The Long Night of the Aching Jaw - The Red Bike Rides in Bretagne, Pt. 5

05/08                                     16:35                     Le Conquet Harbor

My jaw hurt.

   I could not sleep.

    And what’s worse

           I had to pee.

I lie in the bed. I lied. I turned off the light when I heard the door open and a foot on the stairs. A roommate in the hostel. I feigned being asleep. My jaw hurt and I had no interest in talking. He saw through my feint, asked me if he could close the shades and turn off the light. “Of course,” I said, “whatever you want.”

The lights off, I lay in the bed. I was tired; I had wadded toilet paper in my ears against the noises of this or the other roommate. The other was still out and this one quiet, only curt sounds of springs groaning emanating from his bed. The beds were aligned head to foot around the room, six beds or five in total, all along the wall, encircling the room (an extra mattress lay beneath my bed). The mattresses were narrow, rust-colored beds, furnished with a round, long cylinder of a pillow; we slept on 1970s styled (and aged) couches. But the beds were good enough, the room dark, the noise not there, and I tired. I should have slept.

I laid myself down but could not put myself to sleep. My mind was not in and of itself especially restless. It had been a day off for me; I took my time getting from Lorient to Brest. I had a 2+ hour stop in Quimper which  I spent in an African bar run by a white, non-African Frenchman, waiting and watching 100 meter sprints. Once in Brest, I spent two hours in a café in the center, waiting for check-in time and typing up diaries. I had a fine dinner, a drink while I waited for the bus, and then arrived at the hostel at about 22:30, read my Pole for an hour, and went to bed. It had been a fine day.

Actually, I lied a little. Or fairer, I skipped a point. My trouble started after dinner. Immediately after dinner, my jaw started hurting. Usually, my jaw is tense, tight; it hurt. I had eaten steak tartar. I always eat steak tartar when I visit France. This was the first time my jaw hurt after eating tartar (or ever, really, to this degree).

I can hear Amy (my, ahem, wife) responding. “Of course your jaw hurts after eating raw cow! You just swallowed a red patty of uncooked pain!” It never happened before like that, but then, why did my jaw become so sore?

My mind and spirit exist in imbalance, exposed to different levels of development. My mind is well-developed, well ahead of my spirit, so far ahead of my spirit that my spiritual inklings are intellectually-based. What I understand in my spirit comes from my mind. I think my way through life, and through matters of the spirit too. Amy once accused me of having no spirituality. In effect, she’s right, but it’s not from lack of trying. I just can’t get at the spiritual world any way but by working it out.

(My heart steps in sometimes and clouds my judgment for better or worse in individual cases, but for the good overall, preventing me from becoming a cold rationalist).

There are two areas on my body that carry discomfort so casually my mind cannot comprehend them. The first is a knot in my back, just below my left shoulder blade and off my spine to the left. 5, 10, 15 times a day (at least) I swing my torso right and left while standing still, or else dip my left shoulder back, both movements intended to crack my back. I do this on command and more frequently than I should (I just did it, while writing the previous sentence, achieving a crack). I have been cracking my back like this for at least five years, since I stopped wrestling full-time. I remember my last tournament in high school, 10+ years ago, eagerly looking forward to having a friend from my rival school crack my back.

The other area is my jaw. I learned at my first dentist appointment in Israel that I was grinding my teeth in my sleep. My dentist, an excitable South African Jew, seemed to be a specialist in diagnosing teeth grinding and providing biteplates to protect the teeth; he bragged about giving himself a plate, his daughter a plate, and so on. I didn’t know I had been grinding my teeth, but for a long time I had been cracking my jaw in three different places by rolling it clockwise away from my face. I asked him about that, why I was grinding my teeth, and what I might do about it. He said don’t crack your jaw or you might get lockjaw, he didn’t know, and go see a psychologist.

The back pain I can rationalize. I wrestled seriously for 15 years and 10-11 ½ months a year for the last eight of them. I am lucky to have never suffered more serious injury than a sprained ankle or cauliflower ear, and a knot in my back is small price to pay for long years of competition (I also often crack my knees, neck, and each of my shoulders every time I roll either one of them counterclockwise, but there’s no major discomfort associated with these cracks). I remember thinking in my maximalist college training days that I wanted to wake up sore everyday for the rest of my life – in college from the intensity of my workouts, afterwards for the residual damage willingly, eagerly suffered. This is one of those goals that I am now glad I did not achieve. (Sometimes, my right knee fills with fluid, a remnant of a bursa sac injury suffered my last year, and I have a small scar over my right eyebrow from my final college tournament, but seeing those is like looking at my trophy case, a reward from memory lane).

But the jaw pain cannot be thought through medically. The Temporomandibular Joint Syndrome involves the jawbone coming out of its socket partially, leading to the cracking and grinding symptoms. But why does it slip out? Can it be fixed conventionally? I don’t know and I don’t think so. I’m open to rational explanation, I’m downright seeking it in fact, but nothing has won me over yet.

Where forth I turn to spiritual answers. I have long agreed with Amy that my grinding is related to unexcavated grief, mostly related to my mother’s death almost eight (8!) years ago, and also to other, relatively minor things stuffed away in my psyche (or my jaw). This premise centers on the fact that I have not cried about my mother’s death, have only since then cried due to wrestling, physical and mental exertion that could drive me out of my right mind. So now, despite leading a relatively low-stress life and being as happy as I’ve ever been, I still grind my teeth.

At the outset of this trip I decided that if my jaw represents my unvoiced grief, my back must hold the knot of fear and self-doubt that fight to hold me back. It’s a facile explanation, but it serves a purpose. My back is irritable and maybe even more noticeable as a problem, but it and the feelings it represents are easier to put off or confront. I can make my back feel pretty good for a few minutes at a time. The jaw pain always barks.

Once we step off the rational plane and open ourselves to spiritual explanations, there’s much less logic to deal with. So maybe this cow did cry as it was slaughtered, maybe I stumbled on the wrong day to eat cow, which I tend to eat about once a week on average. Maybe if I had gone with a burger, I would have somehow been better off. Less in pain. Asleep.

No matter. As I lay lying in my bed, my jaw hurt. I worried that I would not have teeth in the morning, that dust on my sheets would represent the final remnants of my molars (it figures that I forgot my biteplate in Michigan and was too cheap/low on time to buy another set). I worried that my jaw might look up in my haunted reverie. And on top of my worries, I kept having to pee.

The peeing thing, that’s anxiety. I’ve always been apprehensive of falling asleep, since I was a conscious child. Not so much did I fear my subconscious – I suffered not from night terrors or especially bad dreams  - but losing control spooked me, spooks me. That second when the lights go out is hard for me to grapple with or get my mind around. My freshman year in college, one of my worst years, I had a night where I needed to pee every 15 seconds. Rather, I felt the need to pee every 15 seconds; when I went to the bathroom directly across the hall from me, I peed drops, maybe. It was all in my head. I panicked that night, called my father, woke him up, and then stayed up reading until I couldn’t think, falling asleep around five. Luckily, it was a weekend night and my roommate had gone home.

