Yeah, this is what I’ll miss. (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 17:03:47 -0400

Reactivating

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:29:55 -0500

I’m reactivating this blog for my Spring Break road trip. I’ll be driving alone from Montana, through Nevada, down California, then back up again through Utah.

Gonna be a trip.

Ancient Cyclades had very good reception (Taken with instagram)

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 09:31:26 -0400

Ancient Cyclades had very good reception (Taken with instagram)

We don’t have a hotel rm, but we do have a 3am train and...

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 11:59:35 -0400

We don’t have a hotel rm, but we do have a 3am train and directions to a club called Insomnia (Taken with instagram)

We’re at the Berlin hauptbahnhof, btw (Taken with...

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 11:55:47 -0400

We’re at the Berlin hauptbahnhof, btw (Taken with instagram)

It’s a castle (Taken with instagram)

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 11:53:36 -0400

It’s a castle (Taken with instagram)

“Break” in Germany (Taken with instagram)

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 11:52:33 -0400

“Break” in Germany (Taken with instagram)

Zero workplace dismemberments since 2006 (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 08:50:05 -0400

Zero workplace dismemberments since 2006 (Taken with instagram)

The guy who picked us up at the airport in Moscow. Enthusiasm up...

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:04:32 -0400

The guy who picked us up at the airport in Moscow. Enthusiasm up to here. (Taken with instagram)

Garry Fucking Potter (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:01:36 -0400

Garry Fucking Potter (Taken with instagram)

Kremlin cathedral is quaint as fuck (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 09:59:27 -0400

Kremlin cathedral is quaint as fuck (Taken with instagram)

This bell is also big and is also a fucking bell (Taken with...

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 09:58:27 -0400

This bell is also big and is also a fucking bell (Taken with instagram)

This is a big fucking cannon (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 09:56:55 -0400

This is a big fucking cannon (Taken with instagram)

Taken with instagram

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 09:55:32 -0400

Taken with instagram

Kremlin (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 09:54:45 -0400

Kremlin (Taken with instagram)

Going with the Flo. (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:28:06 -0400

Going with the Flo. (Taken with instagram)

How does he sleep like this? (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 04:42:07 -0400

How does he sleep like this? (Taken with instagram)

Wisdom at the Doha Airport (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:28:26 -0400

Wisdom at the Doha Airport (Taken with instagram)

A Little Surface-Level Political Consciousness

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 17:50:39 -0400

AT THE BORDER
ISRAELI GUARD: Passports, please. (She takes them.) So you guys — where have you been?
Eilat, then through Ramallah, now onto Jerusalem.
ISRAELI GUARD: Ramallah?
Yes.
ISRAELI GUARD: What were you doing in Ramallah?
Visiting a friend, one of our friends.
ISRAELI GUARD: I see. Do you think it’s beautiful?
Ramallah?
ISRAELI GUARD: You think it’s beautiful? Very beautiful.
Not as beautiful as Eilat.
(She returns the passports.)

P, A MAN BEHIND A COUNTER, EARLIER

P: Yes, welcome welcome welcome! Ameeeeeerica, ameeeeerica, God shed his Grace on meeeee! Where are you from, huh? Aaah! New York! City? Albany?! Albanyyyyyyy and Ivoryyyyyyyyyy!

I, A MAN AT A TABLE, LATER

I: So, this is called a kipa, something we wear on these occasions. It’s interesting because there’s nothing in the Torah that says we have to keep our heads covered. It’s a practice I believe started in the Middle Ages, right honey? Something like that. Anyway, my aunt here actually embroidered it, it’s very nice, what thirty? thirty-five? But anyway, we start by blessing the wine.

P: What do you want, I get you anything. Cokes, three shequals apiece. He has five, and you have three, just give him two of yours and me the rest. Have you ever played backgammon?

I: Then, after the bread, we welcome the angels, who come to every one of these, apparently. But they can’t stay long. They have plenty of places to be, as you can imagine.

