cutting great neck

so these past couple of weeks, i've been having a bunch of downcast days. reflective days. days in which i felt lonely and unknown and tired and trivial, days in which i attempted to grasp onto bigger, firmer objects (like politics, and food, and sleep.) i feel so useless, i feel like i'm living a desultory life with no meaning, and i fear that i will never step out of this vision of myself.

these emotions all jumpstarted a few weeks ago, influenced by several factors:

my cousins leaving. how much happiness in packed house had been eliminated since that day. i miss them so much. the first handful of days, i woke up in destitute expectation, only to realize that the house was empty. such utter disappointment, day after day, poured down on us with raindrops of complete misery. the babies--i miss their cries. i fear that i might never see them grow up. the most empty space in the house is my grandmother's room. she has lived with us in this house since august, and her disappearance was so upsetting and unappreciated. i felt like dying. she went on the plane with them, and i feel like she's hurt too, without us, but after fully existing with her support and affection since we moved into the house i felt exhausted and unfulfilled.

when they were here, the house was crammed with remants from israel, memories and whispers, reminders, about the county i left five years ago. about the house. about the persons, about the dark nights, about jerusalem and about the olive tree, and the garden, and rodika our old au pair. and their language--hebrew, such a beautiful, hard language.

the music. i've been slowly attaching myself to the israeli music. one particular song significantly touches me-- hakayitz haacharon--the last summer. i don't know why, but it completely transformed me and i have to listen to it seven times a day, and it's such a close and personal and soulful and soft and subtle song, yet so harrowing. they bring about bouts of nostalgia which i never thought possible.

also, our move to great neck has electrified me. i've never really thought about how i might be the most movable person in the world--9 schools in 10 years of studies--and it's so determining and selfish of me to think about it, and sometimes i look outside into our green, eastern, foreign backyard and i don't remember ever moving to here, and feeling like i stayed in san diego. and then i have a feeling like i never left israel. and this whole move had led me to challenge my views, and had caused me to consider my existence and my character ... like--there are so many persons, individuals i've connected to over the years, and after this move would i ever see them again? talk to them again? would they be my friends? are my links with these ghosts of the past still significant, or are they wasted? should i create new links? and what do i do now? where is my home?

where is my home?

is it in israel, where i was born, where i lived for the majority of my life, where my family is, where i feel most connected to?

is it in the u.s., where i've been so recently involved in, where i have discovered myself the most, where i've been tried the most, the language i attach myself most to? ( and if it is, then where in the u.s.?)

is it in europe, where i've aspired to live, where my hopes and dreams lie, where i yearn to visit and experience and refresh myself?

i don't know. i'll try to answer these questions in the following days, and months, and years, but i don't know if i'll be able to.

songs flip through itunes. they each hold such a deep, entrenching memory to me, something so completely horrifying--each song, and if i would be asked to pick one would i be able to? one of them reflects my nostalgia for israel--another, my deep enamoration with manhattan. another with the personal connections of my san diego friends.

i don't know. i don't think i'll want to live in san diego. and yet everyone i know is there, everything from the recent past ... which in a year i won't be able to remember. which, like memories from palo alto, like friends from palo alto, will fade from my mind like ashes.

i hope to god they won't ever disappear. i hope to god.

not in palo alto, for the reasons that my tie to sf and to pa had already been broken.

[my shoulder is tired. why?]

i'm listening to the carpenters - superstar. one of the saddest songs i've ever heard. it brings me such strong, vibrant memories from my earliest days in the u.s., in san jose and palo alto, about san francisco and the drive to sacramento and to skiing. i remember that first winter, and i feel so nostalgic and sad and the feelings an old man about to give up the old ghost might feel. and i don't know what i should do. i don't know because i feel so angry inside for everything that has happened to me and to everything, just every move and every friend and every person that i've met and neglected and left. and now they would never remember me. like i'm a nomad. a wandering jew.

i know i will miss america. i know i might regret this choice. maybe this is just a fling, maybe it's just normal to reminisce upon the long-gone past with complete and utter loneliness, but i know that i had made my decision to love and return to israel based on feelings that were so strong that i could not turn them down.


---

i have no pictures for you today. nothing.

i have wanted to write my feelings down for such a long time now.

a song i'm listening--lambada--brings me sour and sweet memories from israel. fdjfkldj. i don't know why i said that. i forgot to put "to" after "listening". i don't know the words to the song. i remember it was very well-known in israel. i danced to it in gallie's 7th bday party. i was five. i still remember the magician. and the banana tree. and the house. such a beautiful house.

i don't know. if i move to israel, and i pass by the house, and i listen to this song. then i could go to heaven. then i could go to heaven. i would have fulfilled my destiny. life would become a cycle.

if, by the time i die [which i can't think about right now--i'm not as scared of death as i used to be], i would have gone to every single location i've ever been in, visited, approached... then i would be the happiest person on earth.

