History by wire

Rarely do I get the feeling that I am living a global narrative. Even ten thousand miles from Grant Park, I surveyed the room during Obama’s acceptance speech and saw all my friends getting teary. As far as I can remember, I only mist up during movies and funerals. The latter is too real too ignore, the former too fantastical to trip my hair-trigger cynicism. Obama’s speech, however, dug down to something deep. We all felt that he was speaking to us, all of us, and individually. There was no party politics. There was no fear mongering, no veiled references to divisive hot-button conflicts, no smug vainglory or politiking in general; just the overwhelming desire for America to achieve those ideals which have somehow survived under the tarnish of panic, marketing, hegemonic inertia and paralyzing disappointment that have characterized the last twelve years of American politics. I was activated in a place that hasn’t seen the light of day since, well, since the tooth fairy was debunked. David Foster Wallace plumbed the depths of young America’s political disillusion in his 2000 article on McCain, and for the first time I feel a lever prying at the lid of that disillusion. The echoes are spreading. Already, Iraqi officials have started thawing on a security resolution. The whole world is murmuring. Let’s see what happens.

On another note, I’ve posted an updated draft of my poem True Stories of the Height of Sand. It looks like a couple of my poems will be coming out in the next Voices Israel anthology. I will post them on the thused.poetics site very soon.

Election 2008: Yahav Vs. Borovski

Campaign fervor is in full swing here in Haifa, but the balding eagles of the American big-leagues aren’t on the roster. On November 11th, a week or so after that other horse race finally sublimates its two-year itch in a spurting fountain of televised vote-tallying and indecent pundit exposure, Israel’s third-largest city will select a (hopefully new) mayor. As in every abb-busting exercise of modern democracy, the pack is dominated by an architypal pair: charismatic incumbent and outraged, well-financed challenger.

It’s big news. Both candidates have whipped up a little-brotherly display of PR glitz to rival the upcoming national race currently leaning towards Tzipi Livni. Airbrushed and color-corrected faces of the would-be mayors leer down from buildings, busses and billboards from the wadi to the uni. Some have already been humorously vandalized, and the doomsday-type election countdown clock that Borovski commisioned in kikar sefer has spent the last week blinking incompresensible patterns like a prophesying stroke victim. Throngs of  bountifully cleavaged students in cutoff shirts emblazoned with vaguely apolitical labels such as “The Young of Haifa” were deployed to canvass bystanders with aggressive pitches for change and/or continuing prosperity. Of particular interest is the city’s dismal environmental record and its ongoing and catastrophic outflow of the young. Both issues make ready rhetoric for the challenger, but the sad truth of corrupt Israeli politics makes it impossible to predict what effect (if any) a change would bring.

Here are a few things that I would like to see change in Haifa:

1. No more Dutch tulips in Kikar Sefer: This city is uniquely blessed as one of the greenest in Israel, and its not because of all the water we waste irrigating tulips and mums. Haifa perches proudly on the high Carmel ridge, naturally green because uplift and cooling of moist ocean air causes greater rainfall. Instead of planting ornamentals and allowing untold gallons to evaporate from public fountains, lets plant well-planned, beautiful local varieties and never have to irrigate. Forget the fountains. Come on people, last time I was out on the Kinneret we couldn’t even get to the refueling dock in Tiberius because the lake was so shallow.

2. More bus service, specifically late at night and on shabbat, shuttling quickly between young neighborhoods and nightlife (think Nevei Shaanan to Port to Carmel to University).

3. More funding for cultural events and the arts.

4. Less money wasted on unneccessary and poorly-planned infrastructure repair.

5. More parking and better services at the Carmel beach and adjacent train station, plus some incentives for businesses other than bars and shishlik restaurants to open there (what about water sports, yoga studios, cafes, ice cream shops, etc?) Why not concentrate the things that people want, so that multi-use destinations become fun and convenient. Who wouldnt rather get their morning paper and muffin at the beach than at the mall?!? Also, it would be nice if someone would clean that darling mantle of trash off the beach.

6. Municipal sports facilities. Period.

7. Serious environmental regulation of the Nesher-area industrial leviathin. A cleaner Kishon. These are probably the least likely to occur.

