Tel Aviv Diary - January 13-17, 2013 - Karen Alkalay-Gut
January 13, 2013
A few months ago I did a little shtik - along with a lot of other poets - for the archives of the library. It's been online for a while but no one told me about it. You can judge if you like it - the first poem is in Hebrew but the second is in English. So you can fast forward it to about 3/4 of the way through and tell them if you like it.
It's part of a big library project - hundreds of other writers I've never heard of. The weather here has warmed up to normal so I put away my New York Body Bag and took out my usual winter coat. If I weren't coughing so much I'd go for a walk on the beach tonight. As it was I stayed home and kvetched while my girlfriends had a party. January 14, 2013 On the way back from my physiotherapist's I stopped at a grocery. Not a mom and pop business but a single man, doing everything on his own. Small businesses are really suffering now and so I have been trying to focus as much of my shopping in little stores. But I didn't really need much - some vegetables, fruit, chocolate. But when I paid, the shopkeeper handed me the bags and said "On behalf of the management the staff and all our administration, I'd like to thank you for purchasing at our establishment." With all the depression around here, the frowning faces, the paranoid news, it's nice to have some irony. January 15, 2013 If just 80% of the population vote, the government can be changed. Apparently Obama believes it is imperative, and so do I. I know a different government will not be experienced, but the fact that any one not in total tune with the present government has been kept away from any real experience is even more frightening. So get out there and vote. Here's a Hebrew Youtube that explains why There's still time to buy a round-trip ticket from New York or Boston or Toronto.
January 17, 2012 Yesterday, when Aleppo university was bombed, I pictured bloodstained examination books, classrooms in rubble, and the campus full of shells. I haven't heard much more than the fact that more than 80 people were killed, but it haunts me. How I felt totally responsible for every one of my 50 students when we had sirens in our classroom, and how I wanted everyone to hold hands, to hang on to each other, to support one another. I don't care who was responsible for that bombing, but I can't stop wanting to hold out my hand to those students.