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.
Showing posts with label Tel Aviv. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tel Aviv. Show all posts
Monday, October 1, 2012
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Le fin du voyage
I suppose this was always coming.
But now I'm not typing from our living room in Tel Aviv but from our (notably larger) living room in Newton.
It's strange being back, and I'm not really sure how I feel about it yet. Weird. Now I won't have to put the tag "Israel" in the labels...
I just don't want things to be exactly as they were. I want that time in another place to matter.
Anyway - here goes for summer! If you're American, happy fourth of July! If not, happy fourth of July anyway!
(The French title means "the end of the journey.")
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Computerless Saturday (well, up to now)
My parents were in Jerusalem today and yesterday, so we (my brother and I) slept over at my grandma's. This means:
1. No internet
2. Good food (not that ours is normally bad)
3. Better sleep (see number 1)
4. More time to do stuff (see number 1)
So, I got up after a much better night's sleep than I have had in a while, ate breakfast, and generally prepared myself pour le jour. My aunt came over with a backpack full of cameras (!) and, since she had promised me a few months ago, we were going outside to take photos. She was teaching me to use an analog camera - do stuff the good ol'-fashioned way.
We walked by the Yarkon (the muddy strip of water that we call a river) and took photos of the park around it. Since it's Saturday, the park was full of people. I had a great deal of fun playing with the zoom and focus. We went all the way to the port, which isn't really that long, taking photos of things and windows and stuff, and then took a taxi to meet my brother and then went for hamburgers at a place called Wolfnights. They were delicious. There's not much more to say.
We then went back to my grandma's and sat around for a few hours. My brother practiced his violin. I took more pictures on the cameras. I now have two full rolls of film (36 photos each), which doesn't sound like a lot but it is when you're selective with the photos as we were.
Then, my uncle and cousin came over with a basketball and we went to the park to play. First we were just shooting hoops, then we played a few games that included shooting hoops, then we played an actual basketball game. Kids versus grownups - my uncle and his sister (my photographing aunt) versus my cousin, my brother, and me. And we won - twice.
The best thing? I didn't feel like I needed the computer at all.
1. No internet
2. Good food (not that ours is normally bad)
3. Better sleep (see number 1)
4. More time to do stuff (see number 1)
So, I got up after a much better night's sleep than I have had in a while, ate breakfast, and generally prepared myself pour le jour. My aunt came over with a backpack full of cameras (!) and, since she had promised me a few months ago, we were going outside to take photos. She was teaching me to use an analog camera - do stuff the good ol'-fashioned way.
We walked by the Yarkon (the muddy strip of water that we call a river) and took photos of the park around it. Since it's Saturday, the park was full of people. I had a great deal of fun playing with the zoom and focus. We went all the way to the port, which isn't really that long, taking photos of things and windows and stuff, and then took a taxi to meet my brother and then went for hamburgers at a place called Wolfnights. They were delicious. There's not much more to say.
We then went back to my grandma's and sat around for a few hours. My brother practiced his violin. I took more pictures on the cameras. I now have two full rolls of film (36 photos each), which doesn't sound like a lot but it is when you're selective with the photos as we were.
Then, my uncle and cousin came over with a basketball and we went to the park to play. First we were just shooting hoops, then we played a few games that included shooting hoops, then we played an actual basketball game. Kids versus grownups - my uncle and his sister (my photographing aunt) versus my cousin, my brother, and me. And we won - twice.
The best thing? I didn't feel like I needed the computer at all.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Hi?
Okay...I haven't updated. Yeah. But here's a big long one, okay?
This year, 2012, is the Tel Aviv Art Year. I believe they chose now because a new museum building has opened and the Tel Aviv museum now houses the largest collection of Israeli art.
So last Saturday night (the twenty-somethingth) they officially kicked it off at the Tel Aviv museum grounds. The great thing about that area is that it's quite cultural; there is a large theater nearby as well as a library. The event was entirely free, including entrance to the museum. There were all sorts of performances and activities. In one corner there were people singing opera, in another there was an audiovisual stage with mainly loud rock music. Street musicians had been asked to come and play. The sculpture of people feeding pigeons was covered in sunflower seeds as it should be (but they only put out the sunflower seeds when it's a special event). There were lots of cardboard houses arranged into small cities, and most of them were taller than me, so it created small "streets." There was one area with tons of colored cardboard blocks which could be stacked and made into all sorts of amazing structures (this is part of the Dreamfields urban innovation project). Everyone was building, no matter what age or what language they spoke or where they came from. There was also a computer component to this - you could play the Dreamfields game and it would be projected onto the wall of the museum.
