i just had a poppyseed lassi right after 30 min of cardio

it was sooooooo good

march madness

I haven't updated this in a looong while

and for no good reason.

i just didn't feel like it.

a ton has happened since Joe Seigel: a retreat in an eco-dance-village, failed and accomplished class assignments, stuffy nostrils, new friends, extravagant purim costume ideas, a lot of potlucks...it goes on.

I will give you deets about the Vertigo Dance Workshop in Beit Shemesh just because I already had to bullshit a summary for Shoshana and the Dance Company's website. I'm warning you...it's as cheesy as the gay, PeeWee Herman, minstrel rabbi on "Miracle Days" (remember that, Sahg?! Is it still in the attic?) http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/1276646/jewish/Miracle-Days-Purim.htm

Dear Shosho,

Attached is that summary you requested. When do I get my commission?

xo,

Aliza

Early Thursday night, the artists and musicians of the MASA Bezalel-Rimon group greatly anticipated a two-day retreat at the Vertigo Dance Eco-Village in Beit Shemesh. Though our group had very few expectations, we were ready for an eye-opening, creative experience.The smell of a wood-burning stove and cauliflower curry warmed our senses as we prepared for an introductory session of “contact” dance. Our instructors, four expressive, bright-eyed sisters, gave us a foundation in “contact” so we were able to branch off into our own forms of self-expression. The evening soon evolved into a synergy of art, music, and dance that continued long into the night.

After a soothing Tai-Chi class and a delicious breakfast the following morning, we headed outside to mix the right amounts of sand, clay, water, and straw for mud bricks. We artists enjoyed “getting messy” and learning about sustainable living in an eco-conscious setting. With our mud bricks baking in the mid-day sun, the musicians and artists split into separate rooms for our respective workshops. The artists participated in a project involving semaphore flags to spell out a single word that represented each individual. The musicians partook in an improvisation workshop. When the artists and musicians converged in the main studio, we exercised all we had learned over the past two days in a collaborative dialogue of dance, music, and art.

The workshop helped us articulate our own artistic statements within a broader community of artists. We exercised what comes natural to us in a non-conventional way. We were thrust out of our comfort zones, though the discomfort didn’t hinder our creativity; it exposed our humility. From this raw, vulnerable state we grew together. Witnessing this change in ourselves and in each other, we became closer and unafraid.

We became closer and unafraid?! More like we wallowed in each other's BO, and shit in a hole in the ground covered in sawdust.

It was actually nice. Except for the Tai Chi class where I was paired up with a realllllly smelly, old, Israeli geyser.

Other stuff that happened:

The past couple shabboses, I've been baking fantastic challah. I learned how to braid with four, five, and six strands. I went to the schul nearby the Kfar and met Esther, the jewish finalist in America's Next Top Model. She looked...okay. Her lips were a bit too pouty for me.

challot

Shabbos table

Saturday night Klezmer in a basement in Mea Shearim

I had the BEST BREAKFAST (brunch?) at Kadosh, the BEST BREAKFAST (brunch?) place in Jerusalem. We got a basket-ful of rolls and brioches, an omelette with cheesy scalloped potatoes and labane, sunnyside-up eggs on a fried brioche with wilted greens, israeli salad, an assortment of spreads, two hot drinks apiece, and they come with little butter cookies to dip in your coffee. I didn't even feel like stealing sugar packets, I was so satisfied and felt i had gotten my money's worth.

I visited my drawing teacher's studio yesterday. He invited me because he was inviting another girl to come and see a sculpture of his, and he didn't want her to feel as if it was an invitation for rape. It still felt like an invitation for rape, but I was comforted that I had one on him...having two arms to defend myself and all. His studio is awesome. Located right behind the shuk, incredibly messy, and with an extensive music collection. The 8-foot epoxy'ed sculpture of a naked man took up half the space. He's a really coool dood.

Pesach's Studio

"A Still Life with Cellphone"

Pesach showing us the liquor bottle he intends to melt for a glass sculpture

Pesach just cheesin'
The epoxy golem

I got a pretty mucus-y cold this week. I've been stuffed and coughing like a smoker. But i'm over it thanks to Ricola Cranberry Cough Drops.

Purim's coming up, and I just bought tickets for Bezalel's Purim party. It's held at school and I feel a lot of pressure to come up with an outrageous costume. I had originally intended to make a snake headdress for a medusa costume (the purim theme is Monster) but I couldn't find plastic snakes in Jerusalem. I will probably just dress up as Vishnu again just because I'm making henna paste now and I have those crazy paisley Aladdin pants. (I'm REALLY SAD IM MISSING THE PHAGWA PARADE IN QUEENS, BY THE WAY!) If I'm really pressed for time I'm gonna just put purim on my nipples (pur means dice in persian), and a hamentaschen on my pubic area. Or get a false beard and dress as a rapist. Or my drawing teacher!

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.

Orthodox Jews are Hipsters

Today our ceramics class presented final projects. I was a little concerned because half of my "Family of Cylinders" was still baking away in the kiln, and the remainder of my stuff was unglazed...some of it not even fired for the first time. The reason for this is that a) I'm American, so I don't understand when the israeli potters blab about "bisque" and "angobi" and "chomer" and all that hebrew clay jargon. b) I am not in the ceramics department. I am in fine arts, so i don't spend every breathing minute in the pottery studio. c) glaze is expensive and I don't want to buy dozens of colors by myself. and d) I like throwing pots on the wheel a lot more than spending hours meticulously painting designs on a piece of clay.

