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.

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!

Oh boy, I've got no cleverness left!

It's been a while since I've written, and I've seen plenty of things that I felt like sharing. No major events, no major narratives, and due to camera trouble, no pictures. But here's a bunch of things about my life in Israel.


Jewish holidays
The two Jewish religious practices I try to maintain, besides being intelligent and good with numbers, are keeping pesach for Passover (i.e. not eating bread) and keeping the fast for Yom Kippur. I suppose both reveal a desire for sacrifice and penance within me. Fasting for a day isn't really hard (you miss breakfast and lunch one day, as it goes sunset to sunset) for me as a wrestler, so there's that pride thing too.

So I kept the fast here, same as always. What was different was how the rest of the world behaved.

It seems obvious to say that Israel, being a Jewish country, would take Yom Kippur more seriously. But to call this a Jewish country is reductive. A sizable part of the Jews in the country (who in themselves make up only about 75 % of the population) are not religious. That other 25 % is Christian, Muslim, or Druze, with Arabs and foreigners filling up the sheet.

And yet on Yom Kippur, the country coalesces into a day of rest. On Shabbat, for example, those who are observant do not drive, but those who don't care much for the religious details take over the roads.

On Yom Kippur, it is heavily frowned upon to drive. By 3:30 (about an hour and a half before sunset, as daylights savings in Israel are really early, due to Orthodox politicians/lobbyists who asked for an easier time on YK) the afternoon before Yom Kippur starts, nobody is supposed to be driving. This is a big deal; riots in the old, mixed-population city (i.e. Jews and Arabs) of Akko broke out over how an Arab drove through a Jewish part of town (it's disputed whether or not he drove quietly or with music blasting, and as usual, it sounds like both sides are much at fault).

I live in Nof Yam, a part of Herzliya Pituach, which due to its affluence, nearness to Tel Aviv, and heavy embassy population, is one of the most secular regions in the country. Still, the roads were virtually carless. I went for a walk at midday. In 45 minutes of walking, including a cross over the highway via bridge, I saw one car driving, an apologetic woman behind the wheel.

The roads were not, however, empty. Instead, bikers and rollerbladers and walkers flocked to the streets. Mostly families or kids on the main roads, they were people on bikes who enjoyed the freedom. On the highways, there were packs of serious bikers in matching tight red shirts and black spandex shorts. It's sort of a national bike day, a day where the whole country stops and then allows everybody else on the road. It was most tranquil. (NB: Looking through my archives, I think I must have used the "It was most tranquil" line about ten times. Anybody catch where it's from? (nb of nb: I've used it three times before this.)

After Yom Kippur there are two more holidays in the high holiday season; Sukkot and Simhat Torah (the latter is the reason I can write this blog, as there's no school). For Sukkot, I received an invitation, along with another young colleague and friend, to have dinner with another, older colleague's family. Under their sukkah (a hut, where a family is supposed to take all their meals for the week of Sukkot), we enjoyed a nice soup, pot roast, and sweet potato dinner. There was fine conversation about the movable Do, jury trials, and naive art. The youngest boy at the table threw up (that is, not me), and the big Jewish family feel of it was really nice. My personal practices haven't really changed much, and I don't have any curls growing down the side of my face, but seeing a Jewish country is a strange, refreshing, and at times saddening experience.

The Appropriate Music for the Holy Land
Ok, I'm not going to cover the entire holy land. But Tel Aviv is a city that feels like it should have Leonard Cohen on low volume at all times. The poetry, the mysticism, the cracking voice, the sex, the gypsy 3/4 songs, all a part of the Tel Aviv experience.

But that doesn't mean that if you're cruising down the Ayalon (the major Tel Aviv highway, like Rt. 93 in Boston) and have some difficult thoughts to work out, you can't crank up Purple Rain and "Wanna' Be Starting Something." In fact, quite to the contrary.

Another Strange Thing About Driving
First of all, I'd like to lay to rest the notion that Israeli drivers are bad drivers (a notion that most of you readers heard only from me. Sorry). When I drive 100 KM/H in the right way (roughly 62 MPH), I'm usually passing more than I get passed. 120 KM/H (75 MPH) is about enough to be the alpha car on the highway. So the speed isn't that big a deal.
Of course, like everywhere else in the world, Israelis clog the left lane unnecessarily and at times make outlandish lane changes. The latter actually is a trick I abuse too, so no worries.

