Today, i should be an ocean away, standing beside my sister and our family not of blood.  I should be laying flowers on Anika's coffin and dirt in her grave.  I should let salty tears flow for each year i loved her (15) and a few for the eternity left to come.  I should be there to whisper the prayers, hear the words, and make unspoken peace.  I should have been there to hug my uncle--although there will be enough hugs today. 

 

There are never the right words for a loss, ones to make the ocean's waves wash away the pain and grief.  The songs of birds and angels alike cannot quiet the din inside one's heart, nor still the yearning to awake from the dream.  She was too young, too accomplished and too loving for it to be over so quickly and i don't know if i can come to terms with that.

 

Today my younger sister stands where i wish i could be.  And i can't help but to imagine if it was me, instead of Shawheen, in the front row in black.  We each go home in accordance with God's will--but i pray my time with Anna will not come to a close so soon.  yet, today of all days, it is a selfish thought...and Today i should chant the melodies, let the tears flow, and remember the beauty of Anika's life.

Pharcyde is playing on my iTunes.  The jackals have been keeping me up at night with their incessant singing.  I have been having dreams of babies--no not mine--no need to get excited, just ones i am responsible for.  Don't panic, nothing's changed i still don't want any in the near future...having friends morphed over nine months into temporary mobile homes is like the best birth control ever.  Don't get me wrong, my friends' kids are great. i love friends' kids..you give them back if they are hungry or smell...and the love you, because you are the auntie who brings the cool presents.

 

Jokes aside, I've been mulling for days over what exactly i should write about--pondering the very corners of my 5 square mile life looking for something entertaining to tell everyone.  Somehow, random office practical jokes; sweltering at a dance party that had all its windows on one side blown out by rocket shrapnel; watching some random guy completely miss his left turn, try to cut across a pedestrian walk way and run into a lamp post--completely taking out the front end of his Pinto, the lamp post, and some of the very little grass in this country; working on a short film script; obtaining season one of Angel (yes, i do realize that's pathetic); making worlds most kick ass white chocolate-coffee mousse; and house-sitting (aka hunting for my mama's gecko) while my folks galavant around Slovenia and Vienna just doesn't seem to warrant a post. 

 

The guy that leapt out of his car the other day, stalked to the one behind him, pulled open the driver's side door and started punching the second driver while screaming in Hebrew and causing a complete traffic jam under the bridge outside my office is closer--but doesn't quite get there either.

 

So truth be told, i don't have anything to write about really.  I just got sick of that sappy post being the last one up...and there it is, from the center of the 5 mile square box--with less than 90 days to go.

 

For the last week, i have these random flashes--images of moments, some long gone and others only partly so. i remember being on the bus in ninth grade and your face being contorted with anger and frusteration, teenage rage boiling just below the surface, remember being scared...i hear your voice in my present--smiling and laughing and it doesn't feel so long ago.  i have vague recollections of the train stopping at random stations, nothing more than a platform and dim sodium vapor lights in the emptiness of middle Chile, bodies vanishing out into the 4 am darkness...i counted the moments till the sun rose over ancient volcanoes.  i hear your laugh sometimes on the wind--though it has been too long since i heard it and longer since that i caused it, and it makes me a little sad.  memories like snapshots of whistler and blackcomb, lost bets and codiene induced dreams after hard falls make me smile for no reason--the deck has been put away for too long.  smells of india, thailand, the philippines, fiji and new zealand are stirred up from old boxes of trinkets--conjured no doubt by my imagination...souvenirs are what's left now it seems.

 

soon, this too will pass on, to live in the land of memory, to haunt my poetry and lurk in my drawings and tea leaves...

 

 

 

All good things must come to an end--and i think today marks the beginning of the end for this two and a half year chapter.

Tonight, is my departure talk.  The talk they give to people leaving--the one that is supposed to help prepare you to adjust back into the real world.  I suppose i am at an advantage--i've done this once before...and this time around i have been easing myself out, moved some of my stuff and whatnot.  So, part of me is already home in, wait where was that, oh yeah, home is seattle--i mean kirkland, at least legally.  I intend to draw during the talk, maybe work on trevor's tat design...that and stare at all the other people, the ones who aren't quite yet up to speed on what its like to return to a life that's continued on its way while you took a detour. Come to think about it, i think i am only really going b/c i hear there is good food .

 

Jokes aside.  What used to be ethereal is becoming tangible.  I am into the three month countdown now.  i've started looking through my closet and papers to decide what goes to live with the cats in the big green dumpter outside.  End of this month, law school apps.  End of next month, job applications.  End of the month after, housing.  I start training my replacement on Monday, although she's incredible and i am sure doesn't really need much help from me. i have a departure date--its three months from today. Its like the 7th inning stretch--almost there yet so far away...my mind is already gone and i am just trying to convince my heart its time to go.

It must have been the end of the world....i can't figure out any other reason for it.

A couple of days ago at about 430ish this LOUD music started outside my window.  At first, i was convinced i was haullcinating...as there can be no other possible explanation for hebrew music louder than air raid sirens (as i can sleep through those) coming from directly outside one's window unless it is an act of God designed to teach me not to get more than 3 hours of sleep.  After what felt like 20 minutes, but was probably 2, i realized there was screaming and screeching audible at a pitch just below the utz-utz-utz of the bad baaaad music.  There was no hope of drowning all this out--it sounded like a PA outside my bedroom window.

 

Finally the noise of a car door shutting and the music moves down to the level my parents used to complain about when the neighborhood teenagers would drive down the street with the bass thumpin.  I can sleep through this, i convince myself as i roll over and bury my head under the pillow.  Alas, i pondered sleep too soon!!  The deafening banshee-like screaming of some woman who had obviously had too much to drink and MUST have come home to find her husband either in bed with someone or something else begins.  She's screaming bloody murder, must be calling for the deaths of thousands of innocent people and all the cats in Haifa---you can picture it right, i am spinning scenarios in my now wide-awake brain of what could cause a crazy woman to start a tirade outside my building at 443.  I groan, its only been 13 minutes of this..what next!  Oh, i'll tell you what came next--the car door reopens [i learn later from my flatmates who had gone to their windows to spy that her friends are taking turns losing their hearing in the car and listening to her yell outside the car]- and with the reopening of the car door comes really really bad Russian techno.

 

Inhale exhale--do i know enough in hebrew to yell at her to shut up or do i just let it go and start praying that it stops--oh wait, i have been praying already--the half asleep--Oh God, if you make her stop i promise i will do the dishes more often and not call my sister any more mean names.  No, the bargaining prayers don't work.  Finally, i do hear someone yell [come to find out later it was my flatmate, who finally lost it, went outside and yelled at them that some people do try to sleep and could they move on].  The car drives off and for a few moments it was quiet.  i didnt' know at the time, as all they sounded like to me was more muffled, but they moved two buildings down to commence yelling again outside a friend's apartment....where at least as far as i was concerned muffled banshee screeches means back to sleep.  Ah the joys of weeknight hatzionut rukus....