This internet connection is really weak so I don't know if I will be able to post.
Am now in Tel Aviv. Came here yesterday to go to a wedding in the family and also to get out of Beer Sheva. There was a tzvei adom (siren) while I back in the dorms, packing to go to Tel Aviv. I decided to run all the way to the bomb shelter this time, something about being alone made me feel like not half assing it. And maybe it was also from seeing the pictures of the rockets making it through concrete walls on the news. Showed up down there wearing a skirt and lacy blouse for the wedding with long striped socks and clogs. Got some strange looks.
The dorms were so empty. One neighbor was there, he came out to say hi when he heard me going back into my room, so maybe there were more people who I didn't see, but it really felt like a ghost place.
I appreciated the wedding much more last night because of all the stress in Beer Sheva. It was so strange to walk into normal land after well, basically being under house arrest. People looked at me wide eyed when I tell them a rocket landed just a couple blocks from the dorms. Almost wanted to slap them because they seemed to have no idea of what it was like though they were so close. But that would be hypocritical of me on so many levels:
1) People in Sderot have been experiencing this and much worse for eight years. Eight Years. (People say this to me as part of their wild, vindictive, tirades about why Israel should just kick the shit out of Gaza and I usually ignore it because I hate their tone and their opinions) but if you take politics out of it, wow. I can't imagine it. And, the entire rest of the country has been going on as normal for eight years while these towns have been suffering. I was one of those people up until a couple days ago.
2) But then, on the more confusing level there's Gaza. They suffer more than we do and we ignore. They are people too and they are just as close to us as the towns in Israel that have received rockets (quassams) for years. But then of course they are the enemy.
New Years Eve I was in my relatives' house sleeping in their guest bedroom. They had a radiator in there but it didn't work. I was freezing. Plus this allergic reaction I have was spreading all over my body so I was itchy and feeling like I had leprosy or something. We went to bed at 11:30, I noticed that it was almost the new year but this celebrating the change from 11:59 to 12:00 seemed so irrelevant. No one else seemed to have even noticed.
(This makes me think about why some moments feel special and other times don't. It all has to do with popular consensus. This is obvious but sometimes the obvious we ignore. Even at home when I wasn't celebrating New Years, I would turn on the tv and see the fireworks and the parties around the world and on some level, knew or maybe tried to believe, it was a special moment. Obviously everyone else thought so. But in Omer on New Years we had only watched local tv all day, which is so insular that they do not even mention Gaza, that even is too far away to talk about. (Psychologically more than physically.) What they do show is only sites that have been hit in Israel: news reporters showing the damage in this school or this street, over and over again. And then the alerts when new rockets come. It puts your mind in a prison. To think about things like New Years seems not even pointless -- it barely occurs to you.)
I read a bit of something the other day that said Israelis have gotten too used to, or caught inside the patterns of war. I tell you it is true. It all seemed so natural for them -- the reports on tv from Beer Sheva and Ashkelon (towns being hit) were like reports from a war front. Right now, in Tel Aviv, that mentality seems crazy, but even when one is inside it it doesn't feel entirely feel honest. I mean believe you me if anything of half this magnitude were happening in a number of towns in the US the news stations would be having a ball with it. You can imagine: "The Home Front Under Attack" or "Freedom Under Fire" flashing In Red white and blue while someone talks to us in an overly serious tone. But regardless, how can one report so much on 20, maybe 30 rockets falling a day when your country is dropping I don't know, hundreds of bigger more powerful bombs a couple kilometers away?
I am not the best reporter for this though because I did not understand the newscasts they were in hebrew, nor did I watch the news casts in their entirety. Gaza was reported on, but to a very small extent (or so it seemed to me.) Ahh but we're all hypocrites. I guess it's just natural. We pay attention to what affects us.
Also, with things like this I am always aware that I am not Israeli. I have not taken that step of allegiance to this country and without doing so, my criticism is not bullshit, but it's not entirely fair. I am enjoying the hospitality, the universal health care, the kindness of this country, and I am giving nothing back. And now I want to criticize.
Yes, we all criticize what we think is wrong, but this somehow...
I stayed the night with some friends here in Tel Aviv last night. We were watching BBC in the morning. They had a report about Gaza (apparently less than they have been doing on it) . It was the first time I've seen international news reports on tv since the start of this. Started talking to the guy whose apartment I was in. We started off in agreement I think, in sympathy of what was going on in Gaza.
But then I said, "I don't think this will help Israel. It will just make more people angry."
