As usual I finish the idea with topical confusion, probably I'll have to include a new topic called "versuft" or "zweerver"...hummmm, problem is most of my notes during the weekdays would be under such topic and the readership (this is a joke, if any at all) would get "confused" at not knowing the Dutch language, but oh well... should I care at all?
In anycase it's just a journal, so why should I expect all those many readers to mind anything at all? If Brontee and Frank didn't why would I? A simple project of a human being minding whether to be read or not? I must be just too bored I guess. (Martini break here)
Somehow the last days have been so full of activity, and it doesn't really look like... good mood, bad mood, good mood, bad mood, good mood, bad mood, new year, depression, joy, mortgages, missing, love, casual sex, conversations, alcohol, hunger, nicotine, lack of nicotine, infatuation, pain, despair, joy again, etc.
I've been writing quite a lot and it's not really out of boredom. I'd rather say it's more like out of need (again me being an American, mind the speech out). I'm pretty needy, needy of myself... getting probably too much of myself, it's a little bit disappointing. I wish this note were more of the kitty kind of note, but no matter how much I struggle I end up walking in circles around the same points. I'm just too heavy.
I haven't done any academic writing, and for the same good sake no academic work at all... in my twenties I'm already getting old, for the grave tastes to fresh. Another kunderian though that reminds me of Edgar and Lola, Usaquen park in the evenings, cups of tea, staring at the hills... staring at lives that were never led, that were never lived, imaginary people... imaginary friends. Like Kitty's and Peter's. Kitty's and Peter's that one day became Nicolas and Catalina, Kitty's and Peter's that one day became also the wife, Elliot and even Antigone. Probably Alon is the only real persona, for myself I don't consider either a real persona. A philologist kind of thing, I explained that yesterday I think.
Refusing to embrace my sleep... maybe afraid or maybe just in unrest. Thinking of Rovaniemi, dwelling in Rovaniemi, but simultaneously also down here. Staring at my walls, at walls that are not really mine. Anna in the eyes of her father, Otto in the eyes of his father... Anna and Otto, Otto and Anna.. in each other's eyes. Ari in the eyes of his father... Ari is his own eyes.. through timeless glasses, vanishing.... like air. Clung up.
Tomorrow finally I'm compelled to leave the house, to join the humankind... and well it ain't no bad, but it does no good either. Again smoking... smoking... for the sake of smoking. Busy thoughts, like in the middle of jams, in the middle of traffic jams, motorways and tramlines. Still wife ain't home, nor is Elliot. The hundreds of volumes that fill up the bookshelves of this modest house are nothing but empty blank pages... fearful of the future, drunk in uncertainties. Not living one day at a time... but a minute at a time. Tameless (again). Less political, more infatuated. Just high and dry :-)
Once again, the books of this celebrity house contain nothing but blank pages, except the bible.
Ari
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Back to 121
Well it seems soon I'll have to add a "Latin America" topic entry to my blog... for my "work" in that front is turning out to be interesting.... like Israelis would say "ha davar ha nachon bezman ha nachon".
Probably Latin America is still part of my hothouse, of my glasshouse. It's a universal kind of thing, and when I say universal it makes me laugh big time because I remember the wife of the journalist is still owing me a note about Anna Frank and being universal... herself! the least universal person on earth. Well... there you go girl!
The wife of the journalist (with no journalist *yet*) is still away with Elliot, and they are not very willing to visit us these days for it's almost Jewish new year so they foresee a little bit of sadness, a little bit of thrill... and a journalist that doesn't pick up the phone. Hence they'll stay in the countryside until the end of the holidays. Even the journalist might get a surprise, for he might come back and wife might not be home. She might just not be home.
Everything else is as usual going down the trail, except my spirits... they're just going stronger. Call it a glasshouse, call it feelings, call it love, call it timelessness, or tamelessness even. My endeavour. Let wife just have an encore... as far as Ari is concerned I think he wants fireworks and zeals... it's a young soul you know ;-) The wife proves herself to be very different... more calculated and less realistic, more ephimere and less infatuated. Is Ari anyone to talk about infatuation anyway? Since hands clean... you've got a long historial boy!
The wife just wants her intimacy, and not precisely with Elliot. She wants her morning espresso, her cigarette, looking out the window... with him. For even the beauty of the most beautiful woman is spoiled if there's no gentleman to admire her beauty, and not only to admire her... but to enjoy it.
The wife of the journalist has never considered herself anything attractive, nothing sensational... just an average kind of thing (even when there's nothing average about her... in the end of the day it takes a lot to be a journalist's wife... if not go figure out from the book)... nevertheless in the last few months she's started to consider herself somehow ignorant (which is a kind of beauty), chatty (another kind of beauty whith has to do with the latter), sexy and fatal. Regardless these elevated thoughts, regardless humanism and culture.. regardless everything the wife of the journalist needs indeed a journalist to praise and above all, enjoy her beauty... otherwise this might get spoiled.
This might turn differently... not the beauty of solidity, not the beauty of serenity... not the beauty of a wife... just beauty... young and savage beauty... that kind of beauty no one really enjoys... but everyone's got it at some point in life and everyone's let it go.... It's a different thing. It's not Apolinean beauty, but rather Thesalian beauty.. the charm of the hetaire... whose worst enemy would constitute by definition, a wife.
The wife needs her journalist to interfere in this beauty and shape it... in anger, in sadness, in frustrations... in any of those extreme feelings that might turn out to be sexual and primary.... he seems to know how to exploit it. The wife herself doesn't lack of beauty, no... never. But her beauty next to the journalist is a different thing, a different shade... it's like a razorblade. The next weeks will bring a few answers.... actually many.
One of them will be, what is it like to be not the wife of the journalist, but the husband of the philologist? Don't we give them such a hard life? For the husband of a philologist is never really married to anyone. Is married to her capricious soul, to her books, to her dreams, to her poems, to her conspiciousness, to her obsessions... but never herself. For she.. as an almost religiously devoted philologist is married to herself. Who can live with that anyway? Hummm I think a journalist can, the one that stares through her dreams and aspirations that are seen like transparent shades. He can see the dreadful beauty of her soul, for she's where she belongs. Oh baby, baby is taught to run.
To live with a philologist is like to live with a few different persons (or actually many of them) and never to end knowing any of them totally, reaching one certain depth and then finding someone else's words, someone else's sensitivities. To live with a philologist is living with many different people you don't really know, and between interesting and untolerable... you can't really get to know them. For one day they read Antigone, the next day is Hesiodus and they even read Plato, sometimes Alceus and sometimes Solon, even Euripides.
In the end of the day Elliot is just an excuse, an scapegoat... and a little bit of intimacy. Elliot is cups of coffee, weightlessness, feathers, simulated smiles, moralities, the outside... the wife's got to find a way to escape her mortal heaviness, her positiveness, her positivism.
Elliot brings an answer, the journalist brings the other. I'm sure the next few weeks will bring an answer. An answer for Elliot, an answer for the wife, an answer for the philologist, an answer for the calvinist, an answer for the Jew, and even... and answer for Ari.
...Why not? An answer for Ofer too.
Manifesto.
Probably Latin America is still part of my hothouse, of my glasshouse. It's a universal kind of thing, and when I say universal it makes me laugh big time because I remember the wife of the journalist is still owing me a note about Anna Frank and being universal... herself! the least universal person on earth. Well... there you go girl!
The wife of the journalist (with no journalist *yet*) is still away with Elliot, and they are not very willing to visit us these days for it's almost Jewish new year so they foresee a little bit of sadness, a little bit of thrill... and a journalist that doesn't pick up the phone. Hence they'll stay in the countryside until the end of the holidays. Even the journalist might get a surprise, for he might come back and wife might not be home. She might just not be home.
Everything else is as usual going down the trail, except my spirits... they're just going stronger. Call it a glasshouse, call it feelings, call it love, call it timelessness, or tamelessness even. My endeavour. Let wife just have an encore... as far as Ari is concerned I think he wants fireworks and zeals... it's a young soul you know ;-) The wife proves herself to be very different... more calculated and less realistic, more ephimere and less infatuated. Is Ari anyone to talk about infatuation anyway? Since hands clean... you've got a long historial boy!
The wife just wants her intimacy, and not precisely with Elliot. She wants her morning espresso, her cigarette, looking out the window... with him. For even the beauty of the most beautiful woman is spoiled if there's no gentleman to admire her beauty, and not only to admire her... but to enjoy it.
The wife of the journalist has never considered herself anything attractive, nothing sensational... just an average kind of thing (even when there's nothing average about her... in the end of the day it takes a lot to be a journalist's wife... if not go figure out from the book)... nevertheless in the last few months she's started to consider herself somehow ignorant (which is a kind of beauty), chatty (another kind of beauty whith has to do with the latter), sexy and fatal. Regardless these elevated thoughts, regardless humanism and culture.. regardless everything the wife of the journalist needs indeed a journalist to praise and above all, enjoy her beauty... otherwise this might get spoiled.
This might turn differently... not the beauty of solidity, not the beauty of serenity... not the beauty of a wife... just beauty... young and savage beauty... that kind of beauty no one really enjoys... but everyone's got it at some point in life and everyone's let it go.... It's a different thing. It's not Apolinean beauty, but rather Thesalian beauty.. the charm of the hetaire... whose worst enemy would constitute by definition, a wife.
The wife needs her journalist to interfere in this beauty and shape it... in anger, in sadness, in frustrations... in any of those extreme feelings that might turn out to be sexual and primary.... he seems to know how to exploit it. The wife herself doesn't lack of beauty, no... never. But her beauty next to the journalist is a different thing, a different shade... it's like a razorblade. The next weeks will bring a few answers.... actually many.
One of them will be, what is it like to be not the wife of the journalist, but the husband of the philologist? Don't we give them such a hard life? For the husband of a philologist is never really married to anyone. Is married to her capricious soul, to her books, to her dreams, to her poems, to her conspiciousness, to her obsessions... but never herself. For she.. as an almost religiously devoted philologist is married to herself. Who can live with that anyway? Hummm I think a journalist can, the one that stares through her dreams and aspirations that are seen like transparent shades. He can see the dreadful beauty of her soul, for she's where she belongs. Oh baby, baby is taught to run.
To live with a philologist is like to live with a few different persons (or actually many of them) and never to end knowing any of them totally, reaching one certain depth and then finding someone else's words, someone else's sensitivities. To live with a philologist is living with many different people you don't really know, and between interesting and untolerable... you can't really get to know them. For one day they read Antigone, the next day is Hesiodus and they even read Plato, sometimes Alceus and sometimes Solon, even Euripides.
In the end of the day Elliot is just an excuse, an scapegoat... and a little bit of intimacy. Elliot is cups of coffee, weightlessness, feathers, simulated smiles, moralities, the outside... the wife's got to find a way to escape her mortal heaviness, her positiveness, her positivism.
Elliot brings an answer, the journalist brings the other. I'm sure the next few weeks will bring an answer. An answer for Elliot, an answer for the wife, an answer for the philologist, an answer for the calvinist, an answer for the Jew, and even... and answer for Ari.
...Why not? An answer for Ofer too.
Manifesto.
Olga
Ok ok yeah I know... I fooled ya! This is the thing I wrote in my "poor but happy" forum about Colombia. It's quite interesting, although pointless to understand it without context but... hummmm... it's a journal anyway... you're not supposed to understand anything (oh my god.. again that stupid Hebrew song I love and I still don't know the title... something about "esser shniot ve lalechet... "LOL don't mock me out Ari!) but I'll explain it one day I think.
For I'm a wannabe journals writer you know.. so I want you to understand one day what's going on here (wishful thinking, no one is really reading this crap at all). To explain one of the greatest (and probably biggest) chapters of my life I might need to talk about me and Angela being pub owners in La Candelaria. For that I need a clear mind and lots of drugs and chatty mood, and you bet... I don't have it now ;-). So figure out yourself... it won't be today, it won't be tomorrow.
I gotta clear up mist and figure out the story myself again. Maybe it would help to talk to the journalist about it (I know, you must be sick about him), but better I let him talk this time. I wonder if he's got something to tell me... (Jewish joke).
Ok no more introductions, from introduction to introduction I will end up skipping all the chapters of the books (oh good for you.... Cardigans on the radio so I'm kicking my butt somewhere else...)
Start here: :-)
I think many Colombians do have the opportunity to have a better life outside the streets and re-habilitate themselves, true... and that they just don't take it on (one of my uncles was one of them, he died in the streets shot by some gangster he owed money to... a long time ago.. while I was living in the cozy north near the Arctic). But most of them don't have this opportunity. They really don't. That's what I find pretty hard to get used to.
I remember when Angela and me had our pub in La Candelaria, we used to be surrounded by all kind of mafias and we befriended them as it was the only chance to secure our clients and someone to bring the beer all the way from the shop after midnight.... we also needed someone to escort our tourist clients to their hotels at late night and to bring mustang and arepas when needed.
The "security staff" was a very diverse group as you can imagine, from the famous "Laica" that apparently stole more than a couple of innocent tourists to the policemen with whom we played the bottle and sniffed coke at 4 am to professional musicians and people of the undergroud. The Candelaria was a hothouse for all this kind of people. What I'd call crazy with a reason, or let's not say reason... but raison d'etre....
Among these people I particularly remember one... Olga, my dear Olguita.. for when I joined the bar, back then when I was still studying at the Spanish school... she didn't really like me and try to assault me several times but we built out trust over the weeks and the months. Due of time she used to work for me too... even when Angela wasn't at the bar.
I used to feed her breakfast in the mornings and let her have a decent bed for a few hours... I was a very poor student at the time, but I did have a bed, a decent bed, running water, internet at home, windows to look out, a roof, a cupboard, etc. those kind of things that are never valuable except when you don't have them....
From her I think I learnt interesting lessons in life, and not just in life but in the arts.. and we used to have these long chats about politics and about philosophy, about logic, about the classics. An enriching person. Also remember having seen her properly refreshed and dressed up a few times... she really looked like one of those "madams" she used to talk about.
And she was nonetheless smart, bright, funny... her only mistake was not having had an easy life, not having had more opportunities to outreach. I still remember how she thought she'd reached the sky every once in a while when I gave her clothes from my cousins, spare medicines I found in my wardrobe or 10.000 pesos here and 10.000 pesos there. I still remember Olga... I saw her a few days before I came to Israel -she even dyed her hair rustically for what would be apparently our last get-together, we ate together, we talked about art, about politics, about Uribe and Pastrana, about Sharon and Netanyahu, about Tatcher and Schoreder.... and bid each other good bye.
I still think about all the Olga's that should be out there in Colombia without oportunities to outreach... I still think about Olga in the rainy days and that's something I find extremely difficult to get used to. Not just in Colombia, but particularly there.
Ari
For I'm a wannabe journals writer you know.. so I want you to understand one day what's going on here (wishful thinking, no one is really reading this crap at all). To explain one of the greatest (and probably biggest) chapters of my life I might need to talk about me and Angela being pub owners in La Candelaria. For that I need a clear mind and lots of drugs and chatty mood, and you bet... I don't have it now ;-). So figure out yourself... it won't be today, it won't be tomorrow.
I gotta clear up mist and figure out the story myself again. Maybe it would help to talk to the journalist about it (I know, you must be sick about him), but better I let him talk this time. I wonder if he's got something to tell me... (Jewish joke).
Ok no more introductions, from introduction to introduction I will end up skipping all the chapters of the books (oh good for you.... Cardigans on the radio so I'm kicking my butt somewhere else...)
Start here: :-)
I think many Colombians do have the opportunity to have a better life outside the streets and re-habilitate themselves, true... and that they just don't take it on (one of my uncles was one of them, he died in the streets shot by some gangster he owed money to... a long time ago.. while I was living in the cozy north near the Arctic). But most of them don't have this opportunity. They really don't. That's what I find pretty hard to get used to.
I remember when Angela and me had our pub in La Candelaria, we used to be surrounded by all kind of mafias and we befriended them as it was the only chance to secure our clients and someone to bring the beer all the way from the shop after midnight.... we also needed someone to escort our tourist clients to their hotels at late night and to bring mustang and arepas when needed.
The "security staff" was a very diverse group as you can imagine, from the famous "Laica" that apparently stole more than a couple of innocent tourists to the policemen with whom we played the bottle and sniffed coke at 4 am to professional musicians and people of the undergroud. The Candelaria was a hothouse for all this kind of people. What I'd call crazy with a reason, or let's not say reason... but raison d'etre....
Among these people I particularly remember one... Olga, my dear Olguita.. for when I joined the bar, back then when I was still studying at the Spanish school... she didn't really like me and try to assault me several times but we built out trust over the weeks and the months. Due of time she used to work for me too... even when Angela wasn't at the bar.
I used to feed her breakfast in the mornings and let her have a decent bed for a few hours... I was a very poor student at the time, but I did have a bed, a decent bed, running water, internet at home, windows to look out, a roof, a cupboard, etc. those kind of things that are never valuable except when you don't have them....
From her I think I learnt interesting lessons in life, and not just in life but in the arts.. and we used to have these long chats about politics and about philosophy, about logic, about the classics. An enriching person. Also remember having seen her properly refreshed and dressed up a few times... she really looked like one of those "madams" she used to talk about.
And she was nonetheless smart, bright, funny... her only mistake was not having had an easy life, not having had more opportunities to outreach. I still remember how she thought she'd reached the sky every once in a while when I gave her clothes from my cousins, spare medicines I found in my wardrobe or 10.000 pesos here and 10.000 pesos there. I still remember Olga... I saw her a few days before I came to Israel -she even dyed her hair rustically for what would be apparently our last get-together, we ate together, we talked about art, about politics, about Uribe and Pastrana, about Sharon and Netanyahu, about Tatcher and Schoreder.... and bid each other good bye.
I still think about all the Olga's that should be out there in Colombia without oportunities to outreach... I still think about Olga in the rainy days and that's something I find extremely difficult to get used to. Not just in Colombia, but particularly there.
Ari
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Smokeless, not 2 am, 10 pm
Well I start this blog note with a tiny bit of preoccupation for I haven't written anything of any worth in the last week or so.... Most of my notes (if not all ) have been a part of the annex, oh Kitty! dear Kitty.... if you knew of my glories! if you ever heard of my victories! oh dear Kitty... if you just could....
