palo alto: cutting great neck 2.0


so does war in gaza even get us anywhere?

10:12 / by the gloriously humble gadi cohen / loving replies (3)



nope it don't.

i don't want to seem like this random left-wing make-love-not-war liberation crusader, but there are so many things i want to say about the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza and i hope i'll be able to say them all.

these are human beings. so what if hamas is hiding inside a human shield of palestinians? it is still a human shield. the attacks on hamas are not an attack on hamas; they're an attack on all citizens of gaza. attack on the children of gaza, on the women of gaza, the men of gaza, the infants and the elderly, the working class and the unemployed. but worse of all, this operation was an attack on people-- real living, breathing homo-sapien people, those who are capable of advance thinking, and jealousy and rage and misery and ecstasy, those who can sympathize.

again we come to the idea of people. people, people, people. people are so crucial to the world, and here we are, doing everything we can to obliterate them. hamas security officers are dropping off hundreds at a time, and sixteen-year-old girls bleed to death from a slice of glass of an israeli-destroyed building.


how can slaughtering civilians bring an end to the rockets in sderot?

it can't. there is nothing we can do now but wait and see. there's gonna be a third intifadah, sure. why not? more rockets: last i checked, two in the afternoon, thirty-seven had already hit. why not? more gaza death; actually, more deaths--period.

Israel can not impose Zionism on the people of gaza, nor can it defend itself by killing more innocent citizens. whatever Israel did or does or will do in gaza will only be met by more hate, more sorrow, more revenge-type of crap. instead of focusing on bombing the living shit out of gaza, we need to turn our attentions to the world around us--to europe, to the arab world, and of course to the incoming president obama. we need them to see our suffering, our pain, our sorrow, because via this horrid mass-murder and scare tactic we are only sending out a terrible message of hate.

if hamas is a terrorist organization because it sends rockets out to sderot, then israel is a terrorist state for dropping bombs on an innocent population.

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you know what though?

i don't know.

i think i might be missing ny.

it's a nice place. i miss the snow. i miss ginger. i miss school. i miss iced coffee.

i don't know. i feel better today, but i feel like we should have stayed in israel longer. we should have seen more people, lived in more houses, went to more places. i feel like we should have stayed forever.

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sometimes i want to live in two different worlds. i want there to be two different worlds like a ribbon, how the two sides link in the middle, so that i would not miss israel, would not miss america.

sometimes, i just wish the world would have been simpler. i was thinking yesterday about how horribly difficult it is for people to be born, and then to grow up, and then to grow old. we shouldn't have it this hard, really. and then, how some people stay in the same place their whole life--the same caste, the same little town, the same barred, metal room. why had god made us like this? there is no god.

THERE IS NO FUCKING GOD.

because why do some immoral individuals live in luxury while others, more compassionate, more beautiful people, have to scrap the shit off sidewalks to bring food home?

god does not have his ways. how can we suffer, if we do no wrong? how can we please god if we no nothing of what he wants from us?

THERE IS NO GOD.

not because life is bad. there is no god because there never was one.

and it's so hard for me to fight against this tide, of what i'm used to--i'm used to believing. someone--an orthodox friend--once told me that to believe in god you have to know that he exists even if evidence against his existence exists, too. like, if i read somewhere that the big bang did happen and that man evolved from apes and that, well, god is not there--then i can still believe in him.

well i don't really believe in him and i'm scared because of it.

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what the fuck am i doing here in this world?

