The details of my experience here are beginning to fragment and stutter, like a Skype video conversation, as the bigger goals I have for myself before I leave loom large, and at moments cast a shadow over the three weeks that remain here. Since I'll only have three days between landing and starting my job and then classes, I'm trying to use this time to reflect on my experience, and begin to soften into the last 1.5 years of school ahead of me. I'm starting to "zoom" out and lose a sense for the details, the textures, the moments when the sensuous body of time dances in my perception before shuttling forward again. I'm sure some wiser part of me knows that I can only take any piece of this experience - my last three weeks here, my studies and teaching when I return, my last definite year and a half in Boston - as it unfolds, moving through it, one hour and day at a time.
On New Year's Eve I handed Rafi a pump to inflate his tires so we could bike to Kehillah Yachad together for Shabbat services. Some special rabbi doctor guest offered the d'var Torah (in Hebrew), and spoke about the exodus from Egypt and, from what I gathered, the way that short term solutions cause more problems and importance of stating a long-term vision to people, even if people can't hear it at the time.
As Rafi and I headed to our respective dinner destinations, I turned on my blinky bike light and took off kippah to head to a makolet and buy the chili peppers I hadn't found earlier when I gathered ingredients for my chili recipe.
I had invited Michal over for dinner since - both out of nostalgia for the heavy, earthy meals I've eaten around this time of year most of my life, and out of anticipation of imminently being thrust into snow and ice and bone-cold, the desire to make chili and roasted root vegetables had become pressing. As I finished making the chili, Michal arrived at my apartment. We drank wine and talked about how crazy people get about midnight, about being in the right place at the right time, how what happens in that moment (which moment?) is somehow a microcosm, a fragment of the whole year ahead. Our plan was to go to a party put together by some folks who went to Burning Man, and to not have any expectations for the evening. But as various of one another's friends called over the course of dinner from the parties they were at, and 10 pm rolled by, my will weakened and I put on some silver suspenders and fretted as if I cared about the evening ahead.
As we biked down Rothschild Boulevard, we passed streets packed with people and awash in the the sonic coral reef of live bands and DJ acts from apartments, restaurants and bars. But when we finally arrived at the supposed Burner party around 11, as far into the bar as the eye could see were people dressed in button up shirts and slacks and dresses. Nothing shined or glimmered or blinked; no beats shimmered or dropped or throbbed. Michal encouraged me to ignore the pools of normalcy idling around their tables and see where the party was, but I was already clear that if it this party wasn't overflowing into the street, I didn't want to be there anyway. The night, as promised, was fighting even the thin skin of expectations that began to form in our collective imagining of that magical midnight moment.
We met up with some other friends who had ventured in and confirmed that there was nothing to see, leading us back to a rooftop party they had just come from. On our way, three people walked towards us and raised their beers as the gaggle of people I walked with, one by one, raised their water bottles in return: "Shana tova!", they said. When they got to me, I didn't have anything in my hand, so one of them gave me his beer and insisted I keep it. Some people around us began to panic as midnight approached: "10 more minutes and we're not there! Let's go!" We had passed the party it turns out, and by the time we arrived, and at the very moment I was locking up my bike to a lamp post, I heard some shouts of joy marking midnight.
We entered the apartment where the house party was, climbed the stairs to the second floor only to find an eerily silent room filled with equally spaced couples each stuck in a standing permakiss. Then, to my relief we then went up another set of stairs to the rooftop, only to hear people loudly counting down again - after which a guy standing next to me said, "My phone is synchronized to Big Ben time, and it's still not midnight!" So we did another count down. It's like midnight, that one Disneyesque minute of perfection could never happen.
As I walked around the rooftop, I heard German, British and American English and, of course Hebrew being spoken; some people wore mustaches, some wore Santa hats. It seemed like at least two different parties gave up on their own plans and climbed to this rooftop. Eventually, Michal and I hung out on the couch and just watched people. Before we fell asleep there, we left the party. As I biked back down Rothschild and a couple, holding hands, invited me to bike between them as they lifted their hands, shouted, "Wheee!", and left a smile on my face as I biked the next few meters.
On Sunday, the New Year's celebration continued in my weekly hoop class. Unfortunately, the speakers weren't working and perhaps gave me an insight into the experience of what music would sound like if my eardrum gets blown, though i hope to never know: I could hear it with my body rather than my ears, like it was in the ground. Our teacher, Orly, handed out plastic cups with blinking LED lights in the bottom and poured us all espresso liqueur, which seemed like a particularly bad choice given the intense belly shaking we were about to do. But how could anyone resist one more New Year's l'chayyim?
On Tuesday, as I took the train to teach hooping to the performing troupe at Circus Galilee, I wrote in my journal and occasionally looked back to make sure my hula hoop remained on the luggage rack. My pen ran out of ink and I had another hour before I arrived at Kiryat Motzkin, where the director would pick me up. I looked out the window and saw dozens of sizes and shapes and colors of people resting on benches and leaning against columns, some with calm countenances and some whose faces betrayed their fear that their train simply wouldn't come.
Sometimes when I'm in crowded places, like malls, I have the same almost mystical experience I had gazing at this motley crowd of people: I realized that every single person on this platform has a story - and therefore some place they've left, and a purpose in heading to each of their destinations. Perhaps they're visiting family, coming back from work, going out for dinner. Perhaps their life is about to change in the most unimaginable way. It had been a rainy afternoon and as the train continued out of the station, I saw a half rainbow and suppressed the urge to tap the drab businessman across the table from me with his headphones on and say, "Look at the rainbow!"
Night is falling here, and I just went to close my window. As I reached for the two panels to slide them shut, I stuck my head out of the window and breathed deeply. I wish I could take this smell with me: there's truly nothing else like the smell of dusty pavement mixed with the scent of grilled meat that fills my neighborhood on a regular basis.
No comments:
Post a Comment