1:16 Tea time with Mr Blair

I grabbed my laptop, ready to write, switched it on and then sat motionless, glaring at the screen. I am staring at one of my favourite photos that features on my desktop… Effy standing in front of the Houses of Parliament in London. This was taken during the time he came to London, two weeks after we had met in Tel Aviv. The 4-day holiday felt like a whirlwind romance. At the time I took this photo, attempting to fit Parliament into view, I slowly stepped further and further back, with camera in hand, until the point I nearly walked into the front of red double decker bus. Following the photo, Effy kissed me on the lips, put his hands on my shoulders, pulled me closer to his face, and said “Careful now, I don’t wanna lose you that quickly”.

This romance has fortunately continued, up till now, for 1 year and 9 months; the first 10 months involved airplanes, airports, and huge expenses. This unity consisted of short weekend breaks, which felt like seconds compared to the moments when I yearned for him. This time with him was spent over the telephone, e-mail or squashed in front of a tiny camera attached to my computer, in which were barely able to see each other. Every moment felt as if a freshly baked chocolate cake had been placed in front of me and I was told you can smell but you can’t taste … simply put, it was agonizing. Ten months down the line, my life was in need of a makeover; fast-forward another year and I went to live in Israel. Fast forward another year, this week, I will be returning to the world that resides in memories … I will be visiting home for the first time since making Aliyah.

This blog has taken the longest to write than any other, and hence the day dreaming. My thoughts and feelings have been muddled, trying hard to focus on the future, whilst acknowledging that I will return to my past in just a day. Feelings of happiness and satisfaction with my life in Israel finally reached my doorstep. This emotion took a year to develop, and now, like a recovering alcoholic returning to the pub for the first time since their last drink, I am confronting the ghosts in my emotional closet, which have been folded away carefully, so as not to disturb them.

I am confused how to project my thoughts into words. Yes I am scared; and yes, I am concerned that the grass will be greener on the other side, that I will open the closet and not want to close it again. Possibilities of the inevitable are scary. I am terrified that I will have a taste of my past and will not want to stop eating. But as I said, I am happy here, and despite the fact that the primary reasoning behind my dedication to come to Israel has dissolved amongst the tirade of emotions of the last year, this trip may help to reestablish those initial thoughts, and that the decisions behind my new life was correct after all.

Back to the laptop, the reflections on Parliament’s glass windows put me in a hypnotic state. I giggled over the flashback of seeing Effy for the first time in a suit last night in a clothes store. He looked like a young boy who stood stiff wearing his school uniform for the first time. Effy and I are on a mission to purchase his first ever suit. In Israel, there is no distinction here between formal and informal dress. You can go to work in jeans and you can even attend weddings in jeans. If one wears a shirt and tie here, the general public would generally identify you as a waitor, a groom, funeral director or a foreigner. Effy and I are attending a wedding in London on Sunday. The invitation says Black Tie.

“Black tie Nat, what does that involve? Do I go there with a black tie on?” Effy queries in pure innocence.

“Boobala, welcome to the Western culture of for-ma-li-ty. That means, black suit, white shirt and a bow tie … and no jeans,” I responded firmly.

“Oh, I would have preferred just the black tie and jeans,” Effy says with a grin.

Side point: I tell you what I am really looking forward to ... a good cuppa tea.

1:15 Red Flip Flops

The last few weeks have involved lots of strolling up and down Rothschild (see: http://natalieshaer.blogspot.com/2006/03/reminiscing-in-rothschild.html ). The end of the boulevard by my apartment was lit up with vivid lilac flowers in the trees. The colour was so luminous, it was if G-d had taken a lilac highlighter, marking out his favourite spots to sunbathe. Whilst trotting down the boulevard, I tip-toed across the flowers resting on the ground, as not to disturb them. This trip led the way to saying goodbye, or should I say lahitarot to my dear friend, Tina, who was returning to New York City. As I ventured down, I realized I was being distracted by the feet that ventured past. Whilst journeying around Tel Aviv be-regel (‘on foot’), my focus is often distracted by Israeli feet. For the large part of the year, most people here are booted in flip-flops, wedges, or the famous (or personally infamous) ‘crocs’. These shoes look like rubber clogs with holes (I guess for ventilation), and come in various bright colours. Men, women and children are seen sporting pink, blue, green and red crocs. In my view, they look like clown shoes, but to be honest, I have never understood a great deal of the Israeli fashion.

