lizrael update

dunno

I want to make you cry. I want you to see it so you can feel pain and pleasure.

I’m a reckless driver, I speed by on the highway home. I’m going in the opposite direction of home, it takes a minute to figure it out but that sky isn’t there for nothing.

More than the pinks and yellows of sunset, it’s more. It’s the tiny little outline of the airplanes I’m driving past. Thin outlines of a silver blue despite the orange sky. How does that silver lining get there? If I study it hard enough I’ll die in a car crash so I only ever get a glimpse of that silver lining.

The sky is there to map it out, above a field of track where planes are going to come and go for the next six months.

And I’ll be gone, you know. You didn’t know. I’ll be gone, I’ll be gone to where the pavement tastes like freedom. I’ll be gone to where my tears bear fruit. I’ll be on a plane for six months, and you’ll be here, wondering where I went to.

If I could make you cry, if I could make you feel pleasure and pain.

Then I’ll come back and I’ll be excited and you’ll be excited and we’ll hug and kiss and it will be sweet, almost like the fruit I bore with my tears, but never quite. I’ll be excited to come close to landing and see for the first time rows of this place, and my heart will skip for you and for then and for was.

But it won’t last. I can’t make you cry and I can’t make you sing and I can’t show you what that is – to go in the opposite direction of home, to follow the sky with your eyes, to feel the way and the silver lining along the bellies of airplanes.

old school

So I wonder sometimes about where all this Israel stuff comes from anyways.

This is from circa 5 years ago?

‘Jerusalem, your holy city,’

It was when I sang those words that my eyes gave way to tears. How odd, I thought, why at these words? I realized why. Next year most of my friends and classmates will be living in Israel; learning Jewish studies, living Israeli life, and in a way, putting off reality for another year.

It all goes beyond the fact that I’m upset my friends won’t be around, and that jealousy sits in my heart. It came to me, singing this Hebrew song about the ancient land of Israel and the yearning for our return to Jerusalem. Israel is more than just the place young Jewish students go to learn for an extra year. The reason why I was touched by these words was not only because I wouldn’t be in Jerusalem next year – but that I’m not there now.

I’ve been to Israel once – when I was 12, visiting famous cities and touring ancient site. Even then, I appreciated so much what Israel means to our people, what Israel meant to our people. I took steps in places my forefathers took as they avoided idolatry, were sold into slavery and built the Holy Temples. I saw the graves of men who wrote the books we’re reading today, who set the guidelines for how I live my life – hundreds of years later. If you slowly go back in time, starting with only 50 years ago when we regained the land, to the times of the prophets who spoke to God, and all the way back to Avraham, who proudly settled in a land based on faith, you can only begin to see why eighteen year old boys died in 1948, why the Jewish people are still around, and why they still hold hope close to their ever-beating hearts: the Jewish people are Israel, Israel is me.

Next year, I wouldn’t be in Jerusalem. But Israel would be mine.

Yikes!

Well, at least me and Avraham still have something in common.

delusional

sometimes i get delusional. meaning,

i hear the heavy step of my dad coming home after a long day of work. meaning,

it’s 11 pm and i hear the door creak shut and the heavy steps of those clunky shoes, one with a foot and one with a half-foot and a brace. meaning,

it’s time for me to run downstairs and tell him how i did in school, what i discovered, to ramble on and on for a good ten minutes before remembering that he’s not paying attention. meaning,

it’s a crapload of frustration at thinking my dad doesn’t pay attention to what i have to say.

but he does.

i’ll turn my head when i hear the clunky steps. it’s a delusion. or it’s my brother. the new man of the house. at the same time, my dad’s out there working hard and coming home exhausted at 11 pm.

clunky steps and all; just not here.

sign at the X to sell your soul

“yo, what’s your deal?”

“what? i don’t really have a deal; i just don’t have anything anymore, for her, you know?”

“but what changed that?”

—what changed that? do you wanna go through all of that?—

“she’s been doing what she’s been willing for the past few months; i made no sound about it, i infringed on no one’s rights. i wasn’t going to make her choose - c’mon, how high school is that? i wasn’t going to make her choose between me and the others. so i sat back. she did what she wanted to do, and so she got what she wanted. she paid a price, and she got what she paid for.”

—that and some fringe benefits i wasn’t counting on—

“but you never told her what she was getting - you never told her what the price was - you never explained her that there was a psycho-sub conscious transaction going on between you two!?”

“you’re right. i never told her a lot of things. i never told her how i felt about all the shit that went down. i never told her that i loved her but i can’t for the life of me explain why, after all the fucked up knives in my back. i never told her i was really fuming inside, i never told her how betrayed i felt. i never once told her what actions to take. i never told her there’d be a price to pay.”

—yeah, i never told her. that’s my deal. that’s how much i loved her—

hold tight

everday, you’re life is in someone else’s hands.

actually, millions of hands - your bus drivers’, the drivers cruising around you, the subway handlers’, the traffic light programmers - for starters. it’s a rough and delicate balance that we don’t much think about - maybe because it’s so big and vast - are we supposed to become paranoid?

in a place where our lives are in so many other hands at a constant rate, why not grasp onto every aspect that we can control our own lives to the fullest? you can’t control the express bus that morning, but you can control smiling at the driver as you get on (who’s steering your soul for the next 90 minutes). and you can make room in your row of seats for the man coming on the next stop (maybe he’ll be humming then while he’s stirring your iced coffee later on, or maybe he’ll be paying attention when adjusting your tax estimates).

if we all took control of our lives in all and any aspect that we can, we could really weave a tighter net in the greater expanse of human interconnectedness. since, in some capacity, we are holding the lives or being held by others, we all have a stake - a valuable one.

let’s take this and drive safely - and hold tight.