14th June, 2009. 8:10 am. On growing up

I cut my hair, Something needed to change. And while a trim and a shave are rather superficial, I feel I am growing up. A release of vanity. A spunky edge. I have been in a new relationship that has helped me how repressed I am. How it is so easy for me to let my needs fall to the wayside. How completely out of touch I have been with what they might be. I was always, nice. Often as nice as I could be. This kept me back, I got stepped on, I couldn't confront or challenge people. I had some really crappy friends. I hope they read this and know I am talking about them and know its because they were disrespectful, self centered, manipulative, entitled, and mean.

I am experiencing a paradox. I feel amazing, I feel strong and agile, quick and clever. My relationships feel for the most part positive. I love my job and the people I work with. The projects I am working on are finally my own. They are flourishing and other people are really excited about them.

I feel like I have learnt what I need.
I need a schedule
I need to be busy
I need to make and follow through with plans.
I need to take time for meals and get a ridiculous amount of exercise
I need to be intentional about my time
I need to be grounded rooted and productive
I need to be around inspiring people, people with interests and knowledge, skills, and passions,
I need self exploration
I need to communicate clearly
As much as I want to deny it, I need time for myself time to spend alone, to think rest, dream, and learn

From a living situation.
I need to feel more then transient,
I need intention,
I need communication
I need roommates who are busy and social but also spend time at home, and time alone.
I need roomates who want to work on projects either alone or together
I need a room that me and lovers or potential partners can feel comfortable in together
I need a living kitchen where food is made with intention to share and in ways that everyone can be involved
I need books around and resources,
A policy for respectable and abundant guests and clearly defined boundaries for when this goes to far

From lovers
I need to spend different types of times with them. On fancy dates, just causally hanging out, normal social overlap, time spent on convergent interests and of course sexy time.
Intimacy I need to be comfortable sharing my inner most thoughts and feelings without any type of hold ups.
I need relationships to be process rather then goal oriented with the ability to grow, learn and most importantly explore.
I need to spend time apart so that we can process,
I need partners who can communicate directly, tell me what they want and need, and feel comfortable sharing all that they need to share.
I need to learn what love is in new ways.

From Friends
I need defaults that feel safe
Places and people I know I am always welcome with
I need sustenance and activity to be the base of these relationships.
I need friends who are magical. Putting energy and life into the thing around them and animating their life.
I need friends to be concrete about plans. This doesn't mean on time or even super specific. But if we say we
are going to do something lets hold each-other accountable and make sure we actually do it.
I need different friends so that we can change things up once in a while.
I need people who are real.
Who care, are centered and are willing to experiment with themselves

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22nd April, 2008. 11:13 pm.

From Marvin- Pay It Forward : I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment here on my LJ. I don’t know what that gift will be yet, but you will receive it within 365 days of this post. The only thing you have to do in return is "pay it forward" by making a similar agreement on your blog.

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24th August, 2007. 2:00 am. read post is all mood

I’m back in Ithaca, the apartment is great. I feel quite grown up and overwhelmingly content, but still I’m missing something. Besides a bed that is, I am the most independent I have ever been, and pretty inspired, but at the same time I am feeling very nostalgic and everything is taking much longer then I would like.

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20th August, 2007. 12:24 am. wandering mind

Does a story lose half its value if it’s told a second time? Are recycled conversation insincere even if the topic strikes your fancy? I picked wild blackberries and wished the grapes ripe this afternoon. Talked into the early night with Christine. How deep are my roots, when friendly faces feel superficial? Narrow minds living in each other shadows. It seems souls seem lost only when they try to go someplace new. Will leave for Ithaca tomorrow or the next day, need to fix and pack the car first. Lost in search of home: onward. Roots can be planted superficially especially as we try to spread our wings. Can I leave an echo as I go? Or take little bits with me? How often are places the same returning as when I left them.

Current mood: accomplished.

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7th August, 2007. 8:16 am. One state, two state, One state, no state.

Home at last. Slightly jetlagged but its six thirty and I’m up. The best way for me to learn is through experience. But I’m in school, I return, and I’m not sure why.

