Jeremy

Jeremy
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

And here is Jeremy astride the old city like a conquistador.

old city ramparts 4

old city ramparts 4
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

This is a view from the ramparts - the dome of the rock but also antennas, laundry, satellite dishes, the mundane mixed up holiness of the old city.

old city from the ramparts 3

old city from the ramparts 3
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

Me and Jeremy walked on the ramparts yesterday morning. It is an incredible walk - history and religion and aesthetics and voyeurism all at once. This view of the rooftops makes me think of the very end of Speak Memory, when Nabokov sees the city as an optical puzzle. In the distance, those grey domes belong to the church of the holy sepulcher.

grafitti wall jerusalem

grafitti wall jerusalem
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

And here is the security wall and all its multilingual graffitti. It is such an ugly thing - even from the glorious promenade you can see it, snaking across the landscape. For all it may or may not have done to improve security inside Israel, it has divided people from their work and their families - Jeremy said the hope and flowers school in bethlehem, devoted to co-existence and teaching values of peace, has seen its enrollment drop to a quarter of what it once was because the wall has made it so difficult for so many former students to get there. Samar said when the wall was built here (where the photograph is taken) the Arab residents of the neighborhood on the Jerusalem side were happy because their property values went up - until then, they'd been considered not inside Israel since their neighborhood was outside the 67 borders but the wall has redrawn the borders in some flagrant ways.

niqab

niqab
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

I took this picture a few days ago in East Jerusalem. It is another city there - you can see the mountain of garbage behind this woman. Parts of the city are glittering and glorious and parts are squalid and run-down. Even the roads are haphazard and unsafe. I saw this woman standing on a corner in her niqab and a ten minutes later when we turned around she was stilling standing in that same spot. Waiting for someone, maybe? Waiting for something? In Arabic class our teacher taught us a saying that means basically never - "Tomorrow, in Apricot season." Because apricot season is so fleeting. In apricot season, I'll know what this woman is thinking in her niqab on this hot corner of East Jerusalem.

lev haircut

lev haircut
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

I took Lev for a haircut despite my hesitance, because he had started complaining that his hair got in his eyes. I keep looking at him - he looks older, but younger somehow too, because he looks so new. Jeremy thinks he looks more like Benjamin now.

view office window

view office window
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

I have an office - finally - shared with two colleagues I have not met. There is an old computer that doesn't work and two desks and a lot of good books that don't belong to me. Someone has left tea and coffeee and a kettle on a shelf and someone else has put up printouts of poetry on the wall. Oh and there is the window and this view. Unreal.

leaves

leaves
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

Fall in Jerusalem, though today it must have been eighty degrees. I smelled woodsmoke walking home this evening. I took this picture in the botanic gardens at the University. Not much is blooming right now, but the trees are lovely and loud with birds crashing through the leaves.

lev

lev
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

I spent the morning with Lev - so I have all these portraits. And all the children at the daycare are, of course, lovely, but they're not my lovely.

lev

lev
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

lev

lev
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

lev

lev
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

lev

lev
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

ymca jerusalem

ymca jerusalem
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

They had a parent's day at the YMCA this morning. We went swimming - Lev clung to me like seaweed, but at least he went into the pool - he tends to sit on the side while all the other children swim. Then we went to the class and had breakfast. Lidal cooked fresh pitas and zatar right there on a portable electric griddle, and we had feta and cucumbers and humus as well - a proper Israeli breakfast. Then we went to their outdoor playspace (photo) and came back inside for arts and crafts - we decorated olive jars, filled them with the olives the kids had picked in beit safafa (crushed slightly and mixed with fresh lemon juice, hot peppers, cut lemon pieces and salt water - it's in our pantry marinating now). We also made pictures of olive trees and sculpted clay jars with wicks inside for candles. Olive season here is almost over, and now it is finally visibly Fall - the courtyard here is filled with leaves. I am wondering what winter will look like.

lev

lev
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

This expression means incredulous and delighted - he only wears this face when he's watching someone else be naughty, or thinking about being naughty himself.

lev and rickie

lev and rickie
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

Lev and Rickie climbing on the sculpture near Yemin Moshe. Sunspots. The sculpture is part vulva, part inner ear (Derrida would say invaginated), and has these cunning steps that can be climbed and a slippery slope to slide down. Only a matter of time before someone loses a tooth.

judean hills and pipe

judean hills and pipe
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

tu-tu

tu-tu
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

This is my friend Samar's little girl, on the land near her house. Her family has lived in the hills of North Jerusalem for hundreds of years, and there are groves of olive trees, fig and lemon. She said, you'd never see anyone walking this way in the summer because there are snakes that jump on you and try to strangle you! I still am not sure if she was joking.

