Oh, how quickly things change. Last post(and the post before) I felt that time was slipping through my fingers, but for the moment I often feel as though the end can't come soon enough, even though it's fast approaching as it is. Though I was strongly encouraged to stay with it and even made to feel a little weak for not (I'm not happy with that, but at least I recognize and can resist it), I dropped out of the choir after it came to light just how much catch-up learning of old songs (old to them) they wanted me to do in addition to learning new songs at a pace that visibly strains the most experienced singers. Constantly feeling I'm behind, way behind, and need to catch up isn't a way I can picture myself gaining confidence in singing. I'd rather walk that path together.
Now my outward commitments are few and far between. I think I've had it up to my ears with classes and dinners and this big event and that one. I like learning, but not the way it's usually done here. It feels mechanical. One acronym after another. One small hobby after another abandoned when the initial appeal wears off. If you were really interested in sustaining the practice, hopefully you can do it on your own; otherwise, good luck with getting a group to stay together. (Who am I to talk, though? Look at choir.) I guess I still have some residual bitterness about the writers' group disbanding, not that its death was unpredictable. It could be seen coming. The majority of the classes I stick with now are language related, which makes sense, given my planned educational route. I have a strong feeling a lot of the work I'm doing now is preparing me for some aspects of my job as a librarian.
Without having classes left and right (OK, I haven't for a while, it's just that I'm still grateful for my shift in thinking) I have more free time to build friendships outside of a constantly structured environment, and to read and write, which I value a lot. I just finished a series called The Hunger Games which is aimed at adolescents, but I really enjoyed it. I haven't read anything that engaging in a while, and it's quite thought-provoking, too. I can't wait until the movie comes out in March. I'm also trying to write a poem a day, more or less. I bought six little notebooks from an art supply and stationery store (I think they were about a shekel and a half each, or 30 or 40 cents) with paper lined the way I remember it being lined in grade school, with a dotted line through the middle to help kids give their letters the right shapes and proportions. I haven't seen paper like that in ages. I don't know if that's because I don't work with little kids or because no one cares about penmanship anymore because we type practically everything we share with others. I'm going to hopefully guess the former. I wish my education had given me better penmanship. I'm going to unscientifically state that I think most people (nowadays...whippersnapper) have bad penmanship. Anyway, I plan to fill one of these notebooks each month with poems, even if they're bad. Even if they're terrible. I like writing and want to be a better writer too much to let self-consciousness beat me into not even trying.
I seem to just be going through another phase in a place that overall doesn't change fast or much (it's a world center...how can it?); only my attitude shifts. Sometimes I think about how beautiful the place is and I feel like I never want to leave, but I know it's an illusory feeling, because other times I feel pretty profoundly claustrophobic. I still think it's weird, infinitely weird, the way that my environment is crafted and not crafted such that locals feel like people, but people on the other side of a thick sheet of glass. That's why so few of the staff learn Hebrew. That's why I'll go home feeling I still don't understand much about Israel and the Middle East (even in the midst of the Arab Spring) and I can't tell you I really understand the first thing about Israeli culture, because the first thing is not what you observe on the street, in shops and restaurants. The first thing would have to be learned in a give and take situation, a situation of interaction, not a situation of observation, like on the other side of a panel of glass.
I think my tone sounds very tired and jaded. Today it is, I try to be positive and I'm proud to say I'm getting better all the time, but I will allow myself some balance with reality.
I am STILL waiting for my results from UWM. OK, I shouldn't express impatience. I'm not exactly sure when my complete materials were received, though I think it was about a month ago, and they said I would hear a decision in about a month. Out of curiosity I asked about the possibility of deferral by a semester or a year. I figured that if I could locate an opportunity it might save me some money to work or something in a Spanish-speaking country for a while, rather than studying abroad (which I acknowledge that I really ought to do. I would most prefer to be able to just get on with my studies at this point in my life, but I did not study abroad as an undergraduate, and translators between common languages have to prove themselves in a number of ways: advanced degrees, certifications, memberships, experience, immersion).
I have six months left. Some people think that's still a lot of time but I don't really. I'm totally overwhelmed by the things I'd like to get done in the office before I leave. (As I said, everything I would like to do outside of the office I've already done or I can continue doing it at home). I'm starting to recognize they can't all be done by me. But I'm reassured to know that they can all be done by someone, eventually. I feel pretty confident that I'll soon be dispensable. That's a relief.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Sunday, November 13, 2011
13 November
I've taken the liberty of revising my last post after having read it over and realized that parts of it didn't make much sense.
I still feel time is slipping through my fingers. Either it has taken me more than two years to realize that my time here is really precious, or it's hitting me in the last six months. Anyway, I've done pretty much everything I wanted to do, and a few things more. I didn't expect to go home and to Spain and to be making plans to go to Norway and Sweden (and Turkey, possibly, for a long weekend--we'll see. A package deal can render such a trip cheap indeed and it would be quite worthwhile to visit the Baha'i holy places there as long as I'm so close by), didn't expect to join the choir and be made a soprano, didn't expect to learn how to play Magic cards after only a couple of lessons (this is a card game that is geeky in the extreme, and, having understood, but been bored, by Dungeons and Dragons, my heart yearned for one geeky pastime that I could cling to). I didn't expect, necessarily, to visit Jerusalem once, let alone twice. So I don't feel that I don't have enough time, but as I said there's still so much to learn and this is a particularly conducive environment to the seeking of knowledge, practical and theoretical.
Nutrition class has ended but the knowledge gained from it lasts, which makes me happy. I've not only learned some things but made a few friendships and in some cases valuable connections, including one that has linked me to a thrice-weekly free yoga class.
I did join the choir. I wanted bigger or stronger lungs by the end of it, but it was worth it. To my surprise I was made a soprano because they need sopranos and my voice CAN go that high. I don't know that much about music but it seems to me that it's most obvious if you mess up as a soprano and those notes are just really hard to reach. One good thing about it, though, is that alto is almost melody but not quite, which can throw you off. So the soprano part, being the most noticeable, is also the easiest to hear when all parts are put together, making it (I would think) the easiest to learn, in a way. The aim is to put on a concert in January or February. Then, surely, the choir would sing again at a holy day celebration in March that traditionally has choral music. I'm staying on at least that long, I hope, because for that performance the choir goes into an obscure balcony above a huge room filled with probably at least a thousand people and sings so that their voices flow over the crowd from above. And that seems magical.
I am still waiting for my results from UWM. I would think it won't be long now before I hear the decision. And I am still thinking about alternatives to UWM. The news is making me scared of huge debt. The fact is, I should have always been afraid of huge debt. Yet it really seems that I...well, I almost SHOULD go to UWM, if it cannot safely be said that I SHOULD. It really seems like the best program for me. All except for the price.
I still feel time is slipping through my fingers. Either it has taken me more than two years to realize that my time here is really precious, or it's hitting me in the last six months. Anyway, I've done pretty much everything I wanted to do, and a few things more. I didn't expect to go home and to Spain and to be making plans to go to Norway and Sweden (and Turkey, possibly, for a long weekend--we'll see. A package deal can render such a trip cheap indeed and it would be quite worthwhile to visit the Baha'i holy places there as long as I'm so close by), didn't expect to join the choir and be made a soprano, didn't expect to learn how to play Magic cards after only a couple of lessons (this is a card game that is geeky in the extreme, and, having understood, but been bored, by Dungeons and Dragons, my heart yearned for one geeky pastime that I could cling to). I didn't expect, necessarily, to visit Jerusalem once, let alone twice. So I don't feel that I don't have enough time, but as I said there's still so much to learn and this is a particularly conducive environment to the seeking of knowledge, practical and theoretical.
Nutrition class has ended but the knowledge gained from it lasts, which makes me happy. I've not only learned some things but made a few friendships and in some cases valuable connections, including one that has linked me to a thrice-weekly free yoga class.
