I knew it would happen – I’m getting all involved in how this site looks instead of what I have to say. Maybe it’s like dancing and when I learn how to do it so that it feels natural, my mind will turn around and start working again.

Holocaust Day begins tomorrow evening. The lady at the cosmetics counter who calls me to tell of sales warned me that the shopping center will be closed at 6, and that i should come before to buy beauty products. It struck me as strange, the way we began talking about Holocaust Day in relation to cosmetic convenience, and the way it has become a part of our daily lives to the point where it is almost transparent. And this even though I’ve been looking up family members all week, tracing the life and death of Kurt Gerron, comforting a few friends who become as upset about this day as if it had happened yesterday.
At least Durban is being boycotted together with Ahminidinajhad. The Swiss may think they are being neutral by shaking his hand, but I don’t like that kind of neutrality. It’s appeasement. And it’s dangerous.

 

come on, karen, this is easier than writing in html – you can do it – it’s so simple you can even think about what you’re writing instead of concentrating on the instructions and letting the thoughts come as they will. come on, you can do it.

all right, i talk to myself – it’s common around here after the holidays to go crazy. post-trauma tel-aviv style.

but i don’t know otherwise how i can get myself to accept this simpler, common form of blog.

and i have to do it because i am so far behind in my paperwork i have to find simpler ways of handling things. don’t really seem to be capable of it in the fields that matter

for example,a bunch of my friends were sitting around at breakfast this morning and one of them turns to me and asks how the IAWE is doing. the Israel Association of Writers in English. I tell them we had too many expenses with the last journal and no one is arranging readings or sales so we’re in debt and i can’t get myself to take up the slack so we can get the next journal out. They are seasoned organizers and come up with a thousand ways i can do it, all involving a few more hours a week. My eyes go dull and I don’t remember the rest of the breakfast.

But of course I HAVE to do it, because if i don’t there won’t be any more association. And it’s only 5000 shekel we have to raise. First I have to do my taxes and fill in forms for ACUM and write a song for Panic Ensemble and drink a cup of tea for my throat and call Bracha who is well over 90 and ….

Breakfast, by the way, was at Seatora, at Sea ‘n Sun. it was good, but pretentious. We have a lot of that around here, and I enjoy the simple homey restaurants much more. And the restaurant has terrible acoustics that i cannot forgive. Worse yet, the air conditioning was so strong that i came home and wrapped myself up in the winter quilt. And now my throat is sore.

So we took a long power walk – with the idea that it would warm me up. And indeed it did. There were so many things to see: Scouts dancing in a circle at the scout center, religious families coming home from havdala, stores opening for saturday evening (in the shopping center), dogs walking their owners, cats scoffing both, and all kinds of neighborhood activities. It warmed my heart and now my neuralgia is fading too. I’m glad we skipped the concert.

© 2012 Tel Aviv Diary: Karen Alkalay-Gut Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha