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)!