panic ensemble

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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...

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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.

excitement...

One of my closest and dearest friends in israel just got engaged so I'm going to be wedding planning and shower planning for January!!! I have no idea how to do a shower in israel... nevermind, how do I help plan a wedding here!!! It's going to be insane! They're beautiful together. Good things happen to good people... not that I ever want to be married but for those that do I'm all for it.

Tug or Hug

And it happens again. Heavens to merketroid...as sylvester the cat would say.

My heartstrings are being tugged despite my greatest resistance...I always wish that I could do something to help but I guess it's totally just not my place. Resisting the urge to help takes so much energy.

Reviving Ben Yehuda

As the clock ticked over to 7pm last night, my computer decided to throw a tantrum and shut down on me when I was in the midst of trying to reach an important deadline. After struggling with it for an hour or so I decided to shut it down and went to meet up with some friends to chat and stretch my legs out a bit on walk down Ben Yehuda.

ben yehuda was the chief instigator of a revival of the hebrew language as a viable possibility in the fledgling jewish state.

Now the street named after him in Tel Aviv echoes with hebrew and a polyglot of foreign languages that would probably make ben yehuda roll over in his grave, since rumour had it that he even punished his wife for singing russian lullabies to his son.

As we walked along the snaking road we reached one of the quieter sections before allenby and almost stumbled directly on top of a homeless man who had collapsed in the middle of the sidewalk.

A sweet guy from france has stopped just before us and had already called the magen david ambulance, so I cautiously stepped towards him to see whether he was conscious and breathing, create a barrier so that people wouldn't step on him, and determine what needed to be done for him in advance of magen david arriving.

I roused him and ensured that he would be stable and the ambulance came fairly quickly. Thank goodness for purell as I didn't have any gloves with me.

This was a curious study in humanity and israel. Given that this was a homeless alcoholic who probably suffered from several diseases, many people here tend to overlook his existance. It's a shame and very easy for someone in his situation to fall through the cracks anywhere. But, the younger generation in Israel stops and notices and always offers to help.

Once I had stopped there were several young people who gathered to see if they could be of assistance and more so to that, when the ambulance came, three strong young men were recruited off the street to help the ambulance attendants lift up the wheeled gurney. Three perfect strangers came together in seconds and functioned like a well oiled machineto get the man into the ambulance. It was beautiful and in seconds they had scattered as quickly as they had arrived, on their way to whence they had come.

The humanity and sense of communal responsibility here is so beautifully encouraging in the face of all the rough edges we complain so often about.

While I admire and appreciate this revelation, I've once again taken up my hebrew textbook and signed up for the imaginary ben yehuda corps.

so mad mad mad

I get mad when I feel powerless.

I'm furious with my mother tonight. We SMS a million times a day and she calls me all night long for random conversation, but she has the ability to drive me to the brink.

My mother is the quintessential 1950's wife transported to 2009, and with the addition of major attitude. I love her to the ends of the earth.

One thing I absolutely can't tolerate in any way shape or form is smoke. That's a tough one in a country where smoking is sadly still considered cool and where people still deny the relationship between smoking and heart disease and lung cancer and so on and so forth.

My last roomate would smoke so much that I would come home at night and my bed would smell like an ashtray. She denied that she was a smoker but we would find packages of cigarettes in the freezer, butts in the living room and the place stunk and hurt my lungs every time I slept. I never confronted her but my friends did.

My father went back to work but had a career change backwards recently. Post heart attack, for reasons I still don't comprehend, he went back to full time private practice law. His condition is iffy and I worry constantly, most especially tonight when I spoke with my Dad and found out that his new law office partner is a heavy smoker and despite the Canadian law against smoking in an office, he continues to do just that.

Smoking and Second hand smoke are equally toxic. My father has advanced coronary disease and needs every red blood cell to be free to carry oxygen not carbon monoxide. Second hand smoke even reduces cellular respiration at the level of the mitochondria drastically reducing exercise tolerance.

