leonard, not skynard

Leonard Cohen was the soundtrack to many of my youthful years spent studying in the frigid winds and pelting snows of montreal. I found something seductive about his voice, and his lyrics nipped at my ears with a weight only found in significance. His poems were accessible to me and I was inexorably drawn to the art of this man who had experienced depression deeper than any well I had ever swum in. I was generally pretty happy with the pace and progression of my life but there were notes, leonard specific notes, that he played which were intimate caresses to me. I wasn't depressed but drawn in. The world he created in his songs and poems was profound in a way that was so simple. He depressed many including himself, to the point where he had to leave montreal and cloister himself on the top of a mountain, but for me he was some sort of tonic. Whether he sung about the sisters of mercy, lady midnight, or the partisan, for a moment I lived in his song.

Leonard's landing in Tel aviv within the next few weeks to do a concert in Tel aviv with all the proceeds donated to charities under the umbrella of the Peres center for peace. Our palestinian neighbours refused a concert in their territories as long as a concert took place in israel proper. So leonard being the profound peacenik that he is decided to make some lemonade and demonstrate his commitment to developing calm and partnership in the region by inviting proposals from peace NGO's that his concert proceeds would fund. It's a brilliant idea since he receives not a penny, graces us with his presence and stays out of the political posturing by making a financial and morale contribution at what seems like a crucial time to affect the palestinian and israeli street.

I wish I could go to his show, but the price is to high for me. The tickets have already sold out anyway. Madonna is playing tonight and tommorow in Tel Aviv. I'm just not into the madonna phenomena. Her beats are fun to dance to but cost of the tickets is better spent on itunes downloads with money left over for a cycling trip in the golan.

The gift of a listener

Sometimes nothing can be said to take away someone's pain or grief. We don't always know how someone's pain feels and what we've experienced may not have been similar at all. Sometimes even suggesting that we know how someone feels is flat out wrong.

To me the best gift that can be given is the gift of listening. It seems to confirm that though we may not be understood, we can share as much as we need until our emotions recede or find a soft spot to be preserved.

It was magic at first, but let everyone down...

Indeed, things can always get stranger. Like Alice through the looking glass, I've been looking at the world mouth agape as if someone had slipped LSD into my grapefruit juice. I never could stand orange juice. Teddy Kennedy, champion of socialized health care in the U.S. is gone, so is DJAM. Shalit may be home within the week if Hamas approves the new deal within the three day deadline set by the german mediators. The strangeness that I'm experiencing is not so much in world events,as the world tends to take dramatic elliptical turns which I've come to expect. But, my world on the micro level takes me through wild jungles of tangled discontent. I'm observing myself as a detached observer in the process of living and it feels like living in a freeze frame film. I try to shed the remnants of my atavistic ineffectual approach to aspects of my life.

Last night, while I was working on a paper on myocarditis for our client, deadline fast approaching, I was distracted by a visit from one of my closest friends who lives a 45 second walk from my apartment. Within 2 minutes of her sweeping through my door, Don Juan decides to come calling. It was actually perfect timing because my friend hadn't yet properly met Don Juan. Coincidentally, she had been with Don Juan's best friend ( who I'll call pinky because it fits...) and had a one week relationship with him, only to part on antagonistic terms. Don Juan convinced me to open the bottle of argentinian red wine that I had kept for several months. Of course, I managed to drink about 1/3rd of the glass before noticing the merry go round feeling set in. I'm well aware of my inability to metabolize alchohol. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if it turns out that I'm completely missing alchohol dehydrogenase. My low tolerance is better for me anyhow as I intensely dislike the feeling of being unable to fully control my own actions and I spend enough time tuning my bodies ability to perform that I don't need to make it more difficult for myself by creating extra formeldyhyde for my liver to deal with. A glass of quality red wine here and there though feels relatively harmless and has proven cardioprotective effects.