(My mother was alive and not yet in her final, awful leg of cancer, but my dad and I agreed she shouldn’t be bothered about this one).

I have learned to function, learned to fall asleep. Usually, I pee twice or thrice between when I shut off the lights and when I fall asleep. On my own or at home, this is not a big deal. A quirk, a mild nuisance, but Amy and I are the only ones who have to deal with it, and I think she sleeps ok through it.

In a hostel, it was a bigger nuisance and an embarrassment. I lay on my couch bed, except when I got up to pee. Five times, six, I rose, shuffled down the stairs, out the door, back in, up the stairs, and into bed. I bumped into a water bottle once. I hoped I wasn’t too annoying.

All the while, my jaw hurt and I could not sleep. I tried to address the problem. In my head, I addressed my mother. I told her I was married, happy. I spoke in Russian and thought what a shame it was that I only really invested my soul in mastering the language after taking a team trip to Poland and the Baltics the summer after she died. A trip I paid for with life insurance money. I told her I wished I could have talked to her in Russian like an adult. That I could talk with her as an adult. I thought about how much she would have liked Jeanie, my mother-in-law. I told her that. I could not find her answers in my head.

I lay in my bed and tossed and turned to other techniques, ones I use more regularly. I sang to myself. I sang Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. A cliché choice for my demographic, yes, but still the most emotionally resonant work front-to-back I know (one I heard for the first time exactly almost eight years ago), and I know it just about by heart. I sang through the first three songs, interrupted by two or three pee runs. The technique didn’t stick tonight.

I lie frustrated and worried and tried my last resort short of getting up and reading, of giving up an hour of sleep or more. My most spiritual effort. I reached out in my mind to the voice, the spirit that is ever present in my ear. The spirit I can trust to wash love over my misshapen, knotted and partially detached body, to soothe my woes and worries with warm words and tender touches. I reached out and thought of her, of what she would say, do if she was here. My mind calmed, slowed.

Sometime later I went to pee again, and the Beatles “Come Together” floated through my head, the happy half-conscious moment when control is not lost but forgotten about.

I woke up early. My teeth were still there. The extra portion of pain in my jaw lingered until late afternoon.

Traveling through our 20s, right before the crash

(Technically, this post has little to do with travel. More like time travel. I'll explain.)

As an introduction, I offer two lists to sum up the last year of my life, from say 12th June 2010 to 11th June 2011.

List 1: Israel (Tel Aviv, Even Yehuda, Herzliya), New England (Burlington, Boston, Nantucket, Cape Cod, Hampton Beach), Michigan (Ludington), Israel (Tel Aviv, Herzliya), Europe (Amsterdam, Hamburg, Denmark), Israel (Tel Aviv, Jerusalem), Africa (Rwanda), the broader U.S. (Burlington, New York, DC, Durham, Nashville, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco), the North American North (Ludington, Grand Blanc, Sarnia, Toronto), Massachusetts (Burlington, Boston), the Midwest (Chicago, Ludington), Massachusetts (Burlington, the Berkshires), New Orleans, Burlington, Michigan (Ludington, Ann Arbor), Israel (Herzliya, Even Yehuda), the Midwest (Ludington, Charlevoix, Petoskey, Chicago), Israel (Herzliya, Even Yehuda, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv), Michigan (Ludington).

And a possibly less obnoxious list.

List 2: Library Aide, Model United Nations co-coordinator, M.A. Student, online journalist, tourist, volunteer with genocide survivors, Greyhound bus customer, job-seeker, construction volunteer, job-seeker, cat-sitter, long-term substitute teacher.

The former list includes all the places I either spent significant time in (a full day) or slept a night in over the aforementioned timeline. The latter provides an order of the various positions I filled over that year. It's been some year.

While finishing my time in the final role, as long-term substitute teacher, I had the privilege (read: obligation) to attend a high school graduation. As the bright and hopeful valedictorian and salutatorian read fine speeches about the future and all the possibilities that awaited them in this ever-changing world, I sat staring into the flat chicken fields that served as a staging for the ceremony, wondering whether we are ever presented limitless opportunity, and wondering if that limitless opportunity evaporates at some point, whether that window closes, and lastly wondering whether I have taken advantage of that opportunity or squandered it, and whether that window remains open for me.

Excuse the excessive wondering and pondering and spiritual blundering. 26 is not old. I'm not sure what 26 is. I'm not sure what the normal position for someone of my age is, nor how I measure up, which makes it excessively difficult for an eternally competitive person (if one developing a sense of Buddhistic-esque acceptance) like me to assess my life and whether it is on the rails or wandering in the wilderness that are the 20s. I know that, coming from a pedigree of top high school and top college, my circle of acquaintances and friends, as it were, is successful and forming themselves into what they want to be. Perhaps that's why I'm not so close to most of them, the lucky bastards.

I should clarify. In the new economy or the 21st century or whatever excuse there is to tag onto our condition, working immediately after college is not a foregone conclusion, and finding out who you want to be takes longer than it might have 20 or 30 years ago, or in other countries like the Soviet Union my parents grew up in. We are faced with the paradox of choice, where more options impede our decision-making and ultimately make us less happy because we can weigh many more alternatives to the life we chose. This is related to the concept discussed in one of my undergrad economics classes, the idea that Person X is happier making $70K a year when his neighbor (or co-worker or brother or whoever he compares himself with) makes $70K as well than when Person X is making $75K a year and Comparison X is making $80K a year.

Here stands I, a competitive person but one who, I'd like to think, has never begrudged my friend his/her due. One of my favorite parables comes from the New Testament of the Bible:

Matthew 20.1 For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. 20.2 And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. 20.3 And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, 20.4 And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. 20.5 Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. 20.6 And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? 20.7 They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive. 20.8 So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. 20.9 And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. 20.10 But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. 20.11 And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house, 20.12 Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day. 20.13 But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? 20.14 Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. 20.15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? 20.16 So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

The essence of the parable is that one should honor their agreements, but even more that one who has reached satisfaction in some way should not allow that satisfaction to be tarnished by viewing others' conditions as a sign of what one could achieve instead. In other words, I am not only a jerk for comparing myself constantly to others, but failing at life and at happiness by not staying in my lane and worrying about how I can do right by myself and those who matter, rather than other people. Or as a friend puts it (and I swear I've quoted it here before, but I can't find it), one should win at life based on the rules of their own game; and as I amend it, one should not judge others by the rules of their own game. If eating peanut butter daily is what makes me happy and successful, that shouldn't mean that you are failing because you don't eat peanut butter daily. (Though you are. I mean, come on.)

This is a long way of saying that this whole essay rests on treacherous ground: the art of finding out where one (read: I) should be at the age of 26, and what is the appropriate path to lead to this point and to extend from this point. The answer of course, is that there is little or no exact answer to those queries, and looking at other people's paths will only add misery and doubt to the pondering process. And yet, here I go.

Last fall on my road trip through much of the continental U.S.A., I visited many of my friends from high school and college. Most of those friends were in my age category, i.e. second half of their 20s. I did not do some sort of list-check to compare the pros of cons of their lives vs. my life, no matter how much I enjoy making lists (very much), but I did listen with interest to the plight of the mid-20 something.

