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Because I’m Really Back Now, And It’s Really Important

I got an e-mail from Ari asking me to post this, and because I totally agree with him, I am. Comment as you will.

“The Jew is mightier than the sword.” Or, “I eat my pepperoni pizza on paper plates.”

I recently received the following:

I just signed this. Please join me in getting "Paradise Now" off the
Oscars.

The Revoke the "Paradise Now" Oscar Nomination Petition is red hot,
averaging well over a thousand signatures a day, and increasing speed. The
revulsion being felt around the
world over Hollywood's nomination of "Paradise Now", a movie glorifying PLO
suicide bombers, is palpable. It is galvanizing opposition and spurring
decent people of all backgrounds to action to right this tremendous wrong.

This petition is a UNIFIER. If you have not already signed, please do so.

http://www.petitiononline.com/060201/petition.html

And please pass this on.

Thanks.
E XXXXXX
Associate Producer
Martha
MSLO Productions, Inc.
226 West 26th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10001


I quickly responded asking whether she had seen the movie? As of yet I have received no response.

This short, yet telling email forward just about sums up everything that is wrong with the American Jewish community today.

Not unlike the bogus Fuji Film mass email that circulated a few years back, there is no honor or dignity in garnering a sense of satisfaction, particularly that of being a “good Jew,” because you hit forward on your email. Especially, when this feeling is false and adds to the improper sense of belonging because you are “against” something and have mouse clicked to prove it.

I have seen this movie and I do have personal feelings about it. I found it to be one of the most beautiful, moving, touching and empathetic works of film that I have seen in some time. It was much better than Cats. It presented a window into an existence that I can hardly begin to imagine. And, as is one of the main objectives of art, it appealed to my imagination and caused me to think by doing so. This, of course, as opposed to, a documentary, which would be an attempt at representing a narrative, perceived as a truth by those people telling it. And it is part of the viewers responsibility to know what s/he is watching.

Unfortunately, responsibility regarding serious thought that includes contemplation of competing narrative (read: competing truth) seems to be way too much to ask of the average American Jew. Perhaps this is a result of the vestigial Judaism left in wake of the breakdown of the Jewish nation. “You can’t tell me what to eat, pepperoni is just too fucking delicious, but please tell me what to think when it comes to Israel – OUR precious.” Often, it seems that Israel, specifically the Jewish aversion to Palestinians and all things Muslim is one of the last universal binding components that international Jewry can share.

But Jews are smart people, so maybe it is too immature or naïve to think that such an email is circulating because Jews don’t really have the time to think about Israel and its myriad nuanced problems. I suppose the other option is that this is a calculated attack against our adversarial enemies on the other side of the proverbial Green Line. Perhaps the email should read:

Palestinian (if that is your real name)-

You have managed to thrust your narrative into the American mainstream. We Jews will be damned if we let your competing voice sully the good name of Spielberg’s Hollywood, the same Hollywood built by the hands of the hated Jew back when America wasn’t so enlightened and liberal – two more changes you can thank us for.

You are proving a worthy adversary but you will rue the day that you crossed the machine that is the American Jewish lobby. Prepare for the real battle.

Feel free to forward this message to your other terrorist, murderer, suicidal and/or homicidal friends.


So what is the answer?

Well, I have started a new petition. All I ask of you is not to sign it. Rather, go out and see Paradise Now. Then read the petition statement that is circulating via mass email, one that perhaps you have already seen, maybe even signed. Then make a decision and only then, should you lend your name to this effort.

Please feel free to pass this blog posting along (there is a little envelope icon at the bottom of the post). Better yet, if you have a blog of your own (and who doesn't these days, so I'm talking to you!) please provide a link to this posting or reproduce it or, still better, write your own posting about this petition. Thanks.

And remember, Jews don’t control the media – mass emails, blog postings and online petitions do.

Somewhere Out There

Last Friday, the day after the airport conversation, I returned home from visiting a museum to find a package with my name on it. Said package was from a bookstore half way across the country with which I am unfamiliar. Enclosed was a copy of Wendy Wasserstein’s Shiksa Goddess and a receipt that showed the price of the book (it had been purchased using an Amazon bookseller) but that had the name and address of the sender clipped off. An e-mail address was given, but there was no message, and the e-mail address was completely unfamiliar to me. Still, happy with my gift, and feeling lucky and like somebody somewhere understood, I sent off an e-mail to the address given with my great thanks, and asking who was being so kind. I have received no response.