He said, "They've been bombing us for eight years we need to crush Hamas."
I said, "Ok, but how do you know who is Hamas and who isn't? What are you going to do, kill everyone?"
He said, "If that's what it takes."
We were both not serious, with the killing everyone, at least I hope.
But truth is, my god, if "normal" people in Israel are extreme enough to say things like that, how can one expect the people of Gaza to be any less "extreme"?
ISraelis love to point out where Arab leaders have written in their statements of belief that they want to destroy Israel -- "push the Jews into the sea" is a common phrase. My friend said the same thing for Gaza today. I'm not saying this for you to hate him, only to show how easy it is to hate the other side here. Not even hate, just want nothing to do with. Gaza is a really sharp pain in Israel's back side. They have no idea how to deal with it. They are fed up. And this -- fullscale violence is the only thing they can think of. For so many reasons ISrael would be better off if Gaza just disappeared, and so statements like my friend's, of pushing them into the sea, are..... not rare but common. Ok, not common, but I think it is a sentiment that a lot of Israelis would silently agree with.
Anyway, I brought that whole thing up, because we ended in disagreement, and with me basically saying the Israel could not make the people of Gaza support the man ISrael wants them to support -- that one cannot make a people believe something because one wants them too. Outside interests cannot control peoples' minds the way they control bombs, machines etc. (Vietnam and Iraq for example). But for me to say that was basically to tell this guy that it was hopeless for Israel to get what it wants from Gaza. And that is a harsh blow.
We ended the conversation with me feeling sad and uncomfortable. I felt as if I had slapped him in the face. I don't know how to explain it, but politics are so personal here. They are so nice to me this couple and I didn't show solidarity.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Shalom, (hi)
Right now (it is the same day) I am in my relatives' house in Omer, which is a town near Beer Sheva.
Classes were canceled today. I walked to the university before I found out. Confusing scene there. No one sitting outside where they usually sit. Everyone looking around at each other. People were standing only next to buildings and under overhangs. It felt like everyone knew something I didn't. It was my relatives who told me I didn't have class today.
Apparently five rockets hit Beer Sheva this morning.
We only had one alarm though because the alarms have stopped working here.
One rocket hit a high school this morning. Luckily no one was in school because classes had been canceled the night before. They didn't cancel our classes until later.
My relatives are watching the tv and listening to the radio to know when we have "adom" or red. The alarm. Whenever the phone rings everyone rushes to pick it up thinking that it is someone telling us it is an air raid siren.
We had one more alarm since I've been here in Omer with the relatives. Being here shows me I was a bit in lala land in the university. We just stayed behind thick walls there when we heard the alarms. Here, after the alarm my relatives went running directly to the bomb shelter, yelling to make sure everyone was in. Then they locked the door and stayed in for minutes.
It is required here that everyone have a bomb shelter in their house, or a room that functions as a bomb shelter with reinforced walls. It all seemed like overprotection before, now it jsut seems natural. We have some place to run to.
I'm going for now.
Tried reading, am not interested. Everyone milling around the house here. No one allowed outside. I think I will go to Tel Aviv tomorrow for a wedding in the family even though my cousin here tells me it's not safe to take the bus to Tel Aviv. She says this because the bus takes a route that brings it closer to Gaza on the way to Tel Aviv.
I think it will be fine.
You can see how we disassociate from Gaza though. It is really this area one just tries to stay away from.
I feel so inept with the children. We just ran into the bomb shelter again, and one of the kids started crying. When I went near her she just started crying more.
I kind of wish I were still at the university though everyone is leaving there. This morning there was this weird sense of community. The security guard was joking as he checked us all more closely than usual at the gate. And I became closer with my roommate running to get to shelter with her. I think the students have a better way of dealing with this than what's going on here. Here I can't even walk out of the house, where as at the university we were walking around with freedom.
Some perspective -- it's impossible to have perspective couped up in the house with all my relatives tense.
I went online and saw the protests in New York against Israel.
Classes were canceled today. I walked to the university before I found out. Confusing scene there. No one sitting outside where they usually sit. Everyone looking around at each other. People were standing only next to buildings and under overhangs. It felt like everyone knew something I didn't. It was my relatives who told me I didn't have class today.
Apparently five rockets hit Beer Sheva this morning.
We only had one alarm though because the alarms have stopped working here.
One rocket hit a high school this morning. Luckily no one was in school because classes had been canceled the night before. They didn't cancel our classes until later.
