When I find myself fading

"When I find myself fading, I close my eyes and realize my friends are my energy." 
~ anonymous

I have many things to complain about, but I also have many more to be thankful for. I have been blessed with true friends. Friends who help carry me forward during the toughest of times, just by knowing that they are there.

It is said that you can count your true friends on one hand. I find this to be true for me. Even in the age of Facebook, where we have friendship lists that often measure in the hundreds, sometimes even in the thousands. And even I have a friendship list of 644. How does this adhere to my concept of friends? 

I think it was Thomas Moore who once said: "I have many acquaintances, but very few friends." - a distinction which Facebook once completely ignored, serving to belittle relationships rather than mirror reality. Until one day when Facebook decided to make amends, allowing us to differentiate between friends, close friends and acquaintances. And by doing so, our Facebook access to our closer friends increased considerably.

"Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend." 
~ anonymous

What defines a true friend? Is there some secret formula? True friends do not have agendas. If they did, we'd all be in trouble. For a true friend knows many of our darkest secrets. They are our confessor, but do not carry judgement. They could write our explosive biography, but would do so only with our permission, before or after we die. 

“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.” 
~ Richard Bach

I come from a small Canadian family, and try to return each year during the holiday season to visit my mother, sister, and two close friends. These two friends are family also, for although we grew up under different roofs, we also shared each other's homes. And despite the distance and years that passed without seeing each other, each time we meet, we carry on as if no time has passed since we saw each other last. For our respect and joy in each other's lives surpasses all else.

I know that many families become increasingly dysfunctional over time, something that is magnified especially during holiday season. Maybe my family is too small to be dysfunctional, or I am not in Canada enough days of the year, but we seem to get on quite well. Not only that, but each visit is of great importance to all of us.

With family, as with friends, I have been extremely fortunate. And not just with my Canadian family, but with my Israeli family as well. My Israeli family consists of my Israeli born wife and three children (all born in Israel on a kibbutz), and my in-laws. I know that many people (perhaps most), don't get on well with their in-laws. But, despite my coming from a different background, language and culture, I was accepted with open arms by Adva's parents. My test wasn't the baggage that I brought with me, but how I treated their daughter. Which I was made well aware of when my mother-in-law casually informed me that she kept an Uzi sub-machine gun under her bed and knew how to use it (she had been an officer in the Palmach and not someone to mess around with). Fortunately she never found reason to use it, or thought that Adva could do worse. I have always gotten on well with my brother and sisters-in-law also. My brother-in-law hosts family and extended family each major holiday at his house on the kibbutz. Nothing dysfunctional there, either, unless you count my slipping out after the dinner festivities to check my email at my father-in-law's house.

Family and friends cannot really be measured in numbers, defined by blood relations, or categorized by time and place. They are the people who touch our inner core, for whom we would fly across continents, make our way up from the desert by train to Molly Blooms, meet for coffee or wine after a hard day's work, or join in extended noisy family holiday celebrations. In many ways my life has turned upside down, but friends and family stay with me, and keep me from fading away.

Working our way backwards through time

Will Google glasses one day allow us to relive past moments? Walk down a street, click (blink) on a date and observe all that happened at that point in time and space? Is this really that far fetched? And if we can go that far, why not a time machine that allows us to become active participants in past events? Yes, I am aware of the argument of logistics. If we can go back in the past and change something, then the present will change also. But if so, then it must have already happened. It must have already happened.

But what if logistics is simply our excuse for not being able to break out of the confines of our present level of comprehension. Logistics once seemingly proved that the world was flat. And there was a time when no one would have even conceived of the possibility of the light bulb, let alone the computer. Each generation appeared to entertain the smug belief that the greatest possible enlightenment had already been achieved.

Inventions reached their limit long ago, and I see no hope for further development. ~ Julius Frontinus, 1st century A.D.

Everything that can be invented has been invented. ~ Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899,

Is time travel another electric light bulb waiting to happen?