P: That’s what it’s all about, backgammon, taking two numbers, bringing them together, making mathematical decisions, boom boom. You’ve never played? Ah, that’s fine, that’s fine. I played for a while, but I am lousy! My father, though, he was incredible at it.

I: All right, then, bon appetite, as they say.

P: Like lightening. You have five here, you want to get five, very fast, very mathematical. That’s how my father thought, he had like a - you know - people say there are different kinds of thinkers in the world, different ways of approaching the world. There are four of them: the square, the triangle, the circle, and then there is the - I am forgetting - well, a fourth one, four ways.

I: We have two different soups, cauliflower and cucumber, take your pick.

P: The square is very logical, very straightforward, the circle which is much more emotional, outside of the box types, and then there is triangle, which was my father, very mathematical. Which would you say you are?

I: So what is it you study in college?

P: Yes, me too, I am much more of a circle. My wife, she is triangle or square, but I am talking, dealing with customers.

I: Theater, really? You know, my cousin, she studied theater. Something of an actress, poet, playwright, studied in Tel Aviv. She even spent some time acting in San Francisco, though when she was out there, she decided acting wasn’t for her, I don’t know if she was actually very good at it, but she started getting into writing poetry, plays. Some of them were even produced.

P: You are from Missouri? The University there is in Columbus, yes? Columbia, of course, Columbia. I had some friends who went there. I went to college in New Hampshire. Great, but cold, terrible winters, ugh, couldn’t stand it. So I finished up in Alabama.

I: Passed away, poor girl, at the age of 39. Lung cancer, even though she didn’t smoke. Lots of people get lung cancer, even if they don’t smoke. Not many people know that.

P: We - I was a very big fan of the parties.

I: But while she was alive, she was definitely a firecracker.

P: Like the Spring Breaks, the fraternity parties, all of it…

I: Took a lot of, well let’s call them “risks.”

P: Party all the time. I have no idea how we survived!

I: I actually think she got the bug for acting while she was serving in the army, which I’m sure you know is compulsory here, three years for men, two for women. Anyway, she had a - she has a twin sister, and they were both serving, though at different bases, and they would impersonate each other. Switch papers, the whole deal. It was a big risk, you know, one would have more clearance, things like that. Serious risks. Then, one day, she got in a situation she couldn’t get out of, with her sister’s papers. And when the army found out they were NOT happy. But - and here’s the thing - they only had four people doing her job, so they couldn’t throw her in jail. I think they just confined her to the base. She couldn’t leave the base for a month.

P: And the ladies, man. Southern women are a trip.

I: Seeeeerious risks.

P: But, you know, here’s the thing, I get to Alabama, and Black fraternities, white fraternities, both of them tried to get me! They didn’t know what to do with me, a Palestinian! And so I am thinking and deciding, and I go with a white one, because you know, if you joined a Black fraternity in those days, no white women would want to sleep with you. Really, you know, I know it is maybe different up north, but the racism, it is that people are not emotionally ready for peace. Not heart to heart personally ready. Maybe on paper, maybe the governments.

I: Is the policy strange as a parent? Well, it’s not really a question of choice. I have four sons, all will serve. One of them just turned eighteen and has entered a spokesman unit. He’s in charge of selling positive stories about the army to the press. He just sold one last week, right? About a man who had his hand blown off in 2008 and is now returning to service. My second son wants to go into a combat unit. Which is, you know - I can’t say anything about that because that’s what I did.

P: It’s a lot like it is here.

I: It’s something I took seriously, I applied for more time, actually. By the time I was twenty-three, I was in charge of fifty men and eleven tanks. No other country’s army in its right mind would put a twenty-three-year-old in charge of fifty lives, but I was.

P: We the Palestinian are not ready to make peace with Israel, nor Israel with the Palestinian.

I: Back at the time, I was actually in charge of the occupation of Ramallah, and oh, they hated me. Called me the Chief of Ramallah, not in a good way.