My relatives are watching the tv and listening to the radio to know when we have "adom" or red. The alarm. Whenever the phone rings everyone rushes to pick it up thinking that it is someone telling us it is an air raid siren.
We had one more alarm since I've been here in Omer with the relatives. Being here shows me I was a bit in lala land in the university. We just stayed behind thick walls there when we heard the alarms. Here, after the alarm my relatives went running directly to the bomb shelter, yelling to make sure everyone was in. Then they locked the door and stayed in for minutes.
It is required here that everyone have a bomb shelter in their house, or a room that functions as a bomb shelter with reinforced walls. It all seemed like overprotection before, now it jsut seems natural. We have some place to run to.
I'm going for now.
Tried reading, am not interested. Everyone milling around the house here. No one allowed outside. I think I will go to Tel Aviv tomorrow for a wedding in the family even though my cousin here tells me it's not safe to take the bus to Tel Aviv. She says this because the bus takes a route that brings it closer to Gaza on the way to Tel Aviv.
I think it will be fine.
You can see how we disassociate from Gaza though. It is really this area one just tries to stay away from.
I feel so inept with the children. We just ran into the bomb shelter again, and one of the kids started crying. When I went near her she just started crying more.
I kind of wish I were still at the university though everyone is leaving there. This morning there was this weird sense of community. The security guard was joking as he checked us all more closely than usual at the gate. And I became closer with my roommate running to get to shelter with her. I think the students have a better way of dealing with this than what's going on here. Here I can't even walk out of the house, where as at the university we were walking around with freedom.
Some perspective -- it's impossible to have perspective couped up in the house with all my relatives tense.
I went online and saw the protests in New York against Israel.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
another one
There was another alarm and rocket this morning. I got out of bed and stood in the shower with my roommate. We heard the boom and then a bunch of ambulance sirens a couple minutes later.
That's it.
I read online that last night one of the rockets landed in an empty kindergarten.
My skin is still bumpy and red all over. :(
But everything is ok.
That's it.
I read online that last night one of the rockets landed in an empty kindergarten.
My skin is still bumpy and red all over. :(
But everything is ok.
Still up
I'm still up, it's the same night.
My second roommate didn't come back till midnight. She had been shopping. Came back with all the toilet paper we need for the next month. Doesn't mention what happened tonight as she comes in. I don't bring it up because I had texted her before to make sure she was alright.
She seems as if she's unaffected -- as gone and done the shopping, after school and everything, even after the rockets. But I can tell that by the amount she's talking to our other roommate she is more excited than usual. And then she calls, "Carolyn, What is this!?"
I come out of my room to see she is squatting over a brown stain on the floor. It had been wet there earlier, it had looked like water or something, I think it had come from our other roommate. I had noticed it and not done anything, even as I saw the wetness turn brown. But now my roommate is telling me that it is eating away at the floor and has affected the floor. She is already scrubbing it away -- her scrubs and her voice a scolding for me.
Yes, I should have cleaned it up. But this time I know it wasn't something I caused. AND, I see that she is stressed - that her mini floor freak out is her way of expressing her nerves from the night. So I just take it.
I do wish I had wiped it earlier though, I hadn't because for once it was a mess I hadn't made. The problem is I still get blamed for it!
My second roommate didn't come back till midnight. She had been shopping. Came back with all the toilet paper we need for the next month. Doesn't mention what happened tonight as she comes in. I don't bring it up because I had texted her before to make sure she was alright.
She seems as if she's unaffected -- as gone and done the shopping, after school and everything, even after the rockets. But I can tell that by the amount she's talking to our other roommate she is more excited than usual. And then she calls, "Carolyn, What is this!?"
I come out of my room to see she is squatting over a brown stain on the floor. It had been wet there earlier, it had looked like water or something, I think it had come from our other roommate. I had noticed it and not done anything, even as I saw the wetness turn brown. But now my roommate is telling me that it is eating away at the floor and has affected the floor. She is already scrubbing it away -- her scrubs and her voice a scolding for me.
Yes, I should have cleaned it up. But this time I know it wasn't something I caused. AND, I see that she is stressed - that her mini floor freak out is her way of expressing her nerves from the night. So I just take it.
I do wish I had wiped it earlier though, I hadn't because for once it was a mess I hadn't made. The problem is I still get blamed for it!
........
Ok so not going to think just going to write.
Almost two hours ago two rockets fell on Beer Sheva. Yes, Beer Sheva where I am living and going to school. I was in my room, trying to start my reading when I heard this noise outside and thought, hmmm... I wonder, wonder if that could really be the air raid sirens they told us about. But then I thought, no, they aren't loud enough. But then my roommate knocked on my door and I knew. She was running around. I said, do we stay here or do we go downstairs? (where there is a bomb shelter.) I couldn't remember the time they said we had after the sirens go off before the bombs hit.