I did join the choir. I wanted bigger or stronger lungs by the end of it, but it was worth it. To my surprise I was made a soprano because they need sopranos and my voice CAN go that high. I don't know that much about music but it seems to me that it's most obvious if you mess up as a soprano and those notes are just really hard to reach. One good thing about it, though, is that alto is almost melody but not quite, which can throw you off. So the soprano part, being the most noticeable, is also the easiest to hear when all parts are put together, making it (I would think) the easiest to learn, in a way. The aim is to put on a concert in January or February. Then, surely, the choir would sing again at a holy day celebration in March that traditionally has choral music. I'm staying on at least that long, I hope, because for that performance the choir goes into an obscure balcony above a huge room filled with probably at least a thousand people and sings so that their voices flow over the crowd from above. And that seems magical.
I am still waiting for my results from UWM. I would think it won't be long now before I hear the decision. And I am still thinking about alternatives to UWM. The news is making me scared of huge debt. The fact is, I should have always been afraid of huge debt. Yet it really seems that I...well, I almost SHOULD go to UWM, if it cannot safely be said that I SHOULD. It really seems like the best program for me. All except for the price.
Friday, October 21, 2011
21 October
It seems the closer I get to the end of my service the faster time passes and the more I feel it's slipping through my fingers. There is so much to do, so much to learn and so many ways to grow. For a few reasons I put my request to stay until June rather than leaving in March on hold for a week then asked that the hold be taken off so that, if I'm wanted, I have a little more time. I'm excited to go home, but more than that I'm nervous to hurry home. Funnily the skills I intend to develop in graduate school could make me a prime candidate for a second period of service in the future as a librarian or translator, if I wanted that...and if the stars were to align that way I have the option to reapply and see if I'm wanted again. But given the state of a number of things, not least the world economy, I think my first stint will be my only. (It is an instance of thinking very far into the future, but there's retirement, too).
My writers' group had a resoundingly good final session for a while, with a talk by a member of the Universal House of Justice and the enthusiastic author of a fair amount of children's literature. We may resume in a more informal way in the future. I don't know if I will continue to go. I almost feel that it's a distraction from writing. As one participant, my friend Soha, put it, "writers are like cats." Indeed it was odd sometimes to see us all together in the same room. It was a bit like a mixture of oils and waters. That's not to say that we didn't get along, but we didn't mix in a perfectly coherent way all the time, or much. Anyway, I'm all for supporting my friend Jenna who has been facilitating the workshop, with the help of her devoted husband, Joseph, who while not a writer himself has cooked dinner for the whole group at every meeting. At the same time if the makeup of the participantship is such that the workshop descends into being a mere social gathering, I'm out of there, because I am definitely not hanging around that mixed bag, much as I love it, for social reasons.
I love to see Jenna and Joseph together. It's interesting to see how they interact and work things out. They're one of the most unified couples I've ever met. Here I get to see the relationships of a fair number of couples, young and older, up close (for better or for worse--that's one thing I don't like much about this place, and few people do--the lack of social privacy). Jenna and Joseph are one of the most unified couples I've ever met. I've also met couples here who love each other and operate just fine by giving each other space, and on average I think that's the healthiest thing--but some people want to stick so close together it's admirable and beautiful. There's another couple here, Elise and Bhojraj, who offer each other so much mutual support it's lovely to see. I guess I'm starting to get an idea of what kind of partner I'd like to have, and be, though I don't feel ready to get married now or anytime soon.
Nutrition class is going strong. During the first session we tackled the big question "why be healthy" and created collages that represent our mental images of health and wellness. There is a fair age variety in the class so it was funny to see a bunch of adults pursuing a kindergarten's activity with such zeal and enthusiasm that the facilitator had a hard time getting people to stop. At the following session, last week, I learned or re-learned all kinds of scientific nutrition information. My brain loves that stuff and being aware of how and why things are good or bad for you is all the more motivation to eat or not eat them. We've been asked to set two wellness goals and outline some practical steps to achieve them. Each week we refine them. One of my goals was to minimize refined sugar and processed foods and I've done reasonably well so far by getting rid of all the sugar in my house that wasn't pure maple syrup or honey (I realize these things aren't so good for me, either, but just having them around is better than keeping other varieties of sugar in the house too). I love sugar but I think over time I'm craving less and less of that. I imagine part of that is physiological changes that are taking place as I get older and part of that is sheer awareness of what I'm doing to my body when I eat junk and part of that is my learning to cook and being able to control what goes into what dishes. As I said in my last entry I don't want to specialize in any one type of cooking because I'll rapidly get bored and so will my tasters, but I do have a (reasonably) tangible aspiration now which is being able to effectively combine ingredients without recipes and measure without measuring cups. I'm definitely getting there. It's so much fun to google two ingredients and see what kind of recipes I can find. And I'm getting better at doing background research before I run my own experiments.
And in other news if I'm not too busy--and I intend to be very cautious about not overloading myself--I might join the choir. They have a performance coming up in a couple of weeks, so until then it's not a wise idea for me to join--so I have until then to think about it.
My writers' group had a resoundingly good final session for a while, with a talk by a member of the Universal House of Justice and the enthusiastic author of a fair amount of children's literature. We may resume in a more informal way in the future. I don't know if I will continue to go. I almost feel that it's a distraction from writing. As one participant, my friend Soha, put it, "writers are like cats." Indeed it was odd sometimes to see us all together in the same room. It was a bit like a mixture of oils and waters. That's not to say that we didn't get along, but we didn't mix in a perfectly coherent way all the time, or much. Anyway, I'm all for supporting my friend Jenna who has been facilitating the workshop, with the help of her devoted husband, Joseph, who while not a writer himself has cooked dinner for the whole group at every meeting. At the same time if the makeup of the participantship is such that the workshop descends into being a mere social gathering, I'm out of there, because I am definitely not hanging around that mixed bag, much as I love it, for social reasons.
I love to see Jenna and Joseph together. It's interesting to see how they interact and work things out. They're one of the most unified couples I've ever met. Here I get to see the relationships of a fair number of couples, young and older, up close (for better or for worse--that's one thing I don't like much about this place, and few people do--the lack of social privacy). Jenna and Joseph are one of the most unified couples I've ever met. I've also met couples here who love each other and operate just fine by giving each other space, and on average I think that's the healthiest thing--but some people want to stick so close together it's admirable and beautiful. There's another couple here, Elise and Bhojraj, who offer each other so much mutual support it's lovely to see. I guess I'm starting to get an idea of what kind of partner I'd like to have, and be, though I don't feel ready to get married now or anytime soon.
Nutrition class is going strong. During the first session we tackled the big question "why be healthy" and created collages that represent our mental images of health and wellness. There is a fair age variety in the class so it was funny to see a bunch of adults pursuing a kindergarten's activity with such zeal and enthusiasm that the facilitator had a hard time getting people to stop. At the following session, last week, I learned or re-learned all kinds of scientific nutrition information. My brain loves that stuff and being aware of how and why things are good or bad for you is all the more motivation to eat or not eat them. We've been asked to set two wellness goals and outline some practical steps to achieve them. Each week we refine them. One of my goals was to minimize refined sugar and processed foods and I've done reasonably well so far by getting rid of all the sugar in my house that wasn't pure maple syrup or honey (I realize these things aren't so good for me, either, but just having them around is better than keeping other varieties of sugar in the house too). I love sugar but I think over time I'm craving less and less of that. I imagine part of that is physiological changes that are taking place as I get older and part of that is sheer awareness of what I'm doing to my body when I eat junk and part of that is my learning to cook and being able to control what goes into what dishes. As I said in my last entry I don't want to specialize in any one type of cooking because I'll rapidly get bored and so will my tasters, but I do have a (reasonably) tangible aspiration now which is being able to effectively combine ingredients without recipes and measure without measuring cups. I'm definitely getting there. It's so much fun to google two ingredients and see what kind of recipes I can find. And I'm getting better at doing background research before I run my own experiments.
And in other news if I'm not too busy--and I intend to be very cautious about not overloading myself--I might join the choir. They have a performance coming up in a couple of weeks, so until then it's not a wise idea for me to join--so I have until then to think about it.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
29 September
I have a bit of extra time during lunch and I will try to use it to alleviate my former embarrassment at posting so infrequently.
Today is Rosh Hashana, literally translating to "head of the year"--the Jewish new year 5772, or, a very long time. It's traditional to eat apples and honey to mark the occassion. While I don't have apples, I recently acquired some honey that was produced (well, bees produced it, but humans collected it and put it into little jars) in the Baha'i gardens and am looking for a good dessert recipe to use it. Maybe I'll try to make some baklava of my own, though for now I suppose you could argue there is no point, since I can buy wonderful and cheap baklava at a little shop down the mountain.
My cooking experimentation continues. I thought I would "specialize" in some sort of cooking for a while so that I could get really good at something, because I often feel like a jack of all trades and a master of none. For me, trades tend to have some sort of shiny gleam or other attractive element and I tend to get sucked into one and then another and another quite easily. I am trying to work on my staying power. In any case, I thought I would focus on breads and bread-baking until I learned that Israeli gluten contents in breads, flours etc. are especially high and if that's true that explains why a number of my friends have developed gluten allergies or intolerances in the Holy Land. That was enough to make me want to stop eating bread almost entirely. Lately I've been having or planning to have "theme" nights: Mexican (with a Mexican cooking), Brazilian (with two Brazilians, one cooking and one, well, affirming it was good and eating), cheese fondue (no Swiss were present), chocolate fondue (two Swiss will be present), Italian (Italians are unlikely to be present), and Turkish (I'm not sure we have any Turkish people here, but we're close enough to Turkey it doesn't matter...it doesn't matter anyway).
Remember, these are spaced out so I'm not going to get as fat as it seems, perhaps. In any case I am very excited for my upcoming nutrition class to begin (that will be next week) and I hope it will give me more ideas for cooking healthy as well as deliciously. I also hope it will inspire me to go running more--I've been walking for an hour almost every day since the springtime but it's not helping me lose a little bit of weight as I would like (I am in fact now a pound below overweight) and I feel so much better after a run.
To depart from the topic of food for a while, my literary translation did undergo critique as planned. I was rather disappointed that of the initial 14 participants only six bothered to show up to my critique. To be completely honest, I was very disappointed and have been having trouble tolerating the slightest bit of flakiness from anyone since then, myself included. If the group carries on I don't think I'll carry on with it, but I will work on my writing at home, including translation, since that may be good preparation for graduate study.
Since I passed the qualifying exam for the UWM program in translation I've been added to the program's email list and I have to say it's freaking me out a little bit. Many of the emails I've received have "call for papers" in the subject line. I do NOT want to earn a research degree. I want a practical degree. I know that UWM is not a research-oriented programme--no more than any other. That's what's freaking me out. I suppose with any schooling papers will need to be written to demonstrate assimilation and exploration of concepts, etc. Well, whatever I have to do, I'll do it. It's hard to get a job as a translator without a degree in translation. The bar is raising. The practical will come, if not so much in school then in actual work.
That application is nearly finished! I am still looking for schools abroad that may be cheaper and allow for immersion, but the problems with degrees abroad are the following: funding (even if the cost is overall low where will I get the money?), working from my native language into my non-native language rather than the other way around which is the ideal and in fact the standard unless desperate times call for desperate measures, and the fact that most programs abroad do have the research rather than practical thrust I so fear. UWM seems to be the best possible compromise in this regard, having opportunities for graduate study abroad in Spain or Latin America and even offering most courses online so that it is possible, if I were to find a source of income, that I could stay on and take my classes while still benefiting from Spanish immersion. I can't say how happy I am that this program exists at all. Sometimes it seems like it was made for me (all except the price tag...and maybe I'll get some sort of funding, who knows?).
Tomorrow I have a full day with work, more work, and a going-away party for one of my best friends (this is the chocolate fondue event I referenced above). Saturday, thankfully, my calendar is clear and I can do whatever I want. I hope I can watch it rain. It rained recently even though it is very unusual for that to happen before autumn even begins, and now I am hungry for more rain and more rain to fall down.
Time for me to fly.
Today is Rosh Hashana, literally translating to "head of the year"--the Jewish new year 5772, or, a very long time. It's traditional to eat apples and honey to mark the occassion. While I don't have apples, I recently acquired some honey that was produced (well, bees produced it, but humans collected it and put it into little jars) in the Baha'i gardens and am looking for a good dessert recipe to use it. Maybe I'll try to make some baklava of my own, though for now I suppose you could argue there is no point, since I can buy wonderful and cheap baklava at a little shop down the mountain.
My cooking experimentation continues. I thought I would "specialize" in some sort of cooking for a while so that I could get really good at something, because I often feel like a jack of all trades and a master of none. For me, trades tend to have some sort of shiny gleam or other attractive element and I tend to get sucked into one and then another and another quite easily. I am trying to work on my staying power. In any case, I thought I would focus on breads and bread-baking until I learned that Israeli gluten contents in breads, flours etc. are especially high and if that's true that explains why a number of my friends have developed gluten allergies or intolerances in the Holy Land. That was enough to make me want to stop eating bread almost entirely. Lately I've been having or planning to have "theme" nights: Mexican (with a Mexican cooking), Brazilian (with two Brazilians, one cooking and one, well, affirming it was good and eating), cheese fondue (no Swiss were present), chocolate fondue (two Swiss will be present), Italian (Italians are unlikely to be present), and Turkish (I'm not sure we have any Turkish people here, but we're close enough to Turkey it doesn't matter...it doesn't matter anyway).
Remember, these are spaced out so I'm not going to get as fat as it seems, perhaps. In any case I am very excited for my upcoming nutrition class to begin (that will be next week) and I hope it will give me more ideas for cooking healthy as well as deliciously. I also hope it will inspire me to go running more--I've been walking for an hour almost every day since the springtime but it's not helping me lose a little bit of weight as I would like (I am in fact now a pound below overweight) and I feel so much better after a run.
To depart from the topic of food for a while, my literary translation did undergo critique as planned. I was rather disappointed that of the initial 14 participants only six bothered to show up to my critique. To be completely honest, I was very disappointed and have been having trouble tolerating the slightest bit of flakiness from anyone since then, myself included. If the group carries on I don't think I'll carry on with it, but I will work on my writing at home, including translation, since that may be good preparation for graduate study.
Since I passed the qualifying exam for the UWM program in translation I've been added to the program's email list and I have to say it's freaking me out a little bit. Many of the emails I've received have "call for papers" in the subject line. I do NOT want to earn a research degree. I want a practical degree. I know that UWM is not a research-oriented programme--no more than any other. That's what's freaking me out. I suppose with any schooling papers will need to be written to demonstrate assimilation and exploration of concepts, etc. Well, whatever I have to do, I'll do it. It's hard to get a job as a translator without a degree in translation. The bar is raising. The practical will come, if not so much in school then in actual work.
That application is nearly finished! I am still looking for schools abroad that may be cheaper and allow for immersion, but the problems with degrees abroad are the following: funding (even if the cost is overall low where will I get the money?), working from my native language into my non-native language rather than the other way around which is the ideal and in fact the standard unless desperate times call for desperate measures, and the fact that most programs abroad do have the research rather than practical thrust I so fear. UWM seems to be the best possible compromise in this regard, having opportunities for graduate study abroad in Spain or Latin America and even offering most courses online so that it is possible, if I were to find a source of income, that I could stay on and take my classes while still benefiting from Spanish immersion. I can't say how happy I am that this program exists at all. Sometimes it seems like it was made for me (all except the price tag...and maybe I'll get some sort of funding, who knows?).
Tomorrow I have a full day with work, more work, and a going-away party for one of my best friends (this is the chocolate fondue event I referenced above). Saturday, thankfully, my calendar is clear and I can do whatever I want. I hope I can watch it rain. It rained recently even though it is very unusual for that to happen before autumn even begins, and now I am hungry for more rain and more rain to fall down.
Time for me to fly.
Friday, September 16, 2011
16 September
This is embarrassing. I meant to post every month or so but it's been nearly two months.
The writers' workshop is in full swing (we just had our seventh weekly meeting). We began with some exercises and a warning that in three weeks' time we would have to generate 10-25 pages of prose or 3-5 poems. After those three weeks we switched to a critiquing format in which we critique two participants' pieces each week. Since the deadline for submission was three days after my Spanish translation qualifying exam (and since it's my area of special interest anyway), I told the facilitator, to whom I've expressed interest in studying library science, that I wanted to do a literary translation from Spanish to English. She suggested that I undertake Jorge Luis Borges's "La biblioteca de Babel"--"The Library of Babel". I wondered as I read the story whether she wished to torture me as the story is about an infinite library containing all possible combinations of characters in a certain type and length of book. It is a work of mathematics, religion/spirituality and utter bafflement. I'll be critiqued next week.
Speaking of my qualifying exam, I passed. Now I'm in the thick of the process of applying to UWM. And speaking of translation, this week I had the good fortune of chatting about translation as a career with a departing staff member who is relocating to the Netherlands to work as a translator of six or seven languages into English in the international criminal court. He's quite a brilliant man, and a fast talker. Later I spent an hour de-condensing the notes I'd jotted while he streamed valuable advice. I'm so glad I caught him before he left. It was a great reminder not to let opportunities slip by--he's been in Israel longer than I have and yet I never bothered to have this conversation with him until now. I was actually very fortunate that he extended his service by a couple of weeks at the last minute--he was supposed to leave on the same day it occurred to me to get in touch with him, a Saturday.
I turned 26 last week. It's not so bad. I had a great birthday party. It began as a Mexican cooking class, turned into eating Mexican food and ended with storytelling among friends.
My cooking is improving, little by little. I'm getting a bit carried away when it comes to certain ingredients (like oil). I'm going to take a series of nutrition classes spanning next month which I hope will help me expand my ability to integrate the nutritious and the delicious.
It will be nice to be in the land of inexpensive, good-quality clothing again. In Israel, consistently, clothing that is not expensive is interesting...very interesting. While it isn't the most important thing in the world to have nice clothes, my clothes are getting worn out or holy in the wrong sense of the word, which is a bit embarrassing given the way that I am expected to dress.
Last week I went on my second trip to Jerusalem. It was just as good as my first trip, maybe better because I spent the whole day in the Old City rather than trying to cram in a visit to the massive Israel museum afterwards. This time I went to some additional places such as the interior of the Church of Gethsemane (also known as the Church of All Nations), the tomb of King David, and the room in which the Last Supper supposedly took place (this was interesting as the building had been converted to a mosque and elements of that such as a prayer niche and some calligraphy remained, which reminded me of so many places in the south of Spain). Old Jerusalem is otherworldly. I will never forget it.
The writers' workshop is in full swing (we just had our seventh weekly meeting). We began with some exercises and a warning that in three weeks' time we would have to generate 10-25 pages of prose or 3-5 poems. After those three weeks we switched to a critiquing format in which we critique two participants' pieces each week. Since the deadline for submission was three days after my Spanish translation qualifying exam (and since it's my area of special interest anyway), I told the facilitator, to whom I've expressed interest in studying library science, that I wanted to do a literary translation from Spanish to English. She suggested that I undertake Jorge Luis Borges's "La biblioteca de Babel"--"The Library of Babel". I wondered as I read the story whether she wished to torture me as the story is about an infinite library containing all possible combinations of characters in a certain type and length of book. It is a work of mathematics, religion/spirituality and utter bafflement. I'll be critiqued next week.
Speaking of my qualifying exam, I passed. Now I'm in the thick of the process of applying to UWM. And speaking of translation, this week I had the good fortune of chatting about translation as a career with a departing staff member who is relocating to the Netherlands to work as a translator of six or seven languages into English in the international criminal court. He's quite a brilliant man, and a fast talker. Later I spent an hour de-condensing the notes I'd jotted while he streamed valuable advice. I'm so glad I caught him before he left. It was a great reminder not to let opportunities slip by--he's been in Israel longer than I have and yet I never bothered to have this conversation with him until now. I was actually very fortunate that he extended his service by a couple of weeks at the last minute--he was supposed to leave on the same day it occurred to me to get in touch with him, a Saturday.
I turned 26 last week. It's not so bad. I had a great birthday party. It began as a Mexican cooking class, turned into eating Mexican food and ended with storytelling among friends.
My cooking is improving, little by little. I'm getting a bit carried away when it comes to certain ingredients (like oil). I'm going to take a series of nutrition classes spanning next month which I hope will help me expand my ability to integrate the nutritious and the delicious.
It will be nice to be in the land of inexpensive, good-quality clothing again. In Israel, consistently, clothing that is not expensive is interesting...very interesting. While it isn't the most important thing in the world to have nice clothes, my clothes are getting worn out or holy in the wrong sense of the word, which is a bit embarrassing given the way that I am expected to dress.
Last week I went on my second trip to Jerusalem. It was just as good as my first trip, maybe better because I spent the whole day in the Old City rather than trying to cram in a visit to the massive Israel museum afterwards. This time I went to some additional places such as the interior of the Church of Gethsemane (also known as the Church of All Nations), the tomb of King David, and the room in which the Last Supper supposedly took place (this was interesting as the building had been converted to a mosque and elements of that such as a prayer niche and some calligraphy remained, which reminded me of so many places in the south of Spain). Old Jerusalem is otherworldly. I will never forget it.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
17 July
Even when it feels like you're running in place a little bit, life goes on and there are things to say. Even when you work a job with regular hours in a cubicle in an office...in Israel. I shouldn't understate the uniqueness of the work I do. It is office work, yes, there are papers and filing and bureaucratic processes to be followed as in any office...but it is special. Lots of people describe and remember their pilgrimage as the experience of a lifetime or a turning point in their lives, something that they sacrificed and prepared for over a period of years as they saved up the money and tried to understand the meaning and purpose of undergoing a pilgrimage. It is a difficult concept. I've travelled to a fair number of places now and I feel that I've learned that the importance of "where" in life at large--in a world in which the lines between cultures and societies grow blurry, and which is rapidly shrinking with the growing ease of communication and transportation--is diminishing, if it ever really carried much importance in the first place. But pilgrimage is all about where. You can't successfully undertake a pilgrimage inside your head. And this country is known as the Holy Land. That means that the land itself is somehow holy. It is itself special, because the messengers of God have lived here...and I suppose because there is a certain power of evocation in the sensory experience of seeing the holy places, feeling the heat and the ground under your feet and hearing the call to prayer issued from the mosque in 'Akka that the figures of the faith must have heard as they went about their affairs. There is a certain power to that which supports and complements the power of the imagination to recreate the experience of the events of long ago.
I've been doing a lot of a lot of things:
I've been experimenting with cooking as though I had a picky family of four to feed, with kids who will only eat healthy food in disguise. I'm my own picky kid. And I'm finding that healthy is not so easy, particularly when you have just discovered how much you love puff pastry dough on a roll. Last week I made empanadas, and to my amazement, they both looked and tasted good. First I roasted sweet potatoes, then mixed them with cooked beans, tomato and onion to serve as filling. Then I just cut the puff pastry dough into rectangles, spooned in the filling, folded them over, sealed them with a fork, trimmed their edges and baked them until they went golden brown (and, if I may say so, looked like they belonged more in a baker's shop than in my kitchen...puff pastry will make anyone look good). Next week Thursday my department is having a collective breakfast to mark the end of another pilgrimage season (October to July each year) and I am thinking of further developing my puff pastry prowess by making pains au chocolat, known in Spain as napolitanas, which are definitely the thing I miss the most about Spanish breakfast. If I could start work at 10:00 in the morning, in close proximity to lunch, as I'm told is not uncommon in Iberia (and if I weren't as health-conscious as I am), I would probably have a napolitana and a cup of coffee for breakfast every day.