Anna Frank still having a holiday from me, she's resting in Neot Afeka and Elliot is also away these days, she and the wife of the journalist have gone somewhere... I think it's somewhere in the countryside... because in the end where would you find Elliot if not in the countryside? and Elliot couldn't be found alone, she and the wife of the journalist pretend eternal companion and pity from one to the other.
In the meantime the journalist is still not home, hence wife is just having some time off.... only Ari's home, a bit lacking of inspiration, lacking of strength, lacking of desire, lacking of anything worthy at all. Quite lifeless. These days I really have no patience for writers, no patience for singers and not even patience for simple tellers.... no patience for myself.
No patience for Raegen or Agnon.... and Elliot is not home anyway, and how can you read her anyway when she's not home? It doesn't seem to make sense at all. My language is also quite frustrated these days, no style, no paradox, no understatement... the richness of my wordly style faded away, is led astray.... it seems I really can't find a language which might be as expressive as I would like to, tempted to try Finnish but I think I have enough problems with the English, leave asides the Hebrew.
I do reckon the temporary move brought some changes into my life... I learnt to enjoy the management of larger spaces, to be able to walk around and discover and to feel a stranger basically, in my house, isn't it? No, actually it's not. Oh right! I'm just a passenger here... but somehow I really like the position, a passenger? That's the kind of job I wanted to have... but obviously I'm a pretty problematic passenger, in my silences, in my outcry, in my desperate anxiety....
I couldn't call myself really needy at the moment, not even bitter... but let's say I'm just slowed down, my brains toasted under the inclement Israeli sun and my soul just sosegated. I wish I'd bear the title of passenger for much of a shorter time but the cards were played against me this time or maybe I just did it myself. In the end something has to go always wrong, and this time if not me, it seems something around me has been placed for a shift.
I don't really have time to think about Ofer seriously for the wife isn't home, and we haven't talked in the last days... but it seems we don't have much to talk about... she seems to have grown up quite somehow in the last months... she wants to let things be the way they want, in a strange kind of passivenes before life.... so unlike her soul, so full of justice... so full of struggle.. always a battle... for the first time ever the wife, with or without journalist is prone to surrender. A wife that surrenders..... I don't seem to give much shit about the latest events of my life but I do feel it's starting to hit me... the disappointment is just huge, the frustration even more and the dreams always present... like a powerful reminder of other glories, of other days, of other victories.
I feel a little bit defeated, and not defeated by my intelligence or the lack of it, not defeated by love and not deceived by love... just defeated in general and a bit tired... already too grown up to think about disappearing but you know? It's not that I consider it but it appears on my subsconscious puzzle like a wild dream, like a Romantic dream, like an ode... just like Shakespeare. To dream and to disappear... how not dissimilar they are... it's a broad connection you know. Semantics will explain it one day.
I'm not angry... just a little bit hungry, yeah... right after I read our minister said there's only hardship in this country, because hardship and poverty are different things.... because poverty and hunger are different things... yet I'm hungry... but he might be right... in the end of the day I'm only a passenger in this country, a refugee.... a passenger in my own country, a passenger in my life... a refugee in my own life. But it's not all so bad... we're all ghetto like, aren't we all? And even quite American I turned out to be. I'm not even sad, just saddened. My face smells the defeat and also the taste of the next victory, life and me are not still even... but I'm recovering and in the end, as usual.... with or without journalist I'll pull through, because in the end.... I'm happy as a pig in shit ;-)
Yeah I know... I'm kind of fucked up brainy tonight. It's called lack of sleep, love, infatuation and thirst. Also lack of history, lack of present.... specially lack of present.
Ari
Anna Frank still having a holiday from me, she's resting in Neot Afeka and Elliot is also away these days, she and the wife of the journalist have gone somewhere... I think it's somewhere in the countryside... because in the end where would you find Elliot if not in the countryside? and Elliot couldn't be found alone, she and the wife of the journalist pretend eternal companion and pity from one to the other.
In the meantime the journalist is still not home, hence wife is just having some time off.... only Ari's home, a bit lacking of inspiration, lacking of strength, lacking of desire, lacking of anything worthy at all. Quite lifeless. These days I really have no patience for writers, no patience for singers and not even patience for simple tellers.... no patience for myself.
No patience for Raegen or Agnon.... and Elliot is not home anyway, and how can you read her anyway when she's not home? It doesn't seem to make sense at all. My language is also quite frustrated these days, no style, no paradox, no understatement... the richness of my wordly style faded away, is led astray.... it seems I really can't find a language which might be as expressive as I would like to, tempted to try Finnish but I think I have enough problems with the English, leave asides the Hebrew.
I do reckon the temporary move brought some changes into my life... I learnt to enjoy the management of larger spaces, to be able to walk around and discover and to feel a stranger basically, in my house, isn't it? No, actually it's not. Oh right! I'm just a passenger here... but somehow I really like the position, a passenger? That's the kind of job I wanted to have... but obviously I'm a pretty problematic passenger, in my silences, in my outcry, in my desperate anxiety....
I couldn't call myself really needy at the moment, not even bitter... but let's say I'm just slowed down, my brains toasted under the inclement Israeli sun and my soul just sosegated. I wish I'd bear the title of passenger for much of a shorter time but the cards were played against me this time or maybe I just did it myself. In the end something has to go always wrong, and this time if not me, it seems something around me has been placed for a shift.
I don't really have time to think about Ofer seriously for the wife isn't home, and we haven't talked in the last days... but it seems we don't have much to talk about... she seems to have grown up quite somehow in the last months... she wants to let things be the way they want, in a strange kind of passivenes before life.... so unlike her soul, so full of justice... so full of struggle.. always a battle... for the first time ever the wife, with or without journalist is prone to surrender. A wife that surrenders..... I don't seem to give much shit about the latest events of my life but I do feel it's starting to hit me... the disappointment is just huge, the frustration even more and the dreams always present... like a powerful reminder of other glories, of other days, of other victories.
I feel a little bit defeated, and not defeated by my intelligence or the lack of it, not defeated by love and not deceived by love... just defeated in general and a bit tired... already too grown up to think about disappearing but you know? It's not that I consider it but it appears on my subsconscious puzzle like a wild dream, like a Romantic dream, like an ode... just like Shakespeare. To dream and to disappear... how not dissimilar they are... it's a broad connection you know. Semantics will explain it one day.
I'm not angry... just a little bit hungry, yeah... right after I read our minister said there's only hardship in this country, because hardship and poverty are different things.... because poverty and hunger are different things... yet I'm hungry... but he might be right... in the end of the day I'm only a passenger in this country, a refugee.... a passenger in my own country, a passenger in my life... a refugee in my own life. But it's not all so bad... we're all ghetto like, aren't we all? And even quite American I turned out to be. I'm not even sad, just saddened. My face smells the defeat and also the taste of the next victory, life and me are not still even... but I'm recovering and in the end, as usual.... with or without journalist I'll pull through, because in the end.... I'm happy as a pig in shit ;-)
Yeah I know... I'm kind of fucked up brainy tonight. It's called lack of sleep, love, infatuation and thirst. Also lack of history, lack of present.... specially lack of present.
Ari
A candid song
Well some few minutes for silence... for some kind of selective silence, which is more of a kindred noise... some melodic and melancholic song... some wordless song.... this is my fit tonight, like a post-war song... in the end of the day I'm the post-war hero tonight.... the post-war hero... the post-end hero.....
I really feel less at odds with myself, the change to Tel Aviv did bring something actually... I don't know it's like some kind of security that you're safe in your denial of life, that your bubble is well protected, that you're not alone in your glasshouse and that you actually can live in one. Not sure if I'm allowed to live in mine yet, for so many jungles I haven't seen... and don't really know if I'm living some kind of life or simply teasing fate.
Fate and me closed a deal, or actually it was not fate and me... it was the wife the the journalist and fate... and when they sat together and talked I simply wasn't home... I was too busy inside myself, curdled up into myself.... The wife of the journalist and fate halted their quarrels and their arguments... for some time I guess.
Just as the song goes "You can love me until tomorrow, until you may want to go... for you can always forsake, you can always forget".. that's the kind of deal fate and the wife closed, an airport deal... that kind of non-verbal agreements you close by looking into someone, by feeling his breath, even by staring at his clouds of smoke. The wife of the journalist ain't no Antigone, the wife of the journalist is more of an Elliot, less of a tragic and more of a novelist. And even when Ofer stares at Ari and sees through his clouds and most profound thoughtlessness... even there the wife is much more of a novelist... because the wife of the journalist and Ari.... seem to have come to terms.
With or without journalist, they've come to terms.... And maybe Elliot, Elliot can understand. Probably also Zelma would. And why not, Ofer?
I really feel less at odds with myself, the change to Tel Aviv did bring something actually... I don't know it's like some kind of security that you're safe in your denial of life, that your bubble is well protected, that you're not alone in your glasshouse and that you actually can live in one. Not sure if I'm allowed to live in mine yet, for so many jungles I haven't seen... and don't really know if I'm living some kind of life or simply teasing fate.
Fate and me closed a deal, or actually it was not fate and me... it was the wife the the journalist and fate... and when they sat together and talked I simply wasn't home... I was too busy inside myself, curdled up into myself.... The wife of the journalist and fate halted their quarrels and their arguments... for some time I guess.
Just as the song goes "You can love me until tomorrow, until you may want to go... for you can always forsake, you can always forget".. that's the kind of deal fate and the wife closed, an airport deal... that kind of non-verbal agreements you close by looking into someone, by feeling his breath, even by staring at his clouds of smoke. The wife of the journalist ain't no Antigone, the wife of the journalist is more of an Elliot, less of a tragic and more of a novelist. And even when Ofer stares at Ari and sees through his clouds and most profound thoughtlessness... even there the wife is much more of a novelist... because the wife of the journalist and Ari.... seem to have come to terms.
With or without journalist, they've come to terms.... And maybe Elliot, Elliot can understand. Probably also Zelma would. And why not, Ofer?
Saturday, September 11, 2004
Worthwhile to be named?
Ok... for now I've given up on my article about the Israeli Jewish gay and the European Jewish gay or I didn't give up actually, let's see I'm just taking some deep breath in order to continue with such heavy subject, a bit of George Elliot, a bit of Maimonides and a bit of Hirsh and even American TV.
The topic is actually much broader than I ever thought and I want to make it a little bit more conclusive, not just rambling between subjects as usual. Concrete stuff, which is usually very difficult to achieve. I want to talk a little bit about gay life, not with an article and not with philological methodology, not even with observation. Just a little talk you know... like those semi-political conversations with friends during which we pretend to change the world.
Nevertheless I'm not in the best of positions to engage myself in such little conversations for less universal topics trouble me at the moment. There's a note left about Anna Frank to be made, a note not about universalism but about the lack of it. A note about journals and about a wife's deepest sensitivities. I still remember that conversation with Svetlana a bit at odds with myself, for it led us through a path which brings nothing in return but the darkness of modern life and the death of the tragedy.
The tragedy is probably dead as a matter of fact, dead since Nietzsche and dead since Arendt. Despite the psycho-analytical approaches in literature and the most state-of-the-art trends we seem to find less and less connections to those natural approaches.
Contradicting Carr I would like to say the modern world gives you the impression that history is fighting against itself, is craving for a new start, for a new beginning. For the sake of this new beginning chaos is nothing but an undeniable fact based on necessity.
That reminds me one of the movies of my teen years, "Trainspotting" and those freaky scenes of pathetically young and deconstructed British life, the generation of the 90's in which I got probably stuck. They claim in the future there won't be such a thing as girls and boys but only people. What do you really think guys? I'm very fond of the concept, with a little bit of deceival and a little bit of morality. This concept brings me those ideas about the city and urban life I enthralled in the previous years; those premises would be unthinkable of in the eyes of the natural life, not because one any lifestyle defies or fights against nature for nature is the primary creator, but because there's a need for balance, even in nature and even in chaos.
The abstractions need to be clearly defined and also their outcome. In the end, what does all this have to do with what I really want to get into? Forget it, I'm not in focus at the moment. Probably some vodka will do the job just fine.
Later
Ari
PD: Wife's not home either, she's out with Elliot. Probably for rye.
The topic is actually much broader than I ever thought and I want to make it a little bit more conclusive, not just rambling between subjects as usual. Concrete stuff, which is usually very difficult to achieve. I want to talk a little bit about gay life, not with an article and not with philological methodology, not even with observation. Just a little talk you know... like those semi-political conversations with friends during which we pretend to change the world.
Nevertheless I'm not in the best of positions to engage myself in such little conversations for less universal topics trouble me at the moment. There's a note left about Anna Frank to be made, a note not about universalism but about the lack of it. A note about journals and about a wife's deepest sensitivities. I still remember that conversation with Svetlana a bit at odds with myself, for it led us through a path which brings nothing in return but the darkness of modern life and the death of the tragedy.
The tragedy is probably dead as a matter of fact, dead since Nietzsche and dead since Arendt. Despite the psycho-analytical approaches in literature and the most state-of-the-art trends we seem to find less and less connections to those natural approaches.
Contradicting Carr I would like to say the modern world gives you the impression that history is fighting against itself, is craving for a new start, for a new beginning. For the sake of this new beginning chaos is nothing but an undeniable fact based on necessity.
That reminds me one of the movies of my teen years, "Trainspotting" and those freaky scenes of pathetically young and deconstructed British life, the generation of the 90's in which I got probably stuck. They claim in the future there won't be such a thing as girls and boys but only people. What do you really think guys? I'm very fond of the concept, with a little bit of deceival and a little bit of morality. This concept brings me those ideas about the city and urban life I enthralled in the previous years; those premises would be unthinkable of in the eyes of the natural life, not because one any lifestyle defies or fights against nature for nature is the primary creator, but because there's a need for balance, even in nature and even in chaos.
The abstractions need to be clearly defined and also their outcome. In the end, what does all this have to do with what I really want to get into? Forget it, I'm not in focus at the moment. Probably some vodka will do the job just fine.
Later
Ari
PD: Wife's not home either, she's out with Elliot. Probably for rye.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
The wife and the mirror
Well I really didn't know under which topic to write this note as it's a little bit of everything, lots of weltschmerz and certainly unmeasurable quantities of Angst, it's a bit of the achterhuis as it's self-contained with events of my life, people, places, mood swings and disappointments. It deals with my Idischkeit and also with Israel. Nevertheless I could say it's not very philologic, but what do I know anyway? It's just me in the middle of my life, no accurate observations could made from mouth of this wandering poet. Oh yeah I like this, calling myself a wandering poet? Well it seems I'm on the road to better definitions.
Nothing has happened these days yet big moves have come down on me, with lots of fear and lots of allienation, specially allienation. Isn't that what we Jews are made of? Allienated of ourselves, allienated of history and allienated of God himself. I'm extremely tired and my thoughts aren't very clear, haven't had any time to read or eat for God's sakes and I feel a bit weak, a bit sad, a bit exhacerbated.
I moved into the new apartment and as expected I brought my luggage, my personal luggage... I bring it everywhere, the my own house, to my living room, to my bath... even to the bed of the journalist. Funny no? Geography doesn't seem to be the cure of anything, at least not for a writer. It's no big deal though, emotions are the real core of life... the idea of feeling relatively alive is an interesting concept, not sure to which extent it's true in Israel. Are we really alive? are we really a country? are we really people?
Probably I shouldn't curdle up into this topic anymore.. for the sake of what? So let's review the last hours a little bit more... well I finished moving the stuff into the apartment, which in spite of its several limitations I really like. I find lots of peace and loneliness in a way I didn't find in my previous apartment... I think it's because it's kinda spacey (!!! watch out the meanings) and I can feel a little bit more free to walk around my cage with a taste of desperation. The sight is also very limited, it's like being in nowhere, just the lemon trees and more lemon trees... the imagination doesn't fly through gardens and hills but the breeze from the ocean is watering my soul every here and there, nothing but a nice thing.
It's also interestingly different to be here right now, there's still no added background in the landscape, no pink dots and no red dotes, not even white dots... it's all clean in my mind. No hatred or love stories have wandered down these walls and eventually they'll haunt me, I know it.
But for now I enjoy the feeling of the eventless life, quiet mornings and rendered coffee. It seems like as if a stranger (which is me) is occupying some physical space to which he's trying to belong at any price. There's also a background to the place to some extent, for it was Mirjam's house and that probably doesn't say anything but I guess there's something to it, a little bit of familiarity. As strange as it may sound Mirjam and me have started to get along in a very different way lately, things you can't really understand. I've been able to see through her sensibilities and learn a few things here and there, decaffainated Dutchableness if you want to call it so, although the word is not very reliable for I just put it together... maybe it's just the Germanic disease of compound words. Go figure out.
There was this memorable conversation about Regev and Ofer, I could see a bit of a future there... a light in the shades. If Mirjam would know how much I achieved from that conversation I think she'd be a little bit freaked out. Well in the end of the day I'm a very sensitive man, and it's kind of obvious.
The morning was a bit puzzling... and I did get depressed actually, I just hugged my pillows and returned to my sleep... to my unrest, which is sleeping while you're not really sleeping. Probably just out of fear and tons, tons of sadness. Even the air can understand my immature feelings of the morning. Nature always understands I guess, for she knows all the rules. She probably pities me quite somehow, probably more than I ever pitied myself and it's not such a good feeling.
Call it silly mood. I'm really not in the mood for anything and enjoying the new place in a strange kind of way. It works like this: I really used to hate my old apartment out of many different reasons (actually it's still my apartment, debts-inclusive) which I know (don't we all?) and then I tried to find the scapegoat and just fly away, disappear and wander down streets and place, engaged in uninteresting and chatty conversations with people. Now I dwell in a place where I have nothing but neutral feelings and inexistant phone calls. It's not a big thrill, except for its glorious past and lots of fear about the uncertainties of the future, but in general lines it's just a place, somewhere I'm trying to adapt totally out of willingness, just like having at the same time this idea that it'll be a temporary place, that I'm going somewhere else, that something will come in the middle and will halt my calm. I probably triggered myself, like playing with fate and its combination of factual reality and things I'm very aware of.
Now I thought of Oren a little bit you know? But it doesn't surprise me. Sigur Ros and Oren will always have an automatic connection, but it's funny because there's no really connection between Sigur Ros and Oren. There's an obvious connection between Oren and Ari, and between Ari and Sigur Ros there's also a semi-obvious connection. Not so between Oren and Sigur Ros. The wife of the journalist and Oren don't have any connection either, despite the short time gaps they seem to be total strangers to one another. Their lives seem to have been led in different ways and specially with different words, with different attitudes. From all the previous "releases" I think I like the wife of the journalist less than I liked any of the shinier characters in this cheap John Malkovich movie, but there're remarkable things about her.
