Tel Aviv Diary - July 14, 2007

July 14, 2007

Friday nights - how can anyone explain what happens in this country on Friday nights? The intimacy of family and the loneliness of exclusion is felt in the street. I like both - sometimes being part and sometimes being totally free, drinking coffee in an empty cafe.

But on Saturday nights I like being with old friends. For example, Ezi and his friends from High School are still in touch - and I've known them for almost 30 years.

The only difference between these evenings now and then is that we don't talk much about politics. Even though we always meet on election evenings.

July 15,2007

But even this morning I've been getting calls from friends who want to talk about Tsipi Livni's t.v. interview yesterday afternoon - "Maybe you're not right for the prime minister job," says interviewer Dana Weiss, "you lack the killer instinct." "Maybe," say my friends, "its better to have an instinct for diplomacy, for ideology, for self-sacrifice." I of course agree.

At the request of a number of friends who claim there are no apartments available for rent in Tel Aviv or Ramat Aviv, I'm putting out a call for information. If you're planning on renting out your apartment, let me know and I'll post it.

July 16, 2007

My friends are complaining of censorship on these pages. I only write about a few things, they say, and the really interesting stuff I do I keep to myself. Okay, here goes. Rena and I spent her last night here by visiting "Sisters are doing it for Themselves," the sex shop for ladies at Comme-il-faut. We came home with t-shirts that say, "the pleasure is all mine," and I shamed our trainer by wearing the shirt for a run in the neighborhood.

Don't complain of censorship again. I just don't have TIME to write about all the good stuff.

Dinner at comme-il-faut, by the way, was great. I had the kinoa, which we pronounce here keeno-a, but should be pronounced kinwa, and it was fabulous.

July 17, 2007

One real advantage to having so many visitors,is the alternative perspectives I get from so many different directions. What they see, what they like, what they want from us, and what they want us to want from them.

July 18, 2007

Robert has reminded me that it is spelled quinoa and i was transliterating from the hebrew, and he says it's pronounced the way we pronounce it here. We made it once with ras-el-hanut and it was fabulous. We made it again without anything and it was deadly.

July 19, 2007

Motky, my old manager at Pookh, has gone into websites since he gave me and "Thin Lips" up, and promised me yesterday to help me modernize my website. It's hopelessly old fashioned, he said, echoing many of my less professional friends. He almost convinced me too, because it really is a sloppy little site. But something stopped me. I think it's because in my gut I feel i need to do this all myself in order for it to be genuine. So maybe I'll have to learn how to do websites, right?

Where were you when the Winograd Report came out? Finally, a five hundred and ninety four page document saying what we have known for the past year and were trying not to acknowledge and now are trying to forget, that no one was taking care of the citizens of Israel who were living in immediate and serious danger, that the army wasn't ready and that no-one was coordinated. And some of us have known it all along. So why are we so shaken up? Of course I haven't read it, but....

I have this friend who used to live here long ago and now comes back for a few weeks every year. She's really insightful and I love going out to dinner with her. Tonight we were sitting in a classy place talking about people and suddenly she said, "this place has got Mafia people here. Like that guy for instance," and she points to a man leaving with a few others. "He looks like the guy in charge of the murders in organized crime." "That's Yvette Leiberman," I tell her, "He's in the Knesset." "I rest my case."

To Karen Alkalay-Gut Diary

To Karen Alkalay-Gut Home

you are visitor number