I Am a Blur

 

 

Lately, the days pass so quickly one after the other they are all a blur. I am a blur. I feel like my edges are smudged, the image I see reflected in the mirror is not clear. I don’t recognize me anymore. I am not me. I am a blur.

And I feel this toxic cloud surrounding me, sending its tendrils towards me, sucking all my strength, my will, my everything.

I am a blur. An image you see in the window of a train, inconsistent, an impression that lasts a few seconds and then it’s gone.

I am a blur. A cloud of tiny insects, annoying for a while, buzzing and flying around your heads. But then a strong wind just blows them away.

I am a blur. A lonely figure in the desert, in the middle of a sand storm. Now, I’m here. You blink and I’m gone.

I am a blur. A lonely light in the dense fog on winter mornings.

A single beat of a wing.

One breath of a tree.

The sight of a setting sun.

I am a blur. Inconsistent and fragile. Forgettable.

Soon I’ll become a shadow, no blood will flow through my veins, just pain, acute and unbearable pain.

And after a while, tired and beaten I will transform into a stain on the sidewalk. No life, no feeling, just a smudge of lost humanity.

Whenever It Strikes, I Will Be Ready

 

 

Why does my inspiration strike me at the most inappropriate of times?

While I am cleaning the house, my thoughts go round and round in my head like a crazy carousel. I have to stop whatever I am doing at that precise moment, look for a pen and some paper and write everything down.

While I am sitting with my husband at the hospital surrounded by pain and suffering, something or someone catches my attention. Tears fill my eyes and I hear the words whispering to me.

While I am in bed, dead tired, the moment I close my eyes and drift to sleep, ideas like demented Jack-in-the-Boxes just pop into my consciousness. Good bye, sleep!

While I am walking home from the supermarket, laden with shopping bags, an interesting image appears in my mind. I have to stop, put down the bags and type it into my phone.

Because I am not losing another image, another idea or another sentence. Not again.

 It happened to me too many times in the past. I let those moments slip and they were lost forever.

So, I don’t care if I burn the food or forget the clothes in the washing machine, I will catch those thoughts and bring them to life on the paper, instead of leaving them trapped in my mind.

And if Pitzi the cat tries once again to sleep on my keyboard I will coax him down with a tuna snack and will carry on writing until I have nothing left to say.

Until I Get To Be Me

 

I am tired, so tired of all of this. Weary and drained. Fed up. Had enough.

Oh, did I offend you? Did you want something nice and cheery and motivational, to help you deal with the crap in your life? You’re in the wrong place, pal. I don’t do any of that. Not today, anyway.

Today I write of pain and disappointment, disease and anxiety, anger and frustration, fatigue and anguish. And so many more feelings that fight to be acknowledged.

I feel like all I do these days is fight something or someone, real or imagined. And I am just tired. Sometimes I think I fight with myself and it is not a pretty sight. I don’t have a very good opinion of myself, so I hurl obscenities at me and try to make myself small and insignificant. And I keep bringing up the mistakes I’ve made, the stupid things I did, and I try to humiliate myself and make me suffer.

Sometimes I think I am my own worst enemy. Sometimes I wonder if I am my best one.

When I was young, I used to harm myself.

In order to mute what I felt inside I had to make the physical pain louder.

Not that it helped.

Pain is pain is pain.

And now I have the scars to remind me.

I am so tired.

And I would like nothing more than to lie down under a mighty tree in a deep forest somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania.

To feel the soft wind on my face and to listen to the sounds of nature: leaves rustling, birds twittering, millions of insects, tiny constellations buzzing in the warm air.

To push my cheek to the ground, to smell the rich moist aroma of the earth and the fresh, green scent of the grass.

To soak the soil with my tears and for the moisture to reach the roots of the tree and then to erupt with the sap in the leaves and to be dried by the sun.

I want to lie there and forget about everything, to rest until I don’t remember who I am anymore, to be born again, new and untainted, not as myself, but as something special, remarkable. A flower, maybe. Or a strange bush. A medicinal plant. To ease and to sooth. To nurture.

And then to begin again. And again. Until I get it right. Until I get to be me.

Twenty-Seven Years, One Suitcase, and a Life I Never Expected

 

Today marks our 27^th wedding anniversary and as I sit down to write about it, I still cannot wrap my mind around it…27 years…where did they go?

