Writing ourselves into oblivion

"I don't want to get up. I can't go on like this," my character said, lying in the bed I had written for him. "How do you get up in the morning?" he asked me.
"I pretend that I am you."
"How does that help?"
"For a moment nothing appears real."

Ah, the luxury of being a writer. Writing yourself into a little oasis in an otherwise turbulent world. Or is it the opposite. Is it the turbulence you seek? Somewhere to direct the pain which would otherwise consume you. To help convince you to get up at least one more day.

"And when you know what is real, how do you go on then?" " he asked,
"I have responsibilities."
"Family?"
"Family, yes. Do you want me to write you a family?" I asked.
"Will they be less dysfunctional than your family?"
"My family is not dysfunctional."
"Really?"
"You have to get out more," I said.

There is pain in writing. Most people don't know that. There is even greater pain in not being able to write: a verbal constipation where words remain locked inside, wanting to get out.

Writing, for me, is directly linked to survival. It wasn't that way once, but it is now. A very good friend of mine told me, "It is the DOING of it that matters." And she is right. I am first and foremost writing for myself. Facing my demons face to face. Listening carefully to hear if I still have a voice. But I also would very much like to be read.

And now I will let you in on a little secret. Many of us make New Year Resolutions but rarely expect to carry them through. But I have made a New Year Resolution for 2017 which I have every intention of carrying through. And that is writing a new blog entry every two weeks. Since beginning this blog in 2011, it has never gone this long without a new entry. There are many reasons for not writing. And some may appear quite valid, but none are justified.

When I was diagnosed with Parkinson's, the pivotal moment was whether I would decide to fight it or not. At first, I was stunned. But it only took a short time to make a decision. I wouldn't go out easily. I was left with body and mind and each had declared war on the other. It was for me to keep it all together.

First I began with the body. I went to the gym for two to three weekly workouts. I joined a weekly Pilates class. We could clearly see what was getting better and what was getting worse, and adjust accordingly. But the mind is much more complex. When the body stumbles, you just begin to be a little more careful and put more work into your physical balance. When the mind stumbles, you aren't quite sure what to do, or where it may lead.

The key, I have found, is in finding your rhythm. The more you physically exercise, the better you fall into this rhythm. The more you write, the better the words naturally flow through you. My New Year Resolution is meant to keep me writing, to keep to a rhythm which will keep me moving forward.

And then there is my third book, a very different type of rhythm. It demands all of me at times and takes me to places that I didn't even know existed: some dark and others very bright.

And now that my new characters have begun waking up, I find them beginning to speak to me, and not just through the pages of the book. They appear to have confused what is real with what is unreal and their place in it. I would try to show them their correct place, but that might simply lead to an all out revolt, leaving me with no voice at all. So, the only divisions I can form are by answering back.

The one thing I haven't been able to escape, though, is their critique. I have found my characters to be my harshest critics.

When New Years comes twice a year

Doesn’t seem fair, does it - that we get to celebrate New Years twice a year. First time around: family, gefilte fish and presents. Second time around: friends, cocktails and smooching at midnight. Officially, there is only one New Year in Israel - the Jewish New Year which falls sometime in September. Just as, “officially”, we have one calendar - the Hebrew Calendar  ;-)

Quick - what day, month and year is it today according to the Hebrew Calendar? Okay, while you try to work that out in your head, or look it up on the Internet, I will move on.

The Hebrew Calendar is a lunisolar calendar, meaning that things - such as Hebrew holidays - shift around, when trying to synchronize them with the Gregorian Calendar (you know, the one we use every day). So sometimes the High Holidays (New Years, Yom Kippur, Succot...) come earlier in the year and sometimes later.

This does cause schizophrenia among Israelis at times. Especially when it comes to birthdays.

