Pele tlele

You know all those lists “you are in Poland/Oxford/psychiatric hospital if” plus list of weird features, small characteristics of the places that only people who actually have been there know? Well, time to make the same kind of thing about my present country of living, Israel. To much to say about it, I think I will be adding new aspects from time to time. It will depend on my power of observation... diminishing with the time of staying here, 5-year olds with peyot no longer amuse me, and civil dressed 20 year olds with grocery shopping, casually holding an M16 (or however this deathly tool is called) is an everyday view.

First thing to deal with, and a major topic in this society, are the phones. It seems that being in touch is a priority for Israelis, perhaps connected to the idea of Jewish unity developed in Diaspora times, and even before. Maybe they think that, since the country is so small, there is a high chance that they might know half of its population. Strength lies in your friends and family and, of course in the connections you have. As nothing works here according to the rules, it is vital to be friends with as many officials/shopkeepers/music producers/garbage men/... (Fill in with whoever you need to be your friend) as possible. Hence, a phone is people’s 2nd brain. The new right hand, centre of control and life navigation. Imagine walking back from the university, on of the first days of spring, sunrays warm your face, happy after leaving a boring class, with empty mind you relax while taking a slow walk back to the dorms. Almost... for you are surrounded by the sound of moving stock-exchange, Israeli Wall Street composed of students rushing with phones held by the arm next to their ears while taking out a bus ticket from the bag and in the third hand holding a cup of coffee. Others, probably the leaders of the new generation, already spared some money from their student budget and invested in a handless set, so that they may express their temper by waving them while talking. Well, talking is too little of a word to describe the sound actually. A mixture of scream, howling laughter, and screeching expressions of disbelief and/or contempt, for the emotional Israeli people take a strong stand even when it comes to commenting the type of coffee you bought. ‘Mooocha?! But it’s awful, only spoiled American high-school girls drink it, besides with your body I don’t think you should take it anyway’ last line said just before taking a gulp from your cup. So, like your grandmother who cannot belief that the sound she makes to the receiver is passed to the other person, they yell to their phones. Not only to be sure the other person hears, but for the simple reason, that this is the way they speak. The scope of sounds in this country is quite different – when bellowing is the regular volume, and a male conversation crosses the advisable, safe level of decibels, what is considered to be loud?

Anyway, on the way from school, and in the breaks, an improvised call centre emerges, to be continued at home to the late night hours. Consulting homework, cooking recipes, listening about what the dog did to the neighbour’s lemon tree today, contacting old friends from primary school, a boyfriend in the army who is currently purging some villages. Regular topics.

I think it all come from the need to be constantly up to date. A phenomenon that becomes prevalent in the whole of modern world, in which information is power, here is even more salient. So while listening about distant family members, Israelis read headlines from the Haaretz webpage comparing them to those from Jerusalem Post or ynet. In case they had different sources. And in a cafe the first thing to do, is put the phone on the table, has vehalila, that you would not hear someone calling you! Apart from the fact that that would mean you have to call back, i.e. then it would be your money.

A Long Day of a Student - part 2

On the left- a post party destruction. A regular picture. For some, even an everyday condition of the partment.
On the right- a regular evening passtime.

And then, following your hidden hopes, someone chats to you/calls you. Ah how nice, a perfect excuse, after all social connections are the most important thing in life, what would one do without friends, sow e have to keep in touch, update them on our marvellous adventures. Continuing the homework, you become bored and so tired with doing the same thing for the past 3HOURS (of course the time of facebooking/ talking on the phone is included as the proper study time), well it is almost done, so you go out to catch some fresh air, maybe a beer too... surprisingly (also as a fulfilment of some subconscious hope) you meet one of your friends, and they, what a coincidence, are going out today. You accept their kind invitation to join them, leaving all the tiredness in the homework sheet - for later. You have another coffee to cheat your organism about the time of the day and start getting mentally prepared to the upcoming alcohol consumption. Reminding yourself about your last night out, you device a strategy, and border yourself with limits, specifying the level of drunkenness you want/plan to achieve this night.
The moment you start drinking the plan fades away when you combine it with smoking, you see the life so clearly that you stop caring about anything except for fun. All he other options you planned for yourself as an evening entertainment and kept In the back of your mind: starting a project which is due in 2 weeks, reading The Book maybe, writing a long email to your granny have already faded away, sunk in the vodka-orange juice mix or, better (?) arak eshkoli’ot killer drink. Instead of the planned early leaving you get into the taxi at 11pm feeling the city is yours. Shame to discover there is nothing going on, or that your favourite place is closed/kosher for Pesah/there is shira tziburit or a party only for bald men with moustache. You still enjoy your careless night, observing as if through the mist all the ‘normal people’ who are about to go home, tourist with a lost look in their eyes and the same ridiculous yellow baseball caps, religious people on their way back from the synagogue, couples eating ice cream. You yourself belong to the other world, the jungle and absurd of the night life: arsim jumping on the benches with a pig-like laughter, random gypsies asking for tzedaka, rabbi nachman hip-hop dancers... all with the background of the harp-music. Later on, towards the night the city will be taken over by the second world. But in this unique moment they coexist, as if two layers, one (the regular one) unaware of the other (the jungle one). Small shops providing tourist and walkers with water and small snacks or the local inhabitants with the basic food products turn into alcohol watering holes, supplying you with all the necessary ingredients of party mood, including fancy plastic cups. Night people have their own ways... the last stop being some ha-shamen or some other food provider with fat saturated air, and people gleaming with sweat of the frying.
You still feel it on your stomach the next morning when ‘your alarm clock’s sound drills into your brain...’
A perfect cycle.

