Last posts on night

The Gift of People

2009-12-26T19:36:35+01:00

As soon as I got back to Williamsburgh from the soup kitchen, I knew this was no ordinary night. There was nothing run of the mill about it. It was Christmas Eve, and to me, even more important than Christmas Day. I washed myself in parts as best as I could and went back to my space. I couldn’t help but remember other Christmas Eves, other December 24th of long ago. Through the camera of my mind, I saw people I had known. We were all gathered around a large round table. A festive tablecloth covered the mahogany table and the lights above us were bright and happy. All of us were talking and laughing as we ate the abundant home made food. My mother and Aunt always prepared more than enough food for at least 50 people. Us. Now, many years later, I think that us was the magic word. It opened the door to the feeling of belonging. There is no is us anymore. Tonight I feel like somebody cut me into pieces and I don’t fit anywhere.

blur-friday

2009-11-06T18:09:30+01:00

Route: At the midnight hour at Karuma

2008-03-23T11:20:00+01:00

Night bus travel is a humbling undertaking. It starts with the dark pealing away the scenery to look at, and then idleness hitting on everyone in the bus. People turn away drowsily in mid sentence and don’t turn back. Lost forever to lapses of sleep that involve jerks of remembrances.

“Where are we?” one starts

“Ah, we just moved ten kilometres”

He looks surly around and slides back to sleep. Waking after another ten minutes to ask the same question. Finally tiring and resoluting to suffer without bother.

Night time is a brisk scale into supernatural. A bright spot appears delusional, and in entwines your soul into a wave of misjudged apprehensions. The bus in the night is one place to build such apprehensions. There is a spirit that controls the vehicle. An incantation starts, as a hypnosis swaying in-there is the silent swash of the wind outside, a din building within the bus cabin when all the windows get shut. Then,

The sway, the duck and the stealth with which it overtakes, leaves one breathless. It’s like being under water. The thrill is (a mix of the hope that the water surface is just a level away waiting and knowing that you could sink further and never get to see the surface at all. It’s a choking feeling emerging, bringing – breeding unease.

It’s a shift from fear to desperation. To relief when you suddenly realise the hurdle is overcome. You come to the water surface, take a deep breath and sink right back. There is moment to count your luck…It’s a continuous relapse into fear, imagination and adventure. Sixty seven people live this maze of tactic, wit, luck, trepidation, and a stretch of accident hungry 346km road.

At the midnight hour at Karuma, the moon gleams palely onto the tarmac. The pale pasted night air is wet with mist as we thrust through it. It decorates our wind shield with a whitish sheen from the inside that the driver keeps wiping away. Our headlights beam into a turmoil of smoke that veers away to let us through to the black spot in the future of the road. The spectral black we aim at hidden in the sphere of mist eludes us, gives us an excitement that worries.

At the midnight hour at Karuma, the mist rains onto the windshield creating alternating seconds of blocked view that are wiped away; this exercise of cleaning is repeated so fast it draws us into a kind of hypnosis of taking our eyes one way then the other. The driver’s eyes droop and his grip on the leather wheel is so tight it’s doubtful, so is my grip on the music and the surroundings.

The midnight hour at Karuma is an hour of light thought, furtive grasps at reality - dead-end speeches, and wide-eyed sleep, dreams of reality. There is an outburst of sleep filled hot air, an air of decay congesting itself, permeating into other open noses and passing on the taste of sleep, drowsing others into it.

The bus grows quieter as it gains speed, hurtling into a darkness that unsparingly envelops the bus. Cascading into wavy circles of light and dark. The headlamps peer into the heart of the dark, penetrating into 200 metres of distance ahead, trying for a destination, poking hope. It flickers lightly to taste the length, search for obstacles, and to ascertain the security of the road ahead. Then it blasts full, hungrily, unsparingly, ferociously acknowledging its supremacy.