Sometimes they say it is better to stay in your room. She said, no, lets go. and pointed to the wall with a window -that wall is where they are coming from. (our rooms face towards Gaza I guess.) Then she ran back to her room to grab her keys. I realized I wasn't wearing shoes. Put my clogs on and grabbed my keys, trying to be more organized like her. Though neither of us were thinking very clearly. She opened the door and ran through, I started to lock it, she said no just come. We ran downstairs, two flights. As we were running, I thought, it's probably a drill. We started running around the courtyard down there but then stopped behind a wall. I asked why and she said, probably safer to stay here than to go all the way to the shelter. Some boys come running excitedly to where we are. Loud, and laughing. Cracking jokes. I felt like cracking jokes too. I also felt like grabbing my roommate.
Then I heard a boom. And another. I looked at her and she said yes. It sounds like they are close. And then I started to grab her and realized everyone else was acting more normally so I didn't. A guy I know in my program comes running wildly by us. I called him and he comes back. He says, I was looking for you. Valiant, sort of, but fool hardy. He had been in the bomb shelter and ran out. His movements were jerky. His voice was jerky. His nerves were shaking his whole body.
Then we heard another boom. It is not as clear as I am making it. I heard the sound but wasn't sure what it was. One guy had cigarrettes and a bunch of people grabbed them. A girl in my program grabbed them immediately. She was standing next to me. It occurs to me now that she had been trying to quit the last three weeks. Had gone weeks cold turkey. But as I turned to go back upstairs I saw her there smoking. Didn't know whether to stay or to go. I went up to my room with my roommate but now I feel bad for leaving her there.
I guess we were all acting more in control than we actually were.
Then went to call my mom and cell phone service was out. The network was too busy. Finally got through.
I can go through the rest but I will stop.
I did not mean to make a big deal out of this, or to drag out the actually process of the whole thing, but that's what happened.
I am still shaky. I pretend that I'm not but the adrenaline was real. I started cooking about half an hour afterwards and realized I was not hungry at all even though I hadn't eaten since noon. It was the adrenaline.
But now for the perspective. I wrote an email yesterday to a friend about what Israel is doing in Gaza and was having trouble.
It is terrible. I think 360 people are dead there now, after only a couple of days. Basically Israel is bombing them, saying they are going for police stations etc, but because everyone lives so close together there, lots of people are getting killed. Plus, police men are people too. (Everyone seems to ignore that).
Life has been going on pretty much as usual here (up until now). It sounds terrible -- that we go to school and party etc. while people only a thirty minute drive away are getting the crap bombed out of them, but I think everyone is aware of it, they just don't talk about it. Well, they do, but not as much as one would think they do from the outside.
I was playing soccer yesterday and my old roommate mentioned the possibility of rockets here. I didn't take the idea seriously. I also didn't say anything but was thinking that it was wrong of us to think about attacks against ourselves when such a full scale bloodbath was being done to the Gazans.
I realize now it is much easier to think like that when one hasn't experienced the sirens or the bombs oneself. And I didn't even experience the bombs. I just heard the noises. I thought it was insensitive of Israelis to talk only about the possibilities of what could happen to us when mentioning "this new development" but now I see they were being realistic. It doesn't mean that what is going on in Gaza isn't much worse than what happened here, it is, but that doesn't change the fact that something did happen here. What was my point? I lost myself.
I want to say, yes, it really is a war here. It is a fucking war. While I was standing in the courtyard of our dorms, behind the big wall, I looked at the Israelis around me, and I thought, I finally get what it's about. It is one thing to say two rockets fell on Beer Sheva, it is another thing to stand outside and listen to them fall. Even though no one died or was even hurt one will always have experienced the feeling of being under attack.
I'm not saying this to legitimize what ISrael does to the Palestinians, only to say that after having had so many Israelis tell me, "you just don't get it" I can finally say I am starting to get it.
I think. I don't know.
My thoughts went to the boy I kept writing about on this blog (DO Not Call). The playboy pretty boy and thought, he lives with this kind of thing? Well, maybe he hasn't yet, but he is now. It's just so hard to think of even the young and immature dealing with stuff like this. But they do. I was standing outside in the courtyard with them -- three guys who were probably only eighteen.
