think this change was part of what allowed me to be happy. I could not be fully happy in Israel because I was always missing the other half of me, the one from America. But when I came back I realized I would always miss some part of myself, and I have always lived in want of another place or another time. But the time is now, and I have decided to be happy, because it is good for me. That is another thing I learned in Israel: if you accept what you have, it becomes much better. I was sad and depressed and moping at first there, then I decided to like what I could like and see what would happen. I suddenly became much better friends with several people. I started talking. I started having more fun.

Though I have often been sad and confused about this, and no doubt will be again, I think that it was ultimately one of the best things I've ever done. For myself, for those around me, for my outlook. That's not to say I will do it again, because it was very difficult and I don't think I could. But as long as I live I think I will keep telling this story. Now I just have to find the next one.

Seeing

I think it must have been February of last year or something.

We were in Haifa, on Mount Carmel. My grandparents took my parents and my cousins and me to see the sunset.

We passed behind backyards through a narrow path. Behind one abandoned building that had once been beautiful but had been taken by weeds and moss, tarnishing the characteristic Israeli white-painted walls. Through streets, to an empty lot. You could see the valley, and where the gravel ended there was a steep grassy drop.

All the while my younger cousins chattered about anything and everything. The sunset was beautiful over the city and the sea.

My middle cousin, aged seven, peered up at the sky. "I see God," he said. "Shira, I see God."

And though I fancy myself as one who doesn't, can't, or won't believe, he said it so innocently. So sweetly. I know him to be a trickster, but who am I to say what he did or didn't see?

Who knows, maybe there was something more in that sunset. I'm not one to tell.

Photos, etc.

I was looking through old photos to see what I might put on my iPod for nostalgia, etcetera. The thing about that is - it gives me nostalgia, etcetera.

So I look at these photos. And obviously iPhoto organizes them in chronological order, so looking at the "last 12 months" section is quite literally like seeing the past year scroll before me.

I'm not really that sad about it, for a change. Well, I am. But I'm also not.

I look at them and the way things were, how wonderfully carefree and simply unlike real life they were. In a way I'm glad my friends were here and I was there, because that gave me a reason to document my life, and thus to now look back.

It feels strange, but it's helpful. I think I should do this more often - look at that year. Yeah, it was hard and horrible sometimes, but at least I can look and remember and probably sugarcoat it to a certain extent. And yeah, I miss it. But how could I not?

One of the things I learned last year was to use what you have. I could have moped for the entire six months. I could have disregarded everything good around me. But I didn't, and it got better, because as it turns out, life is pretty nice when you use it. I think sometimes I need a reminder.

Confused, etc.

This is an angsty post. You have been warned.

I'm still thinking a lot about Israel. Especially today.

I have this thing where music makes me feel different things, not necessarily because of the way it is, but more because of when I first heard it or when I was listening to it a lot.

So there are some songs that are Israel Songs. Songs that I would listen to and would make me feel all of the feels.

And some of those songs are ones that I haven't heard in a very long while.

So I had Spotify on and was listening to one of them and BAM. The feels. I felt like I had in Israel, and suddenly I realize that I just don't feel like that anymore, and I remembered.

How much I missed my friends. How confusing it was to have two homes. How different my outlook was, how I felt about different people back then. How I felt about myself.

And I'm still thinking about it, and I'm still sad.

And also - I missed my friends here so much. How is it that after nearly six months here, I don't miss Israel so much? Was it all really that fleeting? Were my friendships too hastily built to last?

And now I miss them. And I miss the apartment. And school.

Something about my geography teacher in Israel came up during lunch. And I realized - I had never really told my friends here that much about my actual life in Israel. I talked about feelings, about homework, about general things - a bit about a few classes. But there wasn't much.

And now I remember everything.

How did I survive for so long without my friends? How am I surviving now, without my friends in Israel?

How?

This Time Last Year

Just today I've been thinking back to last year.

It's been nearly a year since I created this blog, and that year may have been one of the most tumultuous periods of my life, including some of the hardest things I've done.

This time last year I was depressed and thoroughly terrified of the prospect of going to Israel, which frankly I had a right to be because it was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but it turned out for the better. This time last year I was still in eighth grade. This time last year I hadn't yet watched Doctor Who. This time last year I still had writer's block constantly to some extent. This time last year, hell, I was still writing last year's NaNo novel - it's a story I have yet to finish.

In some ways, this time last year, I was an entirely different person.

Those People: a Thanksgiving Follow-Up

I can get to be a bit of an emotional wreck. I tend to beat myself up over things for a long time after they've happened, and it can get bad.

But I've realized lately that there are some people who really help me with that and balance me out, so to speak. I've always had someone like that, or a set of someones. Sometimes it was my family, sometimes friends, sometimes others.

Often they're people I don't see as much, and I spend a lot of time imagining hypothetical conversations or situations or what they might be doing at the moment. And when they see them, I feel so happy.