She's much less of a character but the wife of the journalist is not only sensitive but also sincere and well aware, she's not unique to her kind but very legitimate and authentic. Authentic, that's the word. The wife of the journalist is much more of an authentic person than any other chapter of the plot. The wife of the journalist is a really confused young man wandering between shades and screens of mist with the despise that maturity gives you, with that cold outlook of unavoidable reality.
No one can really point out where the difference strives, but she? I think she can, she really does. Like in Sheryl Crow's songs... the wife with no journalist and with no journal, but a wife anyhow. Like in Elliot's stories with a little bit of saga and a little bit of German romanticism. Consumated. The wife doesn't even know if she's the wife of a journalist or if she'll be ever able to bear that little from now on but she's granted the right to dream and it's legitimate. To dream based on perceptions, to dream based on simple words, to dream based on the taste of his lips and on his natural ability to deceive.
Legimitacy is an innate value for her, it's even a literary idea with a taste of today, with a taste of yesterday. A wife that doesn't receive letters, doesn't receive phone calls and a wife that doesn't expect. She just lives or half-lives through her days in her own way... picking livelihood from a wooden box and from familiar remembrances and even from scenes that were never recorded... from future defeats, from future glories. A wife with no story and with no lover, with no story other than Elliot's and with no lover other than Elliot.
Ari
Nothing has happened these days yet big moves have come down on me, with lots of fear and lots of allienation, specially allienation. Isn't that what we Jews are made of? Allienated of ourselves, allienated of history and allienated of God himself. I'm extremely tired and my thoughts aren't very clear, haven't had any time to read or eat for God's sakes and I feel a bit weak, a bit sad, a bit exhacerbated.
I moved into the new apartment and as expected I brought my luggage, my personal luggage... I bring it everywhere, the my own house, to my living room, to my bath... even to the bed of the journalist. Funny no? Geography doesn't seem to be the cure of anything, at least not for a writer. It's no big deal though, emotions are the real core of life... the idea of feeling relatively alive is an interesting concept, not sure to which extent it's true in Israel. Are we really alive? are we really a country? are we really people?
Probably I shouldn't curdle up into this topic anymore.. for the sake of what? So let's review the last hours a little bit more... well I finished moving the stuff into the apartment, which in spite of its several limitations I really like. I find lots of peace and loneliness in a way I didn't find in my previous apartment... I think it's because it's kinda spacey (!!! watch out the meanings) and I can feel a little bit more free to walk around my cage with a taste of desperation. The sight is also very limited, it's like being in nowhere, just the lemon trees and more lemon trees... the imagination doesn't fly through gardens and hills but the breeze from the ocean is watering my soul every here and there, nothing but a nice thing.
It's also interestingly different to be here right now, there's still no added background in the landscape, no pink dots and no red dotes, not even white dots... it's all clean in my mind. No hatred or love stories have wandered down these walls and eventually they'll haunt me, I know it.
But for now I enjoy the feeling of the eventless life, quiet mornings and rendered coffee. It seems like as if a stranger (which is me) is occupying some physical space to which he's trying to belong at any price. There's also a background to the place to some extent, for it was Mirjam's house and that probably doesn't say anything but I guess there's something to it, a little bit of familiarity. As strange as it may sound Mirjam and me have started to get along in a very different way lately, things you can't really understand. I've been able to see through her sensibilities and learn a few things here and there, decaffainated Dutchableness if you want to call it so, although the word is not very reliable for I just put it together... maybe it's just the Germanic disease of compound words. Go figure out.
There was this memorable conversation about Regev and Ofer, I could see a bit of a future there... a light in the shades. If Mirjam would know how much I achieved from that conversation I think she'd be a little bit freaked out. Well in the end of the day I'm a very sensitive man, and it's kind of obvious.
The morning was a bit puzzling... and I did get depressed actually, I just hugged my pillows and returned to my sleep... to my unrest, which is sleeping while you're not really sleeping. Probably just out of fear and tons, tons of sadness. Even the air can understand my immature feelings of the morning. Nature always understands I guess, for she knows all the rules. She probably pities me quite somehow, probably more than I ever pitied myself and it's not such a good feeling.
Call it silly mood. I'm really not in the mood for anything and enjoying the new place in a strange kind of way. It works like this: I really used to hate my old apartment out of many different reasons (actually it's still my apartment, debts-inclusive) which I know (don't we all?) and then I tried to find the scapegoat and just fly away, disappear and wander down streets and place, engaged in uninteresting and chatty conversations with people. Now I dwell in a place where I have nothing but neutral feelings and inexistant phone calls. It's not a big thrill, except for its glorious past and lots of fear about the uncertainties of the future, but in general lines it's just a place, somewhere I'm trying to adapt totally out of willingness, just like having at the same time this idea that it'll be a temporary place, that I'm going somewhere else, that something will come in the middle and will halt my calm. I probably triggered myself, like playing with fate and its combination of factual reality and things I'm very aware of.
Now I thought of Oren a little bit you know? But it doesn't surprise me. Sigur Ros and Oren will always have an automatic connection, but it's funny because there's no really connection between Sigur Ros and Oren. There's an obvious connection between Oren and Ari, and between Ari and Sigur Ros there's also a semi-obvious connection. Not so between Oren and Sigur Ros. The wife of the journalist and Oren don't have any connection either, despite the short time gaps they seem to be total strangers to one another. Their lives seem to have been led in different ways and specially with different words, with different attitudes. From all the previous "releases" I think I like the wife of the journalist less than I liked any of the shinier characters in this cheap John Malkovich movie, but there're remarkable things about her.
She's much less of a character but the wife of the journalist is not only sensitive but also sincere and well aware, she's not unique to her kind but very legitimate and authentic. Authentic, that's the word. The wife of the journalist is much more of an authentic person than any other chapter of the plot. The wife of the journalist is a really confused young man wandering between shades and screens of mist with the despise that maturity gives you, with that cold outlook of unavoidable reality.
No one can really point out where the difference strives, but she? I think she can, she really does. Like in Sheryl Crow's songs... the wife with no journalist and with no journal, but a wife anyhow. Like in Elliot's stories with a little bit of saga and a little bit of German romanticism. Consumated. The wife doesn't even know if she's the wife of a journalist or if she'll be ever able to bear that little from now on but she's granted the right to dream and it's legitimate. To dream based on perceptions, to dream based on simple words, to dream based on the taste of his lips and on his natural ability to deceive.
Legimitacy is an innate value for her, it's even a literary idea with a taste of today, with a taste of yesterday. A wife that doesn't receive letters, doesn't receive phone calls and a wife that doesn't expect. She just lives or half-lives through her days in her own way... picking livelihood from a wooden box and from familiar remembrances and even from scenes that were never recorded... from future defeats, from future glories. A wife with no story and with no lover, with no story other than Elliot's and with no lover other than Elliot.
Ari
Dear Anne, are you truely universal?
Before Elliot and the wife of the journalist became acquainted with each other and received heavenly confirmation for their life-time bond, Elliot and Ari used to be distant friends... those kind of friends that only met in funerals and coffee shops, friends of Jerusalem afternoons and of library cafeterias. Merely intellectual friends, a nightly friendship that would find both of them immerse among Classical books and odes, among glasses of wine and nicotine.
Elliot and Ari used to sit next to the psychology building at the University and talk to strangers, to many strangers.... that was their kind of it. Ari and Elliot were also friends in pity and compassion, pious friends in their own endeavours. Elliot and Ari used to recite aloud "El Ma'ale Rachamim" and stared at each other in surprise, for the words were powerful and astounding:
"God full of compassion who dwells in the high heavens, grant perfect rest beneath the wings of Your Indwelling Presence (Shekhinah), in the exalted places among the holy and the pure, to the soul of ____________ who has entered eternity. May his/her resting place be in the Garden of Eden. Please, Master of Compassion, shelter him/her under the cover of Your wings forever; and may his/her soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life. The Eternal is his/her portion; may he/she rest in peace. And let us say "amen." Elliot and Ari were spiritual friends, those kind of friends that have never met and that found each other a few centuries earlier or later. But do not misunderstand, Elliot wasn't Ari's only friend.
Before her he had romances with a few others, a Rimbaudian teenager was he... "par delicatesse j'ai pardu ma vie...". He was even a secret friend of Holderlin, how much he admired Holderlin... the essence of the Greek spirit, "unterliegt". But in the beginning, in the genesis of our story Ari used to have an only friend, a childhood friend with whom he walked through all different paths and through who he saw different slides. Back then Ari was much more of a universal man, like every boy and girl in our times I think. Back then Anne Frank constituted his only friend.
And this is the question of the day. Anne, are you truely universal?
My eyes are really closing at the moment. Let's give some space for the wife of the journalist to answer this question tomorrow. It'll be interesting, for she's the least universal person I know.
Elliot and Ari used to sit next to the psychology building at the University and talk to strangers, to many strangers.... that was their kind of it. Ari and Elliot were also friends in pity and compassion, pious friends in their own endeavours. Elliot and Ari used to recite aloud "El Ma'ale Rachamim" and stared at each other in surprise, for the words were powerful and astounding:
"God full of compassion who dwells in the high heavens, grant perfect rest beneath the wings of Your Indwelling Presence (Shekhinah), in the exalted places among the holy and the pure, to the soul of ____________ who has entered eternity. May his/her resting place be in the Garden of Eden. Please, Master of Compassion, shelter him/her under the cover of Your wings forever; and may his/her soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life. The Eternal is his/her portion; may he/she rest in peace. And let us say "amen." Elliot and Ari were spiritual friends, those kind of friends that have never met and that found each other a few centuries earlier or later. But do not misunderstand, Elliot wasn't Ari's only friend.
Before her he had romances with a few others, a Rimbaudian teenager was he... "par delicatesse j'ai pardu ma vie...". He was even a secret friend of Holderlin, how much he admired Holderlin... the essence of the Greek spirit, "unterliegt". But in the beginning, in the genesis of our story Ari used to have an only friend, a childhood friend with whom he walked through all different paths and through who he saw different slides. Back then Ari was much more of a universal man, like every boy and girl in our times I think. Back then Anne Frank constituted his only friend.
And this is the question of the day. Anne, are you truely universal?
My eyes are really closing at the moment. Let's give some space for the wife of the journalist to answer this question tomorrow. It'll be interesting, for she's the least universal person I know.
Untitled
Well I don't really know what to think, I really wish there was nothing to think about, but still even now, in my selective allienation I'm in unrest. Yesterday Oren (Oren #1) was visiting me and well the guy was telling me about the story of his ex-wife. I really didn't have anything to say, I found out how similar his story was to mine, or better say her story to mine. I felt a bit discouraged but that's just the way things are, I really can't change anything at the moment.
Only got to sleep this morning almmost at 4 am, a bit uncomfortable... as if the place wasn't really mine, as if something would bother me very deeply about this place, about myself. Go figure.... I woke up several times kind of powerless and the late morning caught me totally unrested and distressed.
Like in the worst days I decided to go back and dive into my sleep again... half slept, half awake. Some people dies at 20 and gets buried at 80, go figure yourself out. I thought about my bank appointment, which still hasn't happened... and the hours slip away in swift movements, in any case today around 16:30 I'll be on my way there. In the end it was just me who got into the trouble, so I have to find a solution. Only God knows what it will be.
I wish I really didn't have to involve anyone in this complicated tale but probably it's time for some sincerity. Time to start over again with the letters and the complaints, with the struggle... against life, against my own history, against my blood. Some kind of obliged betrayal.
Suzy came to the apartment and it was a bit disappointing... the furniture is gone.... things that don't work here and there, etc. Nohing really interesting. Plus she says she intends to sell the apartment, huh? Just a few days after I moved in. I think there's no justification for this move. I feel a bit cheated on you know? I sort of knew it, I wouldn't live in this place for a long time... so let's see what the future brings and how it brings it. I don't know if I'll be able to remain here in this country for much longer, for long enough as to start enjoying it and my conscious attacks me late at night when I curdle up into the idea of leaving the place. I really became a part of it, just one of them.... but... maybe I came on the wrong moment in my life? under the wrong circumstances? I don't really know but my life in Israel seems to be an endless wrongdoing historial, it's almost criminal.
It seems most people's lives here are led the same way, but does it really mean I can cope with it? I'm not really sure. I'm a Jew anyway and I'm not glued anywhere... I'm an adventurer, but in the end of the day... ain't I somehow glued to my feelings? glued to my multiple loves and glued to my experiences? I wouldn't say I'm glued to the journalist for I certainly doubt if there's anything left in the zeal. Only time will tell and regardless of what I feel it'll the way life wants and that's a dead end.
I'm not an Odysseus neither an Antigone, who am I to fight these things? Maybe I'm not young enough anymore, maybe I'm not trying to outreach anymore. Could it be said I gave up?
I can't realize figure out myself living in the streets of Bogota or in any European city. Probably I can and it's not so difficult to get used to it (living in Israel is the biggest example) but I think I'm really fond of this place, my place in the world.... my spot. The place from where I can look at the world not in the eyes of anyone but me, the place from where I can overlook with the delicate touch of the long forlorn civilizations. Fear is eating me up everyday, is eating up my creativity, my lust, my vital energy, my life.... and I don't seem to be able to fight it in any other way than a sound frustration. A huge frustration. A huge frustration.
Ari
Only got to sleep this morning almmost at 4 am, a bit uncomfortable... as if the place wasn't really mine, as if something would bother me very deeply about this place, about myself. Go figure.... I woke up several times kind of powerless and the late morning caught me totally unrested and distressed.
Like in the worst days I decided to go back and dive into my sleep again... half slept, half awake. Some people dies at 20 and gets buried at 80, go figure yourself out. I thought about my bank appointment, which still hasn't happened... and the hours slip away in swift movements, in any case today around 16:30 I'll be on my way there. In the end it was just me who got into the trouble, so I have to find a solution. Only God knows what it will be.
I wish I really didn't have to involve anyone in this complicated tale but probably it's time for some sincerity. Time to start over again with the letters and the complaints, with the struggle... against life, against my own history, against my blood. Some kind of obliged betrayal.
Suzy came to the apartment and it was a bit disappointing... the furniture is gone.... things that don't work here and there, etc. Nohing really interesting. Plus she says she intends to sell the apartment, huh? Just a few days after I moved in. I think there's no justification for this move. I feel a bit cheated on you know? I sort of knew it, I wouldn't live in this place for a long time... so let's see what the future brings and how it brings it. I don't know if I'll be able to remain here in this country for much longer, for long enough as to start enjoying it and my conscious attacks me late at night when I curdle up into the idea of leaving the place. I really became a part of it, just one of them.... but... maybe I came on the wrong moment in my life? under the wrong circumstances? I don't really know but my life in Israel seems to be an endless wrongdoing historial, it's almost criminal.
It seems most people's lives here are led the same way, but does it really mean I can cope with it? I'm not really sure. I'm a Jew anyway and I'm not glued anywhere... I'm an adventurer, but in the end of the day... ain't I somehow glued to my feelings? glued to my multiple loves and glued to my experiences? I wouldn't say I'm glued to the journalist for I certainly doubt if there's anything left in the zeal. Only time will tell and regardless of what I feel it'll the way life wants and that's a dead end.
I'm not an Odysseus neither an Antigone, who am I to fight these things? Maybe I'm not young enough anymore, maybe I'm not trying to outreach anymore. Could it be said I gave up?
I can't realize figure out myself living in the streets of Bogota or in any European city. Probably I can and it's not so difficult to get used to it (living in Israel is the biggest example) but I think I'm really fond of this place, my place in the world.... my spot. The place from where I can look at the world not in the eyes of anyone but me, the place from where I can overlook with the delicate touch of the long forlorn civilizations. Fear is eating me up everyday, is eating up my creativity, my lust, my vital energy, my life.... and I don't seem to be able to fight it in any other way than a sound frustration. A huge frustration. A huge frustration.
Ari
In the aftermath again
Well you know a shower always acts wonders on you... after a few hours of desperate and outrageous riping-off craving I think I feel much better, I certainly do. I'm just tired, very tired... more like exhausted. I've been tired since the moment I got up and it's been like that for a few days... well you know summer is not really my kind of thing.
All morning I spent very sad, very sad... a bit of desperation in the sadness as well. I don't seem to find an order in anything here, it's still an ordeal and it's terribly difficult for me to get used to the apartment... don't know... it wasn't like this when I moved into my apartment in good 'ol Ramat Gan. Now it's very different, I just feel a stranger here, and now to make the affair even worse Suzy tells me I have to leave in 6 months... well I knew something had to go wrong but let's look at it possitively... the place will constitute nothing but a stop between two lives, between chapters and between two persons... between Ari the fighter and the wife of the journalist... between Sophocles and Elliot. Doesn't it sound interesting enough?
Where will I be living in 6 months? in which part of the city or in which city? Will I be the wife of a journalist or a wife at all? What will I look like? This is so interesting... I can't recognize myself, never really did.
Where will Tel Aviv be in 6 months? Will I be alive? Will I be happier? And my journalist? Will he be around or will be have fused into the clouds like everyone else? Such thought causes me a tremblor. It's like living a period of my life with no history, no plot, no background and no stage, a bit of an spectator regardless the wordliness.
Will I ever leave this country and fight back my fate like an Antigone of my times? Finally she's always been my favourite tragedy. Someone who surrendered to fate more than she did to history, and probably for that I'll be always indebted to Kaltsidou, again we return to the polar circle... the Romantic spirit. A frozen smell to the Acropolis and to the Theban palaces, a frozen smell to the river and a frozen smell to the Logos.
Will I ever be a philologist? will people ever read these lines? Will Ofer ever return to my arms? Or will I contemplate sunsets in stranger's arms? in my own arms? Will I stop fighting against my own land and my own people and stop being at odds with her for once at all?
Only 6 months.... 6 months will bring the answers. 6 months will bring the different tastes of victory and defeat. 6 months will bring the bitterness of time and fate all down on me. 6 months... only 6 months.