Second hand smoke speeds the development of atherosclerotic plaque in the coronary arteries which means blood can't get through and imagine this in a patient that already has over 98 percent blockage in three major arteries. In fact it's been shown that non smokers suffer greater effects from the smoke toxicity than smokers because it seems that smokers undergo morphological changes due to long term exposure to the toxins and carcinogens in the smoke.

Non smokers tend to have a geater sensitivity to even low doses of the toxic compounds. Recent studies in high impact medical journals have shown that that passive/second hand smoke causes heart disease at a 10 times higher rate on average in the U.S. than lung cancer, and heart disease is one of the top three leading causes of death in most developed countries.

I need my father exposed to this? My father who I would do anything for? My father who i've always wanted to be so much like?

How can my parents just quietly and meekly accept this? Why can't they speak up and do something? Why are they so hard to move towards any change, like durges floating in the wrong direction? Why do they never just stand up and fight?

I'm furious that they won't fight for something as important as life because they feel that if they ignore it it'll go away. Nothing goes away magically unless you deal with it.

the 7 year itch

some people get the itch to move, or welcome drastic change after 7 years, others after 4, but the commonality is that here in Israel our right to freedom of movement is enshrined in the basic law of the country. We have the freedom to move within Israel and outside of Israel unrestricted in any way. This right can, for the most part, not be encroached upon.

Every jew and arab who holds Israeli citizenship is entitled to the same freedom.

The palestinian territories are a whole other can of fermented worms when it comes to rights and freedoms. How much should Israel be required to compromise it's security to allow freedom of movement for palestinian (non-israeli) citizens?

I don't see Israel as being particularly punitive in this regard. We have no business determining the movement patterns of palestinians within the palestinian territories, as long as that movement doesn't go beyond the borders of the territories and infringe upon israeli sovereign land.

why is israel obligated to provide entrance to our country and use of our airports and infrastructure to those who avow to destroy us? I'm bothered by the yearly news of thousands of palestinian students unable to leave to study at universities abroad because they can't obtain permission to enter israel and use Ben Gurion Airport. But, find another way. I realize that they have no airport of their own in the territories, so they can either apply to fly from Egypt or wait on a delayed response from israel.

I support the students access to education and if they don't pose a security risk than I'm all for allowing them to fly from ben gurion. However I understand that vetting them for security threats is laborious and time intensive. This delay in travelling to overseas universities has gone on for years, so instead of protesting and wasting time, the palestinians should be preparing a year in advance with eligible students to determine the best and fastest travel point so the palestinians who are interested in furthering their education and not in martyring themselves, have the opportunity to learn and help build a strong and stable palestinian nation prepared to live calmly side by side with israel.

suckus maximus

no this is not a post about whether you might like some saaaki...thank you austin powers. rather, I'm in a sinking energy boat consisting of me, myself, and I. My muscles have maybe 20 percent of the jump and active power that they had a mere three years ago. Last year it was so significant that I could actually sleep while racing. My heart rate wouldn't rise above 90.

Although some of the physical consequence as aptly demonstrated in the disappointments of my post-canada era racing and training has directly to do with the state of my iron levels and it's ultimate effect on the shape and number of my red blood cells and I can embark on an ambitious course to address this with ferrous sulfate, my mental fatigue requires a differant approach.

I really want to try a psychostimulant but it's banned.

Adderall and Ritalin are my dream drugs at the moment and I'm willing to bypass my lifelong avoidance of drugs, prescription ( with the exception of my ventolin for asthma) and non prescription, to reap the benefits of the lengthier attention span and decreased distractibility. But, I can't! It's banned by WADA, the governing anti drug body for international sport! Oh WADA, you paragon of archaic penality!

What about athletes with ADD who have zero cerebral executive function without a psychostimulant to address the problem? Are we creating a new category of dumb jocks or just cementing the image? Do I have to sacrifice my mental performance for physical performance? I can't really live with that idea, there has to be another way, but I'm textbook ADD.

Olim Lay Ethics

I never availed myself of the sal klita basket that immigrants to israel are entitled to. Besides the fact that when I came to Israel, not speaking a word of hebrew, not a soul in Haifa was able to process me in the government offices, I would have felt awkward about taking from a country that I wanted to add to and not subtract from. I was supposed to receive funding for my sport from my association, but that never materialized and though I felt wronged then, I never felt entitled enough to pursue it.

