cutting great neck

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.

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.

sometimes, i feel so preoccupied by the world that i forget to commit myself to things and objects and missions that are significant to me. the world is so big, so easy to leap into, to be absorbed into like a little grain of sand swallowed by a bath sponge.

humanity is so difficult, so bizarre. just imagine: the entire world=people rule other people. that's it. the whole economic crisis, all wars, all murders, all rapes, all courtrooms, all jails, all priests and all rabbis and all terrorists and their victims--they are all people. human beings. as simple, as unintelligent, as dull and reflective as you and me. blogger's run by people!

and what makes the world so harsh, so jading, is that all of these people are seeking nirvana, and their ancestors sought nirvana, and in the end, there are two conflicts: a) ancestors' quest to nirvana clash with people's quest for nirvana; b) people's quest for nirvana clashes with other people's quest for nirvana.

and sometimes, these clashes are caused directly--bin laden flying his planes into downtown manhattan, man rapes 8-year-old girl on side of highway; most of the times, though, these clashes are indirect. a woman forced to wear a burqa because of the rules set by those who came before her, a man accidently impregnating his girlfriend...

and what i can tell you? what is the cause for all of these terrible dilemmas, all of these life-modifying milieus?

i think: religion.

religion, because G-D asked us to spread his mission, G-D asked us to hang all gays, G-D asked us to stone all whores, G-D asked us to burn those who eat pork, G-D asked us to fight Palestinians, G-D told us that there's heaven when we die, G-D told us that we won't die, G-D told us that He exists and therefore we should believe Him because He said so, because god is fucking supposed to know what the fuck he's talking about, right? well, right?

god, i hope you're there. i hope you're hearing me. i hope that you're listening to me.

if you're there, tell me: why do you make all this shit happen?

why do you make us fight in your name?

if you exist, why? why do you exist?

---

i just had a major fucking relevation.

god does not exist.

people--the same people that run this world, the same people that work this world--our ancestors--created god. they created it him out of cow skin and blood, scribing their dazed dreams onto a scratched, ragged slice of leather about their Omnipotent Creator who Made Them and Instructed Them, an eye in the sky whom we are the direct result of, and he can do everything for us, he can create everything and destruct everything all in one fellow swoop.

---

we're reading lord of the flies in english.

we read it last year too.

god, how i abstain from that book.

that's the only word i could fit in there.

i don't abhor it and i don't worship it. i appreciate it for appeasing my ideas; all values are unjustified, groundless, ambivalent, and individuals cannot for the life of them communicate with one another.

we all animals who live nowhere and anywhere at once.

and it indicates to me that there is nothing i can do to change it. nothing i can do to stop myself from living in this bubble of nihilism other than killing myself, which i will never do.

and now i need to do homework.

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.

---

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.

---

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.