Ari
All morning I spent very sad, very sad... a bit of desperation in the sadness as well. I don't seem to find an order in anything here, it's still an ordeal and it's terribly difficult for me to get used to the apartment... don't know... it wasn't like this when I moved into my apartment in good 'ol Ramat Gan. Now it's very different, I just feel a stranger here, and now to make the affair even worse Suzy tells me I have to leave in 6 months... well I knew something had to go wrong but let's look at it possitively... the place will constitute nothing but a stop between two lives, between chapters and between two persons... between Ari the fighter and the wife of the journalist... between Sophocles and Elliot. Doesn't it sound interesting enough?
Where will I be living in 6 months? in which part of the city or in which city? Will I be the wife of a journalist or a wife at all? What will I look like? This is so interesting... I can't recognize myself, never really did.
Where will Tel Aviv be in 6 months? Will I be alive? Will I be happier? And my journalist? Will he be around or will be have fused into the clouds like everyone else? Such thought causes me a tremblor. It's like living a period of my life with no history, no plot, no background and no stage, a bit of an spectator regardless the wordliness.
Will I ever leave this country and fight back my fate like an Antigone of my times? Finally she's always been my favourite tragedy. Someone who surrendered to fate more than she did to history, and probably for that I'll be always indebted to Kaltsidou, again we return to the polar circle... the Romantic spirit. A frozen smell to the Acropolis and to the Theban palaces, a frozen smell to the river and a frozen smell to the Logos.
Will I ever be a philologist? will people ever read these lines? Will Ofer ever return to my arms? Or will I contemplate sunsets in stranger's arms? in my own arms? Will I stop fighting against my own land and my own people and stop being at odds with her for once at all?
Only 6 months.... 6 months will bring the answers. 6 months will bring the different tastes of victory and defeat. 6 months will bring the bitterness of time and fate all down on me. 6 months... only 6 months.
Ari
Monday, September 06, 2004
Dare?
Well well well my dearest kitty (joke follow-up required) this is probably the last (or one of the last) notes you'll receive from my dreadful apartment in Ramat Gan. I'm not very focused at the moment, finding my way through tiredness, lust, excitement and fear... and surprisinly not sad.
Tomorrow in the afternoon (how I'll be able to hold until then?) I'll be leaving my apartment actually. I'll be moving into Mirjam's old house, daring into the big city, a new neighborhood, next to the sea, etc. I'm no real estate man so don't ask me further question... I might end up answering like in the Little Prince, remember the book and the comparison between the 200.000 francs and the red roof? There you go.
I doubt whether this is the right step to follow at this very moment, remember my phone calls of this morning? Well go figure. This is not little Holland you know... but Suzy and me seem to get along... probably something will come out of it, I'll promise to myself to make it all the way to visit her and take her for morning walks, despite myself. Or not so much despite actually... I guess that's something I never really had and still it's worthwhile dreaming, don't you agree? I mean if Anne and Peter could, why couldn't I?
What I thought an eventless day became a chain of unexpected endeavours, just like in Elliot's book. I'm still reading her you know? To my surprise I found out the Middlemarch is not included in my book so I guess I won't finish it in the end, oh well... some books are not meant to be read, some others aren't meant to be finished. At least it includes the complete edition of Scenes of Clerical Life, wonder what? I think Patricia would have a stroke if she'd met me today.
Then the day slept away in I don't know what... I think it was some food shopping and then ah yeah I tried to catch some sleep, interrupted by my several phones once again (as usual) and then a quarrel between my academic projects and my willingness to pursue them, despite my profuse passion. Of course I had some passional encounter you know? Whenever the journalist is not here, it's an old story. You already know about my romance with Elliot.. as the days go by I think our marriage grows stronger, not sure if for good.
Ah yeah I rememember what was in between, some chitchat with Tijs and then Liron... well needless to comment. Just pursuing the same old enterprise... trying to convince myself there's any zeal of talent in my diseased nature. I remember a quotation from George Elliot just read today, Bertha is telling... hummm I forgot his name... anyway you know who I mean that she needs no inventions to harrass his delicate sensitivity, for in order to deceive the poet you only need to tell him the truth. How ironically true, not sure it's the case with me.
Then Suzy, oh Suzy... it was a refreshing opportunity to reconciliate with myself through others without them knowing it, do you know the feeling? To reconciliate with my people and my past... to reconciliate with my own broken history, with my fragmented memories. That kind of friendships you attain in long train rides and in aeroplanes, but the trains are a much better example. At least they used to be in the Europe of my times, which was a somewhere frozen between the Acropolis and Budapest... probably Slovenia, who am I to say? I don't really remember.
I don't need to curdle up into the state of the affair, but it was just comfortable... and pretty sane. The peak of the Germanic spirit in one place, one language, different generations but a common spirit.... a common ground. It's nothing surprising... we the Jewish people don't seem to be glued to anyone but our own inner misery, the misery of being what we are and to see the world in the face of what we've made of it. But it's ok, there's also space for several pitiful remarks, the Greeks helped a lot.
I'm not really poetic tonight, the wife of the journalist isn't home either... it's just Ari, a bit thrill-free and very relaxed, very weightless. As surprising as it may sound I find some kind of boredom in all this calm... as I'm used to debate between the storms and the shades. It's just like being extremely well built for pain and deep thought, but not even fairly prepared to enjoy calm, always in unrest. Hummmmm... it's strange to say, I'm such a peaceful soul but suddenly well I'm bursting up... hour by hour.
Still something comforts me... I'll enjoy several days of silence and quiet, maybe not plentiful and probably disdainful even but I'll take the pleasure out of it. The journalist will return in the middle, and so will the wife and her only friend, Elliot.
Too many boxes to fill yet, so for now this will be it. I don't pretend to continue with my articles for a couple of hours... I'm in such healthy state of mind, nothing good can come out of it. If you think I'm mistaken ask history. The war of the Peloponesus? Have you read the interin between the volumes? Tediously boring, isn't it?
Talking about wrongdoing? Well not now... let's leave this for another day. I want to slow down a little bit and then just disappear... and turn up again in silver and gold, unweary and kindred. Tomorrow will come and also the day after... and the black ship will not get swallowed by the nightly dreadful breath.
I'm not compromising anything nor willing to play the cards with fate... just let me be one at a time and to live one life at a day.... the future is grammatically inaccurate so just let it come. Troubled minds and sorrows are well foreseen but why to evoke them? Just let them come...
The wife and Elliot went outside for walk, and Ari is home alone, Ari is home alone. Let it be, even poets strike here and there.
Tomorrow in the afternoon (how I'll be able to hold until then?) I'll be leaving my apartment actually. I'll be moving into Mirjam's old house, daring into the big city, a new neighborhood, next to the sea, etc. I'm no real estate man so don't ask me further question... I might end up answering like in the Little Prince, remember the book and the comparison between the 200.000 francs and the red roof? There you go.
I doubt whether this is the right step to follow at this very moment, remember my phone calls of this morning? Well go figure. This is not little Holland you know... but Suzy and me seem to get along... probably something will come out of it, I'll promise to myself to make it all the way to visit her and take her for morning walks, despite myself. Or not so much despite actually... I guess that's something I never really had and still it's worthwhile dreaming, don't you agree? I mean if Anne and Peter could, why couldn't I?
What I thought an eventless day became a chain of unexpected endeavours, just like in Elliot's book. I'm still reading her you know? To my surprise I found out the Middlemarch is not included in my book so I guess I won't finish it in the end, oh well... some books are not meant to be read, some others aren't meant to be finished. At least it includes the complete edition of Scenes of Clerical Life, wonder what? I think Patricia would have a stroke if she'd met me today.
Then the day slept away in I don't know what... I think it was some food shopping and then ah yeah I tried to catch some sleep, interrupted by my several phones once again (as usual) and then a quarrel between my academic projects and my willingness to pursue them, despite my profuse passion. Of course I had some passional encounter you know? Whenever the journalist is not here, it's an old story. You already know about my romance with Elliot.. as the days go by I think our marriage grows stronger, not sure if for good.
Ah yeah I rememember what was in between, some chitchat with Tijs and then Liron... well needless to comment. Just pursuing the same old enterprise... trying to convince myself there's any zeal of talent in my diseased nature. I remember a quotation from George Elliot just read today, Bertha is telling... hummm I forgot his name... anyway you know who I mean that she needs no inventions to harrass his delicate sensitivity, for in order to deceive the poet you only need to tell him the truth. How ironically true, not sure it's the case with me.
Then Suzy, oh Suzy... it was a refreshing opportunity to reconciliate with myself through others without them knowing it, do you know the feeling? To reconciliate with my people and my past... to reconciliate with my own broken history, with my fragmented memories. That kind of friendships you attain in long train rides and in aeroplanes, but the trains are a much better example. At least they used to be in the Europe of my times, which was a somewhere frozen between the Acropolis and Budapest... probably Slovenia, who am I to say? I don't really remember.
I don't need to curdle up into the state of the affair, but it was just comfortable... and pretty sane. The peak of the Germanic spirit in one place, one language, different generations but a common spirit.... a common ground. It's nothing surprising... we the Jewish people don't seem to be glued to anyone but our own inner misery, the misery of being what we are and to see the world in the face of what we've made of it. But it's ok, there's also space for several pitiful remarks, the Greeks helped a lot.
I'm not really poetic tonight, the wife of the journalist isn't home either... it's just Ari, a bit thrill-free and very relaxed, very weightless. As surprising as it may sound I find some kind of boredom in all this calm... as I'm used to debate between the storms and the shades. It's just like being extremely well built for pain and deep thought, but not even fairly prepared to enjoy calm, always in unrest. Hummmmm... it's strange to say, I'm such a peaceful soul but suddenly well I'm bursting up... hour by hour.
Still something comforts me... I'll enjoy several days of silence and quiet, maybe not plentiful and probably disdainful even but I'll take the pleasure out of it. The journalist will return in the middle, and so will the wife and her only friend, Elliot.
Too many boxes to fill yet, so for now this will be it. I don't pretend to continue with my articles for a couple of hours... I'm in such healthy state of mind, nothing good can come out of it. If you think I'm mistaken ask history. The war of the Peloponesus? Have you read the interin between the volumes? Tediously boring, isn't it?
Talking about wrongdoing? Well not now... let's leave this for another day. I want to slow down a little bit and then just disappear... and turn up again in silver and gold, unweary and kindred. Tomorrow will come and also the day after... and the black ship will not get swallowed by the nightly dreadful breath.
I'm not compromising anything nor willing to play the cards with fate... just let me be one at a time and to live one life at a day.... the future is grammatically inaccurate so just let it come. Troubled minds and sorrows are well foreseen but why to evoke them? Just let them come...
The wife and Elliot went outside for walk, and Ari is home alone, Ari is home alone. Let it be, even poets strike here and there.
Sunday, September 05, 2004
The gay European Jew and the gay Israeli Jew, are we different?
Well... long after I was expecting this "chapter" to be due I'm returning to it without many fresh ideas though, but I think it's very important for me to complete it. Last time I just made a very confusing introduction to certain pre-topics in social science and I'm certainly not pretending to write a book on the subject for I totally lack of enough knowledge to do so or probably I'm just being extremely Descartesian, nothing but a good thing.
Today I had an urge to write about different things and the ideas are still revolting in my mind altogether with the hangover for the missing chapters of my journal, which I should nonetheless attempt to complete. In the end of the day this is just a blog, and regardless of the highly humanist and intellectualloid context of the same, it is just a blog. The journal, the non sense and the weltschmerz should be the cutting edges of these pages, but with me... you never know. I might shift from incandescent to Antarctic, some Kunderian thought crossed my mind now.. but let's not flow on it.
Once again we've stepped into the core of my writing, the Gay Jew. Let's make an attempt to define both things, difficult huh? But in general terms we might say that the gay is simply someone who has a natural (or acquired) attraction to individuals of the same sex, emotional attraction which translates in feelings, physical contact, romantic desire, etc. In this definition we probably despise all the developments of the recently born queer theory (as usual... undefined within the scope of the social sciences to the same extent of socio-biology or our friend ethnography). Our tragedy doesn't end up there... we're also neglecting a whole super-evolved pop culture that grew among the thema and anathema of gay life, a sub-culture or rather a subdued culture? Can it be called a culture by definition? A hundred anthropologists would disagree with me and other hundred would agree. That's what I love about social scientists, they're just like Jews. Very knowledgeable, irrefutable and unique. Probably this culture kind of thing is only unique to the Western countries (or the stem of it if at all) and in particular to the United States, where gays basically imposed the ghetto system, as ironic as it sounds for the context of this blog itself.
I don't know how different has been the experience of the European homosexuals, maybe not talking about Germany or the Netherlands, where the rise of the feminist movements in since the 60's has given place also not only to an homosexual revolution, but a whole sexual revolution which (excuse the redundance) is not unique to homosexuals. I'm talking about more passive societies, call them Icelanders, call them Danes, Call them Swedes for example (hummm yeah the Nordic countries are an odd example I know)where no one ever gave a damn about anything, homosexuals for an example but we also have testimonies of other phenomena highly overlooked such as pedophilia, single motherhood, chronic depression and the like. This does not leave much to comment on the matter, some little article on the Nordic countries would probably clarify this issue, but this is not the place to discuss salmon, smogarsbord and berrys confitures.
Something makes me think that the American model of the emancipated gay is truthfully different from the Dutch model, just to mention one example (probably a big one, the biggest right after the astonishing British example of the 2000's). Somehow I'm inclined to think the American model is based in its own counterpart itself, homophobia. Is the gay American model useful only by means of counterfeating the American homophobia? American history (and historical definitions by default) somehow prove my point, but again... I'm no sociologist nor an expert in American culture (huh? Yeah I'm a Dutchman, what can I do? My guts revolt a little bit when I say American culture). The European gay model was built probably on different premises, not sure if tolerance would be the right word, but apathy might work out just fine. Still the apathy would describe Geneva and Paris, Stockholm and Berlin, Amsterdam and Bruxelles. Would it so accurately describe Sankt Gallen or Oosterwolde? I'm not sure actually. The example of my friend Antoni and his boer husband prove it otherwise, still I'm granted the privilege of the doubt. Tel Aviv is a completely different story, and the fascination to this difference is probably one of the main issues to be dealt with in here.
That's about the gay, now let's see what's with the Jew? Well this is a far more complicated definition for there's not really such a definition. The bible lacks of the accuracy to differ between what is "my people" and what really constitutes a Jew or even better, contemporary *secular* Jewry. Since the bible, the "opera prima" of the Jewish beliefs (and of Western religions in general) lacks of the truthful definition for the Jew, who could ever produce such a definition? In some kind of way anti-semitism provided a more remarkable definition of anyone's Jewishness. Probably anti-semitism also presented us with the term "Jew", because who is the Jew anyway? The Israelite? The Israeli? The Hebrew? hummm... I couldn't give a proper answer to this question and I don't think any Rabbi could help me.
From a superficial stand point the Jew is simply that individual that bears the Jewish religion, who was born into it mostly... and hardly encompasses the convert although biblical Judaism claims for equality. Talmudic and essentially Rabbinical Judaism prove it otherwise, if there's any doubt one can just read a few pages of the Shulchan Aruch or any other Halachic text of the time or of any time, we might not really want to stop in Rabbi Greenberg but with this only exception I can't find anything relevant to my purpose (if any at all). It's worthwhile mentioning I should have specified beforehand the Greenberg example related only to our homosexual thematic and does not exemplify the issue of conversion which we do not need to deal with at the moment. It is a juncture between homosexuality, Reform judaism, conversion and religion from a liberal streampoint.
I'm not personally satisfied with the definition of the Jew by means of his religion as I'm very well aware it encompasses higher and deeper meanings without being fatalists. The universality of this question might be seen in the Diary of Anne Frank or Elie Wiesel's writings. Halacha (and to the same extent the State of Israel) specifies that a Jew is defined as some who is born to a Jewish mother. This is a kind of phenomenology I wouldn't agree with, not only as a liberal thinker but also as a scientist, as a young man of the 21st century and specially as a Jew.
In that respect I'm more inclined towards the Hellenic view; in words of Goethe "Each one be a Greek in his own way, but be one" and this simplifies the Greek tradition from Homer to the days of Kavafis. A Greek is anyone who adopts the Greek way of living, specially by means of speaking the Greek language, most precious heirloom of the Greek world of yesterday and of today. A Greek was anyone who turned Greek and who paid loyalty to the Greek nation, to the Greek people. This is a Romantic concept I certainly praise... and to this same extent I think Holderin was a Greek and also Rimbaud was a Greek and even Wilde.
I reckon the difficulties of this approach in the eyes of the Jewish cosmogony and from the standpoint of their tradition which I wholeheartedly respect. The Jews unlike the Greeks were historically stateless and it turned them into the "people whose nation is a book" in words of Borges. The Greeks in their own way were also a people of the book but not to the same extent the Jewish people were, as the Greek peninsula and its islands were permanently inhabited by Greeks and pseudo-Greeks and invasors, but remained somehow Greek. The language was spoken as a continuum for thousands of years in the Greek peninsula and the national identity wasn't taken away from them in anyway. It was probably re-defined but never taken away. Jews and Greeks do share common historical constants and even plain factual chronological history would be able to prove this point, hence it's needless to curdle up into it. They have been put up to the level of the two main stems of the Western civilization, the nitch from where all our civilization sprung and in its own way shaped history for everafter.
Then we return to my definition of the Jew; in my eyes a Jew is everyone who identifies with the destiny of the Jewish people and takes upon himself that raw unmodified Jewishness. What I doubt is to which extent such a thing is possible in our world and to which extent it was ever possible. Judaism doesn't encompass a mere religious belief but also a whole system and superstructure of cultural bias and substrati which might be defined as the Jewish mind. I believe there's such a thing as Jewish mentality in accordance to Rafel Patai's book "The Jewish Mind". Patai eludicates several interesting points in the development of Jewish culture and more than an historical text, I consider him very ethnographic.
He claims that there's no such a thing as a Jewish culture by itself, as a basic substratus and then I do not agree completely as certain basic premises in Judaism and Jewish society stem from their own very origin, even today politicians and thinkers of the West claim that Israeli history fulfills (and also disappoints) several Biblical promises. I'm very reserved at this point probably out of ignorance but I somehow agree. My current readings of Guttmann's "Die Philosophie des Judentums" place a few question marks in between.