My friend and Don Juan were unperturbed as we delved into discussion which ranged the gamut from palestinian israelis and morrocan arabs to the afteraffects of a postmodern society's militarization. As 11pm rolled into 1am, my friend left Don Juan and I alone in my place and left me to contend with how to fend off unwanted advances. Suddenly, I was entirely unsure if they were unwanted. I'm actually starting to crave touch again. It's meaningless touch but I'm the type of person who can live off kisses, so to not desire a mans affection for 8 months attests to how profoundly off kilter I was thrown this year.

At the same time that my desire returns, I realize that my ability form emotional connections through physical contact remains hampered. Thus, any satisfaction gained from any random Don Juans touch leaves me with a similar feeling that we get after cotton candy at the local fair; completely unfulfilled and a step closer to taking a vow of chastity and devoting myself to kosher nunnery. The problem is the wiring of my female brain which leads me to associate physical pleasure with intellectual pleasure. Men have it easier as physical pleasure is paramount in most cases and empty headedness is more often than not a non factor in attraction as long as it comes with a set of breasts, a body of barbie proportions,and a propensity for long romps between bedsheets. For me, adonis himself could appear in an apparition and proposition me and I would probably be bored within 30 seconds. I need a different stimulus and a connection that only comes with time and shared experience. Who knows if I can allow myself this yet.

stressball in play

There are moments where I feel like I'm a conduit for all the conflict in this country. Moments where I feel as if I'm being whipped with streams of hot air and gravelly dirt for just existing. I love this country with crazy glue like strength. I was born with it in my heart and this is why i can understand the palestinian longing for their own homeland, even if that homeland was not of their birth. But even with the incredible hulk like power of attraction to Israel, I sometimes feel a primal scream of enough welling up in my throat. I'm not sure if this is just who I've become post break-up or whether this is natural outlay of living in a region with such a profoundly aggressive culture, but at times I have to control myself to prevent a full fledge tantrum from developing. I'm not even a tantrum person. It usually takes a momentous amount to push me to the edge where I'm likely to lose my temper because I tend to rationalize away my anger. I thought to some extent that I had already become who I was going to be as an individual but living here has proved me wrong as it's challenged all my assumptions about myself and my people. Life seems to be about being a work in progress...

Houston we have liftoff...

Finally!!! Coming out of tel aviv and beer sheva in a joint cardiology/biomedical engineering project, is a cardiac revascularization patch that can be used on MI patients who are unsuitable or ineligible for CABG surgery. The patch is implanted on the omentum in the abdomen where is grows on a biological scaffold with the prompt of several growth factors. When vascularization takes place the patch is removed and reimplanted over top of ischemic heart tissue to encourage angiogenesis. It can even be used over top of scar tissue which causes strictures ordinarily and often leads straight down the road to heart failure. The patch has a ways to go yet with further helsinki approved clinical trials on schedule, but I'm so excited that I can hardly contain myself.

The rocking horse I wanted...

When I was a little kid, I couldn't have been older than 4 at the time and my middle brother would have been 2, I used to get terribly upset that my brother wouldn't respect my toys. I didn't have much. Since I wasn't a fan of Barbie, I had no dolls but I did have lots of books from the monthly luckycharm book club, a bike with pink ribbons on the handlebars, and a wooden rocking horse. I used to hide under the couch and wait until my brother would come along to sit on my rocking horse and then scare him half to death by jumping out and chasing him around the house. This was before he became a black belt in karate and ju jitsu, then it was me who was chased around the house, up the park and in circles around the cul de sac on our road. I wanted him to ask me to use my rocking horse so that I could solidify my all powerful big sister status. Of course I had not even a smidgen of power during those years. My brother had my mother wrapped around his pinky and as the eldest sister, if I didnt keep both of us out of trouble then it was surely my fault.

He was a hellfire and you would never have known it because he had the face of an angel with light blond hair and saucer wide blue eyes. My youngest brother mostly stayed out of the fray and looked on, digestive cookie in his mouth, as the two older siblings acted out WWF no holds barred ( kids version only ;-).

