That time I wanted so badly to feel
A different kind
Of dust on my boots
Red, so fine and dry‐
Do you remember how I
Begged you to come to the desert with me?
To sleep again
Underneath black skies
To feel the chill of earth, so dry
That even in summer, at night, we'd freeze
To wake at first light
To the longing, red hills
To the world: a fresh wound
Yawning, open before us.
The tissue-thin, dried-out, brown, crumpled leaves, still sit–undisturbed, in the grey, stone pot that you left behind, when you moved out.
It's the only thing that, when I moved in, I left in its place, on the floor, by the window.
Unlike the box of your old cookware, that I had to haul to the orange street bin, or the long, folding, banquet table, I carried under my arm, all the way to the Wizo thrift shop.
These things all had stories that took up too much space, and you left them behind, for me to deal with.
But the heavy, grey, volcanic stone pot, was already a ghost; I just think you forgot.
Trust me when I say this: in my fifty-six years, I've moved more times than I can count, and as unromantic as it may sound, we're always leaving our ghosts behind:
An old plant in a corner
we'd forgotten to water
A snow globe given by an
office friend
A shoebox of some
deceased relative's
clippings
All just ghosts from a life,
Ephemeral things.
In this driving, blinding, crushing rain,
There's little to nothing that can be seen,
Beyond the house across the street;
Even the bright, port crane lights are gone.
I dreamt, last year, of a massive flood,
That swallowed the jettys that lie in the Bay
And went on to eat the docks,
The port, Bat Galim, and the Lower City
And as the waves white caps lashed hard
The houses, and cracked their graffiti'd facades,
The concrete block, brick and rock
Walls b'neath gave way, and fell
The kiosks, cafés, Tambours, makolets,
All seemed to sigh, surrender, and sink.
The old Russian men who ran shops in Hadar,
Soviet, and stoic, shrugged and drank tea
The Christian Arabs all fervently prayed,
Masjid minarets played Al Adhan
And as the waters continued to rise
Threatening us, atop Har HaCarmel
News 12 said that "..well, of course,
the new Ark has long already been built,"
Then went on to say, "...but there's only room,
for Bibi, Sarah, and the Haredim".
And while I stood at my kitchen window,
Looking out as my city drowned,
'Twas the raven I envied, who'd refused to return
And not at all, the supplicant dove.
Although the sky is falling, nothing ever seems to stop:
Police sirens wail, the traffic hums, and ships (imperceptibly) "race"
To unload goods at port for us and our impatience
The neighbours across the way
Are fighting yet again;
He'd promised to fix the roof last year and now the floor is wet.
So much commerce, all the time; so much to get done
I try to lose myself, instead in watching my pigeons;
Some huddle 'neath dudei shemesh,
Others bravely stood atop: defy the downpour, and
Autumn chill, to gaze upon their world;
They seem to say, "why miss a moment, of this hungry life? It eats us whole, no matter what, so live! Don't just survive."
The obstreperous white of
Cranes' wings in flight
Strike the battleship-steel-grey sky, and
Slash the seamless, fog-drawn dawn;
A brilliance, bright as
Summer's Sun
All calls to mind, how even now,
In dark'st November,
When torpor pulls
Me back to slumber—
The refuge of dreams,
(When all of mine have
Come undone,)
It's neither time to
Give in, nor give up,
With promises waiting, like
Bulbs 'neath the frost
If only I can just hold on
Through interminable Winter's stark,
As day succeeds night, the Spring will dawn
Only new light can vanquish old dark.
I've kept your mug.
The one with the alligators,
Where each one's different,
But every one,
Has the tail of another one
Clamped in its teeth.
You'd told me once, how
The only time, you'd
Use it, was when,
To you, it felt like
The entire world
Was "nipping at your tail"
And I understood instantly,
How it was a part of you
From outside of mom, and me.
I've often wondered
Where did you get it?
Did you buy it for yourself
Some evening, waiting,
Between trains?
Back in the early Seventies
When you worked for
Barton-Aschman
When we lived in Chicago,
And we only had one car,
So, at night, after work
You'd take the train,
Into Evanston,
Where mom and me
Would come pick you up
Me, in footsie pajamas
Red boots and winter coat
While the impotent wipers
Swept the snow off of the windscreen
Of mom's burgundy Renault?
Or, did you find it one morning,
Left, wrapped, on your desk,
A gift from a co-worker,
Or maybe the whole team
Because they'd actually seen
The monsters that you fought
(Both from without, and from within?)
Did it make you feel seen?
Did you feel understood? God,
I hope that you did.
I hope that at least once,
The world had been more kind to you,
Than it later, had become,
When you lay dying in a bed
That wasn't even yours,
Alone and scared, while
The insurance company threatened.
I've kept your mug.
Once, when I was visiting you
And mom, from New York, you'd
Walked into the kitchen,
Just as I was about to pour my coffee into it
And you told me not to use it,
That it was personal, something special
And you told me why, so that
Maybe I wouldn't feel offended
And I'd understand, how for you
It was sacrosanct; an amulet
For the worst of times.
I kept your mug
Out of all of the objects that
Populated our home with their stories
This is the part of you
I chose to bring with me.
I've used it only once
When I felt trapped by my shortcomings
That was back in New York, just after you'd died.
I kept your mug.
I keep it safely tucked
Towards the back of the cabinet,
Behind all my others,
Deeply loved, even if rarely seen
And I hope that maybe
That's the way, you'd
Told yourself
I felt about you.
My ancient home is
High above the bay
In Fall, I open up
All the windows
Air out the rooms from the
Stale heat of Summer
But none of the doors in my
Apartment latch
And with the windows open
It becomes a wind tunnel
And the wind plays percussion,
And the neighbours complain
But who am I?
And who are they,
To try to dictate when the
Bay wind, can play?
It starts as soft panic, that
Sends me back
To the sweetness of sleep.
When finally, I wake
It's at the insistence
Of my twitching nerves.
The toilet calls
Then coffee, and I'll stand,
Once again at my
Kitchen window, as the
Electric kettle, lit blue,
Bubbles
I'll assess the world,
Note the state of the bay,
And whether the pigeons are around today
Then, coffee made,
I'll adjourn to my chair; maybe
Flip through my phone
Or write a small poem
Anything to ignore the
Insurmountable mess that's
Taken over every
Inch of my home–—
"Just, don't look up- keep
your
Eyes on your phone, or
Something else,
Something
manageable, maybe
Sew another hat
Or write another poem"
While meanwhile, the piles of
Detritus grow
And so does the mould that's destroying my home
And wreaking this hell on my body.
By far, it's not that it's
Actually cold, but
There's an absence of
Warmth in the air
Already, I sense the
Truncated light, that
Turns grey afternoons
Into ink-black-blue nights
Already, again these
Old bones of mine
Have turned into picky,
Dith'ring, crack'd sticks
Who beg me to pull on my father's old coat,
A seasonal surrender,
But I protest! Look,
The sun is still bright as it
Was in July,
And flocks of white sailboats
Still rock on the bay
But closer by
To where I stand
The roof where my friends roost,
Is silent today
No cooing or flapping,
No comforting din
Just empty and quiet
No performance given
And down, below
Where the streetcats yowl
Or laze, in afternoon's
Dust speckled sun
It's deserted too; no
Amity found
There's only the city's
Far-off, lonley hum.
Oh, this precious thing
This old, stained, banged-
Up brass tray, marked with
Permanent footprints from my
Mother's Shabbos candlesticks
And a small, round, nickel-sized
Imperial Russian seal,
That looks like an ancient coin
And captivated me as a girl
This tray that my
Bubbe's bubbe carried
All the way to the New World from Minsk
(Or maybe it was Pinsk?)
This thing, that
Like an archaeologist, I've
Carefully extracted with an exacto-knife
From layers, and layers of bubble wrap
And now hold tight, to my chest,
The wetness on my cheek,
Surprising even me
Hundreds of years
Generations of daughters,
And mothers, and bubbes
Now here with me,
The last of the line
Pressed hard to my heart,
This culmination of dreams
Each year, we would say
"לשנה הבאה בירושלים!"
"Next year, in Jerusalem!"