Again, I come from a privileged background and am mostly friends with similarly privileged types. I met few friends who were in dire circumstances: one had the misfortune of moving cross-country to follow a girl who promptly broke up with him upon his arrival; another told me about her parents' struggles to achieve a tenable retiree status due to pension cuts and disqualifications after a lifetime of working as educators; a couple either just had or would shortly thereafter break up with reasonably long-term girlfriends at times where they were, while independent, thrashing about for a direction or a mission in life. Not even the National can spin real sob stories out of those situations. (Well, maybe...)

What impressed me about my visiting and traveling was the number of peers who had undertaken the process of consolidating their self-definition and had launched themselves on a path towards who they wanted to be. 26 is apparently the age for grad school - the number of friends or acquaintances I know in law school, business school, PhD programs, or other MA programs (if not MD programs) has increased tremendously. Even further, I saw friends pursuing dreams with a passion and a focus that thrilled me; two had gone, on separate paths, to LA to pursue Hollywood style dreams; two were invested in their research and academic goals; my brother was in his favorite place of the world and doing all he could to achieve his dreams of making music or movies, whichever came first. And then those who weren't necessarily pursuing dreams were still making life work on their terms: one was a cop and happy about it; another had the next four years of his life planned out and still managed to sound like the same wild-eyed kid who used to try to get lost driving in his hometown in high school.

There are caveats to this pursuit of dreams or this acceptance of the now, of course, in either direction. One of the Hollywood success seekers ended up getting screwed over by his boss, a Mr. Paulie Shore. The cop is on the verge of (if not already having been) getting laid off. Hearts, or at least relationships, have been broken. So the 20-something world turns.


On the one hand, I can 'fess up to feeling pretty good about who I am at 26, amidst the whirlwind observation I have taken of my peers on that trip and otherwise, constantly. I came away from college realizing that I love music, reading, writing, and traveling. I would say my efforts in three of those four fields have been very successful, and I'm still figuring out how and why and in what form I should be writing to feel best about it - I don't think I've achieved the "success" I want as a writer, but I haven't failed either. I have long thought it would be cool to be multilingual, and now I can set a reasonable goal of knowing six languages with decent proficiency and four fluently by the age of 30. Further, I think I continue to plumb the process of becoming the person I want to be, and beyond that I've been blessed to find the person I want to undertake that process with. Shed no tears for me, in other words, and worry not about my whining.

There are sacrifices and tradeoffs everyone makes when blazing through life, one way or the other. For example, as part of sharing in that process of becoming, I will find myself a month from now in Luxembourg. I'm sure Luxembourg will be great. Under no condition, however, would I be choose to live in Luxembourg, a place largely unsuitable to any of my ambitions, whether career-oriented or artistic or otherwise. C'est la vie, as they'll say there, and perhaps the strictures and sacrifices will create new opportunities.

But in contrast to my friends who are carving out a relatively clearer path, who are pursuing dreams, who are having "career" success, I still haven't really figured out what I want to do, never mind how to get there. Another thing I picked up, among the few, in my economics education was the idea that people must feel useful to feel fulfilled. Yes, like most of the useful things I learned in economics, it is a bit of common sense backed with some theory and empirical evidence. Still, it sheds light on the reason I beach on the shore of confusion, of wondering, of the need to defend myself, and not just at home (though, not coincidentally, I'm finally putting this together while sitting in my father's house. Hmm...).

While hardly claiming all trades, I've become a jack of many things, and it's very true that it's hard to do many things well. The idea of a renaissance man is nice, but in practice the well-rounded ideal means many of one's edges are blunted. My resume boasts of a nice variety of positions, but I'm not sure any are strong enough to get a decent job, to get my foot in the door somewhere, to get me on any sort of path. And then there's the problem that I'm not sure I want to be on a path - there's a liberating sensation to not being tied down to a career, to existing as more than a worker. Liberty does little to pay for a room in the hot Luxembourg real estate market, though.

What is 26? Has all this dithering brought us anywhere?

Let's argue that the essay you are now reading is mimetic. That it models itself on the process of living through one's 27th year in the year 2011. The process wanders, it strikes upon a few general themes, it pushes forward in some directions or for some "users" quickly, and in other users' hands and other directions aimlessly. And here we stand, wondering what the point is.

I'm left to make two cultural references that I believe bring this feeling all together. The first is to Calvin & Hobbes. There's a Sunday strip where Calvin goads Hobbes into taking off on his wagon, where they aim to go so fast they will eclipse the speed of light and travel through time. They race past various obstacles, discuss the theory and what they might see in the future, and ultimately crash-land. Upon arrival, dusty and bruised but still enthused, they find that they've moved forward two minutes from the time they took off. That's what 26 is.

Or there's this: "And here I sit so patiently, waiting to find out what price you have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice."

Bob Dylan said that. He was 25 at the time. He's 70 now. I'm 26. I'm still figuring out what I have to say.

Three Last Thoughts on Rwanda

I don't pretend to be able to summarize in a few pithy words what my/our trip to Rwanda was like. Actually, I can easily pretend to be able to do it, I just don't feel like it. Enough internet ink has been spilled on this site about the trip to Rwanda, I think: this post will bring me over 14,000 words. So anybody who is reading this and cares about what my overall impressions on the trip were should be able to pull something together based on the seven (including this one) posts and all that is contained therein.

At the same time, I want to write one more post about Rwanda. Not only because I promised it in the first post on Rwanda (more to myself than to anyone else), but because there is more I can say. And more I want to tell. So in lieu of any grand conclusions about the trip or huge statements, I give to you three little snapshots, events from the trip that encapsulated much of what happened as a whole, while also providing some entertainment. These events are not in chronological order.

Live at Gisenyi

Lake Kivu the morning after the storm.

The trip was harrowing; twice I have mentioned the thundering rains that could have ended our trip prematurely. We rode 10 passengers in a van designed to carry 14 passengers max in theory, but a van with bulky but thin cushions that did little to hide the feel of the steel bars beneath, a van with seats too close together so that there was no leg room even for the midgets like me, a van that had a multi-colored lamp inside that could do the disco rotation as needed, and a van that came from Dubai, where it was apparently the van for a hair salon. Riding in the van for four hours already that day (with stops), we were worn out as it was, and in no condition to weather the storm peacefully. We were saved by the steady driving of our main man Pascal, a driver who switched on to our group with the new van and who, on his first day, wore a bowling shirt with the name "Baker Hughes" stitched on the back. Maybe a code name? Or his bowling nickname, ala The Jesus?

In any case, the trip was harrowing. It led to our only night out of Kigali, a small hotel on a hill overlooking Lake Kivu, a Great Lake (Africa style, obviously) on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. We arrived shortly after dusk and, after divvying up rooms and unpacking, a few of us went out on the porch and talked and watched the lightning storm. I brought my guitar out and provided quiet and (I hoped) non-intrusive background music to the more serious conversations around me.There was an uneasy beauty of the moment.