In the other hand I do grant him ethnographic accuracy when he explains that the Jewish people as a stateless entity transformed certain particular cultural values into their own and selectively forsook the origin of the value as an act by itself. The Hebrew language is the most loyal of these examples, but some others historically closer to us can be provided, such as the "Jewish" heritage of the Ashkenazi Jewry which was technically stolen from different countries and places and overtime kept and observed with almost obssesive jealousy until our days. I can again provide a linguistic example: The Yiddisch language. Yiddisch is basically an odd form of Medieval German in structure and it was enriched with an extensive lexicon stemming from many different languages or places. Go and ask and ultra-orthodox Jew and he would probably deny any connection between Yiddisch and the Germanic languages, which is an obvious post-Holocaust connotation.
All these fact only distract the reader and ravel the possibility to define if not Judaism, then the Jew. Here we're then parting from zero to several untangible definitions. Dutch or German are probably very accurate definitions or just relatively let's say. They do define a geographical space, a culture, a language and certain tighly close historical periods that over hundreds of years tied these people to the adjective of German or Dutch, regardless of the ethymological soap operas we could engage ourselves with.
Gay and Jew might be well defined in a very simplistic way, but thus it wouldn't throw any relevant information that would trigger a thematic or interdisciplinary discussion. The plain terminology is very clear but I'm not very fond of it and find it rather exclusive. That's precisely why I prefer to work on the lack of definitions rather than on the semantic definitions. I would be more satisfied with providing semiologic definitions but I'm not in the ability to do so and by doing so I would be lead astray into the world of non-verbal linguistics.
Gay and Jew or let's say Jewish Gay presents an enormous problem of definitions once again. Jewish Gay throws on us the question of an anti-historical bias, not an anti-historical bias in terms of history itself but in terms of Judaism. Jewish Gay throws on us a serious biblical question and also opens up for us the gates of a non-religious Judaism. The gates of secularism, the phenomenon that probably redefined the status in particular of the European Jewry for hundreds of years and that set Judaism as a socio-political movement, Zionism and Haskala are probably the major outcomes of this phenomenon. We shall not waste time on this subject but secularism and the re-definition of the Jew as a citizen and of the Jew as an Israeli will probably bring more light into the issues we're developing here.
Today I had an urge to write about different things and the ideas are still revolting in my mind altogether with the hangover for the missing chapters of my journal, which I should nonetheless attempt to complete. In the end of the day this is just a blog, and regardless of the highly humanist and intellectualloid context of the same, it is just a blog. The journal, the non sense and the weltschmerz should be the cutting edges of these pages, but with me... you never know. I might shift from incandescent to Antarctic, some Kunderian thought crossed my mind now.. but let's not flow on it.
Once again we've stepped into the core of my writing, the Gay Jew. Let's make an attempt to define both things, difficult huh? But in general terms we might say that the gay is simply someone who has a natural (or acquired) attraction to individuals of the same sex, emotional attraction which translates in feelings, physical contact, romantic desire, etc. In this definition we probably despise all the developments of the recently born queer theory (as usual... undefined within the scope of the social sciences to the same extent of socio-biology or our friend ethnography). Our tragedy doesn't end up there... we're also neglecting a whole super-evolved pop culture that grew among the thema and anathema of gay life, a sub-culture or rather a subdued culture? Can it be called a culture by definition? A hundred anthropologists would disagree with me and other hundred would agree. That's what I love about social scientists, they're just like Jews. Very knowledgeable, irrefutable and unique. Probably this culture kind of thing is only unique to the Western countries (or the stem of it if at all) and in particular to the United States, where gays basically imposed the ghetto system, as ironic as it sounds for the context of this blog itself.
I don't know how different has been the experience of the European homosexuals, maybe not talking about Germany or the Netherlands, where the rise of the feminist movements in since the 60's has given place also not only to an homosexual revolution, but a whole sexual revolution which (excuse the redundance) is not unique to homosexuals. I'm talking about more passive societies, call them Icelanders, call them Danes, Call them Swedes for example (hummm yeah the Nordic countries are an odd example I know)where no one ever gave a damn about anything, homosexuals for an example but we also have testimonies of other phenomena highly overlooked such as pedophilia, single motherhood, chronic depression and the like. This does not leave much to comment on the matter, some little article on the Nordic countries would probably clarify this issue, but this is not the place to discuss salmon, smogarsbord and berrys confitures.
Something makes me think that the American model of the emancipated gay is truthfully different from the Dutch model, just to mention one example (probably a big one, the biggest right after the astonishing British example of the 2000's). Somehow I'm inclined to think the American model is based in its own counterpart itself, homophobia. Is the gay American model useful only by means of counterfeating the American homophobia? American history (and historical definitions by default) somehow prove my point, but again... I'm no sociologist nor an expert in American culture (huh? Yeah I'm a Dutchman, what can I do? My guts revolt a little bit when I say American culture). The European gay model was built probably on different premises, not sure if tolerance would be the right word, but apathy might work out just fine. Still the apathy would describe Geneva and Paris, Stockholm and Berlin, Amsterdam and Bruxelles. Would it so accurately describe Sankt Gallen or Oosterwolde? I'm not sure actually. The example of my friend Antoni and his boer husband prove it otherwise, still I'm granted the privilege of the doubt. Tel Aviv is a completely different story, and the fascination to this difference is probably one of the main issues to be dealt with in here.
That's about the gay, now let's see what's with the Jew? Well this is a far more complicated definition for there's not really such a definition. The bible lacks of the accuracy to differ between what is "my people" and what really constitutes a Jew or even better, contemporary *secular* Jewry. Since the bible, the "opera prima" of the Jewish beliefs (and of Western religions in general) lacks of the truthful definition for the Jew, who could ever produce such a definition? In some kind of way anti-semitism provided a more remarkable definition of anyone's Jewishness. Probably anti-semitism also presented us with the term "Jew", because who is the Jew anyway? The Israelite? The Israeli? The Hebrew? hummm... I couldn't give a proper answer to this question and I don't think any Rabbi could help me.
From a superficial stand point the Jew is simply that individual that bears the Jewish religion, who was born into it mostly... and hardly encompasses the convert although biblical Judaism claims for equality. Talmudic and essentially Rabbinical Judaism prove it otherwise, if there's any doubt one can just read a few pages of the Shulchan Aruch or any other Halachic text of the time or of any time, we might not really want to stop in Rabbi Greenberg but with this only exception I can't find anything relevant to my purpose (if any at all). It's worthwhile mentioning I should have specified beforehand the Greenberg example related only to our homosexual thematic and does not exemplify the issue of conversion which we do not need to deal with at the moment. It is a juncture between homosexuality, Reform judaism, conversion and religion from a liberal streampoint.
I'm not personally satisfied with the definition of the Jew by means of his religion as I'm very well aware it encompasses higher and deeper meanings without being fatalists. The universality of this question might be seen in the Diary of Anne Frank or Elie Wiesel's writings. Halacha (and to the same extent the State of Israel) specifies that a Jew is defined as some who is born to a Jewish mother. This is a kind of phenomenology I wouldn't agree with, not only as a liberal thinker but also as a scientist, as a young man of the 21st century and specially as a Jew.
In that respect I'm more inclined towards the Hellenic view; in words of Goethe "Each one be a Greek in his own way, but be one" and this simplifies the Greek tradition from Homer to the days of Kavafis. A Greek is anyone who adopts the Greek way of living, specially by means of speaking the Greek language, most precious heirloom of the Greek world of yesterday and of today. A Greek was anyone who turned Greek and who paid loyalty to the Greek nation, to the Greek people. This is a Romantic concept I certainly praise... and to this same extent I think Holderin was a Greek and also Rimbaud was a Greek and even Wilde.
I reckon the difficulties of this approach in the eyes of the Jewish cosmogony and from the standpoint of their tradition which I wholeheartedly respect. The Jews unlike the Greeks were historically stateless and it turned them into the "people whose nation is a book" in words of Borges. The Greeks in their own way were also a people of the book but not to the same extent the Jewish people were, as the Greek peninsula and its islands were permanently inhabited by Greeks and pseudo-Greeks and invasors, but remained somehow Greek. The language was spoken as a continuum for thousands of years in the Greek peninsula and the national identity wasn't taken away from them in anyway. It was probably re-defined but never taken away. Jews and Greeks do share common historical constants and even plain factual chronological history would be able to prove this point, hence it's needless to curdle up into it. They have been put up to the level of the two main stems of the Western civilization, the nitch from where all our civilization sprung and in its own way shaped history for everafter.
Then we return to my definition of the Jew; in my eyes a Jew is everyone who identifies with the destiny of the Jewish people and takes upon himself that raw unmodified Jewishness. What I doubt is to which extent such a thing is possible in our world and to which extent it was ever possible. Judaism doesn't encompass a mere religious belief but also a whole system and superstructure of cultural bias and substrati which might be defined as the Jewish mind. I believe there's such a thing as Jewish mentality in accordance to Rafel Patai's book "The Jewish Mind". Patai eludicates several interesting points in the development of Jewish culture and more than an historical text, I consider him very ethnographic.
He claims that there's no such a thing as a Jewish culture by itself, as a basic substratus and then I do not agree completely as certain basic premises in Judaism and Jewish society stem from their own very origin, even today politicians and thinkers of the West claim that Israeli history fulfills (and also disappoints) several Biblical promises. I'm very reserved at this point probably out of ignorance but I somehow agree. My current readings of Guttmann's "Die Philosophie des Judentums" place a few question marks in between.
In the other hand I do grant him ethnographic accuracy when he explains that the Jewish people as a stateless entity transformed certain particular cultural values into their own and selectively forsook the origin of the value as an act by itself. The Hebrew language is the most loyal of these examples, but some others historically closer to us can be provided, such as the "Jewish" heritage of the Ashkenazi Jewry which was technically stolen from different countries and places and overtime kept and observed with almost obssesive jealousy until our days. I can again provide a linguistic example: The Yiddisch language. Yiddisch is basically an odd form of Medieval German in structure and it was enriched with an extensive lexicon stemming from many different languages or places. Go and ask and ultra-orthodox Jew and he would probably deny any connection between Yiddisch and the Germanic languages, which is an obvious post-Holocaust connotation.
All these fact only distract the reader and ravel the possibility to define if not Judaism, then the Jew. Here we're then parting from zero to several untangible definitions. Dutch or German are probably very accurate definitions or just relatively let's say. They do define a geographical space, a culture, a language and certain tighly close historical periods that over hundreds of years tied these people to the adjective of German or Dutch, regardless of the ethymological soap operas we could engage ourselves with.
Gay and Jew might be well defined in a very simplistic way, but thus it wouldn't throw any relevant information that would trigger a thematic or interdisciplinary discussion. The plain terminology is very clear but I'm not very fond of it and find it rather exclusive. That's precisely why I prefer to work on the lack of definitions rather than on the semantic definitions. I would be more satisfied with providing semiologic definitions but I'm not in the ability to do so and by doing so I would be lead astray into the world of non-verbal linguistics.
Gay and Jew or let's say Jewish Gay presents an enormous problem of definitions once again. Jewish Gay throws on us the question of an anti-historical bias, not an anti-historical bias in terms of history itself but in terms of Judaism. Jewish Gay throws on us a serious biblical question and also opens up for us the gates of a non-religious Judaism. The gates of secularism, the phenomenon that probably redefined the status in particular of the European Jewry for hundreds of years and that set Judaism as a socio-political movement, Zionism and Haskala are probably the major outcomes of this phenomenon. We shall not waste time on this subject but secularism and the re-definition of the Jew as a citizen and of the Jew as an Israeli will probably bring more light into the issues we're developing here.
3 am again!
Well time to stop for a while with the heaviness of my ethnographic experiments, probably in nature... I'm much heavier. I guess Ofer was right... I'm heavy by definition. Nothing to do with maturity or bad character, it's just me... in the end of the day I'm a philologist, ain't I? An almost religious one.
I owe this space to myself I think... and surprisingly I can always find the space at the same hour in the same state of mind. It's almost Calvinist and Methodic. 2 am is my spot, my peak.
The day just slept away as usual... very slow but very concise I think. A harmless day, except for my neighbours and their pathetic intentions to convince me I should fix the garden or what once was a garden. I won't fix anything, let the world fall apart... as long as I have a functional modem and my pallmall filter I couldn't really care less.
I won't write this note to my friend "Kitty" for there's no such a friend and I couldn't say I have that kind of imaginary friend to whom I enthrust everything in my troubled mind. I rather enthrust it to myself as I know the wife of the journalist better than I know anyone else, unfortunately I don't know her emotions that well... that's still an unreadable navigation map, like the human genoma sort of. There're several clear facts about the wife of the journalist and her sad beauty. Sadness is always some very sexy kind of beauty... a blank face in the uncertainties, strength and weakness, masculinity and sensitivity, selective silence and a British speech. The wife of the journalist and George Elliot seem to be walking on the same wire. Last night I started doing a re-read of the Lifted Veil, and well there I found myself again.. like in the tragedy and like in the lyrical Sappho. But special in George Elliot, it's probably too personal. Those kind of things only an educated woman could write about, and it's certainly not Barbara Sher or my last therapist.
I remember how George Elliot and me found each other, in a Kunderian plot... as a poor university student wandering down the bookshops trying to pick a few titles I could afford. I stumbled upon that small and thick black cover bearing the title "Middlemarch", one of those books you would only find in musty libraries for outrageous prices and it wouldn't cost me more than a few cups of coffee and I foresaw the advantageous investment, then thoughtlessly picked the least scratched edition (it looked just like new) and ran to the cashier.
Back to my room (I remember the smelly wooden desk, reliquies from grandma only occupying physical space, the black wardrobe, the never empty ashtreys and my little collection of books... also a little radio, eternal companion in those white nights of Cretan glamour, Sophoclean grandeur, Heidegger, Heraclitus and even Jung) I placed the book among my little collection that summed a few hundreds of volumes in the course of the years to come. Hardly ever stared at it but I enjoyed its pleasurable company; I always enjoyed the companion of musty books even if unread, for they gave me the entourage that an intellectual requires even if all his time was spent among cigarettes and love letters.
The Middlemarch laid just next to Euripides' Bachants in its Greek-Spanish edition... another musty book, even mustier... and hence never read, just contemplated... some books dont have to be read, they're just a must-have but they're not meant to be read. That luxurious edition of the Bachants stolen from some shelf of the lyceum was one of those books.
George Elliot's fate was just next to Euripides, because in anycase he never really interested me... for I used to spend my learning hours reading and re-reading Antigone in all possible versions, in all possible languages, the Sophoclean triada, in translation, in original, in papyrus, in critical edition, in textual critic... went to see the Opera and even the philarmonic. Read the Germans, how much I loved the Germans... how much I admired their spirit. So Romantic but disciplined... Never stopped praising them as the greatest civilization of all times, as the continuation of the Greek raison d'etre. If I only would have stopped by to read the Bible...
But George Elliot found her way and surprised me in the tiresome boredom of the Middlemarch, George Elliot and me wed on that day, when I bought an old cheap edition of the musty Middlemarch. We wed back then and our marriage is still on the go, despite the religious differences and the conventions. The wife of the journalist and George Elliot still gather in secret, just like Anna Frank, Stella Mullej-Madej and the wife of the journalist met late at night while mom slept the night away. But back then the wife of the journalist wasn't a wife and there was no journalist either. The gods did their job with excellent accuracy, sequel-free. Afrodite always loyal... loyal to Sappho and loyal to Ari.
Later on in my life the Middlemarch continued unfinished (and is still unfinished) but we did meet again. The school certificate brought me to Silas Marner and the Victorian sadness, for couldn't you die of love? No you really couldn't but George Elliot, like a timeless dramatist proved it wrong, for it was possible to die of love... like in the movies, like in the musicals... like in Shakespeare.
Once again George Elliot and the wife of the journalist met by coincidence, by chance... but thrill-free, they just drank some coffee, died and continued their paths... all by themselves. But there's a somewhere when ends meet ends, it's a spiderweb, just like mythology, just like maths.
Patricia Simmonson, the lecturer and the wife of the journalist met once again, in the aftermath you see? A British Council librarian and an English literature teacher, then a phone call and bouquette of flowers. Then a lousy lecturer and a brilliant student, a brilliant student that never completed an assignment. Patricia and the wife of the journalist met on George Elliot again.
This time "Scenes of Clerical Life" made ends meet ends... One day in the library.. Kafkian conversations and cups of coffee, Kafkian conversations with the lawyer and nicotine. Overlooking the hills with the chapel on the top and nearby the Classics seminar, where I'd lose my nerves on Friday's afternoons and carelessly let Shabbat come down upon us among Greek gods and purified nationalisms.
Among the Kafkian days of Scenes of Clerical Life I stumbled upon the Lifted Veil, that little tiny book that would wed Elliot and me for everafter. That tiny book that would make Elliot and the wife of the journalist accomplices forever. Elliot... another Isobel, married to herself... just like the wife of the journalist... alone and beautifully sad... married to herself. Living on letters, living on presents, living on phone calls... on letters that were never received, on presents that were never given and on phone calls that were never made. Dellusory and deceiving. Just like my nurse, do you remember her? I hardly do. I probably see the connection, it's almost religious.
The Lifted Veil would be our wedding ring, and that symbolic confirmation that only death would separate. Now I still read the Lifted Veil over and over and over again. In my 19th century edition of old smelly cover... you can't even dare to fold a page fearing it would tear apart... in my 19th century edition I still read The Lifted Veil, and hope... by all means to finish one day the Middlemarch.
I can't say life is turned upside down once again, it's just.... ends that make ends meet. It's clearer than ever... Hesiodus explained to me when I was a little kid that stared at the sun, now we're people of the sun... we wear sunglasses. I'm not married to myself but probably more inside the world than I ever was, full of insight. Through the marvellous discovery of the hidden treasures of my mind, my diseased condition... my nature... Tonight, again at 3 am I'm the wife of a journalist, with no journalist but with George Elliot... in the night we still meet... more often than Sophocles and me do. Elliot and me wait for the same train I think, from Geneva to Vienna and then to Prague, the imaginary city... in Kunderian fragments of nothingness, elucidated.
When the journalist is not home, still Elliot and me have some intimacy, the kind of intellectual intimacy that only a beautifully sad person can understand.
Ari
I owe this space to myself I think... and surprisingly I can always find the space at the same hour in the same state of mind. It's almost Calvinist and Methodic. 2 am is my spot, my peak.
The day just slept away as usual... very slow but very concise I think. A harmless day, except for my neighbours and their pathetic intentions to convince me I should fix the garden or what once was a garden. I won't fix anything, let the world fall apart... as long as I have a functional modem and my pallmall filter I couldn't really care less.