[i watched a good movie on friday. nights of cabiria. my comments make me thing of it.]

i don't remember what i was about to say. i don't know what is happening to me. i feel like israel is my home. but i don't know if i can say goodbye to my three years in san diego. which i already did. but i don't know. i just don't know what i can do now.

i've never let out my emotions so openly before as this.

Jane’s Animals

My shoes clap like a baby’s hands
as I enter the new house. In San Diego
we never had wooden floors and
rows of green, summer foliage
flapping against my bedroom window.

I think about writing a poem as I
leaf out of my room to the humidity
of corridor air, like rolling head-
first down the stairs.

The knob to the attic is cold and
wet. Inside, Jane’s dusty horses
glare at me with tired, fusty eyes;
they’re begging for mercy, for freedom,
for Jane, locked inside their cage. I
look out the window: it’s raining,
and the towers of New York are corned
in black clouds.

Those horses and bears and dogs don’t
know what’s outside, don’t know how
good their lives are. In cool, crisp mornings,
I wake up to the azure shadows of dawn. They
don’t seem to care that the sun always
rises on them first, sets on them
last.

i wrote a poem. maybe you like it. it's bad. it's about what i feel right now.

Hate Places

I feel like a fist had been
pushed through my throat
until my chest was heavy
with fingers poking out.
I wish I could have known
better. Everything seems to
move so fast. I want black
nights in San Diego. I want
the stars when we’re in a car.
I want to see people I know
I’ve known I will know for
these years. I want to see them
again. To have them. I don’t
care who they are. To say
goodbye as if it was the last
time. As if I’d never even
think of them again. But here
I am. Thinking about them. There
are so many, I keep thinking
names: and then I never stop.
I never stop thinking of people I
want to see again because it’s
the only thing I can do to
make myself miserable. I
used to think I hated suburbs. Now
I know. When you’re out of one
you start wanting it again.
And then I realize that I
can never hate a place. I
can never hate a place. I
can never hate a place. I
can only hate it when I’m not
there. And then, I cry.
I cry for the hours days weeks
months years I’ve wasted hating
San Diego. I cry for the hours days
years I haven’t hated San Diego.
I cry for the years it took me
to make a life, to build one out
of my own hands. I cry for
everyone and no one
at once. For all the families I’ve
left behind. For Israel. For Palo Alto.
For San Diego. For New York.
Please. I don’t want to talk about
crying anymore I just want home
and then I realize I don’t
even know where it is.

It's a horrrrible poem. I actually didn't cry over this. It's metaphorical. I actually almost never cry. Hahahahahahah. But it basically sums up what I'm feeling right now. In a bad way. Ahhh oh welll. I'll write about my experiences in NY later. and about my bday. and well that's all there was to everything. oh an flushing chinatown. and a

i dont really care.

so. it's basically been a week since i've last posted a post. and that post was horrible. it was really terrible. it was completely, entirely, fantastically miserable. i promised you something which i didn't do.

i just didn't have time.

and i am a liar.

ha. okay. well. it stinks. fucking stinks. now i have to remember everything that happened over the last week and my brain has no memory tissue so fuck.

well, a week ago was... friday? but then the movers came friday, i think... so then, on saturday, we just unpacked... and on saturday we did... what?

oh well. i know what we did on MONDAY at least! MANHATTANMONDAY! WOOOHOO! pictures:

we started on broadway, placed my parents at a small cafe with their israeli amigos on broadway, and grandma, sista and i all went for a trip in greenwich village. which is fabulous. it was raining in the morning, so it was all foggy, but then when we were walking it was amazing. there was a warm, rainy smell of asphalt, of manhattan, of flowers. we made turns and twists, toured the village through its italian cafe part, to its asianess, passed houston, and ate in a quaint, small indian restaurant with extra-peppery foodstuff that took about half-an-hour to cook. we walked back to broadway, and when we got there it started to rain. we crossed the street, and then it really started pouring. and i mean, it was as if god was punishing manhattan for being amazing or something--probably the worst rain ive ever seen. droplets the size of your eyeball, something astounding. we hid inside a business building, which had all these famous charity headquarters, like the nation down syndrome organization or something like that, and the guard stared to talk to us and told us that we can't get out of the building and walk on the street in such a rainstorm (there was almost nobody on the street--everybody was hiding insides shops, or under them) in fear that a lightning rod hitting you.

i was laughing, but then he told me that last week, five people in long island were hiding under a tree during a lightning strom and the tree was struck and they all went to the hospital.

okay. talking about lightning. it's basically pouring outside right now, and i heard the first thunder. which brings me back to yesterday. (i will continue with manhattan in a couple paragrapgs.)

basically, yesterday was the worst storm ive ever been in! I COULD SEE LIGHTNING, AND THE THE THUNDER SHOOK OUR HOUSE!