We went to a relatively lame hotel restaurant by the water, mosquitoes infiltrating the overpriced dining hall, but our bonds were tight and the chocolate mousse cake I ordered (for dinner) good. Indeed, though I was weary from the car ride and the trip in general, hitting its 11th and 12th days, and though this trip marked the final high water mark before travel and group fatigue wore on my experience, we were at a high water mark at that restaurant, and the glow of our mzingu bubble on Kivu preserved that positive feeling.

We returned to the hotel just shy of midnight. I was most interested in going to sleep, but there was a general clamor for some music. And so I pulled out my guitar and played some tunes, pulling from the back catalog of hits ("Barcelona," "Ain't No Minivan Mama"), the fruitful summer of 2010 writing I had done ("Cellulite", "Stuck at the Start"), and the two Rwandan-inspired tunes I had written ("Any Given Day," "Hey, Mzingu", and yes, I did just cite a bunch of my own songs that most people have never heard. It's my blog, roll with it). My lovely audience that I would have liked to take home supported and enjoyed cigars, waragi, tequila, and the company, as well as the scenic backdrop, one of the nicest I will ever play in front of in my amateur musician career. The beauty here was easier, more exhausted, but joyous, a true cap on the high water experience.

An hour and a half later, I woke up in my bed in the hotel room to the evil sound of a nearby buzzing mosquito. My roommate was not on anti-malaria pills and had avoided vaccinations and in general was doing things all naturally to protect his body (we enjoyed watching him put together his herbal cocktail each morning at breakfast). No problem; I had all the respect in the world. And when we roomed together in Gisenyi, with two beds but only one mosquito net, I said, "No problem, you take it. Mosquitoes don't like me much anyway." My macho stubbornness striking again, as you see.

So when the mosquito woke me, I lay still for a few minutes, thinking I could wait it out. I slapped at the air aimlessly as well, or not aimlessly since I could hear him, but with very poor accuracy. The quiet desperation of hearing a mosquito buzzing around you and knowing there is nothing you can do to stop her, and knowing that the noise (definitely the noise and not so much the fact that she will bite you) would not let you sleep, and that sleep is the thing you most need to preserve your calm, your patience, and your sanity, this quiet desperation set in for me.

My roommate, fortunately, is a good sleeper. Fortunate, because my solution was to turn on the lights, sit as still as possible in a poor lotus position, and kill as many mosquitoes as necessary to allow me to sleep. There is always the illusion, after all, that it's only one mosquito that is buzzing around your head; their buzzes sound the same. I killed one mosquito. A buzz returned. I was not fooled. I killed another mosquito. I swung and missed at a few more. Somehow, my roommate stirred but did not wake. I imagined myself to be a modern day Mr. Miyagi with a lower hit-rate. Much lower.

In the end, I killed about 10 mosquitoes over 20-30 minutes, turned out the lights, and pulled the sheet over my head. I slept soundly if incompletely until the morning.

The World's (or at least Rwanda's) finest football pitch (Or backdrop)

A group photo of the memorable pitch.

East Rwanda, on one of the rare spaces in the country flat enough and big enough for a football (i.e. soccer) pitch, with 25 some-odd (we played about 13 v 13) boys aged from 16-24 or so who were ostensibly sophomores in high school, all orphaned or made vulnerable by the genocide, in the sunny but fading late afternoon light, with a beautiful vista to the east that suffered not at all for the fact that we wouldn't be able to see the sunset over it.

That was the scene. We were visiting the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village, and as part of our visit, we got to play football with the kids (or basketball, or volleyball, but I chose the footie). The village is an oasis, of sorts, for the aforementioned vulnerable and/or orphaned population of Rwanda, operating as a high school for these kids. So far they have 250 students, admitting a new freshman class of 125 students each year to hit a maximum of 500 students in two more years.

But enough about the technicalities. On the pitch, the kids are about what you would expect them to be: talented, able, but lacking savvy, teamwork, or foresight that comes with coaching and paying attention to sports. Understandable, of course, considering they have a lot more important things to deal with than being good at football; this isn't a factory or even a competitive high school. It's just a place for kids to play the game.

So a couple of us joined in the game, running up and down, making a couple plays here and there and getting frustrated from time to time. I learned the appropriate words to call for the ball, "Karibu" (meaning "welcome") and "he-he" (short e's; the word means "here"), and called for the ball plenty, but didn't really get many touches - there were a couple sweet crosses I made that didn't lead to goals, but ah well, I screwed up plenty times too. Meanwhile, the light grew hazier and the beauty rose to match it.

And then we had to leave. The game was still going, and we had to leave. My unfortunate response was to fall into "Cheese Fries or nothing" mode*. I ignored the first several calls. Then I turned in and gave up, gathering my t-shirt, walking sulkily off the field and probably spitting to the side a few times more than necessary. I entered the car and, making sure to voice my frustration, said, "Tha's some bullshit."

After a pause, somebody asked what this so-called "bullshit" was.

I hemmed and hawed as I got the words out, then said, "When will we ever get a chance to play on a field like that in a setting like that? We can eat in Mzingu restaurants for the rest of our life," in reference to our rush back to Kigali.

Well then.

Another lost temper. Another blown fuse. And though I won the battle this time - I got the cheese fries, so to speak - I lost the war, failing to make it two weeks without losing my cool. Haval, as we would say. Haval.

But it was a good line. And a pretty place.

Our Redemption From the Children

The scene as I first saw it.

I sat in Nyamata church, the second of two churches on the day. We had been to the Nyabarongo River earlier, where genocidal killers dumped their victims' bodies to "send them back to Ethiopia", via Lake Victoria. We had been to Ntarama church, of the bloodied Sunday school wall of the previous post. Whatever one might say about the reasons for our trip, the futile nature of it, the inability we faced in plumbing the depths of our or others' trauma, it can at least be conceded that we had not had the most pleasant day.

After writing a poem in my journal and sitting inside the church on my own for a few minutes, I heard a harmonica play. Evan was blowing out a tune; "Love Me Do" it sounded like. In an otherwise solitary and silent moment, it made for a pleasant break. I went outside to see where he was.

When I got outside, I found that Evan was not just playing on his harmonica, but playing on his harmonica for twenty or more schoolchildren. Others from our group were out there dancing and smiling and talking to the kids, taking pictures and then showing the kids their image on the camera. No better balm in this world did God invent than the smile and laughter of a curious child.

We spent the next hour walking around the village, chasing after different groups of schoolchildren and picking them out, spinning them around, hugging them, and laughing with them. We drank over-sugared Coke and broke into sprints after the over-cute kids. We alternately terrorized and brightened everyone's day. On my trip in Europe,

Ben made the point, in Hamburg, that no matter how unsuccessful we were in achieving our objectives, or how annoying our requests might have been, we certainly made everyone's day a little bit more unusual and, dare I say it while trying to avoid sounding arrogant, more special. Well, that was at least ten times as true in Rwanda, and even more true in Nyamata village.

But we, of course, were the bigger beneficiaries. I talked about the dissonance between visiting terrible sites and experiencing beautiful people and scenery: this was the greatest dissonance we felt, and the loveliest. It was the most special moment we had on the trip, I feel, and I doubt my companions would protest too much.