On another wall, there was a place for shadow play, with a white light that invited people to create strange shapes and pictures. Our silhouettes appeared enormous on the wall.
I loved it. All the art and culture and connection and bright lights and people, all together. That night, it felt amazing to be alive.
---
Yesterday I went to the Bahai gardens in Haifa, where I was for the weekend. The gardens are famous, with their carefully planned terraces. In the center is a shrine for their founder - the Shrine of the Bab - who is buried there.
It was weird, from up there I could see all of lower Haifa - all of it that isn't on the mountain. It all seemed so temporary, like a bubble - the gardens so carefully created and maintained, the shrine's pristine gold dome, the rusty city, the dirty buildings with laundry hanging from the windows, the old neighborhood's red ceramic roofs, the glassy new buildings rising up from it all, the people bustling and running from place to place like so many ants. I could easily imagine that one day it would be gone and only the trees and the wide sea would remain, moss and ivy making crumbling ruins of the plaster walls. I don't know why I felt that. But its temporariness made me appreciate it a bit, I guess - the gardens planned so that they would seem like the product of much work, the buildings washed of the dust that the smog carried everywhere, the old train tracks still there, unused, flowers peeping between the steel rails.
Later that day we walked in my grandparents' neighborhood. We passed a building that was once beautiful but now was just abandoned. The windows had cardboard on them from the inside and the garden was overgrown. People come and go, they work and they rest, and what they leave is up to nature to take up.
And that's what nature did.
This year, 2012, is the Tel Aviv Art Year. I believe they chose now because a new museum building has opened and the Tel Aviv museum now houses the largest collection of Israeli art.
So last Saturday night (the twenty-somethingth) they officially kicked it off at the Tel Aviv museum grounds. The great thing about that area is that it's quite cultural; there is a large theater nearby as well as a library. The event was entirely free, including entrance to the museum. There were all sorts of performances and activities. In one corner there were people singing opera, in another there was an audiovisual stage with mainly loud rock music. Street musicians had been asked to come and play. The sculpture of people feeding pigeons was covered in sunflower seeds as it should be (but they only put out the sunflower seeds when it's a special event). There were lots of cardboard houses arranged into small cities, and most of them were taller than me, so it created small "streets." There was one area with tons of colored cardboard blocks which could be stacked and made into all sorts of amazing structures (this is part of the Dreamfields urban innovation project). Everyone was building, no matter what age or what language they spoke or where they came from. There was also a computer component to this - you could play the Dreamfields game and it would be projected onto the wall of the museum.
On another wall, there was a place for shadow play, with a white light that invited people to create strange shapes and pictures. Our silhouettes appeared enormous on the wall.
I loved it. All the art and culture and connection and bright lights and people, all together. That night, it felt amazing to be alive.
---
Yesterday I went to the Bahai gardens in Haifa, where I was for the weekend. The gardens are famous, with their carefully planned terraces. In the center is a shrine for their founder - the Shrine of the Bab - who is buried there.
It was weird, from up there I could see all of lower Haifa - all of it that isn't on the mountain. It all seemed so temporary, like a bubble - the gardens so carefully created and maintained, the shrine's pristine gold dome, the rusty city, the dirty buildings with laundry hanging from the windows, the old neighborhood's red ceramic roofs, the glassy new buildings rising up from it all, the people bustling and running from place to place like so many ants. I could easily imagine that one day it would be gone and only the trees and the wide sea would remain, moss and ivy making crumbling ruins of the plaster walls. I don't know why I felt that. But its temporariness made me appreciate it a bit, I guess - the gardens planned so that they would seem like the product of much work, the buildings washed of the dust that the smog carried everywhere, the old train tracks still there, unused, flowers peeping between the steel rails.
Later that day we walked in my grandparents' neighborhood. We passed a building that was once beautiful but now was just abandoned. The windows had cardboard on them from the inside and the garden was overgrown. People come and go, they work and they rest, and what they leave is up to nature to take up.
And that's what nature did.
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