A Long Day of a Student - part 1

That's why I divided it in two parts.

You get up at.... (fill in an hour it usually happens in your case), or rather, your alarm clock’s sound drills into your brain at the hour you are supposed to get up. It seems the middle of the night, regardless the hour, because your shuttles are down and the whole room is pitch black, so as your mind which tries to recall what the hell you did the day before that you are so tired now. Even if you were not drunk the whole evening seems to be blurred and surreal, some silhouettes of people, nargilla smoke, facebook chat with people who you last seen half a year ago, big plans for the upcoming day. The latter image gets especially distorted.
After the first 2 seconds of confusion you make a though, manly decision to stay in bed and skip the first class. Of course it does not go without justification! A. It is boring b. You can do everything that is being done there faster and better by yourself at home, c. You don’t need to see all these faces again, do you?, d. Sleep is essential if you want to get down to some REAL work today, e. What to wear anyway if all your clothes need laundry.
Later you finally roll out of your bed actually feeling bad about missing this class, for ‘what had happened to me where is all my reason?’ I will tell you, the truth is it has been confiscated at the airport, with it you would not be able to make it here for longer than a week. On the way to the next class, you meet other people who did the same thing, and you all convince one another that is was not worth it coz this class will not help you in your future life, besides you are all here to have fun. So before you get to school your mood is much better and you feel perfectly right when after a class instead of heading straight to the library as you once had planned, you go to the cafe to chat with some people about, as we say in my country, Maryna’s ass, i.e. nothing with a hint of unimportance. Second class actually interests you and you sit there mesmerized, realizing how little you know, and how much you would like to study, you compose lists of books to be read as soon as possible and dream about your revolutionary papers in which you are going to surprise and astonish the world with your original views an unique opinions... You feel so excited take a book or two from the library and feeling refreshed by the early evening wind head back to the dorms with a shiny face grabbing a hot chocolate on the way, for of course, you deserve it after this whole studying day. You sit outside for a while, maybe go to a swing smiling to yourself as an idiot. Than it strikes you that apart from planning to astound the world you have homework to do for tomorrow, and it is just so big and ridiculous that you feel a knot in your stomach and an overpowering feeling of disgust to the whole idea of sitting in front of your computer/at your desk with a dictionary or a grammar book or a set of equations ... but you have to. After throwing out the contents of your bag on to your messy bed and putting The Book on the shelf to become a nightmare of your unfulfilled revolutionary dream, a symbol of an ingenious idea you once had in the moment of brightness, you get down to it. Surprisingly after 4o min you have 1/3 of the thing of quite a decent quality, so of course you deserve a break. Yummy sodium glutaminate with a taste of peas from a cup for future cancer and facebook for future blindness and brain cell reduction.

Philosophy of the place

Let’s start some philosophy with a one clear sentence.
When I say I like this place I don’t mean I like the place itself. The geographically specified piece of land bordered with some longitude and latitude coordinates. I mean the fact of being here. For who really relates to a place when they say they like it? One rather says they like the view, the smell, the flora and fauna – otherwise liking the place is totally unrelated to the place itself. What makes us attached is the atmosphere, the people we meet, the way this combination influences us. If you feel good/optimistic/positive, had a number of great experiences, you connect them to the place the happened in, even though they do not depend on the location. That way, you start liking the place. As if become addicted to it, hoping that this feeling will last and you will always, continuously receive as much from it. That is maybe why some people don’t want to re-visit the cities they spend their best yeas in – why to devastate the memories and the picture we preserve. We just have to remember this one specific thing - that it is not the place itself that generates our good mood. It is a combination – of people we meet, our attitude at the moment, decisions we take, time of the year, our age… all small details that creates the amalgam of good feeling. And it is a unique recipe. Not to be recreated.

13 April

13 April - a date to be remembered. I was, for the first time in my life treated as a business client, as a esteemed customer, co-operator, entrepreneur partner, so officially, with such a respect. But, why by my mother?

Thank you for your e-mail.
I am currently out of the office and return on Tuesday, 14 April 2009. If you need any urgent assistance please call my office on 0208 568 5121.

I need urgent money assistance. To whom shall I submit an application?

See the light

Both movies I watched today were about blindness, not seeing the truth about people about something, living in an illusion only creating the picture of the world around us, the silhouettes of people, inventing them the way we want to see them rather than trying to recognize and appreciate (or not...) who they really are. We see things, not only in the visual sense... we live among them, with them - take them for granted. We need a major change, twist of circumstances to REALLY become conscious of certain facts, feelings, emotions. ‘Blindness’ presented it all in a really straightforward way – loosing sight gives another perspective find new way of perception, add a new meaning to something that we treated as common, forces us to respect things anew. But so we need such an extreme, invasive blow? A cancer in the family, a quarrel with calling names? How to prevent it and just be able to treasure what we have all the time? I am not even sure if it is possible to keep the same level of appreciation for something that accompanies us everyday. Some people call it faith. Looking for a hand of God all around, some are just happy. I think we need breaks from the ordinary – just to notice how unordinary it is.