Could be a song or a ribbon of scat...but it's not. I'm off to LA tomorrow after work and then to Toronto to see my family. In between there will be a race, supposedly the hardest course in the U.S. ( to be confirmed--albeit I'm in awful shape this year. a tri a try may feel like the hardest course in the U.S.), a bunch of meetings, an exam, and then family time.
I'm excited and scared. I don't mind the travel time, as I'll get a lot of work done in the air, but I have all the usual hesitations about whether I'll meet up to expectations. I'm worried about seeing how time has affected my parents and grandfather. I'm worried about how my mother will view the way time has affected me.
It's midnight, i've just finished work and am in need of some blissful shut eye. Worrying is henceforth postponed until tomorrow.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
my fair lady redux
how do we learn to be fair to a memory? how to we learn to balance the urge to exaggerate it and turn it into a farce of itself? what if we've exaggerated it to compensate for the scorching heartache that never really goes away entirely? does it make the exaggeration fair?
what if you've never expressed the other side and you've never chosen to look on the downside and the searing sting causes you to want to obliterate the good memory by picking out the bad? are we then justified in doing just that?
does justification matter at all if someone gets hurt because of it? it really doesn't. the whole discussion becomes moot.
I'm an odd duck somewhat. I'm not very translucent. I'd easily get rejected as one of the translucent virgins of paradise. I'm all too much human but I'm not fake. I actually know who I am and I have a complicated relationship with myself but underscoring my life choices are the set of values and ethics that I inculcated. I try to live following a moral compass that isn't so much based on the mannerisms of religion but on what underlies it in the body of ethics. My worldview, or my weltershang is fluid and formative and I'm always searching for new prisms to look through.
Despite all this, i completely lack any template for working through matters of the heart. none of the above served me well. I had a mirror held up for me and I realized that I hated how I was acting but I don't know how i could have prevented myself from falling into something archaically mosaic. i don't believe in an eye for an eye and you can't really measure out an equally weighted eye. nothings ever truly equivalent. you shouldn't be made to feel what I feel because I'm aware of it. my awareness makes it unequal because who's to say that you ever knew? or if you knew you did it because of your own hurt and then nothing could ever be equal, communicated, or understood and the hurt becomes cyclic. "you" could be anyone, but was someone very real and very special to me.
I lost something and I will likely never find it again. Love was a component but it's not about love. I didn't lose that because it's mine to give away freely. I lost something else that could never be priced. It was something that I prayed for after I prayed for the health of my family. I prayed for it and then I found it. I found that something intangible that I couldn't let go of. When I lost it, nothing in my world seemed the same.
But, I have nobody else to blame and I suppose that life does move on. Some people never experience the gift or the loss. The least that I can do in thanks for having been given this, is to remember in truth and look to a fairness in my memory which has the ability to keep some of that gift alive as if it had never been lost.
what if you've never expressed the other side and you've never chosen to look on the downside and the searing sting causes you to want to obliterate the good memory by picking out the bad? are we then justified in doing just that?
does justification matter at all if someone gets hurt because of it? it really doesn't. the whole discussion becomes moot.
I'm an odd duck somewhat. I'm not very translucent. I'd easily get rejected as one of the translucent virgins of paradise. I'm all too much human but I'm not fake. I actually know who I am and I have a complicated relationship with myself but underscoring my life choices are the set of values and ethics that I inculcated. I try to live following a moral compass that isn't so much based on the mannerisms of religion but on what underlies it in the body of ethics. My worldview, or my weltershang is fluid and formative and I'm always searching for new prisms to look through.
Despite all this, i completely lack any template for working through matters of the heart. none of the above served me well. I had a mirror held up for me and I realized that I hated how I was acting but I don't know how i could have prevented myself from falling into something archaically mosaic. i don't believe in an eye for an eye and you can't really measure out an equally weighted eye. nothings ever truly equivalent. you shouldn't be made to feel what I feel because I'm aware of it. my awareness makes it unequal because who's to say that you ever knew? or if you knew you did it because of your own hurt and then nothing could ever be equal, communicated, or understood and the hurt becomes cyclic. "you" could be anyone, but was someone very real and very special to me.
I lost something and I will likely never find it again. Love was a component but it's not about love. I didn't lose that because it's mine to give away freely. I lost something else that could never be priced. It was something that I prayed for after I prayed for the health of my family. I prayed for it and then I found it. I found that something intangible that I couldn't let go of. When I lost it, nothing in my world seemed the same.
But, I have nobody else to blame and I suppose that life does move on. Some people never experience the gift or the loss. The least that I can do in thanks for having been given this, is to remember in truth and look to a fairness in my memory which has the ability to keep some of that gift alive as if it had never been lost.
hwy 6
Pulling another space cadet shawna maneuver, I ended up riding on Hwy 6 yesterday as the sun set and cars whizzed by me at warp speed. Hwy 6 is one of the roads that are banned for cyclists.
