Not Sure

Let me begin with a shout-out to the blog-reading faithful who have emailed me in the past nine days to express their annoyance that I haven't written here in awhile. It is nice to know that one is missed :) I guess I am just not sure what to say. The whole premise of this body of work was to document, in images as well as text, my going away. That, and an impulsive art project last June, is how this blog got its name in the first place. Now I am back, I am not going away anywhere anytime soon except maybe Providence to see Aaron or the Berkshires for Pesach (thanks to a *fabulous* suggestion from Rebecca's mom Dottie!), and this blog is not called "gone away somewhere but now I live in Berkeley" so I'm kind of at a loss about how to go forward with my writing here at all.

Don't get me wrong, I could tell you stories til the cows come home about all that's been going on the past week and a half. I don't know if I just have the good fortune of always being around when notable things take place, or if I for whatever combination of reasons find the world more engaging than other people do and am as a result struck with this rabid desire to tell people constantly, all the time, about what I've observed in this life...but maybe the things I see and the stories I want to tell about it all, when not about bartering for a kilo of broccoli in the shuk or being waved through a checkpoint because my documents are blue and others' are orange, are not about going away anymore. Maybe they are not about anything really interesting to anyone besides myself at all?

I do not question this openly, in this forum, so all the emailers can offer up reassuring rejoinders that Yes, It Is All Very Interesting, Keep Writing! I question it because really, my journey continues--it is not of the body, but of the mind and heart this time--and maybe none of my inner musings are as fascinating as things like my luggage being five kilos too heavy despite my and Ido's best efforts at packing my bags before I left and me arguing with the ticket agent, as if that could possibly make any difference, and then solving my own problem by unzipping all three of my bags right there in front of God and everyone at the British Airways desk in Tel Aviv at four in the morning and putting on like three sweaters and two coats to decrease the weight and digging my hiking boots out of the bottom of my huge REI backpack to shove them into my carry-on, asking previously-named ticket agent to please hold Pierre my stuffed pig while I was repacking my hand luggage because I would hope it goes without saying that clearly, Pierre does NOT get checked into the cargo, no matter what, ever, and I needed to be sure the hiking boots did not take up his alloted space or otherwise I would acquiesce and pay the overweight fee after all.

*sigh*

So what about apartment hunting and the search for a perfectly mindless, non-school-aged-children-related part time job and swimming at the pool in the Y every Sunday morning and making goodness-filled dinners for my housemates and all of us watching West Wing together every night and being the laundry princess and embarrassing myself by saying dumb stuff without thinking on Facebook and being the all-time pitcher in kickball again and trying to remember what Kelly taught me all those years ago about people like us not buying avocados at Trader Joe's and as a result semi-accidentally buying two dozen irises instead...is any of that blog-worthy? I need to think about it some more, I think.

For now, as a reward to you for having actually read this far through piles of my own self-reflective nonsense, I will share a very brief anecdote from Kindergarten today. We were sitting on the rug, having Shabbat with Miss Inbal, and one particular friend needed a few extra reminders for...the usual. I used the native language of teachers, a combination of sign language and various forms of the evil eye, to send him a number of messages without disrupting the actual lesson going on. I encouraged him to stop talking to his neighbors during the story, to stop playing with the hair of the person sitting in front of him, to stop getting up to get things out of his desk to play with, and finally just motioned to him that it was time to come and sit by me. Eyes downcast, he crawled across the rug disheartenedly but as soon as he got to me sat right down and stopped messing around and started paying attention to what was going on and participating appropriately by raising his hand instead of putting his hand into his neighbor's pocket. A moment or two later, without even realizing it, he leaned over against my shoulder and put his hand in mine in my lap, plucking absentmindedly at my bracelet. Ah, I thought to myself--so that is all you needed, little man, someone to tell you that they noticed you and to pay attention to you and for you to be close to right now? I looked down at the top of his head and he looked up at me, his long-lashed brown eyes very sincere. "I am trying very hard right now, Ms. Kotleba," he whispered into my ear from behind a cupped hand.

I hear you, sir. You and me both.