I haven’t read the book yet because I’ve been in the middle of a few other tomes that I needed to get through (and did), but it’s on the short list for what comes next, and certainly the allure of the situation will add to my enjoyment of the book.

I love surprised. But now that I’ve received the book, can I know who my secret admirer is, please?

Lame

I watched figure skating tonight, and I actually have watched it for the past week, and I feel slightly ill, but I cannot look away. The glitter makeup and the insane bright colors and the kiss ‘n cry is all too much for me. I want a world where the only thing that matters is landing the jump you back into, and looking graceful in a frighteningly short skirt.

Even though I’ve loved the figure skating, I’ve come to hate Dick Button with a passion that astounds me. He has made the most consistently annoying, rude and stupid comments of any commentator I’ve ever heard, and even when he was clearly reprimanded between the short program and the long program, he still said dumb ass shit for hours on end. Dick Button, you won your damn medal decades ago, and you’re talking about a sport where fifteen year old girls routinely do harder tricks than any men were doing in your day. Shut the fuck up about your sit spins and your spirals or I will crack you skull open with a toepick.

Winter Sports

I thought of another good metaphor. For the past year it’s like we’ve been preparing for these Olympics together, but we’ve been training for different sports. I thought we were going to be on two man luge, the two of us lying down together, feeling the rush of the wind, the swizzling swell of gravity and the mountain swooped down around us and we steered with tiny movements of our legs, mostly staying so close to each other, mostly touching. But in fact, he was training for two man bobsled, and I wasn’t necessarily the other person in the bobsled. He liked training with me, but whoever came along would be fine, too. And whenever I would try to steer he would hit the brakes to hard and we’d loose time, things would slow down and I’d get confused. But then on Thursday it all became clear. Either way life was a icy painful track going downhill, and I was going to have to do it in a sled by myself. Luge suddenly sounds like a cleaning solution the Olympic committee uses to try to get pieces of me off rocks at the bottom of the mountain, where I’ll soon be splattered.

And Also

Remind me to chat a little about mfa programs and applications soon.

Hiatus Explained

I have become exceptionally good at metaphors. I think I was always pretty good at them, but recently I’ve become really really awesome at them. I see them everywhere I go, and they all speak to me and make me want to curl into a ball and allow the moans that have been building up in my throat for the past fourteen months to come out.

Here is one I came up with while driving to the restaurant where I am typing this:
For the past year it has been like driving with three fine tires, and one that has gone completely flat. There is a constant thumping as you move along, an uncomfortable jerking motion that reminds you that something somewhere isn’t the way you want it to be, but despite the parts that are obviously wrong, you’re still moving forward. The car will still go, and even though you know it’s bad for the car, you’re tempted to pretend not to notice. You don’t want to have to pay to fix it. You know you’ll have to wait, and you don’t want to wait for it to be fixed, you want to just keep going.

And then, since the phone call last Thursday, it has been like getting in your car only to discover that it has a big yellow boot on the far front wheel. The car works. Everything is functional, and you can move forward a few feet before the mechanism of this heavy steel thing forces you to stop. Even though you know this, you test it, keep constantly allowing yourself to be convinced that it may have magically disappeared even though of course you haven’t paid anyone, you haven’t waited for the truck to come, and you haven’t watched a man who seems incapable of doing so somehow repair everything and finally set you back in motion. You just sit behind the wheel willing the boot to unhappen, willing yourself past this mortifying, painful and expensive ordeal.

For a year I told everyone I wish I could just know once and for all how he felt, I wished he would just make it clear so that I wouldn’t have to live in ambivalence anymore. I could just know, and hurt, and then move on. It would be better to know and then be hurt and move on than to not know for a long time, and then be hurt and then move on. I want to say now that I was completely wrong. I was wrong in every way. This is not better. Not knowing was good. Not knowing was frightening, but in a way that had a promise. Maybe he did. Maybe he would. Maybe I would be lucky. Now I know, and I can say for sure that knowing sucks.

