Everything anew...

Not only does this week mark the end of my tenure with my current employer that I've worked for the past three years, it also marks the beginning of my last semester, the universe willing, of course work for the MFA. No matter how I try and wrap my brain around this one I can't help but think "wow!" so much is going on and I'm trying to shed my corporate persona and be a free thinker and academcian. I'm 30 minutes from the start of my class and for the next three hours I have to remind myself that DSNs, ESPs, DSPs, RFCs, bounce codes, headers, smtp and the rest of it has little to no bearing on what we'll be discussing. I don't know if I've been lazy with my schooling over the last year or what the exact deal is, but I've done this dance between the academic and the corporate for 10 years in one capacity or another, and it's becoming steadily harder to flip the switch and remove myself from one venue and into another... I need to write a poem tonight, if I don't get too smashed as I'm due back in the "fray" once class lets out. Once more unto the breach... once more.

It's begun....

I've known for a long time now, well longer than I can consciously recall that this city is kind of the home of the Irish coffee, and if you were to pinpoint the spot where the irish coffee was born, you would say "The Buena Vista" in Fisherman's Wharf/Cannery. Well I was there tonight, and before I went there we drank a half bottle of Jewel of Russia Ultra, and when we got there we had drank the obligatory Irish Coffee, but after that its a blur, there were shots of Jaeger, Surfers on Acid, Baby Guinnesses, lemon drops, and did I mention the surfers on acid, there was the three wise men that came to visit and more shots of Jaeger, and yes, Arvil was there, so in essence we're all fucked. There was someone, names withheld to protect the innocent, that had to be put in a cab home, but he's ok, or will be, or maybe, when tomorrow rolls around, but yes, it's begun and we're all fucked... need i say more?

It's the dream that bothers me...

One might say that everything is back to normal. I'm listening to Jeno on 90hz.org spin his unique and magical flavor of free-form-funk, dishing up rhythms that remind me of wild nights a decade ago in the city that I'm now living in. The commute, if you can call it that, was always to a favorite tape that ran the gamut from 120 to 160 bpm (that's beats per minute). Homeward bound was more like Bob Marley speed, but that's understandable after you spent an entire night dancing on borrowed energy.

I'm not sure what's keeping me up now, I should be getting quite tired and although I know I could probably mosey into my bedroom and find a kind of solace in a little death, sleep rather, I've been putting off this final post, the summation, the report from dream land, not nearly as bold as Greco, simpler than that really, let's just say I'm keeping my word to Erez when he asked me, a few days before I left: "so are you going to write your thoughts?" I meant to write this the week after I returned; I thought it might be a good kind of therapy locked in the smoky chamber of my Portland hotel room. The summary, or the bottom line if you will, is impossible to do, and when my body and brain couldn't agree on either a time zone or desire for one, writing was unfathomable. I'm home now, and I've given up pretending that I'm in the oriental east, near the central Asian land of my home, or as near as I've ever been. Yeah, I gave that one up a while back, I'm here, with small mementos of my trip: a kitchen cabinet that smells strongly of tea I brought back from the shouk in Jerusalem, a couple kippas, one for my brother Ilya who I haven't seen yet since my return, books from the Israeli National Art Museum in Tel Aviv from the Femme Fatal and Reuven Ruben exhibits, a shofar on my dresser that Zach asked me to bring him back, the ticket stub from Mayumana and the double CD collection of Meir Ariel that still on my desk. I've played Metropolin more than a few times since I ripped it into my itunes and transferred it to my ipod, or as Oren calls it "the new American passport." Last night Rachel and her cousin Shai who is here from Israel came to see me, it was nice to hear a "familiar" accent; last week she roped me into giving Shai some pointers on digital photography for a job opportunity he has to become a photographer in night clubs for a new website. I don't know if I was terribly helpful, other than providing him an idea of the kind of gear he'll need in order to pull this off. I wish him luck, I mean come on, besides an assassin for hire I think my other dream job would be national geographic photographer. It really is the same thing when you think about it, one requires you point and press a trigger to "steal souls", the other includes triggers too, one's just messier than the other, you know?

Is it nice being home? I don't know, I think it is. I've been happily united with my turn tables and find myself mixing little flips of three and four records at a time. Maybe they'll congeal into a nice 13-15 record set that I may even record, rather than leave in the air like a Zen rock garden to be plowed over when I open the window. The cat is out of the bag at the office; my boss sent out an email that I'm leaving the company. The response has been rather interesting. Thinking back on the last 11 years of my corporate life I've only left 1 other job willingly, read: not being laid off, and that departure was rather sudden due to circumstances having to do with my need in the new position "yesterday". This change feels like a slight shift in career path, I mean I'm staying in the industry, but I'm changing sides, like defecting from the KGB to the CIA. You have to excuse all these metaphors and allusions to intelligence, I just came back from the movies, I went to see "The Good Shepherd", and well, I thought it was excellent, slow, and not to everyone's taste. I suppose you have to have an inherent love for all that cold war intrigue and espionage that nearly ended the world. Then again, seems like having the "red scare" was far more, in hindsight, tolerable than the unknown enemies of today. At least we knew then from which direction the missiles would be coming. Has our world become more complicated? Or are we simply falling into a kind of solipsistic belief that our world is more complicated and everything is so much more important? Isn't this just a digital replay of the analog world to some degree? Eh, who knows...? I'm really not writing what I should be writing about.

How shall we begin? The basics? Israeli's are travelers. Living in a country the size of, oh um, I don't know, Rhode Island requires one to travel to keep a kind of claustrophobia at bay. However, within this tiny spit of holy land you have numerous climates, forests and deserts, hills, mountains, large bodies of water and the potential that any rock you kick might turn out to be a piece of the ark of the covenant or missing pieces of gospel or mosaic law. That's one of the things that I adore about that country, the possibilities. My mother is fond of saying "look what they built in just 60 years", yes, 58 years to be precise, that's how old the country is, but the land and the native populations are much older. Yet the similarity to the United States, the mixtures, are astounding. We like to think of ourselves as a melting pot, but I ask you, where in this country do you meet a waitress that is half Moroccan, half German and speaks 7 or 8 languages? I heard her screaming in the kitchen, or more like whining at a Russian cook in Russian. She spoke Hebrew to Erez and dropped a few words of German when I decided to exercise what little rust there is in my brain of my childhood language studies. Yeah, similar but different.