Ah hell, one more bonus note from Rwanda - the last night


Our going away party featured a long round of speeches from everybody we managed to rope into our goodbye circle from our friends in Rwanda - potential sugar daddies, sons of reggae stars, good friends we had met in Israel, our friendly hostel security guard, our guides, friends from our blog we weren't as close to - and from us. Then I played on my creaky guitar, loud enough over the roar of the fire to bother the other guests in the hostel and lead us to leave the hostel and go to a nearby traffic circle. Where, after waking up the guard on duty sleeping in the fountain itself (no running water), we proceeded to run through a few more songs. Then a few more goodbyes. Then a giddy, solemn march back to the hostel, I on an improvise-ready little riff with Evan accompanying on his harmonica to a little ditty while the others reveled in the beautiful possibility and sadness of Kigali's night sky, together for the last time. The trip was everything it was supposed to be, even when it wasn't. It was every happiness we could hope for even when we were sad, every calm realization we sought even when we (I) lost our cool. It was certainly a success, a victory, an experience, and something to remember. And, almost a month later, I can still say with certainty that I don't think it'll be a last time, either in Africa or Rwanda. No, one way or another, this was just a beginning.







The Chorus of the other Rwanda related song I wrote, by the bonfire.

Rwandan Ruminations

A smattering of notes, poems, and pictures from the Rwandan trip. When I use a picture that was not actually taken by me, I will credit the group. Many of the photos from the last post, including all of the dancing photos natch, are from the group. Also, the poems would ideally have indentations on various lines, but I don't feel like dealing with the formatting to figure that out.


Group photo.

First day of the trip entry:

A white cocoon envelops our group somewhat. Kigali is nicer than expected, more developed, more expensive. One drive through it was not enough to get a grasp for the city; it sprawls out along hills as if in a countryside. The city is green and red and gorgeous. I sat facing the east through twilight and felt a surge of awe rise through my guitar playing. After dusk with cicadas, lights dotting the hills, and the scent of mosquito repellent, Kigali returns to a natural state.

People have behaved on a spectrum from overly friendly to suspicious and sullen. Our customs officer asked me how I was and our young Rwandan aide is irrepressible to the poitn of obsequiousness. The man who opens the gate to our hostel waves excitedly at us when we enter or leave. People do seem to look at us whenever we pass with curiosity and either eagerness or distrust. Our waitress was polite but coldly so. Many were eager to accommodate us whenever an opportunity came up.



Chanted vocal music bubbles over to us on our hostel porch. Choral music rolls strong and spiritual, whether religious or traditional, harmonic monophony with flashes of call and response.

We must suspend our expectations for this trip. Processes are often slow, many things don't work, we will get sick or lost or sore or cranky. In flavor and degree, this will be a trip unlike any I have experienced for a long time, if ever.

24/09

Obviously, someone else took this, but on my camera. If that makes a difference.

The Visitor



Birds chirp all around me
a cock crow is what woke me
It is a multifabric blanket of sound rising from the hill
Coming to cover me until the sun reaches my part of the hill
A human voice, human labor,
Sometimes this thread emerges on the blanket
I await the blanket, Africa is colder than I thought
And I am a visitor in this land,
A group surrounds me, a white cocoon in the black land
Some know more, some less, some care not to know
Some are connected, some are plugged in
Some are digging, some are sleeping in
I know no more than anyone
And knowing is not a character trait that makes me better
The bird chirp blanket and the white cocoon and the air less than hot
But all I am is a visitor in this thought

Second day of the trip entry

Rwandan restaurant - the wait, the good goat meat, the Ugandan waragi (rubbing alcohol and gin), chapati in a back room of a side street with a smiling hostess Sara called sister (dada) in Swahili, the armed men on the streets. Habyarima's house with secret passageways and torture rooms and churches for Christianity and animist faiths, wreck of the plan, the desire to change the house into a museum. A tightening of the group. The glow of our trip in its absurdity and naive expectation in the face of trauma.

Group photo.

Nyabarongo River entries

He is six or seven years old, dark skinned in a dull brown t-shirt and darker brown pants. I say "mwarimutse" and "amakuru". He says "nimeza". He has a plastic water bottle one-fifth full with coins. He asks me something, uses the word "falanga". I smile and shrug, then say, "nitwa Daniel," using poor Kinyarwanda. I ask, "witwande?" He says "Tunezi Bevinda" or something similar. I ask him to repeat the second name, he does, I say "ndakwashimaye" tow or three times until I get it right. We stand. No words are shared. A minute later he moves, I wish him a "nimosi meza".

As I write this under a bridge, a man in a hat walks by. We talk about where I came from, about where we are, basic pleasantries, and then I see I have to go. I wish him well and begin to leave. He reminds me to take my camera. Very kind. He laughs at my sloppiness as I smile and walk away.



***

Imagining the river full of bodies, the strong current bogged down by the bloated flesh, well, it makes a lot of the heavier rock songs (I'm thinking "Bodies" by the Drowning Pool) sound ridiculous. Also makes most of life's problems seem absurdly insignificant. So it goes.



Weakness

I can be weak. I am weak. I will be weak.
This does not mean I should seek weakness.
Nor should I eschew my attempts to be strong.
It means that I will be weak even amidst my strengths.
Sometimes in familiar ways, sometimes in new ways.
Remember:
I am weak even as I am strong.
Even as I am right I will be wrong.
I shall seek even more strength, but not for power.
I shall seek rightness, not righteousness.
I shall accept myself and others
I will fail to accept both, but will try again.
Even as I am good, I am bad.
I will learn to understand that.

29/09



The Worst Moment


The worst moment of my life
I walk down the green walled hallway
I am late, too late, I came from too far away
And I see you coming out of the room, coming towards me
On your face the most twisted look
Your face is stuck
Your eyes perched on the edge of a waterfall
Your mouth fallen, your brow scrunched, your nose raised
You walk past me, unable to look in others' eyes
And I see Babushka hugging someone outside the door
I know she is gone, she is no more
I am too late
I am too late to say goodbye.
Too late to change anything.
Too late to feel.
All I can do is help put things together.
And really, I am too late for that.

And you are out driving, alone, where no one knows.

27/09

Something About an Island

It's another post of poetry and "artsier" writing. All photos are from the island of Ærø. The essay about islands regards smaller islands in general; the large island of Zealand where Copenhagen is found, or Australia, for example, may not have the same qualities. Anyway, enjoy.


Babbling Hill



They babble on in Babylon.
All these tongues roll down the hill, over me
All these tongues to learn, all my goals
But all these tongues work at the same thing
Is it better to know five tongues and change how you think
Or know one tongue to express the purple light within?
Can the tongue express the purple light?
Can the sun fall on me right?
They babble on in Babylon.

White Sky

A white sky rises
from just below the commercial business roofs
The white sky will stay there
well into tomorrow too
And it is no use worrying
about what comes next
All could end
with a crack in the neck
The white sky will remain
the country's eternal coat
It should not be regarded with apprehension or disdain
But acceptance and a light trace of hope.