I've played around with making other foods as well, such as pumpkin waffles, stuffed bell peppers, homemade lemonade, coconut rice pudding, and homemade guacamole. The Latin bent can probably be explained by the Mexican cooking class I took recently with a Mexican friend of mine. I've also taken Indian cooking classes here and I seem to be getting much more enduring inspiration from the Mexican cooking class, probably because the mix of spices in Indian cooking confuses me and the amount of oil used to cook anything depresses me.
I've been listening to the soundtracks of a lot of musicals.
I've been walking a lot. I like to go for an hour-long walk every morning because I find it really clears my head for the day. I've experimented with making it shorter and I've found it's something that I can't rush. The benefits are lost if I rush because the whole point is taking the stress off by taking at least one thing easy throughout the day.
I've been doing a fair amount of writing. I'm going to start a writer's workshop next week or the week after and I am really, really looking forward to it. I've always liked writing but have never been able to find like-minded people to share my interest. It is in the end a solitary activity (though I've taken some of the isolationary edge off the activity by initiating an occasional writers' space)...but the outcome is something that's meant to be shared, and I am enjoying sharing it very much at the writers' spaces as well as the informal lunch critiques we have had.
I've been thinking a lot about going to Norway and Sweden in winter because that will probably be my first significant change of pace since May. (Maybe I expect too much from changes of pace. A change of pace once in six months is not so bad.)
I've been doing a lot of preparing for my qualifying examination in Spanish translation (I've set a date, finally, 15 August...after that I can either stop worrying or start worrying about the formal application processes). I don't really know how much I have to worry about, and whether I could take the exam tomorrow, or before I started preparing, and pass; but I want so badly to be admitted to the program that I want to put things into place to make sure that happens. And it can't hurt to go in with more rather than less background knowledge.
All in all I've been having a good time. My mental state is sort of shifting to the future and I don't mind that. I could leave Israel tomorrow feeling that I've seen all I wanted to see, particularly since I been to the Dead Sea. The sea itself was amazing. I can forget about the "spa" and the amazing, shameless bodies I saw far too much of for my taste and the fact that as a result of spending a few hours there, my hair smelled like sulfur every time I got it wet for two weeks. But I loved the sea. I loved the intense heat and the buoyancy I had when I went swimming and even the oily residue that such a strange sea leaves all over your skin. And I loved that the beach was nothing but ridges and bubbly formations of solid salt. I never did go on the tour of Haifa I mentioned because the trip was called off, but I think I can understand why people who live in a certain place tend not to go to the tourist destinations there. Tourism is not real life, and real life is in its usually quiet and rhythmic way a lot more interesting.
I've been doing a lot of a lot of things:
I've been experimenting with cooking as though I had a picky family of four to feed, with kids who will only eat healthy food in disguise. I'm my own picky kid. And I'm finding that healthy is not so easy, particularly when you have just discovered how much you love puff pastry dough on a roll. Last week I made empanadas, and to my amazement, they both looked and tasted good. First I roasted sweet potatoes, then mixed them with cooked beans, tomato and onion to serve as filling. Then I just cut the puff pastry dough into rectangles, spooned in the filling, folded them over, sealed them with a fork, trimmed their edges and baked them until they went golden brown (and, if I may say so, looked like they belonged more in a baker's shop than in my kitchen...puff pastry will make anyone look good). Next week Thursday my department is having a collective breakfast to mark the end of another pilgrimage season (October to July each year) and I am thinking of further developing my puff pastry prowess by making pains au chocolat, known in Spain as napolitanas, which are definitely the thing I miss the most about Spanish breakfast. If I could start work at 10:00 in the morning, in close proximity to lunch, as I'm told is not uncommon in Iberia (and if I weren't as health-conscious as I am), I would probably have a napolitana and a cup of coffee for breakfast every day.
I've played around with making other foods as well, such as pumpkin waffles, stuffed bell peppers, homemade lemonade, coconut rice pudding, and homemade guacamole. The Latin bent can probably be explained by the Mexican cooking class I took recently with a Mexican friend of mine. I've also taken Indian cooking classes here and I seem to be getting much more enduring inspiration from the Mexican cooking class, probably because the mix of spices in Indian cooking confuses me and the amount of oil used to cook anything depresses me.
I've been listening to the soundtracks of a lot of musicals.
I've been walking a lot. I like to go for an hour-long walk every morning because I find it really clears my head for the day. I've experimented with making it shorter and I've found it's something that I can't rush. The benefits are lost if I rush because the whole point is taking the stress off by taking at least one thing easy throughout the day.
I've been doing a fair amount of writing. I'm going to start a writer's workshop next week or the week after and I am really, really looking forward to it. I've always liked writing but have never been able to find like-minded people to share my interest. It is in the end a solitary activity (though I've taken some of the isolationary edge off the activity by initiating an occasional writers' space)...but the outcome is something that's meant to be shared, and I am enjoying sharing it very much at the writers' spaces as well as the informal lunch critiques we have had.
I've been thinking a lot about going to Norway and Sweden in winter because that will probably be my first significant change of pace since May. (Maybe I expect too much from changes of pace. A change of pace once in six months is not so bad.)
I've been doing a lot of preparing for my qualifying examination in Spanish translation (I've set a date, finally, 15 August...after that I can either stop worrying or start worrying about the formal application processes). I don't really know how much I have to worry about, and whether I could take the exam tomorrow, or before I started preparing, and pass; but I want so badly to be admitted to the program that I want to put things into place to make sure that happens. And it can't hurt to go in with more rather than less background knowledge.
All in all I've been having a good time. My mental state is sort of shifting to the future and I don't mind that. I could leave Israel tomorrow feeling that I've seen all I wanted to see, particularly since I been to the Dead Sea. The sea itself was amazing. I can forget about the "spa" and the amazing, shameless bodies I saw far too much of for my taste and the fact that as a result of spending a few hours there, my hair smelled like sulfur every time I got it wet for two weeks. But I loved the sea. I loved the intense heat and the buoyancy I had when I went swimming and even the oily residue that such a strange sea leaves all over your skin. And I loved that the beach was nothing but ridges and bubbly formations of solid salt. I never did go on the tour of Haifa I mentioned because the trip was called off, but I think I can understand why people who live in a certain place tend not to go to the tourist destinations there. Tourism is not real life, and real life is in its usually quiet and rhythmic way a lot more interesting.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
21 May
If I had followed my original plan for today (and by original I mean dating back to Wednesday or so), I would be on my way back from Masada and the Dead Sea in the south of Israel after a long but relaxing day. I'll be going on a different trip in June--but fortunately it will still be in a vehicle that can hold no more than five people, which is a rare treat having lived in a ten-person-sherut-filled universe for over a year and a half. I'm not really complaining because sheruts are quite cheap, and if they existed in the United States they would fill a major transportation void in a car-filled universe (at least I think so)...but I don't always want to travel in a group of ten.
Anyway, even more exciting than that, possibly, is my planned tour of Haifa next week--I'm going to visit all the places I've been meaning to visit but which are too close and convenient for me to have worked up that initiative until now. I'll visit the Stella Maris monastery, the Hecht museum on the Haifa University campus, and, most importantly, Elijah's cave, as well as ride the cable car. I'll be happy if I never take another trip around Israel as of now, but I'll be even happier after these two trips, though if a promising opportunity to go back to Jerusalem arose I would take it.
Readjusting to Haifa after my trip home has been more difficult than I thought it would be (especially considering that I thought that after spending only three weeks away, there would be no readjustment). First, I miss home. I miss being around people I've always known or known for years. Second, life here really happens in annual cycles. First, annually. The pilgrimage season begins in October and ends in July. In between, the Shrines are closed in alternation for cleaning. The largest section of staff (the bright young people who make up most of the cleaning and security departments) come and go in a year. Holy days are observed annually according to the solar calendar (or in the case of some, the lunar calendar, the strangeness to me of which will never go away completely). Then, monthly. New staff come. Then every other week--the pilgrims come, and there are evening talks and the pilgrim farewell, and the pilgrims go.