And even now, it's hard to believe, that
Here I am
And you are now here with me
(Maybe not Jerusalem,
But only a short train ride away)
And though I've not brought forth a
Daughter,
Who will stand one day, like we
A white kerchief on her head, and
Sweet prayers on her lips,
And sadly, I know that this
Tray, and all of our ghosts
Will inevitably end
Up in some junk shop, someday
But for now, at least,
This Friday night
I'll stand in my livingroom
Wooden matches in my hand
(White kerchief on my head
Sweet prayers on my lips)
And you will stand beside me
In this Land of all our dreams,
And finally fulfill
The promise we had made.
Skeletal fingers of
Winters trees,
Accusing the sky,
And bluegrey, side-
Ways slanted light
On felt-cover'd mounds
All painted white
That threat'n to pull me, toward
Hiraeth, to someplace,
Where weary, my
Soul might rest
And dream of warm light,
While here in crass brightness,
I dream only of softness
Of dimmed, blurred lines
And patient stillness,
The kind that I
Have only found
In Deep'st Winter's night.
...and yet
Another haphazardly made wound is healing,
New flesh, knitting to old
Even the stomach
And liver have stopped conspiring
To fill all my hours with bile
And this late October day
And its gently bright, clear skies,
All puff dappled white, and
Temperate air, is too
Much from which to hide
And even my friends, the pigeons,
Have deserted their roof-
Top roost
I imagine, they've all gone out shopping
For more delicate lunchtime repost
Perhaps a few careless crumbs dropped
On the decks of one of the boats
Who look half-asleep on the
Silver faced bay, barely
Bobbing at all as they float
And the poor yellow alley cat,
Who's yowling, hungry, below,
May have to stray, and hunt
Elsewhere today, for his meager, daily prey
The world seems to be in
Accord
Someone must have found a way
After all, this Fall light is
Far too sweet, and
No bird will die today.
Prokofiev's pigeons,
Painted the colours of
Gutter-spilt oil and
Gentle ash,
Pinprick the featureless
Pale cold sky when,
As a flock– they all alight!
A balletic mobile in
Multiple dimensions,
Their bellies, now sparkling
White, like gems, in the
Bay's reflected
October light
Then gently, as if by some
Prearranged contract,
Return, to rest, once again,
On black slab rooftops, or
Tilted solar panels, puffed up,
Crouched low, in the
Cold sideway winds
And patiently wait for the
Next orchestral updraft, so this
Corps de ballet can begin,
Once again.
Part of this overwhelming sense of doom I'm feeling, is that, in his last couple of years of life, after my mom had died, my dad was penniless too. Still, we sold what we could of the treasures my parents had accrued over a lifetime together, hoping to sustain him on a little more comfort, a little bit longer, but most of it– paintings and signed lithographs, Knoll chairs that are still in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and other examples of mid-century modern design was worthless to the capricious monster that is capitalism.
After his middle-of-the-night bathroom falls that left him with a broken hip and a concussion, unable to remain in his home, he was shunted from hospital to hospital, and rehab center to rehab center. Even while on his deathbed, the convalescent center where he was staying called me daily, telling me that, because his insurance had lapsed, they were going to have to "release" him; in other words, kick him out onto the street. While the cancer spread through his crumbling bones, he, and I, prayed that it would finally take him more quickly, only so that he wouldn't have to die homeless. He begged me to help him die, but I was afraid.
Most of you who knew me at the time might recall that in the midst of this terrible time, I suddenly had to leave him and return to New York, because my partner of 19 years, the love of my life, was suddenly dying of a cancer, none of us had even known she'd had, and on 2 November, 2 days before our anniversary, her heart stopped as I held her small, blue hand. Two days later, on our anniversary, I burried her.
That afternoon, on our way back from the cemetery, my phone rang, and it was the facility where my dad was, once again, calling to see if I could cover his expenses, and threatening that if not, they were going to have to evict him that coming Monday.
Thankfully, (I don't even remember how,) I was able to fenegel a few more "stays of execution", and on 27 February, 2023, shortly after his 89th birthday, penniless, and alone, my dad died.
It's almost 3 years later, and I haven't recovered from a single aspect of the serial losses of my mom in 2020, my wife in 2022, my dad in 2023, my family home and most of the belongings within it, and my relationship with the wider world since the horrors of 7.10.
It all adds more than I can even begin to disseminate from the overwhelming, all encompassing sense of overwhelm I already experience as a neurodivergent, navigating the intricacies of my day to day world.
Although never officially diagnosed, (because he was born in 1933,) my dad, like me, was autistic, and had crippling adhd. Like me, he was highly intelligent, an intellectual– boundlessly, passionately curious about the world around him, and unfortunately, completely useless when it came to surviving it.
Throughout my life, we'd had an uneasy, and tumultuous relationship, but I loved him, and I wish more than anything I had understood him better; I wish I'd understood that he wasn't as constantly angry as he often seemed, he was panicked, and afraid, and because I often read his outbursts as mere desire for control, and a terrifying fury at me for not being more readily controllable, my own behaviour towards him was more often than not, cold.
I'm so sorry dad.
Once, at 17, following an unsuccessful suicide attempt, I was hospitalised in the psych unit of Miami Children's Hospital. My parents came to visit, and take me out for a meal, but in the car, we had a fight, and I lashed out at my dad, saying, "I don't want to be anything like you! You're nothing!". He said nothing back, but my mom later told me that after they'd dropped me off back at the hospital, crying, my dad had to pull over to the side of the road, and throw up.
Again, I'm so sorry dad. I wish that I could go back in time and just hug you and tell you how much I really do love you.
I suppose that that's the reality of karma; not only will I never be able to make ammends, but here I am, at 56, and apart from the cancer, (as far as I know, ) the threats that he escaped by dying, are the threats that will now most likely follow me for the remainder of my own life, and for the exact same reason: despite my cruel proclimation that day in the car, as it turns out, I am in fact, exactly like my dad.
I'm beginning to trust that our living loved ones are coming home, and while I'm relieved, I'm finding it impossible to access anything approaching joy, or, for that matter, any kind of emotion at all.
It makes no sense. It isn't because there's some level on which I'm disappointed, or worried, or trepidatious.. I'm none of these things. It doesn't seem to be attached to anything;
I just can't access any feelings at all, eventhough I want to.
I feel like something's deeply wrong with me. I feel alien. If this thing that I.. that WE have been waiting for now for 2 years, standing in bleeding, bare feet on broken glass, wanting with every fibre of our collective soul, if this can't elicit in me jubilation, and some kind of desire to connect and celebrate with my people, there's something deeply wrong with me.
All I feel is tired. Tired to the point of apathy.
But maybe that's not true.
As I've said before, I often write as a form of therapy. It's a conversation I have with myself, and, writing this, I've come to suspect that something I said above is inaccurate: that my apathy can't be attributed to disappointment. I think it actually is.
On some level.. no. On most levels, I feel that at this point, it matters so much less than it should. These poor men who've been held as some kind of horrible reserve bargaining chip, who've been tortured in ways that I don't want to imagine, even after having been released, returning to what's left of their lives, their communities, their families, I can't imagine that they'll ever be able to recapture the vital things that have been stolen from them, including the freedom of joy they may have had before that horrible day and the 734+ days thereafter. I can't trust that there's any way for them to ever feel unfettered hope, or innocence again.
I know that there are those who'll invoke stories of survivors who'd rebuilt their lives after the Shoah, who will remind me that we Jews, we Israelis are a people of resilience, and I don't deny any of that, but at 56, I've been alive long enough to understand that so much of the resilience that's the world celebrates, is more cosmetic than not; the horrors we live through, never really leave us. We may surrender ourselves to performing recovery, rebuilding, "moving on", because we learn just how isolating trauma can be, and that if we ever want to connect with others again, to experience any kind of intimacy, we have no choice but to sublimate those parts of ourselves in order to make others comfortable, but in the end, this performance only serves to isolate us further, and we're left feeling that no one except for our demons will ever truly know us, ever again.
I suppose it's all of this. It's undeniably a good thing, that they're coming "home", but I can't shake the deep awareness of the fact, that "home" will now forever remain only in the painful/sweet realm of nostalgia for them, and in that, I feel that there's really very little to celebrate at all.
If ever I grow
Tired of softness
Dress my corpse in
Calico cloth, and
Plant me, deep 'neath the
Cottonwood tree.
At horizon's soft, smudged edge,
Grey bay fades into sky
No division is visible,
Nor is any necessary.
"Hamayim vehashamayim"
("The Waters, and The Skies")
As in heaven, so on earth
And so, it is prescribed.
