So by the time that Craig and I got to the Wailing Wall today, I had to go to the bathroom. Welcome to multiple sclerosis. It's like I'm a pregnant woman. Anyway, when I get back, I look around for Craig. Lo and behold I spot him approaching the Wailing Wall in a yarmulke! See for yourself!
And Craig starts praying! Please bear in mind that my partner isn't Jewish!
When I asked him later, he said he wasnt praying. He was just "feeling." He had an intuitive instinct that he shouldn't pray, he should just be open to a feeling. Craig he felt love and warmth. It was overpowering.
Then the rabbi who had just fleeced him for 50 shekels came by to fleece him down for more...
Then the rabbi's buddy got into the scene...
By which time, Craig figured he'd had enough of the Wailing Wall!
And here are, of course, the obligatory pictures of the Dome of the Rock and the Holy Sepulchre
And last, but not least, here's one of a Palestinian guy selling pomegranates by the Jaffa Gate.
I have a blog entry for Simon that’s an installation of our ongoing argument about the Star Trek (the new movie) that was inspired while watching the sun rise above the Irish Sea from 30,000 feet. It’s good. But philosophy later. Let’s talk about the shit. Literally.
So we get to the apartment circa 3 am Tel Aviv time (that’s 5 pm PDT). Our landlady, Raya is off in Budapest settling her daughter in for a few years of academic study. We’re greeted by a lady named Ilam, her assistant. The apartment was very warm, so we cranked up the AC. It works, thanks be to God. It works really well, so well that I’m probably going to spend the next few weeks worrying about the electric bill. The apartment is actually bigger than Craig and I expected. All of that is the good news.
The bad news was that the toilet is clogged. We need to call her in the morning so she can make arrangements for the plumber. Apparently, Friday is a half-day off and Saturday is a full day off. I suspect that this may have something to do with the Sabbath beginning at sunset on Friday, but I am not certain. Well, the guy at the airport wanted to screw us on a deal for cellphones (praise God for Grace who provides us with the necessary tip-off), so until I figure out how to buy a local simcard from local telecom giant Cellcom, we have no phone. The apartment had no plunger. Through vague descriptions of what you do with the device, we discovered that a plunger is a called a plumba and purchased one for sixteen shekels. Our toilet has a very bizarrely shaped drain hole, which makes it difficult to get a proper seal using the plunger. Sadly, if fortunately, I have developed some expertise with a plunger and, by trial and sewage-soaked error, I managed to unplug it.
Craig has taken some lovely photos of our apartment. They follow.
I love the detail he got on the building number.
The problems below really aren't visible. The dirt doesn't show in the photos. That toilet looks innocuous. Trust me. It's not.
Of course, I spent some time this morning focusing on the smelly mold in the kitchen, depicted below.
We bought a mold stain remover with bleach as a component. It’s cleaned up well. Craig is still sleeping. When he wakes, I’ll see if I can get him to get on a chair and reach the very top zone. I hope he sleeps until morning, though. It makes all the sense in the world that he’d get over jet lag faster than me. He can sleep twelve hours at a drop anytime. He wakes frequently, but falls back asleep just as easily. I wish I slept like him.
We desperately need to buy some bleach come Sunday. There are several surfaces I’d like to scrub. Everything shuts down come Friday afternoon. Fortunately, our supermarket was open. So we did get enough food to survive until Sunday.
The Aesthetics of Tel Aviv
We explored some yesterday. Tel Aviv is the most unusual city. It’s ugly in person, yet strangely photogenic. I can’t explain it. This view from the beach at the Hilton looks hideous. It’s an ugly factory abutting on the beach. Yes, I composed it to use space as effectively as possible. I did add that much to the image. But it never dawned on me the photo would be attractive. But surprise, it’s not that bad.
It's obviously not alluring, but it was ugly in real life. I'm having trouble sorting it out. Part of it may be an issue of light. The sea, while pretty in real life, appears with deeper, more beautiful color in these photos, I didn't doing anything special to the color in the pictures.
