July 18, 2016
I'm putting off doing my exercises by writing this. That is, I'm really tired of exercising and not getting feedback. The blow I took in my hip wound in the cafe on Friday night when this guy pushed back his seat as I was passing seem to have undermined the rest of my body. However this vulnerability did not prevent me from sitting on a stool on Ivn Gvirol street this morning. My friend is vegan and invited me to brunch at Allergia - i think that's what it is called. Nothing wrong with vegan.
July 19, 2019
Geez Turkey scares me. Look at what it's doing to higher education and its deans. I mean it's not Erdogan demanding their termination but the board of higher education. and 15000 professors. just because they're not religious. think of it - how Germany lost one third of it's math professors in 1933 because they were Jews. how does a culture overcome that kind of loss?
July 20, 2016
How can we overcome the kind of loss we seem to be enduring with the closing of culture and educational alternatives?
We celebrated Omer's birthday at Dizengoff Center. It is still the craziest shopping mall I've ever seen - weird and fun. you never know what you will discover at the next turn. I love it. the corners, the surprises, the variety of people. there's even an app to find your way around.
July 21, 2016
I'm off this afternoon to rehearse "Pirate Jenny" for a friend's birthday. i don't know why but i volunteered to do it and when i sing it i'm so full of hate i can imagine what it means to kill - just like Nina Simone. here. The only difference is I can't sing.
that's why i believe that poetry and music puts us in the place of the Other. And why I am terrified by the government protest at the program on the army channel about Mahmoud Darwish. There is a documentary that is now playing on television about him called: "Write it down: I'm an Arab." And he speaks in both Arabic and Hebrew about his life as a refugee and his love for an Israel woman. His discussion of Bialik's poetry and it's longing is especially moving - that lonfinf is the same to all of us.
take a look at the poem:here
I wrote on facebook:
A poem is a weapon:
You can get fired for carrying it
You can get arrested for writing it
You can die from longing
To pass it to others.
I might have put this up before, but suddenly it appeared when i was looking up Darwish on youtube and i thought to share it again
July 22, 2016
Friday afternoon in Meir Park. Omer's sixth birthday was celebrated in the same place as last year and with the same two birthday friends. I find this park to be a perfect reflection Tel Aviv - the children ran all over the small park on missions - throughout all the different sections - and there was no thought of worrying about them. The heat was almost bearable and not noticeable in all the excitement - pizza was delivered by motorbike to the food tables.
there is a place for dogs to run, but they also run all over the park. And outside the park, the animal shelter offers dogs for adoption. they are pretty much the same dogs, but the dogs to be adopted don't get to sun in the park with their friends, don't get loved, don't get fed properly. We passed them brokenhearted.
On my way out, I got tired when Ezi tried the local toilets and sat down on a bench. Near me were two slender guys in elaborate running gear speaking in Russian. And then a very big man passed walking a dog, and as he passed, commented on their conversation in Russian. "Hey, do you speak Russian?" one of the runners asked. By this time the dog-walker was almost out of the park and shouted over his shoulder in Russian, "a little" as he disappeared. For some reason I found this amusing and laughed. The runner immediately came over to me and said, "He understood what we were saying, but he didn't want to admit it. He must be Lithuanian." And then he went into a long speech about how Lithuanians don't acknowledge that they know Russian, and I sat there listening and wondering why he was so verbose and insistent. Then Ezi showed up - and we left. It took me a few hours to realize that we had witnessed a drug deal and the guy was trying to figure out if i understood like the dog-walker did.
July 23, 2016
I think we have to stop publicizing mass shootings so much. it is contagious. It's important to realize to what extent good behavior and positive examples helps to direct the lives of people. There is one program on channel 1 called 'heroes' that does this, but the models are older, adults, not young people who can make a change in the world and need models. Kiri Radinsky, for one, who has created algorithms for predicting future.
I'm not being a fuddy duddy - i know this kind from Munich was crazy but he was more influenced by the publicity a mass killing can get you than Isis. And this is a society in which it is very hard to get rewarded by recognition for anything.