O Let Us Live in Joy

In my previous post I wrote of people running away into nature and the feeling that I've been doing the same, allegorically, for too much of my life. Today I almost did it in practice. Stepping over the fence of downtown lover's parents' home, outside Jerusalem, and heading into the hills for a walk. It was past sunset when I left, so the only photo I took looks like this:

It was a delicious twilight, though, and the further night advanced over high Judea, the more serene I was feeling. Meanwhile, DL was indoors with her dad, watching Romania and Italy tie in Zurich. It was a fine moment in which each of us indulged in what we love best. Now her cheer rises from the basement, which means France scored against the Netherlands. I'm sitting here, writing, with a bottle of beer by my side. Minutes ago DL's mom showed me photos of China, where she often goes on business, and now my mind's eye is full of Beijing highrises and of moonlit Israeli forests. So this is another such fine moment, maybe even finer.

"O let us live in joy, in peace among those who quarrel, among people who quarell, let us live in peace." These words are attributed to the Buddha. I dedicate them to whoever was shooting a machine gun in the valley earlier this evening, and to whomever he was shooting.

Late

It's hardly late by Tel-Avivian terms, only 0:22 at night, yet I feel late.

I spent much of the evening in a radio studio with my friend Susanna, we spoke about Arto Paasilinna's "Year of the Rabbit". It is a book about giving up. A man runs over a rabbit in a Finnish forest, walks among the trees and finds it. Tends to its wound and then drifts with it. He forsakes his Helsinki existance in favor of a drifter's lifestyle, working at odd jobs in the forests of Savo, Kainuu and Lapland, hunting a bear in the snow and drinking its blood, sleeping by a campfire at night.

At no point does Paasilinna describe what this man's feet smell like.

This week I watched a film about escaping: "Into the Wild", by Sean Penn, after the book by john Krakauer. Again a man heads into forests. This time he is young. He is disillusioned not with a family he had built but with the family that brought him life, a truly disfunctional one. He heads north- to alaska, secludes himself in the wilderness, than (spoiler warning), after several weeks of lonely partial bliss, he dies, having accidentally eaten a poisenous plant. Alexander Supertramp escaped completely, too completely.

He is described as having worn no socks for two years.

My feet smell fine but I know I'm escaping too, that I have been since I was 18. Sometimes it's just so damn dark, this whole story. Sometimes it's bright skies by the road in switzerland, examining my sorry shoes, having just crossed Lichtenstein on foot. Sometimes it's late at the little prince, Playing me, playing friend, playing lover, playing father of sorts. buying Flashky a beer because he knew who built the Seagram building.

Whoever built the seagram building wasn't escaping, not when he did it. He did beforehand, you must do for a while, but you don't build the Seagram building from a dead bus in Denali National Park, nor from a dismal Lappish landscape: a slashed forest on the swamps' edge, a screaming crow on a dead tree. you don't build the Seagram building from the back of the Little Prince nor from a studio of Israel's Government radio. I'm going to learn how to do it.

Europa est Perdita

I desperately love Europe. It's where I came from, well, not really. I was born in Israel and both my parents were too, but our background is European and there's something in us that will always long there. We get out of a Metro station in Paris, look up at the Housmanian rooftops, breath in mist and big city smog and feel completely, passionately, disturbingly at home.

There's too much irony in this love-love relationship. As an outcome of WWII, Europe succesfully rid itself of Jews. Many of us came to live here, just one unbreachable step away from its outskirts, in a ghetto divised by our own dumb minds. We saw Germany and Austria, homes of Nazism, grow to become prosperous beyond belief, calm and relatively happy, while we're here suffering strife and inflicting it on others.

Our hunger for European aesthetics is unquenchable. Yesterday a bunch of friends and I all headed north for the day. We visited Nazareth, with its chapels of 19th century Catholic fluff,

and the remains of the old German templer coomunity at Alonei Aba, looking more like a quaint village in Dorset.

All the cirtue of such delights vanished as we entered the austere, grey boxy urbanscape around Rabin Square in Tel-Aviv, we love our city, granted, but it does not delight the eye in the way, say, Amsterdam does.

This week, however, there will be a lot of Europe on our table thanks to the Euro 2008 tournement. Unlike DL, who's a very serious fan, I know nearly nothing about football and tend to support teams based on countries I like. (Last night's Czech Republic's victory was a delight, but I wept for Turkey).

In the case of a Euro, I like almost every country and the championship turns into a chain of reminices. My beloved Sweden may be far from me, but all of its Euro 2008 history is still ahead of it. I'll cheer for you, Sweden, and dream of your deep forests and pretty towns and Pippi longstocking, and look for a bottle of Pripps Blå to drink with your goals, and complain about not being Swedish, and drink more Pripps Blå, and more, and not even care who wins in the end.