There are so many small "warmths" to remember from my trip, from the flowers that Michal brought me on my last night in Tel Aviv to the phone call from Rela on my first night in Jerusalem, consequently, if you're reading this Rela, do say hello, it's ok, the blog doesn't bite back, I promise. Although the weather didn't reflect the hospitality, it was ok, sometimes you need a contrast in order to fully appreciate where you are and what you have on hand. Like I said, other than prevent me from doing something insane like buying gear at Diezengoff mall and heading into the Negev backpacking, it didn't deter us too much. Speaking of which, when I say that Israelis love to travel, point and case: at the mall there are a pair of outdoor shops, smaller versions of our REI or Any Mountain, there was a class being held on traveling through south America. All the attendees were late teens to early 20s, I imagine fresh out of the Army or soon to be released, and ready for a little adventure, the broadening of their horizons and perhaps the necessary soul searching to decide what to do at the University upon their return. Frankly, I like this system much more, other than the bit about having to serve in the military, and even this I understand to a degree, the idea that at 18 one has to decide what they are to become seems a little strange. Here I am in my early 30s and still trying to decide what I'm to become by living between the two fires of my corporate existence and moonlighting in the academic world. Sometimes I wish one would widow me so I could fully embrace the other.

These are the memories I think I want to keep in my pocket, or maybe like a candy cane or a package of mints: kube soup in Jerusalem, the way that Shosh says "Aliya", Michal's laugh, listening to Irina call Erez a goat in Russian for waking her up and making her go to see Mayumana with me, the feeling of breathing air for the first time when you finally exit Yad Vashem, the color of the Mediterranean around Caesarea, the sunrise over the Dead Sea, Yoram's stories about San Francisco in the late 70's, Misha and Nella's panic room, Erez's fluidity and planning, the country western bar in the middle of nowhere but really near Ashdod, the B'hai temple at night, the fact that it snowed in Jerusalem the day I landed, Kippa man, the Yemmenite witch doctor, a Mitzrahi dance club, Israel's whiskey a-go-go, grilled haloumi sandwiches from Aroma, Nili's charming sarcasm and how she allowed me to smoke in her place whenever I was jonesing, the candles of the children's memorial, Guy's sense of humor and cinema knowledge, Shai's love for food and his attempts to describe Rachmo, Eilad's generosity for the aforementioned tickets, Itimar's stories of his first apartment with Erez complete with rats busses and psychotic lunatics, Yafo by night, the old city at night, cab drives with their free opinions and occasional historic tirades, the sun behind the olive columns at Rammat Rachel, floating floating and floating in salt, 2 hours of nearly clear skies without rain at Masada, labone with olive oil and zatar and even the shop keeper in the old city that said "all san franciscans are cheap" when I didn't want to see his shop and goods. Yeah, even he's an integral part of my memories.

I can't do it, I can't really say what I think about that place, I'm not done with it, that's for certain. I've always held this theory, and here you have to forgive me for being a romantic, I assure that I'm completely dead inside, my room mate in Russia for the last two years, the illustrious James Boobar, professor of heavy metal novel writing and Dostoyevsky, will attest to this fact. However, I've had this long standing belief that falling in love means that you are forever sacrificing an integral part of your heart, or soul, some small corner of you is no longer yours. Now you're not completely bereft of this morsel of being, no, it's just stained with another person. There is that smell, the smell of other people, hell at times, thank you Sartre, but this hell can be the most exhilarating sensation that starts in your nose, travels down to your mouth in tiny traces causing you to salivate. It then courses in vapors through your stomach where it twists with hunger even though you've just eaten. The particles now in your blood stream venture out at bullet train speeds into your appendages until you find your toes curling in your shoes, trying to grip the ground in case Newton was wrong. That stain that is the result of "other" may very well be possible in regard to "place". I know a part of me is forever wearing the dirty cobble stone streaks of three summers in St. Petersburg. Although my liver and my lungs cringe at the thought of spending another four weeks undergoing cruel and unusual punishment, the stain needs to remember where its odor comes from. Well I have a new stain, one that will probably need a "refresher". There are still so many parts of the country that I haven't seen and am dying to see: the Golan’s, the Galilee, the Negev, the Red Sea, Éclat, maybe I'll venture out into the Sinai if things simmer down a bit, or finally make it up to the temple mount and take that close-up of The Dome of The Rock. Whatever the case may be, I'll be back.

Ben asked me if I had done any writing while I was over there. Blogging as we all know is a way to avoid writing, or the kind of writing that we at times need to do. In my case the writing I refer to is editing, and specifically editing Not Us Not Them. It's sitting here on my desk, I dug it up, for the specific purpose of editing it. No Ben, I didn't write much, or not at least the kind of writing that translates into poetry or new material, but I think I helped myself find the need to go back in time and finish something I started.

Parting thoughts...

Last post before taxi arrives... next post will be from the good ol' u s of a... about The Dead Sea and what not... but for now... this...

It's time
off track
the business
of
security
trade-
ers
in the bone
white
sleight
of hand
what
peace
purchased
for
mind
if scorned
the price
traffiked
stood
guard
careful
vigil
in
disinterest
after all
what
noblesse
obliges
the mighty
to wall
keep
us all
outsid-
ers
to harm.