On the way down Rothschild, I noticed a scruffy bearded homeless (assuming) man, but he was no ordinary homeless man. He was an Israeli homeless man, dressed in a red shiny jacket and shorts, red flip flops, and held a 80’s-style-brick mobile phone (which may or may not have been working), whilst he lay on a bench under one of the lilac trees . The equality of foot wear in Israel amazes me is. From the richest to the poorest of society, all will have at least one a pair of rubber flip-flops or crocs featuring in their summer wardrobe. ‘They’ say you can only judge a man once you walked in his shoes. I guess that would be slightly confusing in Israel. They all seem to be wearing the same. I presume this is slightly reflective of Israeli society. I indeed do not doubt that there is a definite existence of materialism, but at the same time, most seem equal. There is no such thing as ‘class’ determining the distribution of wealth and taste. If someone wants a pair of red Prada sandals, it won’t be a selected few working overtime to pay for them. And at the same time, most here wouldn’t raise an eyelid to a pair Prada feet strolling past on the Rothschild boulevard catwalk.

On return from Tina’s, I noticed that the previously vacated bench was empty, apart from the mobile phone, red jacket and the flipflops that lay out on the floor. I looked up and saw the homeless chap climbing up the tree. I guess he wanted to take a closer look at the lilac flowers, and maybe at the same time feel closer to G-d.

1:14 Emotions Placed in Perspective

I am on the night shift again, so I presume as tiredness begins to penetrate into my consciousness, my emotional state will be given the platform to leak into my writing ... well, we’ll give it a go at least.

Name Calling

Friends and family often complain that I do not portray my inner thoughts and feelings in accounts of my life in Israel. They read my experiences, yet continue to complain about my lack of emotional depth. Let’s get one thing straight: most unsettling and emotionally driven moments involve particular people at specific points in time. It would be slightly immoral to rant on about the people that shape my emotional wellbeing, largely being those who aggrevate me … I am a cynical Brit after all. Many blog writers have used the first letter of the name of individuals they have written about in order to hide their identity … how ridiculous … I am sure person ‘S’ would probably catch on that person ‘G’ has written about them!

Anyway, enough of this … back to the more serious items on the agenda.

Life Story

I am reading a scrumptious book at the moment, it is the type you just want to wrap up and squeeze its cheeks. The book is called The History of Love, written by Nicole Krauss. The book, The History of Love, that the story is based upon, was written, as it was told, by a man called Zvi Litvinoff. The relevant paragraph to this blog divulges into the somewhat desperate life of Zvi. The story spoke of how he would analyse every moment in his life. For instance, he would be posed questions by passer-bys, and by the time he would have evaluated the query and come up with an answer, the person would have already left, leaving him standing alone in contemplation. It continues

“ … Things were lost into oblivion like so much about so many who are born and die without anyone ever taking the time to write it all down. That Litvinoff had a wife who was devoted is, to be frank, the only reason anyone knows anything about him at all,” (Krauss, 2005, p.70).

It was his wife that persuaded him into publishing his book. And if weren’t for those published words, Litvinoff would have remained an unknown man.

If I were not for me having written my accounts, would I remain a woman unknown, would all my experiences be ‘lost into oblivion’, in respect to the fact that all occurrences in my life are unique; what I have seen through my eyes and no one else's. If I wasn’t writing this down, a huge part of my life would remain unknown. And, if I wasn’t writing down my emotions, would no one ‘truly’ appreciate my experience? I guess, it would simply be Natalie went to live in Israel during that time in her life [full stop]. I am not saying that we should all be walking around with a notebook in our back pocket, ready for our daily lives to be written out. All I am saying, once we are dead, we are dead, and that is it. We don’t have the opportunity to justify to others the type of people we were, we rely on what others remember about us. If it is all written out, we remain alive, in part, as an illustration for others to return to, to remember and understand the person we truly were.

Head Case

Much like Zvi, I am a very analytical person. Many would say an over analytical person, as if it was something bad, like it was a disease to be a deep thinker. I am situated in a 54-floor high building. During the night shift, I get slightly nervous, assessing the fact that I am alone, except the security guards circulating at the bottom. If, say, a plane hit this building, just like at 9/11, no one would think, oh gosh, Natalie is in there, get the rescue team over. It would be, thank goodness it is night and the building empty. Fine, okay, my analytical psyche is slightly neurotic.