I will go on a bit more. Back in the room with my roommate. She's calling her mom and her friends. She tells me that this was happening in her city this past weekend, where she was. She hadn't mentioned that to me. Can you imagine spending the weekend at home, having bombs falling on you there and not telling your roommates about it afterwards? IT is hard to imagine. And yet, I can tell, that this is far from nothing for her. They live with this and yet they cannot hide that it affects them. My old roommate, the one I play soccer with, called me just now to ask if, for the next alert she can come to my room because she lives above us and her room has huge windows. She said this time she went down three flights of stairs in her slippers and that by the time she got down it was probably past the time for the bomb to have hit.
Her voice sounds different. She sounds more shaken than I am.
Ok. I didn't want to make a big deal about it because here it is not a big deal. It is both a big deal and not a big deal. No one was injured or even hurt by the rockets in Beer Sheva.
But I am trying to imagine bombs landing in Amherst MA or Summit NJ, I just can't. The sense that where you are is not safe, is a very strange sense. Right now I feel safe again, but for a second, after I heard the first boom while standing behind that wall, I felt unsafe.
But, most importantly, and this is what I wanted to get to, Israel is really doing something terrible to the Gazans. Talk about feeling unsafe where you are. There they are not just hearing booms, they are seeing carnage.
I haven't been watching the news (no tv.) and have only gone online a little, and now don't know if I want to but I still know, and I've seen some videos.
From the videos I did see, I will say it is both comforting to see normal streets and stores in Gaza, and gut wrenching to see the blood, debris, and wreckage there too. I say it is comforting because the way Gaza is discussed here, even when it is not being bombed, is as if it were some infectious disease. It is a thing we all try to stay as far away from as possible. I saw "it" from a distance of maybe 100 200 meters this summer, standing on a hill next to the security fence, and still it seemed like a place of booby traps and death, even though I could see the buildings of Gaza city from where I stood.
Why? Because what people tell us clouds what our eyes can see. And all one hears about Gaza is either how they want to destroy Israel, about the rockets coming from there, about the need to build the security fence around them, about ALL the security devices in place around it, so that one feels that even by standing in the sightline of someone in this place, on the other side of the wall, one is in danger of dying.
The old, ultra conservative south african man, who gave us a "tour" of the Gaza border certainly did all he could to make us worry that we were in danger being there.
But in truth people live there, go to school, work, eat pray, same as they do in Israel. Some do send rockets at us, but the rest just live. It is nice to be reminded of that. Because otherwise we just see the place as a huge, seething enemy.
---------------------
In other news, and you are going to think this is blase, passe, un important, but for me it is. I have hives or something all over my body. No one seems to give a fuck. I might be vain for worrying about the bumps all over my neck and chest and shoulders, and back, and stomach because I don't want to look like this when I go to a cousin's wedding in two days, but I guess I am vain.
My mom asked me if I wanted to go home after the bomb alert. No I don't want to go home after that. Honestly, the thing that would make me more likely to go home is this feeling I have that I can't take care of myself here and that I don't have anyone here to take care of me. First I was sick. Then the skin on my face was a mess. Then that got better but now this. I keep trying and failing. Finally I went to the doctor about the hives, after two days of telling myself that it was not worth a doctor's visit. I was worried they would see me, and I don't know tell me to stop complaining. I just want someone who will make me ok, so that I don't always feel like I'm sick or something.
Ok, have taken a couple minutes. I am ok. Sorry for the whining. I think I've just developed an allergy to eggs and that's what caused the hives. I am deducing this after looking things up on the internet and from the knowledge that I was eating way way too many eggs the last two weeks. (It was my attempt to get more protein without having to cook meat. OOOOps.) The rash probably won't go away in time for the wedding but that's ok. And I am learning to eat a more balanced diet.
And I am safe.
The end.
Almost two hours ago two rockets fell on Beer Sheva. Yes, Beer Sheva where I am living and going to school. I was in my room, trying to start my reading when I heard this noise outside and thought, hmmm... I wonder, wonder if that could really be the air raid sirens they told us about. But then I thought, no, they aren't loud enough. But then my roommate knocked on my door and I knew. She was running around. I said, do we stay here or do we go downstairs? (where there is a bomb shelter.) I couldn't remember the time they said we had after the sirens go off before the bombs hit.