Apparantly this feeling is not shared by all anglo olim who often feel that we came to Israel and should be supported and treated like royalty for gracing israel's rental market with our mere presence. The attitude is abhorrant to me.

I don't think that the country owes us anything except for the right to participate in it's direction and function as any other citizen is entitled to do.

What makes anglo olim so righteous in claiming EI benefits when they are already re-employed? so it's not a million dollar scam...it's still scamming the government of a country that we're supposed to be here to support. The sum doesn't prevent basic ethics from applying.

The attitude which exists, not only in the anglo Olim community, makes me itch like a case of cholinergic urticaria. I'm allegic to it, it irritates me, and I can't support it. It contributes to the creation of a schism in the state that separates the anglo Olim and the rest of the country and realistically if everyone had that attitude then the country would fall fairly quickly.

Israel owes us nothing except the right to participate in collective determinism. We have a role in how our country progresses. How Israel looks 60 years from now depends on our attitudes and commitment. Take that and put it in your back pocket.

Mars Attacks!

In 1996, a cult sci-fi comedy came out to mixed feedback. It was a tim burton flick and was deliciously dumb, yet it had a few clever moments of black satire.

Mars Attacks depicted random martians coming down to earth, of course to the U.S. being that it's the center of the planet, ostensibly to make peace and they would broadcast peace messages through a universal translator machine with maxims like "we come in peace" and "do not fear us we want love".

Desperate to make a good impression the president sends his chief of staff to meet them in front of an audience at a landing site in Nevada. All the hippies in the country show up and upon hearing the martians say " we only want peace between our people", they release a dove which is promptly zapped by the martians as a prelude to incinerating everyone present.

The martians fly back up above the earth and the president of the U.S. decides that it must be a cultural misunderstanding that caused the violence and he agrees to allow the martians to address parliament, at which point the martian leader pulls out a speech with one hand and a taser with the other and proceeds to incinerate all of congress.

Throughout all these escapades the president refuses to fight or display aggression because he believes their platitudes of peace and desire for harmony, even though they keep proving him wrong up until he's speared by a martian. None of the americans want to believe that the message of peace is just a cover.

We all want to live in a world of harmony, where everything functions and there's no disease, poverty or hunger, and war has been eradicated. But sometimes it's worth reading between and under the lines to preserve the state of a nation and it's people. History is fluid however patterns will forever abound, and it behooves us to maintain an awareness of this when we'd rather be flattered and tickled by warm and cozy pronouncements and agreements. Looking the gift horse in the mouth won't do it, we need to determine who's giving the horse a voice.

reality bitten

israeli culture is very much an "in your face" culture. Great value is placed on the concept of realness, but in actual translation the realness has a limit. I often question whether this emphasis is due to a lack of tolerance for the niceties that lubricate social interaction, a lack of energy for pomp and circumstance, or if it reflects a true desire to know the substance of a persons intent.

On one hand it's blasphemous to hold your tongue in a situation of conflict because your true emotions aren't expressed, while on the other, outward signs of wayward realness are acceptable. By this I mean that it's common to walk through the streets and see women with olive skin and bleach blond hair who have invested thousands into rhinoplasty, breast augmentation, laser resurfacing,inconspicuous behind the ear facelifts, permanant makeup, brazilian straightening, and so on and so forth.

I've long wondered why a society that has no patience for the lack of realness in emotional modulation or conventional manners can still heavily encourage the plastic physical facade that lines the pockets of many a plastic surgeon and his/her pampered pooch. There's an incongruency in the definition of realness here.

I do love those tiny little pampered pooches though, especially when they give soppy wet nosed dog kisses. I'm powerless to resist.

pressured push

Looking around me I don't see leaves falling from multihued trees, mostly because fall in israel this year has been warm above the norm and generally winter brings green to our country in diametric opposite to winter in north america. Nevertheless, strangely, I'm animated. I feel mobilized. I feel empowered to deal with matters that I'd left untouched and unfinished.