The monotony of the bus drone, the passing swish of night images. More and more people keep dropping off drowsily. So that when you look sideways, to the back and to the front, most of the lot has been drawn to sleep. The bus driver maintains machinery pose that shifts only to the swing of the wheel either right or left. There is nothing human about the man turning that wheel, slowly. He also isn’t aware neither of his presence nor his role here. It’s beyond him, the power in his legs propelling the massive machine. The machine droning and yanking all this weight.

Behind the bus, it’s like this a large blanket of darkness is clouding and tailing us, trying to absorb us in its evil scheme. There is a plot out there; it’s a ghost ambition that haunts all night buses, all open eyed drivers battling with sleep, the night travelers, the dogs prowling the roads, and impatience of many trying to overcome the inadequacy of time to do everything in the daylight. The silence of ways…ways stretched with uncertainty.

Its scary looking at people sleeping, it’s like they are spinning our fates in their arduous, adventurous dreams. As we hurtle on the tarmac, quickly eating up the distance that spreads ahead of us. Distant darknesses approach and get dissolved by the prongs of light that reach out, paving the way, waving away the darkness.

At the midnight hour at Karuma, when Pink Floyd sings Brain damage on my ipod, I don’t know which side of the world we are! Behold, the grey water grumbles below the Nile, fighting not to go away. We ride over the bridge, grinding our weak shock absorbers onto the thin meshed gulley at the entrance to the bridge, it scrapes right to our spines, bounces away and we settle to quite another laborious battle to keep awake. Across the Nile, leads us to another level in this puppet story, the rivets are fastened stronger as we levitate into deep unconsciousness.

Thinly strapped grisly old women idle on road corners contemplating crossing the road. The driver sits slumped in his seat, widening his drooping eyes and nodding each time he knocks down an old woman, leaving them braying behind us. The women that don’t cross the road stand grotesque. Leaning against their walking sticks, hair flailing in their own aura, they stare at us with hollowly eyes. Their trembling breath stretches across the road as a web of isolation, claustrophobia, insomnia, and dewy memories. That, sieving through it creates a disability of emotion that grips us, losing our selves to guilt, trepidation, paranoia, procrastination!

That, Alas, somewhere! Beyond this trance, beyond the night, someone else listens to Pink Floyd with yet another complete dilemma. So that when Shine on you crazy diamond plays, I am completely absorbed from this world, taken away by the magic of the electric, into the guzzle of the Nile, into the pale tarmac, into the allure of the moon, into the world of deceptive perspectives. What then, compels me to wake up when Pink Floyd stops singing?

Inside this grayscale landscape, the black box that contained us has shifted continuously past the ghost hour, before the moon turned away or before the rain cloud obstructed it. When, we examine ourselves for a feeling of having existed earlier. It turns out it’s now a trip past the madhouse blues.

There is a proclivity to forgetfulness after it sleep has gone. That the hour before, or perhaps minutes earlier, we all kind of slept. That I didn’t get to listen to the rest of the Pink Floyd album. It’s the sour taste in the mouth, the kind you get after you have slept. The patched feeling, the clear-headedness, and the cloud-headedness..

That while at sleep, we had moved several miles along the way this far

blanket friday

2008-02-01T16:10:00+01:00

Tree Decorated

2007-12-09T03:55:00+01:00

trick or treat friday

2007-10-26T15:50:00+02:00

MOON FRIDAY (I lost it)

2007-07-27T15:00:00+02:00

stary night

2007-03-24T08:12:56+01:00

It was the first day of spring on Thursday, the first time I felt, since the weather got cold somewhere in October, that I could actually be outside, not just walking fast from one place to the other, usually from the apartment to a restaurant and back to the apartment again, but actually spend time outside. wIt was like that this evening. Such a long day. But in the evening, after spending most of the day in the motorcycle dealership, and then heading to the upper east side to see his parents and then rushing back home to meet a friend and then going out to pizza - we went outside again.