Eventually, I realized that I didn't actually enjoy the presents that I got unless I could share them with my brothers. Indeed, I figured out that I enjoyed everything more if I could share it with my brothers. Taking a trip with out them would have been cruel and unusual torture because we were attached at the hip. The three musketeers.

The other night, as I lay awake avoiding the calls of an undesired suitor, I thought of how happiness is so closely tied with shared experience. It doesn't have to be shared experience with a lover or a paramour but could be with family or a close friend. Some people search across continents independently seeking what they could probably find better in twos. Some people search their whole lives and cross continents on solo missions never realizing that the meaning comes from being able to share, but not with just anyone.

1/12th of a year

It takes about a month for me to feel as if my heart can beat again after each contact. The distance of a month numbs everything and allows my world to begin to revibe. Those months add up and years fly by. I don't want these years to be wasted ones. We're here to add what we can to life. Should I let the months add up, these years most certainly will allow failure to accrue. It's been about a month since his last email and I've almost reached the warm threshold of numbness again. It's not entirely myself but it's a state of function. It's a state of equilibrium.

say what we mean and mean what we say?

what if the meaning of what I say this minute is not the same 3 hours from now or tomorrow but then the thought returns again next month? do any of us actually hold consistency in what we feel or think? Most of what I feel is fluid other than my core values and ethics which hold solidly in place for the most part. I probably don't actually hate myself. At least not all the time. It would be too easy to just accept hate and not work towards changing anything. I want to always be forcing myself to evaluate my foibles and critique and evolve. Hate is too static. Is it possible to hate yourself and to love life at the same time?

a la kelly clarkson

Morning brought the realization that I have developed a deep and abiding hatred for myself tied with barbed wire to my experience in my past relationship. I think I might have just imagined the relationship. He was someone who wouldn't even put up pictures of the two of us on social networking sites he frequented nor would he connect us by listing himself as in a relationship. He was committmentphobic and when we were with friends would walk arm in arm or share breakfast with the nearest hot girl 100 metres away while leaving me to socialize in the pack. He often commented on how he admired men who treated their friends and lovers with the same level of affection so that an onlooker would not be able to distinguish the two. Maybe he was secretly planning on joining a polygamy commune. He loved everyone and no one, most certainly not me. So maybe I just have been having a really long nightmare and my relationship was just a creation of what I wanted and clearly not he.

I think I can use this self hatred to keep myself on track and keep consistently turning up my productivity knob, since I don't really have anything holding me back from total devotion to my work, which I love unremittingly.

mandarina nana

Angsty is the word that best describes my state of mind. I'm like the sorbet flavour at my local sicilian gelato shop that's got this mandarin base but then when you least expect it you get a hit of nana weed. It's like a bracing mint hiding until the last minute on your tongue. So Don Juan tells me how sunny and magnetic I am the other day, and I'm thinking to myself whatevs. He has no idea how weedy and full of nana I actually am. I am angst central, stress maximum and so exhausted mentally and physically that I have difficulty staying awake at all points during the day and night. So funny how people see what they want to see and rarely ever look deeper. It's so easy to catch the reflection of the superficial layer. I am a mandarin without the juice. Past due date but still on the shelf for lack of will to jump off and scurry away from purchasers. I'm not for sale. Some men want women for the simple fact of the birds and the bees or in other cases the bees and the bees and the birds and the birds or any assorted combination of beeirds. I'm not an insect and I can only fly like a bird if i run fast enough when I'm fresh enough. I wish I could get away and start working abroad tommorow but I'm drowning in commitments that have to be seen through first. Also, I don't know what I would do with the rest of my medical training. Would I finish in Africa and go straight to the U.S. to begin in June? Would I be able to finish my contract by June? Mandarina has lots more to think about.