Art Museum
Tel Aviv
12.27.06

This is the olive column sculpture/statue/project at the kibutz, Rammat Rachel, or Rachel's Kibutz. It sits ontop of a hill on the edge of Jerusalem and an Arab village. From this place you can see a good chunk of that Judean desert. The trip to the columns happened thanks to a suggestion by Oren. He thought that I might dig the spot, I can't agree more, I mean I was in love up there. It was the first and only time I felt truly alone anywhere in Jerusalem. The city is shit! Yeah, I said it, the city is a pile of shitty stones that 2000 years of civilization have shat upon and created the mess that it is today. A bedouin cab driver might've said it the best: "the orthodox make the war, Arab and Jew." I think he might have a point, really, now don't get me wrong, I love Jerusalem, I really do, I mean I really enjoyed my time there and hanging out with Oren, but after today's drive through Maah Shaarim, the ultra orthodox neighborhood, I've decided fully, I hate them, I really do. Maah Shaarim is about as much a part of Jerusalem as Xanadu is a real place in the Coleridge's poem. It is an ugly ugly corner of the city where Ashkenaz Haceedes have settled and recreated a 200 year old Polish ghetto. There are signs over the arch ways that lead to the courtyards of these insular communities that forbid unmodestly dressed women from entering. The people within these walls do not serve in the army but demand the greatest protection. It seems like a bum rap for the average Israeli, if you ask me, who pays their stipends from the government for being holy and spending their days by the wall praying, not serving in the army, and having demonstrations, somewhat as potentially violent as across the line in that other Palestine, about the Meshiach, who according to prophecy will never arrive until there's a new temple. Well to build the temple on would have to obliterate Al Aqsa Mosque and the absolutely beautiful Dome of the Rock. Sounds like a plan no? Only the dome is the 2nd holiest site, behind Mecca, in all of Islam. Funny how it landed right here, in the middle of this mad mad city. It's a lovely city really, I mean dirty like any other major city, confused streets and what not, but lovely, except not. Let's think about this really... the rabinic movement, from what I've read in history, sprang up as a response to the destruction of the 2nd temple in 53 c.e. At this point the priesthood of ancient Jerusalem was effectively whiped out, thus new leaders were necessary and a group of "teachers" or rabbis took the reigns. This changed the fundamental face of Judaism. Another change came in the codification and preservation of commentary on the Torah in the form of the Mishna and Gemorah. This happened about 100 years after the destruction of the 2nd temple during an insurrection that left many of the Judeans dead in the wake of Roman reprisals. I've deviated from my original point, but if the Priesthood died and gave way to this new form of Judaism and heirarchy within, why the desire for the meshiach, he can't come unless there's a temple and a priesthood to welcome him as prophecy goes. This would end the rule of the Rabbis, wouldn't it? Or, do the Rabbi's become the new millenium's priests? Hm... I don't know, but I know that there'd be someone who would would stand to benefit from an all out war over the temple mount. That's for certain, cause that's the only way you get to build a new temple, is to get rid of what's there. Besides, what is the meshiach coming to deliver the jews from?

Ok, enough pontificating and back to my tales... so on my second visit to the wall, this was the next day after Oren took me of a night time tour of Jerusalem... I stopped and bought a kippa from Kippa Man, a shop, realy, I'm not lying, just down from Zion Square. He had a lovely selection, and I didn't care for the paper Kippa that kept falling off my head. So I figured I might as well add it to my walking kit of supplies that I'm going to refer to as my Jerusalem Survival Pack:

-Kippa or Yarmulke
-Pop out map of old city (know your quarters)
-Cigarettes & lighter (non child proof... yeah!)
-Coinage in the pocket
-Sense of direction
-Lonely Planet guide
-Camera and tripod
-Something to chew
-A sense of humor about these things
-Steinbeck, he reads well abroad.
-Warm Jacket, hat and scarf... just 'cause for the last one...

So as I approached the wall a bearded man sprang forth and said "Anglit? English?"

"yes, I speak english, do you speak russian?"

"No, hebrew and some anglish" smilling

he stuck out his hand and took hold of my slightly unwilling hand, the last time I gave my hand, a fat bearded man tied a red string to it and demanded money.

"blah blah blah (<---insert Hebrew prayer if at all here) Are you married?"

"No"

"well you should get married as soon as possible and have as many children as possible"

"Thanks, but I like where I am."

"Would you like to donate some money to the poor of Jerusalem?"

"No thanks, I'm a student, I'm poor." while wrenching my hand free of his grip and the eyes of his two pesa wearing children clustered around him. I glanced down at his shoes and noticed that they were some sort of dark Italian, and expensive something or other. He himself didn't have pesa, and the rest of his garb was, almost humble and even a little unkept, as if it was all sort of intentional. Yeah, it was at this point that my fascination with these quakers that will stone you for driving through their hood during shabat completely faded and became an active disdain.

Still, I truly didn't want this to deter me from enjoying what is otherwise an amazing city. The three most popular tourist attractions in Israel are Yad Va-Shem (holocaust memorial), the Wailing Wall and Masada (which I saw this morning.)



Now Yad Va-Shem is a truly amazing piece of memorium... I found it far more gripping and fascinating, and less disneylandish than the holocaust memorial in DC, I hate that one, avoid it at all costs. If you want to see something done well with both an impact and a sense of subteltey about it then go see the glass towers in Boston, those are lovely and poignant. However, Yad Va-shem... well even I felt a little weary in the heart by the end. The building is a giant triangle with rooms radiating off. You start at what is the beginning, a series of burned documents found on some victims, photos, remnants of their earthly life. From there you go back in time exploring historic examples and laws that formed the 20th century basis for anti-semitism, there are artifacts dating back to the medieval ages, and earlier, examples of laws that prevented Jews from holding office, barring them from living in certain places etc. etc.

The path of history weaves in and out of he main hall of the triangular building, the ceiling of which is a long piece of sectioned glass. As you weave left and right across the triangle, always advancing, you move rom the early 30s to 1938 and Kristallnacht, then the invasion of Poland, France and finally the all out war after Hitler decides he canfight the Russians in the East and the British and American's on the western front. You weave in and out of Warsaw and learn the history of the liquidation of the ghetto and the uprising which caught the Nazis off guard as Jewish rebels refused to go peacefully into that good night and fought in the ghetto until it was set on fire to root them out. From there it becomes ever more grizzly and you learn names that you never knew before, stories, video monitors present testimony, pictures drawn on 60 year old wax paper of ghostly figures standing in long lines of prison fatigues, already the walking dead, act as silent witness.

There's a model toward the end of the path, before the circular room of testimony, that Claude Lanzman used in his epic documentary, Shoah. I remember how well it was used in the film to demonstrate a kind of tragedy that can't be truly understood, or as Giorgia Agamben said, in Remnants of Auschwitz, to truly bear witness is to have perished in that place, so the witness isn't a true witness per say but a kind of leftover memory that hasn't come to the point of witness as it hasn't died. Death is the witness all others are survivors. Witness the act of survival, I suppose, that's a way you can look at it. Anyway, i don't want to talk about Agamben, he's problematic, but he came to mind when I began to think about Lanzman. There are snippets of Jan Karski's testimony in Shoah, he snuck into the Warsaw ghetto before its liquidation. He was working for the Polish government in exile as a courier and tried to warn people then of what was happening. He took a piece of that prison out with him hoping to rally sympathy that would turn into action, but that came too little too late for many...



You step outside and take flight. The image above is of the flight that you take, your spirit soars, perhaps in nothing more than sympathy, for the experience, and is liberated and perhaps rejoined with a lost relative/ancestor. The concrete walls of the complex become a kind of ramp from which you can fly and gaze out on the world outside. It's a really beautiful moment you can have there at the end, well planned I think.