In this ramshackled
Tumbledown wreck of a home,
The sun yet shines bright through
Black, brok'n windows
Cracks in the floor, hard won by persistence have
Given way to
Soft carpet of green
High up in one corner, of what
Once was a kitchen
A nest, from which
Boisterous demands are made
And surrendered to, with
Patience and love, while there
Hangs in another,
A hive, hard at work—
An entire civilisation
Buzzing with creation.
In this blight on the neighbourhood,
This blemish of decay, there is
Beauty, still
born, everyday.
"Chaya baseret" the
Chayalet whispered to her
Friend as the two walked
Past, and I thought,
"What an amazing
Nom de plume that would make."
There's something inappropriate in
How life goes on
Just hours after a pigua
A robocall from my kupa
Horns beeping impatiently outside, and
Garbage trucks. I
Can't relate. It feels rude,
This inconsistency
Grotesque to refuse
Solidarity. It should stop
Storytime: about that time when, as a hooker, I came up with the idea for the "Lysistrada Mutual Care Collective Fund".
Yet another set of draconian anti-sex work bills (SESTA and FOSTA,) had just passed. These bills effectively eliminated, or at the very least, greatly hampered our abilities to advertise more safely online, and even worse, they caused the shut down of a website that we had used to check if a potential client had had any reports of violence against a worker in the past, placing us all in even greater danger.
Many of us were having a difficult time adapting to these changes, and the increased dangers in which they'd resulted. I had never been very good at working online, and took these changes as an opportunity to start working on the street, or, "the stroll". At the time, I'd been volunteering for the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Coalition doing street outreach, and I often used my HRC bag and supplies, as a sort of cover, ie, if I was questioned by the cops, I was in the area doing outreach, not working.
During this time, I got to meet workers that either hadn't fit into the more privileged circles of "sugar babies", and "escorts" I'd known, from our "sex workers' pot lucks", (yes, it was a thing, ) or who, like me, had had to adapt, and begin freestyling in hotel bars, or working on the stroll.
I'd organised a biweekly support group for workers, and one night, listening to one woman's story, I had had an idea: "We should organise a group that workers would pay into, whatever we can each afford, sort of like what Workman's Circle used to be, and if a member of the community becomes ill, or is in jail or prison, or gets beaten up, or raped, and can't work, the fund could be there to help them."
Immediately, the idea was popular, and it was decided that in addition, we'd organise child care, clothing swaps, and collect, and distribute harm reduction supplies.
I'll unabashedly admit that it was a wonderful idea, and really, one of the highest points in my life, but unfortunately, as an Autistic, I've always missed out on signs of impending danger, and the buzzards were already circling.
As soon as we'd gotten off the ground, a woman I'd been dating, Lily, approached us, telling us that someone with whom she'd done "doubles", a Dominican woman named "Bambi", who, like her, was a single mother trying to get custody of her child, had been arrested, and was in Ryker's.
The group was abuzz with our first mission! Bambi was going to need around 14,000.00 for lawyer's fees and miscellaneous other costs of survival.
As the group got busy crowdfunding, I began to become suspicious: Lily was acting weird, and parts of her story were inconsistent.
Knowing that whether my suspicions were correct or not, it would be the end of Lily's and my friendship/dating, I informed the rest of the board of my feeling, that we were being scammed.
As it turned out, I was right. "Bambi" had been wholly a product of Lily's manufacture.
What I'd not counted on, was that eventhough I was the one to bring her scam to the group's attention, I would be scapegoated, and blamed for having brought her in, in the first place, and I was ousted.
It later, it came to my attention that a worker who lives in Toronto, who was a rabid antisemite, (and with whom Lily had had an affair,) had been hard at work spreading rumours about me in the community, and when a friend of mine raised the fact that my ousting had been done in a particularly cruel and unfair way, (there was a lot of overlap between the sex work and Queer communities, and when I'd been ousted from Lysistrada, I also lost most of my access in the Queer community,) she was told, "well, that zio bitch is problematic, anyway, fuck her".
I tried to kill myself with a Xanax overdose. I'd started feeling like shit all the time, physically months before, and had recently been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, and, having survived my latest attempt, I went to bed, and didn't get up for 16 months.
To the best of my knowledge, Lysistrada still exists, and does some vitally important work, but from what I understand, I've been written out of the organisation's story.
We are haunted women.
We carry our dead mothers' backs
fatted slabs strapped
slapdash, stapled, or
Pinned to our own. Only mine
I have chosen to surgically graft;
it could never have been
any other way.
Brown.. Brown..
Settle down, lest you drown, or
Run aground
A moment's whiff
Might find you nude
But not for lacking
Any good. Brown?
Brown, settle down, or
I can see you
run aground
But as you gaze
Out past the mound
Enjoin the crowd,
"Come!" Bid them, "bow"
Brown.. Hey, Brown,
Look around
Your walls have all but
Fallen down.
My Golden Pothos strives so hard, to
Grace the sun-dappled Persian rug
With elegant tendrils, she senses her world,
Exploring beyond her small side-table
It's almost as if she'd no idea, that
Once her soft leaves reach the floor
I'll cut them off
Replant them anew
Maybe in another room
Beneath another warm, bright window
Where the process will begin again
This is how it has always been
Having been born, was the primary sin.
I think I'm dying, and
Not in the way that we all are
But maybe
Exactly in the same way that we
All Are.
I think I'm dying, and
I can't explain, but it's a
Sense of the end of things, and it's quiet,
But nudge-y
I think I'm dying
And, the
Air outside is dense and
Hot, and almost orange like gaseous lava,
And from my window today, I can
Barely even make out the Krayot across the Bay
I think I'm dying
But right now, ice is
Noisily cracking in a sweating glass beside me, and my
Cold coffee is just, *chef's kiss*
And as of yesterday, my
Nails are all painted "Cherry-Pop Red", (both hands and feet!)
I think I'm dying
But this morning I got a
Text, that some package from Temu is
Awaiting my pick-up at Hop Li, and
On my livingroom wall,
The sun, through my partially shuddered window has drawn a
Perfect rendering of the tree outside,
Where the fruit bats hang, and besides,
Just yesterday, in Shufersal,
I finally bought a new bag of a
Shabbat candles– a hundred of them
They only last 4 hours, but
Who'm I trying to kid?
These days I've unfailingly
Eaten, and am in bed, long before
They'll burn themselves out.
I think
I'm dying, but maybe
I still have some surprises left to look forward to, and
Even if this annoying sense is right, and
I am dying,
My plants still all need watering
This summer's heat has been
Hard on them, too.
All these things that were
Left behind
My mother-in-law's wedding ring,
(a strange, egg-shaped silver thing)
My Dad's watches, and
The fat black fountain pen that always leaked
The Beatles records
For whom at least one,
They'd stood on line
On a Winter, Pittsburgh sidewalk
Waiting to buy
(my Mom's fat belly
Protruding from her coat
already with me
And this poem inside)
Books whose spines had been
Silent friends
Eventhough their stories, re-
mained obscured
Oil paintings, and sketches
And a brick-red bust
From my Mom's
and/or Dad's university friends
These things, too carelessly, swept aside
Breadcrumbs that I've
Left behind, can
Never again
Lead me back
And there is no "back"
And at any rate
were all too sweet
for the birds to resist
Or the transatlantic winds
To allow to persist.
The grey Bay stalks the
Ir HaTachtit
Clandestine, in threadbare
Slippers, she creeps
The vigilant pigeons–
Our sentinals, all sleep
As the waters invade
And the city sinks.
The pigeons that pepper the
Flat, white roof
Outside my open kitchen window,
Are lying down in the
Afternoon sun. Perplexed,
And maybe, a little concerned,
Seek out the oracle,
To see what she knows:
"Hey Google," I say, "what does it mean
When an entire flock of pigeons
Lie down in the afternoon sun?"
But disappointingly,
There's no great mystery,
Sometimes pigeons just lie down
And there is no storm
Coming in from the West,
Nor will the Ayatollah, or the Houtis
Disturb our Shabbat.
At least not as far as these birds are concerned
The pigeons are simply lying down;
But here's the thing: when
You live in a world, where
Fate turns quickly, through both
Nature, and man, something as simple
As pigeons loafing on rooftops
Might seem like a sign
If you believe in that sort of thing.