I left this morning very late because I wasn't going to ride at all. The team left at it's usual time of 6am and I wasn't among the riders. Instead, my bike and I left on an epic tour that began at the robust hour of half past nine, and continued until my foray onto hwy 6 leading back into tel aviv at half past five leading into six.
It wasn't exactly a training session. It was a mind wandering session and I was fueled my many sour jellie bellies in the process. when I'm in proper training mode, I'm pretty careful about nutrition to the point where i regularly dip into deep hypoglycemic mode and can be easily beaten by a grandmother. But, in non-training mode, when i hit the muscle glycogen empty mark, sugar never tastes better and I don't bother suffering through the bonk. I don't even like sugar or sweetness, except in the case of dark chocolate, but when I'm cooked I could even drink gatorade straight up.
anyway, fueled by jelly bellies, I was hypnotized by the circular pattern of my pedaling which steadied between 95 and 100 rpms and i rode from tel aviv up past ramla and modiin and over to sommet nachsom. Once I was near tel shahar i decided to ride up to ness harim near haddassah hospital and then back around on random roads towards tel aviv. At some point one of these random roads took me out to the hwy that I shouldn't have been on. Whereas before I've been stopped by watchful police officers and redirected, this time no one noticed me and I didn't really notice myself.
sometimes i forget that i need a dose of sunshine to feel like myself. it's lucky that we're rarely lacking that here.
I left this morning very late because I wasn't going to ride at all. The team left at it's usual time of 6am and I wasn't among the riders. Instead, my bike and I left on an epic tour that began at the robust hour of half past nine, and continued until my foray onto hwy 6 leading back into tel aviv at half past five leading into six.
It wasn't exactly a training session. It was a mind wandering session and I was fueled my many sour jellie bellies in the process. when I'm in proper training mode, I'm pretty careful about nutrition to the point where i regularly dip into deep hypoglycemic mode and can be easily beaten by a grandmother. But, in non-training mode, when i hit the muscle glycogen empty mark, sugar never tastes better and I don't bother suffering through the bonk. I don't even like sugar or sweetness, except in the case of dark chocolate, but when I'm cooked I could even drink gatorade straight up.
anyway, fueled by jelly bellies, I was hypnotized by the circular pattern of my pedaling which steadied between 95 and 100 rpms and i rode from tel aviv up past ramla and modiin and over to sommet nachsom. Once I was near tel shahar i decided to ride up to ness harim near haddassah hospital and then back around on random roads towards tel aviv. At some point one of these random roads took me out to the hwy that I shouldn't have been on. Whereas before I've been stopped by watchful police officers and redirected, this time no one noticed me and I didn't really notice myself.
sometimes i forget that i need a dose of sunshine to feel like myself. it's lucky that we're rarely lacking that here.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
the black hole
i'm the dumbass. i have no idea what's wrong with me. i have no idea how my emotions take over here sometimes. maybe i've written the flip side of the coin or maybe i habitually see things wrong. it's sunny outside but i don't feel it.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Bringing Gilad home
Hamas sent the Gilad Shalit video to Israel today and it was heartbreaking to watch. This young boy has unmatched courage and even in the video under the direst of circumstances after being held away from his family and home for three years, he still maintains his sense of humour. You can see him at the beginning of the video with a small smile as if he's almost embarrassed at the spectacle and he laughs a little at the mention of the mujaheddin before returning to seriousness.
I believe everybody wants this boy to be returned to his home. He's such an innocent. He shouldn't have to endure this. But at least he seems to have the coping tools to survive. He should only be brought home safely so that he doesn't need to test the longevity of those coping skills any longer.
Of course,realistically, to Hamas the video was more psychological warfare, but to Gilad's family it was the greatest gift.
I believe everybody wants this boy to be returned to his home. He's such an innocent. He shouldn't have to endure this. But at least he seems to have the coping tools to survive. He should only be brought home safely so that he doesn't need to test the longevity of those coping skills any longer.
Of course,realistically, to Hamas the video was more psychological warfare, but to Gilad's family it was the greatest gift.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
all the gmars of yom kippurs past
i guess the guy from my last relationship forgot to delete my number from his phone. Last week before yom kippur began, I got a gmar chatima tova. It was probably an sms that he sent to everyone on his contact list.
ajami
Just saw the award nominated movie Ajami at the dizengoff lev theatres with a few friends. Exhausting to watch and the ending left me feeling like I was hit by a sac of bricks. What an absolutely disturbing movie. gritty and real, I recognized most of the places in the film and the dynamics felt familiar. It read like a treatise on the cycles of violence and racism and was underscored by the differences we demonstrate in how life is valued. Why do we mourn one child more so than another and how do we prevent futility from taking over? It was filmed in time disjointed skips and with a camera style that allowed us to feel in the moment absolutely.
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