Everything is just so organized, and repetitive, and predictable, and maddening. When I was at home I was almost certain I would ask to stay a few extra months to close the gap between leaving Israel and starting graduate school. Now I'm looking for alternatives, though those are difficult to find. I would love to spend some time in a Spanish-speaking country, but this time I'd like to be doing something, and that's difficult. Even trying to sort out graduate school has become more complicated now that I'm aware that there are more options than I considered before. A Canadian I know was accepted to a Spanish translation graduate program in Spain (from English to Spanish, carrying a confusing imbalance of advantages and disadvantages for a native English speaker). I thought such a program would be more trouble than it was worth, until she told me how much it would cost, which is a small fraction of the American price tag, any place I might go. So, although it's a bit disturbing to slow my momentum when I was almost sure I would return to Milwaukee, and although I miss home, I'm looking into that. Graduate school will be way too much of an investment of time and money not to make the best and best-informed decision I know how to make.
Aside from how I can possibly deal with another Israeli summer (which is another reason I am hesitating to stay through next summer), these are the things that have been on my mind. I'm slated to stick around for nearly a year longer, yet, that doesn't feel very long, and I'm already preparing for departure. It's natural and good to be prepared and plan ahead but it feels a bit odd. I still have a while.
Anyway, even more exciting than that, possibly, is my planned tour of Haifa next week--I'm going to visit all the places I've been meaning to visit but which are too close and convenient for me to have worked up that initiative until now. I'll visit the Stella Maris monastery, the Hecht museum on the Haifa University campus, and, most importantly, Elijah's cave, as well as ride the cable car. I'll be happy if I never take another trip around Israel as of now, but I'll be even happier after these two trips, though if a promising opportunity to go back to Jerusalem arose I would take it.
Readjusting to Haifa after my trip home has been more difficult than I thought it would be (especially considering that I thought that after spending only three weeks away, there would be no readjustment). First, I miss home. I miss being around people I've always known or known for years. Second, life here really happens in annual cycles. First, annually. The pilgrimage season begins in October and ends in July. In between, the Shrines are closed in alternation for cleaning. The largest section of staff (the bright young people who make up most of the cleaning and security departments) come and go in a year. Holy days are observed annually according to the solar calendar (or in the case of some, the lunar calendar, the strangeness to me of which will never go away completely). Then, monthly. New staff come. Then every other week--the pilgrims come, and there are evening talks and the pilgrim farewell, and the pilgrims go.
Everything is just so organized, and repetitive, and predictable, and maddening. When I was at home I was almost certain I would ask to stay a few extra months to close the gap between leaving Israel and starting graduate school. Now I'm looking for alternatives, though those are difficult to find. I would love to spend some time in a Spanish-speaking country, but this time I'd like to be doing something, and that's difficult. Even trying to sort out graduate school has become more complicated now that I'm aware that there are more options than I considered before. A Canadian I know was accepted to a Spanish translation graduate program in Spain (from English to Spanish, carrying a confusing imbalance of advantages and disadvantages for a native English speaker). I thought such a program would be more trouble than it was worth, until she told me how much it would cost, which is a small fraction of the American price tag, any place I might go. So, although it's a bit disturbing to slow my momentum when I was almost sure I would return to Milwaukee, and although I miss home, I'm looking into that. Graduate school will be way too much of an investment of time and money not to make the best and best-informed decision I know how to make.
Aside from how I can possibly deal with another Israeli summer (which is another reason I am hesitating to stay through next summer), these are the things that have been on my mind. I'm slated to stick around for nearly a year longer, yet, that doesn't feel very long, and I'm already preparing for departure. It's natural and good to be prepared and plan ahead but it feels a bit odd. I still have a while.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
2 April 2011
Before I let any of them slip my mind I want to write and share my impressions of Nazareth, which I finally visited today. During my trip to Jerusalem I felt like I had stepped into the past--if not 2,000 years, then at least several centuries. On this trip I remained firmly rooted in the present--Nazareth is a modern city, with all the shops, buses, advertisements, and so forth you could expect to find in any other modern city. Our driver warned us on the way in that we would read a lot of interesting signs and we should not comment on any of them until we regrouped and could have a private discussion. Actually, that wasn't so bad. Despite all this there was still an atmosphere of otherworldliness to be felt, with some effort.
Our first visit was to a church that was somewhat small but reminded me strongly of some of the cathedrals in Spain with its old-church scent, intricate carvings, lit taper candles, and sometimes crumbling paintings. Large churches, even with artificial light added, are dim throughout and this too creates a certain consistent old-church atmosphere. The church's name is St. Gabriel Greek Orthodox church and according to that branch's tradition it is built over the site where, according to tradition, the angel Gabriel told Mary that she would give birth to Jesus as she was collecting water from a well. It's quite small and there is a spring inside believed to be Mary's well. After 2,000 years I don't think anyone knows anymore but the legends that have grown up around the spot have value in themselves.
Then we went to the excavation site of an ancient Roman bathhouse, believed by some to have been used by Jesus. Apparently the time period and the location do fit. The visit was very strange and possibly the first time I've walked through a gift shop at the beginning in order to reach to the main attraction instead of the shop being planted at the exit. According to the shop owners, a couple, they met while the husband, Elias, was living abroad in Belgium. When Elias returned to Nazareth he took his new Belgian wife, Martina, back with him and they bought some property to set up a shop. When they began doing construction work on the site they found some exiting piping. They continued excavating and eventually found the bathhouse. Investigation yielded the conclusion that what they were uncovering was a Turkish bathhouse, and so they could do whatever they wished with the remains. Eventual further investigation led to the determination that the bathhouse was actually an ancient Roman one, and, for reasons not well understood by me, they continued excavating by themselves. In spite of so many indications to the contrary, it does not seem to be a tourist trap, as several books and studies treat the subject of the bathhouse. There seems to be an element of politics involved--which I'll explain.
Our next visit was to the Church of the Annunciation across town, built in 1969 by the Roman Catholic church, over the site believed by Catholics to be the place where the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would give birth to Jesus while she collected well water (which may sound familiar). The location of the Roman bathhouse substantiates the Greek Orthodox church's claim to be built over the site of the Annunciation, as it was logical to build a large bathhouse in close proximity to a water source. Thus, the Catholic church shall not be funding the excavation of the bathhouse, despite its possible historical significance. The Church of the Annunciation is huge, and empty, and modern, and an exterior structure as well as the upper floor are filled with beautiful mosaics donated by countries all over the world. I enjoyed this church too thoroughly despite its newness. I could spend an entire day or longer visiting another and another old church, although I know some people don't have patience for that. Some of my strongest memories of Spain and Israel are the interiors of such churches.
We finished the day with some coffee, a mild sunburn and happy tiredness. I'm excited to share the pictures I've taken in the Holy Land, of Haifa, Akka, Jerusalem and now, just before Easter, of Nazareth.
Our first visit was to a church that was somewhat small but reminded me strongly of some of the cathedrals in Spain with its old-church scent, intricate carvings, lit taper candles, and sometimes crumbling paintings. Large churches, even with artificial light added, are dim throughout and this too creates a certain consistent old-church atmosphere. The church's name is St. Gabriel Greek Orthodox church and according to that branch's tradition it is built over the site where, according to tradition, the angel Gabriel told Mary that she would give birth to Jesus as she was collecting water from a well. It's quite small and there is a spring inside believed to be Mary's well. After 2,000 years I don't think anyone knows anymore but the legends that have grown up around the spot have value in themselves.
Then we went to the excavation site of an ancient Roman bathhouse, believed by some to have been used by Jesus. Apparently the time period and the location do fit. The visit was very strange and possibly the first time I've walked through a gift shop at the beginning in order to reach to the main attraction instead of the shop being planted at the exit. According to the shop owners, a couple, they met while the husband, Elias, was living abroad in Belgium. When Elias returned to Nazareth he took his new Belgian wife, Martina, back with him and they bought some property to set up a shop. When they began doing construction work on the site they found some exiting piping. They continued excavating and eventually found the bathhouse. Investigation yielded the conclusion that what they were uncovering was a Turkish bathhouse, and so they could do whatever they wished with the remains. Eventual further investigation led to the determination that the bathhouse was actually an ancient Roman one, and, for reasons not well understood by me, they continued excavating by themselves. In spite of so many indications to the contrary, it does not seem to be a tourist trap, as several books and studies treat the subject of the bathhouse. There seems to be an element of politics involved--which I'll explain.
