After long discussions with a few Jewish shopkeepers whose trade depends on tourism, my heart goes out to them. The world economic crisis is much less felt in Tel Aviv, but Jerusalem, where industries are low tech and there is little cooperation among communities, is very hard hit. Much building is still going on but much seems to be no longer possible – the light rail for one. Thank goodness for the alternative communal communities!
My reading was small but intensive. The atmosphere in TMol Shilshom is usually intense, but there was a little less of the hunger for literature that i have experienced in the past – and i too felt the slight economic depression that keeps people home. Let’s hope the atmosphere in the Machane Market tomorrow the atmosphere will be more positive.
June 30, 2009
And indeed it was. A massive effort to incorporate all kinds of poetry and all kinds of audiences by The Poetry Place has proved successful once again. The program was arranged at least four months ago, but only if you read Hebrew can you understand it: program. I wanted to change the time or day of my performance because of an important wedding but it was all sewn up and incredibly organized. Organized and chaotic at once. The reading I participated in, for example, was in the middle of the machane yehuda market. The music from a nearby kiosk, the massive fridge engine from a butcher, a beggar passing by – didn’t interrupt the poetry but maybe added to it. And the crowd – what – a hundred, hundred fifty – people, crowded uncomplainedly into the narrow alley and found places to sit despite the seeming impossibility of the situation. It made me really respect the possibilities of Jerusalem.
I’ve been trying really hard to like Jerusalem. That’s what I keep telling myself. Not to think – when I see all these American men in white shirts and black skullcaps scurrying around with sheaves of papers under their arms – that they have a master plan to totally control the city.
But I can’t. Lisa says all the foreign journalists never leave Jerusalem and get all their ideas about Israel from that city. She tells them they should try Tel Aviv but they respond that it’s not authentic. “That’s the point of Tel Aviv,” I tell her. It’s not to be authentic, to remake itself every moment, to renounce the idea of tradition.
