78 Days: The pleasance of normalcy

I had a decent day.  That should be something to celebrate.  A decent couple of days.  Yesterday I was in Jerusalem seeing good friends, hanging out, laughing, and even participated in an impromptu evening barbecue on the rooftop of a friend’s hippie-digs in a fun secular-religious-mixed-up-ancient-hippie neighborhood called Nachla’ot. Spicy sausage and marinated chicken thighs.  Oh yah.

Today, I had breakfast with my sister (totally forgot about the plans and went in hastily thrown on clothes and an unwashed face) at a nice cafe.  Made the mistake of ordering the only thing I’m kind of allowed to eat without realizing that it was the most expensive thing on the menu.  Ya, I paid around ten bucks, US, for a bowl of plain yogurt.  ‘Cause I can’t eat sugar or yeast.  Which means no fruit or sweet muesli or honey.  Or anything else cheaper on the menu, for that matter, like pastries or breakfast sandwiches.

Tomer Reshef Salon

Then I went and got my hair cut with my mom.  I have the best, the very best hair stylist in Israel.  Maybe in the world.  They call her the queen of the curly-haired people.  And goodness knows, more people in Israel than in any other place in the world have curly hair.  Or wavy hair.  Or frizzy huge undefinable hair.  The whole Jew-fro thing.  Yah.  This lady conquered it all.  If you can read Hebrew, or just want to see some cool hair photos, visit this article about Tomer Reshef’s Salon in a very hip designer-laden area of south Tel Aviv.  The philosophy is this: if you don’t use conditioner, your hair won’t frizz.  And I can safely say, it is true.  Takes some time.  But you can use a great aromatic natural oil “mask” after you wash your hair and leave it in.  Helps the curls stick.  It’s an all natural place.

My mother annoys me very quickly.  Luckily, as she was getting her hair colored and it would take another hour, I used the time to find wholesale warehouse kinda priced framers.  South Tel Aviv rocks.  It’s old.  It’s crumbly in areas.  It’s dirty.  But it’s got the goods.  Furniture, clothes, you name it, warehouse style.  In Italy, I bought a lot of great artwork.  Signed stuff, original prints, great souvenirs, but some of the stuff I know I’m going to love looking at for years.  And unlike my usual self (I have bought amazing art in the past, only to have put off framing for so long as to have forgotten it in boxes…for years), I took care of framing immediately.  I’m so excited to have picutres, my own pictures, with good frames and glass and matting, that I have chosen.  Such a relief, after living in someone else’s artist’s studio, stacks of paintings, walls full of paintings, none framed or framed well, none that I’ve chosen to be up there.  I shouldn’t be speaking so of my grandfather’s work.  People ooh and ahh when they visit me here.  It’s all a colorful picnic in theory…but you wouldn’t want to live there, ya know.

I will sum up with this, as I write too damned much, and I know people aren’t getting to the end.  Have you ever heard of a sabich?  It’s kind of like a sandwich.  Similar to falafel.  Hails from Iraq.  Well, I love them.  And I had one today at my favorite place to get them: Sabick Frishman, on the corner of Frishman and Dizingoff.  Just imagine, if you will…a whole pita, slit on top so you can smear the inside with hummus, tahini, a spicy chili-like paste, and amba (another sauce, bright orangey-yellow, very spicy and curry-flavored, made out of pickled mangos), filled with deep fried eggplant slices, sliced up hard-boiled egg, and chunks of baked potato, topped with finely chopped tomato salad, slices of onion (sprinkled with red sumac – a heavenly spice – that’s what really makes shawarma taste like shawarma, if you were interested), cilantro, more tahini, and a special spicy mixed vegetable salad.  You can then choose on your own to put various pickled and/or curried-pickled veggies on top.  It is heaven.  Feast your eyes on this:

After I ate, I went to this fab tiny little used book store with a (relatively) huge English-language sci-fi section.  Did you know there seem to be hundreds of spin-off Star Trek books?  I found an entire shelf of Star Trek Voyager novels.  Bizarre.  Do they take place after the crew gets back to the Alpha Quadrant?  Or during the Delta Quadrant voyage, and the authors somehow find a way to not mess up the TV show’s plotline?  Weird.  Who reads this stuff? And why do there seem to be many, many authors?  Who keeps the storylines straight?  Who safeguards the characters? Wonder if I should give it a try.  The reading or the writing…ha!

