First Thoughts

I used to think poets shouldn't blog, they should stay in their garret and preform their suffered acts of inspiration in silence -- perhaps on occasion letting out a sigh, groan or even barbaric yawp. I'm writing now because my mind is filled with parts of conversations I'm having with so many of you, my friends in Berkeley, about what it's like to come back to Israel after years of being gone, the mix of familiarity and strangeness. I'm hoping that all these snippets of conversations can also be woven into the bigger Conversation we are having with each other about places and homes, belonging and not belonging. I'm also writing to gnaw at this question that I bring to this particular visit -- the question of the past war, and how it is that these nice people who give me kube soup, and call me motek, who match-make me and send me to their favorite yoga teacher, who remember me from middle school, *my people*, supported this war. Or, in other words, how to put together the acts of brutality done by the state of Israel in my name (all Israelis? all Jews?) with the way you pay for a shared taxi cab in Tel Aviv: you tap on the shoulder of the person sitting in front of you, and give them your fifty shekel note, and then they pass the money back and forth to the driver, your change always coming back through the passengers perfectly accurate, coins poured from palm to palm, Israeli to Palestinian to foreign worker and back. I can't put it together.