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.

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.