Let's borrow from the world of computers in order to offer one possible theory of time travel. Computer systems have a backup utility which allows us to go back and restore our system from a restore point in the past. This is particularly useful when something corrupts the present and we prefer to return to an earlier point and start over, erasing everything from that point on, as if it had never happened. Apple even calls their MAC backup utility - the Time Machine.

Tempting, eh? Start over again from an earlier point in our lives.

I suggest something similar in time travel, but with a significant twist. The restore point is only created when a time traveler goes back to a specific point in the past and does something that will change that world in some way.

"You are about to change this world. Click save to accept, or cancel to cancel. Warning: this change is irreversible and you will lose all future data."

But wait! Before you go back and present your old self with Sports Almanac so as to become rich through gambling - as Biff did in Back to the Future - you must realize that any change that you inflict will not affect the world that you go back to. Rather, you will have created a parallel world with a different future from that point on. Would there be any point, then, in making a variant of yourself rich in another world? A world whose future you cannot witness? Or would this be similar to wanting to leave a legacy for your children? You will not witness the effect of your legacy after you are dead, either.

Now some of you may claim that the universe cannot house an infinite number of parallel worlds. Yet you don't appear to have a problem with the millions of new souls that are born into the universe every day - each new soul with a new consciousness, sending bouncing thought waves everywhere. Others among you may worry about the ever-increasing possibility of meeting yourselves coming and going. It may just take one errant wormhole and there you are, standing in front of  yourself face to face. Do you recognize your other? Is this a meeting of matter and anti-matter, which will perhaps cause the universe to explode, or implode?

I can see some of you looking for the price tag. Sounds promising, but what is the cost? The going price of a ticket for space travel is $250,000. Can we expect time travel to be in the same ball park?

Word on the street has it that not only does such a machine exist, but that it is in the hands of Google. And word on a Tel Aviv street corner will tell you that it was originally an Israeli startup. The last thing I heard is that Google is looking for beta testers. Any takers? Here is your chance to try out time travel for no cost. You may disappear into a black hole somewhere, but hey, we'd still be back contemplating the wheel if we weren't ready to take chances. Will Google be willing to add this to the Google+ profile, depending on advertising alone for monetary benefit? Will this be the straw that breaks Facebook's back? How long will it take Microsoft to clone the invention, somehow side stepping patent law?

What good is it then, if we can't go back and help avert calamities and foolish decisions, both for the benefit of mankind and the benefit of ourselves? Maybe it is time for us to simply accept the past as something that can't be changed, at least not in this world. At the most, we can try to understand it better, and through this understanding make the world a better place. The best place is to start with ourselves. Too many of us keep repeating the same mistakes.

So, if you were offered the opportunity to go back in a time machine, what part of your past life would you choose to visit - for whatever reason?

Oh, I forgot to tell you. You can only go back as an active participant to some point in your past life. You can't interactively visit someone else's life, or interactively visit a point in the past before you were born. However, you can go back as observer only, to any point in the past. This is definitely one up on reality shows and will definitely change our conception of history. They say that history is written by the victors, but here we have our own direct line to the past.

If I were to go back in the past, I'd choose the sixties. Why? That will have to wait for another blog posting. Right now the ink in my pen is running dry, and the more that I write - the greater the chance that I will meet myself coming and going.

Facebook status: Grandparent

My daughter in-law, Sharon (with significant help from my son, Noam) gave birth to a beautiful baby boy and I am now a grandfather. Adva and I are still getting used to this new status. Grandparents... wow!

Soon after being told the news,, a picture of the baby - taken with an iPhone - appeared in Adva's inbox.
"Come see the picture of the baby!" Adva called out to me.
"Wow," I exclaimed, looking proudly at my grandson.
"But Noam said that this is only for us privately," she added.
"Oh, you mean..."
"No facebook," Adva said, dejectedly.
It took us a while to digest all of this.
"Well, I need to change my facebook status," Adva said.
"Yes," I nodded, "I hadn't thought of that."
I went into facebook to make the change in status which would be broadcast to the world.
"You know what?" I called back to Adva.
"What?"
"You can't change your status to grandparent in facebook. When it comes to - in a relationship - it can only be something like: single, married, it's complicated."
"Really!"
You'd think facebook would have thought of that. Here is a major event in our lives and facebook doesn't even have a place to mark our new status (or would that be an addition in status.)
"Well, I'm going to write something in the status box at the top of my page," I called out to Adva, now that she had got me going.
"I'll probably wait and write something this evening," she called back.
So I announced to the facebook world (or more exactly, to my facebook friends) that I am now a grandfather.