I'd loved you even
Before we had met,
Outside my dreams, and so,
I go seeking,
Furiously scratching in
All your corners
Turning over old
Piles of dust, and
Sifting through them,
For flecks of the stuff
I'd known so well, as
What made up
The bricks of the cities
My mother had built,
Even before I
Was part of her dreams.
Aba,
Those sepia days you spent
Running, scraped knees
A "vilde chaya" on the streets
Of Squirrel Hill, I keep,
In an old, brown, velvet pouch
Tucked safe Into the space behind my eyes.
It's been there all these years, while so much
Else has been left behind: a kind
Of portable familiarity that
You once gave me.
But Aba,
I want you to know, that
I have finally found my own
A million miles and a
Thousand years from that
Butterscotch amber hued world that you’d
Once laid across my shoulders,
(I danced around in it, showing it off
Like a showgirl, given a
New fox stole.)
I think if you were here, you would
Say I'm weird,
But I swear, there are moments,
I can recall your childhood
More clearly than my own, and
I can't help but wonder: what, if anything
Does it say, that
So much of who I am
Was built of these bricks that
You had laid?
There's a pull to this hole
A gravitational pull,
As strong as any
Massive collapsed star.
It works like this: I want to write
I NEED to write, but
To get to the place where I
Need to be, demands of me
A certain mind
A certain, funny kind of mood,
That can digest all the best of my world
Stripping off parts,
("Spaghettified", they call it,) until
I'm stretched so thin you
Might not even recognise me.
But ironically enough, it's
Only then, when I'm stretched out thin
A streak of dust, that the
Flecks of gold
Laid bare, their conceit
Can reflect the light
And how brilliant they shine.
I loved New York.
I loved it in the kind of way that one loves a best friend who's always been there, and who conceivably always will be. I loved the familiarity of everything, how this city that to those who don't live there must feel a bit like a beautiful but unpredictable beast, but to me, each block driving up Third Avenue felt as familiar as my own living room.
I loved New York, but I needed to unstick myself from the trajectory I was on.
I felt as if I was on that carnival ride, I think it's called the "Log Flume", where, you sit in a hollowed-out log, and instead of wheels on a track, you float through a trough that's filled with water, and it splashes you as you go.
My life up until I left, had begun to feel every bit like this ride, except that at the end, rather than the de-boarding platform where other, hot, impatient carnival goers were lined up waiting to ride, there was a sawmill, and I was moving closer and closer to that spinning blade everyday.
I love New York, and in my mind, I can see so many intimate details from my life, from each trodden-on gum stain and sidewalk crack through which I'd pass on my way to the Whole Foods on the corner at E 88th & 3rd, (that had taken over the commercial space that had been vacated by:
1. a small health food store,
2. a dialysis clinic, and
3. an after school tutoring business,)
or the Café d'Alsace on Second that had moved from the beautiful beaux artes building where I'd sit and watch the foot traffic while I drank my bowls of café au lait, (that has tragically, since been demolished,) to the spot, two storefronts up, where Elaine's used to be. I know which bushes in the church yard on E 88th between Second & First bear the most gorgeous flowers, and by instinct, on what day after Winter (or in a few cases, in the midst thereof,) that they'd come to life.
I know intimately, the aisles of the Fairway to which I'd go, all the way downtown, just for their Israeli food and gluten-free sections. I know the rows and corners of its produce section and exactly the spot to find fresh, fragrant, feathery bunches of dill, all slightly damp, and wrapped at their stems in a taupe rubber band.
I love New York, but when I see the same things every day, year after year year after year, I begin to think the same kinds of thoughts every day, year after year, and I look for ways to burst free of that cycle; sometimes, the only one that felt accessible to me was death.
I love New York, but I wasn't ready to die, so I left, to see new things, trip on different sidewalk cracks, learn new supermarkets and love different flowers, and to think different thoughts. To write different poems and stories and confessional essays.
Once, many, many years ago, while standing on 14th St, at Union Square South, I wrote a poem about the Zen maxim that says, "a man cannot step into the same river twice, for rivers flow, and so it's never truly the same river, and men change, think new thoughts, have new impressions; cells die and new cells are born, so even from moment to moment, a man is not the same man."
The poem was far shorter, and more importantly, distilled than this description of it, or the explanation I just gave, but then, it was a poem, and I mention it because, I love New York, and I miss her in ways that I'll never get over, regardless of what I tell you as I shrug my shoulders, cock my head and raise my eyebrows in that stoic gesture that says, "whadayagonnado?"
I love New York, but I'd begun to write the same poems over and over again, and to try to wet my feet in the same water from which they'd originally sprung.
I love New York, but I had gotten from her, all that I knew how.
I love New York, but it was time to leave.
It was time to leave, and so, I left, but also, I'm no longer young, and so, I returned to a river I'd also greatly loved, and as it turns out, the maxim holds true: it's not the same river, and I am most certainly not the same woman.
For Dahliah Ravikovitch
Dahliush
I call you this even
Though when we met
You were already gone, so
Now, we nestle
Beween the pages of a book
That was stolen from a
Public library in Texas,
That I'd bought for twenty sheqels
On Agripas Street.
"How ever did you end up in
Texas" I ask, pillow talk.
But you wrinkle your nose
At me, and say nothing
And I say, "You know,
I too once owned a dress of fire,
My parents made me wear it,
Year after year, until the
White crinoline had
Melted to my legs."
You look at me,
Amused, but sad, and say
"What do you mean, 'you too',
Don't you recall, that
In the end, it was
Not my dress at all,
It was only me that burned,"
And I roll away
And you touch my back.
The scars on my back.
"I want to find a
New pair of comfy sandals
That don't look like 'old lady' shoes."
"I want to get into hiking."
"I want to finally organise my living room."
"I want to...
I want...
...
I want a new distraction from the futile, and terminal nature of existence.
I want to feel pleasure
And joy in
Laughing at this absurdity.
Remember:
Godot never shows.
It just is what it is.
I dreamt that the stone had taken
root in my pocket:
roots like pointed fingers,
penetrating my hip
and following the path
of least resistance,
new fruit burst forth from my
flowering mouth.
The apricot that I ate this morning in the mamad,
which I'd accepted, half-awake, from the grey plastic bowl that
Dvora had set before us–
A small, sweet, refreshment
between the booms, is
also a poem:
Upon consuming its
sugary flesh in three bites, and
at a loss for what to
do with its stone,
I tucked it, safely
into the pocket of my housedress.
Here is a piece of
Sage advice: when you
Live in a warzone
There's no such thing
As a leisurely shit.
(It's ok to laugh!
Real life is always ignominious and absurd!)
Instead, you wait
Until it's ready to come out
(Or you don't, depending
Upon the time of day,
And when, you've learned that the
Missiles usually come)
You thank god that some genius
Invented bidets
And you do not sit, and write
Poems on your phone,
Or let your mind wander as you
Doom-scroll Instagram, because
Exhausted as you may be, from
Four sleepless nights in a row
At any second your
Phone might wake up,
With another red alert
And while death from a
Ten-tonne ballistic might feel far
Too overwhelming, and ridiculous to be real
Dying while on the toilet, is
A concept of which,
Ironically, you can all too easily conceive.
White nights
Of red alerts
Necessitate strong black coffee
And cheap cigarettes
(Even if it's years, since the
Last time you smoked.)
This is no time for slow
Sidewalk cappuccinos
Or thinking of your health, or the
State of your manicure,
Instead, catch naps, or sleep in 'til two
Eat cheese or a pint of Ben & Jerry's for dinner
And take pleasure where you can
Have sex, even if
Only with yourself
And only so long as
You can throw on a robe
And get down to the shelter
In a minute or less.
After yet another White Night
Of Red Alerts,
This
Blinding yellow morning
At least this time
In Dvora's mamad,
Avi, a gentle soul
Who's let his daughter (21) paint
Blue irises on his arm,
has brought Whiskey
And two golden painted tea glasses
Only two
I've a feeling he didn't
Know that I-
Dvora's neighbour,
Would be here.
To you, who are so upright,
Concerned with justice and equality;
I would like to ask:
What is it like
To live your days in sun and peace without shadows
To dip your toes in my world at will
Because you were bored
Or maybe because you needed to prove how worldly you were,
Or worse
You needed a dopamine hit
And my pain,
And their pain
Is such a delicious vein, that you
Could signal your virtue to the ends of the earth?