At the same time I feel like there are demands from everyone around me. I want to give as much as I can but at some point I need a little bit of time to recharge so that I can stay plugged in to the pace that can maximize benefits.

When I need a recharge I like to shut off my phone and disappear for a night, whether it's with friends or on my own, I need it. Since I'm so long in the tooth at this point, I have the luxury of looking back and reflecting on what's worked for me and what hasn't in terms of reaching peak effectiveness. For a while I've been burrowed like a groundhog, not really progressing and hiding my head in the sand so I would willfully not notice. If I had noticed my stagnancy, I couldn't have lived with myself because my motivation and ambition are harsh taskmasters.

I lived through a type of exhaustion that only allowed me to live because I can always keep the wheels turning but slowing to a snails pace is unfulfilling for very long.

kibbutznik in training

I'm entirely enamored with Kibbutz Eih Harod. It's the most amazing kibbutz I've ever been in. It's one of the few remaining kibbutzes in Israel that are traditionally based on the original socialist principles. Situated in the Jezreal Valley, it's nestled into the incline of a hill that Josephus Flavius (one of the chief leaders and israelite defender against the roman empire) described as appearing like a perfect breast. After rising with the sun at 5, I laced up my shoes for an exploration run around the grounds of the kibbutz, passing by the cows and goats, childrens houses, fairgrounds , olympic size swimming pool, tennis court, basketball court,gardens, schools,and nature.

The homes are built to coexist with nature. At this kibbutz nothing is at odds. I held my nose when running past the mounds of manure but breathed in deeply when I passed fragrant orange groves intertwined with hilly and twisting village pathways.It was a ride, up and down and loops around until I felt sufficiently ready to shower and meet my friends for a late breakfast in the dining room at 830.

At breakfast we watched one elderly man sit and eat 6 full ruddy tomatoes one after the other while sprinkling each with salt and I thought about how I'd easily be convinced to build a home on this kibbutz and work in the kibbutz clinic. Maybe the work would reach dead end zone, but it's still so appealing to wake up to the freshness of the jezreal valley and be inspired by fertility of the soil...hhh. This could be taken so many ways, however, I have no dionysian longings. There are no random sprinklings of children on the way. I haven't planted any cabbage patch kids lately either.

Feeling inspired we embarked on a hike up Har Barkan which is one of the eight gilboa peaks. We went straight up the rock face and it was more rock scrambling than hiking, and was probably among the most difficult paths that I've taken in israel so far. I got designated to lead since I could point out good lines to follow up and danger zones to be careful around, but I was loving every single minute despite the fact that I refused to look down until we reached the absolute top at the military look out towards Jenin, when there would be no chance that I would go tumbling on a rocky ride back down to the bottom. My self preservation instincts remain intact.

issifiya

Dinner with the Druze was on tap tonight. I somehow struck up a friendship with a lebanese druze with a past. When he spoke I drank his story like date nector as I had never heard anything like it and there were a million unanswered questions, most of which I hesitated to ask out of respect for his privacy. It was so cute the way he said ugiyot (cookies) and kept encouraging us to take sesame date cookies. I would have taken some, just to chastly tease him a bit, but I'm not a big cookie fan.

DateCookieguy was involved in counter insurgency efforts in southern lebanon, but moved to Israel only nine years ago. He had to build his life anew and is now fluent in hebrew and as an adult student is learning engineering at the top engineering university in Israel. Impressive, but I was dying to hear more about how he saw his identity in Israel and how he fit in to the druze community and the differances in approach to nationality between the syrian druze, lebanese druze and israeli druze.

the missing glass

half full or half empty? what if the glass has disappeared? Do you still measure the water? Is the water still there or has is evaporated? Does your perception change if the water is underfoot and not within a drinkable cylinder? welcome to my world of babble.

