Clone Yourself

It has been exactly one month since my last post.  I do apologize. I have been alive in the meantime (fear not, grand-parents!), but I've also been engaging in no small amount of intercontinental traipsing and academic noodling, with more to follow in coming weeks.

Oye. I never thought I'd get to the point where I was tired of jets...and I was right: I still love jets.  J'adore jets.  Sitting on jets for over 8 hours a pop, however, is getting mighty old.  I have deeper familiarity and longer-lasting relationships with various airlines and airports across this blessed wide world than with people in my current city of residence.  Which is telling, I think.  And more than a little tragic.  Weep for me.

But let's not talk about that.  Let's talk about my recent day trip to the lovely, exotic Tel Aviv.  I am becoming acquainted with various parts of that city only slowly, slowly ("leat, leat" -- a famous Hebrew phrase...for good reason.)  I spent a few hours in the downtown area one evening in the fall, to hear dual concert pianists play Mozart and the Israeli Philharmonic playing Beethoven's 7th Symphony (ah, that second movement!), but hadn't seen it in daylight.  I spent another few hours in Jaffa in the fall (again in the evening) to hear the very first Arabic-Israeli opera singer give a recital.  During intermission I went down to play on the beach in the darkness and it was fun.  But that was all.  

On Monday I made my first trip to Tel Aviv University.  A colleague from Spain was giving a lecture there in the evening, and I thought a change of scenery might be nice for the research mojo. Plus, Tel Aviv is always about 15 degrees warmer than Jerusalem, and I just can't tell a lie -- the 56 degree weather in Jerusalem this January has been getting me down.  It just isn't quite warm enough to go without a coat, you know?  (I can feel you shooting daggers at me through the computer.  This is truly the most utopian January I've ever experienced; I find I don't loathe the month as much as I used to.)   

Of course my little day-trip to Israel's other major city involved, as ever, more than one instance of Misadventures with Public Transport in a Foreign Country, coupled with my always-impeccable timing.  You see, I thought if I left my apartment around 11:30, I'd get to Jerusalem's central station by noon and be merrily on my way.

This was fine, except I'd forgotten one little detail: Arial Sharon's funeral cortege was passing through downtown Jerusalem at exactly noon on Monday, January 13.  Which meant that not 2 blocks away from the central station, our bus was stuck in the middle of the road in bumper-to-bumper traffic for over 40 minutes while the procession went on.  The worst part is that by law the driver couldn't let anyone off the bus, because he couldn't open the doors in the middle of the street.  So the bus -- hot, crowded, full of Israelis -- became a mini-milieu of shouting, yelling, frantic phone calls, joking, and more yelling, abusing the bus driver, pacing up and down the aisles, yelling, and banging on windows. Jerusalem has bad traffic anyway without funerals of important-persons-of-state in the thick of it.  It just isn't a city constructed for anything technologically beyond camels (by the way: Huge Letdown Regarding Life In Jerusalem: utter lack of camels. I wanted an abundance! An Abundance of Camels!). Thus, public transport here is often an adventure of the "leat, leat" kind.

After 50 minutes, the right lane inched ahead just enough that our bus driver could swerve to the curb and legally release us all into the sun and fresh air to walk the final yards to the station.  In all, it took just as much time to travel from my apartment in the German Colony to downtown Jerusalem as it did to go from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv!

And Tel Aviv was lovely.  Humid and green and upper-70s, with lots of people scurrying about in professional attire (Jerusalem has hardly any of that -- you mostly see religious attire, conservative black and white and more black) and lots of entertaining graffiti. I feel like it isn't so much to ask -- that graffiti be entertaining -- and yet it is such a rare thing, I find. Berlin does pretty well, as does Melbourne. Now joining this illustrious list are the artists of Tel Aviv, most deserving of applause. The main road our bus took into town had quite a few delightful examples, including "Clone Yourself".   Which is just great.  There it was, sprayed across the concrete median in English, amidst Hebrew slang and sketches of various people who looked like dinner rolls with feet.

I took my camera along, but it turns out I'm not so good at remembering to take pictures.  I failed to take a single one.  But don't fret! I've found some nice pictures from the interwebs, and here they are for your enjoyment (but only for private use...because I don't have the rights to them.  Let's Be Ethical, dear readers!):

So... perhaps my enthusiasm about TAU just boils down to hanging out near palm trees in January. Ooo, and also -- they have a little beer kiosk right there beside the main lawn, in the middle of campus, which is a truly enlightened entrepreneurial and educational policy.  Have a beer while you sit in the grass with your buddies on a sunny winter day and argue about pragmatist conceptions of stochastic processes! What could be better?  (Answer: a second kiosk immediately beyond the first selling soft pretzels with little cups of that terrible, delicious melty synthetic chemical-approximation of jalapeño cheese sauce. I love that crap.)

In all a very pleasant day in Tel Aviv, and I need to go back and spend the whole day at the beach. Won't have to wait long -- it will be beach-going weather in, oh, about 2 weeks or so. (Oh don't you just hate me, sitting there with your scarves and your mittens and your fleeces and your wool underwear.  But take solace in this: I, too, have paid my wintery debts. And also, I can't take hot showers in the morning ever -- because as much as I love living here, there are some important ways in which Israel continues to approximate a third-world country (this, and also public transport, count among them).

This weekend I have grand plans to finally explore the Temple Mount, so come back and visit the blog soon to hear about further adventures in Jesus land...