Let’s say that you were born on the 20th of Elul, 5747 - which fell on the 14th of September, 1987 according to the Gregorian Calendar. Which date do you now celebrate your birthday on? The chances of the 20th of Elul falling exactly on the 14th of September again is slim, or sporadic at best. So unless you expect to receive presents on your birthday twice a year, you are going to have to decide - the Hebrew calendar or the Gregorian one. If you were by chance born on a holiday (New Years, first day of Hanukah... but not something somber like Yom Kippur), the choice is easy. It will be easier for people to remember your birthday according to the holiday, even if it jumps around the Gregorian calendar every year. So, Hebrew calendar it is. But if you were born on just an ordinary Hebrew date, such as the 20th of Elul, 5747, the chances of friends and family remembering that date, let alone converting it to the Gregorian calendar, are slim. There go the presents. Like it or not, the 14th of September will be much easier to remember. You can’t have your birthday cake and eat it too - although you may still try. “Yes, my birthday is today on September 14th,” you say, opening yet another present, “but it is really on the 20th of Elul”.

And when people say that you will be paid on the 10th of every month, or that rent is due on the 1st of every month, I don’t ever remember this referring to the Hebrew months.

But although we measure over 90% of our daily affairs according to the Gregorian Calendar, Israelis continue to have a love affair with the Hebrew Calendar. Why? Because it is ours. We are embedded in it and it is embedded in us. Much like the Hebrew language, although Hebrew is much more entrenched into our daily consciousness, even though it almost lost out to German when plans were being made for the revival of the State of Israel. At the time, the idea of reviving a language which hadn’t been used in daily life for two thousand years must have seemed rather daunting. I mean, look at all of those things that had been invented and conceived of since - Mein Lieber Gott - how do we give them names. One could become almost meshuganeh. But it was done, and Hebrew has become a modern and linguistically rich language - although it has borrowed heavily on Anglicisms in the process.

But let us return to the Hebrew and Gregorian calendar, and subsequently - the “Jewish” and “Gregorian” New Year. If Israelis can manage peacefully with the two calendars, why should two separate new years be a problem? It’s not as if we are requesting the Gregorian New Year to become a national holiday so that we can sleep off the hangover from the night before. But the celebration of the Gregorian New Year on New Years Eve is considered problematic by many, even viewed as a sacrilege by some. So much so, that hotels have been threatened in the past with having their Kosher certificate taken away if they allow New Years Eve celebrations in their establishment.

Why all the fuss?

“Sylvester” is apparently the culprit. And I’m not referring to the cat in Looney Tunes  (“I tawt I taw a putty cat.”) - the only Sylvester I knew of before moving to Israel. No, we are talking about an anti-semitic Pope from back around 325 C.E., who not only was proclaimed a Catholic Saint, but was also awarded a day of his own by the Catholic Church: Saint Sylvester Day, which falls on December 31. Which also happens to run into New Years Eve. Somehow a connection was made between the two. In Israel, the Gregorian New Years Eve is even called “Sylvester”. In my first year in Israel, as January 1st approached, I kept hearing about the evils of celebrating Sylvester. “What does New Years Eve have to do with a pussy cat?” I asked. “No, you don’t understand. We are talking about an anti-semitic saint who lived about 17 centuries ago.” “Oh,” I answered, “What does New Years Eve have to do with an anti-semitic saint?” I never really received an answer to that. Except for the fact that Saint Sylvester Day falls on the same date (and I imagine that we can find many other things that fall on that date), I don’t really see the problem.  New Years Eve, for most people I know, is a time for getting together with friends and celebrating the coming in of the new year. Marking time, marking friendship, hoping for a year that is better than the one that came before.

And a time for New Years resolutions. You know, those things that we swear by and never carry out. (You can read more about this in a former blog post of mine - Taking the “new” out of New Years. ) Here we Israelis can have more fun and cheat. Not only can we make new years resolutions on the Jewish New Year, but we can test them out before reaching the Gregorian new year a few months later. Then we can either continue on with them, toss them aside and make new ones, or toss out the idea altogether. Now, who can have a problem with that?