I want to thank those people. They may or may not know how much they've done for me, but I love them all.

They make my universe a better place.

A dream

Today I thought of Israel, and suddenly it didn't feel like it ever happened.

Suddenly people forget that I was ever gone.

Suddenly it all feels like a dream, like something that fades away as the day goes on until finally I don't remember and it doesn't affect me anymore.

Is this what was always going to happen?

It's scaring me. Really scaring me.

But every so often I have these weird almost flashback things. It happens when I'm thinking about nothing in particular and suddenly it feels like I had something, something I can't even grasp anymore, and I just miss it so much. Like on Saturday, when I was in a cupcake shop with my girlfriend and Titanium came on the radio and it reminded me of the surprise party my friends and I threw for one girl's birthday, because Titanium came on and I was singing really loudly to it. The sliding glass door to the balcony was open and a summer evening breeze was coming in. At one point in the party I just went outside and stood there and thought of the impending end of Israel, the end I'd felt like would never come. There was a flock of black birds that took flight over the dirty white buildings, the graffiti showing the more permanent expressions of free speech. It was quieter than inside but I could still hear all the cars and bustle on Allenby and King George street, and I felt nowhere but everywhere, almost like floating. I don't know if I'll feel it again.

And sitting in the cupcake shop it just hit me, how much it's faded from my memory, and how much I do miss the people I met and the places I love and the friends I made. It feels like a dream now because it was, it was a beautiful way to start over and remake myself. The dream is over, but I guess it will always lurk in my subconscious. I hope it never disappears.

Nostalgia and some realizations

I'm in one of those moods when you really want to cry but you can't so you can't get it out and you're stuck in this sort of pool of sadness, some of it pointless. Often it's nostalgia. It is now.

See, today I thought about Israel. I miss it a lot. Sometimes it just doesn't feel like that was life at all, just a story that I can tell, one that most people are really interested in.

I miss it, I miss my family, I miss my friends, I miss our tiny apartment and my strip of blue wall and the  public transportation and school. Six months can be so long but so short.

And my girlfriend is at another school now and suddenly I can see how it might have been for my friends back here. Oh, it must have been hard. I miss her so much at school and every so often she'll come up in conversation and we'll ask why she isn't here, and we'll remember that she went to a different high school and none of us can really talk to her because she's so busy.

I just hope that we won't stop at least attempting to see each other. I want to have fun at school and I want her to have fun at her school but I wish we could talk.

I wish a lot of things.

Who I am

Lately I've started to slightly question who I am.

Here I was a nerd who always read books and went on the internet.

In Israel, added to that, I was the one who called out all the time in math and English and had screaming conversations with boys which people gathered around to watch. I was the one who hit those same boys with books when they "misbehaved." My best friends were those boys.

Am I that girl?

Or am I the one I was here?

I liked that new start, the chance to create yourself perhaps slightly differently. I think, in my life, I'd like to do it again. But the thing is, I now have slightly different reputations. I wouldn't hang out with boys as much here (that would be vaguely unacceptable); I can't be sort-of-friends with the popular group; I can't hit people with books (that would be entirely unacceptable).

But both those people are part of me.

We'll have to see what high school throws into this mix...

Choreography

I was thinking of not going to ballet today because I've got a blister between my toes from walking too long in my flip-flops after not wearing any ever. But the blister ain't that bad and it was the last day. So.

I came, expecting to have to explain to the teacher how I couldn't do pointe today because I had a blister, etcetera etcetera, when she asked the pianist to give us a few waltzes so we could do choreographies to them - though she called them "improvisations." I got myself a group of four and we did a short dance to the slower of the waltzes.

I think it was good. We finished first, so while the other groups were still practicing, I went and did some actual improvisation, which was immense fun.

We showed the dances, then the class finished early. I said goodbye to the teacher and pianist, as well as most of the girls. It's weird, this is like a softer, subtler version of the nostalgia I felt before coming here. Which is okay, because I guess that's what you're supposed to feel.

Name Tags, Duck Ponds, and Spoilers

When Whovians start arguing about name tags and duck ponds, you know some huge but obscure spoilers have been dropped.

I was on doctorwhotv.co.uk when I saw that Matt Smith had dropped a HUGE spoilerific bomb on us: Moffat put an important hint into The Eleventh Hour which foreshadows the Ponds' departure. Some suggestions include:

• The duckless duck pond
• Rory's name tag, which has the wrong year (this is supposedly a mistake, but you never know)
• One of little Amy's drawings, showing a house on fire
• The re-use of Mrs. Angelo's brooch in The Big Bang

Well...we're waiting, Moffat. This has always been your thing.

(If you didn't get this, it's fine, just go start watching Doctor Who!)

Change

Right, so.

