Copacetic

Listening to 90's grunge and power pop and screamy angry riot grrrrrl music that makes me melancholy now instead of happy. I feel wrung out.

My best friend is getting a divorce. Or maybe getting a divorce. Does it matter? It just feels all so complicated and messy and grim. I know there was never a time when it was all simple, when we were all just happy. I know that. I used to be angry at my parents and now I'm angry at my husband and I wonder how my parents ever put up with me. Is it any different now? I am clearly angry at whoever has control over my life. But what's the alternative? Life on my own (with two kids) - alone, lonely? That's why my friend's not ready to sign the papers yet, either. It's fucking scary and who knows if we'll ever be happy.

But there's something so soothing about those crashing guitars, all the sounds mashing together, nothing sharp except the baseline, but loud and pulsing. It's all that feeling. We feel dead now. there's so little left of us, all us old married ladies with our bitty babies. Our souls are thin. I am happy underneath it all, but there's so much sadness and anger and frustration and resignation piled on top that I sometimes don't recognize myself in the mirror. Whose tired eyes are those anyway, the ones with the crow's feet?

And yet, isn't there something beautiful about us, us thin women pushing to maintain careers, community, motherhood, love, friends, family, bodies, and spirits? We used to be the super-moms, but I walk around and see these other moms pushing their designer strollers or wearing their babies on top of their hipster sweaters and they look more like the babysitter than the mother. We've got our jeans rolled up and we're still drinking vodka tonics and accomplishing crow pose and that's got to count for something.

We thought we were pure and indie and destined for lives of art. But it all comes out as poop in the end.

Amreeka for Peace

I just saw a movie about Palestinian immigrants to the U.S. that showed the difficulties of life for new immigrants in general as well as Arabs in the U.S. and in Israel. It was such a human movie. I don't know if I agree with the political stance of the filmmaker on the Israel-Palestinian conflict - or the implied stance, anyway. I am not sure I totally disagree, either. But I do know that it showed Arabs as people. That's almost a ridiculous thing to say. Of course Arabs are people. But we tend to forget. I hear it from my family all the time. They will tell you they're not racist, but they are. They will tell you Arabs get what they deserve (as if all Arabs are one) for what they do to the Jews and to Israel.

I feel like my family is so progressive on so many issues. I would go as far as to call my dad a feminist. It is really painful that they have singled out this one group of people to hate irrationally. I guess hate is irrational. They will say I don't understand, that I am not close enough to the Holocaust to get it. That I haven't spent enough time in Israel. That I am a heretic. Even though the folks on the left probably consider me pretty far right on this issue.

In the movie, the grandmother sings a beautiful Arabic song at the going away party for the soon-to-be immigrants. It is heartbreaking to me how close I feel to that music. It is the melody and rhythm I grew up with - both Hebrew and Arabic. I realize that music appreciation is not a political solution, but it seems to bear witness to the fact that we are cousins, despite thousands of years living in Europe, just as African-Americans are cousins in some way to the cultures of West Africa. How can we kill each other, if we are cousins?

I do not know the right policy answers, but I do know that people need to live free and unafraid and no one in a place that is dear to my heart personally and spiritually is living that life right now. I do not know how to achieve it, but I know in my heart that we have to stop hating each other, we have to want peace. Love is not rational either, but it is better than hate.

I guess I'll get a lot of flack for this, but that's just something I'll have to accept.

Poisons

We don't know what dreams are or where they come from, but we know what they do. Sometimes the stories they create stay with us all day and we can't shake them. Sometimes nice dreams leave us feeling unsettled and some times bad dreams release all the poison you didn't know was stored up inside of you, like when you wake up and find out that the dream was not true and you are flooded with relief with your head so soft and immobile in the down pillow that smells of detergent and your shampoo and your husband's spicy deodorant and your toes are warm and not moving and the sun comes for the first time in days through the heavy wooden blinds and they neighbors are fighting out in the street again but you are not and you reach over and say, "I'm so glad it was just a dream," and your husband gives you his butcher hand and you roll your cheek onto it warm and calloused and you hear the baby in the other room, "Ah -ga-da-ba," and your little boy is still snoring away, and the dream sticks to you in shreds of color, but the rest leaks out like a fierce sweat from a high fever that soaks the mattress, but kills the illness, even though it leaves you exhausted. Like a good fight. Or a good fuck.