Soon after that, pings began to sound from my computer, somewhat like popcorn seeds beginning to pop.
"What are those sounds?" Adva asked me.
"People commenting on my announcement of being a grandfather, I suppose," I answered.
"Oh," Adva answered, and then she disappeared.
A little later, suspicious as to her whereabouts, I went into her facebook page. There she eloquently expressed her joy in being a grandparent. She already had over 50 likes. Hmm...

A day passed and we received more pictures, but still with no permission to put them up on our facebook pages.
"I think Noam and Sharon are punishing us," I said to Adva.
"Why?"
"For putting their wedding pictures up on facebook without permission."
"That was a long time ago."
"Lloyds know how to hold a grudge." I said.

Fade out to Noam and Sharon's house, where they sit looking at wedding pictures on Noam's parents' facebook pages.
"We are going to have to do something about my parents," Noam said. "They are becoming incorrigible."
"Maybe we should cut off their facebook access," Sharon said.

The evening of the second day, after arriving home from the hospital, and sending pictures of the baby to relatives (that we did have permission for), Adva asked me, ever so nonchalantly.
"How many likes do you have on your announcement?"
"Likes? What, are we in a competition?" I asked.
"No, just wondering."
"Let me check." I went into my facebook page. "47 likes and 31 comments. How many do you have?" I asked suspiciously.
"Oh, I don't know," she answered, trying to sound a little aloof, "I would say, offhand, about 84 likes and 57 comments."
I tried not to let my sulking appear too evident. The thing was, I needed a good picture of the baby to get things moving again. Maybe if one appeared innocently on my facebook page from an anonymous source. No, Noam and Sharon would never buy that excuse.

Now, don't jump to the conclusion that after 30+ years of marriage, Adva and I are in a competition for public recognition. That would be just sad. Mainly because I'd have little chance of winning. Despite my wide presence on the Internet with all of the initiatives that I have started and developed, when it comes down to it, Adva has the contacts. I mean, she even had our President Shimon Peres personally autograph his biography (in English) for my mother (my mother is a huge Shimon Peres fan).
"That was nice of Adva," my mother said. "Do you know Shimon Peres also?"
"No, but Adva introduced me to him, once."
"Hmm...."

But now that we are grandparents, Adva and I must start behaving ourselves and acting our age... well, let's just say, start behaving ourselves. Otherwise, Noam and Sharon may not let us babysit our new grandson.

Time according to Facebook

Last week I discovered that I got married in 2007. Which sort of turned my world upside down. How do you suddenly explain to your kids that they were born out of wedlock? And how do I explain the discrepancy between the young man that appears in my wedding photos and the aging soul that stares out at me in the mirror each morning?

It all started when I clicked on Get Timeline on a friend’s Facebook page. “It couldn’t hurt,” I thought. “Facebook is continually reinventing itself. This is just another tidbit”. Or so I thought, just before I was sucked into a time warp.

My suspicions should have been aroused when I saw that my personal history began in the year 2007 - the same year that I joined Facebook. And especially where it claimed that I got married on the same day that I joined Facebook - August 9th, 2007. Facebook certainly takes personal status seriously.

It is as if this social experiment, called Facebook, was not quite enough for its founders and they decided to have Facebook become a scientific experiment as well. They had already redefined our place in the virtual world. Why not also redefine our place in the physical world? Will I soon discover that if I attempt to leave Facebook, my marriage will immediately dissolve, and I may find myself fading - both virtually and physically?

Sounds like a page out of my own book - As I Died Laughing. But then, that is supposed to be fiction, isn’t it?

