cutting great neck

again in one of those moods, longing for israel, reminiscing, engulfed by music, wanting to know what type of person i would have been had we stayed.

would i have listened to this music? stayed up hours trying to listen to it? to remember it? to remember the roughly pouring words that fit into one another like wooden blocks. to remember: the night, blacker than black, the white plastic chairs on the balcony, the balcony, the 90s, crumbling apartment structures immersed in age spots.

i know where i’m doinga my semester abroad.

label me: israel, melancholy, memory, miss, music, song

from my trip to israel:






















Six years
in america.

astonishing. oh what a way to celebrate: a week in israel.

how wonderful.


the trees outside are beautiful. yellow-leaved branches tracking over the fading white red-brick wall that stands in my backyard. the grass is coated with brown yellow leaves that glow golden in the sun.

but the skies are white.

label me: israel, pictures

funny how beautiful life is.

how nauseatingly repetitive, and yet beautiful.



it's autumn. the cold is a snake and its fangs are slowly swooping into my flesh.

snow: can't wait for you.



i miss airplanes. europe and israel. beirut on itunes; nostalgia from last winter's vacation, athens, petach tikva.



i'm going back home for a week in the start of november.



i miss the feeling of being somewhere else, not nyc, not great neck, somewhere fresh and different and foreign, somewhere with a different language, a mediterranean city with enticing cuisine and riveting architecture and irresistable culture.



romania...

oh romania.



i want to visit you.

i want to visit the streets of my spectral childhood, the place where i never grew up, where i never lived. where my mother was raised.

label me: fall, israel, miss

grandmother, cousin left today.

to israel. to home.

how i miss israel. we listened to this zionist noami shemer cd today in the car on the way back from a horrible day in the city and i felt so much deep, harkings nostalgia, so much longing and so much remembering.

i'm all alone in the house. dad and sharon are driving back from the airport; it's dark, silent. the radio is possibly on. they discuss the past--the distant, distant past of our infancy, and even before--and science and history, even though in a sense everything that has to do with science or with the past is history. the radio plays softly against the thundering of the wheels against the wet highway asphalt, which sounds like a tree breaking against a violent waterfall in the middle of an empty forest. the window’s rolled down. rain—the smell of it, the cold plummeting drops—blows in.




speaking of the devil: keys jingle downstairs, voices from outside seep in.

they just came in. the keys in the door. it turns. i say hello. shalom, dad says. sharon goes to play with ginger, and giggles, and ginger’s collar clinks.



i celebrated cousin’s departure. he's sweet, but extremely obnoxious and ignorant and acts like a 7-year-old, even though he’s 12. we love each other, but it's almost impossible to live with him. how he has to sleep with the lights and the a/c on; how he always had to have two+ eggs every day; how he always watched the most abhorrent channels, and played the most abhorrent games on the computer; how he feared ghosts and darkness and unclosed closets; how he had to have everything, play with every single electronic device our family owned, especially while we were using it; how he asked me to repeat the same song on itunes over and over again; how he was still a child, an undeveloped, exasperating child.




they all left, and i stayed home to walk ginger. after i hugged and kissed said cousin goodbye, i came back in and closed the door and looked through the small window in the foyer, and saw grandma's bulky, familiar form, her hands reaching for the seatbelt--she always asks for my help when it gets jammed—and then i turned away, and petted ginger.

i was sad.



now i'm listening to cat power. i'm thinking about, thrilled for the canada trip.

i'm... i don't know. i guess i miss learning french. i miss living in israel. i miss school, guide post, history. the english book we have to read is so infinitely dull and horribly stoic. "all the king's men"--brrrrrrrrrrr!....

~~~



i dined alone. in the horrid rain and wind, i stumbled and hopped across puddled pavements to a shawarma and hummus dish, and then i walked back in the darkness, thinking.

~~~


i'm excited to meet the broders again. i just went through a photo album from when i was 6, or 5. and i saw several pictures with them in it.

and i'm feelin' melancholy.

not horribly though. not really. i'm feeling... poetic, almost. no. i'm feeling... absent-minded. bare. jaded. and yet, in some strange way, refreshed almost. new.

it's been almost a year since we moved to great neck. july 30th.


i'm free!

label me: broders, family, food, israel, melancholy, memory, miss, music, nostalgia, rain, travel

i smell like poop.

my eyes are locking shut by themselves. i'm about to faint. i have to memorize 350 vocab words for tomorrow english. i'm too tired. i want to nap a little.

had a snowday last monday.

no pictures.

am too lazy.

play, guide post.

i realized today how useless, dull life is. i realized how there's nothing for us to live for. that we'll have to work and fight for nothing, for the most meager of prizes. children, money, sex. and i know i'm being so freudian right now, but it's truth and that's what matters.

how relationships change in the blink of an eye.

i've been listening to the idan raichel project lately. and i've--i've realized that he truly embodies the israeli spirit, the israeli identity.

i wish i could live there for a year or so. i wish i could see what i missed out on. i wish i could understand what my old friends are going through, what the world seems like to them. i want to be able to stay up till two in the morning and walk into a cafe--somewhat, cafes in israel are different than here... i don't know how to explain it--or just to wake up in the morning and look outside into the red dunes, sands, harsh white sun, cold marble floors, hot summer nights outside...

i don't know. i don't think i remember summer in israel. i don't think i remember much... from a lot of places.

