Sore Feet and Sunshine

I've made it to my hotel in Israel safe and sound. On my way into Haifa this evening, I caught my first real-life glimpse of the terraces and the shrine and they were all lit up and it was as beautiful as in the pictures!

I've hardly slept since yesterday morning. My plane trip was surprisingly undramatic, in spite of multiple security obstacle courses designed to prevent the faint of heart from traveling to the Middle East. Or some other group. Not too sure.


At Toronto, I had to go through another gate into an even more secure area, where the woman advised me the doesn't "make money to chat, sweetheart." Sorry for asking about the brace on your wrist...

Then my gate was in a separate glassed-in room with barriers across the entrance. When they finally opened it, they checked passports, boarding passes, and luggage once again. They also swabbed my palms and the top of my bag with some kind of funky device. That's what they should do in kindergarten: "Did you wash your hands?" "Yes!" "Let's find out" *swab swab*.

Anyway, so that was all well and good. At last, we were on our way (both flights were jam packed; I had to sit in the seat reserved for crew on the first one). The guy beside me on the way to Tel Aviv was super shy but super nice. He gave me his blanket while I was sleeping (guess I looked cold), but he never said a word the whole time. When I tried to engage him when I first got on the plane, he just sort of grunted and shrank a bit. I didn't talk to him again because I didn't want to make him disappear entirely.

Once we hit Israeli airspace, nobody was allowed to get out of their seats. More security. On my way into the airport in Tel Aviv, a security agent randomly stopped me and asked my why I was here, who I was travelling with, and so on. Then at customs, I found out the Israeli government has a list of all the Baha'is invited on pilgrimage and the dates of their stay. Makes it easier all around, I guess.

I spent the day in Tel Aviv, which was kind of a mistake but worth it, now that I'm actually settled in. I could've taken a sherut (a sort of group taxi/shuttle service) directly from Ben Gurion into Haifa, but opted to try to find the Occupy people instead. I took a cab into town (a bit pricey) because public transportation was not running today, it being a Saturday, and Saturday being the Jewish sabbath and all.

It turned out the Occupy Israel people took down their tents a couple of weeks ago, for whatever reason, but they still communicate and protest and organize stuff. You just have to know where to find out what's going on when. Needless to say, I did not know where to find out, so I never found them. So that was too bad.

Instead, I lounged on the beach in 23 degree sunshine. It was awesome. The beach sand was soft and felt like a massage on my bare feet, and the water was warm enough for wading, although swimming was prohibited. I think they built the rock breaker strips (what are they called again?) to stop people from drowning. I climbed up on some of the breakers and got soaked in spots by the waves crashing against them. They were much more powerful up close than they looked like from the shore.

Then I saw some sort of dance group, although they weren't in costume or even that synchronized. I'm not sure what it was all about, since the sign was in Hebrew, but it was kind of cool. They were dressed in their normal clothes and seemed to represent all walks of life, ages, styles, and other variations of humanity. I took a short video, which you can watch below. Quality is poor and someone's arm is trying to steal the show.


I thought it was going to rain, because the sky was crackling and booming with blackness floating in disguised as clouds. So instead of continuing up the coastline towards the old Tel Aviv port, I headed for the train station, even though I knew the trains didn't run until 8 pm. I figured I could sit in there, do some reading, maybe even use their wireless connection if they had one.

But when I got there, after a couple hours of walking through the city (pictures forthcoming), it was all shut up and I saw that to even get into the building, you had to pass through a scanner, as did any bags you were carrying. The door was locked anyway, so I wandered around some more.

I found a park, where I took a brief nap, then wandered some more, took another brief nap at a now defunct and slimy but otherwise cool fountain in the House of Europe Square. The House of America was beside it too. I'm not sure what they were, but they looked very artsy.

There's a lot of modern art around town, and the architecture is interesting too. The vegetation reminds me somewhat of Cotonou, as do the buildings, with their large communal courtyards and unpainted squareness.

Also, there are cats everywhere. Strays, as far as I can tell, and I mean everywhere.