Sleep escapes me as my mind is overflowing. How much can I share here? What are the limits of blogging? Does my namelessness translate to responsiblelessness (this word appeals to me like a word mousse)? No, hardly, I would posit.

jacked

itunes has got a new gift video in advance of the new compilation "en concert" from Jack Johnson. I tried to upload it but my frayed patience wouldn't let me sit as my computer dallied...

unrealized freedoms

Newspapers have been reporting the arrest of an arab-israeli businessman for insulting King Abdullah. The headlines read israeli arrested in Jordan but the text eventually mentions that it was an arab-israeli which apparently is a more common occurrence than we're aware of. Most of the arrests in the past have been for grand theft related offences but this is the first for insulting the crown.

I have no doubt that this same arab who insulted the king feels his freedoms are restricted in Israel, albeit will use his israeli identity to harm our national reputation and protect himself from the charges. His family is trying to bring him home to israel by emphasizing that he needs regular medical treatment that he receives, free of charge no less, in Israel.

The entire country would be arrested if there was a law against insulting our political royalty. I love jordan but even Jordan, one of the more liberal arab countries, does not offer the thanksgiving bounty of rights and freedoms that Israel does.

230 +/-

Supposedly we were out for 180km. Somehow our ride turned into 230km plus or minus a few by the time I reached my little apartment in north tel aviv. It was a stunning ride through my favourite areas to ride with lots of climbing and kibitzing between us.
Not bad for a day of non-training and considering my level of fitness. I might head out for a run later tonight to shake my legs clear of lactic acid but it was not too shabby of an effort overall. I went Jelly Belly free today and but I drank litre upon litre of water with several replenishing stops and many vanilla crisp powerbars, which I should soon eliminate, but they got me through the distance. Maybe I'll try to qualify for Hawaii next year. Will 2010 bring me from olympic distance to ironman distance? Have I caught the bug? My 2008 training in Australia saw me do daily training sessions which included rides of 130km with a wednesday ride of 180km, but this type of mileage is closer to what we rode when I took the bike challenge of Israel "tip to tip" around passover. It's much different to ride long than to ride hard and I could never maintain my 40km pace over 180km but it could be fun to do at least one.

betta butta

Each day brings something different if we just open our eyes to what exists around us. over the past few days I've been like a ice cream fueled automoton zipping from one end of the country to the other and meeting many new people in the process. People who find themselves in israel, either from birth or from immigration tend to be warm and open and it's easy to strike up new friendships or collegial relationships.

I have to wait and reschedule everything since I missed my flight but it works out a little better that I'm here. Besides the fact that leaving Israel is always difficult, I've got obligations here that would benefit from my post chaggim presence. On sunday Israel slowly wakes from it's protracted holiday slumber and by 8am we once again find ourselves at warp speed.

I haven't unpacked and probably won't. At 4am tomorrow though I'll whip out my bike and speedily re-assemble it. It won't be a ride with the team tomorrow morning, rather I'm heading out with a good friend of mine for a lengthy hammerfest. He's been offered the chance to race an upcoming november ironman event in las vegas, with an athlete that he coaches, and is trying to crash train for it. He's a strong but lazy athlete with lots of potential in the ironman distance if he could focus himself and stick to a training schedule. I try to do what I can to help him along and we do have fun riding together, although in training mode I prefer the more competitive team rides.

Sometimes he drives me nuts during the session because he tries to drop me but can't and wears himself out in the process and then the pace slows for the rest of the ride. Other times he's on form and can keep a solid pace when he's not talking my ear off about his rotating platform of sexual conquests. Embarrassingly, we have been on rides when I've run out of steam at 20km of a 180km ride and he's needed to slow for me when I'd rather get off my bike and lie prostrate on the hump of a camel for the rest of the session. He's also been incredibly patient during my long graphic discussions about men, sex and their fx. Reciprocity exists somewhat.

shabbat this weekend is all about the eyes wide open approach.

ugghh

I missed my flight and am having the most rotten of weeks.Not exactly sure what the plan is. ughh.

TA-LA-TO-TA

Could be a song or a ribbon of scat...but it's not. I'm off to LA tomorrow after work and then to Toronto to see my family. In between there will be a race, supposedly the hardest course in the U.S. ( to be confirmed--albeit I'm in awful shape this year. a tri a try may feel like the hardest course in the U.S.), a bunch of meetings, an exam, and then family time.

