All good

 
"Arise My Love" available here.

I used to write in a journal when the mood struck. Trouble is the mood struck only when I was either high as a kite or bottom of the barrel and mostly the latter. As in, just met the love of my life! Love of my life hasn't called...Love of my life and I are getting married! Planning a wedding is torture...Got into graduate school! Graduate school is torture...I'm having a baby! Babies are torture...you get the idea.

Well same goes for the blog in a way. Obviously plenty on which to report, Seinfeld style. What is the deal with pomelos? Do they have to be that difficult to open?  And I don't go five minutes with having a comment about something, Chandler style. Could it be any colder in my bathroom? But what can I say? We have settled into a nice little groove over the last month so the blog has been neglected. Still, a good blogger would find time to write which I have not and I am remiss. So here is a round-up of a few things slightly more interesting than excessive fruit rind.

1. I started selling at the Bezalel Art Fair on Fridays in Jerusalem and it has been mostly fantastic. I get out the house early in the morning and spend the day with other artists, chatting with tourists and locals, talking about myself and my work, and making good money! Not bad. That is, until last Friday when someone stole my phone right off my table while I was looking down at my sketch book. A story for another time.

2. It snowed! The second week of January it had been rainy and freezing. We were all starting to feel rather cooped up. And then we woke up on a Thursday morning and everything was white! It was amazingly beautiful and peaceful and pristine. And it was like a half foot of snow which is very rare over here in Jerusalem so you can imagine it was like everyone was sprinkled in fairy dust. Smiling kids and parents. Mr. Rosen even pushed the kids down a hill on his snowboard, which hasn't seen the light of day in many many years. Of course it melted the next day but we had one day of magic and that was plenty.

3. I have been painting. A lot! And it feels pretty good. I've been missing my watercolors having mostly painted with acrylics over these last few months. I have this vision of making dozens of tiny watercolor pieces and having a group show, not unlike The Enormous Tiny Art Show, complete with festive, catered opening and twinkly lights. Not exactly sure how I will make this happen but it's on my mind. If you own a gallery or rad space in Tel Aviv, lemme know.

4. We had elections and in a strange twist of fate, I think most people are satisfied. Imagine an election when everyone kind of got what they wanted? Weird, right. Well the people who like Bibi got him again. Ugh. But he might become Bibi 2.0 if he decides to create a coalition that doesn't include any ultra-religious parties, which might be possible since centerist party leader Yair Lapid, a former journalist/talk show host/actor and newcomer to politics managed to get 19 parliament seats for his new party (half of whom are women). And the lefties got a bunch of seats and don't seem to mind Lapid (it appears most people kind of like him. It helps that he's nice to look at). And in this strange new world order maybe, just MAYBE, the ultra-religious might have to start serving in either the army or some kind of civil service and the government can redirect the funds formerly used to subsidize an entire community of unskilled torah scholars toward training and entry into the workforce. And those kids might even integrate a little into mainstream society and we can finally live as one nation while we figure out how to live next to another nation. And maybe my kids won't know from the peace process. They'll only know from peace.