Are the Israelis a little maniacal on regular roads? Yes, probably, just like drivers everywhere except in the American South and Midwest.

Are they ruder? Well, that's an excuse to share one of my favorite anecdotes from my dad.
Q: What's a split second?
A: The time between when the light goes green and when the guy behind you beeps.

Here, the split seconds are shorter. Also, there's the Red/Yellow warning light to precede the green, which means by the time it gets to green, you're already late.

The second point I'd like to make (so belated that I had to go back a day later to edit it in) is that in Israel, a flashing light on a police car means something different than in the States. What it means, I'm not sure of. After seeing a bunch of cars with them on, however, and a bunch without, I've noticed that difference. In the states, flashing lights is enough to signify that the cop car is on the hunt, and get out the way.

Here, cop cars drive with the lights on, but they drive with no particular sense of urgency. 85 KM/H in the right lane? That's just fine with these cops. A red light? We can wait. Streams of cars passing by the cops in laughter? These cops are above it.

Again, I have no idea what it means. But usually, when I pass the cops, I skip the laughter. Usually.

Mixed Martial Arts
One of the avenues I've picked up to supplement income and acquire new friends is teaching a local group of M.M.A. fighters how to wrestle. I got the gig from wrestling with one of the main coaches of the club, Ido, who happens to have been on the Ultimate Fighter show, and is a celebrity in Israeli M.M.A. and B.J.J. circles. He's also known as "The Hebrew Hammer".

Every other Sunday morning or so, I drive down to a stadium in a northern part of Tel Aviv (in fact, the very stadium where the wrestling federation is housed), throw on my gear, sans wrestling shoes and headgear, and train a bunch of Muay Thai and Brazilian JiuJitsu fighters.
So far we haven't gotten beyond a snatch single with various leg in the air finishes, and I'm still adjusting to the realities of teaching wrestling in a sport where a knee can always stop a shot in the facial area. But a few other differences and interesting tidbits have come to my attention.

- When the fighters shake hands to begin a sparring or live session, they add a little pound after the handshake. So far I have not considered adding an explosion into the mix, but it's now close to my mind.

- I practice what little Hebrew I know while coaching. If somebody's head isn't in the right place, and he doesn't speak English as well, I'll point to where the head is supposed to be and say, "Rosh po." If somebody has to squat their butt down, they explain to me that the word is "tusik", or "yashvan". In a related but not MMA related note, I'm getting decent at pronouncing Hebrew r's, the letter "resh". You have to swallow the r, you see, and say it all the way in the back of your throat. It's quite difficult, and I may end up choking on my tongue, but whatever.

- The fighters conversely get to practice their English. While much of it is of a blue variety that I would never print on such family friendly webspace, I do like how one of the guys pointed out that when I would call them to the center by shouting, "Bring it in," I was living up to all the coaches in movies. Apparently all I'm missing is the line, "Hit the showers!" Yarr!

- I also managed to develop this into potential social interaction. I've talked with many people here as well as friends from other places about the occasional, surprising challenge of trying to hang out with someone when you know them in one context. For example, one could be in a chorus south of Tel Aviv and unsure about how to approach their fellow choral singers to have a drink one night. Or a cool fellow might play tennis with another cool fellow, decide he wants to hang out with other cool fellow, and then wonder if asking other cool fellow to hang out would sound too awkward, like asking somebody on a date.
I'm told this is more of a guy problem, actually.

Anyway, we watched the most recent UFC the other night in some bar 5-10 minutes from my house. It was a private party and there were a bunch of kids waiting outside for another party. My man Ido let me in to the dimly lit bar area and I nursed a glass of red wine while I watched two guys punch each other for awhile. I can't say I was thrilled with the fight, but it was mostly an effort to set up that social action. And an American wrestler is fighting next time. And I forgot to pay for the wine. Then again, my man Ido was quoted on the Israel broadcast of the fights as saying that he who knows how to wrestle best will win the fight, so a little secret weapon action is worth a glass of wine, eh?

My Favorite Paris Story
The first foreign destination from which I updated this now veritable blog was Paris. I then mentioned the city in various posts, detailing all the adventures I had as well. Actually, there was one adventure I only briefly mentioned, so allow me to share it in detail now before I return to the present and future:
I had mentioned that on our second day in Paris, Ben and I went to the Yitshak Rabin Gardens and then the Palais du Bercy. And that we had to sprint to the train afterwards, and had a very confusing departure. But what we did at the Palais du Bercy added to the fun.