I went to England. I saw him. I slept in his apartment, on a mattress in the room with his computer. When I went to check my e-mail on his computer it offered me his ex-girlfriend’s e-mail address, and although I didn’t write it down, I now know how to contact her.

I don’t want to contact her so much as I want to drag her by her perfect long dark hair to the bottom of an ocean where I will watch sharks devour her body and crack her bones in half, which will make a very unpretty sound which will offend her sense of perfect pitch. The sharks will be French because Spanish people hate the French, right? The sharks won’t eat me because we’ll be friends because I relate to them now, always wanting to be moving forward, wanting to taste something that has been teasing them for so long, and feeling cold inside, totally cold inside.

So I don’t want to contact her, really, but I could if I wanted to. I could send her an e-mail and ask her how she got him to fall in love with her. Then, once she told me, I could drag her to the sharks.

Anyway, I slept on a mattress in the room with his computer. In the morning, when we got up, he sang to me. He sang me a song about trees bending to give me shade. You think I’m kidding but I’m being dead serious here. At night before we went to sleep he sang the song again, and then we both sang along to Stand Up by Lee Greenwood, and I made fun of him for loving patriotic American songs and not being an American. He said he could be an American. I said I couldn’t help him with that. He said, “Yes you could. You could marry me,” and I felt as if my heart was a hairdryer being dropped into a bath of his words. Together we were dangerous, deadly. I was going to fry from the inside out. He laughed and I felt dizzy.

He complimented my pajamas. He corrected my grammar and my spelling. He sent me text messages when he was ten feet away from me. He did not, at any point, love me.

On the plane on the way back to Chicago I cried all the way across the Atlantic. A stewardess and the woman in the row in front of me tried to comfort me and I tried to pull myself together but eventually we both gave up. I am still giving up. Every day I am waking up and giving up, having to surrender the hope that I watered for a year, having to pour lye on it, and stamp on it, light it on fire, sit on it, walk far away from it, pull it out from deep down. I am having little to no effect.

The Worst Parts

Every time I talk to people about this, I find myself saying, “The worst part about it is…” but I always correct myself because there’s too many candidates for that spot. They are all the worst parts about it. They are all awful. They are all so painful that they cause me to wander up and down the pharmacy aisles of the grocery store for 45 minutes without putting anything in my cart before I finally burst into tears in the produce section.

The worst part is that his name is everywhere. Loverboy is not what I would call a common name, and I never knew anyone with the name before, but suddenly everyone in the world is named Loverboy. There’s a Loverboy Diamonds chain, and they have radio commercials in which they repeat the name Loverboy about fifty times, causing me to almost crash my car into a whole series of mailboxes, sedans and pedestrians. I teach children named Loverboy at school, and my friends tell me about men named Loverboy they’ve started dating, or have crushes on or just broke up with. Loverboys are everywhere, and I am quietly losing my mind, my chest in so much pain that at night before I go to sleep I have begun icing it.

The worst part is that my friends are doing the appropriate thing, reminding me that he’s an idiot and that he’s been an asshole for a whole year and saying as many negative things as they possibly can, but I’m not mad at him. I’m not even remotely angry at him. When he called me and I finally said, “We can’t be friends right now. I’m in love with you and it’s too hard for me. It hurts too much.” He said, “I’m sorry,” and I laughed bitterly and said, “It’s not YOUR fault.” The worst part is that I meant that. I somehow don’t think it’s his fault.

The worst part is that there’s a corner I pass whenever I drive into the city, and there’s a bar on that corner, Egan’s Tavern, with a big sign out front that says, “Egan’s Tavern Open 7am” and whenever I pass it I think, “God, I really need a drink,” no matter what time of day it is.

The worst part is that my friends stopped being surprised when he was an asshole to me months ago, and so now they can’t understand why this hurts so much.

The worst part is that I spend all the time I’m driving or walking around my city thinking about all the ways I’ll introduce him to it when he comes to visit. I picture the things we’ll do together, and the places I’ll take him and the people we’ll eat with and the parks we’ll walk in.

The worst part is that everything else is still happening, the world is still going on and I don’t have the energy to care anymore. I can’t look for a job because I can’t care because all I can manage is to get up out of bed every morning and not cry. Locating income is far too much to ask at this point.