Just a few thoughts as my personal attention turns to more pressing matters. Of course, I’ve already voted early for Obama, so now I’m free to devote all of my energy to the approaching trainwreck of the winter semester. Just this week they announced that a deal was struck with the faculty and the fourth consecutive higher-education strike of my graduate career is postponed until further notice.

Prayer for the First Day of Chicago Public School

Check out this plea-cum-indictment posted by Chicago educator and poet Kevin Coval.

Kevin’s article is biting and beautiful. It’s in everyone’s best interest that children are granted access to health, safety, and an education that allows them to rise and give back to their community. If we treat education as a luxury product that we purchase for rich kids and a favor we perform for poor kids, we are only perpetuating a divisive system of class-privilege. Education is not a service we provide to our youth, it is an investment in our continued national prosperity, and that investment will only bear fruit if it is properly diversified.

By the way, anybody fed up with what the candidates are spoon-feeding us? Since when do we get our politics in prose poems and our poetry at partisan conventions? I’m tired of the hackneyed “stories of Americans like you”. We’ve got more than enough ethnographers, demographers, documentarians, journalists and anthropologists in this country. I want a politician to woo me over with legislation, not anecdote. Personality is a construct, but budgets can kill. Tell me where the money will go. Tell me where the law will change.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Life goes on, and on and on and on

Tough couple of weeks. Everything seems covered by a pall. Looks like I will not be making it to the states for my much needed re-sanity break/lovesick-escapade. I have decided though, that I was gonna make the best of the looming academic lull and try to have a little more fun on this side of the Gulf Stream. Some diminutive travels are in the works, but first…

I just got back from this year’s HutzMiZe (“Besides This”) Indy music festival, held in kibbutz  Faroud.  Despite the venue’s Elysian atmosphere, perched above Bedouin vineyards and the crumbing ruins of Syrian farmsteads, and a lineup stacked with some big names (i.e. Avi Fortis,) the festival came up short of meeting my expectations. First off, the majority of the acts (and stage-hours) were limited to radio-ready rock, hardcore and reggae.  The real vanguard bands were forced to make do with five-song sets and sub-prime slots (who’s ready to power-skank at 11AM?) Though the food and services were a pleasant surprise, the audience was somnolent at best and someone had let in a battalion of cops to rummage through everyone’s knapsacks and fanny-packs.

Nevertheless, the truly reasonable  ticket price of 100NIS (for both days) kept me from getting belligerent, and my patience was rewarded by two knock-out performances on day two. Around mid-morning, I was roused from my copy of The Economist by someone with a singing voice who wasn’t afraid to abuse it. Blasting along like a Le Tigre cover of Patti Smith, the young Israeli trio The Strawberry Jam was winning over hearts and minds with a stage show as fun, tweaked and frenetic as their lyrics. Moriel and Hadas took turns on drums and vocals while guitarist Carla tore the tweeters to bits. Of course, I had never heard of these guys till their show, which made it all the more embarrassing to go back to our tents (the band, I later discovered, were our neighbors at the campsite) and congratulate them on their set. Turns out punk-rock isn’t dead, it’s just been hiding in Tel Aviv.

Following the girls were some less-than-notables, and finally my personal favorite took the stage. Asaf Avidan is a quickly rising star on the Israeli folk-rock scene, though his cosmopolitan sound and perfect stage presence (read: down-home accent) could conceivably catapult him to worldwide fame. [I understand he's played quite a bit oversees, but haven't verified this yet..] Avidan performed in duet with The Mojos’ cellist Hadas Kleinman, crooning on a set of pipes so powerful and injured that Avidan is perpetually likened to the late-great Janis Joplin. With a set list somewhat more raw and folksy than expected, the two worked flawlessly and poignantly to create a piercing, aching musical time-warp. The guitar work was soulful and uncluttered, the cello solos resplendent. Even the harmonies seemed pure and familiar. I’m sure I’ll be seeing them again soon.

The End of a Good Man

I have just found out that Craig Pollack, educator, naturalist, adventurer, storyteller and mentor, has passed away. Craig leaves behind a loving community of young people whose passion for wilderness he ignited, whose courage and independent spirit he fostered, and who will always look towards the uncharted and unknown with confidence rather than fear. Craig was the product of another time, when the measure of a man was in his character and wit, cool head and steadfastness, and when it was unseemly to ask too many questions. For me, he will always occupy his place of honor at the fire; legs crossed, palms down, and eyes alight in narration or instruction. Now as before, we will think of him each time we weigh a paddle in our hands, watch the first light blush into the northern sky or groan under the weight of boats and burdens greater than ourselves, which we have learned to carry proudly.

Rest in peace Craig, we will miss you.

Fifteen Minutes of Pure Hope, with Michael Pollen

As a general rule, I post only my own content, but this talk just floored me. I haven’t seen one truly, convincingly hopeful development on the global soil crisis… until I saw this. So that’s what permaculture’s about? Sustainability? Where are all the day-tripping Bacchae burying gourds full of lavender honey by the full-moon light? I thought those new-age permaculture muffins had all lost their frosting. Nay, there must be a couple of good old-fashioned rationalists in the bouquet. Man, have I had my head under a rock.

On a side note, I’m addicted to these TED podcasts. There’s a million, you can get them in audio or video, and they’re free.

The trade

Two schoolyard bullies stand face to face in a darkened parking lot.

“Nice shoes, chump.”

“Nice mom, dickweed.”

The two crack a hint of a smile, remembering their rank intimacy of headlocks, the busted lips they’ve licked. In this city, cubicled by chain links and the barbs above, there is only so much room for a boy to swing his elbows. The schoolyard is not big enough for both of them. Still, after two grades and two summers of attrition, neither of the boxy, dark-haired boys had managed to upend the other.

“You got it?”

“Yeah. You got my cat?”

“He’s in the backpack.”

The taller of the two pulls a worn blue knapsack from his shoulder as his thicker rival produces a gleaming slingshot. The two put down their spoils and swagger towards each other heavily.

“You ever come near my house again and I’ll kill you.”

“Eat me. And stay away from my locker.”

The two pass almost chest-to-chest and back towards their reclaimed prizes. The tall boy grabs his slingshot and runs. His nemesis bends towards the knapsack, noticing a long dark stain along the stitching of the plasticized bottom. He unzips the bag, and finds the head of a calico cat resting like a cherry atop a mangled knot of crimson fur.

***

I reiterate: Israel is a very small country.

Yesterday, after Hezbollah traded the remains of the two kidnapped soldiers for the murderer Samir Kuntar (among others) and the omnipresent TV newscast cycled footage of the carnival in the streets of Beirut, there was more than just a tension in the air. People on the streets were visibly shaken, despondent, and sometimes furious. “The trade” was on people’s minds and in their mouths, and their mouths were generally twisted in a grimace. As always, the politics is personal.

Detractors claimed that the country had made a mockery of justice and strengthened Nasrallah, or that the deal would herald a new golden age for Arab kidnappings of Israeli citizens. Proponents pointed to the need to reassure our young enlisted men that they will never be abandoned under any circumstances, and lauded the near-familial bond with which Israelis look after one-another. Both sides, however, hung their heads at the news that we would receive only caskets from Lebanon.

In these times of popular outrage, the gross popular perception of the conflict reveals itself. In living rooms around the country, violent, racist jokes spawned sardonic grins. Rumors of assassinations slithered through the alleyways. Last night, I was at a wonderful but poorly timed performance of “Gypsy” music here in Haifa. The band’s name was “Machsan Balkan” (Balkan Basement) and the compositions hailed from as far afield as Romania, Serbia and Morocco. At one point in the set, the band began playing a popular tune in Arabic, only to be muted by the crowd. “How dare you sing an Arab song on a day like today” the hecklers yelled, and the band was forced to redraw its set list on the spot.

Simple thinking breeds simple tragedies.

The killing eye

Yesterday, a terrorist in a bulldozer rampaged through a crowded street in Jerusalem, killing four and wounding several score more. Coincidently or not, relatively well-shot footage was obtained from the attack and aired on Israeli television almost immediately after the story broke. I can’t say what events the complete, original footage captured, but what cycled unceasingly on the airwaves was a familiar sight: One Palestinian man, one Israeli with a gun, a muzzle flash and a slumping corpse.

In the video, a man at the controls of a dozer is trying to run over pedestrians while struggling with a cop who has mounted the vehicle. Meanwhile, a young, out-of-uniform soldier can be seen hanging onto the outside of the cab, cocking and checking his pistol against the window before reaching inside to fire into the driver’s head. The clip ends with the terrorist’s body collapsing limply in the cab while a second swat officer verifies the kill with two more shots from a rifle. Another angle showed the whole scene from the side, punctuated with a cape of blood that draped across the steps of the vehicle.

I assume that the same camera captured the deaths of some Israelis immediately prior to this kill scene, but that footage was not aired. The selected footage itself is immediately reminiscent of the February tag-team attack in Dimona, where a suicide bomber was wounded by the explosion of his partner. In that episode, the only footage aired was that of the wounded bomber laying on the ground, trying to detonate his own payload while an Israeli security officer approaches him with a gun. In that shot too, the tape slows to accentuate the blast from the handgun and the jolt of the terrorist’s body as the bullet enters his brain.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this type of stuff does not make it onto the news in the States. In fact, despite the local war-coverage habit of never showing “the good-guys” get hurt, I don’t think I’ve ever seen actual killing on Israeli TV before. Bodies under sheets, yes; those macabre slumberers are mainstays of “pigua” (terror-attack) reporting. Yitzchak Rabin embosomed his bullet thousands of times on Israeli television back in 1995, but that was a national trauma screaming for visual catharsis. Strange, then, that in the last few months I have been witness to brutal replays of two separate close-range killings on the national news. Could this be a coincidence, or has someone with a hand on the reins of the news-media decided to break with the status-quo?

It’s hard to imagine that behind closed doors, someone didn’t question the wisdom of broadcasting these tapes to the general public. Throughout the country, Israelis young and old were glued to TV screens, their foreheads hard and jaws set until the fateful shot, at which point the reactions scaled from minute relaxations of tension to hearty refrains of “Thats it–they should have blown that bastard’s head off way earlier.” Is it this cold and fortifying vengeance that the producers hoped to elicit? Sure, watching the objects of our national fear cut down to carcasses might do wonders for Israelis’ perpetual anxiety, but at what price? Have the news moguls considered the psychological impact? Perhaps Israeli’s are so desensitized that a few more splintered skulls couldn’t make a difference.

Then again, desensitized is the wrong word. Quite apart from the immediate evidence of strife, Israeli life is steeped in the accessories of war. Soldiers and weapons are visible everywhere, checkpoints dot the roads, and compulsory military service drags sons, husbands, boyfriends, fathers and friends into the battlefield. The dull music of war games punctuates sunny afternoons like birdsong. But beyond these front lines, militarism appears in other, weirder places. Today in Physics class, the professor began with a kinematics problem: “Suppose a bullet moving at 200m/s hits a fixed body. The bullet penetrates the body to a depth of 10 cm.” A pause.. “Actually, these numbers are relatively accurate.” A knowing look. “Anyway… If the frictional coefficient is 0.2, how much force has the bullet exerted?”

I can’t tell you how many physics problems I’ve solved involving munitions. In my GIS course, our practice exercises have included things like maps of tank-passable terrain, effective missile ranges and references to zones of radioactive fallout. Nearly every day, me and my lab-mates head down to the nearest bomb-shelter to play ping-pong. These are just a few of the subtler examples. In a country where the collective conciousness already has its tongue so close to the battery terminals of conflict, do such “heroic” acts of violence really need to be projected in front of our faces? I’m not talking about naivety; we know what’s going on here, it’s where we live; but just because we’re glad the killer was popped doesn’t mean we should be watching it in slow-mo.

A city without mirrors

I miss Brooklyn. Of course, I miss Matt and Everett, two of my best friends who are now living in Park Slope, but I also miss Brooklyn. For the last two years or so, I’ve lived in Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city. Built on the soft but steep slopes of Mount Carmel, the city is a verdant cap on the forehead of this desert country. It’s an eclectic, labyrinthine port-city, boasting of most of the advantages of a big metropolis despite its modest population of 260,000-odd Jews, Arabs and Bahais. I’ve never been much of a city mouse, but in my time here I’ve tried to embrace the myriad cultural opportunities offered by these great silt-traps of humanity we call cities. There are quirky neighborhoods, festivals, concerts, traveling shows and multitudes of interesting faces. Still, there is one spectacle which is unavoidable in this last-ditch homeland. The city, like the country, is old.

