Between being and oblivion

muchas of muchas

2011-06-08T23:59:00.002+03:00

Much has happened over the past few months. We're in california at the moment and leaving for columbia on friday. I'll be home in tel aviv for a bit come July and this excites me to no end. A has been active with his music label in NYC and LA. He's just about ready to release his next album, one in english and one in hebrew ( for israeli ears only, hahaha ;-) His style changes so much when he switches his music to his native tongue of hebrew. The music will shift from pure unobliterated rock and rock with sweet riffs and catchy melodies to sorrowful ballads in the Ivrit album.
California is lush and I've had Griffith Park as my backyard playground for all my trail runs and the Ocean tickling my feet at the beginning of open water swim sessions. I've met quirky and lovable people here and already made some lasting friendships.

motivation mania

2011-02-22T06:04:00.002+02:00

Omg, whenever I have a conference with the director of my non-profit and with the director of our new baby affiliated non-profit, I get so excited and motivated and start chomping at the bit to get to work. Some people have the effect on us. I hope on good days, I can be like that too. I guess we all end up inspire others to catalyze and kick change into fast forward.

been a while...

2011-01-07T15:48:00.002+02:00

Here we are in Vina del Mar Chile. Extravagant beauty in the craggy mountains and sweeping shorelines. We met an israeli father travelling with his daughter through south america. When we were in a little restaurant called flora de chile, we heard hebrew wafting through the mix of spanish and the clang of dishes. Lo and behold, we turned and sitting in the back of the room was the father and daughter. It doesn't matter where you travel as an israel, somehow you'll find and bond with other israelis. Being from Israel is like a sticky glue that binds us all together around the world.

pura vida

2010-12-25T20:55:00.001+02:00

Almost time for us to leave for our South American whirlwind. Only one week left!

Taking advantage of insanity

2010-12-25T20:45:00.002+02:00

So by now many of us have read about the palestinian boy sent to infilitrate an israeli settlement, across the green line, who was sent in the hopes of his relatives that he would be shot and spared a life of mental illness. Mental illness indeed remains a stigma in the palestinian territories and israel alike, despite the number of riotously insane people, many of whom consider themselves to be active members of the knesset and PLO negotiating teams.....but I digress. As distressing as this story is, there remains a few things to be cheered by.
1. The boy wasn't shot
2. The IDF were responsible enough to recognize that the boy was acting not of his own will
3. Not a shot was fired
4. The family was caught
5. The boy will now likely get proper care by mental health authorities
6. The IDF is clearly acting with a renewed sense of responsibility and cautiousness which belies many palestinians dogged belief in the solely reactive nature of the military.

Encouraging not depressing.

Disaster Experts: For better of worse

2010-12-16T08:48:00.002+02:00

We had a wild and completely untamed storm that hit tel aviv the other day. It was hurricane like in scope and damaged most of the boardwalk from the south end ( Jaffa- where we live) to the north end ( leading into herziliya). I was out running the first and second days of the storm and saw bricks in the deck of the old city in Jaffa, being thrown up in the air. I watched as trees fell in front of me and braches flew beside me. I hopped over piles of cigarettes that made their way up onto the roads and somehow found eachother like brothers in kind. Mountains of refuse lay everywhere. It was as if the sea got fed up and threw up all the garbage that was laying ill in it's bowels.

After two days the storm stilled it's voluptous winds and the rain came to a peter. Rays of sunshine peaked out and a rainbow dared to make an appearance. Within 24 hours, Isreal sprung into action and managed to almost completely rehabilitate our damaged waterfront and the beautiful port in old jaffa. It was pretty incredible to see how poor we are at prevention and how skilled we are at disaster response after the fact. Ironic and comical almost.

Break on through ( to the other side)...

2010-12-05T16:33:00.002+02:00

Music has always drawn me in. It pulls me tight like an octupus latches onto prey with it's tentacles of force. But instead of sucking me dry it infuses me and keeps my mind and soul moist. When I was overseas with my boyfriend (A), we spent some time visiting at my parents place in Toronto. We try to get home to my parents and brothers for as many of the jewish holidays as possible. Anyway, I have a gorgeous baby grand piano there that I hadn't touched in a good ten years. I'm a bit of a perfectionist and if I can't practice like an obsessive fiend than I tend to avoid playing with technical imperfection. I've started to play again. Just a little bit. Just enough to let the sound saturate me and let my fingers remember the patterns that they would skip through pauseless in their adherance to the sheet music. The rust slows me and my hands tire much quicker than they used to, but the piano remembered me well.

A is a professional musician. He's the consummate professional and takes his craft seriously with constant practice and consideration of all matters musical. I'm not a musician by trade but I'm constantly inspired by his playing and songwriting and expression through art. The sound of his voice is soothing for a rock/pop artist and he has a beautiful falsetto that he uses to great effect like Chris Martin from coldplay.

In Toronto, he took to my piano and began composing lyrics and improvising melody immediately. What's interesting to me is that most of rock and pop music on the piano is based on standard chords and simple patterns that change up a bit with variations in mood and key. My training is only in classical piano and I used to play a bit of jazz style that I had taught myself. Classical piano music is technical and a bit demanding and I think it was easier for me to stop playing than to do injustice to my favourite classical pieces. But, rock and pop pieces feel like fun days in the musical playground. Not intimidating for an unpracticed player at all.

Speaking of fun days in the musical playground... This past summer, during a camping trip, while some close friends of ours were making shakshuka on the beach, A composed a really funny and cute piece that translates as "allah makes shakshuka". It's become a cult favourite at shows in between his real set list. On wednesday during a little show A is having, we're making shakshuka to spice up the night a little bit. It's the funniest concept to build a fan base but we live in Israel and people here love food, so it makes sense to cook our way to success. hahaha...

architects in dispute resolution?

2010-10-21T03:15:00.003+02:00

This weekend I'm presenting at what I assume will be a small conference in Boston and the abstract/paper I wrote that was selected is on the use of health diplomacy as an alternative tool in mediating and managing global conflict. One of the professors attending the conference is a Professor of law (Harvard Phd) and he's organized an ongoing project involving architects from Israel, the palestinian territories, and the U.S. The idea is for them to devise creative, architectural ways to portion jerusalem for dual use purposes. The project is based out of UMass.

I took note of it because I'm so heavily involved in the peace through health movement and like to compare the current state of apolitical activity in dispute resolution by other non-traditional career disciplines. I'm not really for a division of Jerusalem, although I am entirely for land exchange or proportioning land to the palestinians from the westbank and protecting pre-existing palestinian land rights. Regardless, it's important to entertain ideas and feed dialogue even if it's akin to a disneyland trip for architects.

jackrabbit

2010-10-17T02:09:00.002+02:00

Speed and precision. In life we need agility, speed, and precision. Rarely in medicine do we have the luxury of hours to pour over diagnostic algorithms and differentials. Rarely in life can we spend weeks and months deciding what to do next. Timing can mean everything.

confusion and comprehension squared

2010-10-14T05:26:00.003+02:00

Everything changes so quickly that it's hard to even try for predictability. I never would have imagined that I would be where I am now figuratively. I never would have imagined myself so happy with such basic premise. I have my ups and my downs like anyone and I don't flaunt my mood around but instead try to invest myself in life so that I create more reason for life to flower.

I read the news like a ravenous greyhound, sourcing high and low brow forms of my nutritious info-porn. But as dark as the daily news can get, I have a retreat box that I go to emotionally that allows me to target what I personally can change and get over what I can't.

Sometimes I wonder if my 12 year old self would recognize my 30+ year old self because I'm much less tough and far more vulnerable than I was at that age, but at the same time I can feel clarity in vibrant colours much more than I could back then. I was always the kid that tried to do it on her own. I felt that I had no help from anyone and it was tough. Now my life is so intertwined with my loved ones that it makes me wonder if I misread all those childhood years and toiled so hard unnecessarily. perception can be damning.

Right now I just want focused effort from my practical output and effortless focus from my personal insight. I keep throwing up constant checks and balances at myself to make sure I'm on track and that I'm not totally getting swept away by my passion and emotion. In the past my love led me to circumvent my rational voice. As mortals we do that when nose to nose with pure undiluted love. My emotion ate me alive until I found my balance again and yet somehow I came back to life with better perspective and a larger capacity to love and learn. I think that was my reward for suffering so much. I actually matured and grew better prepared for what was later to come and the feelings that run so deep I'm not so quick to suppress.

anyway, welcome to confusion and comprehension squared. my random ramblings for the night.

never ending connections

2010-09-26T03:45:00.001+02:00

It's such a small world and I'm constantly surprised by how much fewer a value than 6 degrees separates me and the people in my past, present, and future. I guess that's a good reason to live your life as best as you can, while treating people as well as possible. Everything and everyone is somehow interconnected. Besides the obvious impetus of treating people well for the sake of human dignity, in this tangential map of social networking, rumours and truths can spread like wildfire.

uncharted territory

2010-09-24T18:43:00.003+02:00

I've never been in a place like this before. loved and empowered and feeling like together we could conquer the world. making a difference has never been so easy. I'm so proud of him for who he is and he's proud of me and he accepts me with all my faults and embarrassing gaffes. we're traversing mountains literally and figuratively. nights in the sinai utterly exposed led to the most meaningful birthday of my life. We're building together and it makes the hard and sharp parts of life less incisive

a bissle of this....

2010-07-18T15:25:00.003+03:00

so, life has been frenetic, challenging, and intensely beautiful all at once. I'm finishing off the second graduate degree that I was working on this year at the same time as handling my clinical work, my managerial responsibilities in the medical division of an american outsourcing company, my health diplomacy commitments, my training, my love life and my social life. Everything is intertwined. Very soon, I'll be heading overseas again to put into place details with my ngo and the clinton foundation for the clinic I'm heading up in Haiti. My volunteer committment with my NGO is going to somewhat turn into a paid job. I'll continue doing a lot of my health diplomacy work on a volunteer basis, but the Haiti project will be a paid contract.

My boyfriend and I went to visit some friends of ours last night in a little arab village about an hour's drive from tel aviv. These are close friends of ours and happen to be genuine, intelligent,accomplished, beautiful human beings. But, one thing that struck me, considering that I'm an immigrant to israel, is that the residents of the village spoke arabic and hebrew. It piqued my interest because the residents spoke hebrew as a tool of assimilation into israeli society, but didn't speak english even though it's an international currency.

Our friends cousin's and siblings had hopes to either study or work in the united states at some point but yet they lacked the ability to converse let alone benefit from a functional life in the language. I can identify with this somewhat as I came to Israel without the ability to do my job or bank or order a salad in hebrew. It's possible to live in Israel without speaking any hebrew and to even be fairly successful, but you can't really benefit from all israel and the israeli culture have to offer without fully knowing the language. I guess, like me, they would pick up the language along the way. But there are also the hazy issues intertwined with identity that struck me in that village. Would it be confusing or empowering to live in a language other than that which your family, village, and/or ethnicity chooses as primary?

Next week, I'm heading to the sinai for a couple days with A, some friends, and my sweet and funny brother with his girl. It'll be my first time in the sinai and I can hardly wait to scuba dive, relax with those close to me, and be immersed in the desert heat. On my birthday, I like to do things that renew me and give me strength. I usually find this outdoors in the wilderness, by the dead sea, or on a quiet beach. Sinai will be ideal.

mishu mashu

2010-06-22T20:57:00.000+03:00

Good luck to those who need luck.

battle cry and battering rams

2010-06-15T20:11:00.002+03:00

I just can't believe it. I just can't believe how scuzzy some people in Israel can be. I'm not to be misinterpreted please as I don't mean just Israel...but at this moment I have my spears sharpened towards one particular israeli company.

here we go now

2010-06-15T17:56:00.002+03:00

I'm so stressed I can hardly convince my body to cease production of the voluminous litres of acid that are set to light fire to my esophagus through day and night. So, what is the illogical but entirely female approach to take? Buy frequent and vast quantities of yogurt and frozen yogurt to soothe. It doesn't soothe emotionally as I'm feeling so overwhelmed and sick to my stomach.