Eyes Wide Shut

Sometimes my behavior completely disgusts me. I don't consider myself to be overwhelmingly self absorbed and I've been accused of taking myself out of the equation entirely but at times it hits me that I've been reacting as if I'm still a tumbling two year old who hasn't been able to put my own drama of life into perspective for the sake of another. Sometimes we can sacrifice ourselves at the alter of altruism but then later find that we crave the inward focus so badly that it comes at the expense of another persons peace. I feel like I modulate myself so much to not affect but lately I've caught myself throwing what seems like tantrums of inward focused self absorbed ego pandering by satisfying my own psychological needs instead of having that consideration that I think is so valuable as social lube.

On another social front involving the right kind of evening lubricant, yesterday I went to join some friends to celebrate a birthday. The birthday boy is someone who in yiddish we would call a gittennashumah. Such a good heart. The place was smokey, which I hate, and filled to the brim with aggressive men including one guy who called himself saddam hussein and asked me if I wanted to do the moonwalk with him. I told him that Michael Jackson rocked but he'll probably have more luck if he goes the way of Lady Gaga (who's in tel aviv this weekend). One particular friend of ours, I'll call him, Don Juan, has been persistently pursuing. He's a man of many keys in that he has lots of issues lying hidden underneath a very calm and smooth surface. I like him but I know that if I ever let him touch me I would feel even more disgusted with myself. I've come to realize that I separate myself into pieces when I think about being intimate with anyone. I don't know if I'll ever be able to enjoy it again and not feel like the experience is an acting exercise that I'm not well suited to. I regret kisses and caresses as if I was breaking some sort of boundary or crossing a line in my mind.

In fact I hate that men in tel aviv feel it's within their right to casually put their hands all over you while you walk by or stand chatting with friends. When I feel wandering hands I usually do a class A disappearing act ASAP. It makes me feel slimed.

Through the Obstacle Course

Is Hazelnut soy gelato intrinsically evil? It doesn't set out to throw me into a high glycemic stupor. It doesn't intend on preventing me from being a size O if I so wish to be one. My taste buds would protest with chimes reiterating the good in it's nutty smoothness.

The majority of the people in the world aren't intrinsically bad in nature either. Last night way past the hour when most of us are deep in slumber and when I am usually diving straight into one of this batch of twenty first consult papers that need to be done this month, hashimotos thyroiditis could no longer hold my productive attention and I found myself on the phone with a close friend of mine who's also in medicine. He pathologically avoids hurting the girls he dates.

He and I have that kind of friendship which is solidly rooted but started out of an attraction that I wasn't into. He's a beautiful guy but, I would never sleep with him no matter how many glasses of wine I've had or how much my libido is in overdrive. I'll never be into him that way but our friendship has really blossomed. It's given the relationship a unique angle from which we've been able to traverse our lives in tel aviv with because I can give him the honest goods of feedback knowing that I've been on a different side of his affections.

From hello we were talking about Moon Sushi. Moon is my favourite sushi place in Israel. I go there all the time with my closest friends for super late night sushi and chats. Somehow we started talking about him meeting another friend of mine at moon the next night and her misperceiving it to be a date. All of a sudden we were well into a discussion of whether it's worth it to set out to always avoid hurting someone and what that really means. Can you live your life never hurting anyone? Can you exist never getting hurt and is getting hurt essential as a nudge towards who you're ultimately going to become? Do we need to get hurt to grow, not unlike a muscle needs to be torn apart so that it can heal back with greater tensile strength? and ultimately what does it take to turn the hurt into positive growth? is it resting and recovering or ceaselessly analyzing or being an egg against a wall? Do we need to face these questions to get through the illusion within our existence and work towards the contribution we're really going to be able to make with our lives which will then bring happiness for ourselves and a better humanity somewhat?

None of these questions are new or unconsidered but do the answers to them change?