What is it like
Never to have to think of things like
Wherever you are,
Where the closest bomb shelter can be found, and
How many seconds you'll have to get there
And to know, by some internal mechanism exactly what 15 seconds feels like
Or worse, how you'll shield your young children's bodies with your own, as you
Throw yourselves down on the ground, under a dangerous sky when you
Find yourselves caught between your children's gan, and home when the azaka sounds? And
What is it like
To never have to think about
Mothers, burying their sons, or daughters
Or children burying their fathers, or mothers
(Or both)
Except, of course, in the most hypothetical terms as you tighten your lips
Click your tongue and think "How awful"?
Or to look in the mirror, and decide "it's time for a trim", so you
Call up your hairdresser
(The one that you've gone to since your early twenties,)
To make an appointment only to learn
She was killed
Last week
When she was caught outside,
Between her children's school, and home when there was a red alert.
And as it turns out,
Did save them from the worst,
But couldn't protect her soft body, or her head from falling shrapnel?
And as you shout at us in the
Streets of Europe or America, calling us
"Baby killers", screaming about "genocide"
We know: you're transparent as glass.
All your concerns, for
Justice, and equality, are symbols for a status that you could never possess.
When, in the path of a glacier, you built your town
You must have thought
You'd had 10,000 years
But 10,000 years comes before you know it
And anyways, things happen
To speed the course of events
(You couldn't have forseen, for instance,
Climate change, at the time)
I hope you understand
This isn't an admonishment
I have built my life
In much the same way.
You asked me
To wait for you
In my smooth, modal dress
The one, you'd always said, just shyly seemed to note the valleys of my body–
The dips above my hips
The curve of my lower back
You asked
That I wait for you
In our golden chair
Which made its way to me
All the way across an ocean
And a sea
All the while, the
Soft scarlet throw sent to us by my mother, still miraculously
Crumpled upon its seat
You want to know
If I'll wait for you, now,
As the evening sun falls- surrendered to the blackening hills of the Galil
And I will
I will wait,
Red lines, now drawn
Down the delicate pale of each arm.
So, I'm standing in the tortilla section at Shufersal, looking a little lost when a woman approaches, and asks, "&/'@&] tortillas?"
I take out one earbud, (ironically at the moment Joe Strummer is singing "I'm lost in the supermarket, I can no longer shop happily",) look at her and respond,
אאאם, סליחה, אני מחפשת טורטיות ללא גלוטן
She looks at me as if I've just asked her where I might find special vibrators for ducks, so I shake my head and explain,
"אאם, לא שמעתי מה אמרת, הקשבתי למוזיקה".
She nods, still looking at me as if I'm not someone she'd necessarily trust around innocent waterfowl, and repeats,
"?יש לך ויזה שלנו"
I respond,
".לא, ולא רוצה, תודה"
and quickly stick Joe back in my ear.
Finally done with my shopping, I make my way to the self-checkout. By now, my tracklist has switched to "Sandanista!" and Mick Jones is singing "Somebody got murdered", a little too cheerfully, I think.
I finish bagging my groceries, and am regretting having bought the 4-pack of 1.5 litre bottles of Schweppes on a day when I didn't bring my עגלה, when the woman who oversees the self check-out bay comes over to me, holding a pen. I figure she wants to check my receipt, so I hand it to her, but she doesn't take it.
I take out an earbud, looking at her quizzically.
"?יש לך ויזה שלנו"
she asks.
".לא, ואני לא רוצה"
I respond, demonstrably annoyed, struggling with my heavy shopping bags.
She steps in front of me, and in Russian accented Hebrew says,
"?למה את לא רוצה"
"!סתם, ככה, אוקיי? אני לא רוצה"
I respond, and replace my earbud, before struggling towards the escalator like an aardvark, trying to do the job of two packmules who are out sick with mono.
Later that evening, I'm sound asleep, when I suddenly wake in a cold sweat. It's pitch dark in my room, and I reach out a probing hand, looking for my phone.
Squinting, I see that it's 03:43. I sigh in exasperration, and allow the hand holding my phone to drop back onto the bed, but in the midst of its arc, there in its blue light, I see something that instantly terrifies me; peering at me, out of the dark, is a face.
Panicked, I turn on my lamp, and as soon as I do, I see that there is not just one, but at least 16 older Russian women standing around my bed. They're all wearing Shufersal uniforms, and holding clipboards, and in a perfectly timed, heavily Russian-accented chorus, they speak as one:
"?יש לך ויזה שלנו"
That's when I blacked out.
My lover comes
Uninvited
Unannounced, and
Always for an indeterminate stay
And I– good hostess that I am,
(Or hungry, if the truth be told)
Put fresh linens on the bed
Caress her face
Search her eyes for the stories that she won't tell
I tell her how she's the
Only one who truly knows me,
Ask her if she's planning to stay this time
Swear eagerly, promises I don't yet want to keep
Just to know the body that lies with mine
This familiarity,
A little longer
But as usual, she says
"That's up to you."
We both know this script by now.
I bury myself in sad poems
Sleep too much
In days
(Or weeks, or maybe even hours,)
Again, we'll go our separate ways, and still,
I fall asleep in her arms,
My head on her breasts
This heart that I've known as long as my own
Throbs, strong against my cheek
And when I wake, she's already gone.
I take my morning pills.
Make my strong black coffee.
I know as well as she, that
The day will come
Neither of us knows when
When I'll invite her to stay
And I'll mean it,
but until then
I've so much to do.
So much to do.
What then
To be when you easily see through the mask of this world
That purpose is a scam
Fulfillment, an empty promise to keep you hard at work?
What then
When you've examined it all and found
The columns just don't add up
They can't
(Their values were lies all along)
And what then
When you've reduced your old life to a
Pile of soft ash on a yellow sheet what then?
What then, when old demons return with warm arms to embrace you
Now that you realise they were
Friends all along
What then?
What then.
Do you know what it's like to be
in love with
a place and its people?
And I don't mean any mundane,
Ordinary kind of love, but
The kind for which you'd willingly lie down your life
At any given moment
Or perhaps, even more bravely,
Persist in enduring it, despite all the pain.
I mean
the kind of love where you can't bear to be away
Even for a month
And when life makes such demands
Even if only for two weeks,
You spend every moment in
Longing, dream every night
And each day of returning.
Despite all the ways
In which she breaks your heart,
And sometimes your back,
Or even your soul.
And while the world,
Those who've
Never belonged to a place
Who've no idea how to belong
(Only to subdue)
Bay cruelly from all outside corners
Taunt you and mock your pain
You know something that they don't:
You could never be torn from this place
Because you are this place
And she is you.
I don't know if it's a cruelty that only once we reach the second half (third third?) of our lives do we learn how precious and special it is to be alive. I don't know if it's a cruelty, because there is so little left to enjoy, or if this is a necessary requirement for this appreciation to spring forth. I know that there's no way to convince the young of this truth, (is that the cruelty?) and that it's something all who experience it must arrive at of their own volition.
This week while cleaning, I found my "suicide stash", the bag of narcotics I'd horded, and had once upon a time intended to ingest, ending my bodily experience of this world.
Rather than secreting it into one of the boxes that are even now heading towards my new home, I discarded it. There wasn't even a sniff of hesitancy.
While a time may yet come where impossible circumstances rear their head once again, forcing me to consider my options for a peaceful exit, at the moment I'm coasting on the fact that rather than give in last time, I chose to be brave and do the scariest thing I've ever done. If I did it once, I believe I can do it again.
As I said, life is precious.
For fuck's sake, live.
As I prepare to leave this apartment again, (now, for the last time,) a stone sits heavily in my throat. This entire time that I've been here, that stone has been with me, but I've done everything within my power to distract myself from it, to ignore it lest it cause me to stumble in my tracks, but I'm afraid that today, as I close that heavy, grey door behind myself for the last time, it will grow out of all control and break me apart.
I'm thinking right now about that meme I posted, twice I think, that warned- "when you leave a place, leave in the fastest way possible". I'm paraphrasing of course, and I can't even remember who it was that had said it, but it was deeply cathartic and seminal at the time, and at the moment I appreciate the sentiment more than I can express.
I won't miss this stale, suffocating place. What I'll miss is the life I once had here, and it's easy- through the cataract of nostalgia, to mistake one for the other, and already, although my brain is resolved, my heart is a little confused.