G’night y’all.  I have to get back to reading manuscripts.  I’m a big-ass procrastinator.  Gotta be ready by 8 am.  And it’s 11:45 pm.  Ahhh!

Just for kicks...who can refuse a Borg sex kitten

83 Days: news, news, news…

So, when you’re on vacation, as I was for about three weeks, you lose touch. I barely kept up with any news. And so, here are some of today’s links. Stuff I found interesting. Stuff I can’t believe I missed. Etc.

Oprah to visit Susan Boyle at home in Scotland. Something not to miss…

The Star Trek movie opened! And I was somewhere in Italy drinking Limoncino and Sciacchetra in Cinque Terre and completely forgot about it!  And it got great reviews, and it looks like it will be this summer’s blockbuster, and this means millions of new Trek fans, I hope, and I couldn’t be happier…and now I need to go see this movie!!! AND I discovered it opened here in Israel at the same time, so no worries for me!!!

A song called “I kissed a girl and I liked it” is now playing on the army radio station, and I’ve never heard of it before, but I like it…let’s google, shall we?

Ah, here ’tis:

And so much more exciting, devastating, embarrassing schtuff…involving beauty queens, politicians, Afghanistan, comedians, wild fires, and much, much more…check out the Huffington Post for the most entertaining way to become informed.

83 Days: Star Trek Voyager?

Seven of Nine

Good morning, world!  It’s a Saturday.  And I have about 9 days left in Israel.  It’s kind of a “vacation” amount of time…except for that I live here.  I have something like 8 important appointments to keep in the next week…amazing that I was able to schedule them all…ranging from my psychiatrist, to my waxist, to my Chinese medicine doctor, and much, much, more.  And today…nothing to do but enjoy a family lunch in celebration of my cousin’s 17th birthday…and tolerate my increasingly annoying mother who is staying with me for a couple days.  It’s a long story.  Don’t ask now, I don’t feel like telling it.  She came back from Italy with me and is staying until the end of June.  Which is a good thing I’m coming to the States in 9 days!

Some thoughts.

Star Trek Voyager.  A great TV series.  Not my abolute favorite Star Trek series (that would be TNG).  But something about the modernity of it, the better effects, the younger more sexy romantic situations, the isolation of the Delta quadrant…make it all very fun to watch.  And, I don’t think I mention my love of Star Trek, and of Star Trek Voyager too much on my blog.  Maybe a small handful of times.  Certainly, I don’t think I’ve ever devoted an entire entry to it.  But for some reason, in the last two weeks, most of my traffic has been coming from people searching for Star Trek Voyager.  Upwards of 50 people a day, sometimes.  For a teeny tiny non-profession and don’t wanna be kinda blog like mine, that’s surprising.  Thanks trekkie guys!  I don’t think I’m contributing much to the online trekkie-sphere, but I’m curious as to why everyone’s been coming to me.

Other thoughts.  I read two great sci-fi books in the last few weeks.  Classics that I should have read years ago.  One that I started, in fact, when I was 12, but put down in the first five pages or so.  And I’m kind of glad I waited.  The more sci-fi I read, the less I understand why it’s a genre.  Do you know why it’s a genre?  I mean, any book that involves outer space or the future is categorized as sci-fi.  Even stuff that doesn’t happen in space, but is merely an imagined sort of near-future with some imagined new technology, is sci-fi.  Because sci-fi books, the best of them, usually have little to do with science directly.  They are so much more about that human condition, social commentary, and excellent storytelling.  So what, they happen to happen in space?!  Was 1984 considered sci-fi?  Was Brave New World?  Maybe they were.  But besides Jules Verne, at the time, I don’t suppose there was much of a “genre” around.  Anyway, I read books.  Excellent books.  If they happen to be sci-fi, fine.  And I love forward-minded writers.  Who often happen to write stories that take place in the future or out in space.  Oh well.