So this morning, despite the fact that the world was working against me, I was confident. This class is a learning experience. I don't need pots and mugs to take away, I now have a skill. My other classmates, on the other hand, were freaking out. I think 4 girls were on the verge of tears. One girl was so finicky with her fishing line, trying to create the illusion that her pots were suspended in mid-air. People brought tablecloths to place their work on, and you could hear them trembling as the teacher walked over to their station. This is their lives. Their cares reduced (raised?) to mud.

I guess it's years of army training that does that to you. Anyways, some stuff my instructor said about my work:

- you have improved. your cylinders have grown very tall.

- you approach the clay with grace. you accept what the clay gives you.

- your handles combine ceramics with elements of abstract sculpture.

- you have a steady painting hand. Your designs are like MC Escher.

- you are positive, you don't take everything too seriously. You work confidently and i can tell you enjoy the process.

not bad considering i thought my unglazed collection was shit. maybe she was bullshitting me to be nice, and she'll give me a really bad final grade.

On a more important note, I realized that Orthodox Jews are hipsters.

They are incredibly obscure and exclusive.

Hipsters consider themselves "above others" and elite...we, too are the chosen people.

Rattails= peyis

in Mea Shearim, the big, thick-rimmed glasses are quite a trend, as with indie, underground, hipsterculture.

both are greasy and unshaven.

act incredibly White.

Both are uninformed in mainstream culture and prefer to sit in their hipster dens/shteibles contemplating the esoteric, the etherial, the transcendental: God/Animal Collective.

both maintain higher standards of eating: kashrut/veganism.

This article's funny: http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/columns/intelligencer/n_9756/

Guess who's back, Back again? (Hint: it's not Shady)

Man oh man oh man oh mano Manishewitz. Hello old friend! Ol' bloggie, ol' pal. Sorry it's been a while. I hope you don't feel neglected.

I do feel neglected...where the hell have you been?

I've been doing things, I swear.

But I'm not just an outlet for you to type on...i am also your connection to friends and family elsewhere.

I know...I've been talking to them too. I haven't been incommunicado.

But you've been lazy.

Ok. Lazy. Whatever. call it what you want. I've been doing stuff. Really, I have.

But you will forget about it all if you don't write it down, Aliza.

Don't address me by my name. You're not my mother.

But I'm your blog. Your own creation. Like your child. I should be MORE important.

I have been jotting and journaling. Don't make me feel guilty. Enjoying israel without blogging every detail is not a crime.

Not a crime...but a sin.

I need something to atone for on yom kippur...To prove i've been doing stuff, I'll give you a short rundown.

Good enough.

For who? Me?

Yes. I am you. And you are your own witness.

wow. mind fuck.

I guess this is the first post of the new year. 2011. Do I say Twenty Eleven? or Two Thousand Eleven? I like Twenty Eleven because it reminds me of 7/11 which reminds me of slurpees.

Since I last posted, I did go on that trip to the north. Some highlights:

- Visiting Ein Hod: an Artists village that was destroyed by the Haifa forest fires. I am convinced that if I make aliyah, i want to move there. It is so creative and everyone's so talented. Theres such a great vibe there...from the man who owns the music box museum, to the two, twin israeli sisters who operate a wonderful ceramic studio.

-I painted the walls of an artist's new home because his old home was charred by the fire.

- Had a tarbukah workshop in a Druze home. got a drum solo on a professional middleastern hand drum.

- Our hotel had a hot tub, and we cracked it open on saturday night and made a party.

New Years:

- our new years consisted of me and some friends hanging around in our hotel room, steaming in the hotel sauna, eating overrated hot dogs, going to a friend's house for a few, and then to a reallllllllly crowded but lame street party in florentine for the countdown.

- New Years day we had really nice mexican food, watched a lot of discovery channel, and then we walked the beach/tel aviv with white matching yarlmulkes and towel capes to appear as a cult...and ended up getting asked to daven maariv with the hotel minyan. I lost my favorite camera. I don't have pictures.

Other little fun nuggets:

- I met up with nikki and hannah in Tel AVIV!!!!! Hannah and I got the wrong day at first and ended up seeing nikki for a moment in her hostel. Looked like she was having fun. Hannah and I met up again on the right day at the Tel Aviv port. We ended up splitting some mugs of hot chocolate at Max Brenner.

- I got all of my hair cut off. It was quite a chop. My hair dresser had tourettes and kept on BEEPing as he was clipping away.

- Last week we visited the Angel bakery, the largest bakery in Israel. They shoved loaves upon loaves of steaming hot bread into our hands. I ate so many carbs. I saw vats of steaming yeast and got to shove my hands into a vat of sesame seeds.

- I took the 26 bus all the way to the biblical zoo. I was five feet from a giraffe. saw a lot of cheetahs and lions. Gazelles, ibixes....fed tropical birds this fruit-flavored semen-looking shake. It reminded me of how much i don't miss my old parakeets biting me.

- I hurt my hip/leg and it hurts to walk a little bit, so I went swimming in the pool at the gym. "Hydrotherapy". It was really relaxing. I need to work on doing backstroke without bumping my head on the wall.

...so the semester's coming to a close. I'm finishing up my classes. doing a couple of final projects. I have a final evaluation in ulpan in an hour or so, and i'm sacrificing cramming time to write this. I am thrilled to visit home, and the snow...and eat lox, play drums for the old people, and have shabbos with my whole family. Life's great right now, and i can see it getting even better.

How's that for a cheezy ending? its so hard ending these blog posts without an inspirational foresight. How bout this: My intestines are making funny sounds and i think i'm really backed up from this week's trip.

Eating Bread at Angel Factory

Drum solo at Druze home

Music box man.

Artist at Ein Hod

Beautiful Pottery studio at Ein Hod.