The hall of names is a series of photographs over a hole in the ground, the circular room is surrounded by pages and pages of testimony from the survivors and their families. There are empty shelves, the book isn't closed per say, and there are stories to be collected about those that perished, stories about a civilization nearly destroyed and wiped out completely.

However, the one that really got me, was the children's memorial:



This one really cuts to the quick. You down a path and into a hallway that gets really dark really quick. Then into a room which is filled with candles and mirrors where you walk in a circle, as a voice reads the names of children killed in the holocaust in English and Hebrew. This one just sends chills up your spine, while the pseudo night of that room brings peace at the same time. It is a really moving and beautiful piece of work. Nothing can ever be enough for those that perished, and these things are really for the living, I'm not sure that they have a point at all, maybe Aeschylus said it best in his play, The Persians: "Death is long and without music."

New Year in Jerusalem was a mellow event. Oren and I met in the early evenning and travelled to Tanya's, class mates of his from the architecture program. We had some beer, some honey pepper vodka, a few cigarettes some laughs and then left to meet Sharon at the flat in Nachlot. From there it was off to this couple who live up the street for a quick l'cheim and a spot of Chocolate fondue and then off to Pacotek, a moving party, which was happening in some theatre. Well, we stood in line for about a half hour waiting to get in, to no avail. The party was effectively full and the door was shut. We rang in the new year in line, I called my folks, and we continued to wait. All of a sudden, something caused the entire crowd to turn around to the street behind us... a car came speeding by and someone from the window screamed "Allah Aqbar!!!!!" at full volume... this gave me an instant chill, but nothing came of it, just that moment, eh... I figure I have no room to complain or even express fear. I don't live here, and the tension that is in the air in Jerusalem is lived with by others on a day to day basis, so I don't feel quite right in saying it was a nervous moment, it was a moment that's not part of the quotidian as I know it. we left the line and took a cab back to down town and found a bar where we toasted the New Year, Oren got drunk off 1 beer and 1 chaser, yeah, shots are chasers, i know, it's completely backward, but Nili says this of the country all the time, so I'm ok with repeating it... so chasers are shots, and you chase your beer with the shot... wooooo....

Last day in Jerusalem was a blast and also the universe telling me it was time to go. The night before we tried to go eat Rachmo, it was closed, then we went to another place for the Kube soup, they had just served their last bowl... it was getting depressing this just out just closed thing... oh yeah, the Jerusalem mix place, up the street in Nachlot, relative died, family went to Greece, denied again... I might've mentioned this below, I can't remember now. So The museum, the National Museum in Jeruslame, with the dead sea scrolls, yeah, that was closed for the morning when I arrived. So I packed it up, after calling Oren and telling him G-d wants me out of Jerusalem, and headed to the gate at the Western Wall, I walked down the road into east Jerusalem and down to the garden of Gesthemene with the thousand plus year old olive trees, gorgeous I tell you, gorgeous... they'll be up shortly, so check back for infra red pics.

The church in Gesthemene was having mass so I stood around for a bit and watched it... Too many people were coming in and out to setup the tripod and take a picture, its not an old church, rather new actually, there's a Russian orthodox one above it up the slope of the mount of olives with golden domes, quite lovely and just on the other side of the road from the garden and the ancient olive trees, supposedly bearing witness to Jesus, (consequently, did you know that Olive trees can live forever? they only way to kill them is to uproot them and burn their roots, otherwise they're kind of like turtles... well, sorta, or redwoods, there, more like redwoods... giant ones) there's a grotto and sepulchre which is where Mary is supposed to have died, now we all know that she's burried in paris at the Louvre, the Da Vinci code told us as much... right? It too is a lovely place to walk down and pics are coming as soon as I have time to work on them....

Oh but realy quickly, on my last day, this was after the shlep to the olive trees etc... I went to the Shook, market, with Oren and Sharon, we made the Rachmo place, fantastic... and then they too me to see this Yemenite, the local witch doctor. People come with all kinds of problems, he gives them village remedies. He makes a kind of juice of herbs and roots, it's interesting stuff, can't say its great, but its not bad. He asked to see my hands when I came up to him, then he started putting stuff on them... he must've sensed I hate lotion... cause he made me put it on... and the smell of his home made lotion lasted with me all day long, not terrible, but not my favorite scent in the world... still, he was an amazing guy, you could just tell, there was something about him... realy.

I think I'm going to end this here, and tell the rest of the tale, which includes a soak in the Dead Sea and a trip up to Masada, another day, fingers are tired and I want to relax a bit before we head out to see a show tonight: the Israeli version of stomp... May Umana...

Back in the 'viv

I came back to Tel Aviv this afternoon and set around to upload more pictures to Flickr. Jerusalem is a not to distant memory at the moment. I have to start this by saying a very big toda, spacebo, swadi kap, danke, mili grazi, mahalo, gracias and THANK YOU to Oren and Sharon for putting me up for the last three nights at their extraordinarily charming Nachlot loft. It was intimate and cozy, but it offered me a centrally located base camp from which to explore Jerusalem. I think though, yeah, I'm quite positive, that Jerusalem didn't want me there for some reason. Here are several examples of why I think this: the jerusalem mix restaurant, aunt died and they closed to go to greece for the funeral, National Museum of Israel was closed, just this morning, it rained for the first two days I was there, we tried to eat Kube soup yesterday, restaurant ran out as we arrived, we trid to get into Pacotek for NYE, we waited for a half hour and they stopped letting people in, when we finally made it to "rachmo" they ran out of the white kube soup, basically, the way I can express this is that it was a series of unfortunate events and near misses, but you know, all in all, it was still an amazing time. Saying that I scratched the surface of Jerusalem would be a lie, I think I would need a week in that city to do that, however, I do feel as though, from the standpoint of culinary ecstacy, I didn't do all that bad. I'll get to that a bit later. There are a number of stories that must be related, but I'm genuinely tired... actually a little exhausted. I plan to set aside time tomorrow morning to write at the cafe, and or from here before gong to breakfast. I'll spill some beans, some thoughts and those darling little observations that are still sticking in my brain, in the mean time you should go and see the photos from Netanya of my family, Haifa of erez's family and Caesarea, an ancient Roman port built during the time of Herod.

There'll be more pictures and posts come the morrow... leila tov.

Twas the night before new year...