When I met and then later, agreed to marry my husband I didn’t know that my life would change almost completely. And not because of the marriage, no. Because, unbeknownst to me, I would embark on a journey that would change my life. Naïve as I was, having been born under a communist regime that liked to keep us ignorant and uninformed, I didn’t have any idea what would mean to me to travel and settle myself across the world. For love. For having someone in my life. A partner.

I arrived in a country that was different from anything I had known or imagined. Different religion, different customs and holidays, different language and totally different climate.

How do you build a family when everything around you is strange and unfamiliar?

It wasn’t easy, I must confess. But, in a sense, it forced me to try and make it work, because I had already chosen this life and I was determined to make the best of it. It is easy, when things don’t work in a marriage, to just pack one’s bags and leave, isn’t it? It is more difficult though when leaving is not an option. Because then, you have to find a way to get by, to cope.

If someone ever tells you that marriage, partnership are easy, don’t believe them, they’re liars. Marriage, as any other human relationship is complicated and not straightforward. Sometimes you are facing certain situations that make you think “I’m done” and then you step back to gain a bit of perspective and try to find solutions instead of just walking away.

After 27 years of marriage, I can tell you, marriage is hard work. Compromises. Good days and bad days. Decisions that have to be made. Kids that must be raised and educated. Tears. Joy and sorrow. Money. Responsibility. Words that elevate and words that hurt. And some days, just putting one foot in front of the other.

And the real test of a marriage doesn’t come during good times. No, it comes during bad times, when you have to grit your teeth and try to survive, to come out of it (mostly) unscathed.

And that’s marriage for you.

So, happy anniversary to us, to our struggles and our moments of happiness, to everything we built together and, I hope, to many more years to come.

Adventures in … Carrefour

 

 

Everybody was so, so happy when Carrefour, the French retail chain came to Israel… We thought maybe we’ll have variety, lower prices, better services, high quality goods... Well, that’s not what happened. There weren’t many brand products and all the other stuff they sold in their super-markets was the same as everywhere else, only more expensive.

We have a mini-market in our neighborhood, among Russian delis and shops. For 27 years, since I’ve moved here, I’ve been shopping there. They are close, while the big supermarkets are usually in the outskirts and I don’t drive. The place had a lot of owners, before becoming a Carrefour branch.

I go there mainly because I have no other choices around, I know the place and everybody who works there and they have a bomb shelter – very important these days.

Like every Israeli neighborhood shop it has its daily struggles. I mean, there is always some “drama”. Not enough cashiers, not enough smaller trolleys, no milk, the watermelon is too expensive.

But today, oh, today it was absolutely crazy. First of all, the shop was messy as usual, with huge crates full of merchandise smack in between the aisles so it wasn’t possible to pass through. They always do this, they unpack the merchandise at noon, when it is already full with shoppers.

I was waiting in line to get my stuff scanned.

Woman: “Excuse me, do you have a Carrefour card?”

Me: “Yes, I have”.

Woman: “Could you buy these two jars of spaghetti sauce for me, on your card? They are on sale if you have a card. I’ll pay you back cash”.

Me: “OK, no problem”.

But, we soon discovered there was another lady who was after me in line and in front of the lady with the jars. So, I had to wait for the cashier to scan her stuff. But…before she even started, an old man with a cane and two packs of cheese moved in front of her.

Man: “Can I scan these? I am in a hurry, I have to go to the hospital”.

Everybody agrees.

Man (to the cashier): “And while you’re at it, bring me a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes.”

SAY WHAT???

Everybody protests.

The line is getting longer and longer. The cashier has to leave her seat in order to bring the man the cigarettes (they are somewhere else entirely in the shop).

The man pays and says: “Where is the customer service here?”

Cashier:” Why? What’s the problem?”

Man: “I want to complain about the high prices you have at Carrefour”.

Everybody begins speaking at once.

“Why didn’t you someplace else if it is expensive here?”, somebody asks.

“You aren’t in a hurry any more”, adds somebody else.

The cashier, on the PA system, asks for help. Nobody comes.

A nice young woman convinces him to go somewhere else to buy stuff if he is not pleased with the prices.

The man leaves. The cashier resumes her work. The woman after me has three carrots, one zucchini, one kohlrabi, one fennel, two pots of yoghurt, a bag of pasta and some other small items. She pays and leaves. The woman with the sauce jars finishes too, and gives me the money she owes me. 12 effing shekels. I would’ve gone home instead of waiting for one bloody half an hour.

Finally, I exist the shop. The nice young woman in line after us had to wait to pay for a quarter of a watermelon.