So much going on. My dad had a cardiac episode on the plane from Toronto to a much needed vacation in Vegas. They were going to divert the plane to a landing but my father refused to inconvenience the other passengers.

My medical writing/editing place of work is giving me grief about my salary, by simply not paying it. All my medical staff have been put into a temporary hold pattern, including myself, since the due to an inept business development (medical) manager, all contacts fell through. I'm told that should my salary be paid then the business development manager, a right wing religo who lives across the green line, will not receive his full bonus. I'm supposed to feel badly that he's not receiving enough of a bonus when he completely failed at his job? when my staff and myself aren't getting our basic salary to pay our bills? .....and this without any prior notice.

I'm up to my ears in work for this unethical company at the same time as I maintain clinical responsibilities, set up my project in Haiti, and I'm in the final month of the graduate program that I've been working on this year. It's an intense workload and I'm slipping into frustration. Especially since I'm completely being taken advantage of. I do enough volunteer work without having my paid work be volunteer work.

Discombobulated and ineffectual arses. How can they treat people like that?

Thank whatever power that may be for bringing me into such a warm, respectful, passionate, loving and supportive relationship that I can at least look to as a sweet recovery pod, when I need a small break from the storm of this israeli cut throat company.

Brothers in arms

2010-06-01T18:38:00.002+03:00

My younger brother is in Israel. I've been trying to get him here for at least 5 years. The timing was ripe for his visit. I couldn't be more thrilled, but my excitement was tempered with my horrification at the Flotillagate episode. Surely, we could have utilized better intelligence to hamper the progress of the vessels without having violence erupt, our soldiers injured, and protesters killed. No one in this case comes out a winner.

I'd write more as my emotions and words are boiling over but I'm up to my ears in workload.

Till it dissipates in a few days....

miles and miles of heaven

2010-05-23T20:56:00.002+03:00

This past weekend, we packed up and went to our favourite camping spot along a beachy area not too far from Haifa. Friends of ours had already set up before we were able to get there, as I needed to work late, but the warm welcome when we stepped onto the sand with mint tea and bonfire already waiting for us, made a weeks worth of daily stress slip away quicker than a wink.

Together we handily managed to get my tent up in record time, chik chok, and we went about padding the inside with our expertly positioned sleeping bag and blankets. Between chatter in hebrew, english, and arabic, we whiled away the weekend hours making up rhythms and melodies, swimming out to reefs and declaring them conquered, examining moss crabs, running through sand dunes and abandoned paths, playing matkot, killing the game of soccer, and generally combining efforts to make the best bbq's in existance with lots of fresh vegetables from the arab village nearby.

Adorable made up songs in an instant and did one honouring the amazing shakshuka that our good friend Allaa made. I got it all on iphone video. Give it a month, the song's going to be the next national hit. hahaha. I'm ralling for it to be included on his new israeli ep.

Besides the fact that the weekend was incredible. I think I truly witnessed the power of music to bridge any divide.

culture gap

2010-05-13T22:41:00.002+03:00

I'm doing another graduate degree while I continue to work two jobs, and despite the difficulty in meeting assignment deadlines and finding the time to complete my course readings, I'm loving every minute of the program.

But something struck me today.

My class consists of professionals from many differant fields. We have lawyers, UN workers, NGO directors, Diplomants, and etc as members of the small class. Out of 32 students, at least 20 are non-jewish and have come to study in Israel specifically because of the strength of the program.

The class diversity means that we tend to have exceptionally interesting discussions. But what hit me wasn't so much a discussion as a few emails from a close friend and classmate from Japan.

This morning she posted a facebook notice that she's heading to Gaza for a picnic. Someone posted a comment that she should say hello to Gilad and maybe even use some of that sweet doll like charm to persuade Hama's henchmen to release him. I thought it was a peculiar choice of locale for a picnic.

After a morning of facebook exchanges, I noticed that she sent our class an email telling us that she had developed an interest in the french perspective on the holocaust. She suggested some books written in the french language and noted how she preferred a pro zionist take on the holocaust experience. I thought it was unusual that she would out of the blue feel the need to discuss the holocaust interest right after expressing her interest in going to gaza, as if she assumed a need to appease our jewish and arab classmates at the same time. It felt like a small person was stretching over too far a chasm that was only imaginary.

Is this what we've (Israel) created? A situation where our global friends and family constantly assume it's necessary to balance an israeli action with an arab action. Why can't we just frame things on their own? Realistically, Israel has so little to do with resolution in conflict ridden regions that constantly tying actions together is leading everyone in the wrong direction.

a word from the SATC scripts

2010-05-11T23:02:00.000+03:00

Carrie: Later that day I got to thinking about relationships. There are those that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up lots of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that bring you far from where you started, and those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you can find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous.

coincidence

2010-05-11T19:34:00.005+03:00

If you're a free thinker, who can consciously deconstruct mental boundaries and are open to liberal interpretation of experiences, then you can probably support theories of synchronicity and coincidence. Often times my life seems like a series of coincidences, joined length to length with some larger purpose and intent overarching that I'm supposed to divine. I take my imaginary divining rod with me everywhere I travel, not to find water, but to find the fluid of comprehension that underlies who we are individually.

Sometimes I ask for answers and get them in the form of an immediate and telling experience. I feel like I'm asking a council of elders and this is how I get feedback from them.

I've ended up in relationships purely by chance and coincidence. I've fallen in love purely by chance and coincidence. I believe that I was supposed to have the experience that I did in my last relationship. I think despite the fact that all my previous relationships were serious and longterm, I never really felt love as deep as I did in my last relationship. He may have even been my first real love. I still love him but the nature of my love has changed. Reality is harsh and when he out of the blue decided that he loved me and wanted me in his life again, I had already used all my strength to move on and I couldn't risk going backwards. It took me a long time but I did move ahead with my life. I tried to be friends and would always help him if need be, and I did, over and over again without a single thank you.

By coincidence and chance I fell in love again when I thought I never would.

I've never been luckier than the day I met Adorable. With him I feel such unfettered love and intimacy because it flows freely. I don't feel like I have to hold anything back. We're fully involved in each other's lives and he's wholeheartedly embraced whatever we're building together. I can't predict the future but I feel lucky for the now. I hope I can give him the flowers and forests that he gives me.

chipped

2010-04-28T19:27:00.001+03:00

Our Vet found a chip embedded in our dog which means she has a home already. It turns out her name is Mica and she lives not too far from us. I'm soooo sad, but I'm sure her family will be overjoyed to have her back.

Adopted by choice

2010-04-28T14:14:00.002+03:00

The other day after Tel Aviv's first TEDx conference, we attended a pretty happening after- party to hear Asaf Avidan and the Mojo's play a short set. Afterwards, feeling a bit hungry, we went with a few of my friends to the Container, which is an outdoor restaurant/bar situated in the old port of Jaffa. During our dinner we noticed a small dog going from table to table looking for crumbs of affection and prehaps a few hugs and scratches behind the ear. We didn't think much of it, but then after walking my friends out to catch a cab we turned to head up the steps to the artist colony and noticed that the little dog had followed us. Before we could pause, the dog scooted up the steps of old jaffa and at the top sat and waited for us. As we got closer to the top, she took a right turn and scooted up another set of steps leading directly to our door.

Looking at each other we burst into uncontrollable laughter. The dog had decided to plant herself in front of our apartment (where we spend most weekends). We noticed that her paw was injured and despite her inability to walk properly she had still made her way up all the stairs and chosen our apartment. So we opened the door and let her in, giving her some water, people food, and a soft cushion to sit on. She was tick free. Immediately she relaxed and fell asleep.

It seems that she hasn't had a home for a while, but she doesn't seem to have been abused, was clean and very affectionate. I think she decided she needed parents and figured we could give her a good home so she adopted us.

Tommorow we're going to take her to the vet to see if she has an implanted indentity chip and to take care of that paw injury. In the meanwhile, we've named her and made her part of our life.
Yesterday, while I was working, my boyfriend tossed her in my car with a blanket protecting the seats and took her to all of his meetings. She hasn't been alone for a second and is madly in love with him already.

Sticky Pot

2010-04-21T12:52:00.003+03:00

It's more than a bit sad and unfortunate when someone can be so paranoid and neurotic that they aren't even able to allow themselves to accept outpourings of kindness for what it is and not make assumptions on the nature of it.

I feel sad for those who are in this situation, however I don't care very much for anyone who chooses to attribute intentions or thoughts to me that I never asserted nor do I possess.

Kissanddagger loves to jump to conclusions about my thoughts even though he couldn't ever be bothered to actually find out what I thought or think for that matter. He assumes motives to my actions and twists them so that a simple act of wellwishing is construed as an attempt to hurt by my existance. Kissanddagger can't simply understand that someone might not want to be with someone who constantly belittles them and so the only way he can deal with the situation is to create some type of hatred.

It's a sticky situation to be in and a difficult way to live a life.

attack of the kissanddagger

2010-04-19T13:42:00.002+03:00

I've done all that I can. I wanted calm and instead I got held down, duct taped, and pistol whipped. I could never say no if there was something positive I could do and usually despite the lack of a thank you, I would get about two days of peace then the onslaught would begin again. In a million years, I would never say a bad word against someone. In fact my friends often try to push me to say things to show that I realize that certain ways of being treated aren't right. I still wouldn't give in because I think I can somehow rationalize away the bad treatment by focusing on what's good, but in some cases I suffer because of it. In the case of kissanddagger I suffered greatly. I was used. This I can accept, but I can't accept the constant emotional intrusion.

bipolar? schizophrenia? or just a personality disorder?

2010-04-19T11:36:00.002+03:00

People around me have commented before about their thoughts on someone who has been completely awful to me, despite my absolute decision to not take it personally and to continue to offer everything that I can as a human being. It's hard not to take things to heart when someone is determined to put you down at every occasion with graphic verbal slices. But realistically, certain behaviour when repeated over and over in a pattern can allow us to rationalize away the hurt by deciding that the behaviour and comments themselves are major symptoms of a far reaching underlying pathology.

I'm so lucky that by chance I met someone who has come to truly love me and who allows me to love him. It's probably the first time I've been able to really open myself to someone and fully trust and be together in a true partnership where I'm not afraid to get torn apart and I have the support to jump up and excel with consistent work.

This warm space of trust and intimacy has been my refuge and prevented me from falling when under attack by Mr. kissanddagger. I pray for the strength to continue building this foundation for something beautiful and for the ability to be as true with each other as humanly possible so that the foundation can never be destroyed by any kissanddagger.

At the same time it astonishes me that kissanddagger can ask me for the world in one breath, have me do everything possible to give it to him, and then in the next breath try to slay me for wanting a little bit of distance.

tinted kaleidescopes

2010-04-18T21:08:00.002+03:00

I always find it perplexing how each person in the world can look at something, be it a situation or an inanimate object or a colour or a piece of sushi, and perceive it in such contrasting ways. It's probably natural that this divergence in perspective exists across the board for humanity because this allows us to rethink our own perspective and test our five sense and challenge our perception. If a majority agrees that for all intents and purposes that the colour green is the same as the grass then those that think that grass is in fact lavender are thought of as a bit bizarre. But who wants to be thought of as bizarre? and is it even our prerogative to call someone out on their messed up argumentative bizarreness? Forget that. If someone wants to create their own world then I'm not going to be the one to bring them into my own reality.

