Wow, world, wow.

Say I to you world. um. I have had an amazing first two weeks back in Chicago. My mother knocks on wood in my head, superstitiously as I say this and so do I. Why be so superstitious about the good things btw? Is it post-Soviet Jewish fear that everything nice will be taken away from you by Big Brother or some kind of looming omniscient totalitarian force? When a people have been terrorized the scars show even in the minds of their children. Fear is a contagious thing we can learn and learn to live with and breathe with...inhalation and exhalation laced with it. If there is no trace, you must be doing something wrong, indulging too much, they're about to take it away from you...knock on wood!

Ha. Happiness like a tap, tap, tap. I just discovered it inside of me, this ability to be happy. Is that weird? Yes. Better late than never? Absolutely.

Not that I've never been happy...of course I have, oh so many glorious times that I have poeticized about. But that was just the problem, there was languish and pain and emptiness between those spaces of goodness and it was as if I did not know how to sustain it. I do now, somehow.

Maybe all the pushing and pulling of myself like taffy across the crevices of the universe have finally paid off. I like to think so. I like to think that my open mouth finally found itself.
:) The lips closed and smiling, like the dog who finally stopped chasing her own tail.

Ritual or not

Skiing, like flying, changes my essence. I can soar down a mountain and I don't feel quite so mundanely human at that moment. I'm another species, and I've torn out of the mold of my daily routines and boxed spaces. My body is curving down gorgeously white slopes, and I'm singing to myself. The rhythm is just too good at those moments. It's at those times that I know that this life is so excruciatingly worth it. 

I spent today at home and slept in, slept off some booze and a jazz-filled first date, nursed the cramps that rock my body into submission. At least the timing is good. A Red Tent phase between my travels and work days and lovers. I call my grandmother who has severe Alzheimer's. She picks up and we have essentially the same conversation that we've had for the past year or more. But it never gets old because it's still her voice and we love each other ever more painfully and well, sometimes you find that you are a packaged little matrushka set of emotion. I'm the little doll inside my mother inside my grandmother inside my great-grandmother. Inside of me is a painful little empty space waiting for a doll I suppose. Thanks for the Cavity within, Woman-Maker in the Matel Sky Factory.

I should really be writing or something so this is a low-commital kinda start....

unprecedented chill

The more I remember my melancholy imaginings of what this Chicago winter would be like, the sillier it seems. Ok, so I imagined it would be this poetic misery, me sitting alone in a cozy apartment, huddled over a laptop with a glass of wine with enough memories to pretend to be an old geezer writing her memoirs.

Except the problem is this: to get to the poetic, the sweet nostalgic poetic, you have to get past the misery. And the misery my friends, the frigidity that covers the Chicago streets and penetrates the soul, is awfully hard to get past. You have to cross a frozen Styx to get to a place where you can have enough hope to express yourself.

Misery. Misery. Misery. 

Placing the placeless

Well December was eaten up by the country of Israel. A place so incredible and always so dear to my heart. I belong there, if I belong any where, if belonging has anything to do with looks and genes and the rage of jewish mothers.

I miss it again already. Like a brother, Israel is my brother - it is the most fraternity I feel for any particular nation of people.

My wandering heart, as usual, is torn by the people I have loved and love all over the globe. My heart has a map inside it, a spinning wheel of places that matter and sting with emotion, like a jeopardy wheel - who will I feel and think of next? Spin it. Not just places but faces that in themselves are placeless except that we all belong together, my virtual community of dear ones.

Moonlit nights in Jerusalem on the back of a motorcycle...I'm holding tight. I'm holding tight in my head.

I'm back in Chicago (a little over a week now,) where I have my own beautiful apartment and completely autonomous life. I feel a split inside myself...I'm opening the house of my soul up and letting a crying little girl walk out. The little girl has been fighting with her mother since she could speak. The little girl has been crying since she could make tears and screams and casualties inside her mind. It's time to love her. It's time to calm her down and let her play and enjoy being a cute little girl. I love kids and my inner kid, I definitely love my inner kid. Time to forgive my mom for thinking that little girl was less than awesome...it's that tiny, pained, dazed little fighter inside of me who still gives me much of my strength and insight.

There was a point when we were walking through several thousand year old ruins in the North of Israel that it became clear that I simply can't take it any more. Maybe this was the problem: I was used to heart break since childhood. My mom was always my heartbreaker. That's just how I saw and felt it for many years. I could never be good enough, I could never line up inside those blurry dotted lines, wherever they were. Mirror mirror on the wall, love me. Implicitly, heart break was normal. Not just heart break but the breaking of myself into little insufferable pieces. Painful little shards that just yearned to form a whole. Whole
some
of us are luckier than others. But in the end the power is in the hands of those who take it.

sleep-living

My entire day seems to be over-determined by how much sleep I get and when I get it.
Woe to my suprachiasmatic nucleus. I remember first reading about this little mechanism we are all born with that does or does not happen to conform with the 9 to 5, 24 hour, 7 day a week, bla, bla, bla tick tock rhythms of modern society. For example, if you're a lucky little "morning person" you'll probably feel so much happier swinging with the rhythms, getting your coffee and toast when you want it. If you only need what 5 hours of sleep, even better.
I, as you can probably guess from my bitter mockery, am not one of you lucky birdsong at dawn break people. I  love to sleep, need to sleep, sleep to sleep. I'm terrible at getting up. I need multiple incentives or a really amazing one to force my body out of bed at a certain time. If I ever marry, this will be good for my getting up problems because I find that the best alarm clock is definitely another human being. In the meantime, I continue to be monkish, to fall asleep with books in bed with me, sometimes my clothes on, ick. Yes, I'm literally sleeping with my books. And do I want to get up the next...cycle? Not usually. My disrupted rhythm is so bad that lately, because I am "trying" to do nothing but mainly work, I wake up with a headache and hungry belly and an unhappy mood. This little soldier is not a good drill sergeant to herself, especially in the realm of movement. Get up. Get up, woman!

It goes deeper, little nucleus beware. Bed is the place of denial, a hide out, a sleep hide-out from responsibility and life and people and places, and well, no matter what signals you might be sending me, my denial is stronger. I can sleep-hide from my own body...it seems that it is not so hard to corrupt whatever healthy path you are supposed to lead. Intention is stronger than pain.