 

 

Don’t Do It Like I Did It

 

 

Everything went downhill since yesterday afternoon when we returned from my husband’s treatment. He has been feeling poorly since last week and nobody at the hospital was sure why. There were many theories floating around but none of them really helpful.

The last PET scan showed that the lymphoma is almost gone, so everyone was happy. Truth be told, yesterday I saw with my own eyes the differences between the two PET scans my husband had – one at the beginning of the treatment and the other last week. In the first one, I could actually see two dazzling, huge “suns” besides lots of shining stars. That’s how spread and active the disease was. And in the second one, well, almost total blackout, power outage. Here and there, lit candles and that’s it. No spotlights, no glaring supernovas. So, of course the doctors would focus on the positive outcome. And we were really glad, too. But my husband was still feeling unwell. So, they tweaked here and there his medication, added something new and sent us home.

The problem was my husband’s condition went from bad to worse.

He woke me up in the morning telling me he called his friend to drive him to the hospital because he was worse than he was in the evening. He talked to the doctor and he’s waiting for him.

I helped him pack all he needed in case they’d keep him there overnight and after he left, I tried, somehow, to begin my day. Coffee, then clean the house, change the bedsheets, you know, domestic stuff that needed to be done. So far, so good.

What did actually happen?

For once, I kept misplacing my mobile phone. Because I wanted to hear it in case my husband texted me, I took it with me while doing stuff and I kept putting it in all kinds of places.

Luckily, I know how to find it through google, so I did that. Several times.

Because I was so stressed and anxious, I kept dropping stuff. When I opened the fridge food kept falling out of it, stuff I didn’t remember placing inside it. One cup of ready-made coffee fell on the floor and broke, so I grabbed what was closer because the puddle kept getting bigger and bigger. It was a big towel I wanted to throw in the washing machine. After I mopped up the liquid I decided to drop the towel in the shower, to let it soak in some cold water. Of course, I then got tangled in other stuff to do and I realized I forgot the towel in the shower only when the water reached the hall between the rooms, heading to the living room. The drain hole got covered with the towel I threw without looking where, so the water couldn’t drain. I had to deal with the whole situation and after half an hour the water was gone. Bonus – the tiled floor was clean, too.

And I still couldn’t find my phone. Just kept running around like a headless chicken, or, as my Romanian grandma used to say “ ca o goanga fara fir”.

I then proceeded to share my lunch with Klara, our cat, because she is crazy about fish and I was having salmon.

At some point during the day my husband called me from the hospital telling me he decided to come home and I got in a frenzy trying to finish all my chores without doing any damage in the process.

The rest of the day just passed in a blur, trying to convince my husband to eat and drink something, my daughter came home, I went shopping, had dinner, did the dishes and now I am sitting here, in front of the PC, tired and a little dizzy from all the events of the day.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring. I hope I won’t spend the day chasing my phone, flooding the hallway, breaking cups or forgetting towels in the shower. More than that, I hope my husband wakes up feeling a little better.

It seems that some days are really determined to test how many things one person can juggle before everything begins slipping through their fingers.

Today was one of those days.

Tomorrow, please be kinder.

Invisible Summer - The Beginning

 

Sunday

I have to go outside today, to take care of some important documents. Otherwise, I would’ve stayed at home. It’s summer and it’s already hot outside, and it’s not even noon.

I smear sun-protection all over myself.

The first thing I see outside our building is the overflowing garbage bin. They haven’t collected it in almost a week. Is there a garbage-people strike?

Under the unforgiving sun, the stench is unbearable.

On the road, a cleaning machine thingy putters away, doing nothing for the dirt.

There are a lot of people outside. The coffee shops took out on the sidewalk their tables and they are packed. Everybody speaks loudly, about prices and politics. Does anyone go to work these days?

The sidewalk is dirty.

A cat, black and white, a Zorro look-alike face, is waiting near the butcher shop’s door.

A man is looking for his dog, I think, shouting his name. Or his child?

I do some shopping. Mainly milk because there is a shortage of cottage cheese and yogurt, only God knows why. Maybe they want to raise prices again.

The cleaning machine thingy has caught up with me. It still doesn’t clean anything.

Near our building the garbage didn’t magically disappear.

I enter the coolness of the apartment. Klara watches me obliquely with her yellow eyes. “Where have you been?” Pitzi opens an eye and then promptly goes back to sleep.

I turn on the TV. A terrorist attack. One dead, five injured. The perpetrators were two Israeli Arabs.