It doesn't bother me and I actually love that humanity germinates differences, what bothers me is when someone refuses to see that it's possible for differences to exist and that their own reality is not the be all and end all for the world in it's entirety. It amazes me even more when someone can make up an entire situation in their head and create an entire mission battlefield argument in their head and then continue to blow it up on their own with little outside contribution.

Tonight I was supposed to go to a memorial ceremony, one of many in Israel tonight for Israel's fallen. What made this one different was that it was to memorialize losses on both sides of the conflict in this region. I've wanted to go to this one for years and for various reasons haven't gone. I RSVP'd and many of my friends were set to go. At the last minute I canceled under pressure from someone in my life who at every point I've dropped everything to help, even while a million miles away, despite being treated cruelly and constantly belittled by this person who doesn't ever bother to say thank you. This person has created such a situation in their mind that while I'm impressed that the person is so in touch with self emotion, I'm nauseated by this same persons inability to understand anyone elses emotion or reluctance to be close.

There's so much that I need to vent about here and it's a shame that I can't at this moment. Hopefully some of my emotion will percolate into something readable and inoffensive soon.

Back in the U.S.S.R.

2010-04-10T23:38:00.002+03:00

Actually, it's not the u.s.s.r. despite the high number of pre-dissolution soviet union immigrants. I'm back in Israel. But my moody frame of reference is Beatles,(or" The Beatles...luv" as Lennon would say) after reading an old rollings stones article about the bands breakup.

This morning I saw a play in Jaffa at the Geshem theatre written by Pinter, called "The Birthday Party". The hebrew script was pretty simple so I didn't have any problem following. But, I found it depressing and irksome. It was about a pianist who wakes up in a boarding house and nothing makes any sense to him and it seems like he's entered a Kafkaesque world where he keeps blinking to wake up and remains glued to the incomprehensible. He's forced to celebrate a strange birthday, when he denies it's his birthday and then two strange men show up to collect him for abandoning the fold which the audience is never privy to information about. The relationships Pinter created seem to me to be awkward and the dark violent undercurrent would have caused me to lose interest if I hadn't needed to pay such close attention to the words so I could translate back to english in my mind.

In the car on the way back home, my boyfriends father, an actor who's renowned in Israel, tried to engage me in conversation about it as it's one of his favourite plays. He's a huge Kafka fan as I am, but I couldn't really connect to where the playwright Pinter took this.

the pressure monster

2010-04-03T04:31:00.002+03:00

There's so much pressure to perform to expectation sometimes and it can be stifling as I fear failure and even imperfection acutely. I want to give everyone my best and it can be exhausting. This week my father had a serious cardiac procedure done and I was with him the full duration, but I wasn't able to let work drop while I was by his side as all of our staff, all the doctors working on my team are on passover holiday. Regardless of the holiday, expectations are that our productivity will not drop and so I trudge on working evening and night hours to make up for the days spent with my family. I can't very well complain as I do want to finish this project and ultimately leave the client with a sense of satisfaction.

double vision

2010-03-31T18:09:00.002+03:00

In Canada, unlike in Israel, we do two nights of seders.It's a bit much as the preparation for each night is intense and involves days of cooking and obsessing over the minute details so that each of our family members will leave our home with content bellies and full hearts. This year my mother and I prepared without an oven as the oven decided to throw a temper tantrum in the midst of a whirlwind cooking session prior to our passover prep. So rallying all our creative energies, my mom and I decended on our kitchen appliances with full force using crockpots, the barbeque, six stovetop burners going full tilt for days and an underoven heating cabinet. Every cooled crevice in our house was packed with delectable dishes, just waiting for the eve of passover.

We made osso bucco and leg of lamb and roast chicken and a giant turkey and sweet and sour meatballs (ground chicken), and fish ( just for me because I'm a pescitarian). There were a million side dishes of salads and vegetables and ratatouille and gefilte fish ( which I made with my grandfather as tradition dictates for us). My desserts were a hit as they were all gobbled up with the fresh fruit. I love cooking for passover from home as my family, immediate and extended, love to eat and it's such a pleasure watching family enjoy what i've made and I loved having everyone together.

Ultimately, in jewish tradition, celebrations with mad hatter style tables piled high bring families together. It's a little quirk of our culture that food draws the uncles and cousins together and there's a tricky little bit of pride in all the excess. We had so much that I felt terribly guilty and very aware of so many who have nothing. Today, my youngest brother and I will be going to deliver a couples bags of fresh food from the seders to one of the downtown shelters for native people in Toronto. It doesn't do much to alleviate the guilt of having but it's something.

argumentative bastards

2010-03-29T20:05:00.003+03:00

I never quite understood the passover saga. It's clear to me that my people struggled for freedom and that's a common theme throughout the rise of civilization, but did we really have to go through the forty years of wandering in the desert before mistaking canaan for canada? I guess our idol worshipping, conflict ridden masses really needed to be desperate for water and manna before we could stop fighting amongst ourselves and actually recognize the land of milk and honey when we saw it.

Thinking about the relationship between the pharoah and moses though , I've always been struck by how easy it would have been for moses to bide his time until the pharoah's death, when as the favourite son he would have been appointed pharoah and king of the known world. Once pharoah he could have released the hebrew slaves and us hebrews could have taken over Egypt ourselves. It would have been a lot faster, sparing everyone the series of plagues and Egypt would have flourished. Who knows, maybe our brethren would have come up ancient egyptian hydroponics and made the desert bloom a little earlier.

But no, Moses was hankering for a good fight. He couldn't sit back while his people were whipped making bricks in mudpits mixed with straw. But why not diplomacy? Act as an internal "deliverer" quietly discombobulating the corrupt construction leaders until his time came to be pharoah, which wasn't far off. I don't think us hebrews have historically been very skilled at international diplomacy because it often involves subverting our tongues in favour of patience and progression.

Seriously though. We could have owned Egypt....

sum of course

2010-03-29T04:20:00.002+03:00

I don't believe in jealousy as a concept, nor do I support it in practice. Especially, when it's spawned by the natural cycles of life. We live in ebbs and flows. Our experiences carry us just like waves carry frothy foam which rises and retreats from shore. One moment my life may be sweller than fresh guava juice and the next it may taste of briney sea salt. For me, it feels like the kicker is sticking in for the long haul because as long as good ethics are in place and I'm living according to the value set that I believe in, I'll make it through to the next plateau and maybe even scale a peak or two.

Life, to me, doesn't ever seem to be an easy binary division of good vs. bad. My career is on track and many opportunities have arisen to be somewhat of a changemaker in my field. Leading can be an experience filled with fear and anxiety and this I've experienced a hundred fold as I can't stand the thought of making mistakes. But, my approach has been to force myself to bypass hesitation and dive in giving weight to the trust that I should have in myself.

I'm in a tropical plateau with lush greenery around me in my mind, but nothing is perfect and everyone deals with difficulty of some sort.

This upcoming week, in the middle of passover, on a date for spring's fools, my father will be going for another medical procedure to follow up on the state of his severly blocked coronary arteries. I've arranged to be with my family during this time and the anxiety in my family home is palpable, but nothing nearly like what it would be if our family was broken or apart. In this role that I slip into of eldest daughter, I have to seal my lips and bury my personal fear so that I can summon the strength of granite to try and support my parents. We all lean on eachother, so none of us can collapse or we will fall hard and that's just not an option.

I would never wish for someone else's lot in life because there's no such thing as a perfectly smooth and easy life. I would rather take the reigns and create whatever goodness that I can with my own hands in the dark moist soil of life. We all have the ability in us to hold on until we
can regain our footing and propel forward again into the flow of life's nectar.

mefloquine hell

2010-02-20T17:51:00.002+02:00

So I could only get mefloquine in tel aviv to use as malarial prophylactic and it has major side effects. The other day I took my second dose, as it's a once a week dosage, and almost immediately I was thrown into 24 hours of violent vomiting, nausea, dizziness, headache, and fatigue. When I finally stopped throwing up, I broke out in a rash all over my face and eyes and lips. It looks like I have chicken pox.

I know I should have taken doxycycline which is a better choice but it's not covered in my health basket back in Israel, so I would have paid much more for it. Still knowing that I have such a strong reaction to most medications, I should have been more careful. Hopefully I'll feel better soon and my face will calm down. I'm glad I don't have a mirror here.

phew

2010-02-14T04:20:00.002+02:00

I know I said I'd be posting on another blog and I did set it up but haven't written anything yet. Our experience has been far too overwhelming and I've been far too busy and removed by reliable internet access. Right now I'm working at a field hospital in the emerg tent, but tommorow morning I'm designated to the internal medicine tent which is more my background.

Earlier today we drove up to one of the orphanages around ground zero near port au prince and treated some of the kids who have had zero access to basic health care. The clinic room consisted of a 60 year old cot and a dental chair. There was sewage running freely through the pathways in the orphanage compound. I'll write more about this later but I think these orphanages are the reason why I ended up volunteering here. I'm going to start up a project in tandem with some other NGO's to bring a mobile medical team for one week per month to 40 orphanages in the area who have no medical care for their children. Without it or any health education these orphanages end up with epidemics of typhus and cholera that are easily preventable forms of suffering. I think I'm supposed to do something about it. Actually, I don't think anyone could not do anything about it.

Working in the emerg tent has been stressful for me tonight as we had some major intakes; shootings with intestines leaking from the abdominal cavity, a full cervical fracture, crushed skull, a hefty ton of malaria cases and etc... The stress was just because it's been a while since I've done emergency rotations. Generally most of these cases require some out of the box thinking to make up for lack of resources. The IDF field hospital is gone and with it all the high tech equipment.

Today most of Haiti was fasting because some Israeli woman told the Haitian president before the earthquake that there was going to be a disaster if they didn't fast and cancel the Carnival. So, when the earthquake happened, the president ordered that the whole country fast and pray to make up for not heeding the warning of the Israeli woman.

So much to say but I'm too tired to write this and I have to go back to see if there are new patients in emerg. I'll be back here writing again when I get my next burst of written energy, because at this point inspiration doesn't provide me with enough energy to type. My tent and sleeping bag are looking awfully good right now :-)

still safe and sound

2010-02-11T01:12:00.001+02:00

I haven't disappeared but will be posting shortly to a new blog just dedicated to Haiti for a bit. I'll paste the link here so you can visit me there until I get back to the holy land. It'll start up shortly. See you soon on bloggy 2...

Obama girl?

2010-02-01T19:57:00.002+02:00

so the famous bikini clad Obama girl, who sung about her crush on Obama and went viral on Youtube as she garnered huge support for him during the presidential campaign, has now stated that she's fallen out of love with him. Obama girl set a press conference to complain about how Obama has focused too much on reforming health care in the U.S. and she doesn't understand why and thinks it's pointless when money could have instead been diverted to strengthening the american economy...shoppers unite! Sorry, but what a dumbass. Anyone who voted for Obama because of Obamagirl deserves to be led by Crusty the clown.

leaning tower of visa

2010-02-01T17:52:00.002+02:00

we finally got the visa for my colleague who's had a hell of a time with administrative lollygagging. More than a week late we're now book and paid to fly on thursday. see you all in bloggyville from a Caribbean IP address... It's a bit funny. When i mention to friends that I'm going to the Caribbean, most have no idea that I'll be sleeping on the ground in a sleeping bag with mosquito netting, drinking water purified with chlorine pills, and treating the ailments of 41,000 earthquake refugees within a small secured area. I hope I can really do my part there.

the daily post...