So you have seen, in many of my former blog posts, how schizophrenic I can be in being both Canadian and Israeli and in speaking both Hebrew and English. And now we can also see how easily schizophrenic Israelis can be, simply because of a small matter of a calendar. (And I am just touching the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Israeli schizophrenia. Don’t get me started.) Now, take this Israeli schizophrenia and mix it into my own Canadian/Israeli split personality, and what do you get. I don’t know what it is, but it certainly is messy.

Happy New Year!

Taking the “new” out of New Years

We are already into the third week of the new year and I am waiting for something wondrous to happen.

You see, I have this fascination for new years. Somewhat of a childlike expectation. As if something different is supposed to happen simply because of the way we artificially separate time. I can’t help myself. It begins with officially toasting in the New Year with warm anticipation (although at times it is more like a heavy sigh of relief at having made it through yet another year). Actually, it begins even earlier than that - during the last week of December when making New Years resolutions in front of a roaring fire in the company of my closest of friends. Maybe it is the seductive lure of the fire, but we really do seem to believe that we will stick to these resolutions each new year.

Looking back, I don’t have a very good track record when it comes to New Years resolutions. The only time that I can remember carrying one out, in recent history, was the year of  2011 when I pledged that I would - no matter what - get my book published. And actually succeeded in doing so.

Maybe the shock of my actually carrying through with a new years resolution is what spurred my two close friends to not only declare significant resolutions for 2012, but also set out with a fierce determination to carry them out. Meanwhile, for the first time, I am left with no resolution at all for the new year and time is running out.

I suppose that we cannot make a resolution until we decide what it is that we want. And I keep coming up with a blank. Sure, I want to continue with my writing after taking this first big step. And I am also working on a screenplay.  But what is it I want out of all of this. Another book? Endless adulation? A smug sense of worth?

We think that if we could go back thirty years, knowing what we know now, we’d be much more in tune with our needs and desires than we are now. As if hindsight would create a better world. But it doesn’t work that way, does it. If we don’t make the same mistakes again, we will make other mistakes. Perhaps just as big, perhaps even bigger. There comes a time when you have to accept where you are in life. Accept it and work on making it better.

Does this mean I should give up on the idea of opening up a pub in Yellowknife? Would such a decision negate all that I have gone through and have become, or would it be a natural continuation to all that came before it. From hot desert to cold desert. From a small dysfunctional community to a slightly larger one. Okay, Yellowknife is much larger than my small desert community. But I’m sure that I could find a community just as small and isolated, not too far from Yellowknife. A community probably only accessible by dog sled or small plane. But how much beer would get sold? There must be a tangible level of possibility for any New Years resolution in order to turn it into  a feasible goal. Otherwise, what is the point? I learned this from a redhead. 

“You really should try living somewhere normal for a change.”
Normal. Here she was staring at me from across the room, knowing all that she knew about me, and yet talking about normal.
“Normal? Scarborough was normal. About as normal as you can get.”
“Don’t confuse normal with a comfortable middle class community of WASPs and  Father knows best,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Have you been to Scarborough lately?”
Point taken.
“What’s a normal location in your eyes?” I asked.
“A nice small, comfortable apartment in Tel Aviv. A short walk to take in some culture or eat at a good restaurant. A stone’s throw away from an evening stroll along the promenade by the sea.”
“Have you been talking to Adva?”
“No, I have been eavesdropping.”
She would always have the upper hand, living in this invisible world of hers. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get both feet in.
“There is only one problem with that vision,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“The people.”

Maybe that is the key. Both the Negev desert and the Canadian Arctic offer places where most people wouldn’t want to even visit, let alone live there. I probably missed my calling in not becoming a hermit, but then they didn’t have Internet back then.

But I am no closer now to a New Years resolution than I was when beginning to write this piece. Am I doomed to now wander through 2012 without any direction at all? When does a nomad simply become someone who has lost his way?

I am open to suggestions. Can anyone suggest a New Years resolution for me?