But what harm is there in all of this? It’s not as if Facebook is seeking world domination. ”Lower your voice,” I tell myself, looking nervously back over my shoulder. When it comes down to it, Facebook is a democratic organization. Except for the fact that it keeps making changes without consulting us, and forces us to automatically accept them in the end, even if at first it tells us we have a choice. And then there is the Terms of Use agreement, which even my lawyer finds difficult to understand. But the bottom line is that Facebook would have long ceased to exist had it not constantly reinvented itself. And if we hadn’t reason to complain, we would have gone somewhere else by now. We love to complain about what we have, but are not yet ready to do without.

Which brings us back to the timeline and the year 2007. I have been filling in the cracks. Yes, although Facebook seems to have made it needlessly complicated with very little explanation on  how to add events outside of the Facebook years, I have managed. And although these events didn’t receive the Facebook stamp of approval, they are now officially within the realm of Facebook. I have found my way out and back in again. I am reminded of Truman in The Truman Show who discovered the escape door which led him outside of his alternate reality. Although I don’t know if he ever found his way back in. And which also begs the question: “Which side of the door is real?” And if one side is real, does this automatically make the other side fiction?

Personally, I enjoy these virtual worlds. I don’t know what I’d do without them. I can sit here, down in the Negev desert, the wind howling outside, the rain beating down on the roof - and speak out to the rest of the world. You may not be listening now, you may not be listening today or tomorrow.  But my words will be out there, floating around. Who knows who will read them. How does that make me feel? A rush of social adrenaline, perhaps. Or maybe I just enjoy talking to myself. Beats solitaire. Or maybe it is solitaire, of a totally different sort. Play on. Drop me a line if you think I am not alone.

How to write Canadian

Hello everybody. This is Tom Chambers, from Expats Anonymous.  Today we are interviewing David Lloyd, a Canadian Expat, whose first novel - As I Died Laughing - has been published as an e-book. We thank David for allowing us to reprint this interview on his blog.

Tom:  From looking at your personal history, I see that you grew up in Canada but spent most of your adult life in Israel. Do you consider yourself, then, a Canadian author or an Israeli author?

David:  That’s a tough one. First of all, it’s strange to even think of myself as an author.

Tom:  Why is that?

David:  I’ve been writing bits and pieces all of my life. I think there was a time when I was young that I thought of becoming a writer. Actually, is there a difference in being called a writer or an author?

Tom: Well, I guess you are only called an author when you get a book published.

David:  I suppose so. Which still doesn’t necessarily make you a writer. I guess that depends on the reviews.

Tom:  Are  you trying to evade my original question?

David:  That obvious, eh? No, I’ll give it a go. I don’t think I could ever call myself an Israeli writer, or author. First of all, the book is written in English, not Hebrew.

Tom:  And that is important?

David:  Yes. The language that we speak is a part of the person we are, or who we are at that moment. I think I am two different people at times, when I speak Hebrew or English. But the more important point, I think, is that my formative years were spent in Canada. Writers always return to their childhood at some time in their writing.

Tom:  Have you done so in this book?

David:  I wouldn’t say that I have gone back that far. But it is there, nonetheless, in my writing. Israel is my adopted country. In a way, it is something like your in-laws. They are now family, but not the family you were born into.

Tom:  And you can always divorce your in-laws, but not your genetic family.

David:  Yes. Canada will never go away, even though I have been living on the other side of the world for more than 30 years. So, I guess if I had to choose, I would call myself a Canadian author / writer. I don’t know what Margaret Atwood would have to say about that.

Tom:  I suppose the irony, then, is that your book was not published in either Canada or Israel, but in England.

David:  Actually, it was published in cyberspace, since it is an e-book. But yes, it was published by a UK publisher. And you can get it on Amazon and Smashwords. Sorry, I couldn't help but give it a bit of an advertisement.

Tom:  Fair enough. Tell me, without my mentioning your age, why is it that you came out with your first novel at such a later age.

David:  I guess I had not much to offer until now.

