Letter to Ivan

Dear Ivan,

I write you this letter from Tel Aviv, in the most distant of all exiles from all possible truth that there be in this world but at times it seems to me as though this isn't so bad after all, truth is a murderous alphabet that fills the space with so much anger, with so much Angst - the Angst of having lived so to speak. It is very strange to be far from Jerusalem after those long months that counted more than a thousand days and that, even when insignificant in the count of a person's life seems to be enough to realize how how much not at home man is in this world and perhaps that's his ideal position; from religion one at best learns that man is in practice very much alone in a very large world, a little peg in the largesse of the universe yet very much on his own.

Miracles never happen in Tel Aviv, except for the new large buildings that extent their arms into heavens like a Tower of Babel, perhaps hoping that one day we'll manage to reach far enough and then we'll crown ourselves into kings of the universe. The beauty in the spaces reflects everything so untruthfully, at best faint representations of something already old and uninteresting. One can be really that alone in Tel Aviv among very large crowds, without speaking to anybody and not wanting to in any case. What one misses the most is the true friends, those that would help one wander through the days of the apocalypse, that shared their bread with the stranger and that drank together the bitter waters of life, until they became entirely drunk as to be able to escape the terrible facts of truth : that there're no facts and history is but a word. That we're all in boat leading specifically nowhere and that the awareness of being such Noah, with all the fragility and insecurity that it implicates, is all what can be called faith in an age like ours when every possible concept has been turned into its radical opposite, or into its negation or into a joke.

The faith of Tel Aviv is otherwise, for people truly believe in the Tower of Babel and as though it were our taks to bring the eschaton with our hands, they make strenous efforts to embrace life all the most, as though one had the option in this world as it is to embrace anything but his own death and that of the others. As though one had a chance to accept the conditions of this world as it is, yet without negating them or wanting a better one not in the far-away Redemption but in the absolute present of our life today. I find this faith admirable, but certainly not mine. I walked into the church today, not for too long... and it made me very happy that those who can't believe in anything still can flee from this overdose of "knowing everything" into a cold space where one knows that there's little up there to pray for, and that is the only reason why one should pray in any case. To leave the chair empty not for the Messiah, because every Messiah that will come and occupy the chair is a false one... simply leaving the chairs empty for all those tired from the intensity of living, to rest from life if just a little... that's all what my Messianic feeling is about.

Warmest regard, friend of the true places
Miss you