The two books I read and loved reading every minute I was reading them are, Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card, and Foundation by Isaac Asimov, the latter being the one I attempted reading back in 1992.  Apparently, I have a whole series to enjoy now, from each of these books.  Ender’s Game I started reading at the Ashram, moving from dim light to dim light at night, trying to squint my way through the pages and avoid the loud trans music that was intermittantly being blasted all over the compound.  And Foundation, funnily enough, I found at the Budapest airport as I was waiting for my flight to Rome on a 5 hour layover.  It called to me.  It was one of the few books in English at one of those portable book stalls between gates, bright orange, with the name Asimov popping off the spine.  When I try and subsequently fail to like a book, the memory stays with me, and I felt compelled to redeem my 12-year-old self from the shame of having rejected Asimov.  So there, I was, engrossed in the fall of the Empire, my bags of duty free Hungarian Tokaij dangling from my arm as I waited to board.  It made my vacation, too.  I finished Foundation on the cliffs of Riomaggiore in the Cinque Terre national park, nothing but blue sea and sky and a slowly setting sun before me.

Last thought of the moment (as I really need to shower and dress and wrap birthday gifts in the 37 minutes I have left).  Did you ever consider how likely it is that you are?  What I mean by that is, how likely was your conception and birth?  There are people out there who are likelier than me.  People whose parents were high school sweethearts, whose grandparents were the same, who come from the same types of communities, maybe the same religion, ethnic background, etc.  Then there are highly unlikely people.  Like our current president.  How likely was it that a white, white, white girl, originally from Kansas, living in Hawaii, met a Kenyan student?  How likely?  In my case, my very crazy Israeli mother met and married an American tourist she knew for less than two weeks, an American tourist who happened to be from Chicago…she then endured four years of a crappy abusive marriage to him in Chicago before getting up the courage to divorce him.  Then, in all the craziness of her single life in Chicago, she and her roommates have a party, invite tons of random people, including my father’s cousin E, a woman my mother met at a bathhouse of all places.  E brings my dad, right out of college, to this house party.  Do they get together then?  No.  Months later, my mother is set up on a blind double date by none other than this woman E.  She doesn’t like her date, but her friend’s date happens to by my dad, whom my mother recognizes.  And here’s the thing.  My mother would never have dated this pasty, tall, gangly, freckled, bizarro had he told her his real age!  That’s right.  He lied and told her he was 25.  My mother was 28, and that even put her off.  But had she known that he was really 23, OMG.  So, crazy Israeli woman, somehow gets to Chicago via a spontaneous stupid marriage.  Pasty-white, gangly, American, right out of college, totally out of his league, happens to meet this woman through bizarre encounters.  Yes, they are both Jewish.  That’s the only similarity.  Because their families both hated this relationship.  Am I likely?  Am I?  I don’t think so.  Maybe more likely than Obama.  But not by much.

How likely was your conception?  What a thought…

Have a great day, folks.  Live long and prosper!

144 Days: Purim Progress

Yes, that’s me in a NASA flight suit.  Or ASAN, as you can see, I used the Photo Booth application.  I’m trying to decide whether to wear this outfit, or my Star Trek captain’s uniform.  Ya, I guess I have a thing for science, space, futuristic, optimistic, yada yada yada, costumes.  But this one, the flight suit, was mine.  Yup, mine.  When I was 11.  Can you believe it?  It’s tight, and I’m not sure I should wear it out.  But I certainly fit into it, and zipped it up.  It’s a child size 18.  Not sure what that means, but it’s a child size!  I’m not an obese ogre that I often believe I’m turning into.  I got this flight suit in December of 1990.  At Space Camp.  In Huntsville, Alabama.  And no, I didn’t make it to NASA.  Or I should say, I haven’t yet made it to NASA. Perhaps they take poets, philosophers, and sci fi nuts who can do them loads of PR good.  But here it is, my authentic child-sized flight suit.  I think I may go with my less-than-authentic authentic adult-sized Star Trek uniform.  Black is far more slimming, don’t you think?  What is it about space exploration and onesy jump suits, anyway?