If I were an anthropologist typing up my fieldnotes right now, I would remark on the following: outside a lot of houses, people had left items on or in front of the low wall, as if for other people to take. Here there was a blue button-up men's shirt, there a pair of shoes, at another place, a couch, and somewhere else some unopened bottles of some sort of drink. I don't know what the significance of this is, how often it occurs (on the Sabbath? once a month? every day? randomly?), and what happens to the objects, but it was certainly intriguing. If anyone knows, please enlighten me.

Weary and bleary-eyed, I finally made it back to the train station, and set off for Haifa. I got off at the earlier Haifa stop, instead of the one right by the hotel, so I took another cab right to the door. They put me in their registration as wanting a male dorm, even though I'd clearly marked "female" on the form. The receptionist even double-checked. Luckily, there was a bed available in the girls' dorm so I'm all squared away, as it were. I just need to get some food tomorrow, and change over some coins into shekels.

Dark Water Swallows Me Into the Rising Tide

History repeats itself.

I don't fit.

I reached my tolerance threshold. I couldn't breathe.

It was a relief.

I feel like I should apologize, but I have nothing to apologize for. I'm afraid I might have hurt your feelings. I'm sorry if I did. It wasn't intentional.

It makes me sad, and there's only so much sadness I can handle. It makes me depressed about life. I don't like being depressed about life.

It's never been a judgment or a condemnation. It's a suffocation. And the sadness.

Always the sadness.

If I didn't care, I wouldn't feel sad.

And the shit hits the fan.

I'm good at saying I'm fine when I'm really not, but it seems impossible to explain. And it usually makes things worse. I regret it.

It's better this way.

I'm not fine. But I will be. It's just the same old shit. Someday, I'll get used to it.

But now I'm wallowing in it. Damn.

Reply

You get inspired by the dedication of creative people who struggle through the hard times, work dead-end jobs, and give up basic pleasures in order to pursue their first love.

You watch as they suffer, as they fade then strike back, as they reject the possibility of rejection. You see them give up and rebound.

Sometimes you are lucky enough to walk beside one of these people. You share in their struggle; you push them forward. You try to keep them on the dark road they are forced to follow because if they fall by the wayside, the world will lose their gifts - and they will lose themselves. You pull them away from the beckoning lights of mediocrity, of a well-paying 9 to 5 job in a career where they could pass for average, but which will taint the artist they really are, sometimes irreversibly.

Sometimes you stand back and let them stumble, because you know they have the strength to build themselves back up again; if you hold their hand, you will have to carry them. You will destroy their essence. Artists carry themselves. They do not rely on others to support them in their work - at some point, they must acknowledge their own innate power. This is step one. Without this knowledge, there will be no success. There will be no art, only jot notes and shadows.

The rest is self-explanatory. Eventually, and repeatedly, the artist recognizes that they cannot escape their calling (their addiction). They draw up the strength to persevere, to chase the mirage. It's their blessing and their curse, with explosions of creative highs and black holes of disappointment. It's their lifeblood, the reason their heart beats, and also the reason they curse and cry.

The world starts to take notice. For that brief moment when you are lucky enough to stand by their side, you get a glimpse of why we are here.

You get inspired...

Life Is Good

I realized since my last post that it's not my musical abilities that have diminished; it's my perception of them that has changed. I wrote some decent stuff even a few years ago, when I wasn't so concerned with the result. It comes down to confidence in the end, I guess.

I love my writers group and every person in it. It's definitely the highlight of my week. I'm going to miss it when I go to PEI and Gros Morne, although I'm sure the trip will help me fight my withdrawal. It's going to be cool to finally see some more of Newfoundland. I can't believe I've been here for five years and haven't been past Spread Eagle! Now, I have been to Labrador...

Life has been pretty good since I got back from Vancouver. Lots of new friends and some old ones that I've gotten to know better. Vancouver changed me in good ways, even though overall it wasn't the best experience for me. Or maybe because of that. Definitely because of that.

This weekend has been amazing too. I really don't want to go back to work tomorrow!

Rambling

Sometimes people trip into your life - or you trip into theirs - and unexpected synergy occurs.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you click with someone right away. Often, of course, that's a misimpression, and later on you discover that you have very little in common. But sometimes it turns out that you really do have a lot in common, and as long as you build your relationship, it can be something real.