I almost never go out on Fridays here, but tonight, just walking outside, being a bit buzzed from a beer, a shot of absinth and then another beer and seeing all the people all dressed out to go out, or sitting in bars or just, like me, walking in the beautiful still air that's so nice and warm that I could actually unbutton my coat and feel the hair touching my skin - I felt so alive, like I'm finally waking up from a long winter of hibernation. We walked down 6th street and headed to the water, and we were looking at all the new Williamsburg buildings and talking, walking slowly, but somehow advancing faster then we were all winter.

And then, we stopped in that tiny park that was raised right by the power station in honor of the fairy stop that used to be there, bringing people from Brooklyn to Manhattan before the trains and the bridges were built. The water was so still and the air so nice and warm. We were talking but I could barely hear the words, I couldn't stop looking at the reflection of the lights on the water. so still and vivid that they looked like pillars of bright white and shiny orange and pale yellow and red lights. We were talking of the train, and of 6th sense and it was just words, passing between 3 people who were more interested in just being then in talking and passing something between them, that was much larger then the words - happiness and friendship and love.

I haven't wrote while being drunk in ages, it's weird having to go back and correct the spelling of every word. It's true what they say, it is the fine motor skills that get fucked first.

Nighthawks

2006-08-19T01:12:56+02:00

I wake up in the middle of the night, not quite knowing what time it is, it feels like early morning, but it can be any time, it's still dark outside, I hear some cars on the highway outside, and other then that just one big silence. I reach my arm out to him, but the bed's empty, I call him, not knowing where he is, half in English and half in Hebrew. He's sitting on the couch, not being able to fall asleep, keep waking up to mosquitoes and hunger and thoughts. He comes to bed and tell me his thoughts, still half asleep, I'm trying to think back on what woke me up and I then I start to laugh, remembering the last few moments of my dream.THE DRESS DREAMI'm still in Israel, but my parents are already not talking to me, I'm on the last few days of running errands and getting ready for the move to New York. It's the afternoon and I'm going to my parents house to take something, I hope they will not be home and indeed when I come in, only my sisters are there, but shortly after, my mom and dad arrives. There's this tension that there always were when we were kids and my parents would come home, and suddenly it felt like we were under inspection.My father say "We were worried about you, we haven't heard from you in a while" I don't know if I want to just let this go and make the effort to act as if all was normal and just ignore their not talking to me, but eventually I get angry and cynically say "Well, you don't talk to me, so you don't get to know what's going on with me" He get upset, but he doesn't say anything. My mom's cleaning the kitchen counter, she say "I'm busy now, but I do what to talk to you about this later on" She say will have dinner and talk about it later. I feel like she's pushing me into a corner, I say "I can't stay here for the entire evening, I need to get going, if you want to I'll talk about it now" though on the inside I just hope we would not have the time to talk about it at all and it will all be forgotten after I leave for New York.Then, without a warning or a reason, my mother becomes very nice, she smiles at me and she say "I got you some things for the trip" She hands me a black shiny paper bag, in it there's a dress, I take It out, it's baggy, made of shiny cheap crushed satin fabric, it's got 3 huge tiger tooth buttons on the front and a weird heavy belt.I make a sour face, obviously I don't like the dress, I think it's ugly. I tell my mom I don't like it and she takes it from my hand and say "Well, I'll just take it back to the store then" making me feel both guilty and greedy, I sigh and tell her that I'll try it on and see how it fits.I'm going into the bathroom to try it, before I do, I sit on the toilet to take a piss. Somehow the urine shoots from the toilet seat and spray over the entire dress, just soaking it in piss. I get really anxious about my mom thinking I did it on purpose just cause I thought it was ugly, I try to stop pissing but I can't and the dress just gets more and more soaked, I throw it to the floor and see that the black dye is starting to ooze out of it, that when it's mixed with the urine it looks dark brown, like blood, I realized that somehow, I manage to get it soaked with period blood as well as urine, I try to wipe it with toilet paper but it just sticks to the fabric and make the situation worst. I throw it to the floor again and it just get covered in dust and go on oozing this orange liquid, that's dye and urine and blood.In the dream, I'm both stressed about my mother's reaction, but mostly I'm amused by how ridiculous the whole situation is, how ugly that dress was and how slapstick like I look with my jeans still down to my ankles trying to wipe away piss and blood and just making the situation worst and worst.As I tell him the dream I realise that it's a lot less funny and a lot more emotional then I was feeling at first, but I still can't stop laughing at it when I'm talking about it.NIGHTWALKBy the time I finish telling him about the dream and writing it down so I don't forget it, I'm almost fully awake, he can't fall asleep. I put on a dress and shoes and we go out. The streets are very quite, there's garbage trucks and a couple of the late night bars are still running pretty silently. We walk down the empty streets, looking at pigeons sleeping on window ledges and cats walking about. I haven't walked those streets so late at night since I got here. It looks different so late, there's a pale moonshine, the air is Misty, it looks like a magical hour. We look at the buildings, at the new ones being built and the old ones that still stand and how beautiful they are. We are talking about how the neighborhood's changing. He's been talking about moving a few times in the past few days, there's a restlessness in him now, a desire to go to other places.We cross the highway and walk toward Kellog's Dinner. The Bright neon light's exactly the opposite of the magical poetic feeling of the outside, there's some crappy 80's song playing, and the bright red tables reflecting the lights makes me want to close my eyes, to adjust to the blinding colors. A group of teenagers are sitting on one of them, a few couples, a policeman, coming through the door after us, sitting down to have some coffee.We sit down, he order food, we share it, I'm half listening to random conversation, he hold hands, we talk, the night's surrounding this restaurant from all places, but inside it always look the same, only the people changes. I eat, the warmth of the food makes me feel sleepy, tired. Two paramedics enters, this is the only place that open 24 hours and so it hosts a very random combination of emergency forces, kids with nowhere to go and random people, some are starting their day very early, some are still half way into their nights. I drink the water from the too large plastic cup, I'm happy to be there, with him, awake in the middle of the night, it feels special, even with that horrible song from the soundtrack of "ghost" even with the blinding red table between us. It feels romantic and beautiful and like us.

