So What's So Good About You?

I came out here to make a difference, I came out here to live the dream, but it was a lie.

I came here to join the army of my people and I did only to find that I was the only one in it.

The dreams of distant people really don't exist. In Israel the dream of the Jewish people, brave and strong and pure died a death. It died alongside a Palestinian woman peeking through her window to see what the commotion was about far, far, below. It died with a 78 year old Palestinian man who took a bullet to the neck while sitting in his favourite chair. It went up in flames along with a house in Nablus burned by mistake.

The death of the dream is no bother. A new dream rose from the ashes of the burnt out house. The aspiration of the purity of arms, the knowledge that reality and dreams make impossible bedfellows, the knowledge that Israel and Israelis are real people with human flaws and weaknesses. There is no such thing as the ultra moral Israeli army as there is no such thing as an ultra morality within the human condition...shit happens everywhere, people die.

Israel is a work in progress, Israel is not yet finished, the borders to my country remain undefined. This is what brought me back, there is unpredictability here, there is weakness and there is a pain that I still can't quite understand but sense everywhere. There is a longing amongst those living here to escape and a dream among those abroad to rise up to Israel. Some come and some leave neither is good or bad...it simply is. We come here and we leave here, some stay to watch their children leave for you're not really an Israeli until you run away from here for a few years.

There are many things I hate about this place but nothing more than the smell of fear that sits all around. Today I saw a woman pushing a child in a pushchair while carrying 2 sets of gas masks. Today I read that Bibi has requested secret service protection for 15 years after he leaves office. The fear is everywhere, I want to take the country by the scruff of the neck and scream at everyone

LOOK AT WHAT YOU HAVE ACHIEVED, THE NEAREST A TERRORIST CAN COME TO US IS GAZA! They're so afraid of us all they can do is lob their whizcrackers from their own turf.

And it's true, we fought and we won the second Intifada, we pushed the PA leadership into their current position of non-violence through our successful use of military might. Quite simply we have won the fight. Now we have to fight the harder battle and shrug off our fear of what 'might' happen should we do the increasingly unlikely and leave our West Bank fortresses in the name of finally becoming a country with internationally recognised borders and ending our thousand years problem with the Philistines. The Philistines with whom I grow increasingly impatient, what are we negotiating with them over anyway? They've already renounced violence in its entirety we hold all the keys to all the doors they wish to enter, we decide what they get and we decide what we give them so for how much longer is my intelligence to be insulted by watching these old, fat ineffective men sit opposite each other and wait for the other to be the first one to leave?

It's time to move forward, it's time to recognise our own strength in the face of unflinching hatred and to do what's right and just in the face of such hatred lest we become the reflection of the hatred directed against us, lest we become defined by it.

A New Day

The world turns and we turn with it, the ever uncontrollable, unforeseeable cycle of life moves it's merry way with no regard for us individuals and our hugely important petty needs. Every day is a struggle though each struggle brings with it the elation of victory at days end. A funny old world this place of ours, one that we would never choose to live in perhaps though one that can hold us well enough nonetheless.

I seek fame and fortune though not because I am poor or so unknown as to be an irrelevance. I seek these things because this seems to be what there is to seek. Happiness is elusive when being chased and only really achieved in a retrospective fashion, by that rationale I will say that right now I am happy enough though I have fonder memories of years gone by and hope only to remember the now in the same fond way in the future (still with me?)

So my invisible semi extant friends, are you happy? Does the word hold any meaning or significance for you at all?

The Wedding

There's an old yiddish saying; "there's nothing so good as a wedding as a funeral". Tonight I was at a wedding of two good friends and I felt my usual feelings...that of loneliness in a crowded room, of, things that I find difficult to discuss...of negativity and misery at a time of great happiness.

I have no understanding as to why I feel this way. I can't justify it to myself or you. I can't understand why, when I should feel nothing but happiness for my friends I feel only sadness for myself. My own path in life is still uncertain, I am alone and wandering. Perhaps I shall remain so. I am alone because of my demons, I am alone because of the thoughts in my mind that give me no peace. I would give so much to have some silence in the recesses of my mind, a rest from worry and anxiety.

It is not to be, my lot in life is to live with myself, to say the wrong things to the girls I like, to embarrass myself with too much alcohol, to wear clothes still stained from a months old adventure. This is the man I am, this is the man the child with too many dreams grew into, the man suffering under the weight of those dreams and trying to find a way to make them come true.