12:59 / by the gloriously humble gadi cohen / loving replies (1)

so basically, life is pretty much weird.

first post in two months: let's make it a good one.

who's reading this? no one, probably.

so i had this huge headache today and i don't know why. i'm extremely superstitious when it comes to headaches so i was not sure why this headache slapped into me on this very day. maybe because i woke up on the wrong side of the face. maybe because i drank coca-cola for breakfast. maybe because i ate waaaaay too much today, and yesterday, and the day before, and even the day before. maybe it's because...

because i don't know about israel anymore.

it's boring. it's still home, but it bores me. i expected it to be different. but israel always stays the same. the same colors, the same people, the same food, everything so stationary, so lifeless, so usual, and now i don't really understand why i even anticipated anything different. maybe i had my hopes up. expectations. maybe israel isn't really my home.

is it my home?

fuck, who even knows. i don't believe in god anymore, though it pains me. is that the reason for my headache? maybe there is a god and he doesn't like me not believing in him so he lightning-struck me with this horrid mind-wrecker?

no, god doesn't know if israel is my home or not because he doesn't exist.

the truth is, i feel like during this whole trip i've been putting up this fake front. it's the biggest one i've ever pulled, and though there are some gaping holes in it, i feel like it has been somewhat successful, considering the difficulty. anyhow, this front is destroying everything i stand for and it disappoints me that life is so hard, so miserable that human beings can't even be themselves. why should someone be scared of walking around with a headscarf around, oh, i don't know, great neck ny? or why should someone be refused their right to marry their loved one? i hope all of this will change in the next century. i hope people will be seen solely as people and not as muslims, blacks, gays, sluts.

if i become a politician, a journalist, a whatever, then i will fight for this idea to the death.

but the truth is, i don't know if there is anyone who i can show myself to, or anyone who can show themselves to me. the latter is more severe than the former. i have too many acquaintances, too little friends. if i had to pick one person to live with for my entire life in a desert island, i wouldn't know who to pick. would i pick anyone? not my father, not my sister, not my mother. names swoop around like giant birds in my head. who? who? and i feel like this plays a large part in my innermost misery. who can i lean on? no one. who can i trust? no one. i can only trust myself. i can only grow my inner soul into a mature, sociable, normal character. nobody else can do anything for me. nobody else can shape me or touch me or befriend me. because i've lived too long without good friends. i've lived too long searching, too little finding, too little settling. maybe one of these days, i'll live in an exotic land--spain, france--where i would find friends, lovers. people. i could trust them.

i feel like, due to the situations that have been thrust upon me, i'm the most miserable person in... in the vast network of human beings that i know. i feel like my life has been marked by a black omen since my delivery in schneider hospital, or that my future has been marred by a negligent upbringing and overly compassionate consideration. who has to deal with all these issues? my life has been tossed and thrown around without any care to anything like i was a, a, a basketball, like god [again, god=spit, so, metaphorically, ? ...] decided to surf a rebound and shoot me and throw me around the world. i am a broken, outcasted soul, extricated from the burning center of society into the gray-blue outposts of life. i can send letters to the center, sure, maybe even take the bust there once in awhile. but i'll never live there.

for now, i need escapes--i yearn for them, reach for them. escapes: school, journalism, politics, manhattan. another headache pill could do the trick. but i'll also be searching--searching for my whole life--for more, more, more escapes--movies, Europe, nytime--more and more and more, until i would just explode. escapes will shower me by the gallon.

my head burns like a potfull of beans and beef, or chunt in other words. yum...

water? food? shelter?

i don't know what i'm doing here. what i'm doing here in the basement of my cousin's house. in my cousin's house. in hod hasharon. in israel. in this world. what the fuck am i doing here in this world?

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Do you have time for a poem?

maybe
Maybe
I'm looking out for you on the street.
you're wearing a red-lace skirt and jade eyes
as fragile as an ocean.
Maybe I'm only looking out for someone
who resembles you, someone tall
and feverish—
someone who, at early morning hours, stirs like the rooster
and sobs across a lake of white satin.
Maybe
I've been looking too long
and I'm done, and I'm tired, and a long, purple
nail pinches me in the neck
like a snake's angry fangs.

It's yours.

I'm done searching for you, for your face—
for your long, slanting, ugly face—
I'm done, you hear me?
I'm done with red-lace skirts!
I'm done with green eyes!
I'm skeptical, and maybe even
dead to the world--
you made me so,
you made me,
you made,
you.

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