I've been in Jerusalem for 24 hours or so... i went to the old city twice, once last night and once today... i can tell you that visiting the wall at night is absolutely, besides friday, the best time to see it as you avoid all the shit bags that come shake your hand, ask you if you're married, say a blessing for your well being and then ask for money, without having released your hands. they ask out of the goodness of their bearded pesa wearing hearts and if you look at their italian leather shoes your heart will melt with sorrow and compassion for these men of the wall, roaming for the goodness of jerusalem's poor. yeah... poor my ass... the old city during the day really irritated me. it was good to see the muslim quarter alive, its very lively there, dirty, bustling, crazy, noisey, but the liveliness was welcome. the difference between the jewish and muslim quarters is stunning, you will notice the poverty in the latter immediately. you definately feel off walking around there, but the food in the muslim quarter is amazing... absolutely amazing, had this dish made with goat chese, fried and in a sweet sauce with pistachio, definite artery clogger, but i could've eaten several orders of it and still wanted more. the dish is syrian, i hear the lebonese make the same thing, but its completely different from this syrian version we had. if you're wondering why my typing seems a little off its because i'm on oren's keyboard which is a bit funky, it has the slash key in a strange place and rather than struggle with caps, it's easier for me to barrel through this without... and here i must give a nod to my good friend grady_love a.k.a. john, he took me to the airport, the good irish man that he is... and he never capitlizes anything so i'll attribute my lack of caps to this trail blazer.

there are so many stories and observations i'd like to write down but time is nigh, oren just popped out of the shower and the night calls. the phone has been ringing off the hook with invitations for parties and celebrations to mark the new year. i do believe we're heading to someone's house first and then a club, an underground party, old school really, directions are kept secret until it happens... ilya, do you remember the good old days of raving in frisco with map points and crazy drives into the muir woods looking for the secret grove filled with satyrs and nymphs engaging in a bachic rite? well, maybe that's going a bit far, but it sounds like a hoot... so updates about my trip to caesaria, haifa, netanya and the bizarre place that is jerusalem will have to wait until, perhaps, i get back to tel aviv on tuesday and back onto erez's wireless where i have oodles of photos to upload... in the mean time.. l'shana tova... may old blah blah be forgot as the song goes... peace and brotherhood to all... and to all a good night...

health, wealth and happiness (in any order you wish)...

liebe,
-L

p.s. mom, the red string thing is a total scam... complete and utter, pisses me off like nothing else... not bringing them back, i'm morally opposed to them at this point. the money is collected by the ultra orthodox, for who, the needy, the poor? last i checked those fur hats and long silk coats aren't cheap... i refuse to contribute to the ones that refuse to serve in the army and seem more a blight than a blessing... and where in the bible does it say to wear a red string as a sign of a blessing, hm? no red strings for you... love ya ma!

Trade-offs

Spiderman constantly grapples with his Uncle Ben's dying words: "with great power comes great responsibility." I kind of feel the same way: "with a short trip comes constant trade-offs regarding what to do and what to see." These are the politics of dancing, metaphorically speaking, while on the road. As for physical dance, there's been a bit of that too, but we'll get there yet.

I suppose I have to back up here, a number of days at that, as I've not been in Tel Aviv (means: Hill of Spring). The story starts with my walk/exploration of the Tel Aviv from the center of the city heading south along King George V street a few days back. I got it into my head that I really wanted to see the waters of the med. The last time I saw them, I think, I was four years old and we were emigrating from Russia with a stop in Ladispole, Italia. Or maybe, the last time my skin actually felt the waters of the med it was in the form of the black sea when I was about the same age. That goofy picture of me knee deep in black sea relaxating... yeah, I think that's probably more accurate.

King George st. is a hodge podge of clothing stores that range from trendy to fetish. There's a sense that you're walking down Telegraph ave in Berkeley and heading for the great unknown, which in this case is the Yemmenite quarter. One reaches King George st. from Ibn Gvirol just after Rabin Square. Its actually a lovely walk, I wish I had taken it a little slower and explored more of the shops. When I started the day I had been dead set on seeing the markets and bazars of the Yemmenite quarter, but that changed as I went along... anyway I'm digressing as I just woke up and should probably go shower, except for the fact it's 1 in the afternoon and I'm loathe to move off this couch.

After a number of blocks along King George, one reaches the market at the intersection of five streets. The stalls of the market jut out from both sides of the street and crowd the space some like some tropical rain forest. The canopies above the stalls quite thoroughly blot out the sun providing shelter for shoppers during less favorable seasons, like the two main ones, hot and cold. The first few blocks are tend to be kitch stalls selling fake bling and clothing. I saw another market, the Carmel market, a few blocks before reaching the narrow streets of the quarter that sold clothing, but the clothing stalls with their authentic armani replicas appeared as I pressed on through the thick swell of humanity haggling in at least 3 languages. Clothing gives way to food and the mountains of fresh produce where cantors are screaming "banann" which is very much "banana" but the guy screaming is Israeli and trying to pronounce it in the Russian: "ananas" and so it goes on and on. Some are more sullen, they almost seem like prisoners surrounded on three sides by the commodities of their existence, like the man who was manning the sweets, giant trays of backlava, birds nests and other delicacies of honey with pistachio accents. I don't know why, there were others near him, but I chose to buy from him knowing that of all the sellers he probably was the least likely to speak any English. Go figure... go figure I tell you.

There was one stall, which if I had a real kitchen here, I would've spent a fortune at:



The bins on the left are filled with mixtures of rice and spices. The proprieter of the stall grabbed a scooper and filled it with goodness and shoved it right under my nose for my to smell it, damn him and his wily mercantile ways. A few stalls down I saw an aluminum table and fish, fresh from a bucket or tank of water, tossed onto the mortician's slab flopping around gasping for air. It doesn't get much fresher than that. They looked pained, their mouths sucking air instead of water. I walked over to take their photo. The fish monger shook an angry finger at me and his head in tempo with his disdain for me and my western ways. Sorry folks, no dying fish pics, but I swear I saw a great composition on that table, slightly morbid but great nonetheless.

I kept on walking until I stopped at a small line. A man on a raised dais was squeecing pomegranates in a large sturdy press. Along with the sweet red pits he would blend in orange or carrot juice, or the juice of any other fleshy fruit he had in a glass counter. I opted for a pom and orange mixture, fresh squeezed there in front of me. This was truly a pleasure, I highly recommend you try it, in whatever country you may be. Bottled Pom is nice, but as you can imagine, there's nothing quite like fresh squeezed and this goes doulbe and triple true when walking through such a market.