2010-01-27T22:20:00.002+02:00

As part of the agreement for sponsoring our flights to Haiti, I'm going to be responsible for some daily reporting of the situation on the ground and our work there. It needs to be readable by my work colleagues, so I'll probably set up another blog and will post a link here so anyone who reads my meandering thoughts and periodic fits of lovelorn anxiety can follow me in professional mode on the Haiti blog. Watch this space for a brand spanking new link :-)

i gotta feeling...

2010-01-26T19:58:00.002+02:00

so everythings in place to leave for Haiti with one exception. We're waiting to receive Visa's for our colleagues in the phillipines who are joining us at a meeting point in the U.S. before we journey together to the dominican republic and then to Haiti. I'm supposed to leave on thursday.

finding the stress balls

2010-01-21T10:45:00.003+02:00

Years ago I picked up a gift for my brothers in China. It was two beautiful little red boxes, embossed with traditional chinese designs, containing two perfectly round silver balls each. When you placed the balls in your hands you could turn them over and over with your palm and feel a light tinkling inside. The motion if handling the balls, the feeling of smooth, cold, metal, and the light vibration from the tinkling sound was supposed to bring relaxation and stress relief. Since my brothers were wrapped in asian martial arts culture at the time, I thought it might be an apt present. It was a little superfluous for them, to some extent, because the martial arts was the larger stress relief. But they did actually enjoy playing with them for a long while after I brought them as a gift.

I'm stressing today as the rain comes down and there's much on my mind.

Later tonight, I'm headed to a "Call for Action" roundtable on improving health for Arab women in Israel which will take place in Jaffa. I spread the word to many of my friends who will be attending sessions as well. I hope they have a good turn out for the larger conference because the planned agenda looks fascinating and is a perfect opportunity for civic mobilization in the furtherment of coexistance.

friends of ours?

2010-01-21T09:26:00.003+02:00

The Israeli ZAKA (emergency rescue and first aid team) that handles recovery of remains, flew directly to HAITI after a mission in Mexico and has been working almost non-stop since arrival. their only break was taken last shabbat when they paused to break bread and drink wine with colleagues from egypt and qatar... Disaster breeds anarchy, chaos, and... cross cultural closeness?

esthers lesson

2010-01-21T02:25:00.002+02:00

"For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father's family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?....."

so basically we owe it to ourselves and the world to do something and not sit idly by when things disintegrate around us. Even more so when we have a "royal position" ie. a skill set or a comfortable state in life that allows us to reach a little bit further.

Blinded by the light

2010-01-20T12:49:00.003+02:00

No one is ignoring Haiti. It seems to me that the entire worlds attention is now wrapped around this tiny nation, whose government has retreated into non-existance. Money is flowing in from everywhere but no one is quite sure how to administer it. The Americans are busy trying to ensure security in a historically highly volatile nation. As usual the security and logistics efforts threaten to consume the humanitarian efforts.

Since Israel is experienced in disaster management and we believe in the concept of "Tikkun Olam", which is something like healing the world, we're able to set up quickly and fill the health gaps left when the entire world has no choice but to focus on security. To some extent, our constant preoccupation with preserving our existance, has enabled us to walk a fully functional balance beam of administrating health care and managing human welfare in a secure environs while threatened.

One one matter truly irks me and that is the matter of everyone's neighbour and his sister wanting to help Haiti while ignoring all the other regions that need help. Sudan has fallen off the media radar. No one pays attention to the Congo anymore. Rwanda has lost it's luster. Shall I go on? It's a huge world with many problems...why must everyone choose to focus on the same one? Help Haiti but don't forget the other 7 billion living on the planet.

pride without prejudice

2010-01-19T16:21:00.002+02:00

I'm so proud of Israel and now I'm just as proud of my place of work. Sometimes it makes worklife easier when your personal motto matches with the mission statement at your workplace. I've just been notified that we have approval to organize a six person medical delegation to send to volunteer in Haiti for two weeks. Plane tickets will be purchased and salaries paid for the duration of the outreach trip. In addition, the team will be bringing over needed supplies to help stock the already established field hospitals.

i-efshar

2010-01-18T13:02:00.002+02:00

In the fall I decided to commit myself to doing another graduate degree full time while working full time. It's now the final week of the semester and I'm a few hours off the deadline for submitting two lengthy take home exams. I havent slept yet but since last night something has been creeping into my lungs and my throat is becoming sore.

It's impossible that I could be once again getting sick. the last time it took forever for my lungs to clear up and I run terrified from the possibility of doing a course of inhaled corticosteroids to deal with a respiratory virus. Maybe I'm having an allergic reaction to the smoke creeping under my door from my neighbours apartment. Maybe I'll finish the exam, stand in a hot moist shower and wish for the best.

wiiiiiilma....

2010-01-17T21:53:00.002+02:00

When I was a little kid, I'd often watch the flintstones and would marvel at how Fred would constantly get so strung out and wound up. It seemed to me that he was always yelling at fiery haired Wilma. Eventually the contrived conflicts and blasted bickering begun to bore me. It felt like a waste of time.

Now I live in a genuine conflict culture. My entire home region is populated by a people who live in constant conflict, with their neighbours, their work colleagues, their friends, and their families. Everyday I listen to stories of road rage, workplace rage, spousal rage, and so on and so forth.

A friend of mine once told me that if I ever felt frustrated or angered by the bad habits of someone close, I should think about how it might just be the flip side of their best habits as well. In which case, the thought would be able to help me better understand the situation and allow me to overlook detritus that would surely bother me. I try this all the time.

My personal approach to life is normally conflict adverse. I lean towards solving problems by removing my initial emotive response and focusing on the rational. But, this is not the best way to be when living in a society where conflict is desired, craved and valued as a method of problem resolution.

My compromise over the years has been to become more aware of my own needs and not be as willing to subterfuge myself in the name of conflict avoidance. I don't think this means I have to throw tantrums or bellow at the top of my lungs while pounding my fists into my chest and pointing my finger into someones face space.

But, at the same time, I don't want to always be fighting when my energy can produce so much more when I can direct it towards building and not destroying. It's interested to me since Israel has been so successful in many arenas, but, I think it has more to do with confidence, true skill, and professional absolutism than in conflict generation.

more than a dog...

2010-01-15T13:29:00.004+02:00

Rest in peace my sweet little pebbies. you were the best dog that ever existed. Your unlimited affection, bright eyed intelligence, and mischievousness made you such an integral part of the family that your absence will be felt acutely. I'll always remember how excited you got when you saw me getting ready for one of our epic walks together, and how your tiny tail wagged furiously whenever you heard one of our family's voices. You loved scampering around outdoors and circling the pool whenever we went swimming and you used to greet us at each point in the pool rim where we stopped. You guarded us against the chipmunks and raccoons and even though you were only 4 pounds of dog, you projected yourself as 100 pounds of teacup poodle ferocity. Your fur was the softest I've ever cuddled and your hugs the warmest. No one will ever take your place my little sweet pea.

consider yourself showered....

2010-01-13T12:48:00.003+02:00

Yesterday, we held a bridal shower for one of my closest and dearest friends. It was so funny hearing her describe the ecstatic smile on her fiancee's face when he proposed to her and how she hopes to find that smile across his lips again as they build their lives together. It's a good and healthy relationship, and she totally and completely deserves it. Her relationship is not an old one. It began less than a year ago, but it felt right to her and to him and the pace was fast and furious as it moved towards total commitment to each other. Part of her is anxious because the pace has been so quick, but I think her intuition has always been spot on and hope that she can trust it.

The shower began at 8pm and went until 4am and we made so much food and desserts that there was no way it could all have been finished, nevertheless, the girls and myself made a valient effort to prevent anything from going to waste. There was a ton of salads, homemade veggie sushi, focaccia pizza's, dips, spiced fritatta, cheesecake, two types of fruit crumble, chocolate cake, Knafe from Jaffa, nuts, chocolates, and a million other offerings for 13 women who enjoy food.

As the group nibbled into the night the conversation veered from the irreligious and antifeminist aspects of jerusalem holy sites, to advice given to the soon to be bride by each of our friends along with advice from the soon to be bride given to the lovelorn in our group of friends. We talked about her fiancee's most disgusting habit, which apparantly is his unwillingness to cut his toenails by himself. I've heard worse. She was gifted with about 7 differant types of see through lingerie, including a cooking apron which may well see more use in the bedroom than in the kitchen.

ICC or FLKLKJLKJW

2010-01-11T11:08:00.002+02:00

I'm in the process of writing an advocacy paper for a hypothetical situation where an new anti terrorism NGO in Israel has decided to up the ante, play some legal tennis and lob a lawsuit into the ICC against Mahmoud Abbas for funding terrorism activities through the PLO. To do this, I'm playing around with light terms like command responsibility, reviewing all terrorist actions since 2002, and then matching everything up with the Rome Statute and the body of material in the Geneva Convention. I'd much rather be baking in advance of my closest friends shower on tuesday.....oh distraction how do I love thee, let me count the ways!

collecting and reframing

2010-01-09T17:30:00.004+02:00

I feel the need to reframe my thoughts and shift my perspectives. This happens to me periodically when my weltershang, my worldview, gets shaken up. I like to be challenged to rethink, although sometimes it's embarrassing and painful as new realizations and variable awarenesses flower.

wanted...

2010-01-07T14:18:00.002+02:00

what do I want in a relationship? of course the usual;love, validation, respect, communication, and so forth. But realistically how much of this do I need? I realized that I need the affection that when wrapped around me, extends to the rest of my life and allows me to flourish with my life commitments. I need the kisses and the warm caresses as nourishment. I also need to be myself. This is key for me because I feel like I'm quite verbose in the expression of my personality.

I need to be able to dance at will, or sing along to the car radio or in a stairwell or taste the chocolate that's melted on another tongue first. If I try to hold back when the music moves me or hold in the tickling of my vocal cords it makes me feel stunted.

training in motion

2010-01-04T23:11:00.002+02:00

so it's 2010. I'm not at all ready to hop into the pool and start training again, as my shoulder is sharply painful which probably isn't helped by the fact that I regularly carry a shoulder bag which weighs about the same as I do. I stuff it with everything I own just to be prepared for any and all emergencies.

But, over the next few days, in the sphere of my sport, I'm going to transition over to focusing on being lighter so that when I do return to a slightly more intense and slightly more voluminous training schedule that the restriction doesn't interfere heavily with the intensity that I'm able to hold while training.

A friend of mine, also in medicine, went to a weight loss specialist who placed him on a program based on a breath metabolic analysis and he's managed to lose close to 30k over the past few months. It cost him several thousand shekels and I'm supposed to be learning how to save, not spend, so I'll resort to that only if I'm desperate for a kick start.

The blunt...J. Blunt.

2010-01-04T13:45:00.004+02:00

I have seen peace, I have seen pain, resting on the shoulders of your name...
Do you see the truth.. through all the lies?
do you see the world through troubled eyes?

should I feel a fright?...is my fire of hesitation burning bright?

...you and I have lived through many things...I wouldn't cry for just anything......

would I leave?

2010-01-03T23:46:00.002+02:00

I might consider leaving next year, I think. If I got into my choice training program at Harvard through Brigham Womens or Mass Gen in Boston, I might just consider going and then coming back. I wonder if I could do it. I would miss Israel madly. Maybe this is a pie in the sky dream, but my scores are step one. done. An actual application would be step two and then the process begins...I'm tenacious but the competition would be steep. However, having training in Boston would enhance my ability to contribute here by far. At some point, I'll get there but is the timing now? maybe not.

pure insanity

2010-01-03T08:55:00.003+02:00

what do you do with a love that makes no sense, that drives you crazy with it's irrationality and power to remain despite everything? What kind of insane emotion can make me feel like a sentimental, tempermental, maniac, having to hold myself back lest I fall down down down the slippery slope into a river fed by waters i've never known? what is this messed up intensity that I have so little power over?

panic ensemble

2009-12-31T14:56:00.002+02:00

I feel panicky for watching a window close to once again be with someone that I love with 100percent of my heart. Not a doubt in my mind.

