Reconstituted

Friends, I have been in the all-countries blender; I have been reduced to my pulpy essence, and now mixed back with water to make myself again. I'm not sure how else to describe what happens to me when I cross from country to country and have to reinvent myself with a new-old phone, new old-friends, new-old family. New-old burning concerns. My name sounds different here, a little more graceless on the lips, a little more comic. When I go to look for an apartment I am suddenly desirable to landlords who confide that everyone in the building "good Israeli people," that I should get my wedding dress ready, that this building brings sons. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem the residents of Sheik Jarrach neighborhood are being thrown out of their own homes, and living in tents in the yard, while messianic ultra-orthodox settlers have seized their houses. In this twilight zone of transition between countries, everything is frought with symbolic exchanges.