cobblestone streets
really great handwriting
tea at Bahji in the afternoon
vegetable stands on the side of the road
broken pieces of colored glass in the sun
old cemetaries (calculating ages of the dead)
children calling me “auntie”
cooking for a lot of people
close friends getting married (congrats to two couples here especially! Love you!)
Posted in Haifa, Thoughts | Comments (2)
A cockroach crawled up my jeans leg while I sat at a bus stop yesterday. I had to shake it out…it was about as long as my index finger and quite…wriggly. Not so much fun.
Also, I had an entire conversation with the old man sitting next to me, even though he knew about 20 words in English and I know about 5 in Hebrew. He offered me a peach but I wasn’t hungry.
Frisbee last night at the beach:
Last week’s frustration has been channeled into action, which is much more fun. I had quite the wonderful weekend, and while I am not home as much as I used to be, I have decided that it is a good thing to be busy, especially for someone like me.
I have been rather obsessed with a few artists recently. So check them out…
The Shins- Wincing the Night Away, 2007
Joshua Radin- We Were Here, 2006
Bloc Party- A Weekend in the City, 2007
Tom McRae – unreleased recordings
Posted in Haifa, Music | Comments (4)
The heat has not been crippling this summer, and I work inside an office during the day, so I do not get the brunt of it. Maybe 15 years of Chicago winters went so far into my bones that I need 15 years of sun to get tired of it. 
Bahji (where the Shrine of Baha’u'llah is located, about 45 minutes drive from Haifa) is only open in the evenings right now because they are doing major construction and landscaping, so I have spent a few evenings there in the last few weeks. It is really quite amazing to be there in the quiet dark, with only small pools of light from the opaque globes scattered around the gardens.
Meet my new friend, from Bahji:
One thing blends into another, each night is like the other, and each moment there is more strength in my words. I made promises to myself in each place, these are now binding and I am not playing games anymore.
(there are games and then there are games, and I haven’t played either in a very long time)
I hope I am not getting sick, the tiredness is in my head and my throat and I am not sure why midnight is a magic time, suddenly I must sleep. I know there is much more for me to say, about beach days and bridal showers for friends, dinners and birthdays and moments with every single person I meet. The stuffy Jasmine-filled heat of sanctuary, home is here and home left the moment I opened my eyes today.
I made promises. I say this out loud to hold myself to them, the prayers will not drift away in the wind and everything is tied down with the most beautiful pieces of string.
Posted in Baha'i, Haifa, Personal | Comments (4)
I used to write love songs. I would run the tips of my fingers over dry earth, my eyes over the trees passing by. Pulling out every word, using the mortality in my thoughts, idealized in eternity.
I used large words to say everything, and no one heard because nowadays people don’t hear large words. Everything is cut into little pieces, the latest sound-bite of the newest fad, now on news stands! (I haven’t looked at a supermarket checkout line in years).
Five hundred thousand points for using the word “dextrosinistral” in a sentence! That is, by the way, a left handed person who is trained to use their right hand. And your prize is…a dictionary?
Admit it…at least once, you have opened the dictionary or encyclopedia intending to read all the way through. Come on, admit it! (looks around) I guess that was just me
I always wondered why the popsicles I made in the summer never turned out like the ones from the grocery store. I was convinced that I could find the perfect recipe, and I wouldn’t have to chew my way through a solid block of ice.
Paper airplanes are the perfect pathways for love notes, if only they would fly in the right direction.
I wish you would stop and ask for directions.
Posted in Haifa, Poetry | Comments (5)
Time does kind things to us,
to recreate in exactly the same and different ways.
Mother, I wish I could sing the way you do,
there is a certainty in it.
Maybe my children will hear in the words I whisper to them
The echoes of you.
Posted in Poetry | Comments (6)
So apparently using your television as a babysitter/parental replacement is not actually a good idea! Shocking, I know, but it appears as though those popular “Baby Einstein” videos and other similar educational shows actually do more harm than good. When I was working as an intern at Target in 2004, those videos were flying off the shelves.
“…the only thing that baby videos are doing is producing a generation of overstimulated kids.” I can see the drug companies doing little dances in their chairs as they count the profits from Ritalin.
Also, “The gene most closely linked to left-handedness has been found…” In even better news, this gene “is also associated with a slight increase in developing certain mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.”
I’m left handed.
And finally, I was born on the Mississippi River, just a few blocks from where the 35W bridge collapsed in Minnesota.
Posted in News | Comments (7)
I am strangled by time zone differences and my inability to communicate. I spent the day doing nothing except watching documentaries and baking gluten-free cookies. I didn’t even clean, respond to emails, make phone calls…not one useful thing.
Oh, well I did paint my nails.
Meals have been haphazard today. I am finding myself in strange places in my head. I slept only as much as the sun allowed me, woke up with my arm so asleep that it was no longer my own.
I drank too much weak coffee last night, I talked too much and now everything is fuzzy because I no longer remember what stories I tell. There is no need to talk this much. I want to start over, start my stories over. I don’t want to be the same person any more. I want to be me again.
Yesterday was a morning in the Hadar, entering stores, the feeling of fabric between my fingers and street vendors. I love the crowded vegetable stands with mangoes twice the size as usual, the butcher that says “Welcome to Israel!” (that beef was amazing in the stew, by the way). Roya, maybe I should have bought that magnet.
I wish I could find one thing that consumes me…too much ambivalence is making me a very boring person. I wish I could gather stories to re-tell that make people hold their breath. I wish I could walk in the streets with nothing but time and photographs of the future and restless feet…
and you.
Posted in Haifa, Thoughts | Comments (8)