... But I just didn't think it could work. I shockingly just didn't think it could work.

I wish it could be different but the relationship itself would probably just be wrong for us both. He deserves something mindblowing in a relationship and the universe surely has it's plans.

My mind and my mind heart contrived to send me in opposite directions. Hopefully it'll bring him and I both real, touchable, powerful happiness through and through.

100percent

2009-12-30T22:32:00.002+02:00

sometimes love, even 100 percent certain love, is not enough. and if it isn't enough it still doesn't mean that love is any less than 100 percent real. it's more real than the earth, the sea, and the moon.

it just means the relationship itself may just not be right and that the love will have to exist on it's own but it's definitely there, definitely real and will probably be there for eternity.

if i know that love is there even if the relationship wouldn't work, i'll take the love and use it to fly while hoping that my love will do the same.

strangee

2009-12-30T19:12:00.002+02:00

One of Eddie Murphy's old school 80's movies had a character named Strangee. I think it was coming to america or something of the sort. I'm hereby naming 2009 after Strangee. As this calender year comes to a close, I can't help but think of where I was at this time last year and how long this year has actually been for me. It's been at least 10 years within one, and at the same time I almost thought it would never come to an end. It seemed 2009 would go on forever.

Here we are about a day away from the beginning of the new calender year. I don't feel the same renewal as I do on Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashona, but it signifies something for me. It's some sort of culturally approved landmark that I can't help but notice as it passes by. With new years eve, I don't make resolutions as I do on Yom Kippur and it doesn't really feel like new years for me, until I look on my agenda or phone and see the date.

In Israel, it's become popular to celebrate sylvesters on new years eve as if to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the world but still celebrate and identify with Jan.1st. Lots of friends are holding big bashes and there's a holiday dinner for me to attend with my work colleagues if I'm able to finish work in time.

But the length of the year throws me for a loop. I can't believe it's over. I can't believe how different my life is now. I can't believe how I could never have predicted what happened over the past year. Somehow, I partially slumbered my way through the year buried in my attempts to reach professional goals which had clung to me like an anvil. I'm perched now on the other end of the year and I'm still breathing and love has revisited my life in surprising ways. I'm being productive and overworked, but I've felt genuine happiness again. I'm a little less perfectionist and a lot more open in my personal relationships and the dividends have wrapped me in enough warmth to supplant the warmest goose down duvet.

As I tip toe into the new calender year, it almost feels like I could redo 2009, but we can never get back time lost, so I hope that all my choices allow me to carpe diem into the next decade. I'm listening closely to the murmurs under my sternum and will allow my battered but almost healed heart to have more of a say again in the direction of my life.

one crumbling wall

2009-12-29T23:24:00.002+02:00

The kotel is a place of solitude, reflection, and transcendence to me. When there, I feel our collective human spirituality and my personal brand of judaism weighting the air we breath. It's a place of truth for me. It's a place of ultimate revelation. I pray. To whom I'm not sure. But there is the only place where I feel like I have a direct line to someone. I'm sure this must sound strange coming from someone who doesn't self define as religious. It seems that for me religion isn't found within the four walls of a synogogue but in the four elements and the banality or beauty of our day to day existence. Religion for me is in our conduct and connection to matters larger than our own person.

I believe in human determinism intermeshed with fate and I feel like somehow my prayers amplify at the wall and maybe even somewhat affect the raw material that fate provides me with. I pray in apology. I pray for the health of my family and I pray for many other things that are too intimate for me to even share here lest it affect the way they are heard and judged. I also make deals. I make promises that I can't break.

I found myself at the wall twice this week and I might yet go again... I'm trying hard to use a divining rod to force myself to listen carefully to where my heart is directing me. I am analytical by nature and by training, but I have an unruly heart that says and does as it pleases and I don't want to let myself hurt anyone. I was at the wall this week, only once on my own, but the first time I was faced with a choice in front of g-d. Despite my heart I couldn't ever betray someones trust in me and I don't think I've betrayed anyone's trust. I feel on this it's clear.

My love is real and as true as love could ever get. I could say this at the wall and be utterly transparent. But a kiss... a kiss at the wall, when someone who cares for you waits in another city and trusts you to be honest with them, would be betrayal through any lense. I was sure that lightening would strike me down if I did it. At the very least I could not live with myself nor could I look him in the eyes.

I went away for months and was separated from someone I love, but my feelings never once wavered. I was committed 100 percent. When I'm with someone, whether it's a relationship or the beginning of a relationship or whatever, I can't be split but this is the first time in my life where I've felt such a strong pull to do so. Somewhere inside me is the answer and I need to listen closely to the beat of my heart for a little bit to suss out the morse code.

merry chrismakah

2009-12-25T10:05:00.002+02:00

Who celebrates christmas in Israel? Actually, we have a huge christian arab population to join the traditional christmas time pilgrams. A jewish friend of mine is obsessed with christmas and santa and the tree and the presents and has been facebook status updating about her love for it, over the past two weeks at least. I want to delete her just to get rid of her status updates. She's going to bethlehem today and is trying to convince her israeli parents to buy her christmas gifts to put under her tree. Part of her christmas tactic was to convince me that my good friendship obliged me to accompany her on a christmas pilgrammage for jews. Hello, jews for jesus? Sorry sweetie, it's really not my thing. Nevertheless, I extend merry holiday wishes across the board to everyone!

strangest situation

2009-12-24T19:20:00.002+02:00

I longed for something forever it seems. There was one person who it felt like I had some inexplicable metaphysical connection to and despite distance I continued to feel his pain, and happiness, and even his presence. It didn't matter if there were oceans between us, I could still feel him. If he was near me and I didn't see him with my eyes, I felt him with my soul. I could sense when he would phone and I would feel sick when he would feel sick as if we were in some sort of ET redux. But what did it mean if the relationship itself wasn't enough? would it change if we had committed to change? or had too much water gone under the bridge?

I don't think it devalues the love which was so huge it threatened to engulf me. Nor do I think that this particular love, so unique and so intense, will ever truly disappear. But, when faced with that love coming back into my life, somehow life contrived to take me somewhere else for a while. Maybe it'll mean that as the water flows, our streams will converge at a point with sweeter waters, or maybe it'll mean that what once was is assuredly no longer. I guess time keeps secrets.

the wicked warlock of harvard

2009-12-24T16:39:00.002+02:00

He makes me want to walk into a window. I'm dealing with a doctor who was trained in internal medicine at Harvard and works in preparing medical research with me and his personality would make docile and aggresive cats alike want to run and hide in an available garbage pail. People tend to respond by just refusing to deal with him, quitting, and or generally passing the buck. I'm going completely nuts, working day and night and am feeling like leaving January 1st at the end of this phase of the project, I'll keep the other project I'm managing and exchange my higher paid research and clinical management hours for the lower paid but far more gratifying clinical hours.

I want Harvard clinical training too, but not if it's going to turn me into an evil warlock clone.

dancing? me?

2009-12-23T11:09:00.003+02:00

Tonights gonna be a good night, yeah, tonights gonna be a real good night. I gotta feeling...Thank you black eyed peas. I actually can hardly stand that song because it's so blandly repetitive and it's stringy strands of melody just sit there in my ear without anything buoying it upwards. But, tonight i'm heading to a secret studio location in Neve Ilan to be part of the audience for Nolad Lirkod ( Born to Dance). If my presence depended on my dancing ability then I would have been required to sit across the border in Jordan at least.

However since I won't be demonstrating my finely honed 90's dance moves, designed for maximum comical effect, at this particular juncture, I have an audience spot to watch tonights live show with a special musical guest feature including a performance of the tears for fears song "Mad World".

It should be fun, fun, fun, till her daddy takes the T-bird away...;-)

whoa horsey...

2009-12-21T00:09:00.002+02:00

Yes, I just quoted howdy doody from the 1950's. I realize that I've now just reached the epitome of nixonistic geekdom. But, go easy on me please as I'm not feeling very well today.

So much to write about. So much going on in the world and in my own head. But, I've been working since 8 this morning and will likely be working through the night to meet the standards that I expect from myself. It seems that life got in the way of blogging this week.

Worry not, as I'll be most certainly spitting out my usual "crunchy granola and green apples" take on life over the next day or so.

Birds of a feather

2009-12-14T16:26:00.002+02:00

I never thought that I'd want a bird, but I fell in love with a parrot at a pet shop next to kikar dizengoff. It's a beautiful bird with so much affection to share that I almost mistook it for a baby boy instead of a bird. When I was an undergrad, I did a project in neuroendocrinology dealing with songbirds and sound recognition. Part of my responsibilities involved raising zebra finches from birth up to protein extraction at adulthood. I loved those birds and spend hours in the aviaries, even when I wasn't weighing them or feeding them. I actually preferred studying in the heated aviaries with my birds to studying in the labs where we did our Elisa's and western blots and etc.

As much as I loved spending time with the finches, I would never have thought of adopting one and bringing it home. But, this parrot at the shop is hard to resist.

So I've decided that at the point that I have a place that I own and when my life is a bit less parapatetic, I'm going to bring home the parrot and a small dog. As long as the dog doesn't eat the parrot or vice versa we'll be a model of zoonotic coexistance ;-)

Two C's

2009-12-14T14:22:00.003+02:00

Is it possible to be too compassionate? Is it possible that compassion is counterpoint to competition, that if we're compassionate it precludes us from being healthily competitive?....

Telling...

2009-12-14T11:05:00.003+02:00

For the past 8 years, I've had tremendous difficulty drinking hot liquids. I was once engaged a long time ago and after I broke off the relationship, I could only manage to drink hot soy chai, for about a month or maybe more. I was too stressed to actually eat anything. It was a long time ago and the weeks passed in a blur. My Second Cup Cafe, soy chai kick, ended when drinking a cup of it on the way to a rotation at the montreal childrens, I suddenly couldn't hold it down.

After that I could not only no longer drink soy chai, but I couldn't drink any hot liquids at all. This was the ultimate punishment as I used to be crazy about herbal teas and soups, especially in the frigid montreal winters. I used to wake up in the morning and drink a cup of hot water and lemon without fail, and at any one time you could easily find 15 or more celestial seasonings teas in my kitchen cupboard. My favourite was the apple cinnamon blend tisane.

The year before last I tried testing myself a little bit and found that on occasion, the rare occasion, I could sip a tiny little bit of tea to wet my mouth or enjoy a special kind of thick soup very slowly and manage it. But more often than not I found myself around the corner revisiting it like a cow with four stomachs within ten minutes.

I attributed it to a hyperactive esophagus, or perhaps a mild case of barretts esophagus that could be related to a high stress lifestyle compounded by recent lifestyle triggers.

All of a sudden, I've noticed that if I'm careful I can drink clean herbal teas again. Not always and not black teas but ginger or nana made with clean mineral water and honey seems to settle with me once again.

Maybe it's a sign that some of the pressures squeezing me before have eased and the wonderful and progressive aspects to my life have multiplied. I love my work and the balance that I've struck which addresses my specific interests and presents me with specific challenges on a day to day basis on managerial, academic, and clinical fronts.

little girl fantasies

2009-12-08T20:55:00.002+02:00

I used to wish that I was the girl in princess bride who wesley would chase after and find love with after so many years apart, but I felt more like adventurous Wesley and even then I knew that I could never be a princess. Men and boys long for the Princess which I will never be. I'm much too play in the rain tumble and jump.

