It’s in Jerusalem. As we say in Hebrew, “Alek Pestival.” I mean, not only have we deserted Metulla, and mitigated the tragedy of a forsaken town, but I don’t think there will be one poem read about the past year. Nevertheless, I am longing for culture to continue in this country – for writers to hear each other and learn. And I’ll be there if I can. I’m supposed to appear on each one of the 3 days.
The whole thing is a bit of slapdash – a poetry festival that’s half prose, no english schedule. Here’s the Hebrew:
If you have not heard of Ka. Tzentnik, or the LSD treatments of Jan Bastians, it’s time to learn. See the movie, Return from the Other Planet (2023),I admit I never read Ka. Tzentnik, but I knew a lot about Auschwitz from the survivors I grew up with, and about Bastians from his son, Roland.
What I didn’t quite realize was that Bastians and his treatment of Post Auschwitz survivors must have been derived from the psychiatrist who was my teenage idol, R.D. Laing.
But that’s another story.
The story here is this amazing film about Ka Tzetnik and the books he wrote about the Holocaust, a work you must see. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ4mm7t33KE
Because the situation is so bad here I couldn’t read the paper or watch news, so I started watching old army series. The soldiers are so naive, so warm, so fine. The problems are so innocent – it is a perfect escape.
I heard today that solders with pdsd are being treated the same way Katzetnik was treated after he fainted at the Eichmann trials – with hallucinogenics – to relive the trauma. The doctor was asked if the government was subsidizing the treatment – and he laughed.
I don’t know how to do it yet, but I’m going to find a way to contribute to this institution. And if you have any information, please let me know.
Fell. By tomorrow I’ll be well enough to party, but today the wind got knocked out of me by a petty fall. There’s probably big news but today I’m reading a bio of Rambam and Cordoba is much more interesting than Tel Aviv.
Because one of the panels I’m on in the poetry festival next week is about a writer in the holocaust, I’ve been reading a lot about holocaust porno – and the comparison is inevitable – the way everybody becomes evil in this situation, even the victims. That point has to remain central in all our minds all the time in times like these.
But I was thinking of something else today. The doctor who was supposed to be fixing something in my skin kept me waiting for an hour, even though I had been injected with something to dull the pain two hours before. But when he arrived, and began to work on me, he could not be his usual charming self. Instead he had to talk about how young men had to have drastic plastic surgery and how much of a waste it was. I realized how he had been working on some soldier whose face had been blown up and my silly little mark had no significance to him. or to me either anymore.
First, the love part. Tonight is Tu-B’Av. It’s the equivalent of Valentine’s Day in practice although the background is much more significant. Anyway we went to buy a ring, And I told the lady I was looking for something modest and flat because I don’t wear rings. But after much consideration I wound up picking out a grotesquely large and ostentatious piece – that I love. Why? 1. Ezi liked it too 2. It has many layers and looks something like the countless emotions we have every day in the war we’re going through. 3. It was made by a brother and sister named Rosenstein – my maiden name. You will see me wearing it on days when I really need support.
We also went to the beach which was amazing as usual. We looked back at the full moon and there was something so eternal about warm emotions. Even though my day was not at all productive and pretty nasty, I got all mushy about my friend, who, like me, gets intimidated by powerful women.
Fear: Hizballah showed the filming of its vast tunnels – big enough for rocket carriers, complex enough to really erase us. Why are they showing their ‘secret weapon’ to us now? To intimidate us further? I would think they would not show us anything until they used it – unless they too are scared – of us. So we’re playing big time chicken.
A woman who was always there – for laughing, for celebrating, for weeping. Even the last time I saw her she taught me a lesson about overcoming shyness in the service of honoring others. She was a mensch.
While Hizballah is showing us the videos of all their tunnels and their massive weaponry and raining down their usual 50 odd rockets on the north, I am chattering with my friend (now 10 months in exile) about our college days and how we now understand what we were experiencing. Then Ezi and I go out to the exhibit of Maskit
Ezi has a long history of the fashion house of Maskit
since the chief designer was a deep friend of Ezi’s parents and even I managed to meet with her long ago. As a gesture that brought me into the family, Ezi’s mother bought me a famed desert coat then. How wonderful to see the coat in the museum now, a symbol of the effort to incorporate the new immigrants and the immediate environment into our lives.