I Miss You, I Miss You Not

It’s a bit if a cliché; I leave home to be with you, I stay because you make me feel alive. I leave for the adventure and stay for this thrill, to make you love me back. Somewhere along the way you did, and that was worth the world to me. It was worth becoming a foreigner, anonymous, homesick - or just sick sometimes. It was a demanding relationship with a maniac, but it was with the sexiest, most incredible maniac in the world.

You never promised me anything. I knew the deal, the terms were fair: when it stops being good, we’ll leave. But it didn’t, for a very long time. Sometimes it felt like an entire life. And when it did stop, I started making excuses; It’s just a phase. It’s February. Nothing a Caribbean vacation wouldn’t fix.

I got used to you, it felt comfortable and everything else disappeared for a while. We started our own little family.

We always knew it wasn’t going to last forever.  The truth is, we lasted longer than anyone, or even I, thought we would.

Just like that scene in every movie, 45 minutes in - or seven years in real time - CUT TO us all grown up, silver streaks in our hair, uncool jeans and Birkenstocks, spending our weekends between farmer's markets, ice-cream runs and children's meltdowns. You go through the motions but feel unfulfilled, the same bars aren't as fun, holidays start to sting. 

And then you realize; it’s time to go home now.

Thanks for all the memories. xox

Bring Yourself Back Online

Feeling sentimental lately. Maybe it's the long winter, maybe it's old age... But it must have something to do with the approaching milestone of my 10^th summer in New York, and it feels like one that must be reckoned with.

So, I’ve started to plan a virtual surprise party for myself, and in the process, I remembered - I used to blog.

Rediscovering this archive of my 20's reminded me a lot of things that were completely wiped from my hard drive. Like the fact that they were pretty good, that I had a blackberry and plenty of time for recreation and introspection.

It was strange to see how my- naive, fresh off the boat -self wrote with more vulnerability and less vocabulary. Strange, because it is embarrassingly raw, but it works.

In a way, I'm right where I started in July 15th 2008. I live in the same neighborhood, although it's almost unrecognizable.

Many of the landmarks and people who were part of my universe have left or relocated, and so has the Hope, and Change that were very present in those days.

Small bars and eclectic music scenes were rammed by tattooed soccer moms with double strollers. Now I'm one of those, no tattoos, though.

Instead of focusing on the decay, global and personal challenges I'll try to channel that romantic, younger vibe, jump-start my ancient crush on The Big City.

At the turn of a decade, a new chapter. Or at least a fresh post.

Waiting For Spring

Labor Free Day

Hello Kitty

The third September in New York.

Fall 2010. The beginning of the end. In a good way.

כל סוף הוא התחלה חדשה

etc.

Strolling

A short one.

It's almost the end of fall 09'


Starting to clear the table. or the desktop.

USA TODAY

A weird thing happens to the brain when you overload it with new software. It freezes, reboots.
Language overwrite, to the untrained muscles of the brain, and while one was able to converse in two languages before, just thinking in one becomes a tiring exercise.

Overwhelming like the Union Square passage from the L uptown to the NQRW Monday morning. Adaptation happens whether we make room for it or not. It's the three month review.

Everything serves to further said my fortune cookie today, and I don't mess with anything that comes from China Town

Sleep is the BEST
thing for your immunization system.
And water for your skin.
It's the same cycle, the second year. beginnings, new setting, same self
And like it or not, it will soon snow.

BUT

It's really not a big deal.
Just a fact.
“Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you,” Rashi. This is how the new Cohen Brother's movie opens.
Dark, heavy and bizarre. It looked like a Hopper painting.


A picture from the land of the free, and the borough of Kings

Brooklyn Follies

Traveling across seas and land, brought me closer than ever to my ancestors.
I didn't ask for it
Not sure I would ask for it - had I known the possibility exists. I am very clueless these days.

It turns out, I will be covering this semester Borough Park, Brooklyn. The largest Jewish community living outside of Israel.
...

Completely by chance.
Or is it?
Mysterious are Jah's ways.

Happy New Year to all of us.


September 09, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.