Monday, February 14, 2011

Patchwork


I walk every day through the narrow streets of South Tel Aviv. I listen to Dizzie Rascal, to The Clash, to Phil Ochs. My mind is in London, in New Jersey, in California as I step around the boxes being unloaded from lorries. Men step into my path, I step around them, continue on and out of the streets to my office on the sixteen the floor, Derekh Begin.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

The Dizengoff Blader

If you sit at an outdoor table at a café on Dizengoff Street on a Friday you will see a tall man glide by on roller-blades. He is young, (in his twenties), and wears a crisp black suite. He has a beard and a large black hat and listens to music through small ear-phones, tucked into his ears. Over his shoulder he holds a large yellow flag with a large black crown. Bellow the crown the there is Hebrew writing. The flag signifies the belief that the now deceased Lubaviche Rebbe was/is the Messiah. You can see his roller-blading follower on Friday afternoons on Dizengoff Street, gliding along or waiting at the lights.

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

A woman in an office

There is a woman, who is a phony. A phony in the sense Holden Caulfield used the word in The Catcher in the Rye. I just spoke to her. I had laughed at a football joke which appeared suddenly and out of context in a piece on history and politics. She asked me what was funny. I told her. But as I spoke she kept on moving around me, and as I added my final sentence, explaining the jest, she laughed. But she laughed before I had finished the sentence, before I had made the point.

She is a phony and a self-aggrandizer. She is particularly nice to people whom she thinks can help her. She makes out that she works hard, while doing little and spending much of her time hanging around, being one of the girls or one of the gang. She's smug; she's conceited; she's pretentious. She works for an organization where she can have influence and do good. She feigns interest in this. But her purpose is self aggrandizement. She wishes to look good herself, to proceed for her own good. Nothing else comes close in importance.

She resents the intern who's been sent to help her, cuts him out of meetings, gives him little to do and tells him as little as possible. She tries to keep him out of the way. Meanwhile she is continuously chummy with him, though she'll never invite him to eat with her and others in the office.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

A man who lives bellow me

There's a man who lives in the flat bellow mine. The story goes that he fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and came back with post-battle shock. I saw him now, standing guard in the small garden at the entrance to the building. He has a metal stick, a thick pipe which he holds in two hands like a rifle. He normally wears an old baseball cap or an Israeli farmer's hat pulled tight, almost over his eyes. He doesn't speak.

He lives with his mother. She wears long colourless baggy dresses which almost drag of the ground. She moves slowly. When we meet on the stairs she mumbles and attempts to smile. She always gives way.

With them lives a dog. The dog barks loudly and incessantly. It barks constantly, for hours, often at night. I doubt it's been out of that flat in years.

In the same flat there is a parrot. I chirps loudly, imitating the telephone an a human cough.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

A woman who in our building

There's a woman who lives in our building. Whenever I leave or enter the building she's there. She's constantly outdoors, often standing near an entrance at the rear of the building. Sometimes she looks at you, normally a blank look every now and then accompanied by a weak smile. She wears long faded t-shirts and old baggy jeans. Her hair is short and grey. Sometimes she walks a small brown dog.