Okay, thunder again. now.

Sharon: GADI, maybe you should close the door?

I'm in the kitchen right now and the rain is touching me. the rain is horrible right now.

[thunder]

it was frightening. i searched on the internet how to protect yourselves from lightning, and i learned that if im outside during a storm and i hear thunder, i should go inside a shelter that has walls, and floor, and roof, and plumbing. and that if i'm in a place without any shelters, i should get in a push-up position.

here's a minor video from the storm yesterday. i don't know if you can hear thunder, or see lightning, but let's just say there was one thunder where i jumped out of my seat, my heart was pacing, a glass in my room fell on the floor and broke, and i was literally scared for my life. kid you NOT.

okay, well it's raining cats and dogs at the current moment. but it's still not as bad as yesterday. maybe it's going to get as bad. and if it is im gonna die.

anyway. some more manhattan pics:

mom left to sd on monday. for work purposes.

two days ago we met up with avi& judy in newark, in the largest new jersey mall ever, and we went shopping with them and we said hi to the little darling baby and we then went to the pool with them and i have some pics:

what else... what else...

nothing.

i'll post something soon. i hope.

so. im supposed to sleep at the moment, not blogging or facebooking or yahooing or whatever. and i know the above comment sounds cliche, but the truth is i really wanted to blog just to, you know, not forget what happened in th elast ifve days.

i shouldn't have kept you in the dakr for so long.

so what im gonna do is write this blog post, and then add the pics later. like, tomorrow morning. and also spellcheck.

day grandma and ma arrived: we went to russian supermarket on 108th st. and it was again so scrumptiously astounding and some more buying of appetizing crunchy flavorful olives which i already finished and yyyuuuummm. and then we came home and it was amazingly fun.

and so yesterday the movers came and we unpacked all that shit. i redeiscovered all the crap from a long time ago.

and today we unpacked allt he shit too.

so. not much.

but i will add more tomorrow morning. i promise, loving readers. please leave comments.

so it's been a good 24+ hours since i've last posted a post. and it's been very... average. wild, but not too wild. good, but not too good. exciting, but not too exciting. i'll start from last night.


when i left you, i was hungry. so dad went to get a big, fat slob of pizza from this one place our israeli neighbor recommended, called mangia or something, on middle neck rd., and it was ny style pizza, something extraordinary, which i thought was only feasible to make on the great island of manhattan, or on the great island of sicily. yuuum! i gobbled up two scrumptious slices in a blink of an eye. i would've taken a photo but it would've been one big fat blur.

speaking of big blur and scrumptious... i have come to realize my ambition in life.

most delicious little olives... of all time. they're israeli. they're green. they're stored in some salty water thing. maybe vinegar. they're infinitesimal. their only insidious quality is... that they constipate. which makes me outstandingly sad. miserable. i might even cry.

i moved into great neck, long island, ny last wednesday. yep. i wanted to start this blog a long time ago. i wanted to start it in san diego even. just to describe my life in new york. you know, if in the end i turn out to be a friendless jerk who's a social failure and sociopath who can't even crank out a good gpa and in the end turns out to be a meaningless blob in a stupid all-american, capital punishment hotdogs and ketchup state, then at least i would have documentation of my slow disintegration, and maybe a friend (even if blog) to turn to in troubling times. so basically this blog'll be about my difficult move here and also about my visits to manhattan, the sights, the restaurants, and of course school life and the pimply adolescence in jewish great neck.

so anyway. i'll just start from wednesday.

wednesday, we got off the five-hour plane ride which was alright but, i mean, was more than enough, and sharon and i waited for dad to get the car, which he got in forty five minutes, and we practiced our ny accents (co-afeee, do-aag) on the ride. we came into the house and realized mom gave us one key instead of two, thinking the other was just a duplicate. oh, shit. thankfully, the owners of the house, who are very nice people, were in the neighborhood, gave us a pair of keys and answered all my dad's numerous questions even though they were on the run to the owner's aunt's house, where she already had dinner on the table, so blah blah blah.

empty house. those last couple nights slept on good mattresses though. grass green. skies blue. empty house.

about half-an-hour after (fourtunately) getting into our new home, we sped away towards manhattan to hang out with our best friends from israel, mr. avi& mrs. judy broder and their children, sai, elai and their not-even-one-year-old son yali.

so. much. fun. manhattan is literally the big apple of my eye. its the capital of the world. we basically spent the whole time with them either in the hotel room, eating or walking to and from the place of eating. which is not that bad, considering we were inside one of the most amazing cities ever. we ate in carnegie delli, where they slaghtered an entire cow for our table alone, me taking the vast amount in a corned beef sandwhich the size of my face. YUM.