The worst part is helping my friend plan her wedding.

The worst part is my family acting like nothing has happened because I didn’t tell them because I know they’ll respond in a way that will hurt more.

The worst part is knowing that there are pictures of him waiting on a roll of film with 12 more pictures left on it in my camera.

The worst part is that I might be moving to Panama and before I told him I was in love with him I told him that I’m probably moving to Panama and he immediately said, “I’m definitely coming to visit you.”

The worst part is that he is all I’ve thought about for almost 14 months, and now I don’t know how to stop. I’ve pulled the keys out of the ignition but gravity is working its magic and I keep going down down down the hill.

Everything Falls Apart

Sorry for the bout of silence.

Here's a few notes on what's been going on:

There was a pirate themed graduation party in which all of the following occurred:
1. A personalized version of 'Yo Ho A Pirate's Life for Me' was written and sung for my benefit
2 An inappropriately older man composed and performed a song in which I was referred to as surly
3 Much whiskey was consumed
4 Much chocolate was consumed
5 My white girl dancing skills were mocked
6 I gave some words of Torah that didn't entirely make sense
7 Loverboy called to wish me an very unexpected mazel tov
8 I received some hilarious and unusable gifts
9 I received a Chevra CD
10 A 'Top Ten Reasons Tamar Graduated from Iowa A Semester Early" list was announced, and it was scarily accurate

Before the party there was an insane visit to Southern California and rural Washington, where I cavorted with cousins and became addicted to the best game ever. I also read quite a bit (check out the sidebar for my updated recommendations).

A day and a half after the party I left for Israel, where I've been bumming around, drinking coffee and eating pita and hummus and laughing entirely too loud. I've seen Loverboy and Mr. Best Sex I've Almost Had, and run into half of the Jews I've ever known. I've been to museums and wine bars and meals with hippies. I've met my long lost identical twin (she's British and thirteen years older than me and looks nothing like me, but we're basically the same person) and kissed an Israeli-Arab, and had an old friend invite me into his bed. I've been felt up by security guards, and I've been hugged by a soldier on the street and I've been getting up at seven every morning. I booked a ticket to go visit my friends and enemies in England, I've been consulted on a possible gynecological crisis (not my own, thankfully) and I had a dream about being pregnant. It has been a very full few weeks. In a day and a half I'll go back to the States for 35 hours of washing and repacking, and then Londontown, and a showdown with Loverboy, and then, inevitably, heartbreak.

If someone would have told me this was what life as a graduate is like, I would have packed more drugs.

Oh Yeah

I might be moving to Panama.

How To Explain

When I was 12 or so I became severely depressed. It was this real and strong thing, and almost ten years down the line I have no idea how I survived it. Every day just felt too heavy on top of me, like I was stuck under a piece of furniture, or inside a car trunk, and instead of struggling I just wanted to lie there and let the breath be pushed right out of me. The commercials now say depression hurts and they’re right, it throbs like a black eye that will not heal no matter how much you ice it.

I think the difference now is that most of me lives outside this car trunk. Most of my life is crazy and fun and interesting, but the only part of me I’ve ever cared about is in that trunk again, and I’m kicking, screaming, begging him to let me out and he won’t. He won’t unlock the trunk, and so I wake up, brush my teeth, pray every morning, go about everything as if I’m not covering my own body with bruises, thrashing around desperately in that dark, locked suffocating trunk.

Sometimes when I think about him I cry without noticing.

Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad

It’s been kind of a crappy week. Honestly, it’s been a pretty awful semester, but I’ve had fun regardless, and indeed, even though the past few days have been ass-bad, Mathnerd and I had a nice time today. First we were in shul together, trying to hold ourselves in line while listening to the world’s longest monologue about Kazakhstan. I really thought we were in trouble when he went on a plumbing tangent, but we kept everything in check. And then tonight we gave ‘What the Bleep Do We Know’ a fighting chance, but it sucked. A lot. So we switched to the 60s version of Lolita, which was a little terrifying (am I the only person who thinks that Sue Lyon looks a lot like that chick from The Bad Seed?) and very weird, but actually pretty funny.

