What it looks like

It looks like summer and summer feels like an hallucinogen. It looks like Efros coming in from the desrt or from the Sinai (deeper desert, further south), bangles and all, and we go to smoke a Nargila at Fadi's cafe. Efros teaches me a phrase in Arabic: "You won't be a moon unless you vanish."

We vanish from the cafe with Ita who just returned from L.A. and with Fadi himself, a 6'6" collosus. Fadi begs of Ita to avoid repeating her fond Hollywood party experience of snorting cocain. "I know what I'm talking about. I've been there for ten years, I took, I traded, I did everything."

We drive to the greengrocer's and shop for stir fry ingredients.

It's always late at night except when it's rough, punishing day. Fadi takes Efros to pick up his girlfriend who's going through rehab at a Jaffa facility and take her to the beach. Two women lean against the wall, their mouths agape, they're experiencing withdrawl. "Look how feeble the human being can be" he tells her, then adds "We should bring Ita here".

I was down too, punished by the days, taking in too much whisky, coffee and tobacco. Downtown lover left her job for all the good reasons. 500 Palestinian families in Jaffa are being kicked out of their homes because they failed to register their ownership of properties in Turkish times (i.e. pre 1917) and now the land is coveted by real estate sharks who have friends in appropriate places. The walls are full of wrathful posters. I take a genral in the Togolese army for a tour of Jerusalem. I take international conceptual artists for a tour of Jerusalem, I MC an event dealing with contemporary Israeli comics and graphic novels.

Keeping a spare shirt in the backpack.

What does it look like? It looks like headlines. Don't look at the headlines, not at the mess on the desk, nor at the floors. No matter how often I wipe them, they're filthy, no matter how well I do the dishes, they're just filthy, and the tiny little flies, I don't know where they come from. I clean this kitchen constantly and kill all the spiders with my copy of Agi Mishol's "collected poems". It's perfect for that. perfect size: not too heavy, not too light, enough surface, hardcover.

And somehow it's always a festival: week of the hebrew book, Jerusalem performing arts festival, a nocturnal flea market event. Oh, that we can't miss. Ita opens a stand of literary reviews and underground literature. We bring the guitar and the booze. Then it's off to Zika for grilled beef tonsils (delicious, I swear), with Chicky and flashki, Efros and downtown lover. It looks like summer, the right kind of summer, until I get a stomach ache and have to go to bed.