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.