Reality Bites

I thirstily drunk up Haruki Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore" as if the words were springwater rehydrating a cactus. Page after page kept disappearing as if time didn't exist while my nose was buried between the pages. It's a book of surreal, metaphysical, comical, tragic genius. It carouses across a narrative that weaves in Shintoism and greek mythology and and and... It's consciousness expanding and disturbing at the same time. There were parts that I found profoundly disturbing but forced myself to continue reading and it was fully rewarding to pull together the riddles with which he constructs the plot.

I don't usually go for science fiction, not since I was a 12 year old Ursula K. Leguin fan. This isn't science fiction, I think it's much closer to Umberto Eco in style. I was turned off by the advertisements which made me think it was airport trash. It's definitely not.

I wasn't planning on reading his books because I'm not a fan of his political beliefs centering around the middle east. But, it was actually curious to read this in light of my knowledge of his opinions on Israel. I can see within this book how he came to his understanding but would love to catch him in a philosophical debate and use the theories he threw out at the readers in the book as counterpoint. I can see where he's building from and also see a really clear counterpoint using his own logic.

This book is an amazing and addictive and bordering on genius work of fiction.

Gut Response

Compelling as it is to read about rabbis flying over israel blowing the shofar seven times to eradicate swine flu, I'm more compelled to scribble down my two cents of flabbergasted open mouthed thoughts on ... the case of the swine flu and the hassidic health minister...sorry the flu mexicasa. If it were swine flu then it wouldn't get the necessary visas to enter at haifa port.

We don't have a health minister in Israel. It's very pathetic to have a country at this stage of development without a health care minister, but we apparently have more urgent matters at hand to deal with than the health of an entire population. A perfect example of how no one wins in war. The palestinians don't have an infrastructure padded up well enough for proper health care without Israeli assistance, and we in Israel have to put our resources into fortification and protection so our existing solid infrastructure is rapidly collapsing and we could end up actually no longer being able to offer that health care expertise that our population and the palestinian population require.

We are a country at perpetual war to secure our existence. Who cares about the quality of that existence that we lead?! I jest. We actually have thousands of doctors currently filing suit in the supreme court under the banner of the Israel Medical Association to get a health minister appointed.

We do have a deputy health minister who recommends his suggestions to the prime minister who is then empowered to vote in the Knesset as he pleases on behalf of a non-existing health minister. The reason for this is that the deputy minister is a member of the hassidic persuasion. The stream of Judaism that he belongs to believes that only g-d can make decisions. As mere human beings we cannot and we must relinquish our destiny to g-d. Interesting approach and necessary hypocrisy involved for a member of government.

What drove me to write was the current approach to the swine flu pandemic which is expected to rise in incidence and prevalence over the next few months within Israel. The Rabbis now have a vested interest in health in Israel because their man is in the highest position currently available in the ministry. If he succeeds they can point to the success of religious belief, and if he fails they can point to the shameful seculars.

Most recently the Rabbis have been chiming in on almost every health crisis that arises. They've posted notices in Mea Shearim trying to invalidate a mothers diagnosis of Munchhausen syndrome by proxy and warning of death by internet exposure. The other day it was reported that several went up in a helicopter, circled Israel and blew the shofar seven times to cure us of any swine contagion.

The newest and most progressive announcement is that the Rabbis have decided a more aggressive approach to eradicating this flu is necessary... we must all fast on the eve of Elul. Nevermind that fasting suppresses immune systems and dehydration and hyponatraemia can basically open the gates to all sorts of nasty bacterial and viral invaders to jump on in.

It seems that the Gemara has instructed those of us who are observant to fast because the pigs intestines resemble human intestines.

Personally I think we should save the money on helicopter flights and divert budget towards buttressing the education in religious sectors!

all those things that pass..

sunrise doesn't last all morning, a cloudburst doesn't last all day..
sunset doesn't last all evening, a mind can blow those clouds away...
all things must pass, none of lifes strings can last...
so I must be on my way to face another day...
I love the beatles. The simplest of childlike lyrics that replay in my mind from the moment I wake throughout my morning without even the need for the accompanying notes or rhythm. Clarity within a chorus.