my dad's been making dvds from old videotapes of us, and so sometimes we'd gather around the computer and watch... the past. and i find that i don't remember much of anything. sure, i can recall madrid or dancing and singing in the backyard in palo alto--but i don't remember so many of the places we've gone to, in san francisco, in san diego, in israel, and i feel so secluded and frightened... i feel like i've been swallowed up by my memory, by my lack of memory.

i miss it, a lot. sometimes.

but would i like to move there? oh, i'm not so sure now. i remember in september, how lonely and wretched i felt, how much i yearned to live in israel again... but now... i'm not so sure. i'm not so sure.

label me: boredom, friends, guide post, home, israel, life, memory, miss, philosophy, play, sex, snow

manhattan on saturday february 28



sometimes i feel like life is... is like a long, roatating journey packed with ennui and fatigue, at times spotted with good points that sooner or later become strenuous bores, unneeded chores--a life filled with things from a life that has been lived before, a life... i don't know.



manhattan on saturday,
manhattan on sunday,
manhattan on saturday,
great neck the rest of the week,
cold air,
same people, same activities.

sometimes i feel like there's only history to look forward to; the past, the intriguing, beautiful past, jam-packed with death, violence, peace, love, hope, fury.



we went with the shapiras to south side seaport, that tourist hole near wall street, and then we went up towards chinatown but never made it, so then we just returned and dined at the same turkish place we ate at in june.

hmm.

we have guests now and i want to tell ya'll how nice life is and how normal and how ordinary and how strange my life is still and how dark night is outside, how dangerous, how enchanting like a movie.

ohh and yes, i did see two grand movies this weekend: "all about eve" (such a screenplay, such actors) and "la strada" (a bizarre connection to the glorious "nights of cabiria.")



i want to live in europe when i grow older; not new york, not san diego, not san francisco, not israel. europe: france, england, ireland, spain, greece, italy, germany romania russia. i want to live in a place where not everything revolves around you, when society has a social aspect and does not only consist of statistics.




i've been listening to a bunch of israeli songs lately

and i want to be in israel again

just to be there, alone, independent, in a small mediterranean apartment

with some girl, just locked up

and go to clubs, and listen to music and eat watermelons in the summer:

is it all that bad?

there is something like you
in me; something capricious
and sickly, a long shadow
inside my eye that expands
and contracts with the wind,
black and vile. i see you, the
vicarious creature, the untenable
wolf; vexing and peeling away
scars that have dried long ago,
drawing blood that has poured
long ago. you extend a drooling
arm, like a curtain, waving in
the wind and rain. the and needs
to be smaller, because we all
know that wind and rain
always go together, don’t we?
like harold and maude? and
porgy and bess? and sometimes,
i think, you and me—but not in
the small and sort of way, more like
in two voices that fall into place,
red and rose, chanting hymns together
like twirling snakes. sometimes,
i think, you and me need
smaller ands, like wind & rain,
wood & fire, dark & light.
you & the and is as little as
the light at the end of the tunnel.

<3 KIF KEF

<3 MEKUPELET


ANI CHOZER LETEL AVIV

I'M RETURNING TO TEL AVIV!!!

label me: boredom, europe, food, future, history, israel, life, manhattan, miss, movie, music, night, philosophy, poem

it all ties in together.

everything


i understand everything.
my life.

the worldd.

why?

למה?






My most played song on iTunes is Hakayitz HaAcharon by a band called Shefiyot Hazman

שפיות זמנית - הקיץ האחרון
from 1991

the last summer by “time’s illusions”

i don’t know; something about that song makes me melancholy, makes me reflect, makes me... feel so lonely, so full of darkness, so left out... so neglected. but it expresses so many profound and mystical ideas, and i can only... i can only, i don’t know... i love it. it calls to mind israel; the darkness of israel, the sadness, the gloominess, all of my missed opportunities, the homes, the people... i can't tell you. i can't...it is such a mysterious song, so... so full of longing.



the story:

a few weeks ago we drove in the silver toyota

to a park, to costco

two weeks ago, to be exact

and i opened the glove container or whatever

and there’s this colorful cd

and i remembered—i recalled my father telling me that he knows this famous singer and she was his good friend and she signed a cd of hers and gave it to him

he told me this, what—two years ago?

so i put this cd in

and i feel like crying.
...

i want to meet her

i really do.

and it all fits in together. why did i have this sudden connection to the song? this emotional bond with her voice? because i’ve heard it before. years before. in a different time.

it was a one-hit wonder, and then she became a businesswoman.

wow.



why am i telling you this now?

why am i telling you this at all?

i don't know; intrigue. self-fullfillment. life.

~~~

i went to a party on saturday

and it was amazing

valentine’s day party

...


the play is moving along

fine

and i guess...
that’s it.

tuesday early morning
ah.

darkness
cat power
catcher in the rye
chips
sleep
wake up
shower
life

lyrics

this is my last summer with you
with the first rain i’ll disappear
my tears will pour down the streets
like a leaf that falls and far-away hopes
i’m a man of winter amidst men of sea
but in this winter i will not exist
slowly, slowly the layers melt
between wanting, not wanting and last prayers

so remember that you promised not to cry
because the skies are big and the tears are small
close your eyes every first rain
and think of me

i want to climb on the mountains because they’re there
and to visit oversea countries
to know if there is other life forms
and if the dead keep living
because this is my last summer with you
with the first rain i’ll disappear
my tears will pour down the streets
like a leaf that falls and far-away hopes

so remember that you promised not to cry
because the skies are big and the tears are small
close your eyes every first rain
and think of me

label me: friends, future, happiness, israel, life, melancholy, memory, music, nostalgia, play, song, uncertainty