On the Other Side

This is Har Nof, Yerushalayim. My home for the next ten months.

I want to bury myself in bed and whimper.

The list of items I still need to buy is shrinking. I have thousands of shirts, more skirts than I could have even remotely conceived of, and I am positively swimming- no, drowning in socks. I still need a shoe-pocket, clothing hangers and shower slippers. And a bath mat. Oh G-d, I had completely forgotten about the bath mat.

My mother's penchant for list making would be painfully useful just now.

I can't decide which terrifies me more, the fact that I still have things to buy, or that I will soon have nothing left to do but pack. And leave.

I need to settle on books to bring. I'm still working my mind around that idea... which books, out of the hundreds in my house that I have read and loved, do I bring with me? Or rather, the question is more aptly phrased, which ones must I leave? Should I bring all six of the Harry Potter series? Is it traitorous not to when I am taking the whole of "Lord of the Rings"? Should I try new books, or take comforting favorites? "Series of Unfortunate Events" or Garth Nix? Steven Erickson or George RR Martin? Should it worry me that I haven't even considered bringing a single book that fall outside the realm of Fantasy? And where on earth am I going to keep them all?

Tonight's unhelpful image: I am standing at the mouth of a long, dark, smooth tunnel through which I am preparing to walk. It is utterly silent, except for the swarm of humming insects buzzing and clicking and whirring around my head, jostling me with constant reminders of a dozen things I have forgotten. But I don't know what they are saying, and I have no time to respond to them or meet the needs they are blaring. I just have to walk.

Do I walk?

Tick... Tick... Tick...

I am leaving in exactly one week.

I am terrified.

I feel as though I'm on an icy slope, speeding faster and faster through raw, frigid darkness, and I can't stop. Or as though I am lost in thundering, monstrous, crushing waves with no movement, no air, and no escape. Or as though I am completely alone in some tiny prison that grows smaller and more terrible with every passing second...

Oh, the limits of imagery! I'm groping for words that melt through my fingers like sand. I want to go to Israel, of course I do; how can I so badly want to stay home? I'm being blinded by constant flashes of irrepressable foreboding, breaking into shudders and blinking back tears at inexplicable moments. I'm sobbing myself to sleep, I imagine, or I am curling in utter terror as I reach Har Nof.

It will all be so different, so hard. I'm not nervous, I'm not anxious... just terrified.

I have to let this rest for now. Changes in condition to be recounted tomorrow.

I Don't Want to Say...

Every day, I check my blog. I know nothing is new, of course, just as I know perfectly well I haven't come near this dear "Create Post" page in over a week. But still I check, hoping for a comment, an inspiration, secretly wishing that I've put up something brilliant in my sleep. But there is only the same, because this blog is mine, and it is my own responsibility.

This blog has been mine for almost half a year. Six months of joy, of tears, of giddiness at the realization that people enjoyed and, even more, respected all of my silly little bits and pieces. I could not believe, could not even imagine that so many wonderful, fascinating strangers would care so much.

But I have not posted for a while now, because I know that every post could be my last, my inevitable empty goodbye. I am leaving for Israel on the 5th of September, and I do not think I will be able to maintain my blog when I am there, though I'm sure I will have more inspiration than I ever could have hoped for. Sooner or later, I will have to say goodbye.

This is not goodbye. This is a test for myself, a defiant challenge to the harness of laziness weighting my shoulders. I will post again before I leave, as often as I possibly can. I will determine the force of my farewell. And I will not be overcome by the inevitable.

So until tomorrow...

Good night.

Dear Nava,

You are a girl in my graduating class. You have been for twelve years. I know you on a courteous greeting-chat-goodbye basis. We are not remotely close; I have never been to your house.

You intimidate me to no end of expression.

I saw you one week ago Sunday, at a hot, dusty sleepaway-camp in the Pocono's. We were both visiting our brothers. Your hair was blown and fixed back beautifully, and you wore a light blue cotton skirt, a neat black top and beaded flats. Your cheeks were faintly rosy, and your skin glowed with a pale sheen of delicate sweat.

I was wearing a jean skirt that had seen better days, and my hands were filthy from scrounging for pebbles to lob into the lake.

You saw me first, and called to me. If I had seen you, I might not have spoken. Nodded, perhaps, maybe waved. But I wouldn't have approached you- I wouldn't have wanted to, and I wouldn't have thought you wanted me to. We spoke for a few minutes, about absolutely nothing, and you ran to catch up to your mother. I went back to not skipping stones.

Yesterday, Nava, your father died.

I had no idea he was ill. I had never thought about your parents, or your life, or your siblings. You were only Nava, slim and suave and pretty, and excellent in all of my most loathed subjects. You were just Nava, another girl I put in a bell jar.

I don't know if you are still going to Israel; I know you were planning to. What will you do if you don't? Go to college? I know your mother will need you, you are the oldest daughter of many younger siblings and your mother does not drive. And what will you do if you do go? Sit in your classes and avoid celebrations, and think of your mother and your brothers and sisters who are mourning at home, trying to mend a life that has split wide open?

Yesterday, I was counting the minutes until the fast day was over.

Yesterday, Nava, you were calling around the neighborhood, telling people that your father had died.

And I do not know what to do.

A Thesis on Food Preparation

Some people (professionals, I like to think, as well as those with strict organizational tendencies) naturally cook from their heads. They measure ingredients meticulously, calculate boiling temperatures and calorie counts, and endorse the practicality of slicing vegetables julienne. These are the dieters, the culinary artisans who substitute applesauce for oil when they bake, and push Splenda into realms of use it was never intended to enter.