Tom: Really?

David: No. I think I always had a lot to say. But for a long time it was enough for me to just write for myself and the people around me. Getting published really wasn’t on my mind. But at some point, things changed. 

Tom:  What was the cause of the change?

David: I realized my own mortality, and felt the sudden and urgent need to leave something of myself behind.

Tom:  And this is  your legacy.

David:  A part of it, at least.

Tom:  Do you see the book as something of a self-biography?

David:  God no. If I admitted to that I would have to constantly worry about dodging silver bullets. Of course there is a mixture of fact and fiction, and as the author, I have the luxury of not saying where the fiction begins and ends.

Tom:  Much like the theme of your book.

David:  I see that you have read it.

Tom:  Does that surprise you?

David:  I’m still getting used to the idea of it being out there.

Tom:  What about the people in the book. Are any of them real?


Tom:  I take it by your silence that you aren’t comfortable with this question.

David:  Well, you have to understand that certain characters will always be inspired, in some way, by real people and real circumstances. However, once they enter into the book, they take on a life of their own.

Tom: Nobody threatening class action?

David:  Not yet.

Tom: I have been looking at the book cover.

David:  You don't like it.

Tom:  Well, it is a bit strange. The guy that is sitting there and the things surrounding him.

David:  Believe it or not, the cover was meticulously thought out. The positioning, the way each item is displayed and depicted, has a direct connection to the underlying themes in the book. The problem is that you usually see a downsized copy of the cover on the book sites, and don't get the full detail. I could talk about this at great length, but it would be too much of a spoiler.

Tom:  The interaction between the various plots in the book is quite complex.

David:  Yes.

Tom:  Aren't you afraid that people won't get the book. That they won't understand what you are trying to say?

David: They will get what they will get. The main thing is that they get something. I guess that the success of the book depends on that.  I still discover new things in the book even after ten rewrites and reading it over endless times.

Tom:  Things that you didn’t see when you wrote them in the beginning?

David:  Things that I discovered in retrospect. Some which turned out to be quite clever. But then, I am not your most objective reader.

Tom:  How will you feel if people interpret your book quite differently than you do yourself?

David:  I have no problem with that. I believe that once a writer has released his work, his work no longer belongs to him. Who am I to say what interpretation is right and what is wrong. As an English teacher, I told my students that they could present whatever interpretation they wanted of a piece of literature, just as long as they built a conclusive argument using examples from the text. I informed them that the highest mark would go to the interpretations that surprised me the most, as long as they backed it up.

Tom: And did they? Surprise you?

David:  A few did. Not an easy thing to do. I remember writing a paper about Wuthering Heights, while studying English Lit at university. I set out to prove that Nelly was evil, and that most of the things that went wrong in the novel were the result of her subtle and misguided intervention. The professor had MA assistants who marked the papers. Mine came back as an 86, and with all types of comments in red expressing astonishment at my claims, but not relating specifically to what I wrote. Normally I would have let such things pass, but I really did think that my paper was a masterpiece and that the assistant couldn’t see past her own traditional concept of the book. So I went straight to the professor and asked him to read my paper.

Tom:  And what did he say?.

David:  He crossed out her mark and gave me a 98.

Tom:  Why not a 100?

David:  Now you sound like my mother.

Tom:  Getting back to authors and their works, how do you think Emily Bronte would have felt about your analysis of Nelly in her book?

David:  I hope she would have learnt to let go of her book, just as I have mine.

Tom:  Have you really? It has only been a few days since it came out.

David:  That long?

Tom:  And on that note, it looks like our time is almost up. Is there anything you’d like to add before signing off?

David:  Only that I have set up a facebook group for people to post comments about the book. I’d like to say that the writing of the book was satisfying in itself, and that I really don’t need anything more, but I do feel the need to hear what people think. Not simply whether they like the book or not, but how they relate to different parts of the book, no matter how harsh their criticism. Especially after the second or third reading.

Tom:  Do you think a second or third reading would help?

David:  It certainly wouldn’t hurt.