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.