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.