Passing for Future

Out front, through and away from the building with the sleek revolving-door. I am walking in Manhattan, clutching a tall, hot paper cup, striding with purse and plastic bag swinging. I am waiting for the light, crossing Lexington, moving toward other avenues with famous, impressive addresses. Alone, independent.

But the liquid in my cup is one-fourth milk, and steeped with five packages of plastic sugar. It's still bitter. To bitter for me, accustomed to sweet.

And the plastic bag holds two sandwiches in plastic triangles, that I juggled around the crowded college cafe before I succumbed to the dread of eating alone, again.

My purse is a tangle of easy-reach cords and technical gadgets designed to make life easy, simple. Somewhere within is buried my accursed ID card, which I must show to my doorman to enter the building. (I don't wear it on my neck. I don't want to look stupid.) After twenty seconds of awkward, one-handed searching, I produce my empty plastic card case to which my key is attached. This, presented on a platter of an innocent, bashful smile, finally reward me entrance.

I sigh to my brightly dismal dorm. I hope this isn't really college.

Even my room pretends to be something it isn't.

Media

What I say means little
I have often found.
My "no"s and "yes"s disappear
In oceans of opinionioned sound.

And what a sight! That sea.
A vision that they cannot see,

For in the time that one would need
to land an island in the greed

The sea would take its due
And look!
Poor see-man,
He has drowned.

---
Hello, everyone. I am back from my wonderful year in Israel, happy, slightly writers blocked and at a loss how to express my anguish and frustration for this latest episode in Israel and the Jewish People's perennial struggle for existence.

(That's where this poem came from.)

Please tell me- how are you?

Future

If I

forget you

may I lose

my right

hand
.

On Being Stared At

I stand slowly and move toward the wall. Hoping, willing, that the direction I'm facing is east. Praying prematurely that G-d will make me invisible.

Three steps backwards. Tight, furtive steps, and then I move forward. Three steps. Focus...

But they're looking at me. I can feel it as I stand, as I bow incrementally, as I strike my chest so softly. Their eyes are like spotlights, like dull lumps in an old mattress. Innocuous, but unrelenting; I squirm, but I cannot escape them. I'm from New York; I'm not used to such scrutiny!

I tried to find a quiet place, a subtle cranny where I could pray in privacy. I looked, and looked, but such a place does not seem to exist in Disneyworld. This small pavilion was the best available, and it would suffice, if not for the family behind me. They sit, and eat their ice cream, and gaze in fascinated bewilderment at this vision in front of them.

If you want to know, ASK!!

So I pray. What else can I do? They are still on my mind, but I push them to the rim; for the moment, I've stopped them from swimming in my thoughts.

Three steps backward. I ask for peace as I bow again. Forward now...

At the end, I smile at my mother, sitting at a table with my sister. "Ready to go?" she asks. She knows- I nod, and we leave.

But on our way out, I hesitate, and direct closed smile to my silent peanut gallery. Why? Why not? I can't approach them, walk up and demand an explanation for their careful, ignorant study. At least I can show them... something. Prove I know they were staring, that... that I'm a person, too.

So I spread on my grimace-hybrid, and the father grins back at me, an arc of something that looks rather like sympathy.

He thinks I'm crazy.

I am frozen.

There's nothing you can do. Be dignified.

And so I walk away, with the sounds of the park and my pulse thundering in my ears. Shocked, but oddly gratified. The reality of my good fortune crystallized again for me, for a moment. The goodness I am given; the greatness of my difference.

But find a better place tomorrow, please.

Many Colored Mirrors

What is Israel?

Is it that place on the news, that Iz-reel country torn by war and scattered with brown, screaming faces? That place everyone brings up when they want to seem sophisticated, where all those strong-men in green (you know, with the big guns), are all over, glaring and beating up women right there on your TV screen?

Sounds like an ugly country.

Or is it a location of historical interest- that place where and myth and moral and blind belief blur so black that even logic struggles to pierce the morass? So much of society roots itself there- how fascinating for you! Even a walk in the streets is a history lesson. See here, the remainders of Roman architecture- over there, the Crusaders' battleground. So much to see, and photograph, and place in albums, and forget... wonderful.

Or rather dull. I think, anyway.

Well then, maybe for you Israel is modern. A thriving state of metropolis and shopping malls, of neon lights and stereos and crashing trains. People are rich, people are rude, people are pretty, people live! Just like anywhere else, right? Different language, of course, but hey- even the street signs are written in English. Oh right, they have that army thing. Great souvenirs, much better than Greece.

Bewildering.

So maybe it's the religious place. That place you want, mostly, and people want for you. And maybe you don't know why you want it, or what it is, or why you are really going there. And, maybe, it's not even something you feel- not when you land in Ben-Gurion, or when you walk around Haifa, or meet your first taxi driver.

And maybe you'll feel it at the Wall- maybe not. Maybe Tzfat will reach you, or at the foot of a mountain in the Negev. But maybe not.

But you'll feel it some time. So is that what Israel is for you?

Maybe. Anyway, it's a lot closer.

Never a Dull Moment... Yet

I'm afraid I've gotten used to being busy. I am decidedly ill equipped to cope with this difficulty.

You see, I've just spent approximately nine months steeped in a Cuisinart marinade composed primarily of study and haste. When I was not in class, I was going to class, or else I was leaving class and rushing to a meal. Baring this, I was hurrying to a supermarket, or trying to make it to the Kotel with daylight left, or rushing to catch the last precious minutes of hot water supplied to our dorm.

It was hard and fantastic, and more consuming than anything I had done before. Therefore now that I have returned to my lovely, comfortable abode, in which there is always hot water, and there is always food, and there nothing to do, I find myself in a quandary of boredom which appears entirely unfamiliar to me. Do to this (I suspect? I hope??) I am also sustaining a decided lack of literary inspiration.

Well. Life will pick up.

It always does.

Life as I Know It

Dear World;

You have changed over the past year. Changed rather a lot.

I know you might disagree- "So I'm a little older," you might protest. "Does that mean I'm any different?"

Yes, my dear world, you are different. You are a little bit smaller from the last time I really looked at you. (Are you appeased?) You are also more transparent, and somehow infinitely more colorful. Most of your lines are sharper, though many seemed to have blurred beyond scrutiny. You are more cruel than I can comprehend; you are sweeter than I can imagine.

Dear World, change is frightening, I know. That moment when you gaze into your mirror of cosmos, when you turn back the pages of the diary written in stars, and you do not recognize yourself... Is there a greater pain or terror in existence?

But look close, my friend- Read between your careful lines. Oh, how you have grown! Pure, living reality has sprung from rote facsimile. You have learned to breathe on your own, to take your careful steps around the Universe all on your own. You can see for yourself, for now you can truly see.

The World that was was wonderful. The World that is is real.

And there is ever work to be done.