Why am I getting dressed up all fancy?  Because it’s Purim!  A holiday my mother used to describe as the Jewish Mardi Gras when we lived in France.  We commemorate another “survival in the face of imminent death” scenario, way back during the Babylonian captivity.  A king chose a Jewish bride, Esther, without knowing she was Jewish.  His advisor, a guy named Haman, was dissed by Esther’s relative, a guy named Mordechai, so he plotted to get all the Jews killed by the state.  Esther steps up and reveals that she is Jewish, and that should the king wipe out all the Jews, she would be killed as well.  So, instead of the Jews going bye bye, Haman and all of his sons were hanged.  And we celebrate by dressing up in costume, often dressing as the characters from the story, reading the story out loud from the scroll, and using loud noisemakers to drown out the name “Haman” every time it’s read.  It’s the one holiday when it’s a mitzvah (or commandment) to get drunk and make merry.  Hence, this is a huge party night in Israel.  The week itself is a big old party.  Halloween times a hundred, at least.  Everyone gets dressed up.  And tonight I’m going to two parties…the first, as the guest of my genius computer engineer at her company party (I dare not say the name here, lest I get in trouble…but I’m really psyched for it)…the second, at another friend’s art studio, with lots of people I should know.  The downer: I can’t drink.  Alcohol=sugar.  And I’m on antibiotics and I’ve got the ongoing fungus trouble.  Can’t feed the swarming gelatinous friends, now can I?

And what progress have I made, do you ask?  I cleaned my room!  Yes!  Yes!  All clothing is hung and folded and clean and gorgeous.  I changed my sheets and shams and duvet and everything!  It took me all day.  And the rest of the house is in dire need of a scrub, but my bedroom is finally resembling something normal.  There’s still some clutter, mostly books and paper and notebooks and folders and stuff like that…but I aspire to own a book shelve unit in the very near future…and who knows…I may drop my melancholic mask long enough to go out there and purchase just such an item of furniture this week!  I just might!

Chag Sameach, all!  That means happy holiday, in Hebrew.

282 Days: You Can’t Always Get What You Want

I’m sitting in one of my favorite cafes listening to “It Ain’t Me Babe,” Dylan straining his sandpaper voice as I stare into nothingness.  I really need that slap in the face.  Which slap in the face?  A slap by the Stones.

I know it’s silly, girlish superstition.  Superstition of my own, mind you, but superstition nonetheless.  The first time it happened to me it was like a lightening bolt.  I was feeling very scared and very sorry for myself.  I was in smelly dirty little train station in rural Poland waiting for a midnight train that would take me to Prague.  After several hours of calling every hostel and budget hotel and mid-price hotel in Prague, I couldn’t find a bed for myself for the next night.  I should mention I was 20 years old at the time, traveling on my own, backpacking through Europe, a friend having bailed on me at the last minute.  I had started in Dublin where I’d been studying that year, and the goal was to make it to Israel only by land and sea within about a month’s time in order to get to the opening of my grandfather’s art exhibition, which would prove to be the last in his life.  So, here I was, in Poland, very disgusted by my surroundings, very disturbed by not knowing where I’d be sleeping the next night, and alone, all alone.  I had decided to call my mother in Chicago on a payphone, and she listened as I cried and cried.  Nothing she could do, at all, but I thought it might help to talk to someone.  It didn’t.  It served to pass my misery on to someone else.  Inflict worry onto someone.  Should I disappear, at least my mother would know my last known location.  There were homeless people there who smelled worse than anything I had ever smelled in my life.  I sat in the tiny cafe, or, not even a cafe, a minute kiosk of a thing.  I probably was writing in my diary, dribbling on and on about not knowing what to do, when before I had so been looking forward to visiting Prague.  And then – and then – and then.  Something I will remember forever.  A familiar tune crackled from the tiny transistor radio in the kiosk.  You know it.  The Stones.  And they were singing to me.  Well, not to me.  But to me as much as anyone else. A recording artist must be hoping to touch lives far and wide.  And I laughed, and I smiled.  You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.  Everything seemed trivial after that.  It was a slap in the face.  Here’s a girl from an upper-middle class family, a couple credit cards on her, and fair share of international street smarts under her belt.  What on god’s green earth could happen to her?  She would not sleep on a gutter.  And even if she should, it would not kill her.  And of course, everything worked out. From that day forth, I have noticed every time that song has played.  Often it has been when I’ve been freaking out.  And it helped to think of that disgusting Polish railway station and the first time the song helped me.  So…come on now.  Mick?  Keith?  Help me out.  I need a sign.