What remains from those years of childish yearning? A desire for someone to long for me as I long for them. Not just anyone and I never would go out and look for love or a relationship or any of those commercially pushed concepts of romanticism and directed coupling up. If I can't have the real thing than I don't want anything.

Usually the boys who chased after me would turn me off, but then somehow I evolved from primordial goo and decided that it could actually be relatively sweet being with someone who cared for me enough to not let go. I wanted to light up someone as they light me up with the mere sight of their face or sound of their voice.

Where are appleboy and I in this schemata? nowhere really. He does think of us as us but I'm having trouble letting go again of something else that inspires in me torrents of emotional ferver, and can't yet be a part of another us wholeheartedly.

Maybe I just watched Princess Bride too many times and need a re-education.

cut worth two pence or less

2009-12-08T16:10:00.003+02:00

I ran out for a quick hair trim today as I won't have any time to do it later this week, and the hairdresser took off most of my hair leaving me looking like an eighties revival with short choppy layers at the front. It's still past my shoulders but looks so cindy lauper that I'm going to be hiding it under a hat for the next month. He got so caught up in his "I'm a top tier stylist bow down to me mode". I asked him to follow the line of the cut that he did last time and instead he did something totally different. He tells me that all the girls in Israel add hair extensions so their hair can be long and thick and then he turns around and chops mine off.

The stylist says it looks young and fresh so why does it look to me like my head is shaped like a papaya? At least in a few weeks my hair will grow out of this time-warp throwback and I'll be back to the style that's more me.

heiroglyphics of the israeli male

2009-12-07T23:04:00.002+02:00

what does it mean when someone has to see you, misses you and their urgency comes through in messages and emails? Usually it means that there are feelings, cautious feelings but something nevertheless... what would it mean for me personally? I'm not entirely sure. Confusion abounds when suddenly the current shifts and the person who needed to see you so urgently gives up on you so quickly and easily once you gingerly shift your attention back to them.

Peaks and Valleys

2009-12-07T10:08:00.003+02:00

Bad times make you reevaluate your system of values and doubt your certainty. I was thinking about this and concluded that going through bad times teaches you to do this and it's an approach that generally stays with you through the good times as well. But, you have to travel through a valley first.

I have some confidence in my choices. My value system is something that I feel good about with the exception of the times when I feel like I've hurt someone and then I tend to beat myself up over it.

I'm neither up a hill, nor in a trough at the moment. I guess for now I should relish the day to day fluidity and progress of my life.

whistle while you work

2009-12-06T19:55:00.003+02:00

I'm whistling allright, however the whistling isn't coming from my vocal chords so much as it's generating in my lungs. Everything hurts from my neck to the muscles in my legs. I think I need a full 24 hours of rest but I can't seem to find it. I'm trying to push myself to keep up my social commitments and work commitments and some sort of adapted training schedule. It's exhausting me. I don't want to spread anything so I'm being exceptionally careful around everyone but ideally I could be at home cocooning.

Today seems long and it's not nearly over as I'm in meetings until 10pm tonight and then back home I'll go where I'll likely be working through most of the night but at least I can wrap myself in some blankets and stay warm.

I feel like hardy dwarf from the 7 dwarfs.

floating

2009-12-05T18:12:00.004+02:00

It seems that I'm floating along with Appleboy joining me on some bubbled up trip. My commitment is neither here nor there because my heart isn't really truly free. Life itself follows none of the rules that humanity binds itself by.

The company on my daily journey through certain aspects of my existance is enjoyable although it feels like his feelings towards me are far more developed than mine to toward him. I don't think of us as a couple because I realize that I feel more for someone else than I let myself actualize. There's an acute awareness in the back of my mind that I should be careful to not let myself go where I'm not prepared to go yet.

I'm going to pull myself together and venture out from my bed a little bit for some fresh air.

one after the other

2009-12-05T16:11:00.003+02:00

First I'm slowly suffocating. I can't pull in a breath. Then I decide to pour myself some rice milk since my throat is sore and it's soothing Putting down the glass, I break into a coughing spasm and spill the full glass all over my work laptop. Within 2 seconds it short circuited. I never eat or drink around my laptops, but the one time I pour a glass next to it and murphy's law takes action against me. I wiped everything up and used my hair dryer to dry to dry off the keys but it's not turning on anymore.

I'm not sure which is more important, the fact that I can't do the rest of my work today on my work laptop and am relegated to my netbook, or the fact that I can't breath enough to aerate my mind, let alone do a bike or run session.

How to breath through a straw Volume 1

2009-12-05T14:20:00.002+02:00

This morning found me wrapped in a blanket until 1pm in the afternoon. Pulling breaths in was a monumental effort and I gave my ventolin inhaler a hulk hogan quality workout. No cycling with the team this morning as there's no way I could hold the pace, but I'm going to do an indoor cycling workout and a run shortly if I can manage it. I should probably take the day off, while feeling like this since I don't want to place extra stress on my already stressed out lungs and put my heart under strain with the reduced oxygen levels in my bloodstream...but....my body expects the activity, craves the motion.

lungs with an attitude problem

2009-12-04T13:51:00.002+02:00

I woke up this morning with bronchitis. My throat scratchy and sore, and my lungs unwilling to open up. Last night I was on the edge of being sick and I wasn't cautious enough. Problem is that I was scheduled to do a local running race which I had already registered for and has placed it in my schedule. A friend had lent me his car, so I shook myself into action and went to pick up the car at 5am. it was so much easier driving than taking a bus. I wasnt' certain if any of my friends from the sport were going to be there and were able to give me a lift, so a friend of mine offered me his. It was such a completely thoughtful thing to do and made my morning much easier.

My lungs are not in good condition today. I raced probably one of the toughest running races, cross country, in the mountains, that I've done recently. The climbs were steep and the descents fast. I couldn't get much air in and my lungs were burning, not from the effort but from some nasty little bacteria that made it's way into my bronchioles. I was a bit worried that my race effort would cause a migration into my heart and lead to endocarditis. So I pulled back a bit near the end and it was pretty silly of me because I was beat by exactly one second.

The field wasn't too fast as the season is pretty much over, but I'll tell you that placing second is harder than not placing at all. This holds true, even if I'm sick. One second..oh I can feel it eating away at me for not working hard enough and not seeing her until right at the finish line. She slipped by me without me noticing.

Well, I'm reasoning it away this afternoon and I've decided to put myself on a short course of a broad spectrum antibiotic. Next thursday I'll be racing another running race and hopefully feeling better and well enough to really ramp up my motor. I guess I would be pleased if I got beat and was fighting for it, but circumstances weren't in my favour. Next week should go much better. What bad timing for me to get sick.

estrogen 101

2009-12-03T17:56:00.003+02:00

I chalk my tempestuous but private emotional tantrums up to the fact that I'm a woman. I know that's not very PC of me, but it's the only thing to which I can attribute my hiccups of emotional lability. This fits like a perfect sample size and I'm willing to wear it.

There are some people who cause storms of wild barely controllable emotion to roil within me, because I'm touched to my core. When this happens I rabidly guard my space, pull back from my cauliflower eared cellphone, and take the time to regain my center of balance.

Ordinarily and with exception, if I can get away from my phone, create breathable air around me, and hear the whisper of my soul's guidance, then I can continue onwards soon enough.

unreality

2009-12-02T07:58:00.004+02:00

Who can ever be absolutely certain how they feel with so much worldly dissonance surrounding us? It's almost impossible to listen closely enough to your gut to hear every word of it's garbled language, and I'm not referring to what it says after a lunch of humous and ful.

I'm feeling some sort of strange disconnect that settled in between yesterday and today. An unreality of sort that's governing my emotion. Empty and full, then empty again or maybe full. I can't tell which one I'll be. Last night I dreamed of two bodies, bare, alone in the dark warm night, pushed close against each other, pulsating rhythmically, with a familiar smell that I'm fond of, not the smell of a cologne but something more earthy and natural with a hint of mint toothpaste. The two forms mesh together as if their bodies were only meant to experience each other. I felt him deep inside me. That familiar sensation but without any worry in the world.

We tasted each other and it was a familiar taste that was sweet but not sickly sweet. Each touch felt like tiny firecrackers exploding on my skin. I was in heaven. Pure heaven. But when I pulled tighter what was there disappeared as if it wasn't really there at all and I began to cry, in my dreams I cried so hard that I emptied of the weight that held me to the ground and the wind picked me up and blew me with my eyes closed and tears still falling. The wind blew me through the desert and dried me, leaving me on top of a sandy desert rise, hearing only my echo as I lay prostrate among the scorpions.

What am I doing? I have no idea what I'm doing. What have I done? I have no idea what I've done. The only thing I'm sure of is who I am, and despite my constant embarrassment of myself I'm comfortable with that, but it doesn't ease the pulsing pressure inside me, nor does it relieve the rotorouter working full tilt in my body somewhere underneath my sternum. Why am I crying?

lov-ed

2009-12-01T15:16:00.002+02:00

I'm going to call myself the human vortex, sucking myself into myself. Does that even make any sense? There's one person who I loved more deeply than I ever thought that I could love and who I ached for, so long after we fell apart. Now my life has taken me along new pathways, into uncharted territory as I face the possibility of a new relationship and yet cannot fathom ever losing the beautiful, messy, painful and inimitable experience that I once had. I feel such deep loss and yet also a tentative gain.

Maybe it's not so much a goodbye to what was as it is a chance to see what the future brings for everyone. Maybe a week from now, maybe 3 months from now, maybe 6 months from now, I'll feel different. I'm trying to see this as if I owe it to myself to give this new relationship a small chance. I never ever thought I could say that. But why does such a healthy thing to do hurt so much right now? Is that normal? It's not like I'm so normal anyway.

clarity for clarities sake

2009-11-29T21:37:00.002+02:00

Just so we in bloggyland are all clear, the last post about scratched up diamonds was about the recent time I've been spending with Appleboy. he's 37, but we'll call him Appleboy because it fits. This is the random musician that I spoke about once upon a time...

My last relationship involved a diamond too, but my last post wasn't a last relationship hash.

abba dabba do

2009-11-29T15:20:00.001+02:00

If my shoulder improves and I start swimming again, I'm heading to Abbu Dhabi to race on March 10th, 2010. Israel manifest destiny in play..hahaha kidding kidding.

confusious's confusion

2009-11-29T13:44:00.003+02:00

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without...I tend to fall for scratched up diamonds.

Today I have the day off clinical work and no compelling ADR or conflict resolution lectures to attend, so I'm able to work from my laptop preparing for a pilot oncology project that I'm heading up. Of course, when my schedule on a sunday becomes unstructured, web surfing to all the medical journal sites beckons as does mid sentence contemplation.

I was just thinking about my recent befuddlement. I've started to become close with someone and it's wrenching because if I let myself truly connect with him then it's like confirmation that my heart has turned towards someone else. I can't really let myself go towards him fully because something holds me back. I'm not hurting anymore, but I cherish some moments and I'm afraid that those moments will disappear from my soul. I'm afraid the imaginary ties that connect me to whatever was in my last relationship will forever be severed. In reality they were long ago cut, but in my heart they are tucked away and protected.

when we live, most of us crave to live a life witnessed by friends and family. Why? Because it validates us to know that someone has witnessed our existence. I'm not a be'er, but a do'er and still I feel like I appreciate what I do and where I go more when I can share it with someone who's important to me. It enriches my experience when someone I care about shares and it feels a little bit empty if I experience or live life on my own. It doesn't have to be a boyfriend but a friend or sibling or so on and so forth, so long as that person matters to me.