Our next visit was to the Church of the Annunciation across town, built in 1969 by the Roman Catholic church, over the site believed by Catholics to be the place where the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would give birth to Jesus while she collected well water (which may sound familiar). The location of the Roman bathhouse substantiates the Greek Orthodox church's claim to be built over the site of the Annunciation, as it was logical to build a large bathhouse in close proximity to a water source. Thus, the Catholic church shall not be funding the excavation of the bathhouse, despite its possible historical significance. The Church of the Annunciation is huge, and empty, and modern, and an exterior structure as well as the upper floor are filled with beautiful mosaics donated by countries all over the world. I enjoyed this church too thoroughly despite its newness. I could spend an entire day or longer visiting another and another old church, although I know some people don't have patience for that. Some of my strongest memories of Spain and Israel are the interiors of such churches.
We finished the day with some coffee, a mild sunburn and happy tiredness. I'm excited to share the pictures I've taken in the Holy Land, of Haifa, Akka, Jerusalem and now, just before Easter, of Nazareth.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
26 March
Now not only has the fast elapsed and Naw Ruz come and gone--to the joy of Baha'is all over the world--but as far as living in the Holy Land goes I have crossed the 18 month mark. I doubt I'll keep track of further so-many-month marks (as if I'm monitoring the growth of an infant) and just take note of the year markers (all one of them, in September) until my departure. Even without the banquet and fanfare of the Naw Ruz celebrations in Madison, I think Naw Ruz this year was the best I've ever experienced. I invited some ten people over to my house and cooked dinner for them. I was very nervous given the fact that I rarely cook for myself and almost never for others--and I had never cooked for so many people--but people by and large expressed their genuine contentment with my cooking and hospitality. I even handled dessert Persian style (sort of) and dished and handed it out to everyone present (rather than their serving themselves). After the food was eaten we had spontaneous storytelling (one of my favorite things) about episodes in the history of the Baha'i faith plus some present-day stories. I invited one friend with musical inclinations, and a guitar, and another who is going back home very soon. The musical one played and sang a bittersweet song about going home (actually, it was one of several songs he performed for us throughout the evening even though he had a cold) which moved the departing one to half-sad and half-happy tears. I hope that the whole thing was just one of many instances this year in which I'll take initiative to do something I'd never done before and wasn't sure I could do well.
As is generally known, the governments of many middle eastern governments are collapsing, and while the government of Israel does not appear to be meeting its downfall anytime soon, there has been some strife following the bombing in Jerusalem on Tuesday (killing one person and injuring about 30) and the rocket attack on Ashkelon (injuring no one but causing schools to shut down. From what I can tell by following the news, although the security threat reached just below the threshold of war this week, few are predicting Israel's entry into another war at this time. In the short time I've been here I've seen (you know, not literally) a fair amount of fundamentally petty tit-for-tat violence and so a feeling of war-wariness and war-weariness doesn't seem at all inappropriate, particularly given the fact that if war does erupt now the fruits of the last one will have only lasted some two years or so. Anyway, I feel cautious but generally safe because of Haifa's position in the far north of Israel, on the coast--relatively far from both the West Bank and Gaza--and Lebanon's lack of involvement.
I will be home in less than a month. Having learned from my experience making most preparations for my Spain trip at the last minute, I am pleased to report that I have already got the ball rolling in this regard, and I'm looking forward to it every minute now.
As is generally known, the governments of many middle eastern governments are collapsing, and while the government of Israel does not appear to be meeting its downfall anytime soon, there has been some strife following the bombing in Jerusalem on Tuesday (killing one person and injuring about 30) and the rocket attack on Ashkelon (injuring no one but causing schools to shut down. From what I can tell by following the news, although the security threat reached just below the threshold of war this week, few are predicting Israel's entry into another war at this time. In the short time I've been here I've seen (you know, not literally) a fair amount of fundamentally petty tit-for-tat violence and so a feeling of war-wariness and war-weariness doesn't seem at all inappropriate, particularly given the fact that if war does erupt now the fruits of the last one will have only lasted some two years or so. Anyway, I feel cautious but generally safe because of Haifa's position in the far north of Israel, on the coast--relatively far from both the West Bank and Gaza--and Lebanon's lack of involvement.
I will be home in less than a month. Having learned from my experience making most preparations for my Spain trip at the last minute, I am pleased to report that I have already got the ball rolling in this regard, and I'm looking forward to it every minute now.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
16 March 2011
On 2 March the Baha'i month of fasting began. The style of fasting is similar to Ramadan--that is, eating and drinking anything is OK between sunset and sunrise (to the relief of some of my Australian friends, who apparently fast for an hour or two longer in their native country than they do in Israel)--but not nearly so long. In effect, for 19 days healthy Baha'is not engaged in manual labor skip one meal (and snacks) a day to remember the poor and to focus on developing their spiritual selves. Somehow I'm having almost no trouble at all the days of the week when I'm busy working (I joke that on these days fasting is a lot like taking a late lunch, which isn't all that uncommon for me, anyway) but the weekends are hard. Though it's not written anywhere in the Baha'i writings, some people like to talk about the purported health benefits of fasting in this way--I don't think there are any; I think our fast is a minor sacrifice to remember the poor and exercise our muscles of detachment from the material world. I know several people who are doing or have done modified fasts in which they eat a small lunch, give up snacks, etc., and no one judges them. It's really nice. No one should or even can adequately judge the personal sacrifices anyone else makes. One really pleasant thing about this season is that a nice dinner (rather than a lunch) is prepared in the cafeteria each evening of the fast, and it creates a different atmosphere. I like things that mark the passage of time, and I think that is a natural human thing. Otherwise every day is the same and may have no meaning.
The fast concludes on the evening of 20 March and the next day--the first day of spring--is the Baha'i new year. Let me stress what a great deal of sense this makes to me. It's my favorite holy day. In Madison there would be a huge banguet every year followed by dancing and musical entertainment. I miss those. People have private celebrations here, but nothing large scale. I'll be going out to dinner with some friends at a favorite restaurant.
Then in almost exactly a year I'll be gone. Time really passes fast here. Parts of me can believe I've been here for a year and a half, and parts of me cannot.
The fast concludes on the evening of 20 March and the next day--the first day of spring--is the Baha'i new year. Let me stress what a great deal of sense this makes to me. It's my favorite holy day. In Madison there would be a huge banguet every year followed by dancing and musical entertainment. I miss those. People have private celebrations here, but nothing large scale. I'll be going out to dinner with some friends at a favorite restaurant.
Then in almost exactly a year I'll be gone. Time really passes fast here. Parts of me can believe I've been here for a year and a half, and parts of me cannot.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
15 February
I think now I've gone record time without posting. And I have a record deficit of things to say. I've been cutting way back on activities and spending a lot of time in contemplation of where I am and where I want to be. I have joked that I am having a mid-service crisis and this may be the case - because I'm waking up to the fact that in about a year I won't be here anymore, and in about a year and a half, hopefully, I'll be back in school - and because this is a good time to reflect on how my service has gone and how I would like the rest of it to go. On how things have gone, I'm pleased with how I perform in my work and I'm grateful that I see my work as important even while I acknowledge that a lot of different people with different sets of skills could do it just as well. Service is service. I haven't always been pleased with my attitude - I've had trouble focusing or been easily distracted for weeks at a time, and I can get stressed easily on some days - but overall I think I have the right outlook. When I came I wanted to do some sort of sustained effort to volunteer in another department, ideally, throughout my time here. I started in the library, helping with records, and moved into conservation to learn to do bookbinding so that I could rebind books for the library. I'm happy with the learning I've done in general. I've learned so many things, abstract and concrete, that's it's hard to try to begin summarizing them.