How was my trip… Amazing.

What did I do… about the same things I do here.
Is this a waste of time, not making the most about being overseas… no. I didn’t travel to change myself, just to be and experience things differently and in a different place. This is what I did. Breakfast when living across from the shuk, awakening with random people every morning; one vegetable quickly joined by another and another, the melody crescendos… wallah!
Like anywhere there are good people and bad people. My friends were beautiful and simply could be from anywhere. They didn’t know how to not do things. The difference being not knowing doesn’t stop them, they try and learn, there is no failure in failure just a different lesson and another chance.

Conflict… It is true that tension flows through life. There is a lot of hate. Arab to Jew, Jew to Arab, Jew to Jew, Arab to Arab, Wealthy to Poor. “Dumpstering” the shuk is easy, but some of the men curse with their eyes and guarantee that their precious garbage makes its way safely to the compactor. Pretty young girls can have their share for a different abuse.

How was the homeland… I felt connected to people right away. Their kindness and love. Some of the places are beautiful. But I’m polarized, radicalized, and still idealized. I could have done much more in terms of activism but didn’t. I was scared.
Action means Action. I’m not ready to commit to absolutes.
“Don’t hitchhike, don’t take the buss, don’t bike, stay out of east Jerusalem, DON’T GO TO THE WEST BANK, don’t drink the water, don’t sleep on the beach.” ITS DANGEROUS. And yet through this danger, people live their lives. These “dangers” are facts of life. Each with its own Dichotomy. These are facts of life.

But how was my trip, I’m beating around the bush, trying to find words. My notebook became abandoned Ink failed to stain the page. Graffiti is beautiful, and Die Lucky Bush fills the walls of my brain. Soldiers see through the veil in Iraq, but perceive conflict with Palestinians as necessary and un avoidable.

Who am I in all of this. What was my experience, where do I stand. What is my story and who do I tell? I did all these things and have all these narratives.

I think governments are abusive, some so more then others. I see wrongs in a time where there isn’t a clear right…but is there ever? I think the Israeli government is wrong. It justifies its actions by protecting the lives of people who are wrong and not the people who are wronged. I have trouble excepting this. And even more trouble presenting it to others. For me this realization has come from two months of seeing, and a vast amount of internal deliberation.
I’m not Israeli though; I didn’t grow up with those fears. My upbringing is that of an American liberal Jew. How can I be expected to move from those values just because I’m in a different land and the right wing government is so called jewish? The violence needs to stop. New settlements need to stop. The taking of peoples land needs to stop.
It’s a disaster though, the cyclic nature of the baligan has it propagates itself. Oppressed and impoverished people become resistant and they are held accountable for their own oppression. Any answer is to be found outside of all of this.
My one regret about my time in Israel was that I didn’t go with Nomi to see Beit Omar and help with the permaculture projects she was working on there. She has been working with people who have gotten sick of being arrested and beaten at demonstrations, and see no improvement for the village coming from them.

Each action causes a reaction. Both sides “take advantage” of every new development they can.

Down it all spirals.
This spiral must be stopped. There are proactive approaches on both sides. Both out of necessity and out of resistance, this trend must continue.
I don’t think I am being radical in saying any of this. And as I have said earlier, I came to this place very slowly and through a lot of thought. I am even more reluctant to tell other people what I’ve learnt because I am not promoting anything I see as radical actions. The only thing I want to express is what I see as my own radical honesty, and hope that if enough people can do the same and try to look past their biases then possibly some real change can be made.

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8th July, 2007. 2:24 pm. Update from the past few weeks

Back in Jerusalem now, but inbetween I spent a week out in nature at the global awareness summer gathering. It's a permaculture group that kinda rally's behind Ishmael. We built cob stoves and compost toilets and a structure, then workshops began. They were mainly in hebrew, but it was ok because Shira and I did reiki 1 stuff. I spent a night at the kenerit and then close to a week in tsfat. I still haven't gotten used to the israeli idea of a spring yet, they are quite cute actually.