The end of the stalls were near at this point, quite near. I steppd out of the mess. There was a large parking lot to the right with more stalls on the left heading west toward the Sea. I parked myself against a wall smoking a cigarette while changing out my lenses. There was a man selling flowers at the very end of the row of stalls. He had these tightly wrapped bouquets of roses, very small buds, I wanted to take a macro of the colorful collections. I switched out for my old macro lens, walked up and he gave me that waving finger back and forth. I really wanted to go right ahead and take the photo anyway to spite him. I don't understand this, I really don't, but if you keep me from taking this photo, what chance do you think you have of me actually buying some of your wares? Hm? Seems like bad business sense, but then again what the hell do I actually know, I'm just a westerner, "these are not the droids you're looking for."

The Med was just a few blocks down from here, I could smell salt in the air, it could've been from some barrel of pickled herring, which I had passed just a few stalls before the the flower man and his verboten finger, but no, this was the sea. I gave Erez a call to find out what the neighborhood was like in this part of town... Yes, paranoid as always, I mean I had thousands of dollars of camera gear on me and, well, I'd like to come with it... er... um... something... If New York is "The Big Apple" then Tel Aviv is "The Little Apple" as they call it, and all apples have a rotten worm hole here and there, so it's probably wise to take some basic precautions.

I hoofed it across the sea-side road. To the North of me were large hotels which do booming business in the summer with travelers that come far and wide to enjoy the sand and surf of those waters. Some kind of current must've kicked up the silt near the beach as the water was quite brown... a little dissapointing as I was expecting blue blue and maybe some more blue along with turquoise pools of glittering midertaneanism... not so, I saw that later. To the south of me was a finger of land that jutted out into the water. I began to walk along the beach stopping for the occasional picture project. The blasted remnants of the old walls of the Gidi museum presnted themselves as a fascinating attraction. The broken stones had an inner core of steel and glass that wore the skin of the past as decoration/commemoration. I walked inside, openned my bag, confirmed that I didn't have a gun, and then began to read the placards of how a handful of troops took old Yaffo, "old Tel Aviv" and the resistance in 1947/48 before the formation of the state. There was a bit to read, but as far as exhibits, not too too much, other than old sten guns, thompsons mortars and rockets now quite defunct and impotent in their glass cases. I asked the girl working the counter, a pretty sandy blonde in fatigues if she had ever been to Yaffo, as it's a stone's throw from the Gidi house, she said, no but I hear it's quite nice. I marvelled at this statement, when a country is this small, you figure you'd go everywhere, but I don't have room to talk as I'm constantly finding new nooks and places to eat in San Francisco, but still, this isn't a nook Yaffo, this is a sizeable chunk of history.



From here it was furhter south along the coast and to the hill of Yaffo. The rest of the afternoon I can only describe as near misses. There's a syrian synagogue on the grounds, along with orthodox churches and several mosques and a center for memorizing the Qu'ran. Yaffo is a remnant of what can be described as the relative peace and harmony pre-zionism, that existed before the state. The walls and steps of the tell date back to before Jesus. This was an ancient port City and the name of Jaffa or Yafo is attributed to Noah's son Japheth who legend has built the city... there's more of such claims and history on Wikipedia if you're so inclined. I wandered around through the narrows and straights of the rising and falling stone corridors exploring the small galleries and artists shops. It really is quite a charming experience to be in a place like this. I bent down to scratch a small cat that wound up following me around as I followed the ancient sea wall, with its collar of razor wire around and back up the hill to a small shop with sketches and old roman coins that were retasked as jewelery with their certificates of authentecity from the Israeli Archaeological society.



Ok, I'm going to have to cut this short... I have a half naked Israeli standing here telling me I have one minute to go into the shower or I will be shot, as we didn't wake up till 1 this afternoon and its time for food and to visit with people while there's still a spot of daylight.

Shalom for now...

Time's catching up...

I think I'm running out of steam for the day. I woke up early as I said, left the house with Erez and had breakfast, then made my way to a mobile phone shop and bought a sim for my Razr so that I have a local number here in Tel Aviv. After that I went and read Cannery Row at Cafe Hillel. Michal, Erez's sister lives kitty corner from the cafe so she met me on her way to the gym. We sat and talked for a bit and then she walked me to a street that she said was a good short cut to to Shaul Hamelech st. (King Saul st.) and the Art Museum of Tel Aviv. I spent several hours walking around the permanent and temporary exhibits. The museum houses a wonderful collection of post impressionism work including a couple very well known pieces by George Braque, a couple lovely Kandinsky's, Picasso, Klimt, Mondrion, Chagal and others from that time. There was a large exhibit of called DREAMLAND: REUVEN RUBIN AND THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE LAND OF ISRAEL IN HIS PAINTINGS OF THE 1920S AND 1930S ...



Another temporary exhibit was a collection of pieces entitled Femme Fatale that featured prints by Beardsly, several pieces by Munsch and others. Every piece was somehow tied to the concept of the dangerous woman. The exhibit ranged in age from 16th century paintings to a film poster from the 50's.

This is the museum's write up on the exhibit...

The term “femme fatale” – literally, disastrous (or fatal) woman – connotes a woman who uses her power of attraction to lure men into dangerous, even fateful, situations. The theme involves familiar aspects: seduction, passion, mystery, violence and dark secrets. The Old and New Testaments provide several prominent examples: Delilah, Judith, Salomé. Greek mythology too describes destructive women such as Pandora, Medea, Medusa, and the Sirens. All of these served as inspiration for many artworks of great importance. Represented in the exhibition are artists from the 15th through the early 20th century, among them Lucas Cranach, Rembrandt, Francisco Goya, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Aubrey Beardsley, Maurycy Gottlieb, and Edvard Munch. These artists depicted a wide range of types, from the fragile, pale, seemingly helpless woman through the dauntless heroine to the woman vampire, bat, spider, and so on. The spectrum of situations they depicted ranged between the tragic, the heroic, and the melodramatic. The exhibition includes, among others, oil paintings, sculptures, graphic works, and Judaica.



I think I'm going to go sack out for a bit... I had something else I wanted to write, but I'm honestly beat...

