2:19 New Changes For an Old Timer

I confuse the barrier between sentiments versus details far too emotional for this platform. The former being the comfort of a night with an English friend, accompanied with a dj and crew from Brixton, London, inside a cozy little bar on Lilenblum in Tel Aviv. The latter being the ensuing feelings it left me with, living here. At times in the bar, I forgot which city I was in; the music so smooth and funky, that it must be a West End bar. I was only reminded it was still Tel Aviv on the arrival of skinny tanned guys, holding scooter helmets and wearing flip flops. Maybe the dense humidity outside has been playing with my thoughts, confusing the disparity between desires in dreams and the pain of reality hitting the depths of my stomach.

A dear friend just made Aliyah. Over dinner, we discussed the new beginning. The excitement of her arrival bounced across the table and fell into my lap. The innocence of the three-week thrill of summer settled into the corners of her eyes, like a glistening tear drop. Did I have any wise knowledge to impart to her over the Thai noodles and Peking duck? Well, I felt like the bitter old woman that needed to give her a smack around the face, dash the innocence off her grin, and to tell her my real thoughts of how it is to be here. But I couldn’t bring myself to it. I suppose the move of making Aliyah is what it is, the remnants of a dream or fantasy that materialize into a fresh page in Israel. To take the excitement of ‘Aliyah’ is to say there is no point in dreaming. But what makes this page fresh? A new start for me actually started a week ago. A fresh page within inside myself: I swept out the dust in my cupboard and I came to realize what my new start was for the last two years. This page was regardless of city or weather, but was a fresh start for me, from within myself.

Back to the bar with the Brixton crew, it was strange that I never felt more at ease. I wonder if I had swapped places with my friend at dinner, that I would have felt the same pain and joy in the bar. Even though I am the Jew in the land of Jews, I still feel like the foreigner. And even though I have been here for two years, I am still no more, no less than a London girl. So, one piece of advice to add to the ‘Aliyah guidebook’: new places don’t necessarily mean new pages.