As soon as I got to Tzfat I bumbed into Barbra, then after that met some people talking about bio-desiel in english. He was making organic orange and cherry liquore, and had made a 100 bottles of wine from the grapes that grew on his roof. There was alot of really conciencious environmental stuff going on there. I ended up staying on the roof of the center for healthy living wich is a pretty neat project doing some urban sustainability stuff and also bringing life back to the fruit trees that have been neglected since israel reclaimed the city in 48.

But Tzfat also has alot of really intense stuff going on. I think too many people get too far into kabbalah and try to rap their heads around it all. There was a real split between really wonderful people there and some other ones who had the coldest eyes I've ever seen.

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14th June, 2007. 3:12 am. Police, Radical Rabbis, Santa as an aged hassidic man, and the universialtiy of vegan tuesdays

Jerusalem is just like Ithaca, only bigger and smaller. In the past three days, I've ran into three people from the states and keep stumbling across the same few people who I've met around here.

Last night I went to something that wasn't quite a potluck, but other then that; home. There was a puppy, that made me think of Yuky, when she was really small. The people, the food and the music felt like home. Michol looks like love, and everyone smiles just the same. The get together was at an ecological action commune where seven people who are doing national service instead of their military service are staying while the help start and run community gardens.

At the house they have everything from permaculture gardens to humanure and recycling gray water.

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11th June, 2007. 9:50 am. ready to drop off some baggage

So this morning I find myself awake,the sun rises over the dome of the rock, from the roof of the hostle we are less then a thousand yards away from all these holy places. It seems slow this morning, still not quite sure of where I am. We left the rest of the group lastnight at the airport and came back this way with dan in his rent-a-car. Things are especially overwhelming but also really simple.

This is a city that revolves around walls. Layers and layers of them. With both positive and negative conotations. The most amazing thing, is that after two thousand years of strife and struggle, tactics havent changed. To protect jerusalem the answer is yet again becomes a division and a barrier. I'm feeling that this is something that needs to be worked against in constructive ways. More then ever I realize that violence isn't any type of sustainable answer, and that people need to unlearn things they have been taught for things to improve.

Also, from being on this trip with all of these activists and organizers, I feel more then ever like I can make a difference, and that this empowerment comes from an understanding and values that solutions need to come not from governments, but from small steps by alot of people. All working to make the world into a more desirable place.

Current mood: awake.

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6th June, 2007. 10:12 pm. Quick update from israel

Brief summary of the trip so far.

There are thirty nine Americans on the bus,
We have eight Israelis plus the driver, the guide our gaurd, Eldad and the two leaders.
Both of them are from Different Progrresive Socialist Zionist groups.
We just finished a really honest and challenging activity on the whole conflict here. The people on the trip are for the most part really able to understand their biasses that doesnt mean we dont have strong oppinions. Today we went to a Rug factory ran by bedouin women.

Out of the group there are at least four vegans and at least six more vegitarians.

We have done so much really awesome stuff, and very rarely have we been given anything that we were supposed to take at face value. Even that at Independance hall yesterday was kind of a joke to us all.

Yesterday we went to a rally standing against the fourty years of occupation since the six day war. I met some radical clowns and was given a bike.

More thought out post coming soon

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30th May, 2007. 9:27 pm. bags packed and tummy filled

I feel like there is no middle ground between seeing this journey I'm beginning as an epic adventure, and downplaying it as next to nothing. Both feel silly and incomplete, I guess I'm leaving tomorrow but I can hardly believe it. I can't think of any other time I've been this excited and had such little clue as to what I should expect. At the same time though, I'm definitely not nervous, maybe a little aprhensive from having my bag packed and no-where to really go, or at least not be going there quite yet. Also, I feel like I'm way over-packed, but only because i have a second backpack full of stuff I'm bringing people, mainly the bundle of positive news.

Home has given me a slightly awkward feeling of being crowded and cramped in a lot of space. In the sense that its a five or ten mile bike ride to anything, but there isn't necessarily something to do once I get there. There weren't many times when I both had something to do and someone to do it with. I did get to catch up with a few people I haven't seen in a while, but the toughest part is not meeting many new people.

Yeah I'm definitely ready to go.

Current mood: eager.

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