Week 17

As I made my way to the gym, I noticed pedestrians and cafe goers craning their heads every which way, and a few seconds later, a man's screams shuttling down Rothschild Boulevard.  Perhaps I imagined I was joining them as I, too, paused for a minute or so to try to find the source.  The sound hid and revealed itself in the hundreds of surfaces and textures of this urban labyrinth of buildings and trees.  It seemed to have no origin, and to be Tel Aviv spontaneously crying out from her concrete and cement anonymity, asking to be known.  Almost two hours later, as I returned from the gym, I heard a woman's wordless, sourceless screaming.  I wondered if it had been going on for two hours.

*

Last Friday I walked from Zion Square in Jerusalem to Yakar before heading to Aviva Zornberg's house for dinner.  It was raining, and my hemp shoes and cotton jacket were darkening with damp.  As I stepped through the streams of water that coursed through the winding streets, it splashed over the
rubber edge of my soles and into my shoes and socks, and children gleefully screamed morid hagashem! ("the One who makes the rain descend").  Finally, a few blocks away from my destination, the water began to trickle in through the seams of my jacket and soak into my sweater.  Jerusalem has a way of penetrating all of my layers every time I go there, touching my flesh in ways that often causes goosebumps.

I return home soon, and as my time here comes to an end, I'm beginning to see the way the world rhymes again - how much visual sense there was in walking home the other day to see a guy hand a folded up chair to another guy on the corner, who then turned around and pull his pants back up to his waist.  As I walk down my street to my apartment, people's faces shimmer with meaning.

My friend Eric is visiting Tel Aviv with his boyfriend Eduardo, and arrived on Tuesday.  I met them at Laika, the "alternative" (i.e., hipster) club I went to on the first day I was here, almost 17 weeks ago.  Again, the DJ was spinning some sweet beats, and again no one was dancing.  We followed suit and yelled, trying to make conversation over our drinks.  Every five minutes someone came by advertising another party that was the "new best thing".  By the time we had the sense to leave, we had a pile of at least twenty postcards in front of us.

At 1 am, the boys still had energy, so I took them to Cafe Adar - the hidden courtyard behind Shuk Levinski.   After momentarily settling on an outdoor couch with a candle lit next to it, we decided to climb the spiral metal staircase to sit amongst the elegant old phones, bubble-like TV sets, and pile of records in the corner.  While eating tahini, beans and hard boiled eggs, and sipping beer out of mismatched glasses, we were able to talk more quietly over the Arabic music that shimmered in the background - about traveling and TV shows - until 3 in the morning.

*

Before I returned home and heard the city protesting its anonymity, I climbed out of the basement of the Shalom Meir Building where my gym is, to the street level.  As I began to push open the door, my last three steps were greeted by the smokey breeze of the early evening air.  I almost tripped on the top step as I was jarred by remembering that I'm in Tel Aviv, a city, like all cities, that I can never truly know.  Though its name is more of a concept of unity of people and buildings and pipes than an actual place, its buildings still reflect the clouds and the color of the sky.  There's freedom in not being known.