The Palais is, I think, a sporting venue. It's walls have this grassy face to them, and sleek concrete walls to mark each subsequent section of the wall. Atop each grassy face is a little walkway.

Naturally, seeing that wall, I decided to climb it. Ben decided to cheer me on. And naturally, going up was the easy part - pulling by grass or railway or just low balance, I scrambled to the top of this venue. I climbed it just because it was there, and upon being atop it (about 50 feet above Ben, at about a 45 degree incline), I received no satisfaction except the climbing thrill.

This was countered by the fear of how to descend. It's one thing to climb up by pulling and slowly edging. Going down you have gravity to take into account (it's a bitch, ain't it?).

I decided tiptoeing along the concrete face while holding onto the grass might be the trick. Surely a crab walk down would be a controlled, manageable venture.

For about the first five feet, it was controlled. Then I or my old sandals' soles slipped, and all of a sudden I was sliding. Having begun to slide, I started screaming, a happy sort of scream like on a rollercoaster or when I jumped off the 10 meter platform diving board at Duke, but with a hint of fear. Meanwhile I'm using my hands to try to slow my momentum. And Ben is waiting at the bottom, not sure if he should laugh, try to save me, or call for help.

I landed ok, skidding forward a little. As soon as I proved ok, the two of us burst into a couple minutes of hard laughter. And the damage suffered was a badly scraped finger and my left sandal, which tore up on the top so that I couldn't wear it before. If you ever wondered where my trend/fetish for buying brightly-colored shoes came from, it was out of mere necessity: the Roman blue Nikes where the cheapest things I could find at the train station in Rome, and I didn't have my backpack where my sneakers lay.

Me right before I lose control and start screaming.


So anyway, I'm going to Paris again in November with the AIS team. As part of the International Schools Sports Tournament, we travel at the end of each season, and Paris is the destination this year. I'm looking forwards to a triumphant return, a hotel 25 KM away from the center (though a small part of me thinks our tournament is at the Bercy), a meeting with Ben, and more unexpected good times. Of course, this time around, I'll be a leader of young men, and maybe such antics will be frowned upon...


Out on the Ledge
Speaking of students, here are a few of the latest fun things they've been challenging me about, and then a few more examples of how not different students and teachers are.

- One of my study skills sections has a few kids eager to be friends with me on facebook. They've spent class time and even a little of time out of class asking me about it, trying to figure out the proper spelling of my last name, and then still getting stumped. Little do they know that it's only recently that I've gone by Daniel.

- Some of those same kids were chagrined when I made fun of them for liking Jack Johnson. But I'm only looking out for them.

- Just like the wrestlers I worked with last year, all these kids are very eager to see me live out all their facial fantasies. Handlebars is the common request from the kids, and by handlebars they mean a fu manchu (where the mustache goes down along the chin, but with no goatee anchor; handlebars are the things that curl off your face, and I can't grow them yet). One freshman who grows far too much facial hair for a high school freshman has been bugging me to have a "Beard-off". Poor kid doesn't realize that regardless of the result, he will not be a winner in this event.

- Now to the teachers. Saturday I hung out with a few other teachers at our lovely colleague/friend Kate's apartment (she's actually the one who went with me to Sukkot). We drank, we spilled drinks, we had a good time. Her apartment is on the top floor of an apartment building (one that also houses my dentist's office) right next to the beach, and after a little bit of time, she invited us out to the ledge.

Accessed through climbing a few walls, the ledge hangs over the street. It's a fairly wide ledge, and there is minimal danger in sitting out there and enjoying conversation and one another's company.

I bring up this night, however, to draw similarities between us and them, with us as teachers and them as students. We like to imagine high school kids are especially immature, and that they do and say things we would never do. However...

One of our conversations on the ledge revolved around walking by people's houses and seeing if they have porn on TV, and all the implications of such thoughts and actions. Later, back in the apartment, the three girls (there were five of us total) went into a long discussion about tampons, their first periods, and the various implications of remembering these things. Which was fine, but not all that much better than the things our kids might talk about.

And needing to match the level of intrigue and weirdness, I, upon leaving, flashed a little worm on my arm. Somehow, that didn't repulse everybody, and marks the second time in a week's span that I showed female friends that little worm. The bastard's hanging around, alligator blood and everything.

Anyway, enough grossness and silliness. Until next time.