24.12.2024

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.  

13.12.2024

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.

05.12.2024 : Gratitude

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.