What Se F**k?
Shalom! Ma shlomach? Sababa, sababa. Toda robaba. Le trov!
Shalom! I can officially have a five second conversation with the people of Israel as well as say a prayer before we eat. That and I can tell you what fat is (ksulot) and a check for a future date (Check dahuy). What can I say? I am the most useful thing you could have around especially in Bazaars or ordering ice cream.
Ma shlomach? But I've learned more than just dorky words. I learned girls still take selfies here --when they buy a baseball cap and try it on for the first time, they sneak a peak around the coffee shop and hold their phone up against the light to find a perfect angle for pouting their lips and capturing their contained excitement. The bathroom icons are still the same --even though they might lead you to a room with stalls and both of the sexes washing their hands side by side.
Sababa, sababa. Muslim people still pray when they are called --even though an intercom rings through the whole block announcing that it's time. Bagels are a jewish thing as in Jerusalem, the designated Jewish courtyard had bagel stores lining the walk from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to the West Wall. Hookah is found nearly everywhere but from families that go to the park on Sabbath to relax and with men who are eating lunch in a cafe.
Toda robaba. There are clothes and scarves covered in elephants that are not offered to you unless you reveal a wad of American dollars. Honestly, I am mildly obsessed elephants as I have bought a pair of pants with elephants and finally after ten days of searching, I have bought a tapestry with elephants. After being told I cannot buy affection and love, I still stumbled into yet another bazaar with the sole goal of finding the most authentic and fitting tapestry for my significant other --the same significant other that has states you, my readers, know more about my feelings towards him than he does. I call bullshit. But he knows better, right? I wore it as a scarf since the sea breeze in Tel Aviv froze my bones and my heart was only thawing from our argument --more of a discussion. The real discussion that was thumping my thoughts --a nuisance --was why the fuck are there elephants instead of camels all over the place? Well, in the bible, a giant rodent, the closest relative to an elephant still alive today, roamed the land and Israel is home to it. But who wants to walk around with giant rats on their pants? Right.. Just as many people who want to wear tapestries as scarfs and sit on them blogging.
Babe --this is about to smell like Israeli sea mist and my body --you can wake up to the light distortion of me.
Le Trov! I'm worried my body has absorbed the smell of the Middle East. What if I come home and I no longer smell the sweet meadow flowers? But all that holy water still leaves my legs in pain. All the blessings that that have been said and offerings I put in church boxes are just words and coins I left in beautifully designed places. What is so holy of buying river water for $15 let alone spending $126 for a pair of plastic earrings from the "holy land"? The power of Christ compels you to spend five times the normal amount because Jesus will save you. At least I was allowed to soak my feet in a river with monster catfish for free. There is nothing holy about a land because some people labeled it so. There is nothing holy because a mob of people nailed a man to a cross for expressing his god-given ability to speak. Holy is the fact that these places are free and the people in them are free to be their odd selves and swing their heads back into the river to feel something enlightening that my toes had too many callouss to feel.
I feel nothing in these sites. I am touched by the magnificent beauty they possess with their ruins but I am here for their architecture and destruction of nature. In Nazareth, the Church dedicated to Mother Mary is a wondrous depiction of said art. The walls have gifted paintings of Mother Mary from different countries and their own interpretations of what she looked like. That was beautiful. That touched my inner cynic. That made me act like the biggest tourist and run around taking photos of each one. Every country with their own mother. The Chinese obviously had a woman with squinted eyes, the Africans had a dark skinned woman. Each different to fit the people of the original country. Gorgeous. Unbelievable to see how perception and the face we call beautiful in the morning can sway fact that if she was born in the Middle East, the Nazareth depiction would be the closest.
Art of a city touches me, the nature of a city touches me, the people themselves --they seem to run more on their toes --touches me. Their stories add new meaning to the facial expressions I see daily. Stories like that of a Kibbutz where the children we given off to a Child's Home until age three seeing their mothers only at feeding time because mortality was so high. Stories like that same mortality rate led the women to naming their children after inanimate objects since the spirit of death only wanted little boys and not wolves.
The story that inspired the title and invoked my understanding of Israel --inspired me to change --was that of the Russian Disco. One night, at a Russian square, one suicide bomber walked in to a night club and threw his grenade into a crowd. The grenade went off and over twenty people died. The building still stands where the initial impact happened where the concrete fell from the supporting wire and where the bodies rest. This is their cemetery and their flowers are the graffiti that cover the walls. There are portraits of Ganesha and bizarros boats of people all masked with an underlying pain. Their friends died because of some feud they were not involved with but still fell victim to this ignorance, this terror, this action that needed a reaction because enough wasn't done.