I do notice that the automatic setting is leaving the rocks and surf overexposed in several of the other photos I've taken today. I'm going to have to experiment with manual control. I have a beautiful sketch (somewhere) of a Bedouin tent pitched on the beach of the Mediterranean. I remember how jarring it was, the first time I saw it. Obviously, I grew up post-'67. There were no Palestinians on the beach in my Jordanian imaginary. I can't venture to make any comments about the Israeli imaginary, other than to note that again, class organization trumping tribal organization seems to be the rule. The people here all have recreational hobbies like fishing and windsurfing, something I don't see a lot of in the Arab world.
But to return to the topic at hand, perhaps Tel Aviv light has a photogenic quality. Georgetown light did, but Georgetown looks beautiful to the naked eye, too. I can’t explain Tel Aviv. The stores look grimy, crowded and nasty. But look at these photos Craig took while shopping.
Yeah, Craig has an artist’s eye (I love my Big Bear), but it’s not all just his eye. He’s finding these results unpredictable, too.
Part of it is a problem of maintenance. Like the apartment, the city as a whole is exceptionally poorly maintained. You can see how Labor Zionism shaped the ethos of the city. The bourgeois compulsion toward creating a perfectly commodified cityscape simply has no expression here. Buildings are run down and filthy. There are our apartment windows, taken from the outside. This grime is standard, at least here on Arlozorov Street.
Indeed, Craig wonders if we have any right to complain of the apartment’s filth. For all we know, this may be par for the course. The neighborhood has its share of blown-out buildings.
And façades can be terrible. Who dreamed up this monstrosity?
But there are people who share Craig’s sensibility and try to create little nooks of cozy beauty.
And there was some aesthetic sensibility, for example in the creation of street signs. Here is one for Ben-Yehuda Street:
I find these trilingual signs quite charming. The street is named for the guy who revived Hebrew from the dead. Hebrew died circa 500 BC. That’s roughly contemporaneous with the founding of the Roman Republic to help you contextualize. This guy, through force of will, brought it back from the dead and now a few million people speak it as naturally as if it were, say… Arabic. Sorry. I couldn’t resist.
Michael Dewar, a new friend in Portland I made through my goddaughter Michelle, is an old Tel Aviv hand who has helped Craig and me with much practical advice. He reminded me of Theodor Herzl’s slogan from Altneuland—If you will it, it is no fairy tale! I think of that phrase a lot while I’m here. Michael sent me the German phrase translated into Arabic (إن أردتم فهذه ليست أسطورة) and I had to scramble to figure it out at first, as it didn’t seem to be an Arabic idiom he picked up while in the Peace Corps in Madaba. While the translation with literally accurate, if one were to translate its emotional impact on the Arabs rather than the literal words, it would have to read as a wry Though we do not will it, it is nonetheless no fairy tale. I mean, here I am.
Yes, sure enough, the fairy tale became real. But the word real has so many meanings. In the process of becoming real, it feels as if Tel Aviv has none of the positive qualities of a fairy tale. It's all too real and not in that Arab political sense, either. It’s just not at all enchanting. It’s not that it lacks charm, but it’s in little things like the street signs. Like an unexpected photo taken by your partner of you trying to figure out which carton of milk to buy.
NOTE TO NEIL: Yes, that is my old Packers cap. But I wore my new Yankees cap to the gym everyday last week, which won me a snarky comment from the gym owner and a few glances from other clients, including a guy in Red Sox cap. Rest assured, the Yankees cap will make it into the rotation regularly on this trip.
Craig and I had some romantic time yesterday. Afterward, he came back into the bedroom to find me laying with my hands clasped behind my head. Naturally, he giggled.
"What?" I asked. "What did I do now?"
"Nothing," he said, smiling.
""What? Out with it!" He came back to bed and we snuggled.
"You're in your macho mode."
"Is that a problem?" I ask. "What's so funny?"
"It's a part of you. But I know the real you. You're my Lally. You're the cutie snuggle bear who drops things in the kitchen and curses. They don't know the real you."
"You're the only one who does, Cozy."