The Heat Within (White Sky Within)

The heat within
The white sky has settled in my head
I sit perched upon the bed
My back to the open window
I will seek the heat within
Seek to balance it, to spread it otu
To the edges of my body, to the pores of my skin
(Last night my sweat puddled my sheets
My body sought, it seems, to break the heat)
But heat and cold, uneven and perceived
Our desire to get it right is sometimes not believed
The wind and the sun work at opposite ends
Our perceptions are setenced to perpetual bends
But I will fight for my heat within
I will fight my heat within
I will know my heat within
The heat within is, or could be, where I begin.

Something About an Island



There's something about an island. The way water is never far, never really out of sight. How the sky is more mutable, a living and volatile being; sun shines through blue translucency, then light white clouds pass over, the wind quickly blowing those on before the ominous gray blocks settle above, except of course they settle not at all, thundering and pouring and gusting their innards out before the wind takes them too away, returning the sun blue sky to preeminence. Such are 15 minutes on an island. (Weather forecasts must work like probability density functions, providing general ranges for what the weather will be like in the next day, hour, or minute. Variance is great, and a fact of island life).



An island possesses its charm. As a rule, each island has its own charm, but there are charms that fall under the general island heading. One reaches an island by boat, by ferry, hence by means uncommon to a landlubber's daily routine. 1-2 hours of slow rocking, all ferry rides seem about this long, and a new port, a new ground, well-removed from before. Hardly as transportive, as transformative as air travel, a boat journey, a ferry ride brings space, comfort, and calm views.



Then there is the village on the island. Every island is removed from time. Not completely, for time stops for no island, and no minute is an island, as they say. But an island falls on its own pace and custom, a lag behind the mainland, the inevitable source of civic questioning. To wit: should we keep up with the times or keep on preserving. Nowhere is this clearer than the village.

Each island preserves its village in its own way. Nantucket makes it a rule that all new buildings in a certain area must be built in the gray cedar style predominant on the island. On Ærø, where we stayed for two days, wihtout the summering crowd, pink shirts, and Gatsby strut of the previous island, they forbid the construction of new buildings near the center. Gingerbread yellow red and orange houses stack up on the streets, their burnt orange shingled roofs sloping dangerously convex into each other, former sea captains' homes next door to homes fashioned out of one-time ship decks or poops or what have you: this is Ærøskøbing preserved since the 18th century. Many buildings have the year of their construction displayed on their outer wall, old styled black digits spelling out 1784. There is an old-fashioned windmill just above the center to the south. I should say: of course there is an old-fashioned windmill on Ærø, just near the village.






Every house in Ærøskøbing has antiques displayed in the window, dogs and china and sea relics. The displays are redundant: the town is an antique. Each shop has its opening hours displayed but on the tail end of the high season, those hours operate as a guide, a framework of when the store might be open, should customers be present and should the shop owner have no more pressing business than his/her business. Each shop may fill its own niche - pharmacy, book and school supplies store, gardening shop - but each store also sells souvenirs and services the outsiders, admitting in a charmingly open manner that outsiders dictate life on the village. Without knowing for sure, we sensed that everyone on the island, 7,000 residents, must know each other, and the outsiders as such must be easily marked. The open velkommen is usually felt, except when we poke our heads into the local watering hole and cannot decide which is less welcoming: the steady inquiry that confronts us from the gaze of every local in the full room, or the wall of cigarette stench that flooded our nostrils and eyes immediately. We did not enter the bar, ultimately.



We stayed on the island for about 42 hours. The weather was indecisive and tumultuous but on the whole ok. We only left the village once, on our walk to the windmill. Our experience was limited: walking, cute shops, nice dinners, a charming pension; in sum, a travel experience distilled. Sifted until the essence of a trip comes out: the romance of being alone with someone important, or of just being alone, in a new, beautiful, strange place.

There is something about an island.

And now for some Poetry, Dutch and Deutsch style!

The following is some slightly more artistic writing that I did, inspired by the Netherlands and Germany. Dig in. (And yes, there is product placement in the poetry, of sorts. Call it the new post post modern.)

Two Ends of a Bridge
Focus on the sun, the warmth on your eyes,
burning through the fall goosebumps breeze
See the blue dot behind your eyelids
Rising just out of view.
If the two ends of a bridge don't meet
It's probably to let a sailboat pass through
Unless the bridge over the river Drina has been blown in two
Think of Isidora's gift and her friend in Hamburg
Think of how amazing life is, or how
awful it can be, as in the genocide book
How life is often (always?) both

Untitled (06/09)

The mind craves change, but so much is the same

We are more attractive when with someone

When home, moving seems better

When away in a god place, everything feels like home

Just because I want something different, rarer

does not make me better

Just because i want someone to change does not

mean I must not accept them now.

Down at the Beach

Photo courtesy of Benjamin Chang. Check more of his photos here and here.

5x2 trampoline area. Yellow padding over the springs, green/purple/yellow/blue trim on black mats. A 12-year old boy jumps alone, tentatively, unimpressively. A girl steps on the second mat from the left, row farther from the sea. She is 16-25, probably towards the younger side, light brown hair in a ponytail, brown tank top, blue shorts. Her hops begin, probing and testing, never wasteful. She goes from corner to corner, lightly. Then she flips backwards. Her form is perfect, with straight legs, an unmoving upper body, and arching arms. When I do gymnastic movements, I achieve movement through force; short, explosive contortions or circles that signify power but cannot be pretty in observation. I land in spite of myself. She moves through grace, suggesting only the barest exertion. Her legs appear powerful from my stairway perch, but more as a result of her movement than as a tool to achieve that movement.

She spans the whole mat, perhaps 2mx4m. She flips forwards, she flips backwards, she lands on her butt and then twists off the bounce before landing again. She stands on her hands. Her training must be as a diver or a gymnast. Or as a trampoline artist. She disappointingly jumps a pedestrian 720 rotation. She atones by landing a backward flip with a twist, and again forwards. She may realize she is being watched.

The younger boy is off by now, outgunned and outshined. An older boy, abotu 25, the younger boy's brother for sure, blond, and long like a swimmer, dressed only in thigh low swim trunks and tall man musculature, rises from a chair nearby next to a pretty girl in a red bikini, and steps onto the mat two over from hers, on the same row. He briefly warms up and launches his body into back flips, front flips, and a double back flip, which he does not quite land.

Undoubtedly, he is also very skilled, and his grace is far greater than mine. But power infects his movements as well, allowing him more revoutions but robbing him of her elegance. He looks like a diver, and he appears to be showing off or competing in a way that she does nto. I am projecting, of course.

She steps off. The younger boy returns and emulates his brother, attempting a front flip. She is now on the sand, by two wooden bars; I realize the fenced in section of beach they are in holds a nearly full array of gymnastic equipment: rings, bars, and so on. She tries to do a one-armed cartwheel on the sand. She does not quite succeed. I can do a one-armed cartwheel (though maybe not on sand). I think this proves my point. She puts on sneakers, walks over to talk to the bikini girl, and then leaves the gymnastic compound.