Sometimes they say it is better to stay in your room. She said, no, lets go. and pointed to the wall with a window -that wall is where they are coming from. (our rooms face towards Gaza I guess.) Then she ran back to her room to grab her keys. I realized I wasn't wearing shoes. Put my clogs on and grabbed my keys, trying to be more organized like her. Though neither of us were thinking very clearly. She opened the door and ran through, I started to lock it, she said no just come. We ran downstairs, two flights. As we were running, I thought, it's probably a drill. We started running around the courtyard down there but then stopped behind a wall. I asked why and she said, probably safer to stay here than to go all the way to the shelter. Some boys come running excitedly to where we are. Loud, and laughing. Cracking jokes. I felt like cracking jokes too. I also felt like grabbing my roommate.
Then I heard a boom. And another. I looked at her and she said yes. It sounds like they are close. And then I started to grab her and realized everyone else was acting more normally so I didn't. A guy I know in my program comes running wildly by us. I called him and he comes back. He says, I was looking for you. Valiant, sort of, but fool hardy. He had been in the bomb shelter and ran out. His movements were jerky. His voice was jerky. His nerves were shaking his whole body.
Then we heard another boom. It is not as clear as I am making it. I heard the sound but wasn't sure what it was. One guy had cigarrettes and a bunch of people grabbed them. A girl in my program grabbed them immediately. She was standing next to me. It occurs to me now that she had been trying to quit the last three weeks. Had gone weeks cold turkey. But as I turned to go back upstairs I saw her there smoking. Didn't know whether to stay or to go. I went up to my room with my roommate but now I feel bad for leaving her there.
I guess we were all acting more in control than we actually were.
Then went to call my mom and cell phone service was out. The network was too busy. Finally got through.
I can go through the rest but I will stop.
I did not mean to make a big deal out of this, or to drag out the actually process of the whole thing, but that's what happened.
I am still shaky. I pretend that I'm not but the adrenaline was real. I started cooking about half an hour afterwards and realized I was not hungry at all even though I hadn't eaten since noon. It was the adrenaline.
But now for the perspective. I wrote an email yesterday to a friend about what Israel is doing in Gaza and was having trouble.
It is terrible. I think 360 people are dead there now, after only a couple of days. Basically Israel is bombing them, saying they are going for police stations etc, but because everyone lives so close together there, lots of people are getting killed. Plus, police men are people too. (Everyone seems to ignore that).
Life has been going on pretty much as usual here (up until now). It sounds terrible -- that we go to school and party etc. while people only a thirty minute drive away are getting the crap bombed out of them, but I think everyone is aware of it, they just don't talk about it. Well, they do, but not as much as one would think they do from the outside.
I was playing soccer yesterday and my old roommate mentioned the possibility of rockets here. I didn't take the idea seriously. I also didn't say anything but was thinking that it was wrong of us to think about attacks against ourselves when such a full scale bloodbath was being done to the Gazans.
I realize now it is much easier to think like that when one hasn't experienced the sirens or the bombs oneself. And I didn't even experience the bombs. I just heard the noises. I thought it was insensitive of Israelis to talk only about the possibilities of what could happen to us when mentioning "this new development" but now I see they were being realistic. It doesn't mean that what is going on in Gaza isn't much worse than what happened here, it is, but that doesn't change the fact that something did happen here. What was my point? I lost myself.
I want to say, yes, it really is a war here. It is a fucking war. While I was standing in the courtyard of our dorms, behind the big wall, I looked at the Israelis around me, and I thought, I finally get what it's about. It is one thing to say two rockets fell on Beer Sheva, it is another thing to stand outside and listen to them fall. Even though no one died or was even hurt one will always have experienced the feeling of being under attack.
I'm not saying this to legitimize what ISrael does to the Palestinians, only to say that after having had so many Israelis tell me, "you just don't get it" I can finally say I am starting to get it.
I think. I don't know.
My thoughts went to the boy I kept writing about on this blog (DO Not Call). The playboy pretty boy and thought, he lives with this kind of thing? Well, maybe he hasn't yet, but he is now. It's just so hard to think of even the young and immature dealing with stuff like this. But they do. I was standing outside in the courtyard with them -- three guys who were probably only eighteen.
I will go on a bit more. Back in the room with my roommate. She's calling her mom and her friends. She tells me that this was happening in her city this past weekend, where she was. She hadn't mentioned that to me. Can you imagine spending the weekend at home, having bombs falling on you there and not telling your roommates about it afterwards? IT is hard to imagine. And yet, I can tell, that this is far from nothing for her. They live with this and yet they cannot hide that it affects them. My old roommate, the one I play soccer with, called me just now to ask if, for the next alert she can come to my room because she lives above us and her room has huge windows. She said this time she went down three flights of stairs in her slippers and that by the time she got down it was probably past the time for the bomb to have hit.