Before, when we've talked, I've told him that while he doesn't hear my harder voices, they are a real part of what makes me the person that I am. For a time, those voices, which don't really live with me at home, but figure in my writing and in my work, could be disturbing to Craig. He is coming to understand that part of me a little more. What I haven't been able to articulate yet, but what I now realize, is one of the reasons I fell in love with Craig is because he's the only person on earth I can be the cutie snuggle bear with. For many years that tender and playful part of my personality was dormant and unused. Because of it, I was empty and achy inside. Craig's love gives that part of my soul life and brings me peace.
Back in August, I read a novel and it gave me, almost by accident, words that I’ve been searching for. The words were, “It was a condition he’d need to get used to, or to tolerate never getting used to—not exactly the same thing, more’s the pity.” Gregory Maguire wrote them about Liir, the son of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West and his loneliness, something I haven’t had to deal with in years. That freedom is a sublime joy that I’ve gotten very used to. The words apply to me when it comes to the brain damage and chronic fatigue that come along with MS.
The words express my problem. The reason why this is hard is that I keep expecting that I’m going to get used to it—that I’ll get over the loss. That’s the trick. You don’t get over it. That’s what makes it real loss. My difficulty in adapting has resulted from the fact that my goal for psychological healing has been too ambitious. This year of progress results from the fact I am learning to tolerate that I’ll never get over the loss.
Anthony Swofford said, “There is a wreck in your head, part of the aftermath, and you must dismantle the wreck, so you move it around and bury it. It took years for you to understand that the most complex and dangerous conflicts, the most harrowing operations, and the most deadly wars, occur in the head.” I didn’t understand it when I first read Jarhead, but I get it now.
This sense of loss will always be my companion. I will never be able to reflexively imagine myself as I am, to curb my ambition to my present capacity for achievement. I will always need to scale back and control as best I can for the disappointment entailed in always falling short of my ambition. I will do this for the remainder of my life. The pain and the shame are gone. But the sorrow will always linger. This is now my psychological baseline, my normal. Whatever else I will feel (and I will feel much, make no mistake, I am not giving up on life), this sorrow will underlie the texture of my emotional life. It is by no means all of me. But it will always be part of me. Though I did not choose it, it has become a fundamental part of my identity. So much for Schmitt’s assumption of existential identity—it turns out choice hasn’t much to do with it—at least not as much as we might like to think.
I now understand that those things that give meaning to our lives must perforce one day bring us to sorrow, for life is ultimately a matter of loss. Nonetheless, I am no longer depressed or dejected. To remain in such a state would be an immature response to life. Rather, I now understand that sorrow serves a purpose in the divine economy of our emotional lives. It brings awareness and vitality to our joy. I did not know to cherish the experience of power while I had it, while I could change the world around me and be productive, creative. I was too young to know loss yet. Yet the sorrow I feel for this loss, if I am committed to life, awakens me to my present joy. It reminds me to cherish what I have while I have it. It reminds me above all to cherish Craig while he is mine to love, before Death comes, for Death is coming.
When I was younger, this thought would have filled me with fear and desperation. It does no longer. For if I can fill my senses with love for him and truly cherish what God has given me in my partner, then, I know I will have sucked the very marrow out of life (even Henry David Thoreau has his uses, apparently). And my memory of him will be as full as possible and it will lend me comfort in my waning years. For if I am Christian yet, I know that love never dies. And if I have fallen from grace, the fullness of this memory of life lived in love remains the greatest thing I can achieve. My sorrow awakens me to what is most glorious in life. And whether my soul is immortal or not, it will have been beautiful. And mortal that I am, I cannot ask for more and so am content.
Because of the brain damage, my life is always accompanied by alarms set on the stove or my cell phone to remind my poor wandering mind to do things like take the laundry out of the washer and place it into the dryer, to take my medicines, turn on the broccoli streamer just before dinner. The alarm bells drive poor Craig crazy. It makes good thematic sense that God would give me another alarm bell. This sorrow, when it swells in my soul, is one more reminder to cherish Craig while he is mine to love. I who was once so distracted by the future needed this reminder to cherish my present and my partner. I have lost my formidable sense of focus so that I would focus on what was truly important before it is too late.