green shutters blue sky

green shutters blue sky
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

The shutters here are so lovely, ice cream colors. This is a building on an otherwise decrepit section of Jaffa. The whole street's been torn up for a new light rail system, which new mayor-elect has just announced may be cancelled. Cutting his losses...and I'm sure the people who've been stuck in traffic for five years will be thrilled.

ben and lev

ben and lev
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

And here is a dirty secret. The easiest way for me to get unselfconscious pictures of those boys is to shoot them watching TV.

ben's haircut

ben's haircut
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

So we finally got his hair cut. ALL his hairs.

lev and tongue

lev and tongue
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

These pictures represent Lev's daily cycle - manic to sulky to giddy to asleep.

lev sulky

lev sulky
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

lev giddy

lev giddy
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

lev asleep

lev asleep
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

olive picking beit safafa

olive picking beit safafa
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

Lev's daycare group went to visit one of his teacher's today in her home in beit safafa and they picked olives off the trees around her building. They have been learning about olive trees in class. The season is almost over but for the last few weeks we've seen people all around the city harvesting the trees that grow in parks and along the streets. Now the lemons are coming into season. Lidal was a lovely host and made rolls with zatar and some kind of salty cheese.

ben

ben
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

Benjamin, very overdue for a haircut. Not as overdue as Lev....nonetheless.

ben

ben
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

We haven't done much for the last week, since the boys have been trading off illnesses - beginning with lev's stomach flu, going on to Benjamin's mysterious tummy-ache, trading back to Lev's cough and fever, returning to Ben's stomach flu. Now they both share a cough and big circles under their eyes. Not much to do except make funny faces.

porush and bull

porush and bull
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

Jerusalem elections tomorrow. The choice is between the ultra-orthodox Porush, whose cartoon profile you can see on this banner (I'm waving and smiling and two dimensional! I can't possibly threaten your way of life!) and the billionaire and arms dealer Arkady (my boys call him the super villain, because he looks like a Bond character, cold war era) and the smooth-shaven, kippa-less and right-wing Nir Barkat. No school tomorrow so everyone can exercise their right to vote for the lesser evil, if they can possibly figure out who it is.

honey, did you wash my black pants?

laundry, North Jerusalem
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

I had to go up to North Jerusalem to buy a new cord for my laptop (after the last one scorched and shredded - macbook users, beware). It is a sea of black and white up there - like being in a totally different city. Teenage moms in wigs with modestly clothed, hugely pregnant bellies, six year olds pushing strollers, a whole semaphore of hats and coats and stockings that I come nowhere near to understanding.

old city walls

old city walls
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

Sunken gardens by the old city walls, near the cinematheque.

old city walls

old city walls
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

The traffic in this city is tragic. A couple of times now, I've abandoned my taxi and walked home, yesterday from as far as the new bridge of strings. This is not without advantages, as I end up walking home around dusk past the old city walls.

galilee and hills

galilee and hills
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

All that exposed ground is normally covered in water. We saw turtles.

lev

lev
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

Lev just looked at this picture and said. that's you. Then he said, no, it's me, it's me. Oh yes it is.

the boys

the boys
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

Benjamin liked the waters of the kinneret because they are calmer than the ocean, and he could walk in very deep. He held on to my neck and kicked as we waded in even deeper, and then suddenly let go. He sunk, of course, and after I hauled him up I said, why did you do that? He said, I wanted to see if I could swim. We've been thinking about swimming lessons - this is maybe my cue.

cloud drama

cloud drama
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

As if people were not already too inclined to see the hand of God in what happens in Jerusalem, every so often the sky comes along and does this. Which is pretty spectacular, but not what you would call a proof.

lev

lev
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

Lev is delighted, as usual. I think Noa or Ben were doing something wonderful. He told me the other day " I am useless without my brother!"

ben

ben
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

With the mountains by the Galilee behind him. I can't remember what has him looking so distressed - I think he was just chilly. His hair is looking a little overdue for a cut. Right now, as I write, he is working through a David Grossman book in Hebrew out loud - the whole thing. The book is titled "itamar Metayet al kirot" and is about a little boy who walks up his wall and into the paintings that hang upon it. This is the first time he's read this much in Hebrew, ever -I feel a little like he looks in this picture, watching with bated breath.

silhouette

silhouette
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

We went to the Galilee over the weekend and met our friends David and Ronnie at a hotel on the beach. We drove up past the Dead Sea, alongside the Jordanian border; it is a stark, spectacular drive, and we kept passing caves in the rocks, squatter camps, Jewish settlements and vast stretches of desert and mountain. The drive was a bit stressful because Lev starting manifesting stomach flu about an hour and a half outside Jerusalem. He threw up near the Dead Sea, and kept threatening to throw up all the way through the desert and then the changing landscape of the lower galilee. He recovered when we arrived, enough to see the ostriches, to swim in the lake, to run on the shore and to play the long imaginative games that he and Benjamin delight in and which depend on no setting except their imagination.