Writing this feels weird. I haven't blogged since the election (angry face) and I've come to the realization that you can't put anything on the internet if you don't care who reads it. Even if it's password protected or supposedly unviewable by others. The reality is that anyone can see it.

I haven't been able to write a song in a while. I'm afraid it's because I'm trying to write at a level that is beyond my capabilities at the moment, so whatever I write feels disappointing. Or maybe I am just uninspired, or I've lost my poetic edge in the realms of academia and fiction writing. I know my prose is pretty straightforward, nothing experimental or poetic about it. That's not a bad thing; it's my style and I think I'm getting okay at it, almost ready to start querying agents with my novel (which is finally finished! Yay!).

But I think that my literary ability has overshadowed my attempts at learning music, and also my recognition of where I am. Usually I don't care so much, but I have an expectation that I will be at least alright at stuff as soon as I try it (weird, because a lot of the time I fail, just like anyone else).

I also overuse parentheses, but that's a side note.

I really want to write a song. I wish I could play an instrument well enough that I could make it do what I want. I know it's my own fault for being lazy and not taking the time to practice, but it's so frustrating, because I'm not sure I make progress even when I try. I don't know what to do. Maybe guitar's not my instrument. Maybe I just don't have the talent to be as good as I'd like. Maybe I put too much focus on other things. I don't know.

But it's frustrating.

This is not at all where this post was going to go, but it's where it went, so that's it, hey.

Looking forward to Friday. It's been a bit of a crappy couple weeks, with highlights here and there, but mostly meh. I'm looking forward to a break.

So This Is What Democracy Looks Like

With a majority government voted in by less than forty percent of Canadians, I feel like the math I learned in school is somehow flawed. But I know it's not. The system is.

Time for electoral reform. It took me this long to understand how much is wrong with the current system, but now I'm fully on board. Alternative vote, proportional representation, democratic reform. The UK may be breaking ground on the 5th. Let's hope they do. If they do, they may set a precedent for other countries, especially those in the Commonwealth.

Canada's politics are so archaic compared to Europe. That's why so many people are apathetic about it. They know the system doesn't work right, that if they vote their vote might not even have an effect.

I wonder what the next four years (and more?) are going to look like, with polarized politics, an Opposition that can't hold the Government accountable, and a Prime Minister who acts like he owns the place - which he kind of does now.

Time to move to Liberia.

Existentialism Is Depressing

When our identities evolve, we grow apart from those once closest to us; we drop our friends and they drop us. It's nothing personal, just a case of our identities no longer merging. Sometimes we evolve together and manage, for awhile, to fight off the claws of time and experience that pull us all in different directions. Eventually, though, every relationship's pulse grows weaker.

Nearly five years ago, I arrived in St. John's. Now I'm almost done my degree. Maybe it's cliche, but I am not the same person who stepped off the plane into this windy Canadian city. That person makes up a part of me, as does my nine-year-old self watching the school library flood as another typhoon soaks the red sandbar that is Cotonou; my eleven-year-old self watching the new millenium come in on a dirt street darkened by a power outage; my thirteen-year-old self flinging the words to a depressed poem onto my desk; my fifteen-year-old self blushing at the surprise birthday party put together by my sister and our dance group; my seventeen-year-old self watching anime with my bilingual friends in my mom's apartment while she's away in Belgium; my twenty-year-old self starting a new relationship in the pounding Texas sun.

As I sit with Stabilo's "Rain Awhile" crackling from my laptop, my mood slips from its recent state of fierce contentment to that more familiar sense of dissatisfaction. I think of movies: "1776", "Freedom Writers", "Pray the Devil Back to Hell". I search for the deeper meaning, the balance of life that leads to happiness and fulfillment. How much must I embrace this socially constructed reality in order to find meaning? Is my cause within or without it?

I pull the blankets (really a sleeping bag and some spare parts from the thrift store) up around my chest and put my hood up over my fuzzy head to warm up my ears. I'm going to a party tonight. The past few weeks have left me over-socialized. I'm hungry and cold.

Tomorrow I can sleep in.