Because I make tempests in teapots.  Mountains out of molehills.  I need contingency plans.  Because for some reason it has always been important for me to grasp what the worst case scenario would actually be.  And 9 times out of 10, if death or career suicide aren’t in the cards, I should be able to calm down.  But it doesn’t usually work out that way.  Now, detoxing.  Now, depressed.  Now, alone.  Now, lost.  It’s hard to be realistic.  To put things in perspective.

I am alarmist.  Do I need to analyze myself to find out what it is before I can take measures to try to stop?

Can’t I just go out there, out on that limb, and buy that ticket to India?  Can’t I start my food publishing empire?  Can’t I get my PhD?  Can’t I get a move on already?

And now it’s the Fab Four heading back to the USSR…not the Brits I need right now.

At least tomorrow I’ll be heading up to Binyamina for a counseling session.  A fantastic woman, friend of a friend that I met at the Ashram last weekend.  It’s upsetting to her that I’m very unhappy with my career right now, and as she’s some sort of coach for people, she offered to give me a free session, or some conversation time.  I’m excited to be getting out of the city again.  I’m excited to be seeing her again, as she was a really gentle, lovely, comforting woman…one of those “mom” figures I seem to be drawn to.  A nice afternoon in the country, some cups of tea, good company, and a potential for real help.  Wish me luck…

Don’tcha just wish sometimes that world could be like Star Trek?  No money, no disease, equality, opportunity, liberalism winning out over conservatism, science over religion, multiculturalism over capitalist beige-ness.  A genuine spirit of discovery and cooperation.  If I ever become wealthy, after I make sure I feed and teach several African nations how to take care of themselves, save the ozone layer, find a sustainable form of energy, bring at least a dozen species out of extinction, and other of the most worthwhile causes, I would pay for a ride up to space.  I really would.  I pine to know what’s out there.  I suppose I should take comfort.  All of us are on a spaceship.  A giant spaceship.  Spaceship Earth.  The “Terra”.  Hurtling through space, all of us tethered together.

295 Days: One Year in Israel

Jerusalem Light

Today is my one-year anniversary.  I have been living in Israel for one year.  It’s hard to believe.  I still feel like a hermit.  I still feel green, new, clueless.  And I don’t feel like I have any more courage, ingenuity, spirit, pride, or anything more than when I got here.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I’ve had therapy.  Lots of therapy.  And drugs.  And I’ve published something.  Something small, yes.  But something that has gotten amazing feedback.  And I graduated from culinary school.  So, besides the job issues that never cease, and never will cease, as making a living has to be done, anywhere in the world, something was accomplished this year.  Another certificate.  More experience.  Some emotional progress.  Yet, a great deal of treading water, treading on known, old, not-so-healthy paths.  But there is light.  There is light.  It’s an interesting feeling knowing that we never really grow out of childhood.  I will always be stuck at 16.  In many ways.  We are all adolescents.  Faking it.

I thought I would have a party.  Instead I’m alone at home.  Not altogether bad.  Trying to plot the next few turns, make the next plans, straighten myself out.  Alas, major exhaustion from Yom Kippur yesterday, and continued recovery from the 2-week Irish visitation, has gotten me plonked down in front of youtube and the like, watching Star Trek Voyager.  I am thinking of going out and getting some expensive beer.  Then again, I really really need to stop spending money.  I have less in my account than I thought.  And that’s not good.  But it is an important day.  Will two Belgian beers and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s really set me back all that much in comparison to the enjoyment it will all bring?  Yes, it’s worth it.  But in the end, it really is more of an issue of getting up and out of the chair (at least it’s a chair and not a sofa or bed).  As it’s Shabbat, I will have to trek 20 minutes to the local AM:PM, the only shop that’s open around here.  Gotta love Israel.  It is nice, though, to have a real palpable feeling of “otherness” for the weekend.  It’s much more quiet, relaxed, even though it’s inconvenient not having buses or shops or stores or restaurants open locally.

The cats are back.  They were at my sister’s for the duration of the Irish visit.  Not sure I’m glad, as they are a royal pain.  The company is OK some of the time.

