Simchat Torah?

I think god is a kind of knowledge we develop inside ourselves, a way of learning our place in the world and making peace with it.

What I cannot make peace with are the ghosts, ghosts of futures that never transpired. Ghosts of lives I did not live, ghosts- ghosts are regrets, griefs, despair.

We are the things that haunt us.

Loss

The most unimaginable of pains.

Nationalism, the great unifier of men.

I bleed the blood of one thousand men,

One thousands weeping mothers.

I wait for it to end, but the blood keeps coming.

A great war in the soul, my love.

New Beginnings

A dying man looked upon me.

All of a sudden I had a strong desire to leave this world and return as a bird.

I wanted to soar away, over the rooftops of Tel Aviv.

I wanted to sit in your window, and sing in the morning.

I wanted to investigate the disappearance of my dearest friend, the sun.

I wanted to fly to the Horn of Africa, and return with the hum of summer in my feathers.

On this note, I reject this lifetime.

How could my creator have neglected to give me wings, when I was clearly destined to fly?

If ever you see a bird consumed by the pleasure of flight, think of me, for there shall I be.

Yom Kippur 2021- endings

Think of me when you walk by a sweet jasmine plant, that lives in the starry thrill of the night, and shares its secret with everyone in the street.

Think of me when you smell its aroma filling your brain with pleasure.

Think of me when you fall in love on a swing tied to a great tree, and lie listening to the great treetrunk creaking above you.

Think of me when a wind rustles the leaves, rippling through the grass.

Know that I came from a green place, and unto it shall I return.

YK 5782/2021

Pain has so many points of entry in my little life right now-

Emotionally, physically, spiritually.

I will not call your name on the Eve of Atonement. I will whisper the song of the ocean with the salt of my lips. I have no tears for you, for all my tears are salty waves assailing the deserted shores of Yom Kippur.

I will sleep the sleep of generations to come, with a clear conscience and the naive dreams of the child I could have been.

Past and present meet like strangers in the empty streets of Yom Kippur, Tel Aviv, 5782.

Yom Kippur 5782

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5782

I’m so religious that I use my phone on yontif to apologise to people I haven’t harmed. Apologising to people who have hurt me is a coping mechanism- satiates my need for complete innocence.

I came here with my pillow, as my grandmother did so many years ago. Her two plump pillows travelled from daughter to son, on yontif. Trauma breeds coping mechanisms.

In shul tonight, I stopped at ‘end od’. Will I bow to you? And if you never return to me, nevermind me returning to you, what will fill that vacuum? The physics and philosophy of your existence is in conflict with my ever-changing, ever-growing investigation into the explanation for my existence. Who am I, how did I get here?

I feel like I am made of so many complex parts, that one origin, nevermind creator, does not grip me with conviction.

So come back to me. I remember that night, when I felt you with me. I sat in the lavender field and watched a Marseillaise blood moon and I felt your destructive power. I remember the night when I sat in the jasmine garden in via Dante, and I went home, and I was pregnant with your forgiving warmth. And before I retired to bed, I watched you glow through the window.

Come back to me, creator. I have a life growing inside me. Do not desert me now.

Deep, Heavy Regret

You have cast a dark shadow upon my life.

Only separation, oceans between us, will bring a beam of light into my life

Asaf’s War of Attrition

Were I to tell you about a man

So consumed by his own affairs

That he neglected those of his children-

You would tell me,

You are projecting-

It is your trauma speaking.

Asaf’s trauma is all of our trauma,

His wounds are those of generations

Upon generations

Of compacted pain, the thrill of escape

And impending danger-

The ultimate crash course in self-defense.

He was the last Jewish man.

And I, the last thin, red line.

Drop it, you told me.

You’ll never fix that shit.

asmr

I once gave all of my agorot to a shopkeeper in Jerusalem.

Just like that.

Immediate relief.

An empty agarot jar.

Oddly satisfying, as they say.