Her voice sounds different. She sounds more shaken than I am.
Ok. I didn't want to make a big deal about it because here it is not a big deal. It is both a big deal and not a big deal. No one was injured or even hurt by the rockets in Beer Sheva.
But I am trying to imagine bombs landing in Amherst MA or Summit NJ, I just can't. The sense that where you are is not safe, is a very strange sense. Right now I feel safe again, but for a second, after I heard the first boom while standing behind that wall, I felt unsafe.
But, most importantly, and this is what I wanted to get to, Israel is really doing something terrible to the Gazans. Talk about feeling unsafe where you are. There they are not just hearing booms, they are seeing carnage.
I haven't been watching the news (no tv.) and have only gone online a little, and now don't know if I want to but I still know, and I've seen some videos.
From the videos I did see, I will say it is both comforting to see normal streets and stores in Gaza, and gut wrenching to see the blood, debris, and wreckage there too. I say it is comforting because the way Gaza is discussed here, even when it is not being bombed, is as if it were some infectious disease. It is a thing we all try to stay as far away from as possible. I saw "it" from a distance of maybe 100 200 meters this summer, standing on a hill next to the security fence, and still it seemed like a place of booby traps and death, even though I could see the buildings of Gaza city from where I stood.
Why? Because what people tell us clouds what our eyes can see. And all one hears about Gaza is either how they want to destroy Israel, about the rockets coming from there, about the need to build the security fence around them, about ALL the security devices in place around it, so that one feels that even by standing in the sightline of someone in this place, on the other side of the wall, one is in danger of dying.
The old, ultra conservative south african man, who gave us a "tour" of the Gaza border certainly did all he could to make us worry that we were in danger being there.
But in truth people live there, go to school, work, eat pray, same as they do in Israel. Some do send rockets at us, but the rest just live. It is nice to be reminded of that. Because otherwise we just see the place as a huge, seething enemy.
---------------------
In other news, and you are going to think this is blase, passe, un important, but for me it is. I have hives or something all over my body. No one seems to give a fuck. I might be vain for worrying about the bumps all over my neck and chest and shoulders, and back, and stomach because I don't want to look like this when I go to a cousin's wedding in two days, but I guess I am vain.
My mom asked me if I wanted to go home after the bomb alert. No I don't want to go home after that. Honestly, the thing that would make me more likely to go home is this feeling I have that I can't take care of myself here and that I don't have anyone here to take care of me. First I was sick. Then the skin on my face was a mess. Then that got better but now this. I keep trying and failing. Finally I went to the doctor about the hives, after two days of telling myself that it was not worth a doctor's visit. I was worried they would see me, and I don't know tell me to stop complaining. I just want someone who will make me ok, so that I don't always feel like I'm sick or something.
Ok, have taken a couple minutes. I am ok. Sorry for the whining. I think I've just developed an allergy to eggs and that's what caused the hives. I am deducing this after looking things up on the internet and from the knowledge that I was eating way way too many eggs the last two weeks. (It was my attempt to get more protein without having to cook meat. OOOOps.) The rash probably won't go away in time for the wedding but that's ok. And I am learning to eat a more balanced diet.
And I am safe.
The end.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
AHHH I've gone crazy. It's 1:25 in the morning and I've just found new videos on youtube of Spring Awakening and I've been watching them... over and over.
It's hard to explain but I need whatever it is those kids have. Maybe it's a drug. I don't know.
I have another presentation tomorrow. It's about Iran before the Revolution. We read this really theoretical article for the presentation, and I don't think our presentation explains the article exactly, it's really scattered and not clear. But sometimes when I'm working with someone else I do not have the time to think things through myself so I let things get done... not as well as I would like them done. Also, I don't like always arguing with someone else if they think they have it and I don't think they have it but I'm not sure of what the right thing is. If I had been doing it myself I would have done a better job, but whatever. I was going to fix things tonight, but instead I'm doing this.
Actually writing this is helping me to detach myself from this coke like addiction I've developed to youtube. Maybe I will actually look at the thing tonight.
(MAtt Doyle is amazing. I know I said I was going to get over this, but I haven't...)
I met a bartender last night who has a twin brother. I hi fived him when he said it.
So writing the above got me to go and work on my power point presentation. It is now 2 in the morning but at least it is better than it was.
I think I have an allergic reaction to something. I am allergic to Israel.
I am going to bed happy though because of those Spring Awakening videos.