That's how the light gets in...

I'm looking for that crack. I'm looking everywhere for the break in the veneer that'll let the light in. In a full circle I turn myself. All I can see so far is darkness enveloping me. I can't stop crying every night and everyday I hate myself.

I ask myself why I couldn't be what he wanted. Why everything about me is so wrong. Why my hair is the wrong colour, my skin the wrong shade, my background the wrong heritage. Why is everything about me so wrong. It even feels completely wrong and false when I'm with any man. It feels fake as if I'm faking enjoying being with them and I'm faking enjoying their touch. In fact I can barely stand having their hands on me at all. It feels like poisonous ants on my skin and I feel gutted inside like someone took a serrated edged ice cream scooper and is slowly eviscerating me.

I've never been like this. I can't listen to music. I can't watch movies.

I'm positive that he's been happy from the moment he told my best friend that we were over. I'm positive that he's happy. I should be happy for him. If I really did love him then I should want him to be happy. So why doesn't it make me happy too?

How will I make it though this. How will I find the light in between the cracks? Where is it trying to get through? I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to deal with myself. Dealing with anyone else is far easier. This is my personal version of Dantes Inferno. A thousand stabbing hands reaching into my heart.

leaving on a jet plane...

Looks like I might soon be out of here. I'm partial to accepting a contract with MSF to go back and volunteer in Africa for 12 months. After that, I'll figure out how to continue my work in the middle east. I might base myself in Egypt or in Jordan. Ill take my writing work with me as that can be done remotely and I can also manage my physician/medical editors remotely.

I just can't handle the fallout from my ex. I feel like I need to get away from myself to peel off all the emotion wrapped around that one experience. If I don't, then I honestly fear that every day I will die just a little bit more until nothing is left of my essential self any longer. I'm living in this messed up parallel inside-out life, where on the outside I have amazing friends and a great family and a solid career path that I am passionate about; on the inside I have a black hole growing that brings me to tears every single night when it's late enough that I'm by myself and I only want to come home to myself.

The black hole is the unresolved messy end to my last relationship. It lives inside me like a heavy fetus it's umbilical cord wrapped around my throat preventing me from crying out anywhere but here. In my written space I can vent and breath and cry juicy words onto the screen.

I think all it would have taken back then to end it right side up and to free me from these chains would have been to have had one discussion in person and then leave it at goodbye.

But he was so insistent that there be nothing. And the emptiness turned into a living breathing dragon. I mean really, here I am at 10.30 in the morning when I should be with patients or reviewing or a million other things, and instead where am I? sitting in a quiet space that I favour, taking time to write out everything that hurts but can't be seen.

When a dog meows...

This has to be watched!!! It's such a startling operetic coming out of this gorgeous boy but the sound doesn't connect with his face or his gender. It's like a choirboy soprano who entirely skipped vocal puberty but went full tint into physical puberty that only his vocal cords escaped from.

functional insanity

Often I wonder whether it is indeed possible to love someone despite everything that's ever happened between you, despite titanic personality clashes of the scale of the earth and the moon, despite titular earthquakes of emotional gravitas, despite the rhythms of normalcy and common sense that beg for acknowledgment.

Could this mean that 50 years from now, while laying in blissed out nakedness with some random unshaven lover that I've fallen onto along the expense of sandy beach that lines my inner desires, I'll constantly be comparing fingers to fingers, touch to touch. Will I be carrying him in my heart forever at the expense of appreciating the immediate and the sensually present? My youth is fleeting or already gone and what remains is only contemplation and hindsight.