West

I'm an East Jerusalem enthusiast. I grew up in a Jewish enclave in the east, and always looked at the west as the somewhat annoying haunt of spoiled, Politically ignorant, Jewish-American teenagers. When hitting town I rush towards massive Damascus gate and then through it, to eat Knafe at Jaffar's, lose myself among the market crowds, and discover an ancient, chapel-dotted, stone passageway or two.

Today, however, I'm heading west. There's a concert to attend, as well as an alternative arts festival. I even have a television appearence scheduled. I'm to speak about Macedonia on Israeli channel 1. But first I accompany my friend Baptiste from France to the very threshold of the east. There we meet his Quebecoise friend Roxanne who lives in Ramallah.

Having met, all three of us turn our back on the magic of the east. as if in support, the east stops looking magical almost at once. This picture of Jerusalem, taken a few steps from Damascus gate, has to be the least romantic ever shot. Of all the city's fabled sights, only the magnifiscent Dome of the Rock is there, popping over the open back of a truck.

The supposedly modernist, sprawly west, on the other hand, embraces us instantly in delightful pink stone and an air of antiquity, as we walk into the 19th century Russian compound.

We stop to chill at the garden of its old pilgrims hospice.

Turn of the century Nahalt Shiv'a neighborhood, right down the street, is positively gushing with charm. Here we were joined by Flashky, that unbeatable young chap, who took the van from Tel-Aviv spontanously to join in this little Odyssey.



Having caffinated ourselves we tread further and discover a fountain, clearly a gift of the city of Paris to its little middle eastern sister. Downtown lover, who dislaike Jerusalem and rarely joins me here, is mad about Paris. Alas, no such fountains can be found in her cherished Tel-Aviv environment.

We finally arrive at our first of the three destinations. A festival for alternative and socially involved creativity brought together small presses from around the country to a basketball court, somewhere in the labyrinthine Nachla'ot quarter. A lot of our friends from Tel-Aviv are here ,and there are also many new faces and a lot to learn. Certainly this fair is the most succesful alternative the "Week of the Hebrew Book" events, often criticised for being overly commercial.


Osnat!

This is where we bid farewell to Baptiste and Roxanne as they head up to her Ramallah home. They intend to make it past the roadblock before dark.

Flashky and I head on, walking to the edge of the Nachlaot and into the Mahne Yehuda market area.



We stop for a beer and a snack at the cheesiest drinking hole ever seen, a "club for members only" whose members are all elderly Iraqis. One wall is entirely covered by the decorative seal of some obscure German Brewery. The brew served to us is, curiously, Indian "Cobra" brand.

We made it to the studios of Israeli public television, but are not allowed to take photos inside. In defiance we pull out the camera out in the bathroom.

I was gorgeous on T.V.

We rush across the city to its center for the performing arts. On the plaza outside there's performance art taking place. Past colorful fabric, dotted with peeping holes, dancers are moving.



And on stage ,Jordi Savall's famed Hysperion XXI ensamble is performing songs from the Sepharadic diaspora. Legendary soprano Montserrat Figueras leads in Ladino. Yair Dalal is at the Oud and Savall himself plays the unique and beautiful Viol.

Time to go out.

First we hit Gilli's bar, which is good fun. Gilli pours us the butt of every coctail he makes. We get intoxicated enough that I forget to take a souvenir photo. Later at the Sira (possibly the city's finest nighthole), I do take one and immortalize Flashky's dancing joy. He's in an advanced flirt with the girl in a white tank top, a German from Cologne. Later on he ditches her, thinking that I am interested in returning to Tel-Aviv.

Now, I may be old, from Flashky's perspective - very much so. But I'm not letting go so easily of a city that looks like this at 2 AM


And like this at 3 AM



So we go to a place whos name I can't quite remember, tucked away down a passageway.

Than back to the Sira.


Where we learn how to balance pint glasses on top of one another and nearly get in a fight with an Everton supporter in his fourties. Flashky (a true Liverpool fan) does his best to calm the man down by pointing out their similar taste in music, but gets beer poured on his shirt. He stands up for himself, standing not two inches away from the aggressor's face and calling him a fascist. The Evertonian's friends, a group of truely sweet brits, calm him down and we bid farewell in good spirits.

No, in great spirits.

Magic and Loss

I got this from Lin's blog.

It is the blog of an L.A. man who's wife (a childhood friend of a friend of Lin's) gave birth to a baby girl. The pregnancy was difficult and ended in a c-section. The following day the mother was finally strong enough to get out of her hospital bed and go to see her baby. When she did, she suffered a blood clot and died.