Shalom, bo'ker tov

If yesterday was wet, today it's biblical. I woke up shortly before 7 this morning to the sound of thunder and wind. The rain on the window was pleasant enough, but someone sure took the lid of the holliest of hollies, as the sound of the weather was straight out of Indiana Jones.

The order of the day will be getting a chip for my phone, taking advantage of that GSM thing we all love and don't get to exercise, not fully, back home. Then I'll hunker down in a cafe and write a bit... the weather is just too crappy to go walking around taking pictures.

Michal and the girl we met last night, I can't remember her name, I didn't drink that much zubrovka... Shanee, that's it... they're both off today, Erez told me to call Michal once I obtained a sim card... he should be getting up soon so we can go to breakfast before he heads off to the office.

Funny thing 'bout that Zubrovka, I had to order it, I mean I was watching the 1946 version of The Razor's Edge with Tyrone Power, something I rippeed onto my Ipod before I hit the road. Elliot Templeton has this wonderful line where he says "ah, zubrovka, it's like listening to music by moonlight", guess I wanted to see the moon last night.

So here's my first feeling/observatio... Hebrew, the written language, the sign, it has a slightly new referrant here than back home. What I mean by this is that when I see Hebrew on the door of a kosher restaurant, or while walking up and down Devon st. in Chicago, when I see that back home there's a part of my brain that is aware or thinks of it as a form of exclusivity. This is "Jewish" this isn't, or that it's definitely something other than main stream the same way a "House of Saris" on Devon is something other than Bed Bath & Beyond in a strip mall in the burbs. The script bring with it a whole host of baggage back home, I'm aware that it is something more to me, or should be, than to a gentile walking down the street. Here, a sign is just a sign, and the holy script of fire is nothing more than advertising at times. There is a kind of demystification that happens from over saturation, a death of the word, or maybe the script, or maybe just my attitude toward the script. I'm aware that people here live their lives rather differently than we do back home. For instance, the weekend is not Saturday/Sunday, no, it's Friday/Saturday, so that one can spend Friday day preparing for the shabat and resting on Saturday before the start of the week on Sunday. Thursday night is the equivalent of Friday night. These small prescriptions are biblical, they're a necessary part and identity of living Cana'an. I, in all of my reformist and more than often, irreverent ways am some what of an outsider here, well naturally the language barrier, but it doesn't matter, Hebrew, or so the joke goes, is Israel's second language, the concentration of Russians is growing. I spoke Russian to the Falafel chef last night... but more so than that, there is a sense that here all Jews are welcome, regardless of how irreverent you may find yourself... as they are too... and there's no mystery to the signs on the door or the smells that emanate from them... I like the fact its just a sign here... I really do...

Passport control and me...

I think it's the almighty trying to send me a message: "you and passports just don't mix." Yeah, I think that's the message, really, it seems to be my lot. Before I get to the details of my recent woes I'll tell you about the trip... misery friends, misery. I started, well truthfully, I never went to bed the night before I left. Had those pre-flight jitters, over active brain etc. etc. I left the house shortly after 5 in the morning and headed to the Oakland airport where I caught a JetBlue flight to NYC. The trip was mostly uneventful. I passed out before the plane finished boarding. I must've slept a good 3 hours of the flight to JFK. The couple next to me was traveling with a small dog in a carrier under the seat. This was the most patient crated animal I've seen since the guy I met in '03 that was bringing a St. Petersburg short hair cat back to the states.

NYC was gloomy and wet, not a white christmas at all. The lines in the international terminal were long and obnoxious, or so I thought. The actual international desk was surprisingly free of lines, you just had to know where it was, hidden, behind long thick swathes of human holiday desperation. Checked the bags and settled down at a pub for a beer and the most pathetic chicken club I've had in years. I've heard of limp pickles, the kind that are like rubber, but this entire sandwich looked and ate like it was a microwave sensation.

The plane from NYC to Milan, Malpensa, was delayed by a nearly an hour. I had a 2 hour window to catch my connection to Tel Aviv. Sometime between checking in and dinner I managed to loose my itinerary. The Delta desk at NYC didn't check me through to Tel Aviv, only to Milan. I was without a ticket and without the flight number that would help me find the gate when I reached the terminal at Malpensa. I called home and Lu was kind and generous enough to log into my email account and get me my flight number. Finally we boarded the plane and I was blessed with a quiet and completly unobtrusive Italian woman on her way back from Holiday. We spoke a bit at the beginning, but her English wasn't great and one of us fell asleep first. I can't remember which, but I'm certain we both needed the sleep.

At some point during the night I was awake and decided to take advantage of my new toy, video ipod, so I threw on The Razor's Edge and enjoyed my tiny little screen, illuminating the darkened plane of comatose travelers. The flight arrived in Milan about an hour late as predicted. The time was 11 in the morning and the Delta rep, with her incredibly sultry Italian accent, said "Run!" when I asked "El Al? 382?"

I didn't exactly run, but my pace was brisk as I found my way by following the Transiti signs to terminal 3 gate 5. Francesco was working the desk and I came straight up. He was expecting our flight, knowing that we were delayed in NYC, there were 15 of us that were transferring here, Israel bound. "Can I register here?" "Uh, yes, but I can not issue you de ticket until you pass security control."

This is where the fun begins. A slightly sloppily dressed man in a dark suit with a radio routed through his sleeve appeared. He had a short crew cut and spoke Italian, Hebrew and English, at least. His English wasn't stellar, but it was good enough to get the point across. He gathered unto him all Israeli passport holders and did his business. Then he called for Foreign passport holders, I was at the head of the line having arrived first.

"So... first time in Israel?"

"Yes"

"What is your purpose for visiting?"

"Holiday."

"Do you hav family der?"

"yes, in Netanya."

"what's taken you so long to come here?"

"I have a very busy life back home."

"You really don't speak hebrew? Shneyder, you speak hebrew yes?"

"No, English or Russian... do you speak Russian?"

"no, you have another passport, yes?" (as he pointed to the country of my birth, in my passport, Uzbekistan)

"no, I'm not an Uzbeki citizen."

"but you're a Russian citizen."

"no, I'm only an American citizen."

"Are you involved with any Jewish organizations?"

"The JCC?"

"Do you observe holidays?"

"the high holidays"

"like what?"

"yom kipur, pesach"

"and those happen when?"

This is when I wanted to unload on this man... first of all we don't follow the Hebrew calendar, so the dates are irrelevant. "usually around april or may for pesach..." and I bit my tongue at this point.

