Tel Aviv Diary November 26-December 2, 2016 - Karen Alkalay-Gut

Tel -Aviv Diary - November 26-December 2, 2016 - Karen Alkalay-Gut

November 26, 2016

Fire - faulty electrical wires, firebombs, a can of gasoline, etc. and the country is on fire. There are Palestinian firemen fighting alongside the Israel teams, Cyprians, French, all our neighbors. No one with any sense wants to destroy trees or scorch earth, but it doesn't take much sense to enact a little revenge...

Of course Solomon knew about this with his judgement. Still.

SOLOMON

Lets go over this one more time:
Here’s the baby – born of me,
but the neighbor says he belongs to her.
And the judge looks like he really
doesn’t care one which whore wins
– just wants this case as precedent –
and the baby is making enough noise to give
us all a headache – so the judge
whips out his sword and says we’ll just
slice him up the middle. And I think maybe
in my job you have it you sell it and you still have it
but being a mother is about loving not owning
and I slip myself in between him and the sword.
The judge says here, he’s yours
And I say, you just don’t get it.

November 27, 2016

I'm beginning to get nervous about this evening atHaezor. Dan Shorer will interview Corinne Allal and me about language. I have no idea what it will be - every time we talk it's a completely different conversation. Well it will be good anyway, right?

To get away from the news I decided I needed a new bathing suit - we do a class on TI on Thursday nights and it is so cold coming out of the pool so i thought if i had a two piece i could get dressed more quickly and avoid sinusitis. So i went to the 'outlet' in herzlia. i haven't been there for years but it hasn't changed - just the prices are much higher. anyway i found a pair of shoes my size - and it was so surprising i bought two more. this was not good. it was clear that i need a whole lot of retailing to get away from the ecological damage, the politics, the whole mess.

great shoes, though.

November 28, 2016

So I was right. one should never miss the news around here. What was I doing yesterday thinking I could listen to audible books instead of the news. Incredible losses from the fires in Haifa and Jerusalem, Isis battle on the northern border, more accusations against Bibi, plans for resisting the dismantling of the illegal settlement... and i was listening to some british novel about a less than perfect marriage instead of the radio.

Seriously folks, there is a crucial need for funding to reclaim the homes. I don't know whether the donations have been organized or not, but I'll let you know.

November 30, 2016

Happy Birthday Oren. We miss you.

Oh did you miss a good evening last night. Everything worked beautifully and when Ezi gets to download his film you'll be able to see it properly. in the mean time you can see it here. well, no. soon. it was one of those evenings when you really wish your friends were there because you gave up all these secrets you never had the occasion to share with them.

So we woke up this morning expecting the rain, and it didn't come. It would be good for the greenery bad for the roofless houses in Zichron, Nataf, and all the other fire-struck places. But I thought of the Hebrew word for fulfillment and it comes from the root word for rain. Hitgashmut-geshem. Fulfillment is really needed now.

Late night - we're still waiting for the rain. We stayed home all day thinking about the cold and rain and now we'll have to run all our errands tomorrow and that's when the rain will pour down and we'll have to skip over the flooding street gutters.

December 1, 2016

and at 10:40 this morning the rain came pouring right on my guest as she left our place to her car. All I wanted to do after that is get back into bed, but we had places to go and people to see. And now I have to go out to a TI (total immersions) class - maybe to catch my death and die.

The storm came while we were in the pool. Nothing of the instructors' words did I hear over the thunder and the clattering on the tin roof above us. But it somehow worked and maybe i learned something.

December 2, 2016

We had tickets for the philharmonic in the morning. so at 11 there was Prokofiev and Khachaturian - in a remarkable concert conducted by Karen Durgaryan with pianist Behzod Abduraimov. and at 1 we raced from the elegant concert hall to the dumpy theater of Tmuna to see anti-shefa. Poetry, music, in a similar concept of what constitutes the relationship of art to the participants. I may be in the group next time but we have to meet and think about our lives and stuff and what kind of theme we want to do.

After that we went down the street to the Bucaresest restaurant, and probably got the entire kitchen up to attention. I can hear the manager telling the cook that some non-Rumanians have entered the premises, one of them is definitely foreign (Sabine). The food was authentic and good and reasonably priced. the bill was hand written. suitable for a rainy day. Definitely.

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