Others approach the art of cooking from their (metaphorical, certainly not physical) hearts. From grandmothers to five year olds to bachelors with a flair for improvisation, taste and satisfaction are the goal- adding the complications of substitutes and artificial cheese is simply avoiding the point. Butter is a staple, and measuring instruments? Ha! Feeble crutches for the faint of heart. Recipes are to be memorized, buried and altered at instinct, and an excess of any kind is not an error but an opportunity for seconds.

As for myself, I fall somewhere in the middle. I am a thoroughly cautious cook by nature, though I endeavor to embody the latter set. My most successful concoctions arise from impulse, because for some inexplicable reason it is nearly impossible for me to alter written recipes and as exactly as I obey them, the results never emerge as satisfactory as the author promises. It has taken quite a long time, but I have at last begun to tire of the irritating smugness that seems to uniformly plague the authors of these misbegotten tomes, and rely more often on my own intuition (though this course of action is far from foolproof- ask my smoke detectors.)

My mother is a category in her own right- she cooks from her hands. She rarely bothers with recipes, as she has invented most of her dishes and simply alters their ingredients to allocate whatever mixes, sauces or spices currently reside in our pantry. My mother can pour almost anything on chicken (from orange juice to diet coke), and it will taste delicious. No one believes her when she confides that her ratatouille recipe consists solely of chopped up vegetables and maranara sauce. My mother does not use a vegetable peeler- she simply slices off the peel in great squarish chunks, a practice she could perform perfectly with her eyes closed that I have never been able to remotely imitate. Her piece de resistance is her Shabbos soup, a solid, chunky concoction built of potatoes, onions, soup mix and other canned vegetables that (without offense to the clear chicken broth of tradition) merges to form unquestionably the most intoxicatingly delicious concoction that has ever been seen or tasted on the face of the earth. My sister and I can make the same soup exactly, and as tasty as it often is, it is never remotely as sumptuous as my mother's.

Others may scoff at her seemingly casual approach I am sure, but without question I know that there is no other chef, cook, baker, method or cookbook I would rather imitate than my mother. The soup alone is worth any amount of derision.

Divine Intervention

Good ideas arrive at the absolute strangest, most inconvenient moments possible. This particular snip came to me last night in the shower. (Happenstance? I think not!) It may be the first story-concept I have ever dreamed up that could potentially go somewhere.

There was a spider in the corner of the sewing room.

It was quite a large and repulsive spider, Nehri thought. Muddy brown and speckled with dust, the creature would certainly fit comfortably on Nehri's broad thumb nail. She could hear the frustrated click-clack, click-clack of its pincers as it struggled for purchase on the slick paneled wall, and wondered if the thing's web had gone dry.

Nehri has been watching the spider since sewing instruction had begun, nearly twenty minutes ago. She quite despised spiders, as she did all insects, but the battle of wills here- the spider's, the wall's, her own ability to bite down on her disgust - had fascinated her enough to ensure her silence thus far. He's running out of time, though, she thought distantly. Even if I manage not to vomit, one of the other girls is bound to spot him soon, and that will be the end of him.

She tore her gaze from the spider's struggle and gazed around the silent instruction room. Everyone knew today's pattern, of course- it was the first day of term, and each year they were assigned the same simple stitch to start- but most other girls were studying the ceiling with glassy eyes, minds whoever-knew-where as their practiced fingers completed the task independently. The few who managed to maintain consciousness had tucked a letter or slim periodical into the seat in front of them and read as they worked. Nehri supposed she would have done the same, had not that fascinatingly vile creature caught her eye.

She swiveled in her stiff-backed seat to resume her study of the spider, and to her dismay let out a reflexive little gasp as she realized that he had succeeded in his efforts and now clung tenaciously to the dark rafters above her. In the thick quiet of the sewing room, her exclamation seemed to ring like a plague-bell, and twenty-five sets of heads cricked as one as they snapped toward the source of the noise. Nehri flushed in the sudden glare of attention and curtsied to Madam Kar, the sewing Leader.

"Forgive me, Madam," she murmered hoarsely in answer to the Leader's questioning gaze. "I... I stuck myself."

"Bloodily?" came the crisp response.

"No, Madam."

"Then return to your work." Nehri sat with a grateful sigh, new petticoats crackling. Leaders at the Border School tended to be overcautious when confronted with anything of a remotely serious injury, but one would need to be missing a significant volume of skin to even begin to impress Madam Kar. An infuriating quality if you needed sympathy, perhaps, but for the moment Nehri would have her no other way.

Nehri raised her eyes cautiously to the beams above her, scanning despite herself for the whereabouts of that accursed insect. She had begun to wonder if he had fallen among the students when she finally spied him hovering over the cherry wood doorway. A trickle of bile soured her mouth, and she swallowed as the ugly thing disappeared into the wall.

Inspiration-less

Isn't it infuriating how just when you are veritably drowning in time to do exactly as you please, you can come up with absolutely nothing? I am leaving for Israel in 34 days, and I so dearly, desperately want to write something before my surroundings shift so completely that I will be thoroughly lucky if I manage to get up on the right side of the bed in the morning. But every idea I eke up turns into fizzing, blackened pile as soon as I come up with a title.

And so, I will do as I always do when I am thus afflicted: post a picture. The following is a small drabble I pieced together on Photoshop based on the Series of Unfortunate Events novels.