I was reading some of my old blog posts and I can just feel how much I've changed. Yeah, I knew it would happen back then, but it's kind of wonderful to see now.

Six months ago a change like this might have made me sad. But today? Oh, no. I'm at the top of the world and yet it can only go up from here.

Because I'm not depressed and I learned to cartwheel and I had recess and I started liking the theater and people tell me I look like I'm from Tel Aviv and I know how to get around here and I have amazing new friends and they're very very sad I'm leaving and I started liking myself and I let myself branch out and I finished three notebooks and I learned to do a handstand and I can cope with a high school and I am crazy and I'm fine with the messed-up world and I have CHANGED within.

This doesn't mean I might not be crying when I get back, no it doesn't. I can still be sad. But I'm happy I had this opportunity. I am very, very glad.

"I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend."

~ Augustus Waters

I love the world.

Closing Time

Today was the last day of school.

It wasn't that much really, we came to school and our teacher spoke and stuff, embarrassing me and the other girl who's leaving in my class by saying how lovely we were. I got a cork board thing with a bunch of notes from my friends, which I thought was really sweet.

Then she handed out report cards - unfortunately for me, in reverse alphabetical order - and while I waited for mine, I went about saying a few goodbyes. One of my friends who are boys permitted me to hug him in that time, which he hasn't let me do when I tried. I took photos of unsuspecting people and ran up and down the stairs.

I got my report card and was quite happy with it, except for my grade in history, which had a mistake in it and lowered my average by a lot, so I went around for about two hours to find my teacher.

Then I finally found her and just about sorted things out.

After my friends had gotten their grades too, we went downstairs to the kiosk and bought a coke and mentos, then went out to the parking lot. I got my camera out and we exploded the coke (except not really, because it was too small) then jumped on the remains. A second friend who is a boy permitted me to hug him before he left.

Then I went home, put my big cork board down, and went to meet my friend at the bus stop, where we caught a bus to Dizengoff Center. I took her to a great bakery and we bought a baguette, took it back to the Center, ate it, and proceeded to buy shakes at re:bar (mine was mango, pineapple, passion fruit sorbet, and yogurt). We went to "Everything for a Dollar," which does not have everything for a dollar, and I bought a minimini notebook. Then we met up with the rest of our buddies, who were buying movie tickets, and I hugged all of them, including a third friend who is a boy. I had to go home because of my ballet open house.

I don't know what to say about it. It's been a kind of amazing day, and I'm feeling happysad, but kind of more sad. I don't know. This song kind of defines it (not in the sense that I'm in love or anything). I've had it on repeat for the last ten minutes.

I need some quotes. Goodbye.

(Doctor Who title reference again!)

Quotes

"It's reminding people what friendship should really feel like, which is inconvenient, and annoying, and a bit of a pain in the arse."

~ Alex Day

"In real life, people are rude! People are shit!"

~ Alex Day

"In our hyper-secular world, worship is still inevitable. But it's vital to remember that our gods don't choose us. We choose them."

~ John Green

"I'm being extremely clever up here and there's no one to stand around looking impressed! What's the point in having you all?"

~ The Doctor

"The universe is big, it's vast and complicated and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles."

~ The Doctor

"Forever is composed of nows."

~ Emily Dickinson

"Some infinities are bigger than other infinities."

~ Hazel Grace Lancaster

"It makes good times even better when you know they are going to end."

~ Violet

"You can love someone so much, he thought. But you can never love someone as much as miss them."

~ Colin Singleton

"We're invisible. I've never been here with someone else. It's different being invisible with someone."

~ Lindsey Lee Wells

"What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person."

~ Q Jacobsen

This is what I do in the times when I don't know who I am: I look for quotes. Because I am the quotes and the quotes are me. "I'm not a complex person, wind me up and watch me go" ~ "Don't Look Back" by Alex Day

Sluttish Time

(No, I didn't invent the title, it's from Shakespeare's Sonnet fifty-five.)

Today I realized that on Tuesday it will be two weeks until I'm gone.

Shakespeare was right on for a lot of stuff. Including about time and "all the world's a stage" and things.

Time is making me confused. The passing of time is a strange thing. What is time? I don't think there's a definition. If time is a collection of seconds and minutes and hours, what are seconds and minutes and hours? They are ways of measuring time. And time is...well, you get the idea. Chicken and the egg kind of thing.

And so suddenly I've got three days left of school and I'm getting my report card soon and my uncle is arriving from New York and it's officially going to be summer on Thursday and I have to say goodbye to my friends here.

My life is bonkers. But then, it always was.

A Piece of Brilliance

So I was watching John Green's video about Book Expo and towards the end he said this:

"In our hyper-secular world, worship is still inevitable. But it's vital to remember that our gods don't choose us. We choose them."

~ John Green

And I think that is just amazingly true.  John Green is an amazing author. If you haven't read his books, I encourage you to do so.

DFTBA!