I won't write this note to my friend "Kitty" for there's no such a friend and I couldn't say I have that kind of imaginary friend to whom I enthrust everything in my troubled mind. I rather enthrust it to myself as I know the wife of the journalist better than I know anyone else, unfortunately I don't know her emotions that well... that's still an unreadable navigation map, like the human genoma sort of. There're several clear facts about the wife of the journalist and her sad beauty. Sadness is always some very sexy kind of beauty... a blank face in the uncertainties, strength and weakness, masculinity and sensitivity, selective silence and a British speech. The wife of the journalist and George Elliot seem to be walking on the same wire. Last night I started doing a re-read of the Lifted Veil, and well there I found myself again.. like in the tragedy and like in the lyrical Sappho. But special in George Elliot, it's probably too personal. Those kind of things only an educated woman could write about, and it's certainly not Barbara Sher or my last therapist.
I remember how George Elliot and me found each other, in a Kunderian plot... as a poor university student wandering down the bookshops trying to pick a few titles I could afford. I stumbled upon that small and thick black cover bearing the title "Middlemarch", one of those books you would only find in musty libraries for outrageous prices and it wouldn't cost me more than a few cups of coffee and I foresaw the advantageous investment, then thoughtlessly picked the least scratched edition (it looked just like new) and ran to the cashier.
Back to my room (I remember the smelly wooden desk, reliquies from grandma only occupying physical space, the black wardrobe, the never empty ashtreys and my little collection of books... also a little radio, eternal companion in those white nights of Cretan glamour, Sophoclean grandeur, Heidegger, Heraclitus and even Jung) I placed the book among my little collection that summed a few hundreds of volumes in the course of the years to come. Hardly ever stared at it but I enjoyed its pleasurable company; I always enjoyed the companion of musty books even if unread, for they gave me the entourage that an intellectual requires even if all his time was spent among cigarettes and love letters.
The Middlemarch laid just next to Euripides' Bachants in its Greek-Spanish edition... another musty book, even mustier... and hence never read, just contemplated... some books dont have to be read, they're just a must-have but they're not meant to be read. That luxurious edition of the Bachants stolen from some shelf of the lyceum was one of those books.
George Elliot's fate was just next to Euripides, because in anycase he never really interested me... for I used to spend my learning hours reading and re-reading Antigone in all possible versions, in all possible languages, the Sophoclean triada, in translation, in original, in papyrus, in critical edition, in textual critic... went to see the Opera and even the philarmonic. Read the Germans, how much I loved the Germans... how much I admired their spirit. So Romantic but disciplined... Never stopped praising them as the greatest civilization of all times, as the continuation of the Greek raison d'etre. If I only would have stopped by to read the Bible...
But George Elliot found her way and surprised me in the tiresome boredom of the Middlemarch, George Elliot and me wed on that day, when I bought an old cheap edition of the musty Middlemarch. We wed back then and our marriage is still on the go, despite the religious differences and the conventions. The wife of the journalist and George Elliot still gather in secret, just like Anna Frank, Stella Mullej-Madej and the wife of the journalist met late at night while mom slept the night away. But back then the wife of the journalist wasn't a wife and there was no journalist either. The gods did their job with excellent accuracy, sequel-free. Afrodite always loyal... loyal to Sappho and loyal to Ari.
Later on in my life the Middlemarch continued unfinished (and is still unfinished) but we did meet again. The school certificate brought me to Silas Marner and the Victorian sadness, for couldn't you die of love? No you really couldn't but George Elliot, like a timeless dramatist proved it wrong, for it was possible to die of love... like in the movies, like in the musicals... like in Shakespeare.
Once again George Elliot and the wife of the journalist met by coincidence, by chance... but thrill-free, they just drank some coffee, died and continued their paths... all by themselves. But there's a somewhere when ends meet ends, it's a spiderweb, just like mythology, just like maths.
Patricia Simmonson, the lecturer and the wife of the journalist met once again, in the aftermath you see? A British Council librarian and an English literature teacher, then a phone call and bouquette of flowers. Then a lousy lecturer and a brilliant student, a brilliant student that never completed an assignment. Patricia and the wife of the journalist met on George Elliot again.
This time "Scenes of Clerical Life" made ends meet ends... One day in the library.. Kafkian conversations and cups of coffee, Kafkian conversations with the lawyer and nicotine. Overlooking the hills with the chapel on the top and nearby the Classics seminar, where I'd lose my nerves on Friday's afternoons and carelessly let Shabbat come down upon us among Greek gods and purified nationalisms.
Among the Kafkian days of Scenes of Clerical Life I stumbled upon the Lifted Veil, that little tiny book that would wed Elliot and me for everafter. That tiny book that would make Elliot and the wife of the journalist accomplices forever. Elliot... another Isobel, married to herself... just like the wife of the journalist... alone and beautifully sad... married to herself. Living on letters, living on presents, living on phone calls... on letters that were never received, on presents that were never given and on phone calls that were never made. Dellusory and deceiving. Just like my nurse, do you remember her? I hardly do. I probably see the connection, it's almost religious.
The Lifted Veil would be our wedding ring, and that symbolic confirmation that only death would separate. Now I still read the Lifted Veil over and over and over again. In my 19th century edition of old smelly cover... you can't even dare to fold a page fearing it would tear apart... in my 19th century edition I still read The Lifted Veil, and hope... by all means to finish one day the Middlemarch.
I can't say life is turned upside down once again, it's just.... ends that make ends meet. It's clearer than ever... Hesiodus explained to me when I was a little kid that stared at the sun, now we're people of the sun... we wear sunglasses. I'm not married to myself but probably more inside the world than I ever was, full of insight. Through the marvellous discovery of the hidden treasures of my mind, my diseased condition... my nature... Tonight, again at 3 am I'm the wife of a journalist, with no journalist but with George Elliot... in the night we still meet... more often than Sophocles and me do. Elliot and me wait for the same train I think, from Geneva to Vienna and then to Prague, the imaginary city... in Kunderian fragments of nothingness, elucidated.
When the journalist is not home, still Elliot and me have some intimacy, the kind of intellectual intimacy that only a beautifully sad person can understand.
Ari
Belief?
Well good morning Tel Aviv! You still there Kitty? (Yeah I know, a cheap joke for Anne Frank fans). The morning broke already and fortunately I'm not deep asleep, I could even manage to hear both of my alarm clocks, very unusual.
Probably feeling more awake than the whole previous week together and certainly more defiant, more Homeric... almost heroic. It's going to be a couple of strange days you know... life is hitting with intensity lately and you just don't know what to think anymore.
Reading the news any often? Well it happened to me that I started reading news obsessively, 3 international newspapers a day (without much interest) and a sudden addiction to Ha'aretz... the troubles of the world do not make an impression on me any longer, I seem to be used to it... the madness of this world only reminds me of Hesiodus and Homer. Didn't they also attempt to explain us what we would be up to through the analogy of the children with the eyes wide open and the future? I think they did, we just failed in listening.
Hopefully I'll be able to continue in this sweet madness, move the apartment, await for the Jewish high holidays and then probably join the organized crime or some masonic lodge. Leaving the old apartment without fixing the garden (just joking... that little old lady will drive me crazy) and I'll just have to see how I'm going to survive them!!! At least Yuval is abroad at the moment so I have a little bit of a break. I'm not only a lonely wife but also a lonely widow. You see? Life is hard o Zeus!
Anyways I don't want to trouble anyone with the ridiculously simple particulars of my day, except that I would like to tell someone just told me I'm a hot dude, hehehehe! I bet they haven't seen me when I just wake up or when I'm furious.
I just wanted to ask a simple question. Do you intellectualoids ever read the horoscopes? Well do not start revolting your guts or blaming it on me being queer and ineffectual. There is some horoscope I read every here and there, actually every Sunday. This horoscope appears in the Colombian newspaper "El Tiempo", weekend edition. More than a horoscope is more of a Tarot kind of thing. I always found it very intellectual and very mystical, not the usual crap you read from Madam I-want-your-credit-card. As a believer in fate I just tend to let life passively make the connections and find the axe.... that's how this horoscope truely surprised me and it still does.
I'd really like to share this morning thoughts:
(It's damn difficult to translate as the level of language is really high but I can just try)
For Wife: "We're always at disadvantage with fate for it knows the mysteries of time and so you always wait patiently for its revelations with the true hope they will be for good. But lately you're very much afraid at odds that fate will turn its back to you and that instead the good anguish will will turn up with those fierce fangs that rip off your soul. You're engaged in dark thoughts that look just like a black ship just about to sink in the night...."
Interesting no? I find it very refreshing and pictoresque. I wouldn't like to comment anything at the moment... let us flow with the week and see where the ship is going to sink and disappear....
Somewhere else I found written "... and life will pass with a smell to new, life will pass..." Beautiful and at odds, no?
I need to start the day... or let's say to continue it where I left it on August 24!!!!!! that is actually 12 days ago.... oh well there you go boy and like mom would say, "bills are still running". Oh yeah... they're.
Ari
Probably feeling more awake than the whole previous week together and certainly more defiant, more Homeric... almost heroic. It's going to be a couple of strange days you know... life is hitting with intensity lately and you just don't know what to think anymore.
Reading the news any often? Well it happened to me that I started reading news obsessively, 3 international newspapers a day (without much interest) and a sudden addiction to Ha'aretz... the troubles of the world do not make an impression on me any longer, I seem to be used to it... the madness of this world only reminds me of Hesiodus and Homer. Didn't they also attempt to explain us what we would be up to through the analogy of the children with the eyes wide open and the future? I think they did, we just failed in listening.
Hopefully I'll be able to continue in this sweet madness, move the apartment, await for the Jewish high holidays and then probably join the organized crime or some masonic lodge. Leaving the old apartment without fixing the garden (just joking... that little old lady will drive me crazy) and I'll just have to see how I'm going to survive them!!! At least Yuval is abroad at the moment so I have a little bit of a break. I'm not only a lonely wife but also a lonely widow. You see? Life is hard o Zeus!
Anyways I don't want to trouble anyone with the ridiculously simple particulars of my day, except that I would like to tell someone just told me I'm a hot dude, hehehehe! I bet they haven't seen me when I just wake up or when I'm furious.
I just wanted to ask a simple question. Do you intellectualoids ever read the horoscopes? Well do not start revolting your guts or blaming it on me being queer and ineffectual. There is some horoscope I read every here and there, actually every Sunday. This horoscope appears in the Colombian newspaper "El Tiempo", weekend edition. More than a horoscope is more of a Tarot kind of thing. I always found it very intellectual and very mystical, not the usual crap you read from Madam I-want-your-credit-card. As a believer in fate I just tend to let life passively make the connections and find the axe.... that's how this horoscope truely surprised me and it still does.
I'd really like to share this morning thoughts:
(It's damn difficult to translate as the level of language is really high but I can just try)
For Wife: "We're always at disadvantage with fate for it knows the mysteries of time and so you always wait patiently for its revelations with the true hope they will be for good. But lately you're very much afraid at odds that fate will turn its back to you and that instead the good anguish will will turn up with those fierce fangs that rip off your soul. You're engaged in dark thoughts that look just like a black ship just about to sink in the night...."
Interesting no? I find it very refreshing and pictoresque. I wouldn't like to comment anything at the moment... let us flow with the week and see where the ship is going to sink and disappear....
Somewhere else I found written "... and life will pass with a smell to new, life will pass..." Beautiful and at odds, no?
I need to start the day... or let's say to continue it where I left it on August 24!!!!!! that is actually 12 days ago.... oh well there you go boy and like mom would say, "bills are still running". Oh yeah... they're.
Ari
Saturday, September 04, 2004
Good Morning Las Vegas
This morning I'm just wondering... why I didn't have a blog about coming out of the closet or maybe to talk about my parents and let everyone know my one-side story? why didn't I have a blog about my gay insecurities and anonymous sex? As funny as it sounds I never thought I had any issues about it, and eventually I found out I really don't, maybe I've got some other issues... and I'm probably going around them all the time but what the heck? I'm a sort of a poet somehow, probably riddles, puzzles and enigmas are the language of my soul, just like sadness... a very sexy kind of thing.
Yesterday was just an ok day, after the all-night-long craving I hit the bed in the middle of the morning, totally exhausted and filled up with some kind of joy, with some kind of knowledge... exposed to my little tragedies here and there I seem to be able to find a way around and really sleep in peaceful joy.
Yesterday was a day for banks, cable companies, embassies, telephone companies, and all different types of bottle-sucking places, yet I slept in. In the middle of the morning, past a white night and among my books, I just fell asleep... like a Goethe of my times, being a Greek in whichever way... slowing down in drunkenness and joy.... making part of the "theory".
"Theory" is one of the most fascinating terms in the Western languages, I think probably Hebrew uses the same root, you know... Hellenization...
I'm too fuzzy this morning to start curdling up and basically it's jusy 1:14 pm and the sun is shining out there... it's just too early for any kind of serious though... or is it ever too late for any kind of serious thought? Maybe I should go back to Euripides and his Bacchants... for I've spent way too much time in Antigona, which I think to be the best tragedy of all times... and somehow more meaningful than the Homeric poems but I can't be sure, it certainly doesn't overwrite Hesiodus, but who could overwrite him? He's talked about the problems of the world in the I century, and also in the XXI century!!! and it was written quite a while back if you ask me ;-)
There's also Sappho, the greatest and most magnificient example of Romantic poetry, way back in time at least compared to Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats.
But Antigone... Antigone is like frozen music in the ears... it's a momentum... probably the most brilliant of all tragedies. Maybe it's just another tragedy but you know? Antigone justifies my sadness, justifies my sadness timelessly, just like a state of mind, like the edge of the writer.
Antigone makes light of many interesting ideas, probably Semitic kind of thing... because you know only the Jews could come up with that kind of dramas... but she's also very Greek, very Apolinear and very Attic...
I feel very identified with Antigone... you know.. I think she didn't really understand fate, but she surrendered to it and just did "what had to be done", regardless the do's and dont's of the Theban society... an example of the richness and diversity of the Greek society.... a whole scale of grays (mind you I didn't say gays, but that as well lol). Antigona just followed her fate at any price, and when this fate becomes a national idea and a rebelion then we understand much better the Greek in general I think, their exile in Venice during the 17th century and even the Coup D'etat in the 30's. The Greek tragedy exemplifies the modern Greek just to the same extent the Bible exemplifies the modern Israeli. This is the lesson of Antigone, and in particular (and to a larger extent) the lesson of Sophocles, fate must be taken upon and that as an act itself constitutes an heroic act, almost Romantic, and twice as Homeric.
Oh well... this is not an academic paper, so if you think I was going to give further explanations and elucidated comments you're pretty wrong. It's just a journal you know... I'm just emotional... have you ever tried to listen to music when you're underneath the water? Well that's what I'm trying to do, very Sophoclean... but I can still try.
Yesterday was just an ok day, after the all-night-long craving I hit the bed in the middle of the morning, totally exhausted and filled up with some kind of joy, with some kind of knowledge... exposed to my little tragedies here and there I seem to be able to find a way around and really sleep in peaceful joy.
Yesterday was a day for banks, cable companies, embassies, telephone companies, and all different types of bottle-sucking places, yet I slept in. In the middle of the morning, past a white night and among my books, I just fell asleep... like a Goethe of my times, being a Greek in whichever way... slowing down in drunkenness and joy.... making part of the "theory".
"Theory" is one of the most fascinating terms in the Western languages, I think probably Hebrew uses the same root, you know... Hellenization...
I'm too fuzzy this morning to start curdling up and basically it's jusy 1:14 pm and the sun is shining out there... it's just too early for any kind of serious though... or is it ever too late for any kind of serious thought? Maybe I should go back to Euripides and his Bacchants... for I've spent way too much time in Antigona, which I think to be the best tragedy of all times... and somehow more meaningful than the Homeric poems but I can't be sure, it certainly doesn't overwrite Hesiodus, but who could overwrite him? He's talked about the problems of the world in the I century, and also in the XXI century!!! and it was written quite a while back if you ask me ;-)
There's also Sappho, the greatest and most magnificient example of Romantic poetry, way back in time at least compared to Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats.
But Antigone... Antigone is like frozen music in the ears... it's a momentum... probably the most brilliant of all tragedies. Maybe it's just another tragedy but you know? Antigone justifies my sadness, justifies my sadness timelessly, just like a state of mind, like the edge of the writer.
Antigone makes light of many interesting ideas, probably Semitic kind of thing... because you know only the Jews could come up with that kind of dramas... but she's also very Greek, very Apolinear and very Attic...
I feel very identified with Antigone... you know.. I think she didn't really understand fate, but she surrendered to it and just did "what had to be done", regardless the do's and dont's of the Theban society... an example of the richness and diversity of the Greek society.... a whole scale of grays (mind you I didn't say gays, but that as well lol). Antigona just followed her fate at any price, and when this fate becomes a national idea and a rebelion then we understand much better the Greek in general I think, their exile in Venice during the 17th century and even the Coup D'etat in the 30's. The Greek tragedy exemplifies the modern Greek just to the same extent the Bible exemplifies the modern Israeli. This is the lesson of Antigone, and in particular (and to a larger extent) the lesson of Sophocles, fate must be taken upon and that as an act itself constitutes an heroic act, almost Romantic, and twice as Homeric.
Oh well... this is not an academic paper, so if you think I was going to give further explanations and elucidated comments you're pretty wrong. It's just a journal you know... I'm just emotional... have you ever tried to listen to music when you're underneath the water? Well that's what I'm trying to do, very Sophoclean... but I can still try.
Question marks
I don't really have a leit-motif to write tonight but I'm just doing it... just letting myself flow and trying to explore my thoughts through my words, it's interesting... how language can give you information about the real hard core of your life, your own words, your own space, your own imagination... reveals information which is unknown even to yourself.
I've had a couple of lazy days... a denial kind of thing... total denial... and maybe a bit of a search... of direction probably. Coming to grips with myself a little bit in the last week. I've been alone for Ofer is still on his American holiday, no word from him yet... not that I was expecting anything, but it would be nice nevertheless if you know what I'm talking about.
But just let it be like that... there're worse things and I'm certainly convinced of that. These days "alone" have been a bit strange in any case. Probably I've had just too much time with myself and also plenty of time among strangers, with strangers, a stranger myself... probably even to myself.