I'm excited and scared. I don't mind the travel time, as I'll get a lot of work done in the air, but I have all the usual hesitations about whether I'll meet up to expectations. I'm worried about seeing how time has affected my parents and grandfather. I'm worried about how my mother will view the way time has affected me.

It's midnight, i've just finished work and am in need of some blissful shut eye. Worrying is henceforth postponed until tomorrow.

my fair lady redux

how do we learn to be fair to a memory? how to we learn to balance the urge to exaggerate it and turn it into a farce of itself? what if we've exaggerated it to compensate for the scorching heartache that never really goes away entirely? does it make the exaggeration fair?

what if you've never expressed the other side and you've never chosen to look on the downside and the searing sting causes you to want to obliterate the good memory by picking out the bad? are we then justified in doing just that?

does justification matter at all if someone gets hurt because of it? it really doesn't. the whole discussion becomes moot.

I'm an odd duck somewhat. I'm not very translucent. I'd easily get rejected as one of the translucent virgins of paradise. I'm all too much human but I'm not fake. I actually know who I am and I have a complicated relationship with myself but underscoring my life choices are the set of values and ethics that I inculcated. I try to live following a moral compass that isn't so much based on the mannerisms of religion but on what underlies it in the body of ethics. My worldview, or my weltershang is fluid and formative and I'm always searching for new prisms to look through.

Despite all this, i completely lack any template for working through matters of the heart. none of the above served me well. I had a mirror held up for me and I realized that I hated how I was acting but I don't know how i could have prevented myself from falling into something archaically mosaic. i don't believe in an eye for an eye and you can't really measure out an equally weighted eye. nothings ever truly equivalent. you shouldn't be made to feel what I feel because I'm aware of it. my awareness makes it unequal because who's to say that you ever knew? or if you knew you did it because of your own hurt and then nothing could ever be equal, communicated, or understood and the hurt becomes cyclic. "you" could be anyone, but was someone very real and very special to me.

I lost something and I will likely never find it again. Love was a component but it's not about love. I didn't lose that because it's mine to give away freely. I lost something else that could never be priced. It was something that I prayed for after I prayed for the health of my family. I prayed for it and then I found it. I found that something intangible that I couldn't let go of. When I lost it, nothing in my world seemed the same.

But, I have nobody else to blame and I suppose that life does move on. Some people never experience the gift or the loss. The least that I can do in thanks for having been given this, is to remember in truth and look to a fairness in my memory which has the ability to keep some of that gift alive as if it had never been lost.

hwy 6

Pulling another space cadet shawna maneuver, I ended up riding on Hwy 6 yesterday as the sun set and cars whizzed by me at warp speed. Hwy 6 is one of the roads that are banned for cyclists.

I left this morning very late because I wasn't going to ride at all. The team left at it's usual time of 6am and I wasn't among the riders. Instead, my bike and I left on an epic tour that began at the robust hour of half past nine, and continued until my foray onto hwy 6 leading back into tel aviv at half past five leading into six.

It wasn't exactly a training session. It was a mind wandering session and I was fueled my many sour jellie bellies in the process. when I'm in proper training mode, I'm pretty careful about nutrition to the point where i regularly dip into deep hypoglycemic mode and can be easily beaten by a grandmother. But, in non-training mode, when i hit the muscle glycogen empty mark, sugar never tastes better and I don't bother suffering through the bonk. I don't even like sugar or sweetness, except in the case of dark chocolate, but when I'm cooked I could even drink gatorade straight up.

anyway, fueled by jelly bellies, I was hypnotized by the circular pattern of my pedaling which steadied between 95 and 100 rpms and i rode from tel aviv up past ramla and modiin and over to sommet nachsom. Once I was near tel shahar i decided to ride up to ness harim near haddassah hospital and then back around on random roads towards tel aviv. At some point one of these random roads took me out to the hwy that I shouldn't have been on. Whereas before I've been stopped by watchful police officers and redirected, this time no one noticed me and I didn't really notice myself.

sometimes i forget that i need a dose of sunshine to feel like myself. it's lucky that we're rarely lacking that here.

the black hole

i'm the dumbass. i have no idea what's wrong with me. i have no idea how my emotions take over here sometimes. maybe i've written the flip side of the coin or maybe i habitually see things wrong. it's sunny outside but i don't feel it.