It's hard to explain but I need whatever it is those kids have. Maybe it's a drug. I don't know.
I have another presentation tomorrow. It's about Iran before the Revolution. We read this really theoretical article for the presentation, and I don't think our presentation explains the article exactly, it's really scattered and not clear. But sometimes when I'm working with someone else I do not have the time to think things through myself so I let things get done... not as well as I would like them done. Also, I don't like always arguing with someone else if they think they have it and I don't think they have it but I'm not sure of what the right thing is. If I had been doing it myself I would have done a better job, but whatever. I was going to fix things tonight, but instead I'm doing this.
Actually writing this is helping me to detach myself from this coke like addiction I've developed to youtube. Maybe I will actually look at the thing tonight.
(MAtt Doyle is amazing. I know I said I was going to get over this, but I haven't...)
I met a bartender last night who has a twin brother. I hi fived him when he said it.
So writing the above got me to go and work on my power point presentation. It is now 2 in the morning but at least it is better than it was.
I think I have an allergic reaction to something. I am allergic to Israel.
I am going to bed happy though because of those Spring Awakening videos.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Actually...
Actually, the presentation went well. Well, well enough.
At Amherst I didn't have the confidence to get up and bullshit, but here I do. Ok, it's not bullshit, but it is talking about something without a lot of preparation, and acting as I if I have the ability to talk about it. Last year I could not do it. Now I guess I believe for the first time that I have the ability (if I try) to understand things pretty well and to explain them, so even if I haven't done a great job figuring something out, what I've done is still pretty good. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's a big step for me.
I think instead of writing papers I should be giving presentations of some sort.
Today there was a sandstorm here. I think. All I know is the wind was blowing everywhere and there was a haze in front of the sun and in the sky.
It finally feels like Christmas/ holiday season. I guess because it's Hanukkah.
I'm sorry I write so much about school. I think everyone knows though that I am preoccupied with school work more than I should be. For some reason I am always a little bit stressed, and even if I am not acting as if I am, and do not think I am stressed about x/ y paper, often when I sit down to write, the first thing that comes to mind for me to write about is how I should be doing x or y. Maybe it is just a deeply internalized guilt. (I write this because I was just about to launch into how I should be doing work for my final papers but am not.)
I'm doing better than I was for a couple weeks. I ascribe the change entirely to a change in diet. Food makes a difference, apparently. I decided to start cooking for myself. At the moment all I can cook is omelets. But I make really good omelets. I am aware though that eggs, cheese, and some cut up vegetables is not a balanced diet. At least it's better than I was doing for a while.
My next step is meat. I also make good salads. It's a start.
Ok, yalla bye.
(I am in the computer lab. Do Not Call is here, but I'm not going to talk to him. )
PS. In this recipe exchange everyone will probably just get omelet recipes from me. (sorry). I can't tell you how to do anything else.
At Amherst I didn't have the confidence to get up and bullshit, but here I do. Ok, it's not bullshit, but it is talking about something without a lot of preparation, and acting as I if I have the ability to talk about it. Last year I could not do it. Now I guess I believe for the first time that I have the ability (if I try) to understand things pretty well and to explain them, so even if I haven't done a great job figuring something out, what I've done is still pretty good. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's a big step for me.
I think instead of writing papers I should be giving presentations of some sort.
Today there was a sandstorm here. I think. All I know is the wind was blowing everywhere and there was a haze in front of the sun and in the sky.
It finally feels like Christmas/ holiday season. I guess because it's Hanukkah.
I'm sorry I write so much about school. I think everyone knows though that I am preoccupied with school work more than I should be. For some reason I am always a little bit stressed, and even if I am not acting as if I am, and do not think I am stressed about x/ y paper, often when I sit down to write, the first thing that comes to mind for me to write about is how I should be doing x or y. Maybe it is just a deeply internalized guilt. (I write this because I was just about to launch into how I should be doing work for my final papers but am not.)
I'm doing better than I was for a couple weeks. I ascribe the change entirely to a change in diet. Food makes a difference, apparently. I decided to start cooking for myself. At the moment all I can cook is omelets. But I make really good omelets. I am aware though that eggs, cheese, and some cut up vegetables is not a balanced diet. At least it's better than I was doing for a while.
My next step is meat. I also make good salads. It's a start.
Ok, yalla bye.
(I am in the computer lab. Do Not Call is here, but I'm not going to talk to him. )
PS. In this recipe exchange everyone will probably just get omelet recipes from me. (sorry). I can't tell you how to do anything else.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)