The older brother continues for a couple more minutes and then sits and stretches. The little boy continues for a brief time alone before growing bored. The sea laps at the sand, unchanged, and the wind gusts, unchanged, knocking over my plate of fries so as to stain the concrete with sand-specked mayo and ketchup. The scene ends.

This, at least, is how I remember it.

Tyranny of the Next

The tyranny of the next

Release yourself from expectation

Detach from plans and schedules and details

Accept that the essence is the same

The company, the air, the direction.

The details are just details

The tyranny of the past

But I am just as at fault as any

And on the road, the blame is needless

Useless, in the way.

Let the mistakes go. Let tomorrow be.

Breathe. And again. Breathe.

Meditations After the War

Because after all, war grants even the most unimportant thoughts gravitas. Anyway, collected herein are a few different observations, short tales, and comments on life in Israel, or more specifically, my life in Israel. Scattered within are photos taken either by me in Masada or Akko, or pictures from my brilliant photographer cousin.




It's a small thing, but in two of the three movie theaters in our area, and I presume in movie theaters around the country, an intermission is taken during the showing of the movie. Sometimes, it's at the midway point, like when we saw the urban gritty Linha da Passe, and sometimes it's well past that, as with Oscar darling Slumdog Millionnaire stopping with our chai walla just about to answer the final question, it seemed. It's an interesting non sequitor for a society that always seems to be rushing, a contradiction among many.

***



Just this weekend I made it out to my first show in Tel Aviv of live guitar-based music that portends to be modern. Really, I made it to two shows, if briefly.

It started with a certain colleague, call her, say, "Amy", and I picking up another colleague and friend, Karyn. The three of us drove down Ben Yehuda and then Allenby, driving on streets officially reserved for commercial traffic, and after some circling, we found a parking spot near the club we had our eye on, on Lillenblum St. Lightning lit up the sky to our south, ominous but we hoped not impending.



The gate was 25 shekels to get in (these days just north of $6). We paid for three and walked in to a dark, crowded bar room. The bar itself was opposite the door, with high tables and stools to the right of the door, along the wall, and a stage area in the opposite corner. The place was small but packed (i.e. about 40 people). On stage, a girl with curly brown hair that almost covered her face when she leaned over her acoustic guitar sang in Hebrew. While we couldn't understand her, the mood translated quite well: gloomy, emotive, and dark. Even though she was an opening act, the singer's downward pull, combined with the lack of seats, pushed us out of the bar. Fortunately, it was a quick enough rejection for us to get our money back.

This led to plan B. We called a fourth friend, Andrea, who was stationed near her home in Florentin, a working-class neighborhood in south Tel Aviv known for its nightlife. She was at the 8'' MM Pianobar, and they too had live music. This would reunite our dinner/bar group of a weekend before, and seemed like the only appropriate option.

Well, we did try to add someone else to the mix, but she was driving from somewhere amidst a pounding hailstorm and so was unenthusiastic about continuing her night.

Anyway, after some wandering the wrong way down one way streets in a strangely deserted Florentin, we found a decent parking spot. I ingested a quick dinner as the girls drank coffee and warmed up, and then we walked over to the bar.
This was also a crowded bar, but bigger, with a second tier for the bar itself, the lower floor reserved for the stage, the piano, and a few tables. Andrea and a friend saved us seats, and so we squeezed into the corner of the bar and watched the show.



The show was put on by the performer Zaak. Zaak, I gather, is the singer, a handsome sabra with a high voice who strummed on the acoustic like all folkies should, except with a little more South American-styled rhythm. With him was a shaggy-haired bassist who looked quite similar to the girl on stage at the other bar, except he was a smiley dude rather than a mopey woman.

It was a cute enough performance. Zaak held sway in two languages (Hebrew and English), and played a few cards nicely, if repetitively. The big one was the covers card; first he played back to back Prince jams, which was fun, but for every surprising Pearl Jam tune ("Indifference", though he muffed the poison lyric) there was a too cutesy reach into "No Diggity" land. And on all the covers, the bass player had a little bit too much fun with upper registers and wah-wah pedals. Add that to the crowd being a little bit over clappy (i.e. clapping out the beat for every song), and the show dragged a little bit.

Some of that dragging was saved by the fact that we apparently sat at the VIP table. Squeezed next to Andrea was the father of the artist, and his family spilled around the table. While sitting next to them, we found out that Zaak is fluent in a bunch of languages, that all the songs he played were original (well, except the covers), and that, well, he's a charming young man.

Anyway, an inroad of some sort has been made. Will this lead to another true breakthrough performance? Future remains hazy.



***

A fantastic window into any society, if the opportunity presents itself (so perhaps we should qualify that as a fantastic window into any urban society), is the train system.

I ride the trains twice or three times a week. The ride from Herzliya to the south Tel Aviv station is just under 20 minutes, a huge save on gas and aggravation in evening TA traffic. Then there's the chance to catch up on reading my morning paper - usually by that point I've finished the Israeli paper, the Ha'Aretz, and I'm on my way through the IHT. Round trip costs me 15 shekels, and the only real drawback is that I usually have to wait for the return train twenty minutes longer than I'd like.

There are a few basic facets of the train system that one has to accept in Israel. There's the obvious - it's not a metro, it's more of a commuter rail, riding along the eastern frame of the city, side by side with the main highway, the Ayalon. The ride is much more comfortable than one in Moscow, or even Madrid, as the trains are amply sized, suited for the amount of passengers that ride the rails. I rarely have to consult guides for how to get a good spot on the metro, for example, as a seat is almost always available.

At first I was very impressed with the speed and punctuality of the trains. This was mostly because the impression I got from past teachers at our school was that the public transportation system in Israel was in shambles, a no man's land of dirty buses running on disjointed schedules. Of course, those teachers were trying to sell me cars. Anyway, that positive first impression wore away as I realized that trains often showed up late and I got used to having a pair of seats to myself, an accomodation that the trains could not always meet during rush hour.



The other things that you have to get used to are particular to Israel. Like the prevalence of rifles on the train. Assault rifles or sniper rifles, occasionally handguns, all a part of your trip into the city. Now, they're not quite floating around; usually they're in the hands of a young man or woman dressed in dull green army garb, a soldier for the land. Nowhere else in Israel have I encountered such a concentration of soldiers in uniform with their guns in tow, and the viable reactions are two: to get used to it and pay no mind, or to freak out and jump one of the soldiers, breaking the end of the gun with your bare hands so that they can't use it to fight back, and then continue in their humiliation by stomping on the gun, confirming your overwhelming masculinity and alpha male status. Or you can just not take the trains, I guess.

Then there are the non-stop political ads. Billboards line the train station tunnels, representing not only the big three parties (Likud, Kadima, and Labor, from right to left), but also a few of the fringe outfits. In addition, the big ones often campaign against each other, so you might see a picture of Tzipi Livni (Kadima) looking leaderly and strong (as well as pretty) on her own party billboard, then an unflattering picture of her along with an imposing picture of Bibi Netanyahu flanking the strong yet shrewd Ehud Barak on his Labor party poster, and then a picture of Livni getting a midnight phone call and looking in distress for the Likud poster. The three faces of Tzipi Livni, you might say.