What was begun as a blog for sharing baby photos and stories with the extended family became the intensely photographed and written record of life as a single father in L.A., dealing with incomprehensable loss. I defied clicking on the link for a few days. This morning I did.

A Tale of Three Doobis.

This is Doobi Otso.

The camera really doesn't do him justice. He's way cute, so cute in fact that he defied being given as a gift. Lin and I bought him for something like 5$ at a Boston J.C. Penny's. We meant to give him to my cousin Nathalie's two year old boy, but Nathalie lived in New york and while we waited for our next trip there we sort of got attached to this dumb piece of made in China fluff. Nathalie's kid got a wooden dinosaur that clacked as it moved about on the floor, we gained a toy and the finest bedroom decoration and a mock baby to take in our own juvenile moments or, alternately, parentlike ones. I'm sure lot's of couples do that. Don't they?

What most couples don't do is name their teddy bear Doobi Otso. Doobi is the Hebrew word for a teddy bear, and has nothing to do with the intake of soft drugs. Otso was the word used by ancient Finns to refer to the bear. The actual Finnish word Karhu, signifying bear, was taboo in shamanistic Finnish culture. The bear was a sacred god whose name could not be uttered. I still own a tiny Finnish children's book name "Panu and Otso make music". In it a boy and his teddy bear play various instruments. Otso is the bear's name, and that's a cute bear too.

Panu and Otso make music was the gift of an ex-lover on mine. Ulla from Helsinki, who hoped it would help me learn music-related words in her somewhat less than musical language. Ulla is no longer my lover, nor is Lin. right now I'm with downtown lover.

Which brings us to the following bear, Doobi Hamoodi.

He wasn't named that before I came along. He was just plain old Doobi then. downtown lover's dad brought it for her from a trip abroad when she was five. She asked for a huge bear and he promised she would get one. When the family picked the dad from the airport he handed her very typically sized Doobi Hamoodi. DL swallowed her disappointemnt and said thank you nicely. When they arrived at home he pulled out of his suitcase a replica twice her size of the same bear.

It should come as no surprise that it is the tiny bear, rather than the huge one, that became a lifelong bed buddy to her. The big bear remains in her parents home, nearly untouched, while doobi Hamoodi is shaggy to the point of disgrace. His fur is super-worn and his eyes are so far sunken into his face that he appears to be perfectly blind. That's a well hugged bear, a bear with a history.

When two lovers meet, so do their histories. I showed Doobi Otso to DL when we first came together, told her his story and explained that he was almost family in my seven year long previous relatioship. Such a long relationship is a lot for a new lover to contend with, so she was surely pleased about the fact Doobi Otso was kept in a closet rather than soaking my tears of loss in bed every night. Not to mention that I am a man in his thirties, I really shouldn't have a teddy bear anywhere outside of a closet.

Doobi Hamoodi, on the other hand, is partner to DL's free spirited years. Like the portrait of Marlene Dietrich in Susanne Vega's famous song, he was watching the rise and fall of all her former men. He was even there when she was undressed the night that inspired her much quoted two line poem, first published in "Maayan":

When you undress me
Even the shirt moans.

"This bear is so cute," I told her when I first saw him, "When you undress him, even his sweater moans." I realized that respecting Doobi Hamoodi would be respecting DL's past and present, what made her a woman and what made her a little girl. However, while I was focusing on that Doobi, she discovered that there was yet another one in my closet.

Meet Doobi Gefilte.

Lin gave me Doobi Gefilte before she left, so I can start anew, without the baggage linked to Doobi Otso. It was the sweetest farewell gift imaginable, and yet I kept him in the closet too. For god's sake, I'm a man!

I pulled it out for her on one of the first nights she stayed over "I can't fall asleep" she complained, "And I don't have my doobi..." I replied that I have doobi around that might be useful, a realy nice one. I used the Aramaic term "shufra D'shufra" - finest of the fine.

Downtown lover fell madly in love. She realizes it's a gift from my ex, so in a way it can't be embraced by her. It can never be "ours". If we want our own relationship Doobi, we had better go out and purchase one, but damn it! it's a cute bear! Lin made no compromise in picking him out. It's a top notch bear. How can DL not fall in love with it? and was it not a gift? it was too! a gift meant to symbolize renewal. Doobi Gefilte can be loved. or can he be?

What to do? A mad web of Doobious passion and intrigue has formed. In relationships nothing is simple, not even stuffed animals. Nostalgia, love, pain, sexual histories and foam stuffing interwove to form the greatest drama of our time. In the meantime all doobis enjoy their time in the limelight, and doobi gefilte even wore a special red ribbon in its honor.

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.