In the western neighborhoods of Brooklyn, the demographics are remarkably similar to urban Israel in many ways. Educated, self-made money walks its undersized dogs at all hours. Jews are the overwhelming norm, and ambition is palpable as a breeze, forcing through crowds and windows and the static of urgent dropped calls. There is one difference. In Brooklyn, the average age on the street hovers around twenty-some, the margin stretching by perhaps two decades in the afternoon toddler hours. It is the google-eyed universe of the young. Here in Haifa, the majority of passersby are rheumatic seniors, shuffling from clinic to grocer to peeling apartment. Just now, on my way to the café where I now sit typing, I saw a man who must have long since forgotten his seventy-fifth birthday, inching knock-kneed down the sidewalk in a suit-jacket that must have fit him once, before the weird wasting of age shrunk the gentleman four sizes too small for his own favorite jacket. Haifa is a ghost town that doesn’t believe in ghosts.

My grandfather, incidentally, is offering his own ounce of flesh to the clockworks. He will be losing his left eye in one week, victim to a long series of ophthalmologic maladies. He is understandably upset, and my dementiatic grandmother can still sense this, even from eight floors up in her separate room at the nursing home. I am there a couple of times a week to force a smile onto their faces. I love them, so the guilt of dreading these bleak visits is all the more powerful. First in college and then again at sea, I wrote of my dreams, full of images of mortality. Since I’ve been back, the dreams of death have stopped. Maybe my subconscious looked into the mirror of this city and was spooked by the reflection.

Of course, this is the real world. I am ultimately thankful to live in a city as diverse as this one, and age is a vital part of diversity. The awareness of all of life’s stages enriches my daily grind and gives perspective to the overwhelming worries of post-college young-adulthood. Still, sometimes I just want to escape to where life is frozen in its youth and skin is more a hint of sex than a record of hardship. God bless America and its wicked high.

Sustainable Design

I almost hit the tree.

It was sometime near midnight and I was out prowling the Carmel center in search of something interesting. I walked down into Gan HaEm, just above the Haifa zoo where as a child I had wondered over the majestic wild animals which I now recognize as barely conscious souvenirs of their wild selves, stuffed into cages about ten sizes too small to accommodate any but the most stunted of souls. In a primary, emotional way, this zoo is everything that sustainable design is not. It’s a place where complex, beautiful and valuable ecosystem treasures are wasted for the half-assed benefit of largely oblivious human beings.

But, only meters from the green bars of the zoo’s front gate, as I ascended towards the thoroughfare of Shderot Hanassi, the sidewalk narrowed between two wrought-iron fences, and flowed around something. It was a huge cyprus tree, standing in the middle of the sidewalk like a tourist pausing to stare up at the tops of the high-rises. Everybody would just have to go around.

This is the right idea. Sustainable design is not just the mitigation of ecological damage by lessening the damaging outflows of pollution, sewage, or carbon from inevitable development. Sustainable design should, from stage one, be about design; specifically, it should consider and respect the local environment. This does not mean leveling an entire valley with bulldozers, then making sure to add skylights and waterless urinals into the subsequent office buildings. Real sustainable design is about using the valuable resources of the local ecosystem (natural drainage, wetlands (for effluent treatment), heritage trees or habitats, shaderows and natural wind-blocks, beautiful native flora and geomorphology) and building around nature, not on top of it. In this overlooked pocket of urban Haifa, decades before the term Sustainable Design was coined, some prescient architect was told to build a sidewalk where a tree was, and decided that between the two of them, the sidewalk would be the one to get out of the way.

Smart (read:green) builders these days have a wide selection of efficient appliances, bathroom fixtures, heating and cooling systems, water recycling mechanisms, electricity sources and biodegradable or recycled building materials to choose from. With all the new technologies on the market, lets not forget about how much of the Sustainable Design process occurs before a single blueprint has been drawn.