Inevitably, I'll invent regrets because that's what I, gluttonous emotional masochist that I am, do; I'll invent them and torture myself by blowing them out of all proportion, because what I truly miss is something that can't be recaptured- that sense of safety, and warmth, and completeness that I had with Carrie. I'll pepper myself with these unjust regrets because regret suggests control surrendered, and control surrendered can theoretically be recaptured, but this is a lie. The past is gone. Nostalgia is- not only blind, but treacherous and misguided.
My new life- my new imperfect, insecure, exciting, warm, wanting, fulfilling, beautiful life, is waiting for me, and all of it is on the other side of this apartment's door.
The first time I landed in Israel, I dropped off my enormous duffel bag out of which I'd live for the next 14 months or so at the moshav, changed into fresh clothes, and "tremped" my way out to the main road where I could catch a bus to Tel Aviv.
As we left the more rural areas of agricultural fields and got closer to the city, I began to see more and more signs in Hebrew.
Maybe it was the exhaustion, (I hadn't slept in over 24 hours,) but I began to sob. For the first time in my life, I was home, and I was in love.
This last April when I returned after all these years, I didn't cry. I didn't really have any powerful reaction at all. In fact, everything felt completely "normal" to me; I never encountered that blissful shock to the system that had once felt like the liberation of shedding old skin.
It's late December, and that moment still hasn't come. Everything is still just normal, almost boringly so. And yet, as I sit outside on a grey, blustery, Haifa winter day, my face gently lashed by the harbour rain, I can't help but feel that this... THIS, is incredibly special: this normalcy that I can almost take for granted. In fact, I've never felt this normal before.
In the centre of Haifa, on Horev Street, there's an old, abandoned Bauhaus building. I think it's a house, or at least it was at some point. It lives on a hill above, and removed from the street behind the privacy of a rough stone wall.
She looks like she's silently witnessed a hundred-million moments, notable, mundane, and everything in between.
There's something I need you to understand, since you've never been here before: on these dark, cool nights, especially the nights of the new or old moon, the softest black, velvet blanket lies over the city- freezing us all in this timeless space. If you find yourself here in these special moments, you might notice how we, (I'm including you in this,) become ghosts, maybe even haunting our own lives from a separated dimension.
I love to walk these dream streets, to hear the baying jackals and the rustling leaves‐ magic that even the occasional ambulance siren or revving scooter can't diminish.
I want to tell you why I've brought you here, to this spot, to stand on this sidewalk with me beside the busy boulevard, and stare at this house. Really, I want to tell you a secret; are you listening? This house terrifies me, but not for the reasons you might think.
I'm terrified, because I want to go inside. I want to go inside and become part of its story, the soul that looks out from its black windows, but really, this too is not what scares me. What does scare me, is that if I get inside, I might discover that I feel nothing, that it's simply another old, soulless shell. I'm afraid of losing the gorgeous possibilities, the stories I've told myself in one awful, banal, wonderless moment.
Perhaps it's better to linger outside, to press my fingertips on the rough, stone wall. To continue to love her from this sidewalk by the noisy boulevard.
And when I die
They may say that I just
Never amounted to much:
I never sought fame,
Or won some big game, or
Caused new blooms to bud,
But I have saved lives as anonymous as my own,
And I have leapt– blind
Into frontiers unknown.
I have loved, and I have lost
And I've learned when to forgive,
But most important of all
Whether noticed by others or not
Not once have I ever forgotten to live.
Uch.
The sink is full of dishes again and I have no energy to deal with them.
It's not emotional this time,
Stam,
I have no energy.
I could really sleep all day if only
I didn't need to get to the Misrad Hapanim
And my manicure is chipped
(Only 5 days in! Can you believe it?)
And I've run out of food, and
I'm sick of all the offerings on Wolt.
I push down the switch on the electric kettle
Pour the coarse brown granules of instant
Directly from their jar into a tall glass
"too much", I think, and pour even more.
Outside, the bright cold light is still
As it lies across the silver surface of the sea
And if I crane my neck, I can see the white, snow covered top of Har Hermon.
The Haifa sky is roaring tonight, except
Neither rockets, nor jets, but the
Most delicious storm is rolling through.
My eyes burn a bit and I want to sleep, but I'm
Loathe to miss even a single crack or
Lash of rain against my window.
No matter what, it's always been too long.
In NY, maybe once every few years we'd get a windowpane shaker, but even those were
Nothing compared to those daily storms that
Marked my Florida summer youth.
Age twelve, I'd run,
Ill advised out to soggy golf course across the street
To twirl in the drops,
catch
As many as I could in my curls
My dad used to say I was a duck.
(He wasn't half wrong. )
But now I'm being silly
Drowning in nostalgia when right now
Right here —
The cracks and lashes already decrease in frequency.
Oh, now, regrets:
Already, it all sounds so much further away.
How many breaks can a bowl endure?
Even if beautifully repaired each time
With lines of gold
An elegant map of its traumas,
With each new fall,
And more lines added
How long before it
All breaks down?
A memorial cast in gold exists only for others to appreciate.
Already, I am a ghost amidst the ruins.
No one who even would have cared I'd ever lived remains.
My memories, sensations, passions, dreams,
Words –
All turned to ash
Already blown away.
On the edge of a drowsy afternoon nap
Rumbles– made softer by distance and water
And were this not August, in Northern Israel
They might even be thunder
(indistinguishable but for context)
I close my eyes, and drift off into them
Something like the sea: something
Bigger than me.
Not ten seconds
Past ten minutes
After the last audible blast,
Already, outside
Trucks beep as they reverse
Wolt scooters rev to life
(At first, I swear, they sound almost like azakot)
Horns blare, and
Impatient workers shout over the din
As if nothing of potential great consequence had just happened
As if all of this was completely normal-
Our fragile lives, dependent
Upon a technology that
Still feels like a miracle
And although I, a sceptic,
Do not believe in miracles,
Here I am, now
Showered and dressed
Legs tucked beneath me, hot
Coffee on the couch
And from my window
The bay looks particularly blue today
Stark Mediterranean contrast to the
White roofs that lay like low tables between us
And the red and white
Candystriped arms of the bay port cranes
Turn the world from my window into
"le Tricolore"
I pour a second cup from my Moka pot
And turn up The Beatles
To dance with myself
The small, white puffs
That had punctuated the sky
Have already dissipated
No longer distinguishable from
Ordinary clouds.
Inbar Frishman
Friday, 27 September, 2024
09:23hr, Haifa
Up here, on Carmel
Above Haifa Bay
The early Fall wind is a
Loud, yowling banshee
Poking long fingers through cracks
And cracked windows
Below in the street
And under the cars
Heat cats
Join in on her chorus
(Out of sync)
But Boisterous as Berlioz'
"L'imperiale" !
Just now, I ran to do my
Sink full of dishes
It's been building, and
Haunting me, this task,
For days, but
Having heard Al Adha through my bathroom's open window,
I thought, "Maybe a break in the uncertainty
Before the alarms might
Abruptly wail again
And I'd have to abandon my task, and run
To the place where I've done so much waiting of late."
But also,
It's a noisy task-
Doing the dishes.
Apart from the sound of the running water, there's the
Claques and din of wet dishes colliding
I've been afraid, you see, I'd thought
I might miss the alarms- they're not
Always that audible, but
Emboldened by the
Thought– "they'll be busy praying"
I set out to conquer my
Own Mt Everest.
Whoever would have thought that
Doing the dishes
Would become a task I looked forward to?
I've just woken up after far too little, poor quality sleep, to reports of the suicide of another Nova survivor, and already, the day has its cold, clawed hand wrapped around my thoracic spine.
I can't believe it's been almost a year.
In 40 days, it will be a year.
A year of our burnt, crushed and crumbling innards struggling to keep us alive, while the world mocked us.
A year of waiting for the pain to lessen– even only a little bit.
A year where our souls have transformed into something we'd never thought we'd own in these generations,
And now, another family's first year has been reset to zero, where it all begins again.
And I can't keep up with the dishes in the sink.
And the scrubby sponge I replaced just last week already smells sour.
And I–
I have to shower, get dressed and do my makeup so I can get to the lawyer's office,
but the gravity of the day
Is nothing compared to that of the void.
I swim furiously against it, in the
Non-substance of hypoxic air.