Toda robaba. There are clothes and scarves covered in elephants that are not offered to you unless you reveal a wad of American dollars. Honestly, I am mildly obsessed elephants as I have bought a pair of pants with elephants and finally after ten days of searching, I have bought a tapestry with elephants. After being told I cannot buy affection and love, I still stumbled into yet another bazaar with the sole goal of finding the most authentic and fitting tapestry for my significant other --the same significant other that has states you, my readers, know more about my feelings towards him than he does. I call bullshit. But he knows better, right? I wore it as a scarf since the sea breeze in Tel Aviv froze my bones and my heart was only thawing from our argument --more of a discussion. The real discussion that was thumping my thoughts --a nuisance --was why the fuck are there elephants instead of camels all over the place? Well, in the bible, a giant rodent, the closest relative to an elephant still alive today, roamed the land and Israel is home to it. But who wants to walk around with giant rats on their pants? Right.. Just as many people who want to wear tapestries as scarfs and sit on them blogging.
Babe --this is about to smell like Israeli sea mist and my body --you can wake up to the light distortion of me.
Le Trov! I'm worried my body has absorbed the smell of the Middle East. What if I come home and I no longer smell the sweet meadow flowers? But all that holy water still leaves my legs in pain. All the blessings that that have been said and offerings I put in church boxes are just words and coins I left in beautifully designed places. What is so holy of buying river water for $15 let alone spending $126 for a pair of plastic earrings from the "holy land"? The power of Christ compels you to spend five times the normal amount because Jesus will save you. At least I was allowed to soak my feet in a river with monster catfish for free. There is nothing holy about a land because some people labeled it so. There is nothing holy because a mob of people nailed a man to a cross for expressing his god-given ability to speak. Holy is the fact that these places are free and the people in them are free to be their odd selves and swing their heads back into the river to feel something enlightening that my toes had too many callouss to feel.
I feel nothing in these sites. I am touched by the magnificent beauty they possess with their ruins but I am here for their architecture and destruction of nature. In Nazareth, the Church dedicated to Mother Mary is a wondrous depiction of said art. The walls have gifted paintings of Mother Mary from different countries and their own interpretations of what she looked like. That was beautiful. That touched my inner cynic. That made me act like the biggest tourist and run around taking photos of each one. Every country with their own mother. The Chinese obviously had a woman with squinted eyes, the Africans had a dark skinned woman. Each different to fit the people of the original country. Gorgeous. Unbelievable to see how perception and the face we call beautiful in the morning can sway fact that if she was born in the Middle East, the Nazareth depiction would be the closest.
Art of a city touches me, the nature of a city touches me, the people themselves --they seem to run more on their toes --touches me. Their stories add new meaning to the facial expressions I see daily. Stories like that of a Kibbutz where the children we given off to a Child's Home until age three seeing their mothers only at feeding time because mortality was so high. Stories like that same mortality rate led the women to naming their children after inanimate objects since the spirit of death only wanted little boys and not wolves.
The story that inspired the title and invoked my understanding of Israel --inspired me to change --was that of the Russian Disco. One night, at a Russian square, one suicide bomber walked in to a night club and threw his grenade into a crowd. The grenade went off and over twenty people died. The building still stands where the initial impact happened where the concrete fell from the supporting wire and where the bodies rest. This is their cemetery and their flowers are the graffiti that cover the walls. There are portraits of Ganesha and bizarros boats of people all masked with an underlying pain. Their friends died because of some feud they were not involved with but still fell victim to this ignorance, this terror, this action that needed a reaction because enough wasn't done.
"Se day will come when I'll live on this earth and you'll be like WAT SE FUCK?"This was the only quote I found in English on the wall and for some reason, I felt as though it had more importance than the middle school wording. This was the cry of those smothered by ceiling who died without reason but for someone else's cause. We are someone else's cause. Tourists and the symbolism we tack on to a river filled with mossy steps. The absurd amount of money we spend is what keeps these holy sites free to those people who need god, who have changed their lives because of Mother Mary and whatever image they have of her. We are someone else's cause but I enjoy tagging along on this ride cause it is only building my cause.
I'm not tan just dirty. I'm not wise just observant. I'm not upset just touched.
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