The trains most especially offer a glance into the mindset of the Israeli people. There are the simple reactions, like when a soldier cries out, "Of course" after it's announced that the train will be five minutes late. There's the general habit of leaving a bag on a second chair on the train or in the station, even when the crowds would dictate giving up that luxury. If you leave something or have shampoo leaking in your mesh bag, they'll point that out for you, a kind gesture in a gruff voice.

But the Israeli character at its most prickly is seen in the way that, almost unfailingly, those in the station waiting to get on the train will try to squeeze into the train car even as the passengers leaving the train are fighting to get off. The courtesy of allowing your neighbor to go in front of you is a rare discovery in the Holy Land. After all, you have to make sure you get into the train so you can choose between any of 20 empty seats to get the best one for you and your bag.

***

But if the trains show the negative potentiality of Israelis, there are times when the citizens remind you of their sweet, kind cores.



I wanted to buy a home stereo system. Nothing fancy, just a system that played CDs and had decent speakers, so it wouldn't be completely rinky-dink.

I went to a strip mall near our school on the way home one day. My first stop was at Best Buy, a store whose goods match its American counterparts in theme, but whose scope is laughably limited. Also, it looks kind of junky on the outside. And small.

They didn't have what I was looking for, so I walked over to Home Center, another store in the shopping complex. After a little bit of looking, I found the stereo section, and then I narrowed down my choice to a black nakasumi model. It looked basic but effective, with two nice handheld speakers and a cd player. There was no corresponding price tag, so I figured I'd go for help.




A man came over, and in my pidgin Hebrew I found out from him that this was the last one in the shop, that it cost 200 shekels (just about my budget), and that if I wanted, we could test the cd player. We couldn't find a CD to test it with, however. The radio worked fine, and I felt like going home, so I told him that I was sure it was fine and I'd take it, so no worries. Or I told him, "I have horns sticking out of my side and it's giving me cramps." Either way, I made my choice.

The purchase itself hit a snag, as the stereo was not only the last one they had, but also not even in their system. So they gave it a different serial number - 9090803838, as I remembered from them typing it in a few times - and sold it to me. That different serial number carried a 400 shekel tag, but they knocked it back down to the promised 200 and I went home.

There should be no doubt at this point that when I went home to try the stereo, I found out the CD player didn't work. The disc wouldn't spin, and there was nothing that could be done about it (at least, nothing that could be done with my technological illiteracy). It would have to be returned.

Here's where the drama raises a notch (and you're wondering how a story about a broken stereo system could get any more dramatic, aren't you?). Despite remembering when I bought the stereo, which did not come in a box since they didn't have any for it, that I must keep the receipt, because there was at least a 50% chance the stereo wouldn't work, I couldn't find the receipt. So while I was right about the unreliability of Home Center's random stereos, I was wrong in my method for holding onto the receipt. I turned my car and my bedroom upside down, but I couldn't find the thing. And why didn't I just keep it with the stereo? Because it was a gift, and I thought it would be tacky to have the receipt near the stereo, even though I told the recepient of the gift the price just like that. It's just my foolish pride.

Anyway, I decided I'd go to the store after school on Tuesday, a day after I bought the stereo, in hopes that maybe they'd remember me and help me out with the stereo regardless. I didn't have much hope, but I didn't have many other options either.

I arrived to find the woman behind the help desk already engaged with a customer in a heated discussion. The woman looked to be in her early 30s, with that darkly Caucasian Israeli skin tone and long gold curls that had a brassy tint to them. She looked like a regular spitfire, hardly someone who would help me in my sorrow. Besides, she and the customer were going back and forth in loud tones, he a little bit more aggressively, about a phone he had bought at Home Center and how they weren't responsible for the service plan, or something.



A younger, pudgier girl, a cashier, came over and told me to wait. Since there were no customers at the checkout line, she decided to try to help me. In Hebrew, I explained that the stereo wasn't working, or more specifically the discs, but that I didn't have the receipt (kabbalah) or the bill (heshbon), and I knew you needed that, but I had lost it, and was looking and looking and couldn't find it, so she told me the verb for search, and then she said she'd check with the manager behind the counter and maybe she could help, and I said I bought it yesterday and pointed out the picture on the wall from the Home Center staff retreat of the manager who sold it to me the day before, as if that would help. I had my most resigned, world-weary face on, prepared for the inevitable teeth-pulling argument that would get me nowhere.

It may have been that my face is what saved me, not so much for its stunning form and general presence as for that "I give up and just want to go home and curl up" aura glowing around it. In any case, by the time the manager turned to me, I had a well-practiced story about my situation (in Hebrew), an advocate in the cashier, and a steady lean on my right elbow as if I knew I had no chance of getting anything. Because that's what I thought.

After confirming that I was dumb enough to request a return for a stereo without a receipt, the
the manager pulled out the purchase list from the day before. I recited the serial number at some point, and while I wasn't sure if she heard me, the manager managed to find my purchase. It was a day before at roughly the same time, and so it wasn't perhaps as hard as it seems. It made me think that for all the wonderful things that technology has done, it still hasn't completely eliminated the need for holding onto receipts. But Home Center is close.

It was easy after that; she took my name, number, and a few other details down, and promised that in the next couple of weeks I'd have a new stereo system to replace this one. She printed out a new receipt for me, one which I actually held onto. She even switched to English a little bit for me, speaking it much better than I speak Hebrew. It was a happy ending.



And one with a nice epilogue: when I came to get my new system about a week later, not only did it work, but it was a fancier, nicer version, without costing me any more. So if you go on a scavenger hunt and find the last piece of a type of merchandise, grab it and hope it's broken. Then you can get an updated version for the same price and a little extra time.

Also, Israelis can be very, very nice when they allow themselves to be. Which is good.

***

And there are the times when I'm in a restaurant in the old city of Yafo, hearing stories about how Golda Meir was known as "the Mattress", for the relative ease which it took to lay on her. The eggplant is bad but the company is just fine, and we're late for the show we're going to but the waitstaff is very nice, if a little inattentive, and work and politics and gruffness seems faraway even as we're talking about someone's stolen bike, and when we go to the next bar and there are vulgar visual puns on common ad themes, like a grotesque alien baby sucking on a voluptuous woman's breast as "Got Milk" is written above his head, or a Coke bottle turned to a phallic image, replete with phallic wordplay (think about it), and a little brown dog runs under tables, stopping only to be petted and held, and then only for brief periods of time, and the night goes late but not too late, then the place becomes unimportant and the people and the haze and the combination make up for everything, and Israel is ok.

Or when I'm in that same restaurant with somebody else, and while we talk about giving and receiving, the soundtrack features three Leonard Cohen songs, two of them outright classics and one a less obvious pick, and Dylan's "Don't Think Twice" rolls out of a Neil Young jam, and all of a sudden the potential has exploded into a humble happy home. Then all is ok. Israel is ok.



Next post will be a little more focused, on the many ups and downs of contemplating life-changing decisions. Or getting into a country for good. Cheers!