I need to feel something nice today. For a while now, I've been staying in bed, not because I'm physically unable to function (at the moment,) but because I've been deep in trauma response and depression. This is a bad way for me to be, because if I don't interrupt it, inevitably, I'll spiral into inertia to the point where that familiar little voice begins chattering away in my ears, telling me that the only way out of this rut is to die, and that's really not what I want. I'm not ready.
It's like an addiction, suicidality; it's the soft, warm, comforting place to which I invariably disappear in the face of overwhelming helplessness. It's the only place wherein I feel I have agency, when existence is too painful, or even simply too much.
It's a constant, patient, unjealous lover who courts me with promises of certainty and commitment, where otherwise, none can be found.
I'm not ready though. I've other loves to explore, and I know beyond the shadow of a doubt, that when I am, she'll be there, close enough for me to surreptitiously reach out behind me- even with just my fingertips, and ever attentive, she'll take my signal, then she'll take my hand and gently say "come my love, let's go home".
I desperately need someone to invade my life,
Stuffing rolled up bundles of
Boisterous beauty in all its corners
To hide them in crevices I might not see for years,
In backs of shelves,
Behind boxes and stacks of papers
And stuffed into the toes
Of old shoes and boots
Small, soft gifts to discover in
Moments such as this
When hungry,
I hunt on hands and knees
Candle and feather,
(even for crumbs)
But all that I find in these
Strange, dusty corners,
For what it's worth
Someone else's ghosts
An insincere, and
Badly rendered copy of
That which I'm missing.
It's hard to turn a house into a home when you're alone.
There's no shared memories
Stacked haphazzardly in corners,
Nothing to soften the sharp echos of
Bare foot slap on hard tiles
I make my dinner at my kitchen counter,
Alone
Cut small tomatoes into plastic bowl
Add in
Olive oil and garlic,
Then pasta and toss with
Pepper and cheese
I light the shabbat candles for the first time in my new apartment
But the light here isn't golden and warm
There's a blue cast to it that
Haifa's lights outside my dark window mirror- cold diamonds tossed across a
Black, velvet valley that swallows light
And there's none of the mess from our shared life here
These walls seem extra bare, and that and the high ceilings sharply contrast with the
Warm, jewel-tone painted walls of our New York City apartment.
Carrie
I'm so afraid that in the move, I might have
Left your ghost behind.
I imagine you
Sitting alone in our disheveled nest
Amidst too many books and too much unopened mail crowding every surface.
Google tells me that that mess is 5731 miles away,
But that's probably from JFK to Ben Gurion
And after all
The Upper East Side isn't Queens
And Haifa isn't Lod
So it's probably even further when you consider
I wonder if maybe you might still find me in the placelessness of dreams–
(I wish you would)
And when you do, will you
Please hold onto the back of my skirt's waistband
The way you used to
(Teasingly, I thought)
when you didn't want me to leave the house
You see,
I know myself
How easily I can be
Hypnotised by those
Cold, Blue lights
And how, forgetting my step
Fall headlong
Into that
Bottomless, black velvet valley that swallows light.
I'm having a bad CFS day, symptoms wise. It's after 4:00 here in Israel, and I haven't yet been able to get out of bed, or even to sit up.
I had so many dreams about Carrie: that I'd picked her up from work on the bus, but we were on a strange bus together that was taking us further and further away from home.
At some point, I had to get off the bus, and go back to our apartment, while she continued on.
When I got there, the hallways of the building were clogged with the remnants of disassembled boxes. I made it into our apartment, and began the painful task of selecting, and packing up our books, knowing that I had to leave this place too.
I really miss her right now. It's a physical ache. I would give my right arm to be able to hug her again. To press my face into her neck and inhale her.
These are moments I don't know how I've managed to survive her death, or how I can continue to do so, eventhough I know that that's exactly what I have to do.
Baby steps on tender, cut-up feet that refuse to heal.
A minor international incident occurred today in Rami Levy: I'm in the chumos section, when all of a sudden, the siren: red alert!
A guy and I make eye contact, as I ask, "?יש פה מיקלט" ("is there a shelter nearby?")
A woman in a hijab abandons her cart and runs; another woman in a mesh top with tattoos does not abandon her cart, but also runs.
The man with whom I'd made eye contact, calmly walks over to my cart, as I too am considering abandoning it and running– SOMEWHERE, and I figure, he probably knows I'm about to split and he just wants to take my watermelon, (because it's a really perfect watermelon, practically worth taking your chances in a Chizbullah missile attack,) but no: he picks up my backpack, which I'd placed in the cart, opens the top pocket, and pulls out the culprit: my phone.
The red alert was in Majdal Shams.
He smirks, as I melt into the floor tiles.
So, last night, while Iran was sending us suicide drones and ballistic missiles, I was hiding out next to our bomb shelter, with one of the sweetest guys I've ever met, Samir Khoury.
Yes, Samir is an Arab.
Yes, I am a Jew.
No, it wasn't awkward, or weird, or tense. Samir did everything in his power to distract me from what was going on, (not that I was particularly freaked out, but Samir is a good host.)
He made us good Arabic coffee, and gave me his penultimate cigarette, which refused to stay lit for some reason, so I kept asking for his lighter.
"Stop asking," he said, "you aren't a guest, just say 'give me fire'", so I did.
When it was time for the "all clear" around 4 this morning, I began picking up the glass cups, with their layers of mud in the bottom, to wash.
"What are you doing? You don't have to wash them, just leave them, I'll take care of them" he said.
"Hey, " I answered, "stop treating me like a guest."
"Ok, so maybe you do the rest of the dishes in the sink?"
"What do I look like, your maid?"
People in the West seem incapable of imagining any world where we, Jews and Arabs live side by side, and not only appreciate one another's company, but genuinely love one another like family, and yet, this is as much a reality as the other extreme, and a far preferable one at that.
Did I mention that Samir is my landlord, by the way?
One of the most frustrating aspects of the protestors in the West is that they are so intent on spreading this narrative that we are natural enemies, that the animosity is an inevitable result of us mixing, but it's not. Not everything in this world is friction.
Had one of Ali Khameini's missiles gotten through to Haifa this morning, Samir and I could have died together; same fate, Arab and Jew, both of us Israelis, equal under the law.
Like I said in a previous post, there are many sociocultural problems here, and yes, there is racism, (show me someplace where there isn't!) and yes, we need to work on it. And we are. Stop trying to divide us, to drag us backwards.
This city, at dawn
Belongs to the birds, and I trust them
Far more than an app on my phone; I know
If suddenly a thousand wings frantically pummel the air
Outside my open window
My soul will follow them
No gentle, soft things,
Practical, stoic things, they are warriors
And I feel protected under their wings.
They are busy at serious business this morning
A silly, yapping dog across the redandyellow rooftops knows this
He's concerned
They're convening their war council
Making their plans; I'm an interloper
Who wandered blindly into their territory
They know this
I've heard them talking, and
I'm grateful my hosts have bigger fish to fry.
Some impressions and thoughts on coming back to Israel after so long:
Haifa is really beautiful. The air feels like some vital nutrient my body's been woefully missing and craving for years, but settling for something artificial in its stead.
The morning light feels "correct".
The pigeons constantly threaten to fly in through my open window, only to turn suddenly, within its frame and disappear; they're loud, both in wing flapping and coos.
The word that keeps coming to mind when I try to describe what being back feels like, is "normal"; it's both disappointing and promising.
There are so many Arabs here. It's honestly wonderful. There's no apparent suspicion of interpersonal animosity or awkwardness, only warmth, a sense of community and equity, and an apparent, almost passionate desire to support one another, like family: Arab and Jew alike. The outside world's accusations of apartheid feel laughable from here. On a separate note, I want to learn Arabic; it seems like the right thing to do, and a considerate way to honour this sense of fraternity/sorority.
It's not heaven, not by a longshot. I don't think it's the greatest place in the world. I've no desire to wax poetic about it, in fact, to do so would feel like a dishonest disservice; if you love someone, truly love them, it's not because they're perfect, but because, in their imperfection, they're perfect for you. I may be falling in love again with this strange, normal, troubled, embattled, misunderstood place that nostalgia had, for so long, rendered a series of flat, simplistic elements.
When my mother died, my father spent his time waiting.
He watched TV, and he waited.
He had his coffee and bowl
Of Dole grapefruit every morning, and he waited.
He slept each afternoon for hours, ate his Lean Cuisine dinners, fed Jack, then was back in bed by eight each night to watch more TV before falling asleep by 9, only to wake again at seven, and do it all again.