I was chatting with an older friend the other week who described to me how she would never forget one love who buried himself so deep in her existence that even though she's now married with three kids, she still feels intimate with her ghost of lovers past...

killing me softly with his song

faded by time, sun dappled images of fallen leaves etch themselves into her concrete flooring. she pulls herself up from the ground battling her will to lay still
and hide wrapped in the silence of twenty five square metres of mid city isolation.

her tears have alone watered the soil of her beautiful arid state
the drought single handedly alleviated by the plentiful aquifers in the corners of her two green eyes.

In Vino Veritis

Wine gives us liberty while love takes it away. wine makes us princes while love makes us beggars... and I have to explain why I'd prefer a simple glass of australian shiraz?

Last night was the final night of the Jerusalem Wine Festival. After spending the day in clinic in Jerusalem, i was persuaded by my friends to stay well into the evening and let loose a little bit at the wine festival. Full disclosure here in that my tolerance to alcohol is ridiculously low. I'm not much of a drinker at all. I rarely drink and am usually the sober designated driver/walker in a circle of completely smashed friends. However, I do love red wine.

Less than a glass of wine will turn me into a tipsy, giggly, overly affectionate, head spun, full on tel avivi. I begin the first sip thinking that I'll wet my mind and find clever witticisms falling off my tongue. Half a glass later, I'm in awe of how comically incongruent I'm capable of sounding.

At around midnight, the bewitching hour, we decided to hop over to another one of my good friend's bash/impromptu nachlaot jam session in his cool rooftop flat near the mahane yehuda market. I loved it but it was fascinating to see the differance between my tel aviv friends who I came with and my jerusalem friends. It was so starkly obvious who was from where. The vibe was very laid back nachlaot. My tel aviv friends have a totally differant style and chic factor and the conversation in the car on the way back to tel aviv around 5am centered around character.

We talked about the character of cities and their inhabitants and who imbues who with which. This, of course, was done in between bites of tehina and hot sauce laden falafel and dripping shwarma from which I abstained so as to not dilute my delicious grape intoxication that evening. Some things remain constant in Israel regardless of the city you call home.

action pause break

so the other week I had some acute pain that I attributed to an inaccurate cause. It happens. There's a long list of differentials and I wanted it to be the striped zebra. Turns out that I incurred another stress fracture. This time in my pelvis making it excruciatingly painful to sit on my bicycle seat properly. It was suggested that it was likely to have developed because I don't use regulatory riding shorts that have the cushy padding in the bottom. Lesson for the weathered cycling masses? Wear padded shorts.

I subscribe to cost efficient training and that means that I eliminate most of the things that would make my training and racing more comfortable like padded shorts, massage therapy, sleep. OUCH! It's not going to be fun on my bike for the next couple thousand kilometres.

I was thinking of becoming a one night stand kind of girl for the remainder of my years, but my goals in this area may be slightly hindered by this injury for now :-P

24 keys of Life

Facebook is one of my guilty pleasures. I even use it on my phone. There are a million silly quizzes that we can do and last night I gave in and did the WHAT MUSICAL KEY ARE YOU? quiz. Apparantly I'm the key of Emajor. Take from that what you will... I was thinking more of an Eminor or even the simple Gmajor. Rachmaninoffs Symphony number 2 was in the key of Emajor so I guess for sure I'm a match since I'm a fan of the complex and serene hahaha.

the modern day hermit

Cancelling plans to go out tonight was the simplest of decisions. One of my girls called me up and tempted me by descriptions of a hot meetup with lots of gorgeous and sane tel aviv men. instead, I dallied and postponed my late night run until now it will be too late for me to join. For 8 months I've avoided half of the city, even while running ( which is hard to do in a tiny city like tel aviv). It's very counter to my nature. I long for freedom to go wherever I please, but am literally terrified of a scene with the ex. As it is he still spreads rumours that I'm chasing him, among other rumours that he has fun with. As if he thinks that it's not going to get back to me. It's disgusting but I have no intent on adding fuel to his flame. what this means is that by default my life is compromised.