(Azrieli Tower, Tel Aviv)

Having moved to start a life in a different country hasn’t exactly balanced the mechanics of my mind. On a daily basis, my mind is brimming over with questions. At the start, I was constant grumbling, comparing England versus Israel. Once I got use to the fact that I was actually in Israel, and learnt to accept that you can’t buy a microwave dinner in the supermarket, that coffee shops generally do not distinguish between a latte and a cappuccino, I actually started to enjoy life in Israel. Nowadays, or should I say, the past four months, there has been a constant battle of answering fundamental questions in my mind, concerning happiness, financial security, and more often, whether I will be able to continue life without the people that truly love me, apart from for the Tripoli tribe. I wish I had at least one answer to the many questions that goes through the obstacles my mind. I chose not to write all this down. It may be therapeutic, but it is enough of a confusion to be me, let alone attempting to write this mental chaos down.

Details of a Picture

Back to the book, the character Alma spoke of how her mother would keep the love between her and her late husband ‘alive’, by removing herself from reality and neglecting herself in the process. Alma refers to Alberto Giacometti, the sculptor and painter, “... sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure”.

Alma continues,

“… To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you’re limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky. My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father, and to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world” (Krauss, 2005, p.45).

How beautifully put. I guess many lead their life in such a way, and choose to have a selective vision of life to make the process of living a little easier. On the other hand, we may focus on the tiny precious moments, forcing you to truly appreciate your experiences. I find this quote has a slight double meaning. Or maybe, I still haven’t fully worked it out as it may be implying that it is good to hold onto certain feelings of the past; or, if doing so, you are preventing yourself from seeing the total picture, like Alma’s mother; and, therefore, holding yourself back from experiencing life fully.

My problem is that I place too much focus on the landscape. I constantly reevaluate major questions about the direction of my life, and forget to look at the trees, the flowers, and all the beautiful and simple things that surround me, and live for now, for this moment. Fine, this is my resolution for this week … one step at a time.


P.S. Judy, thanks for the book ... you aren't getting it back (joke)!

1:13 Flags and Drumsticks

It is 7.59 pm on a Monday night. I am standing on Ben Yehuda Street and waiting. A moment later, sirens whale down the street and throughout the country. These haunting sounds, reminiscent of those in War movies, had a different purpose. People stopped their cars, got out and stood; taxi drivers and their passengers got out of their cars and stood; and people came to their balconies and stood facing the street. All of Israel stood in silence to recognise all those that have died for the state of Israel. The sirens symbolized the start of Yom Hazicaron, the Day of Remembrance.

This instant in Ben Yehuda was totally disparate to a time of remembrance I can remember experiencing in London. Around five years ago, I worked in a large men’s shoe store situated in the bustling area of Regent Street, near Oxford Circus. The remembrance day in mind was commemorating all the fallen soldiers of Second World War. It reached 11 o’clock and there was two minutes silence. I recall standing by the window, observing the world continue to do what it was doing, as the silence passed on. No one stopped, no one stood and no one was remembering. The two minutes could have been any two minutes of the day or the week. There was no sense of recognition, or mourning, and it seemed like nobody even cared.

The unity and nationalism that exists in Israel astounds me. On Ben Yehuda, I felt connected to every person around. We all recognized the importance of what was symbolic to that day. We all felt the significance of that moment.

The next evening saw the arrival of Yom Hatzmut, a day to celebrate the independence of Israel and acknowledging the establishment of the state. The momentum was as emotional, yet on a totally new level. Flags lined the streets, attached to trees, poles, cars and homes. This was reminiscent of the World Cup in London … it is quite amazing how different occasions can stimulate excitement in people, to get their national flag out and celebrate … football, independence of a nation.

Parties resounded in every nook and cranny of Tel-Aviv. Every roof was filled with people dancing to music. The country lit up in celebration. Every passer-by would holler Hag Sameach (‘happy holiday’), and for the first time I felt part of something. I no longer a mere Londoner in Tel Aviv, but for once I felt part of a nation, part of the ground I was standing upon. It was totally uplifting and rejuvenated my understanding of why I was where I was.

The last two days brought an amazing sense of nationality. People of all ages come together to recognise the importance of who they are and how they got there. We appreciate the significance of the past, to celebrate the freedom of the presence, and learn to appreciate what we have gone through to get we are today. This is the unique quality of Israel that makes her so special. She is so emotional, thoughtful, and appreciative and especially knows how to have a good time. I guess that is why I enjoy her company so much.

Today, every garden will be hosting a barbeque and some sort of celebration. The party continues. I am off now to eat some meat, chicken drumstick in one hand, flag in the other … hmm.

















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Totally irrelevant, but quote of the day, by my dear Adam: “ I am well educated in the swirling mass of morid physcological acute disorders that are parent child relations”.