"well I can't give you your ticket, or let you inspect your luggage, until my kapo (I didn't think this was a Hebrew word for boss... have to check with Erez, gave me chills hearing it) can call your family in Netanya and confirm you are invited.

(did I mention that you have to check your luggage with a security official as it was in transit and out of your purview while enroute to Milan? Yes, this means you go to the tarmack, identify your suitcase, open it, rifle through it a bit and confirm that nothing, like a cigarette sized pack of explosives were slipped into it while you weren't looking.)

"I'm not staying with them, I'm staying with my friend in Tel Aviv. can you call him?"

"I can't, my kapo must, how do you know this friend?"

"we were pen pals"

"?"

So I stood around now, watching my passport as it lay on a table and this poor sod doing six things at once, sometimes double fisted with walkie talkie and cell phone at once. He became tired of me starring at him and my passport and handed it back to me thinking i'd be more comfortable, which I was, with it in my hand. I still didn't have my ticket though. He came over to me, as I never let him get more than 10 ft. from me, boarding had started "no problem, don't worry, you have a place on this plane, today..." to which I responded, "great, I'm not worried, can I have my ticket" and he said "no first we have to call your family." and I said "well you have their number," apologetically, half heartedly, "no we're waiting..."

This went on, as the plane slowly boarded. I kept thinking shit, this is one of those small deals with limited over head storage and I've a backpack filled with camera gear, laptop and other sundry electronics, no way will Iallow them to check it. Another thought kept bouncing around my head, my luggage is sitting on the tarmack, if this monkey fascist doesn't let me on this plane, I'm completely screwed and will be sans suitcase and holiday. I moved myself over by the ticket desk. Francesco was the only sympathetic individual around. He inquired on my behalf once, but was cut short in italian, at least it sounded that way.

As the boarding continued something humorous happened, well at least I found it humorous. From out the jetway came a host of heavily armed Polizi, I mean these boys had sub machine guns, side arms, spiffy vests with what looked lik a full compliment of ammunition and grenades, knives and all kinds of badges. They strolled out and positioned themselves on either side of the El Al and Air Dubai counters. My first thought was: "is this going to be some kind of jew/arab rumble in Milan?" Is that why they're here? Then I couldn't help but notice that each and every single one of these polizi were incredibly handsome men. When confronted with the sad sorry state of overweight doughnut holes in uniforms on the job at home, these boys looked like they were plucked straight from the pages of prada. They were done up to the nines with gelled out hair, trendy cuts, that messy metro thing that's taken the world. They were so handsome in fact that you wondered if they even knew how to fire those things around their necks, or if they were some kind of poster children for the carbineri. Just one of those odd things I notice when completely sleep deprived and heading into my third pressurization.

The plane at this point was halfway loaded with passengers. My dark haired friend came over, there was now a mother and her two daughters standing about awaiting this inspection, they at least had their tickets. He came over, whipped out his cell phone, and called my mom's cousin, Misha, in Netanya, as his kapo never showed up. I've no clue what the two men had to say to one another, I'll find out tomorrow when I get a sim chip for my phone and call Misha, but he laughed a bit, so I figured that was a good sign. He walked me to the ticket counter, fished out my printed ticket and then cut me ahead of the line, down the jetway and outside where I was met by a young versace wearing Israeli that had me identify my suitcase and go through the elaborate procedure I described above. When we finished another man walked me back up to the jeway and I double timed it around some people to the plane's door. I managed to store my stuff, and was sat next to an Italian couple, we were all too big for the seats and I was stuck with an aisle, could've been worse, it could've been the middle seat. The flight from Milan to Tel Aviv is 3 1/2 hours, still about 3 hours too long if you ask me. The plane's cabin was filled with a bizarre group of nuns, religious looking older folks, russians Israeli families. Mostly though, it was the retirees, they walked and talked with a sense of entitlement that drove me a little nuts. There was the woman on the cell phone speaking in Hebrew and yelling at the top of her lungs, the man across the aisle from me brushed off food and it hit me, and he took no note of it until I made a brushing motion with my hand to get it off me, there was the man that walked up and down the aisle seemingly blessing everyone as he went and winking at the nuns. No, this wasn't all in my less than lucid imagination, it was real, I was there, it happened.

So after another 3 1/2 miserable hours we arrived in Ben Gurion, a total travel time of 17 hours in the plane, not including boarding and deplanning, 5 or 6 hours of transits, transfers and waiting... makes for a rather long day. No, I didnt' go to bed, we went out and had falafel, then met Shanee, a friend of Erez's sister who livs up the street, at a bar across from the spot where Yitzakh Rabin was assassinated, the brasserie restaurant, lovely spot really. The falafel shop was fantastic, they had actualy closed the shutters as we were walking up to it, but erez did some fast talking and got us inside where we were the last order of the night and the hummus was fried up fresh just for us.

Its pouring right now, I mean really coming down. I'm exhausted, yes, thoroughly done or the day, so I'm going to bid you laila-tov and say... stay tuned! more to come...

Ciao!

Adieu James Brown.... Adieu

The godfather is dead, all hail the king of soul...

T - 11 1/2 hours and counting....

I felt it...

T minus 4 days

HDR Imaginnings

So what is HDR? HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and is a technique used to create eye popping, jaw splitting timages that take in more of the color spectrum than what a single exposure can capture. Cameras aren't quite like the human occulas, our eyes adjust to different gradations of light and record the entire scene. When you see those brilliant sunsets you are seeing multiple levels of exposure while a camera can catch a single exposure at such and such fstop/time. HDR is a way of create images from multiple exposures of a single scene so that you can convey more color, more depth and more of the gradients that a camera might miss when shooting something that is the product of single exposure. I took some of the raw files from my trip in Russia and applied some Ton Mapping filters to them. I didn't have the necessary triplicate exposures to create even more surreal HDR images from them, but its possible to do it with .RAW files. The improvement is noticeable if you look... in addition I did little experiment using a single light source, my windows and a sliver of my living room to play with some of the HDR tools and the triple exposure, +2/0/-2 EV, that's up there too... so if you want to see what HDR can do, click on the image below...

T-minus 7 days...

Moscow...

The complete set of pictures, finally, after like forever, I finished scanning that last roll of film from Moscow that includes a few shots of the interior of St. Basil's in Red Square, the very recognizeable and bright symbol of Russia, an Orthodox onion domed church. So you should go look at them... now... as it took me forever... to finish....

This is a trend methinks...

Cause its my last class today....