And so I am grateful. I hope I can carry this feeling with me as well. This must be my discipline.
Sorry to be such a lousy blogger. My focus has been really shitty. I’ve been handling a lot of bureaucratic shit and that puts me in a bad frame of mind for writing. Plus, I’ve got some other stuff banging around up in my head. Just garbage. Here’s all the latest
I got an application off
I am now an applicant for the United States Institute for Peace Dissertation grant. Who knows if I get it, but the important thing is that I’ve now sent out one application. The next, if the GraduateSchool offers has another “Dissertation Fellowship Competition in the Humanities, Social Sciences & Social Professions” as it did last year requires a four-page proposal! If they’re announcing one this year, the deadline is likely to be in February. Following that, the SSRC’s Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship is due on March 1 and the Palestinian American Research Center Fellowship is due on March 15. I need to get cracking.
The Packers are in the NFC Championship Game
—and against the Giants, no less, who wiped the Cowboys off the map last week. Apparently Tony Romo spent the whole week before drinking margaritas and banging Jessica Simpson and has taken, in my brother Rashid’s view, a disproportionate share of the blame for the loss. While Rashid’s response was, well, more controlled, his opinion is clearly shared by Terrell Owens:
Indeed, the Cowboys are apparently the most sensitive in the NFL, if we are to believe Tony Romo’s own heartfelt response to TO’s comments:
I need to e-mail my buddy Brian McGrath, the Giants fan, to let him know that his team is going down this Sunday. Kirk, however, has sent me this reminder:
I am excited about the possibility of a Pack-Pats Super Bowl, but I've been excited about that since Thanksgiving. I was hoping even more for a Cowboys-Pats Super Bowl but obviously that won't happen now. Don't get too cocky about the Giants though, because they have been playing better than just about anybody in December and January. They opened my eyes with how they almost beat the Patriots in week 17 and come to find out they were really, really good at the end of the season. It's not surprising they took out the Cowboys, who played like they had their thumb up their ass at the end of the year and kind of stumbled into the playoffs. Sure, the Cowboys were 13-3 but they sure seemed pretty bad in December, a time when you normally want to start peaking. The Giants are definitely peaking while the Cowboys seemed to fall asleep and deservedly lost yesterday. I definitely think the Packers will beat the Giants but it won't be easy. I also think the Pats will beat San Diego but I also think that one won't be easy either.
But I’m going to razz Brian, anyway. He’s in Yemen and could probably give a shit anyway. He can take it.
Craig and I have been working out
Craig and I have joined Bally’s gym, some fifteen minutes walk from our house. Craig let me have all the trainer sessions. Kevin, my trainer, has a really great gay vibe. He smiles a lot, starts out with very basic exercises and quickly becomes a sadist. He especially loves making you lift light weights and do push-ups on pillates balls that throw you off balance and engage more muscles as a result. I’m sore all over, but have been to the gym four times this week. You can’t beat the convenience, but there aren’t nearly as many cute, muscled guys hanging out here as at school and, of course, no gang showers. I love gang showers. If I ever get to build my own house, I’ll have one. I’ll also have urinals in the bathroom and a toilet with enough pressure to flush properly.
We got Craig an mp3 player. It took me a lot of work to find out how to buy tracks without getting some stupid monthly subscription, but I did it. Craig is excited about his new workout collection.
Craig and I got Direct TV
Craig surfs continuously and, after nearly a week has said, “You’re right. It really is two-hundred channels of shit instead of five. There’s nothing to watch.” I laughed and laughed. But we can at least watch the same twenty re-runs of Sex and the City with clear reception and will actually be able to watch Desperate Housewives again.
I actually like the NFL channel, as they show all of last week’s games over and over again. It’s soothing. Plus, it’s a great way to catch up on what you inevitably missed. Plus, I’m trying to watch the news again. I was thinking about ordering the NFL Sunday ticket, but our friend Bill, the manager down at Billy McHale’s, suggested that it might be cheaper to order just the Packers games every week in the weeks they aren’t broadcast locally. I’ll have to look into it.