It was only recently that I thought I could never share my heart with anyone ever again and maybe this is partially true. I'm with him, but not really with him. I find him talented, pensive, fascinating, and a bit messed up, all things that I can appreciate. But, I'm afraid to really feel those relationship box emotions again. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll be numb out of choice, or fear, or inability to expose my being.

Maybe he's perfect, for someone else...or maybe it's good for me to let it flow and see what happens.

Dim lights of Yaffo nights

2009-11-29T10:20:00.002+02:00

A robust number of friends of mine have moved to Yaffo. The other night we decided to do a middle east mash up of thanksgiving traditions and hold it in a beautiful apartment off a main artery ( yefet st.) in Yaffo, that two friends of mine share.

I gave my ant size toaster oven a workout as I tried my best to prepare a few yummy contributions to dinner and dessert. One of my friends was worried that no one would bring anything and it was completely unfounded because the entire place was filled to the brim with a cornucopia of potluck contributions. We had kimchi, and sushi, and turkey, and four types of eggplant dishes, and salads, and stews, and casseroles, and macaroni with cheese, and two differant types of sweet potatoes, fruit crumble, cookies and brownies and cakes, and around 20 bottles of wine. The wine barely lasted the beginning of the evening.

The apartment is typical Yaffo in that it's a gem hidden by the darkness and detritus of the Yaffo night. To find it, you travel through a small road that's perhaps large enough for two men on bicycles, and you push through a foreboding crusader style gate into a large but unkempt courtyard. Once inside you travel up the stairs of the building to the second floor and as the apartment door opens, you're pulled in fast to another world of shiny wooden floors with arabic half moon windows and a delicately style second floor loft living room with arabian prince style bathrooms. Each window looks over towards the water and should you need fresh air during your dinner, the roof and it's ancient thick wooden plank table beckons in rhythm with the sparkle of old yaffo.

Our crew of friends was mixed with lots of self identifying palestinians, and israeli arabs, and japanese, and american, and israeli, and two canadians. Conversation was robust.

That night though as the clock ticked towards 2am, my friends wanted to go to Comfort 13 for some great music, but I decided to head closer to home as i wanted to sleep a bit before I woke at 5 for a fun training session. We instead drove home to my place, past the andromeda complex,and through the shuk hapishpishim in Yaffo where so many memories hit me all at once it thrust me into silence.

I'm like that. When I'm overcome, I retreat into my own thoughts and internal dialogue. I tried not to go into Yaffo for a long time, even though I love running through it and enjoy the cute little cafes and nooks. Yaffo is full of character. Now, though, I find myself back there a bit more because of my friends and I try not to let it feel strange but I associate so many places with someone else and another time in my life.

Some places I've gone this year, I went to imprint new memories over top of old ones that were so beautiful that they caused me pain. But, although my longing has subsided, and strangely, my wounded heart has mostly healed, I can't help but relive images, conversations, and the feel of a touch that I felt when I was in Yaffo last year with a very different life.

I thought I would be walking wounded forever. I imagined myself a 70 year old women carrying an invisible wound. But time does heal and life does take us down pathways that we can't always predict. We meet people in random ways and sometimes it feels like there's a reason we met them. Maybe we want there to be a reason because we can't live with the incomprehensible. We have to define, label, comprehend.

We find places in random ways and maybe we're plugged into our own matrix of humanity and meant to be there, but I guess ultimately we have to take what's random or fate directed and add our own humanistic approach by trusting in our own choices as a response whatever we find ourselves nose to nose with.

so petty

2009-11-27T19:27:00.003+02:00

what disgusts me more than most within a friendship or relationship? women who hide behind SMS. It's the most asinine approach to a relationship in existence. What garbage is it when a women can't even buck up and say something in person? I think that's part of what defines someone's character. How someone handles themselves on a personal level can be so telling.

tone deaf tunes

2009-11-27T12:49:00.004+02:00

Clear your ears of wax and prepare for the assault. I decided to not put up my guitar and vocal version of Spiderweb and instead put up something without my ABC guitar skills. ;-)
See below:

Tone Deaf Tunes Version Aleph

an earful of israeli talent

2009-11-24T14:18:00.002+02:00

someone close to me has been filling my ears with amazing israeli music that I've never heard before. I love it. Seems I definitly needed some guidance to discover material that was previously inaccessible to me because I rarely listen to the radio. It's funny because I listen to it then he sings it and it makes sense. Maybe my neurons are starting to connect and maybe I'm recognizing more than I think.

The other day I had an epiphany as I realized why my hebrew sucks and it has little to do with hebrew trauma in beit yanai and everything to do with my personal learning style. To be continued....

On another note, I love the brit band 007 and they were in Tel Aviv this past weekend. We're becoming a culture hotspot! Bring on the 007s and the leonard cohens and the Paul Anka's. Actually, please hold the Paul Anka, I can do without the likes of his music. Too maltitol sacharine for my discerning taste.

Kicking out expresso

2009-11-24T14:12:00.002+02:00

Expresso + shawna's motormouth = trouble incarnate. Yesterday I thought I'd give myself an extra little kick to focus better through the closing out of the afternoon. So after I got off a quickie phone call during my break, with about a minute to spare, I grabbed an expresso short to take with me. Within twenty minutes it kicked in and I could hardly contain myself. Expresso with training can be useful. Expresso on it's own makes me feel antsy, punches up my heartrate from around 40 to around 80, and makes me feel generally awful but definitely awake.

closest to home

2009-11-22T23:27:00.002+02:00

Does anyone think that we're going to see Gilad Shalit delivered to Egypt alive and well this friday? Runblings on the arabic region online papers seem to think so. I hate to get my hopes up on this one, but they already are. It feels like we're constantly gobbling up scraps of Gilad confirmation because our whole country so desperately wants him home with his family.

Each time we're led to believe a deal will be solidified, it's fallen through and our hopes again drop down through the floorboards. I can only imagine the psychological gymnastics that Gilad is being subjected to by Hamas and/or whichever peonic Islamo-extremist testicle free sect of violence is holding him.

riding on a wing and a prayer

2009-11-21T14:48:00.002+02:00

We took off through nachshon junction this morning and went over to the Lackhish area, around through a big climb on a tiny hidden road, and then back through nachshon towards tel aviv. The total was around 160 kilometres of fighting to not get dropped from the pack. We were split into two groups today to address the differences in level and degree of ride difficulty. I was unceremoniously tossed into the elite group where I felt like a guppy surrounded by octane fueled barracudas.

As we started the ride, one of the guys asks me how my climbing is, and of course I gushed about how much I love to climb but am not the quickest descender. Well, I almost ate my words.I do love to climb and the longer and harder, the better for me. But, when I have to keep up with a bunch of peak fitness "in season" cyclists on those do or die climbs, I'm working so hard that I have to suppress the urge to throw up all over my bike half way through the ride. Today was hell for me. I loved it but it was pure hell trying to keep the take no prisoners pace.

This group is a big family and I completely feel the love while I'm riding.

I have the tendency to be slightly self destructive, and while I'm capable of training high volumes, I tend to let myself end up in a performance hole by not addressing key sports nutrition, supplement, and recovery principles. It's easier to be much lighter when you eschew training hydration and fueling and post training recovery but when you do this you entirely lose the quality of the effort. I used to think that you could do this and as long as you conducted yourself appropriately the night before and the day of a race, a performance would go as planned. When you're 18 and a bit of a kamikaze on the race course, your body can handle that to some extent. You won't reach a peak but your body will handle it.

When you're older, glycogen stores get depleted very quickly as your muscles turn into a furnace and the outcome can be messy. I don't know how many training sessions I've done where I've gone so deep into glycogen depletion that I can't even lift myself out of the pool, feel like I'm going to pass out with each breath, and/or lose the ability to support myself on my own two legs. I'm not so into that anymore.

The family/team atmosphere helps too because the guys are always reminding me to drink or use gels or whatever so that I have the energy to keep the effort level high. The result is my performance improves but I'm not any lighter. I can address that later.

There is one women though who drives me bonkers. She's a strong cyclist on the flats and on the descents but can't climb for beans. She falls off the pack climbing and I move to the front or at least try to. Then when we finally hit a long descent she comes flying by my place in the pack and uses her massive ass to move in the pack ahead of me. I have to let her in or get knocked over. I'm not one to criticize other womens bodies, when I spend enough time criticizing my own, but she totally uses her humongous ass and it's bizarre centre of gravity to shoot down the descents and then when she moves back into the pack ahead of me, two things happen; I have to work like hell to find a wheel and hang on again on the descents which are hard for me as my bike is very light, and then I just have to pass her again on the next climb. It's really irritating and tests my patience.

Around Lackhish we started passing tractors travelling in the opposite direction. It was curious because the first one had a women wearing a full black chador with just slits for the eyes, and then all the next ones had women driving wearing various forms of full coverings including what appeared to be lumber jackets. I've never seen religious muslim women driving tractors before. I guess in Israel you can really see all walks of life doing tasks that our internal stereotypes refuse to allow us to connect with them. A bike can be such an amazing viewfinder into our israeli shakshuka culture.

Foot in Mouth Disease

2009-11-20T23:36:00.002+02:00

It seems that I was born with foot in mouth disease. The colloquial version, I like to think. When I was a wee toddler my grandmother nicknamed me the chatterbox, because apparently I had a wind up mouth. Here I am, at my third decade, and I still haven't soldered the wind up into the off position or developed a well functioning pause button. I catch myself going on into tangents and exhausting ears way too often, although in my advanced age I at least have found self recognition... the first step!

I talk to speak my mind. I talk to speak someone else's mind. I talk to fill in the spaces within a conversation and I talk to create space within a conversation. If no one intercedes with a comment or sentence fragment, then I could very well embarrassingly carry on until the next full moon and answer myself too.

My next project should be to collaborate with one of our brilliant israeli high tech companies to come up with an electric stimulator that buzzes me when I've exceeded the normal period of singleperson led conversation. I am so embarrassing to myself it's ridiculous.

It's not that I don't enjoy listening. I do. Very much. And I'm very interested I l in hearing out what most people have to say. I love conversation, but let the pause go on for too long and I pick up the slack filling in the gaps within the next millisecond and continuing until my lips are otherwise occupied or I get called on it. Most of the time I like tucking in for a good listen and I'm a pretty decent facilitative listener, but when I get going, my mouth is on turbo.

Next: project shawna takes a breath...

karma kook

2009-11-18T21:14:00.002+02:00

Weirdness prevails, in politics and the personal. Life can take such strange twists and I sometimes feel like I'm trying to find the yellow brick road but it's so overgrown with weeds that it's shiny buttery brick is entirely concealed and I'm navigating based on instinct. Just trying to make the best choices on my own, without parental interference, can be exhausting.

At least I've got some forward momentum now. I still wish I could put myself on some Ritalin but water and lemon will have to suffice, just in case I return to racing. At some point I will, as I do have unfinished bidnezz with my sport.

the side note

2009-11-14T19:06:00.003+02:00

A friend of mine bumped into Don Juan the other day and it seems that he can't figure out why I'm not interested. The ick factor is just too high and my ick rating for him was confirmed when I learned that while I was stealthily avoiding his calls, he was bedding a blond israeli friend of mine who had no idea of Don and my earlier dalliances. Here humour sneaks in as I keep picturing Don Giovanni and the floor opening to swallow him up for cockiness and indiscretions. I don't mind though. It's not that Don Juan will ever be an object of my affections. I'm glad he's having fun and not with me.

pulling out...

2009-11-14T15:52:00.003+02:00

Premature pullouts cause more damage than pleasure or progress.

