Hi Mom!

Look what's happening in Jerusalem! Are you gonna bring me back home?

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3386430/Holy-smoke-UFO-in-Jerusalem.html

What's also happening in Jerusalem:

Yesterday I had pottery class. I was surprised I remembered how to throw a pot. My new teacher is fierce. She is first cousins with Joe Seigel. "He was so famous. He also lived in Coh-nik-tee-coht. (awkward pause) He died."

I then had screen printing, which would have been informative if I had understood a word of it. I amused myself by flicking the screens which were stretched tight enough to sound like drums.

That night we had a potluck. I made some tofu lettuce wraps a la P.F. Chang's. I learned how to make sushi like an asian from the Asian on the program (If you're making hand rolls, the key is to put a little pat of rice on the end of the nori to seal it.)

Today I had typography which was also intimidatingly in Hebrew and with second-year students, but the teacher was sympathetic and the students were soooooo nice to me. I think i'm gonna have to learn how to use photoshop.

Brain K'fart

Back in the swing of thangs.

I'm extremely tired and stressed for no reason. Is it jet-lag? Is it residual laziness from vacation? Is it laziness as an inherent characteristic? Too many Lemon Zest Luna Bars?

But his Roasted Brown Rice Green Tea from the Fish Market in New Haven is bumping my day from Good to GOD.

Upon entering the Kfar for the first time in a month, I was in some little La La land...it was as if the past three weeks I spent at home was a fleeting daydream (were a fleeting daydream? three weeks is plural...so it would be were. but i'm referring to them as a singular subject...so, WAS? damn. this lack of formal education is corroding my brain)

Anyways.

I came home to the warm faces of my old and new roomies. They looked the same, except for the new ones i had never seen before.

Thats a crazy thought. If I dyed my hair salmon and hole-punched my eyelids and put pennies through them, then the new people would just always know me as Aliza-The-Girl-With-Penny-Eyes (sounds like a Beatles song). They'd have no other point of reference. I'll chew on that for a while.

My room was just like I had left it. Which is a good and bad thing. GOOD because I left the door unlocked since Shosho told me that a girl from Rimon was going to stay there for the break. Nothing was stolen (not even my assorted sugar-free gum collection). BAD because the half-drunken mug of tea I had abandoned had accumulated a 2.5-inch coating of mold.

Shabbat was really nice. All the stranded and downtrodden came and had a potluck with us, except I made wontons filled with meat, so a pot-unluck (HA!) for the vegetarians. I forgot how much I missed the shuk on machane yehudah. Really groovin on the new Asian mart right on Agripass St.

My spine cries for my memory foam mattress at home, and I miss the family a lot. But I have new imported pillowcases and blankets from that smell like Downy, and those great fluffy towels from Grandma's linen closet. And Sparky has deposited his DNA all over my black clothing (I mean his fur, not his sperm, you sicko).

I got my report card today and put the final touches on my schedule for 2nd semester. So far it looks like this:

Sunday: The History of Spiritual Consciousness with Reb Kegger (Rabbi Kagan)

Monday AM: Pottery with Jaqi

Monday PM: Screen printing

Tuesday AM: Typography (I'm excited about this one)

Wednesday AM: Painting with Talia

Thursday AM: Intro to Sculpture

Thursday PM: Drawing with Mr. One-Arm

Friday-Sat: Aliza G-s rested, and saw that it was goooooood.

I only got grades for 3 classes. 90s in Painting and Drawing and a 95 in One-Arm's class (I gotta stop calling him that. Ahemmm...Pesach's class.)

Overall, I'm very happy considering I've never been to a formal art class before and this is the best in the country! Although in Photography class where we had to grade ourselves, I gave myself a 67.9001359. Thats a whole other story.

Flying Back El-Al

2/17/11

I woke to ghosts:

men draped in white, swaying

in the aisle, thumbing through prayers.

I am returning (leaving?)

Last month my parents rushed to fill

a nest that was rapidly unweaving.

When I arrived, we desperately clung

to the frame.

Home became a verb

whose infinitive I almost

forgot the meaning of.

I burnt the bottom of an uncooked challah,

misplaced new dishes in old cupboards.

Tried to reclaim

what had grown without me.

I embraced Woodbridge winter:

driving past cemeteries

with tombstones peeking through

snow like a teething earth.

Frigid air perfumed with burning wood.

Now, sitting on a wing

gliding at 35000 feet,

I am ready to re-own a place:

The dumpster cat

with eyes as black as Turkish coffee mud,

slices of kugel served at klezmer,

the Slow Saturdays.

The ghosts have removed

their sheets and now fold

them to fit into velvet bags.

We sip water

pre-packaged like applesauce--

a reminder of how this far up

we are self-sustained.