I'm trying to re-think things in a scale of grays, without judgemental predicaments about the right and the wrong but probably more about the convenient, and fate and me again lead a struggle, almost a battle. For it is so human to go against fate, to go against history and against physis... this struggle against fate is the story of Achiles and also the story of Jesus, even of Alexander the Great and many others... to the same extent the history of the Jewish people, we're a people against our own fate, against ourselves.. I can see it in my life.. I've been struggling for 20 years to fight fate, and the sooner or the latter it just chased me... and surpassed me.
In the last two years fate and me have fought a lot less though, and I don't know if that means growth, it's probably just surrendering... taking upon things you know are just there, you can't avoid them. Call it the way you want, call it blood, call it historical "momentum" and even can call it "struggle".
It's an endless circle... I'm always going back to the same old burnt out topic, the tragedy... life itself a tragedy... a Greek tragedy. An Oedipic raison d'etre.. or in words of Goethe "frozen music", that's how life is... just like frozen music. I don't find the connections of my life itself to the tragedy, but of life itself... in disattachment... in observation... in drunkenness of theories and chants.
I try to re-think the latest chapters of my life... like a periodic sequence of time, just like something mathematic and I certainly fail, I truthfully fail. It's more of a diachronic thing, it's more of a "daimona eautou" in words of the Greek world, a "kata to daimona eautou". Probably is simply a rule of logic, a rule of nature.. a rule of dynamics, you see it in comparative linguistics; issoglosses, connections, comparisons, analogies, syntagms, a super-spiderweb, a supersystem.. just like the universe, like our galaxy. Even chemistry could prove my point, or maybe relativity would do just fine.
"I adore theatre, it is more real than life" in words of Oscar Wilde, the idol of my youth... the idol of my earliest years... I used to enjoy his speech and his delicate cruelty, which now I find probably aesthetic, but meaningless... just like I used to enjoy George Elliot and in particular "The Lifted Veil", such an amazing piece of art... and Victorian not even by character, but by definition, feminine and moralistic. And even when their points seem proven in nature, they don't prove the definition of their art itself, at least not in the terms of Aristotle, in the terms of the river of Heraclitus, "for you will not dive into the same river twice, since not the river nor yourself are the same being".
From then on I probably upgraded, and even read Keats and Shelley... and the unreadable Wordsworth. How could I forget the lectures of Patricia Simmonson? Funny though how I remembered her today, so little that we got to know each other and such a miserable lecturer she was... and how much influenced me... you see? It's a thing of the spirit, probably literature or rather learning literature might be just like religion. Not a religious being myself, but there's something to it... there's indeed something religious about me, something religious about my understanding of the world. Probably I didn't enjoy any other lecturer just like I enjoyed Simmonson, with the exception of Kaltsidou, some other time I might devote a few hours to talk about her, Greece and the German Romantic spirit, the Tracian morality.
I also used to read Shakespeare which I found very fascinating and elaborate, probably not his books about the Jews in Venice (and yeah I read it, quite boring though) and even Macbeth boring I found... a bit too classical, too artificial and too full of content... a kind of late tragedy but Shakespeare, to whom I owe all respect wasn't Greek enough in my taste, how could an Anglo-Saxon ever be? Ever read Cynewulf? Probably there's an answer to my question.
But "A midsummer's night dream", that I really liked, it's rather refreshing. Hyppolita... Hyppolita.. that was her name, such a sweet lady and as funny as it might sound I immediately relate her to Calista Flockhart! yeah I know... how stupidly banal of me, but in the end of the day I hope you don't have issues with that but I'm simply a man of the 90's (not sure if I'm already in the 2000's, somehow I think I'm still stuck in the 90's for a while) and I also reckon I had to look up the name online, as I had some trouble remembering it. That's what happens when you learn the Classics all your life and drop out for 6 months to be a businessman.
Poor Hyppolita... so innocent and pure, so beautiful, so clever, so fearful... a wanderer herself. I think we have a lot in common, just like Tori Amos and I do (yeah gay joke). Theseus I didn't really like and I was expected to, but that's like coffee with sugar, I was expected to like it and I certainly don't, or did I just convince myself I don't? Well it doesn't matter, at least for the sake of the historical memory.
Leave thrills asides, I retrieved to the children's book kind of, now I only read little myths and short tragedies, they contain the real core, they're self-contained, just like me... self-obsessed artist. But never mind you, I'm an intellectual, so I read Erzensberger sometimes. Who can anyway forget "Einladung zu einer Jasmintee tasse"?
I also read the Bible.
Ari
I've had a couple of lazy days... a denial kind of thing... total denial... and maybe a bit of a search... of direction probably. Coming to grips with myself a little bit in the last week. I've been alone for Ofer is still on his American holiday, no word from him yet... not that I was expecting anything, but it would be nice nevertheless if you know what I'm talking about.
But just let it be like that... there're worse things and I'm certainly convinced of that. These days "alone" have been a bit strange in any case. Probably I've had just too much time with myself and also plenty of time among strangers, with strangers, a stranger myself... probably even to myself.
I'm trying to re-think things in a scale of grays, without judgemental predicaments about the right and the wrong but probably more about the convenient, and fate and me again lead a struggle, almost a battle. For it is so human to go against fate, to go against history and against physis... this struggle against fate is the story of Achiles and also the story of Jesus, even of Alexander the Great and many others... to the same extent the history of the Jewish people, we're a people against our own fate, against ourselves.. I can see it in my life.. I've been struggling for 20 years to fight fate, and the sooner or the latter it just chased me... and surpassed me.
In the last two years fate and me have fought a lot less though, and I don't know if that means growth, it's probably just surrendering... taking upon things you know are just there, you can't avoid them. Call it the way you want, call it blood, call it historical "momentum" and even can call it "struggle".
It's an endless circle... I'm always going back to the same old burnt out topic, the tragedy... life itself a tragedy... a Greek tragedy. An Oedipic raison d'etre.. or in words of Goethe "frozen music", that's how life is... just like frozen music. I don't find the connections of my life itself to the tragedy, but of life itself... in disattachment... in observation... in drunkenness of theories and chants.
I try to re-think the latest chapters of my life... like a periodic sequence of time, just like something mathematic and I certainly fail, I truthfully fail. It's more of a diachronic thing, it's more of a "daimona eautou" in words of the Greek world, a "kata to daimona eautou". Probably is simply a rule of logic, a rule of nature.. a rule of dynamics, you see it in comparative linguistics; issoglosses, connections, comparisons, analogies, syntagms, a super-spiderweb, a supersystem.. just like the universe, like our galaxy. Even chemistry could prove my point, or maybe relativity would do just fine.
"I adore theatre, it is more real than life" in words of Oscar Wilde, the idol of my youth... the idol of my earliest years... I used to enjoy his speech and his delicate cruelty, which now I find probably aesthetic, but meaningless... just like I used to enjoy George Elliot and in particular "The Lifted Veil", such an amazing piece of art... and Victorian not even by character, but by definition, feminine and moralistic. And even when their points seem proven in nature, they don't prove the definition of their art itself, at least not in the terms of Aristotle, in the terms of the river of Heraclitus, "for you will not dive into the same river twice, since not the river nor yourself are the same being".
From then on I probably upgraded, and even read Keats and Shelley... and the unreadable Wordsworth. How could I forget the lectures of Patricia Simmonson? Funny though how I remembered her today, so little that we got to know each other and such a miserable lecturer she was... and how much influenced me... you see? It's a thing of the spirit, probably literature or rather learning literature might be just like religion. Not a religious being myself, but there's something to it... there's indeed something religious about me, something religious about my understanding of the world. Probably I didn't enjoy any other lecturer just like I enjoyed Simmonson, with the exception of Kaltsidou, some other time I might devote a few hours to talk about her, Greece and the German Romantic spirit, the Tracian morality.
I also used to read Shakespeare which I found very fascinating and elaborate, probably not his books about the Jews in Venice (and yeah I read it, quite boring though) and even Macbeth boring I found... a bit too classical, too artificial and too full of content... a kind of late tragedy but Shakespeare, to whom I owe all respect wasn't Greek enough in my taste, how could an Anglo-Saxon ever be? Ever read Cynewulf? Probably there's an answer to my question.
But "A midsummer's night dream", that I really liked, it's rather refreshing. Hyppolita... Hyppolita.. that was her name, such a sweet lady and as funny as it might sound I immediately relate her to Calista Flockhart! yeah I know... how stupidly banal of me, but in the end of the day I hope you don't have issues with that but I'm simply a man of the 90's (not sure if I'm already in the 2000's, somehow I think I'm still stuck in the 90's for a while) and I also reckon I had to look up the name online, as I had some trouble remembering it. That's what happens when you learn the Classics all your life and drop out for 6 months to be a businessman.
Poor Hyppolita... so innocent and pure, so beautiful, so clever, so fearful... a wanderer herself. I think we have a lot in common, just like Tori Amos and I do (yeah gay joke). Theseus I didn't really like and I was expected to, but that's like coffee with sugar, I was expected to like it and I certainly don't, or did I just convince myself I don't? Well it doesn't matter, at least for the sake of the historical memory.
Leave thrills asides, I retrieved to the children's book kind of, now I only read little myths and short tragedies, they contain the real core, they're self-contained, just like me... self-obsessed artist. But never mind you, I'm an intellectual, so I read Erzensberger sometimes. Who can anyway forget "Einladung zu einer Jasmintee tasse"?
I also read the Bible.
Ari
The gay European Jew and the gay Israeli Jew, are we different? (Intro)
This is a question that permanently troubles the philologist, probably the question itself stems on the split identity but that's much of a bigger topic which I'll develop some other time, plus before I do so I guess I have to do some re-read of a few authors, among them Diana Wang, Marx and even Elie Wiesel.
The few months I've spent reading Ha'aretz have also elucidated me quite extensively on the subject but let's focus a little bit on my current question for I haven't seen or read anything on the matter. Probably I can remember a few cheap books on Israeli gay soldiers, movies here and there (Trembling before G-d for one) and maybe a few other things I used to read during my free time at the Open House in Jerusalem.
During 2003 I had the chance to be heading this support group for Orthodox gays which I found to be probably one of the strongest experiences ever. Different social determinants for a common reality, for a common ground. I owe these set of experiences to people like Chris, Elroi and Al. All of them provided me with interesting example to examine the particular case of the religiously observant gay jew, in particular Al (z"l) who being religious (reform though) was living and sharing a life with his Israeli partner who was in the closet and religiously observant as well. This strange kind of camaraderie was very unique in my eyes and probably not so atypical to the Jerusolomite environment (technically impossible in Tel Aviv for obvious reasons), even though I found out later on such a thing did exist among different circles in New York and even among Yeshiva students, that shocked at first glance to tell the truth.
Yet I did find something very unique about these people (which applied to all of them, or to most) and was basically the dimension of their inner conflict. Several times I've talked about fate and the Jewish question, defining the Jews (since the Biblical times through the Reform movement - here I'm talking probably about Jewish philolosphy or let's say history of the Jewish ideas) as a people against themselves, against their fate and against their own historical determinants. This is probably a unique existentialist phenomenon; I remember having read once a book by this certain Jewish French sociologist called "The reflexive condition of the Jewish existence" (I can't translate the exact French title into English) in which this phenomenon was explained in the eyes of political history, with special emphasis on the Zionist movement and its remarkable definition of a new Jewish character. The idea then became clearer upon reading this article by an Uruguayan anthropologist called "Jewish diasporic mentality"... or if not clear, then probably better developed. The bottom line is, the Jew is by definition an anti-historical being in terms of Anthropology (or at least in terms of the historical anthropology of E. Carr or let's say anthropological definition of history).
The jew against himself and against his own stem? Probably yes, this doesn't manifest on a scientific ground though. It is just this kind of popular belief or anathema or call it in whichever way you want. To my advantage, anthropology does emphasize on these popular tales and beliefs as serious manifestations of social cohesion, national character, familiar structure, etc. But do not forget that in case I'm nothing by a philologist trying to convey some thoughts about homosexuality and judaism, there's nothing anthropological about me, with the exception of the method: observation. (Damn, if my anthropology books weren't resting in some storage room somewhere in Latin America I could really play the scientist and explain my point with deeper accuracy). Let's say that as a philologist I'm accurately trained for certain kind of anthropological field work, collection of unretrievable data and lots of speculation. That's nowadays a "totally" independent science that is probably called "ethnography". All of us involved in the humanities and the social sciences (in particular language students) deal with ethnographic methods, but their real scope within our fields can be as useless as those long and tiresome statistics classes. I didn't find them interesting nor useful, but apparently they seem to have sharpened my data collection logic, results are still due to be examined. Probability is a natural rule and in different terms probably the biologist, the mathematician and the physician learn about it as much as the linguist, the sociologist and the philosopher. Maybe the rules are not entirely dissimilar, only our terminology might be the underdog for our imminent confusion.
After having explained unsuccessfuly the problem in the approach I might as well extend a philological remark. I can't conceive philology existing by itself, at least not classical philology and certainly not in our times.
Classical philology is possibly to a certain extent the oldest of the human sciences. Poetry, epic and historical narrative couldn't be considered within a scientific scope, neither science itself as they made part of the so-called "divinity", the essence of the Logos. I would prefer not to call it "religion" for this is a latter term and probably foreign to any Greek. As usual the previous considerations are relevant to the Greek world, but not only. They might have been axiomatically true to other peoples of the antiquity (and of more recent antiquity). Not sure if that includes the peoples and tribes of Israel, nevertheless I'm pursuing some extensive reading on the subject and I hope I may be able to complement this point at some later stage.
I was just about to extend into the particular of the philological science but I'll hold myself as it is certainly not in place. I might just conclude by saying that the current approach of what is really philology might be seen more in the scope of historical or comparative linguistics which is a scientific discipline, almost like mathematics. The Indo-European linguistics of 1850 when the obvious questions about the similarities between Old Lithuanian, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin were raised is certainly not the same science of today. The terminology and the method evolved at a very fast pace. The philologist evolved from following slavishingly the Classical text (more of a papyrologist if you want to call it so) into a totally conjenctural, theoretical and speculative science. Fortunately as redundant as it might sound, philology is still methodologically philological. This explanation was certainly unnecessary for the scope of the subject I want to treat, but I found it particularly helpful if the reader (if there's any at all!) wants to grasp the methodological approach of this non-social sciences educated speaker who is only trying to approach a subject from a very personal point of view. Nevertheless I foresee being deeply influenced by the "contexts" of the methods I've acquired over the last 6 years. Some contact with the so-called Jewish social science will make my points less "philological" and probably closer to the "true" human science, as Heidegger would re-phrase it.
The few months I've spent reading Ha'aretz have also elucidated me quite extensively on the subject but let's focus a little bit on my current question for I haven't seen or read anything on the matter. Probably I can remember a few cheap books on Israeli gay soldiers, movies here and there (Trembling before G-d for one) and maybe a few other things I used to read during my free time at the Open House in Jerusalem.
During 2003 I had the chance to be heading this support group for Orthodox gays which I found to be probably one of the strongest experiences ever. Different social determinants for a common reality, for a common ground. I owe these set of experiences to people like Chris, Elroi and Al. All of them provided me with interesting example to examine the particular case of the religiously observant gay jew, in particular Al (z"l) who being religious (reform though) was living and sharing a life with his Israeli partner who was in the closet and religiously observant as well. This strange kind of camaraderie was very unique in my eyes and probably not so atypical to the Jerusolomite environment (technically impossible in Tel Aviv for obvious reasons), even though I found out later on such a thing did exist among different circles in New York and even among Yeshiva students, that shocked at first glance to tell the truth.
Yet I did find something very unique about these people (which applied to all of them, or to most) and was basically the dimension of their inner conflict. Several times I've talked about fate and the Jewish question, defining the Jews (since the Biblical times through the Reform movement - here I'm talking probably about Jewish philolosphy or let's say history of the Jewish ideas) as a people against themselves, against their fate and against their own historical determinants. This is probably a unique existentialist phenomenon; I remember having read once a book by this certain Jewish French sociologist called "The reflexive condition of the Jewish existence" (I can't translate the exact French title into English) in which this phenomenon was explained in the eyes of political history, with special emphasis on the Zionist movement and its remarkable definition of a new Jewish character. The idea then became clearer upon reading this article by an Uruguayan anthropologist called "Jewish diasporic mentality"... or if not clear, then probably better developed. The bottom line is, the Jew is by definition an anti-historical being in terms of Anthropology (or at least in terms of the historical anthropology of E. Carr or let's say anthropological definition of history).
The jew against himself and against his own stem? Probably yes, this doesn't manifest on a scientific ground though. It is just this kind of popular belief or anathema or call it in whichever way you want. To my advantage, anthropology does emphasize on these popular tales and beliefs as serious manifestations of social cohesion, national character, familiar structure, etc. But do not forget that in case I'm nothing by a philologist trying to convey some thoughts about homosexuality and judaism, there's nothing anthropological about me, with the exception of the method: observation. (Damn, if my anthropology books weren't resting in some storage room somewhere in Latin America I could really play the scientist and explain my point with deeper accuracy). Let's say that as a philologist I'm accurately trained for certain kind of anthropological field work, collection of unretrievable data and lots of speculation. That's nowadays a "totally" independent science that is probably called "ethnography". All of us involved in the humanities and the social sciences (in particular language students) deal with ethnographic methods, but their real scope within our fields can be as useless as those long and tiresome statistics classes. I didn't find them interesting nor useful, but apparently they seem to have sharpened my data collection logic, results are still due to be examined. Probability is a natural rule and in different terms probably the biologist, the mathematician and the physician learn about it as much as the linguist, the sociologist and the philosopher. Maybe the rules are not entirely dissimilar, only our terminology might be the underdog for our imminent confusion.
After having explained unsuccessfuly the problem in the approach I might as well extend a philological remark. I can't conceive philology existing by itself, at least not classical philology and certainly not in our times.
Classical philology is possibly to a certain extent the oldest of the human sciences. Poetry, epic and historical narrative couldn't be considered within a scientific scope, neither science itself as they made part of the so-called "divinity", the essence of the Logos. I would prefer not to call it "religion" for this is a latter term and probably foreign to any Greek. As usual the previous considerations are relevant to the Greek world, but not only. They might have been axiomatically true to other peoples of the antiquity (and of more recent antiquity). Not sure if that includes the peoples and tribes of Israel, nevertheless I'm pursuing some extensive reading on the subject and I hope I may be able to complement this point at some later stage.