I’ve been Teaching Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict
We’re just finishing up the Robbers Cave Experiment and will be getting into the dawn of nationalism. I’m having all sorts of fun reading about French absolutism and the court culture of Versailles, under which the nobility of France became a sort of exotic pet. In their powerless indolence, they apparently had nothing to do but fuck themselves silly, a la Les Liaisons Dangerouses. I don’t know why it fascinates me. I even have friends with differing views on the subject. Sean, who is a member of the House of Savoy, might look at this alternately as golden age, where rich young nobles did nothing but kiss the king’s ass and fuck around in vengeance for being forced to marry the king’s bastard children. He might alternately resent the powerlessness and pointlessness of their lives. Who knows? Simon, in distinction, had no ambiguity whatsoever in his appraisal of the subject. He pissed on one of the many exterior walls of the famous châteaux to express his contempt.
What drives my interest? It may well be the cake. I adore cake.
I need to start writing again
So what else is new?
I’m still trying to sort out Civ 4
I have won three times at the warlord level and these are purely high score wins. To get a feel for the game, I’m having all the civs (including my own) and terrains assigned randomly. At this point, I’m pretty sure that there is no dominant strategy, in the sense that there is one strategy that can generate a win in most situations. I had a dominant strategy for Civ 3 that worked in most (but admittedly not all) situations. I don’t think that’s possible in Civ 4. Civ 4 is ultimately terrain driven and different terrains require very different strategies. Moreover, as far as I can see, the different gamer geeks who write on the subject are right. You need to commit to a clear strategy that delivers you to a victory type that is selected in the opening game. Everything, therefore, seems to hinge on figuring out the type of planet on which you’re living at the earliest possible juncture. In Civ 3, I never really gave a shit so long as I started on a continent and not an island. Figuring out the planet type so you can commit to an early strategy is essential.
Why is world size so pivotal in Civ 4, you ask? It’s tied to the way the AI makes war decisions. My theory is that in Civ 4, AI war decisions are driven by terrain pressures. The various AIs do not seem interested in vast empires and, instead, tend to want to become nation states of somewhere between six to nine cities. As a result, they tend to become more bellicose when they can’t expand to their ideal or when they are losing territory to foreign cultural expansion. In the absence of those pressures, only the AIs with very warlike personalities (e.g. Shaka, Montezuma) seem bellicose.
Small planets, particularly small pangaeas, are very warlike, because the AI has trouble getting to its six to nine city ideal. In contrast, large planets are very peaceful. I find that, on a large planet I can, by and large, avoid war until the 20th century at warlord level. In contrast, in my small Pangaea game a few iterations ago, I fought at least ten consecutive wars with less than five or six turns of peace between them. I’ve kept from losing much territory, but the wars have all been largely defensive and they showed no sign of stopping. I never actually declared a war in that game, but I bet I’ve fought more wars than any of the other civs have, this iteration. I punted it in frustration and started a new iteration.
I’m frustrated in my inability to find a satisfying game pattern. I know I need a better understanding of the AI worldview. The AI is difficult to buy off. The diplomatic model requires more work on my part. I don’t know how to manipulate the AI well enough to be safe from it.
Lebanon still hasn’t elected a president
So what else is new?
Nelly and Simon are getting married!
By far the best news I’ve had in a very long time—Nelly and Simon are getting married in May in Las Vegas. It looks like I will make my second trip to Vegas in as many years to dance at their wedding!
Craig sent this to me on Friday. I'm the luckiest guy in the whole world!
Small Things With Great Love
Life on a daily basis, day in and day out, may seem trivial and unimportant. However, when I consider that I live each day with a great and profound love, then I'm reassured. Even the smallest portions of my existence are meaningful when founded in a great love.
It was the strangest St. Patrick’s Day ever. I spent it with Craig in a hospital in Boise, Idaho, visiting his maternal aunt, Marlene. The poor woman was in a car wreck. She has a fractured neck and is on life support. Lots of images are rushing through my mind.