When Carrie died, I thought
All that was left to me was to wait.
To fill my laborious days with
Small distractions.
I wrote
And I waited.
I slept
And I waited.
I scrolled on Facebook, and YouTube, bought things I didn't need, tried to fill the hole she left, and I waited.
On October seventh,I woke to a world that had
Torn off its mask, and
I couldn't wait anymore.
It's why I'm coming home.
Not to die, but finally to live.
I have waited long enough
To
Become
No more; it's time instead,
To be.
I have signed the papers.
I will sweep this heavy, grey dust from my wings, and
Fly Again
Toward blue, open air.
In a dream I saw myself
High in the branches of a
Cherry blossom tree
I read a book
My mother's book, I was so Young, unjaded; free
I said be
Ware, those thin branches are stronger than they look
They'll break your bones, even as they
Break beneath you
And at this tree's base
You'll lie bleeding
Defeated
These beautiful blossoms have
Tasted others' blood
After all,
This is why they are this particular shade
Of pink.
Behind me, it stretches
Sometimes frayed, but never detached,
This root
Five thousand years long
There are knots here and there of varying size and complexity, and
Sometimes parts, worn so thin as to be imperceptible to the naked eye
The colours change
From greyed browns to the
Vividest orange
––
Today
There is a new orange sundress– bought on a
Cold, rainy March day in New York for
Slow April coffees in Tel Aviv
And hot, humid, impatient waiting at bus stops
And (Hopefully)
Slow evening walks along the tayelet
––
It's true, I have lost so much
What I'd thought were my actual roots
My parents
My love
Artifacts of lives lived
My sense of safety, and
I will lose yet more
This is only inevitable
Yet the root will remain
Anchored deep in five thousand years of soil
And when finally, I too
Am soil
This is my prayer:
That fresh shoots should spring up from what was me
And the young eat the fruit I'll have left behind.
There's a page on Facebook that showed up in my suggestions, that's all about Miami Beach from the 50s - the 80s, and, scrolling through all the pictures, I'm filled with a visceral, and often painful kind of nostalgia. There's a certain blue-ish yellow cast to the light in these pictures, and I can feel the strong, acidic sun on my sunburnt arms and back; I can smell the Solarcaine, and the way the old hotel rooms smelled: slightly musty, and extra air conditioned, and with 40 plus years of old cigarette smoke and suntan oil and perfume still clinging to their blackout curtains.
I remember the summer we were on Hollywood beach, and that scratchy, white, gauze shirt I wore daily. It was the summer that "Personal Best" came out, and I was 12, or 13, or 10, and I remember running on that beach, wanting to be Mariel Hemingway, feeling both excited, because her character was like me, and wanting to celebrate this visibility by embodying it, yet hoping that nobody would be able to tell that that was what I was doing, afraid of the possibility of exposure of such an intimate truth.
I remember how- in the evenings, at Rascal House, my shirt still stuck to my body from the combination of heat and sweat and suntan lotion and Solarcaine, as I pulled the pumpernickel and onion rolls from their basket, scooping out their insides with a probing index finger and stuffing them full of the delicious "health salad" from the stainless steel bowls. I remember feeling exotic, with my wild curls untamed, my tan, and the carved, coconut wood, monkey head pendant I wore on that trip tight around my throat, a souvenir from one of the open front shops along the boardwalk.
So much triggered by images of a gone time.
The pain is in the reminder of the many things lost that I'd taken for granted. The quiet presence of my father, before life had made him bitter; my mother's fat, soft hand on my side as I- sleepy from a day in the sun, lay my curly head in her lap. The innocence and hope and naive belief that nothing would ever really change that much, because the now, back then was so interminably long.
It all feels so close still, as if by turning my body in some, certain way, I might still reach out, and touch it, but it's gone. Even the places in which these memories are set have disappeared, and the people, and the culture that they'd embodied, gone. Gone.
Gone, and I think–
I shouldn't stare at these pictures anymore for now. The past has a way of seducing us with its idealised perfection, and I know myself far too well; I'm in grave danger of drowning in that blue-yellow light.
Can we please speak again of other things, like
How the delicate blossoms of the almond trees always remind you of my favourite Van Gogh, or
How the brave lupines have already returned
Painting the drowsy Jerusalem hills in purple?
Do you remember, my love, that soon the markets will be filled with baskets of dark, shiny cherries
(Your other favourite reason for stained fingertips, remember?)
Would you tell me how pretty I look in my
Old yellow sundress
Eventhough I've pulled it, wrinkled
From the bottom of the clothes pile in the corner,
How you've missed my shoulders in sunlight
Can we please just speak of
Something soft for a moment
I know well how our world is burning
But must we constantly sit by in its
Scorching heat?
Others will surely watch it. Meanwhile, my love, look up
The harsh, winter light has already changed her slant.
Broken
A stone in fragments I
Return to the land
Coarse dust
Hoping that she will remind me
How once, I knew
How to put myself back
Together again
But she too is broken
(A finer dust)
And maybe I'm going home
After all
To be
Dust amidst dust
Here in this world of
Whole Hard Stones
I fall
Settle lost between cracks
But at home
I am buoyed, as
Only the wadi wind knows how to do.
Please, don't ever
stop
pointing out the
cracks in the walls
where sunlight leaks in;
on my own,
I only know how to see
locked doors.
דברו איתי על האופן שבו כל הנשמות מנוקות לאחר שאנו משאירים מאחורינו את בשרנו; ספרו לי כיצד כאב ואובדן ושנאה וכל הדברים הנוראיים האלה הם רק חלק מהחוויה הארצית שלנו
אין לי מושג אם אאמין לך או לא, אבל יהיה סיפור נחמד
💔
I
Like some old ram-
shackled stone house, am
Haunted
Not only by ghosts of a life once lived
Of people who I have loved and lost
But by a life I lack even the
Pluck to meet.
If only she would court me gently on softened steps so as
Not to spook me or send me running toward
Nightmares, and fantasies of
Needless sleep
I might love her
I might lay down beside her and
Welcome her into my body
But she is brusque
And loud
Inconsiderate and more and more inconsiderable
And I am growing impatient with her ways.
If I could be honest with you, I mean, really, really honest, I'd tell you how lately, several times a day I have to forcibly keep myself from downing my generous cache of oxy and xanax, more out of terror at an uncertain future, than simple hopelessness.
If I could be honest with you, I mean, really, really honest, I'd tell you how the only way I can see myself surviving beyond this, or any given week, is if somebody came along and took me by the hand and promised to help me to navigate this nightmare world as if I was a child.
If I could be honest with you, I mean, really, really honest, I'd tell you how I'm as terrified that someone will offer me help, as I am that no one will.
If I could be honest with you, I mean, really, really honest, I'd tell you how what terrifies me is the thought that whoever offers me help will come to realise that I'm a fraud of a human being
Not even plastic, but paper
So easily torn
So easily torn to shreds.
I had decided
That for the sake of self preservation
I'd regard the New Year as insignificant, to
Do nothing to mark the occasion
And yet
In the upper right-hand corner of my phone's screen, it reads
"11:48"
And I feel as though the seconds are ticking down to my execution.
11:49
I wish it would pass
Unceremoniously as any other night
But this night is different from
All other nights;
On this night, the heel of a boot grinds into me
The coarse white ashes of my previous life
Abrasive
Leave tender, and bloody, and raw indentations.
11:52
11:53
Alone.
11:54
בדד
11:55
לעולם ועד
11:56
חלאס
נמאס לי
Enough.
Sometimes, in the midst of that strange, dreamless sleep between dreams,
An image
Some random, mundane object that was a fixture in my parents' house pops into my head, and my body jerks violently awake, short of breath, heart pounding.
It's all gone.
The enormous "I'll Drink To Anything" mug that held two regular mugs worth of coffee
The green, oval cigar tin from the middle section of the downstairs medicine cabinet
The enormous, wooden headboard in my parents' bedroom that made a specific sound I've never heard replicated, when it banged against the wall whenever someone sat on the bed
Gone.
All this familiar ephemera–
Elements of a world I once knew, sacred only for their profanity
Things affixed firmly in time, place, soul
This world in which I now find myself can only be characterised by familiarity's absence
I reach out in all directions
Try to snatch "home" elements from the aether.
They cost so much
None of them are the same.
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