I'm thinking that it's just about time to move. As much as I love Israel and feel that I can still give a lot more, living this way makes me claustrophobic if every move I make has to be about avoiding him. After he dumped me, I only stayed in israel to spite him because he regularly accused me of being not israeli enough or not belonging to israel because my parents were born in Canada. It was ironic because his alter ego is so inclusive, but when it came to me he ramrodded regularly with the idea that I wasn't wanted in israel because I wasn't born here and didn't act israeli enough. But I don't have the energy to be spiteful and i want to live my life with the freedom to go where I please in my own city, and to find that unfortunately I may have to leave. I've never been so depressed before, nor for so long.

hominum hominus home

Home today while I should be at work. I'm not even getting much done using the time that I do have. Compulsively I switch to writing freeflow. My mind is occupied. Prepatterned with the ides of august and contracted by the belts of my imperfection. I sit with my psyche bloodied by my battle with the darkness that he set upon me. what power did I give away over myself in a moment of floating serenity. moments, if even that, was all it came to amount. moments that never added up to any sum of sort.

delete delete delete

why do some people gravitate towards depending on people who don't want to be depended on. Depend on me if you're going to take my advice and take control of yourself. Don't depend on me if you just want to complain. I don't do it so I don't expect anyone else to complain complain complain and then do nothing about it. In light of my own complaints i've decided to curb the amount that I care. enough of this. I'm having enough trouble trying to delete an entire extended relationship and it's tentacle effect on my mind. Let me deal with myself for once. If I want to sleep at 12 instead of going out until 3 and getting up at 5 then understand that it's not because I don't value your friendship. Let me recover and become myself again and then I can give you more. I'm not invisible to so why do my needs never count? Because I never assert them and then they are just not recognized as ever existing.

I'm not mary mother of jesus or mother theresa so why is it that I'm always expected to subvert my own very basic needs? I did the exact same thing in my last relationship with *&&$*head. The curious part about taking this approach with men, subverting our own needs, is that they will tend to then not even realize that the relationship is completely entirely nauseatingly all about them and their needs.

Maybe not all men. I know this is a vast and sweeping assertion when it's only meant to refer to the few men who truly are all about themselves. My apologies to mankind I admit to being highly jaded.

tinted viewfinding glasses

what does it take to be able to see things from a rationally removed perch? is analysis of anything affecting ourselves always tainted by emotion or could it very well be possible that we have the ability to box ourselves up, not so neatly, and peer out at the remnants of what's left around and underneath us as the world turns?

one of my friends is an organizational psychologist who is convinced that her degree in organizational psychology is the exact same as an MBA, so she can't understand why here degree isn't accepted as an MBA by israeli firms... well, maybe it has to do with the fact that the course modules were all psychology and zero hard business skills. I'm trying to help her build her career but it's tough because it seems like she wants me to do all the work including be her motivation. At this point I can't give away so much of my zip because I need it to drive myself, but she needs it much more than me. She doesn't have anything to drive herself forward because she feels as if companies should be chasing her but the reality is that it's not the market at the moment and even so there are tons of talented candidates and she needs to differentiate herself by working on progressive projects or getting some further education or just getting in their faces and campaigning for herself. She doesn't understand that opportunities don't drop in our laps. Sometimes, now most especially, we have to create those opportunities by getting behind sisyphus and giving him that backup so the rock doesn't fall back down to the bottom.

Every conversation is a motivational speech with her lately and I've found her tons of job openings and opportunities that she forgets to follow up on or she goes to one interview decides that she has the job, doesn't get the job, but in the meanwhile has skipped all the other job interviews set up. She doesn't have an income and laments that she can't survive, but is more intent on finding a husband than on building a career. What is with some israeli women these days? Are starter marriages really that fulfilling? What really is the point of marrying for two years and then divorcing? Is it really all that worth it to have that princess fantasy white wedding? I never want that. it's so funny how we can be polar opposites from our friends.