Being in Love
I watched Craig comfort his aunt and I remembered (as if I ever forgot) why I fell in love with him. His is a gentle and kind soul. I never know what to say in these situations, but he always does. He said sweet simple things, hummed hymns for her and reminded her of beautiful days they had together. She can’t speak. But he knew just what to say. He was an angel. I married an angel. The truth is, I never had a chance—I was in love with by our second phone call, before we’d even physically met. Craig’s soul is beautiful. I will always love him and be in love with him.
My Last St. Patrick’s Day Party
That was St. Patrick’s Day 2001. I had a pub band called We Oughta Been Irish (cause none of us were). The joke ran something like, “So an Arab, a German, a Norwegian and two Jews walk into a bar and order a beer. They asked, ‘Can you play?’ so here we are…” We were the original pub band of perpetual revolution. We never got the t-shirts made, but we had a logo, courtesy of Chris Davis.
Our keyboard man and drummer, Aaron Sarnat, has a dad who’s a doctor and a mom who’s a real-estate tycoon. They have this really awesome mansion in Tacoma that they rent out for affairs as a business. Well, they let us use it for free. Three of my best and closest friends, Kirk Anthony, Briggs Moon and Brian McGrath flew in from Boston, Dallas and Washington, respectively to be at this party. My goddaughter Michelle drove up from Portland. Naturally, Peter Hovde was there (he was the Norwegian in the band) as was Carrie Doan. Katharina Roeckpe, our German fiddler was there, too. Judy, our mandolin player had not yet joined the band. But between all the members of the band and their friends, this was one huge party. The energy was wild, the liquor was copious. There was some weed in there, too, and Aaron got laid that night. Drummers always get laid, right?
I was triumphant that night. I tended a full bar (cream drinks, martinis, margaritas, you name it, I mixed it and served it up with the correct garnish), made fish and chips and sang to bring the house down. I don’t think I realized it, but that was the last time the old Talal was really and truly alive. By September he’d be a queer multiple sclerotic. Yeah, that poor SOB never got laid, but he could drink all you sorry sons of bitches under the table, and that after having mixed everybody drinks and made and fed you the best fish ‘n chips you ever ate (Dave Huntoon had to grudgingly admit that I kicked Ivar’s ass when it comes to making fish ‘n chips). If only the old Talal had been smart enough to figure out he was queer, he’d probably been laid that night too. Sex or none, though, it was one of the best nights of my life.
And the next day, after everyone else left, Brian McGrath and I walked to O’Shea’s after doing shots of 151 at my shithole apartment and got totally smashed again. It was Tuesday night—Irish Heritage night—and who could say no to $2.50 shots of Irish whiskey and $2.50 pints of Irish beer? That was the day I took the best picture of Brain McGrath ever. This is the guy they let into the State Department, the suckers! Marxist radical alcoholic hockey fan. He's now a master of dry understatement, believe it or not.
You know what? I don’t care what anyone says about how obnoxious the old Talal was. He was a good guy. He had three friends who flew in from the ends of the continent to drink with him on St. Patrick’s Day and, good Arab that he was, threw the mother of all parties to celebrate. My people may lose every war (God help us), but goddamnit it, no one throws a better party. The boy knew how to live (poor virgin that he was). Would you believe that we even sang “American Pie” that night, too, after my famous rendition of “Seven Drunken Nights?” It couldn’t have been more perfect.
That, brothers and sisters, was that day that I died.
Dave Huntoon got married
This isn’t a memory—it’s announcement. I just got the e-mail today! May Dave and Heather be as happy as Craig and me. It’s the best I could wish anyone. And don’t you dare die in this war, hear me, Dave? Live for many years and be ludicrously happy. Speaking of great karma—
Dinur and Mai-Anh both got into grad school
While they haven’t heard from all their choices, both Dinur and Mai-Anh will be in graduate school next year. I couldn’t be more proud.
I got a letter from Mark, my college roomie
Mark’s now a priest. We’re getting to know each other again, after his great transformation and mine. It’s a little awkward, but it’s good to hear from him again.
Would you believe that I still have grading to do? Back to the grind... But I hope you had a blessed (and suitibly wet) St. Paddy's Day, wherever you may be!