Another year.  Appropriate it came right after Yom Kippur.  After the gates of heaven slammed shut for another year.  Another chance.  I didn’t really pray.  Even though I was in synagogue a good deal yesterday.  Even though I fasted.  I am not sure I believe in prayer.  I didn’t feel too spiritual.  I felt good, actually.  Felt calm.  Sleepy.  Adult.  Slightly nostalgic, but not in a negative, wish-I-were-back-there, kind of way.  I awoke on the morning of Yom Kippur having had a very goo night’s sleep.  I was in Jerusalem staying with a very good friend of mine, a woman I feel more at home with than almost anyone in my family.  She had laid a matress for me on her living room floor and given me perhaps the most comfortable comforter to sleep with.  I remember waking several times during the night wondering why it wasn’t yet morning and time to go to services.  And when I finally woke for the real morning, the memory of my family’s last vacation to Hawaii was on my mind.  It was one of the best trips we’d ever taken.  All of us adult.  All of us more or less getting along.  We were on Kauai where my parents have a time share, a place we’d been several times before.  And the vacation was spent on calm beaches, fun small restaurants, cooking meals together in the kitchen, and playing Scrabble.  Lots of Scrabble.  And mostly me winning, as is the case in my family.  It was a good time.  And even though the fast was not easy for me this year, I took a nap after we broke the fast on my friends sofa, with that wonderful comforter, and I felt safe.  A safety I feel with very few people.  A safety I rarely if ever feel with my immediate family.  A safety I feel when I’m with people I know will take care of me and always welcome me with open arms, no questions asked, no guilt piled on, no judgment doled out.  It was only for 20 minutes or so, but I will remember it for a long time.

I am thankful to her from the core of my being for creating safe, warm, loving spaces in this often cold and confusing world. It’s rare for me to feel comfortable on anyone else’s sofas.  There are perhaps three I can think of.  So, thank you to the Queen with the most comfortable Jerusalem sofa and comforter.

And will there be another year?  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  Time will tell, all too well.

Star Trek Voyager

298 Days: In Her Jeans

I just discovered a tiny echo whilst typing.  Interesting.  Mac keyboards are far more fun to use, and the pleasant clicking is even more pleasant as a tiny tinkle bouncing off the wall.  Funny I never heard it before.

My Irish friend has gone.  I now have to go back to life as it was.  And I don’t want to.  I really have to apply to other jobs.  I am so overqualified.  I must be able to get a job that either has far less stress and responsibility (that will still pay a decent salary) or find a job that is far more meaningful and interesting (that will still pay a decent salary).  There’s something unique about being on vacation vicariously.  Within five minutes, I have to be back to myself.  Pick the cats back up from my sister’s.  Clean the house.  Be alone.  Be alone.  With my fears.

I fit into her jeans.  My Irish friend’s.  My grandmother came over yesterday, and said she couldn’t leave her clothes where she had put them, and she started to clear them away.  Well, when she left, I put them back…but her jeans were right on top.  And they were exactly my size!   I couldn’t believe it.  I suppose it’s always been that way.  When we were roommates back in Thailand I borrowed some of her things, and they fit then.  But she’s the kind of person that when you see her you see a petite gorgeous thin thing.  She has curves, yes, and she is very small on top.  But knowing she and I have the same size, that I can fit into her trousers.  This is something.  It made me feel very happy knowing this.  I usually feel so dowdy.  And in comparison to her, I feel so ignored in a room.  Men just stare at her gorgeous self.  I’m far more plain.  But I could be more attractive.  I have potential.  I’m not as fat as I think, if I can fit into her jeans.

Funny, the relativity of productivity.  I tried so hard to work today, and despite the fact that I sat in front of a computer for many hours, I just didn’t get much done.  Yesterday was similar.  But I force myself to accomplish things.  Force is the only word, and thankfully the best word, for it.  List making, brooding, waiting, procrastinating…  I got up yesterday, bought manilla envelopes, wrote on my special stationery with my initials, wrote addresses, and got to the post office right on time to send these packages away.  I sent my first magazine article to my parents, my sister, my best friend, and a chef who helped me out here in Tel Aviv.  Amazing.  And, I paid my phone bill.  It was a huge thing for me, this.  But it’s not real work for anyone else.

I’m still quite spaced out.  It’s probably the drugs.  I should go get the cats.  But I don’t want to.  I want to sleep and watch star trek.