Bringing Gilad home

Hamas sent the Gilad Shalit video to Israel today and it was heartbreaking to watch. This young boy has unmatched courage and even in the video under the direst of circumstances after being held away from his family and home for three years, he still maintains his sense of humour. You can see him at the beginning of the video with a small smile as if he's almost embarrassed at the spectacle and he laughs a little at the mention of the mujaheddin before returning to seriousness.

I believe everybody wants this boy to be returned to his home. He's such an innocent. He shouldn't have to endure this. But at least he seems to have the coping tools to survive. He should only be brought home safely so that he doesn't need to test the longevity of those coping skills any longer.

Of course,realistically, to Hamas the video was more psychological warfare, but to Gilad's family it was the greatest gift.

all the gmars of yom kippurs past

i guess the guy from my last relationship forgot to delete my number from his phone. Last week before yom kippur began, I got a gmar chatima tova. It was probably an sms that he sent to everyone on his contact list.

ajami

Just saw the award nominated movie Ajami at the dizengoff lev theatres with a few friends. Exhausting to watch and the ending left me feeling like I was hit by a sac of bricks. What an absolutely disturbing movie. gritty and real, I recognized most of the places in the film and the dynamics felt familiar. It read like a treatise on the cycles of violence and racism and was underscored by the differences we demonstrate in how life is valued. Why do we mourn one child more so than another and how do we prevent futility from taking over? It was filmed in time disjointed skips and with a camera style that allowed us to feel in the moment absolutely.

retrospective mindshifting

I've got a little bit of extra time with work this week and the next because technically I'm supposed to be on vacation but I have some small supervising responsibilities until friday at which point I might catch a flight to the U.S and then Canada.

Of course, it's to my bloggy journal that I go when those few minutes leave me pondering.

I was thinking how emotionally wrought I was when I made the decision to leave montreal and toronto and commit myself wholeheartedly to Israel and a medical career with a whole differant slant to it. I remember leaving montreal and thinking how I would never have an apartment that beautiful again and I would likely never enjoy a city as much, but on this I was wrong. For me Tel Aviv and Israel itself trumps anything I experienced in all my years in Montreal. I still love la ville de montreal but Tel Aviv fits even better. Leaving Toronto was more difficult as my family is there and they all brought me to the airport and none of us could stop crying, but they were partially happy tears because they meant the start of something new and exciting and i was about to go somewhere that I'd always longed to be a part of.

When I left Canada I wasn't sure that I'd have a life with as many opportunities and conveniences. This is partially true, but what I left I don't even miss, with the exception of my family who I miss everyday. Ten years ago I would never have predicted that this is where I would be. I loved the university health network in Toronto and the lifestyle of Montreal and never would have thought that I could sacrifice it all and start from scratch here in Israel. But I did and now I can't imagine the opposite. I can't imagine being content back in that same University Health Network in Toronto or in the MUHC in Montreal ( the health network in montreal). I literally can't imagine living there again although each time I go back it's startling because it's so easy to slide back into that life again.

It's almost as if when I'm in Canada, my life in Israel was just a dream.

Very often over the past year I've entertained options of going back out of the country whether to the U.S. or to Africa, but something has kept my feet here so far.
My footprints are still here despite the best efforts of he who shall remain unnamed from my last relationship.

Of course regular sojourns out of the country are necessary and if I didn't go i would probably feel too claustrophobic to live here. I crave travel and have always wanted to reach out to the world in my own way. But at the end of the day, waking up in Israel fills me with value and intent.

here we go with the virgins again...

This video has to been seen. It's so hilarious. How fantastic that this cleric is able to speak with such authority and complete confidence in his arabian nights adolescent wet dream. He speaks of women without urine or phlegm or feces who stay in locked tents 24/7 waiting for their husbands eyes to set upon them. I wonder what these child free translucent woman of the heavens think when the swarthy, sweaty, odorous, demanding, and murderous men with overhanging bellies come traipsing in to the tents of heaven ready to be pleasured.