On how I would like things to go from now, I would always like to read more about the faith while I can see and feel its relevance and the fruits of past efforts in everything around me. I want to sign up to guide at the Shrines (guiding basically consists of standing guard to make sure no one makes off with the prayer books or someone else's shoes and counting visitors) and I want to see if I can help with Spanish translation in the primary department which deals with correspondence - just a couple of short emails a day to translate is making me hungry for some things that are a little longer and more complex. I would like to be of service to the families here somehow, and I would like to sign up to do things that are of absolutely no benefit to me, simply because they have to be done by someone, because this is real service, in a way, and because I imagine that is what large parts of having kids is like. It might even be a good warm-up for the times when my kids will behave ungratefully (or not gratefully), because here I know I'll be met with at least some gratitude for the services I render.
I'm very happy that in exactly two months I will be home - I've already booked my flights, and proven that I did not steal my identity. And I've begun to make a list of the things I would like to do when I get there:
-see family and friends (of course, this is far and away the most important thing and far and away the most time consuming as well)
-breathe fresh air
-drink tap water
-look at grass
-go hiking
-walk through downtown Chicago
-walk through downtown Racine
-walk through downtown Hustisford
-visit Milwaukee's east side (maybe visit an art gallery, maybe go to Rochambo)
-bike
-go for a long walk
-visit an English-language library
-cook for several people
-see snow, if i get so lucky
-shop for electronics (very expensive here)
-buy underwear (most clothes here are ill-made to fit the body, and underwear is no exception)
Undoubtedly the list will grow.
On how I would like things to go from now, I would always like to read more about the faith while I can see and feel its relevance and the fruits of past efforts in everything around me. I want to sign up to guide at the Shrines (guiding basically consists of standing guard to make sure no one makes off with the prayer books or someone else's shoes and counting visitors) and I want to see if I can help with Spanish translation in the primary department which deals with correspondence - just a couple of short emails a day to translate is making me hungry for some things that are a little longer and more complex. I would like to be of service to the families here somehow, and I would like to sign up to do things that are of absolutely no benefit to me, simply because they have to be done by someone, because this is real service, in a way, and because I imagine that is what large parts of having kids is like. It might even be a good warm-up for the times when my kids will behave ungratefully (or not gratefully), because here I know I'll be met with at least some gratitude for the services I render.
I'm very happy that in exactly two months I will be home - I've already booked my flights, and proven that I did not steal my identity. And I've begun to make a list of the things I would like to do when I get there:
-see family and friends (of course, this is far and away the most important thing and far and away the most time consuming as well)
-breathe fresh air
-drink tap water
-look at grass
-go hiking
-walk through downtown Chicago
-walk through downtown Racine
-walk through downtown Hustisford
-visit Milwaukee's east side (maybe visit an art gallery, maybe go to Rochambo)
-bike
-go for a long walk
-visit an English-language library
-cook for several people
-see snow, if i get so lucky
-shop for electronics (very expensive here)
-buy underwear (most clothes here are ill-made to fit the body, and underwear is no exception)
Undoubtedly the list will grow.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
15 January
For some two weeks now I've been feeling quite under the weather. I know the weather here is quite mild but I'm learning that suffering is relative and when it doesn't get much colder than this morning's 9 degrees Celsius (I passed by a bank or something that read -9 degrees Celsius, which I'm sure was a gross exaggeration of what the temperature actually was, but not how it felt), people, including me, suffer. I made the unwise decision to go to dawn prayers at the Shrine of Baha'u'llah this morning - the windows were open, and I spent a lot of the time walking briskly along the paths throughout the gardens that surround the Shrine trying to get warm, because the visitors' center didn't open until 20 minutes before I was scheduled to leave.
After that I had my annual staff visit to the International Archives building - it's the smallest and oldest of the buildings so far constructed on the Arc (only the library remains unbuilt), it's the only one without offices at least in the building proper, and in my mind it has the most unique atmosphere. On the back wall is a large blue, red, and yellow stained-glass window. Nowhere else in the World Centre can such a window be found. The interior is a bit cold to aid in the preservation of the archives inside. Most fascinating to me are the preserved writings of the central figures of the faith - even though by now I can read Arabic and Persian scripts with some effort (and can comprehend minimal vocabulary), my skills don't really extend beyond reading the equivalent of Arial font, so I didn't even try to read the writings. Many of the letters in Arabic and Persian script have the same form and zero, one, two, or three dots above or below the line to indicate exactly which letter they are. A lot of the writings I saw today don't have any dots included yet they can still be read - by the ultra-lettered only. So I just appreciated their form, knowledge of who addressed them to whom and what they were about, and their often very, very beautiful illumination.
After that my body said no more and more or less forced me retreat to bimarestan (this is "hospital" in Farsi, but I use it here because it literally means "land of the sick", which I think can be applied to my bedroom). Hopefully, I'll feel better this week. I saw a naturopath last week who prescribed or suggested to me a large number of remedies, not for my current illness but for my general health. I described to him the problems I've been having with fatigue and irritability and he explained (without forcing the concept on me, I think because I radiate a faint air of "I'm not really that open to alternative medical methods so please don't try to give me any crap") that my diagnosis in traditional Chinese medicine would be "liver qi stagnation". Interesting. I've come upon a correlation between the irritability and the liver in the Baha'i writings:
"Envy consumeth the body and rage burneth the liver: avoid these two as ye would a fierce lion."
--from a provisional translation of the Lawh-i-Tibb or Tablet of Medicine by Baha'u'llah
I don't recall studying any connection between chronic anger or irritability and the health of the liver in nursing school, except that poor liver health is correlated with irritability through a third factor, alcoholism.
In any case, according to my accumulated medical knowledge none of these are harmful and I'm game for all of them, and I guess we'll see how they work out. It would be nice to come out of this as strong as an ox. I'm getting bored with the limited scenery my bedroom has to offer.
After that I had my annual staff visit to the International Archives building - it's the smallest and oldest of the buildings so far constructed on the Arc (only the library remains unbuilt), it's the only one without offices at least in the building proper, and in my mind it has the most unique atmosphere. On the back wall is a large blue, red, and yellow stained-glass window. Nowhere else in the World Centre can such a window be found. The interior is a bit cold to aid in the preservation of the archives inside. Most fascinating to me are the preserved writings of the central figures of the faith - even though by now I can read Arabic and Persian scripts with some effort (and can comprehend minimal vocabulary), my skills don't really extend beyond reading the equivalent of Arial font, so I didn't even try to read the writings. Many of the letters in Arabic and Persian script have the same form and zero, one, two, or three dots above or below the line to indicate exactly which letter they are. A lot of the writings I saw today don't have any dots included yet they can still be read - by the ultra-lettered only. So I just appreciated their form, knowledge of who addressed them to whom and what they were about, and their often very, very beautiful illumination.
After that my body said no more and more or less forced me retreat to bimarestan (this is "hospital" in Farsi, but I use it here because it literally means "land of the sick", which I think can be applied to my bedroom). Hopefully, I'll feel better this week. I saw a naturopath last week who prescribed or suggested to me a large number of remedies, not for my current illness but for my general health. I described to him the problems I've been having with fatigue and irritability and he explained (without forcing the concept on me, I think because I radiate a faint air of "I'm not really that open to alternative medical methods so please don't try to give me any crap") that my diagnosis in traditional Chinese medicine would be "liver qi stagnation". Interesting. I've come upon a correlation between the irritability and the liver in the Baha'i writings:
"Envy consumeth the body and rage burneth the liver: avoid these two as ye would a fierce lion."
--from a provisional translation of the Lawh-i-Tibb or Tablet of Medicine by Baha'u'llah
I don't recall studying any connection between chronic anger or irritability and the health of the liver in nursing school, except that poor liver health is correlated with irritability through a third factor, alcoholism.
In any case, according to my accumulated medical knowledge none of these are harmful and I'm game for all of them, and I guess we'll see how they work out. It would be nice to come out of this as strong as an ox. I'm getting bored with the limited scenery my bedroom has to offer.
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