Yali is so amazing. he is much more adorable than i expected him to be. he has big fat cheeks and a big smile. aw. sai and elai were so fun and easygoing, so cosmopolitan, it was incredible. we were basically talking about american culture and it prevailing in israel (mostly, THE DARK KNIGHT, mmm, which all espouse.) anyhow, they live in a hampton inn right up the street from times square. they had marvelous fun in ny, i expect, but now that they're off in florida i hope they won't have as much fun (so they'll [please?] return here again soon.)

on thursday we drove down to new jersey to get ginger from newark airport and jesus motherfucking christ! too much traffic. three hours to get there (basically going zero miles per hour) doing nothing nothing and we got to the airport and went to the gate and waited for about an hour until we went to the pet room upstairs and waited there until ginger would arrive to her new home. she was SO excited. so excited. to see us. her ride was also five hours, imagine, spent locked up inside a cage, awake, in the turbulent belly of an airplane, in boiling temperatures, water's already been splashed out of the cage, and no pee, no poop for twelve hours...gack. so that was a happy day, bringing her back home. here is ginger about fifteen minutes after picking her up. she was trying to get all passerby to pet her big fat fur. lazy.

anyway. friday--what'd we do? I don't really remember. we went to sign up at the schools, which was nothing special, just a same old secretary giving us forms to fill. we signed up at the library, where all was jewish (shabbat shalom, moishe tseidel), and the books are numerous and old and it's huge! and i like the library. it's very nice. we dined on a nutritious lunch at a nice zagat-rated mexican restaurant in great neck. i was REALLY tired and i took a two hour halcyon nap. which was long and warm and spectacular. and then we watched a movie (well, three-fourths of it anyway). which was bad. and when i mean bad, i mean cliche and old and boring and tedious and talky and oh-i've-seen-this-thing-done-too-many-times-old, Paris J'Taime. Acting--meh, stories--blah, directing--well, the talent was there, but the performance? poooop. (i fell asleep at three in the morning. stupid fucking nap.)

saturday, we went to flushing meadows park, which was really fun (and ego boosting, since i chose what to do the whole day.) it was raining furiously the night and morning before, the windowshield almost smashed, splatters the size of a river, so the air was crisp and the birds were singing and the weather was perfect. ahh. big globe was also marvelous. (the rain was an ephemeral hiatus from this dreadful soggy heat that we must get innured to as soon as possible before we have a stroke.)

we went to the queens museum of art which was meh, but the panorma exhibit was WOAHHH! the new york city model was superbly detailed and beautiful and simply woooooow. i loved it. i love ny. every building was 3-d'd and there, brooklyn, bronx, manhattan, staten island, just beautiful, really builds an admiration for this wonderful city.

night, we went to moti and noami in new jersey. it was fun, good food. will likely happen many more times in the future.

yesterday we went to manhattan. sing to me oh muse of the raw modernism and classicsim clash of manhattan, of the glorious green growing fields of central park flowing with frolicking tourists with their little tourist baby strollers, of the rivulets flowing, of the lake and the beautiful buildings, ahhhh. we crossed from upper east side to upper west side, where we came upon the entire population of manhattan + about the three million european travelers who are stealing manhattan by storm (according to the sunday nytimes), all of whom were sunbathing and touring central park after the long, unending rain flooded the grass fields and wiped the city of its scum.

in upper west, we came upon a fair. good food and shopping, i liked it, tired feet. i usually like upper west side, but i guess the walking and the fair and the swiftness of it all detracted from the usual quixotic experience. we cut through times square. glorious m&m shop, delicious, could smell the chocolate in my noseeee, mmmmmmmmmmmmm......... new yorkers are genius, i have to give it to them, even though their tough exterior and cynicism kills me [how stereotypical of me. oh well.]. good food. ahh. i love new york.

and then we hiked up all the way back to 67th street...where our car was parked in an ingenious spot. simply beautiful.

anyway. woke up late today after goingto sleep early last night after long run to future high school + back. can't wait for more visitors. didn't do anything today.

weather at the moment--sun almost setting, hot, humid, blah. sister= "i want the computer, it's not fair you get it for so much time i barely got it two days ago and its not fair lah blah blah im stupid."

i read a lot today.

oh and p.s.: the nytimes is amazing. i'm reading it and rereading it day by day. simply astounding.

now fireflies are going to come. oh farewell.

Hillama McRomney On Ocean Valley Lane
A polling station on my street during Super Tuesday...I was so excited for that day.