So tired

2006-02-25T05:00:00+01:00

I am not sleeping well, and I'm not exactly sure why. I fall asleep easily but I keep waking up every 15 minutes, and it seems to be because of my spouse's movements. Each time he shifts or moves, I wake up. This is a big problem, how am I supposed to ever sleep with him if he keeps waking me up just be moving a bit? I wonder why I'm so hyper sensitive about it, I wasn't always, or was he just not shifting then??

This may seem like a silly posting, but it's amazing how lack of rest can affect your day. I haven't done anything today, or the past week, I'm just too sluggish, I've been dragging my butt around and pushing myself to do anything, event the smallest and easiest. My one theory is that I've been confined to my home for too long and haven't been physically active this winter. I'm a mom of a 4 year old little girl and I study at home online. I would have a job if we hadn't moved to a small town where the only position I could have are at a fast food place or Zellers. Nothing against those establishments per say, I just want to work in my field for once.. But anyway, back to my lack of sleep, I have also entered Miss Pissy Pants mode and am very easily irritated at, well, nothing.

So in an attempt to correct this and lose the 10-15 lbs I gained since last summer, I'm joining Curves, the ultra gym for women. I simply must fit back into my dress pants once I graduate, and I've always wanted to tone and build my muscles, I want to be strong and feel great, and perhaps sleep!! Hopefully this new innitiative will turn into a habit I'll be doing for a very long time.

Gloomy Moon's Light

2006-02-11T20:05:00+01:00

In midst of night

when all is still

under a gloomy moon's light

in bed I will

think about what's done

and what is yet to come

I lay awake eyes open wide

and think of you

under a pale moon's light

how it fell through

the life we shared

and all future plans we had

Deep in night

between awake and sleep

in a blue moon's light

I promise my heart I'll keep

it safe from break and ache

and love's harsh forsake

Dreaming eyes shut tight

about love's thrill

in a fading moon's light

maybe some day I will

find a love true

and risk my foolish heart anew