Lick it and put it in the Blue Box

I want mail.
I don't wanna skype or do email (not that i get much email).
Send a letter-

Shimshon St:u Siegel
Yeshivat Bat Ayin
Gush Ezion 90913
Israel

I'll write back.

when it should it doesn't and when it could it's not

There have been DOZENS of times in the past few weeks when I wrote huge, sprawling, moping, bitching, ranting blog posts in my head, unleashing the complex of frustration, confusion, anger, loneliness, shortness-of-breath, lust, despair and physical discomfort I've been experiencing so much in the weeks since my job at Brandeis wrapped up.

But whenever I have a moment to actually blog this stuff, it just isn't there.

Right now, mellow. Slight ache in the lower neck. A little shortness-of-breath. It was an amazing sunset. I have to go babysit and type environmental Torahs.

Maybe next time.

Not sleeping in a box

I've been back in Israel for about 12 hours.
I put myself to bed just after 11pm, tired, weary, drawn-out, a little edgy, lonely, beat-up by the events of today's journey, which involved losing an expensive bottle of liquor, standing on the side of the road for over an hour, breaking into my room with a dirty pick-ax and feeding my emaciated friend Squeakers the Cat two bowls of Friskies.

I really thought I was gonna sleep for a long, long time.

A friend used my room for storage, and so my stuff is all buried under his. I didn't find a proper setting for the bed, and just used the ratty sheet I found on it, and some pillowcases from the community linen closet. For whatever reason, I didn't grab a sheet with which to cover myself, so at 1:10am I woke up, chilly and mosquito-bitten.

In a story in the book I've been reading, swarms of mosquitoes in Alaska actually cover people's limbs. In my trailer in the Judean Hills, one little bastard has his way with me until I leap up and smash him (or her). It's a nightly hunt I had forgotten about.

I am freaked out being here right now. I don't exactly feel like I am at home. My little room, in which I had been very comfortable last year, feels like a box, a closet, a tomb. The exposed lightbulb glares. I am a little freaked out.

It seems to take a week

I think about posting every day, every night. I challenge myself with ideas of newer, more revealing content. I imagine myself opening up and sharing all of my thoughts, experiences, struggles, my questions, hypocrisies & doubts. I imagine it to be cathartic, shattering, catalyzing.

Then I go to sleep instead.

My plane leaves in about 19 hours. It's coming to a close, this patchwork adventure in American living. This has been my longest period in the States in 2 years, more than double any prior trip. It's been good. It's been hard. It's been rewarding. It's been reaffirming, both towards the Darkness, and the Light. It's been fattening. It's been naughty. But not as naughty as we might have liked.

I am right now at Sarah and Jason's in Brooklyn. Tomorrow we are going to a premier Brooklyn brunch spot, near the Museum. Then I go to Soho to pick up my bags. I might take the Subway to the airport, spend $8 rather than $48. I dragged my stuff here from Boston, so I reckon I can wrangle it, especially if I get a little help on the first descent in Soho.

I don't feel ready to go back. I can muster, when I pause to do so, a yearning for the streets of Jerusalem, and certain bearded faces, and certain unbearded faces. But I don't feel ready to return to the religious life, to a context of pray-ers and believers and self-abnegation.

I don't know what I feel ready for.
But I guess no one's asking how I feel. Tomorrow is coming.

Left you hanging

Hi. I am in Rhode Island with Mom and Valerie, visiting cousin Doug and his wife, baby girl, dog Merlin (a Hungarian Kuvasz) and Tonto, the Sun Conyer, a clever bird who, when held over the garbage can and told, "Dookie, Tonto," actually does defecate. I lived with Tonto for a few months in Santa Clara, California, back in 1996. She's mellowed since then, and doesn't squawk all night long. (that isn't a real Tonto photo up there. just a pic of another Sun Conyer.)

In one week, I return to Israel. I am excited, but also feel some trepidation. I was exposed to / reminded of many aspects of life this summer from which I feel very distant when I am in Bat Ayin. As I always say at these moments of mini-transition, I need to establish myself a physically-spiritually-emotionally healthy routine that will provide me with a stable base while giving me opportunities to expand beyond the stultifying lethargy and indolence that the Dark Forces seem hellbent to instill as my primary mode of being.

Beyond that, I just gotta lighten up and love life. Ahem.

And find me a Ms. Shimshi-Wu.