So this is what we mortal women have to compete with to prevent the martyrs from sacrificing themselves. Who wants to see flesh translucent enough to see the bone marrow? It might make it easier for diagnostic purposes haha but as a turn on? ick. From first glance at this cleric, I would suggest that he's more inclined to prefer eating a table of chickens and bone marrow than sex with heavenly translucent virgins.

What a messed up middle east we've found ourselves in. I hope it's not viral. Would be such a shame if our upstanding western boys became martyrs themselves so that they could bypass the trials and tribulations of courtship.

the silencer

It wasn't a marvel comics superhero who brought a full 24 hours of solitude and quiet reflection into tel aviv yesterday. With all the honking cars off the roads, the city seemed perfectly quiet even with the throngs of tykes on bikes playing on the pavement.

I went for a long walk to be alone with my thoughts and traversed most of the city along the sea, so that I could hear the soft lapping of the waves accompany me as a soundtrack to my yom kippur reverence. The heat was strong yesterday and that made my fast a bit difficult. Even though the early end to Yom Kippur was supposed to make it easier, my throat and lips were completely parched by my day walking in the sun. Over 2200 people were taken to the local hospitals in tel aviv over the holiday for treatment, although a portion of that number includes women in labour. Luckily for me, despite my rather unwise foray under the blazing middle eastern sun, I managed to make it without an IV of saline or ringers lactate solution. The moments that I wasn't walking, I was nestled into shady spots along the tayelet where I could read without interruption.

Although I've always gone to Shul on Rosh Hashona and Yom Kippur, it doesn't feel like I need to search out a shul service here. I tell my parents that all of Israel is my shul.

for the final blowing of the shofar, I walked over to a shul on dizengoff where people always gather in the street to listen to the songs of prayer and hear the shofar. From a vantage position I listen attentively with fellow tel avivis as the blast of the shofar made it's way through the stained glass windows and open doors of the shul, across the crowds and atop the bauhaus style apartments. With uncharacteristic silence and with complete stillness the crowd together felt the heady shofar note weave it's way through their ears and into our hearts.

of course, the best way to break the fast was with friends at my favourite sushi place. As soon as it opened we sat perched atop our favourite elevated chairs and ordered lots of spicy sushi. It's always appropriate to end a jewish holiday with some high quality shrimp...too funny. One of my friends was on his way to a holiday in berlin. Yom Kippur inspired him to bond with the germans.

I read an article in the haaretz late last night concerning normalization. The first dirty word for arabs involved in the peace process is collaboration, then comes normalization. As I was reading I couldn't help but laugh as sad as it was to hear of the powerful egyptian press group boycotting and pressuring others to boycott Israel, because within my NGO we've long experienced the underlying cold peace and anti normalization. It's better for us that it's upfront and in the open now.

It's much easier to work and combat injustice and obstacles to peace when they're acknowledged to exist. We've long had difficulties sharing work on publishable papers and conference presentations, and had many physicians outright refuse to take part in any health diplomacy project that involves other egyptians knowing of their involvement with israelis. This is even given that we have a peace agreement with Egypt. I'm of the opinion that it's a great step forward to make prejudices public so that we can better combat them. Cold peace is better than missiles, but is an obstacle to progress for all. Shine some light on the resistance remaining so it can be directly addressed.

random stupidity

some people ought to learn to observe the principles of apology themselves. some people ought to take a second look at themselves and at the truth they think defines them but is just an empty truth.

ma zeh...

Yom Kippur begins in a few short hours and I need to scoot out for a short hour run before the fast begins, but i was thinking about how perplexing it is when we wish people an easy fast. The point behind fasting is so that we experience anguish and cleanse ourselves of any wrongdoings.

Given, twenty four hours is hardly long enough to cause anguish for most people except when dehydration sets in. Still why do we bother wishing people an easy fast out of courtesy? Why denigrate the effort that it requires for some people?