I was just about to extend into the particular of the philological science but I'll hold myself as it is certainly not in place. I might just conclude by saying that the current approach of what is really philology might be seen more in the scope of historical or comparative linguistics which is a scientific discipline, almost like mathematics. The Indo-European linguistics of 1850 when the obvious questions about the similarities between Old Lithuanian, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin were raised is certainly not the same science of today. The terminology and the method evolved at a very fast pace. The philologist evolved from following slavishingly the Classical text (more of a papyrologist if you want to call it so) into a totally conjenctural, theoretical and speculative science. Fortunately as redundant as it might sound, philology is still methodologically philological. This explanation was certainly unnecessary for the scope of the subject I want to treat, but I found it particularly helpful if the reader (if there's any at all!) wants to grasp the methodological approach of this non-social sciences educated speaker who is only trying to approach a subject from a very personal point of view. Nevertheless I foresee being deeply influenced by the "contexts" of the methods I've acquired over the last 6 years. Some contact with the so-called Jewish social science will make my points less "philological" and probably closer to the "true" human science, as Heidegger would re-phrase it.
Friday, September 03, 2004
Response to "A wedding, not me"
Guess what? Just late at night, coming back from a long beer night, pretty alcoholized... but pretty kindred. I just decided to browse around the gay blogs in tripod before writing my last note of the day, not myself a beginner in blogs but today just started a new one... again in the same good old tripod... then I stumbled upon your g(r)ay matter kind of thing and I felt some kind of familiary with most of your writing but specially (as of today) with "who wants a wedding? Not me".
A few weeks ago my boyfriend and me went to a wedding, a Jewish wedding... just like any other wedding, the brother of one of his friends was to get "happily married". Weddings are always moments that make me think about life in general, not exactly my own life.. but the whole thing in general.
A few years ago, just like any other gay teenager in the Western world (I was raised up in a Dutch family) I used to look at gay marriage as the ultimate aspiration in my life, like a goal, a bottom line.... years later I had the chance to live with a man, to whom I was almost married... and that very experience made me realize how unrealistic those ultimate dreams are... now things are very different.
I think the reluctance to marry kind of thing doesn't necessarily have to do with you being gay, but it might have a part on it. Gays are certainly more immature and less commitable than heterosexual men in general, that's for sure. Even less steady, less self-secure and less interested in settling down... just remember (as much as I do) the old days will come. Yeah being gay releases you from being normal, but doesn't exempt you from life undefinitely. Nothing really does.
I think no one really posseses the qualities to make a marriage work, since most of them are just learnt overtime but I do reckon some background must be present, some willingness and a few other things. Probably very different to those you need to make a successful heterosexual marriage.
Today I met a Russian friend for a beer session, surprisingly she confessed me that she'd learnt a lot from gay relationships for her own relationships and that somehow she'd learnt to think like a gay, not a bad thing though. Just in keypoints such as I don't really need to marry and comply with conventions to achieve happiness, sometimes when you feel you don't fit with someone you can simply walk away, the manly side of women, the feminine side of men, and many others.
That made me think about how possitive inasmuch as negative it is being gay, having more or less challenges according to the generation you belong to. You've got some issues? That doesn't really affect marriage itself, probably yours, but not the thing itself.
I agree marriage is mostly a validation of people's love and I find it pretty unnecessary, you can be married without the need to sign a contract or make a big party that you'll be paying back for the next 5 years. I'm not sure if true gay love means more than most marriages, but I'd rather say it's as meaningful as successful marriages. Successful marriages (at least the ones I've seen in the last years) are based on those premises of gay relationships (of successful ones)or maybe it's just the other way around. The lack of official ties is what makes gay love such a rewarding and frustrating experience. Yeah you're bonded to anyone by law and that makes your convivence very dynamic, but we are also men.... no children, no mortgage, no parents in law... once day you're just sick and you can just walk away, can't you? (Most of us do I think).
I have a boyfriend I totally adore, he's probably the best boyfriend I ever had and he really likes me, he rather adores me. Probably one of the few persons I've ever got along really well in my life and very important too, one of the few persons who have been able to put up to my intellectual level. I'm extremely attracted to him and he makes me very happy. Yet I don't want to spend all day with him, I want to see other friends, work on my dissertation with the pursuance to become a doctor one day, I don't want to live with him and I don't want to meet his mother everyweek, it doesn't mean I'm less in love with him.
Somehow I'd like to think he might be the love of my life, as he's a really amazing guy.. but somehow I also know he's not, not because he's not good enough just because we're both unsettled and liking it very much I think, and probably I'm just too young for that. Still there's a lot of fish in the sea you know....
I also want to have as many anonymous sex partners as I can, to taste all the sizes and all the types ;-) but does that mean I have to lead astray the opportunity to achieve some level of happiness and relative emotional stability during a certain period of time? Not really... probably it's just a matter of growing up and realizing men are men and our physiology is underdeveloped, even when our gay female instincts refuse to think it so. I've met a couple of hot guys with whom I haven't been able to have sex, it doesn't mean I won't be able in the future, and the number of lousy fuck dates my boyfriend has doesnt say anything about his love, in the end of the day I guess there's a difference between screwing an ass and making love.
I'm not against marriage, neither I support it. Inasmuch as I don't believe in black and white, I believe the world can be a very comfortable place to live in if we accept all the different scales of g(r)ay.
Ari
PD: I forgot to say, he calls me sweetly "wife", still I work, pay my own bills, pursue an academic career, have my own friends and probably also an active sexual life. Does it make me a lousy wife? I don't think so.
A few weeks ago my boyfriend and me went to a wedding, a Jewish wedding... just like any other wedding, the brother of one of his friends was to get "happily married". Weddings are always moments that make me think about life in general, not exactly my own life.. but the whole thing in general.
A few years ago, just like any other gay teenager in the Western world (I was raised up in a Dutch family) I used to look at gay marriage as the ultimate aspiration in my life, like a goal, a bottom line.... years later I had the chance to live with a man, to whom I was almost married... and that very experience made me realize how unrealistic those ultimate dreams are... now things are very different.
I think the reluctance to marry kind of thing doesn't necessarily have to do with you being gay, but it might have a part on it. Gays are certainly more immature and less commitable than heterosexual men in general, that's for sure. Even less steady, less self-secure and less interested in settling down... just remember (as much as I do) the old days will come. Yeah being gay releases you from being normal, but doesn't exempt you from life undefinitely. Nothing really does.
I think no one really posseses the qualities to make a marriage work, since most of them are just learnt overtime but I do reckon some background must be present, some willingness and a few other things. Probably very different to those you need to make a successful heterosexual marriage.
Today I met a Russian friend for a beer session, surprisingly she confessed me that she'd learnt a lot from gay relationships for her own relationships and that somehow she'd learnt to think like a gay, not a bad thing though. Just in keypoints such as I don't really need to marry and comply with conventions to achieve happiness, sometimes when you feel you don't fit with someone you can simply walk away, the manly side of women, the feminine side of men, and many others.
That made me think about how possitive inasmuch as negative it is being gay, having more or less challenges according to the generation you belong to. You've got some issues? That doesn't really affect marriage itself, probably yours, but not the thing itself.
I agree marriage is mostly a validation of people's love and I find it pretty unnecessary, you can be married without the need to sign a contract or make a big party that you'll be paying back for the next 5 years. I'm not sure if true gay love means more than most marriages, but I'd rather say it's as meaningful as successful marriages. Successful marriages (at least the ones I've seen in the last years) are based on those premises of gay relationships (of successful ones)or maybe it's just the other way around. The lack of official ties is what makes gay love such a rewarding and frustrating experience. Yeah you're bonded to anyone by law and that makes your convivence very dynamic, but we are also men.... no children, no mortgage, no parents in law... once day you're just sick and you can just walk away, can't you? (Most of us do I think).
I have a boyfriend I totally adore, he's probably the best boyfriend I ever had and he really likes me, he rather adores me. Probably one of the few persons I've ever got along really well in my life and very important too, one of the few persons who have been able to put up to my intellectual level. I'm extremely attracted to him and he makes me very happy. Yet I don't want to spend all day with him, I want to see other friends, work on my dissertation with the pursuance to become a doctor one day, I don't want to live with him and I don't want to meet his mother everyweek, it doesn't mean I'm less in love with him.
Somehow I'd like to think he might be the love of my life, as he's a really amazing guy.. but somehow I also know he's not, not because he's not good enough just because we're both unsettled and liking it very much I think, and probably I'm just too young for that. Still there's a lot of fish in the sea you know....
I also want to have as many anonymous sex partners as I can, to taste all the sizes and all the types ;-) but does that mean I have to lead astray the opportunity to achieve some level of happiness and relative emotional stability during a certain period of time? Not really... probably it's just a matter of growing up and realizing men are men and our physiology is underdeveloped, even when our gay female instincts refuse to think it so. I've met a couple of hot guys with whom I haven't been able to have sex, it doesn't mean I won't be able in the future, and the number of lousy fuck dates my boyfriend has doesnt say anything about his love, in the end of the day I guess there's a difference between screwing an ass and making love.
I'm not against marriage, neither I support it. Inasmuch as I don't believe in black and white, I believe the world can be a very comfortable place to live in if we accept all the different scales of g(r)ay.
Ari
PD: I forgot to say, he calls me sweetly "wife", still I work, pay my own bills, pursue an academic career, have my own friends and probably also an active sexual life. Does it make me a lousy wife? I don't think so.
Thursday, September 02, 2004
Agaetis?
Pretty boring days.... some kind of hectic boredom, a tiresome boredom. Spent the last hour trying to find a new spot to blog in, in the end just returned to the good old tripod... not to mention I was running a blog here already, but it was pretty boring... or let's say... too full or romance and frustration.
Not that I'm less stuffed up with both things but probably I've come to the end of some circle, a kind of a cycle... getting just younger and younger in my own way, and probably less understanding and more immature as time goes by. Yeah I know... nature takes over, who can fight physis? She's been proven, test and self-certificed for thousands of years.
Again an English-speaking blog, so full of non sense but oh well.... isn't it what this country of all made of? Self-hating Jew speaking if you haven't realized it, as if anyone would be interested in wasting time reading all these semi-political speeches. I won't dig deep down into Sharon and Netanyahu, neither I will curdle up into Ofer or even myself. Let everyone have a break from me, let me have a break from them.
Yesterday was a bit of a mad day to tell the truth, nothing got done, nothing... just thoughts in the air and less wishful thinking than usual, tiny pieces of reality in instant coffee and fresh memories of Tel Aviv.
I want to have some more coffee and try to get some focus, although it's already 6:12 am so forget it... senses don't come down on weekends, certainly not here... a place where even morality strikes every once in a while, but newspaper didn't inform us.
Let me have another day indoors, just to slain my own exhacerbation... maybe I'll spend some time reading the bible, the bible of the 21st century, written by our legitimate politicians with adversitisings of Walla, HOT and the latest soap operas whose main function is to keep unemployment as high. There's also some people like me, who never watch TV... I truly condemn them... we just think of love stories.
Ari
Not that I'm less stuffed up with both things but probably I've come to the end of some circle, a kind of a cycle... getting just younger and younger in my own way, and probably less understanding and more immature as time goes by. Yeah I know... nature takes over, who can fight physis? She's been proven, test and self-certificed for thousands of years.
Again an English-speaking blog, so full of non sense but oh well.... isn't it what this country of all made of? Self-hating Jew speaking if you haven't realized it, as if anyone would be interested in wasting time reading all these semi-political speeches. I won't dig deep down into Sharon and Netanyahu, neither I will curdle up into Ofer or even myself. Let everyone have a break from me, let me have a break from them.
Yesterday was a bit of a mad day to tell the truth, nothing got done, nothing... just thoughts in the air and less wishful thinking than usual, tiny pieces of reality in instant coffee and fresh memories of Tel Aviv.
I want to have some more coffee and try to get some focus, although it's already 6:12 am so forget it... senses don't come down on weekends, certainly not here... a place where even morality strikes every once in a while, but newspaper didn't inform us.
Let me have another day indoors, just to slain my own exhacerbation... maybe I'll spend some time reading the bible, the bible of the 21st century, written by our legitimate politicians with adversitisings of Walla, HOT and the latest soap operas whose main function is to keep unemployment as high. There's also some people like me, who never watch TV... I truly condemn them... we just think of love stories.
Ari
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Untitled
Afraid
Living in the next day
Timed after myself
And bearing a name
Thinking of odes
Thinking through a glass
Unkind
In drunkness of other glories
Of other days
Caressing myself
Curdling inside
Tempora, iternum
Phoebus.
Chasing myself in the fields
Drowning in urbanity
Past the leaves
Past the echoes
Electronically sensitive
In cups of coffee
Unanswered
In streams of consciousness
Written down
Torn apart between shades
Of joys, of sun
Of memorable regrets
Once again borne
Once again blue the sky
To and fro the sky
Once again Blues
Not you
It's the center of things
Momentum
Living in the next day
Timed after myself
And bearing a name
Thinking of odes
Thinking through a glass
Unkind
In drunkness of other glories
Of other days
Caressing myself
Curdling inside
Tempora, iternum
Phoebus.
Chasing myself in the fields
Drowning in urbanity
Past the leaves
Past the echoes
Electronically sensitive
In cups of coffee
Unanswered
In streams of consciousness
Written down
Torn apart between shades
Of joys, of sun
Of memorable regrets
Once again borne
Once again blue the sky
To and fro the sky
Once again Blues
Not you
It's the center of things
Momentum
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
In the aftermath
Breaking through the ages
In little pieces of mud
In the aftermath of thought
Demographically spaceless, forlorn
In isolation
With consolidations
A journey of unrest
Unmovable landscapes, puzzles
A stranger to my own life
In the aftermath
Lost sight in two fold emotions
Looking out the window
But sitting outside
Avoidable
Thinkable
Stories never told
In understatements
Through blank pages
Laid to rest
Like a journal
Uninteresting stories
It's my own ode
In a navigation map.
In little pieces of mud
In the aftermath of thought
Demographically spaceless, forlorn
In isolation
With consolidations
A journey of unrest
Unmovable landscapes, puzzles
A stranger to my own life
In the aftermath
Lost sight in two fold emotions
Looking out the window
But sitting outside
Avoidable
Thinkable
Stories never told
In understatements
Through blank pages
Laid to rest
Like a journal
Uninteresting stories
It's my own ode
In a navigation map.
Away
You've just missed the last train home.
Who will save you? Caress you?
Who will inflate your dreams?
Inflamate your soul?
Because the dry soul is wise....
But you're just on time for antologies
In delicate souvenirs
Yourself to the Gods you present
But you've just missed the train home.
Who will save you? Caress you?
Who will inflate your dreams?
Inflamate your soul?
Because the dry soul is wise....
But you're just on time for antologies
In delicate souvenirs
Yourself to the Gods you present
But you've just missed the train home.
Rovaniemi
...But if you can still dream....
Mother used to say.
Out of certain things you just can't get any sadness.
It's finally just about yourself....
Just like in the Arctic, in the eyes of my father...
Face to the ground
Cold white hands...
Newspapers
In the wooden house,
The wooden house I never left....
It's still my name, the same old stories...
With a taste of today, bitterness of yesterday.
Without ties, without phone calls, free of thrill
If you could only forget those things...
Your own pandora box, regrets mumbling outside...
Even here and now you bear the same name
Even in the outside, even by yourself
Odors of fertile ground
Free of language, free of thought
In ultimate wisdom
Just like plants... in time you grow
You yield and part...
Even from your only love, embracing yourself,
Caressing.. and then you stumble.
You're still not complete
Mother used to say.
Out of certain things you just can't get any sadness.
It's finally just about yourself....
Just like in the Arctic, in the eyes of my father...
Face to the ground
Cold white hands...
Newspapers
In the wooden house,
The wooden house I never left....
It's still my name, the same old stories...
With a taste of today, bitterness of yesterday.
Without ties, without phone calls, free of thrill
If you could only forget those things...
Your own pandora box, regrets mumbling outside...
Even here and now you bear the same name
Even in the outside, even by yourself
Odors of fertile ground
Free of language, free of thought
In ultimate wisdom
Just like plants... in time you grow
You yield and part...
Even from your only love, embracing yourself,
Caressing.. and then you stumble.
You're still not complete
Sunday, August 15, 2004
Untitled
Eyes in the city
Powerful surroundings
Dreams in gray and blue
How insecure
The same sky
Here and there
Just in one day
Spinning reality
Stories of the untold
Unfold
Threefold
Distorted, disturbed
Echoing
Phoebus
As if my tongue could muse
In fascinating silences
Terrified
O'er cups of coffee
And electronic smiles
Daring into the light
Drowning into the sight
Cut onto frames
Clinging onto bottles
Such a struggle
Myself a battle
Spaceless
In blank pages
Underneath
Untold
We're all made of glass
If all this may just pass?
......Remembrance...
Powerful surroundings
Dreams in gray and blue
How insecure
The same sky
Here and there
Just in one day
Spinning reality
Stories of the untold
Unfold
Threefold
Distorted, disturbed
Echoing
Phoebus
As if my tongue could muse
In fascinating silences
Terrified
O'er cups of coffee
And electronic smiles
Daring into the light
Drowning into the sight
Cut onto frames
Clinging onto bottles
Such a struggle
Myself a battle
Spaceless
In blank pages
Underneath
Untold
We're all made of glass
If all this may just pass?
......Remembrance...
The young deer
Simplicity, smooth featured life
Painful and delicate faces of reality
And one, Aurora, mementoes
And endless day
Merciless sorrowfulness, in different faces
Takes over
Memories of yesterday's tiles
What what there, will never be again
The violent noises
Yielding a space
Dreams in purple
Again me.
Selective isolation, uncertainties
The old age, the flux of the stories
A timeless line
A tameless line
Broken clouds
Afternoon vanity
It's the same day
In its own sane way
Me in smoked pieces
Ready to disappear
But still there
And hereinafter
...Here
....How much I wish I lacked of speech....
Painful and delicate faces of reality
And one, Aurora, mementoes
And endless day
Merciless sorrowfulness, in different faces
Takes over
Memories of yesterday's tiles
What what there, will never be again
The violent noises
Yielding a space
Dreams in purple
Again me.
Selective isolation, uncertainties
The old age, the flux of the stories
A timeless line
A tameless line
Broken clouds
Afternoon vanity
It's the same day
In its own sane way
Me in smoked pieces
Ready to disappear
But still there
And hereinafter
...Here
....How much I wish I lacked of speech....
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