This morning we rode along a route that took us to the rolling roads near sderot, then over to ashkelon, back through the nachshom junction, on to Latrun and then back home. I've been riding with a new cycling team and getting lifts to the meeting point with one of my close triathlon friends who has a car. This friend used to be one of the top 10k runners in Europe and he's a serious competitive cyclist now who's trying to turn over into triathlon.

It works out well because I have someone to chase when I do runs immediately off the bike during training sessions. I love running but I always dig so much deeper when I have a mode of competitive comparison. He leaves me in the dust running but I max out trying to catch him. It's fantastic redlining and despite my low training volume I feel much better with my physical performance at this point. I think I'm starting to recover from all my previous years overtraining.

Anyway, during a point in the ride where I could tuck in to the pack, spin at 100 rpms and coast a bit for recovery, I started chatting with a rider who had served as part of the IDF intelligence in the lebanon years. I was fascinated. He spoke about his role as coordinator of intelligence in southern lebanon and how part of his role included finding jobs and opportunities for cooperating lebanese who wanted to take advantage of economic opportunities in Israel. He said that Israel actually has the largest intelligence division of any national force and that one of the largest mistakes we made in the lebanese pull out was not providing sufficient holistic support for the Lebanese who assisted us. The downfall was that many of these same Lebanese developed a strong hatred towards us for abandoning them, and turned to hezbollah and straight away offered all the intelligence that they had on Israel and the IDF.

The story sounded familiar as this is basically what happened in Afganistan in the 80's when the U.S. pulled out after fighting the soviets. Afganis who had helped the U.S. were abandoned and to avoid complete destitution they turned to the Madrassas and the Taliban and eventually towards terrorism against the U.S.

The matter of pulling out or disengaging at any level from an occupied or contested area is fraught with pitfalls and poisonous snakes. We're supposed to learn from history's tales and humanity's failures, but somehow when it comes to warfare and politics, we ignore lessons which dooms us to repetition.

The burning question then becomes.. when is premature? and is it actually possible to ever fully extricate ourselves from these situations at a win-win level?

lid of the pressure valve

2009-11-13T16:02:00.002+02:00

We all need a way to release the pulsing hot pressure that affects us on a day to day basis. everybody feels pressure in some way or form and we all have different responses, some adaptive and others a bit more maladaptive to our situations.

The Orang Asli tribe is indigenous to Malaysia. They're a tribe who have been subjected to forced conversions to Islam and encroachment of their forested territory. A conflict averse community, from a young age the members are taught to avoid physical violence and confrontation at all times. Each adult models conflict averse behaviour, and the children lacking any examples of violence, demonstrate very little tendency towards it. Problems that arise are generally solved at intertribal resolution sessions.

This technique and lifestyle while effective within their tribe with likeminded conflict avoiders, is drastically ineffective when faced with outside interference. When the tribe has run into conflict with invading forces or conquerers their level of internal stress has risen and they have tended to suppress the instinct to fight. Unsurprisingly, this tribe has suffered from high levels of stress induced and stress associated diseases. The members of the tribe who have most successful adapted to the stressful encounters that they were unprepared for and who have largely avoided these diseases were the ones who embraced the regular cultural dance sessions. These sessions were unique in that they were the one time when the Orang Asli tied themselves to a deep rhythmic drumming and danced with dynamic and erratic movement to the point of exhaustion, releasing all their pent up stresses and frustrations.

I'm an internalist. my emotions, pain, and stress, both physical and psychological, get packaged up and my defuser is my sport, most especially the zen component of my sport...swimming. This year I didn't have it in my life since my shoulder injury brought me to a forced vacation from Triathlon competition. Being a water baby, the feel of the water has always brought me a yoga like zen. Luckily, I could still run and bike which allowed me to blow off the steam that would have sent me totally off balance if I even made a feeble attempt to suppress it.

Personally, I can't exist without regular hard physical exertion and lots of fresh air. I sink into an anxious depression very quickly if I go longer than a day without some hard effort. If I could sell this method in a bottle, I'm sure we'd have far healthier populations.

We need the high heart rate and the healthy sweat to rid ourselves of the emotional toxins that we collect on a day to day basis. If we don't release them then we set ourselves up for all kinds of physical ills that appear in the longterm. Our bodies function in an equilibrium and even if we don't think that we're affecting ourselves by throwing one component off, our bodies respond.

I guess to some extent we need to prioritize finding a pressure release method for ourselves as preemptive self-care. Maybe packaging and selling that could be the next big thing in middle east peacemaking. Probably more so than massive israeli-palestinian conference calls for compassion. My cellphone is a genius at stress inducing...

disappearing act...

2009-11-12T00:10:00.003+02:00

I haven't actually disappeared nor have my thoughts dried up,but I've been falling into bed like a magnet hugs a fridge, holding fast to the sheets. Lately when I get home around 12am, I just haven't been able to burn the same midnight oil as I usually do and still make it up for the early mornings, so for the past week I've been giving in a little bit and going to sleep when I get home.

Lots to talk about and lots on my mind weaving webs of concern so tomorrow I shall reindulge in my little bloggy diary entries. I taped a song that I taught myself on the guitar and i might post that for giggles and break my all word, multimedia adverse, blog mould...depends on how into self humiliation I am tomorrow :-)

small reminders

2009-11-07T13:33:00.004+02:00

Often we need reminders of why we do what we do, in order to continue doing just that. They may be miniscule but draw us right back into the exact space that we need to be in psychologically to achieve our best. I know why I chose my field of work and I receive positive reminders almost everyday but in other areas of my life reminders come less frequently.

Reaching for the top in any discipline demands dedication, focus, sacrifice, and a willingness to suffer, but the rewards are multifarious. There are times when your goals may make you feel like you're in a isolated bubble that no one knows about or can fully identify with and this can make you want to give everything up, especially if you're a social creature. But when you step away, as i did this year, and then take a tentative step closer again it can seem so Technicolor delight.

I absolutely love racing. Love it. Love the adrenaline,the camaraderie,and the feel of having your daily pound of flesh paid in hard training come together in a zone performance. This is why it's difficult training on my own and going long periods without racing. I get my best performances racing either every weekend or every other weekend during a season. I have a performance arc that takes three consecutive races to take effect and brings me to consistent results by the fourth race into the season. I had lately started to forget why I'm so addicted to the sport and racing.

All it took was one ride with the team where I was feeling surprisingly good...thank you 5am expresso barista... and click...I can't get enough again.

Team bike practice is a different animal than riding on your own. The pace is fast and furious for 130 to 180km and you get hit with surges on the climbs and rabbits taking off on tricky technical descents. When you ride well, you hear it from your teammates who are quick to compliment for strength, finesse, fitness, or speed, even if you yourself have visions of an albatross on two wheels and a carbon frame.
Ideally you should be able to ride at your anerobic threshold during the ride to get the most benefit and this can compare to straight out race simulation of the type you can't hit on a long solo endurance ride.

This morning's ride under the november sun came with reminder written all over it.

headache hell

2009-11-03T00:05:00.003+02:00

I need to work tonight but can't think straight or curvy for that matter. There's only one cure when I'm not feeling well, and that used to be someone's warm touch. Having my back rubbed, by someone I cared for who had a healing touch, when I felt awful, was the only cure for me. My consolation for now and the future is that at the very least I have my duvet all to my self.

eeechhh

2009-11-02T19:41:00.003+02:00

Hydration, glucogenation, and caffeination are taking their affect on my neural pathways but my killer headache remains and I'm feeling on the edge of being really sick. Today as I was walking back home in the middle of a torrential downpour, some random musician guy started chatting me up as we waited in a puddle for the crossing light to turn green. he was cute, and said his music was kind of a mix of the beatles and ehud banai. He's coming out with a new hebrew compilation this month. Being the ex-music geek that I am, I had to know more but it comes at the risk of owing to balance the information equilibrium.

He asked what I do and I was as ambiguous as possible so to not encourage him to think that he could pick me up, but he kept walking beside me and telling me about his music. We ended our walk at the same place as he was going to a birthday party for a musician friend of his at the bar next door to the little bauhaus walkup that I call home. He asked if I would come and join but I begged off. I have a weakness for talented, sensitive, moody, whippet smart musicians, and it's best to stay as far away as possible lest I break my benedictan chastity vow and get unwillingly drawn into the relationship red zone which I will avoid come hell or the most beautifully tangled melodicist cum lyricist in Israel. I've laid down the gauntlet and no one shall cross. I have few free minutes to myself anyway. Many israeli men will try to pick up a duck billed platypus if it means there's a possibility of immediate nocturnal gymnastics.

My biggest asset is my lack of romantic entanglement. I can offer my superiors all of myself in time and effort because I can work day and night and weekends without worrying about the need to run home for dinner. It gives me an edge.

I experienced this in play today as we had a midday conference, where two of the female doctors in attendance had their babies with them as they were all coming back from maternity leave. The entire meeting involved baby cries that wouldn't be tolerated anywhere but in Israel, where family accommodations are common. listening to the babies cry, I realized that I need to capitalize on my freedom to work whenever and wherever without limitation, because this will help me climb in a profession where there are few women at the top.

I used to want a family, not marriage, but a family of my own. This desire shocked me because there was only one person who I've ever felt that I wanted that with. I have a strong maternal instinct and this is definitely one of my weaknesses, but one that I can channel through my profession. It doesn't have to be channeled through reproduction.

catatonic

2009-11-02T14:51:00.003+02:00

My brain hasn't been functioning very well for the past while. I'm too tired to think clearly and have inserted toothpicks to keep my eyelids open this afternoon. It's interesting to me how we choose to manage our levels of fatigue in a working environment as we may function inefficiently but at least we're functioning. How ideal is this? It's not the gold standard approach to professionalism and productivity but I can't seem to justify closing my eyes long enough to feel sharp instead of fuzzy when I open my eyes once again. This continous state of fatigue affects learning and I can attest that when I was training hard, and thus physiologically required a greater amount of sleep than the average person, and wasn't able to get as much as I needed, even when sleeping in for a while to 6 or 630am, I could sit through an entire morning of hebrew class without even knowing the topic.

Mind you, no one else in the class knew the topic of the day either. It was a class A waste of time. There are few other things I hate more. Maybe it wasn't just brain malfunction.

I'm longing to go home, unwrap myself from my clothes, and envelope myself in my warm white duvet. Too bad for me. It's not going to happen until after midnight at the earliest tonight.

Two stripes and a Star of David

2009-11-01T13:10:00.004+02:00

Canadian Israeli filmmaker extraordinaire, Igal Hecht, screened his docu-quest this past week in Tel Aviv. The film played at the Jewish Eye Film fest in Ashkelon and at various locales around the world including the Toronto Film Festival. His newest release is THE FLAG,and friends organized a special showing of it at one of our cozy apartments in central tel aviv. The turnout was fantastic and Igal entertained questions for over an hour afterwards while we munched on homemade pecan squares and whole wheat fig cookies.

The idea behind the film was to take a provocative look at how the israeli flag is seen by various demographics. Igal travelled through Israel to get differing and emotive perspectives from everyone from the druze community to anti-zionists in mea shearim ( he was chased out...and gave me my first glimpse of Igal actually expressing anger outwardly. He's probably among the gentlest of people that I know. ) It was a ton of fun and I had brought a bunch of friends along with me to support Igal with the film that he had injected so much of himself into.

His personal perspective is almost aligned with mine in that he believes in preservation of the state but also in universal human rights and freedoms. Many people believe that these exist in mutual exclusivity when it comes to Israel, I'm not of that opinion. I'm also not much of an apologist for the state of Israel and I don't think that's helpful at all to the cause of peace in the region, so it's refreshing for me to see films that reflect a staunchly Big C conservative left wing. In any other region that would be an implausible categorical definition. Nothing is implausible or impossible here.