P: The ways we have been treated, shoved behind a wall, embarrassed and humiliated.

I: I had to search cars, keep people from throwing stones at Israeli vehicles. Now, I cannot go there. Well, I could, but people wouldn’t like me very much.

P: You will say you have a land claim three thousand years ago, and you did, you did. But we are here now, the grandsons of grandsons of grandsons of grandsons, you know, and now this is our home. And then the Jews take the land back, but now it is us who had a land claim that is being ignored. And now it is sixty years later, now they are the grandsons of grandsons. Then they say their hometown is Haifa, and I say my home is Haifa.

I: My wife, who was an officer in the army, works in a hospital that treats children from Israel, Gaza, Jordan, Palestine. They don’t discriminate. It’s tough, to hear patients talk. Because you listen to one person, and you believe them. Wholly, they are not lying. Then you hear another person talk, and they have a completely different story, but also, for them, it’s true what they say, they aren’t lying, you completely believe them. And you cannot bring both sides together.

P: They say one, we say another, both true, both impossible, and we are not emotionally ready. But the problem: we don’t see each other. We can’t. There’s a horrible hideous wall between us. The Israelis look towards us from their side and see a nice wall, we look and see that wall from our side. We cannot understand because we cannot see.

I: You hear people complain about the army. But we are all human. And the rules we have, they are stronger than those of a bigger country… the things that happen in the US army, they are much worse, because they are far away. You are in the army here, you are always at home. Trying to defend home.

P: I sit here in my shop telling you this. There is another man sitting in his shop in Tel Aviv, telling you something else, and we do not see or hear each other, because of the wall. It is up to people like you — tourists, artists, people from outside — to take away the stories, to bridge this wall, share the hearts and experience of people who cannot see each other.

I: The situation, it is awful. We hope and pray there will be a day without fighting, without armies, where we can all live in peace. The Palestinians deserve land, we deserve land. But, you know, it’s a joke in Israel. When I was growing up, my mother, who was an officer, told me, “Don’t worry, son. By the time you are old enough to be drafted into the army, we won’t need one.” That’s what I was told. That’s what I told my sons, who are now one by one enlisting. That’s what they will tell their children. Serious risks.

P: So thank you for being here. I hope you are enjoying your stay here in Palestine. It’s beautiful, yes? I think it is very beautiful.

AT THE AIRPORT
SHUTTLE DRIVER: What airline?
Turkish.
SHUTTLE DRIVER: You’re going to Istanbul? Blagh. Istanbul, why Turkey?! Turkey hates Israel. Go to Greece! Go to Bulgaria!
What’s in Bulgaria?
SHUTTLE DRIVER: The ladies, man. Wooooorld class! (The shuttle arrives.)
Thank you, sir.
SHUTTLE DRIVER: I am not “sir.” Have a good flight.

Tram giggin (Taken with instagram)

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 03:56:25 -0400

Tram giggin (Taken with instagram)

Triptease

Yeah, this is what I’ll miss. (Taken with instagram)

Reactivating

Ancient Cyclades had very good reception (Taken with instagram)

We don’t have a hotel rm, but we do have a 3am train and...

We’re at the Berlin hauptbahnhof, btw (Taken with...

It’s a castle (Taken with instagram)

“Break” in Germany (Taken with instagram)

Zero workplace dismemberments since 2006 (Taken with instagram)

The guy who picked us up at the airport in Moscow. Enthusiasm up...

Garry Fucking Potter (Taken with instagram)

Kremlin cathedral is quaint as fuck (Taken with instagram)

This bell is also big and is also a fucking bell (Taken with...

This is a big fucking cannon (Taken with instagram)

Taken with instagram

Kremlin (Taken with instagram)

Going with the Flo. (Taken with instagram)

How does he sleep like this? (Taken with instagram)

Wisdom at the Doha Airport (Taken with instagram)

A Little Surface-Level Political Consciousness

Tram giggin (Taken with instagram)