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| Life seems to have wound its crescent-shaped tendrils around my eyeballs and drawn them back to this xangasite for the moment. Perhaps I should feel violated to be the recipient of such violence reminiscence; perhaps you should feel outraged for such a butchery of any standard of imagery. Though it is fitting, because the jellyfish are beginning to spore in the mediterranean waters at the base of the hill upon which I live; though they do not suck at one's eyes, their young can certainly engender slight prickles up and down one's arms while waving through the gentle waves of the ancient sea.
I suppose I am not here to flow my consciousness. Indeed I jitter because my next few years stand on the brink of decision without an earthly decider. Tomorrow, or so I expect, I shall hear if funding for Oxford has come through. If so, I bound my way back to the land of Jonathan Kirkpatrick and take up my hobbit-hole amidst the penscrawls of angry Jewish polemicists from the time of our Lord. If not, my homesickness may lead me to a land deeper in my historical subconciousness than any childhood whisp; my citizenship may soon be in a tiny land where the entire world was once brought to peace but is yet surrounded by enemies. In Israel awaits the option to study the landscape and its archeological bowels at the expense of the state if I do choose to claim citizenship.
What sort of ideals guide such a decision? Am I a Zionist who believes that disobedient Israel has no divine right to this land? The only flag that has ever billowed pride in my breast has been white with two blue stripes and a six-pointed blue star; the only national anthem whose tears have burned my cheeks declaims hatikvah bat shnot alpayim: l'hiyot am hofshi b'artzenu - The hope of 2000 years: to be a free people in our own land.
Yet Isaiah's lofty gaze towards plowshares whose edges had once been more deadly and pruning hooks whose tips had once been more fierce plods through visions of preceding doom. Do I dare fool myself that I have any home among this people, my people? Their lot is surely with God, but surely it is not to be now, in this condition. This is not my home, and I wonder if the desert heat has invented an oasis...
So decisions will be made as the morrow becomes the yesterday. Self-identity may be at risk, but then again, I spent my whole last year at university undermining any intrinsic reality of identity, so I have only myself to blame.
So I pray for the chance to serve - to find myself fulfilling a function. The setting is part of the set-up, and I am certainly no playwright. Leave it to the Master...
btw, i'll be back to the states just in time to celebrate our independence from overbearing taxes and clogged parliamentary ears. perhaps that will mean hotdogs and fireworks, if jetlag doesn't kill like a redcoat. | | |
| I got into Cambridge!!! We'll still see what happens; my top choices are Harvard or UCLA...
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| i leave for israel in a few hours, and i think this may be the end of xanga for me. i actually am planning to keep a livejournal. so look for me there.
merry christmas. | | |
| not funny. i just actually read this phrase in a book: "His enslavement to the covenant of grace..."
blegh. | | |
| Rereading the Schoenfeld incident reminded me the last time I spoke to an Austrian woman:
We were ricketing on the train between Vienna and Salzburg, listening to the sound of music drifting over the passing Alps. I sat next to a wrinkle of a women with a kiss in her smile and a twinkle in her eye. Across from me, Myrna shared her scrap-booking supplies and expertise with Ann and Miriam, and Brad alternated his sturdy gaze between their discussion and the rolling fields of snow through the window. We gently jounced to a halt and heard the rustling of passengers alighting and embarking.
As the train cracked forward again, our cabin door opened, and there wafted in the faint scent of cigarillos and Austrian stout along with a tired-looking young man carrying a large suitcase. As he took off his coat and scarf, I rose to help him with his suitcase, and I took up a perch atop my seat in order to put it on the rack that hung above our heads. Just as my last stretch had almost fully slid the bag to its resting spot, the train jerked - and I fumbled to regain control as the bag tumbled onto the sweet, old Austrian woman below.
(to be continued)
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