Nightmare in Borough Park

I always have crazy dreams when I’m sick, and last night was especially insane. I dreamt that my family and I were crashing the wedding of this guy I knew when I was in Ireland. I recently found his engagement announcement on onlysimchas in real life, and apparently it disturbed me, because last night’s dream was one of the most subtly upsetting things I’ve ever experienced. You know how in dreams, something can happen and it’s normal but it just feels awful in the dream? This was just creepy. Hours after waking up I still feel vaguely unclean. I hardly knew this guy, and I can’t imagine any circumstances under which I would be invited to his wedding, but that’s ok, because frum weddings frighten me. Weddings frighten me, really. Good thing I look gross in white…

End of the Line

So, I have successfully completed my last week of undergraduate classes, and it was very anticlimactic. I’m sure all this will begin to feel real at some point, but I definitely haven’t reached that point yet. At all. I handed my thesis in last week, and got it back for revisions this week, and hope to hand it in for the next and final time on Monday, at which point I will be done Done DONE with both the thesis, and even better, with Evil Advisor. I hate this man so much, it’s kind of amusing. I think my favorite part of hating people is finding out that other people hate them, too. For instance, on Tuesday night I was at a party thrown by one of my favorite professors at the Mill. Here’s a nice little excerpt of our conversation:

Me: I think the thing that pissed me off the most was when it turned out that after being my advisor for six months he didn’t even know my name.
Prof: To be fair, I don’t think he knows his own name.

Yes!!! I love catty professors. Diplomatic people suck.

The whole thesis process has been such a nightmare. I’m so irritated that I even undertook it, because if I hadn’t I could have spent this semester taking a Shakespeare class and hanging out in the pottery studio, and even, once a week or so, sleeping. Instead, I wrote a thesis and got praise like, “The strongest aspect of Tamar’s thesis lies with her ability to single out an interesting and significant development in recent fiction, how the signifying practices of pop rock contribute to the hyperreality of contemporary culture and the proliferation of false constructions.”

Didja get that? Yeah. Thanks. And guess what Prof. Asshat’s criticisms were? “While the overall shape of the thesis is adequately handled, it’s clear that more could be done with the interpretation of Hornby’s story as a test-case pop rock novel. After all, the novel is fairly transparent.” This is especially hilarious because, as of last week. Prof. Asshate hadn’t read High Fidelity. This comment is also funny because the other thesis reader wrote, “First, there's little trace of the obsessive interest in the obscure that the thesis documents (the very choice of High Fidelity prompts me to echo Barry: ‘Couldn't you make it any more obvious than that?’), and the paper would benefit from extending its discussion of the 1990s rock novel as a genre.” Two professors are agreeing with each other, but one is saying, “You should have talked more about the novel because it’s so easy,” and the other is saying, “Why did you choose that novel? It’s so easy!”

Oh, academia, you crack me the fuck up.

Linkity Link

The past few weeks have been full of fascinating current events, and I’m sorry I haven’t been in any way diligent about handing out the rockin’ links I’ve found. Here are some of the best ones:

At UT San Antonio, you can trade in your Bible for a Penthouse, the true word of God.

Damian from OK Go has an editorial in the New York Times about filesharing.

I read a book about oral sex, and subsequently considered enrolling in the PhD program in sexology at Maimonides University, except it’s in Miami, which I’m not ok with.

I found a nice Iowa writing blog, and a blog that I love for many reasons, but primarily because it’s called Circle Jerk at the Square Dance. Earthgoat even has an awesome piece about how the US is like the world’s middle finger. Yeah.

Cool, yo.

Loverboy strikes again…

I won’t go into the gruesome details, but after telling me he was falling for someone with basically my same name, he made some flip comment about how the two of us might have a time together, “in a few years when we’ve both made aliyah…”

Yeah, did you hear that? That was an atom bomb being dropped on my heart. I can’t fucking love this man until I move to Israel??? Who made these rules?

Brief Notes

Know what I hate? When, while talking to someone I make some flip comment like, “I wanted to kill myself,” and the person says, ”Don’t. I’d miss you.”

I was being flip. I was telling a story, and you just ruined the rhythm, and anyway I obviously understand that it would be a poor choice to kill myself. It was an exaggeration, and if you can’t handle them as a grown person then you need to go back to kindergarten and steal yourself a sense of humor.

Goddamn.