Blogging And Roller-Skating

Recently I came across some comments about blogging. The writers claimed  that blogs were no longer fashionable or effective, and no one bothered to read them. Furthermore,  because there was too much information on the net, blogging was dead. Although in my case, my low visibility is a living proof (forgive the pun) of the veracity of this statement, I am well aware that many bloggers are very successful, and some have thousands and even millions of followers.

Still, for me, the best thing about blogging, is the inherent freedom that this genre allows. No one prevents me from writing a blog, or censors its content. Moreover, unlike academic papers, there is no peer review, and once the essay is written, publication  is almost immediate.

This month I mark 3 years of writing a blog. In the first two years I had a comfortable home in Red Room, an American site for writers. Unfortunately this site was suddenly closed in July 2014.

Please keep reading in the Times Of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/blogging-and-roller-skating-2/

Between Chores And Personal Freedom

 MAR.10.2013 

My brother and I were very familiar with the concept of a burden, in our home it meant doing our chores. My mother taught us to always do those first and then we would be free. We didn’t help much around the house so our tasks were mainly doing homework and practicing the cello- for my brother and doing homework for me. But sometimes even completing those proved too much. I  Still  remember that during the summer holiday, when my mother returned  home from work, at noon, and found us  still asleep, she would move the shutters and say gently ”I don’t like meeting the morning when I come home at noon”  we both felt ashamed.

In my turn I followed my mother’s example and taught my daughters about burdens and tasks. I have to admit that my girls were much more diligent than I was at their age. As they both played a musical instrument we woke up every day  at 6am and started the day with practice (we were not very popular among our neighbors, and had to move from our apartment to a detached house). This way when they came back from school in the afternoon they were already free and able to play.

My mother often said that one of the less attractive aspects of getting old was the nagging presence of a burden. At the time I  didn’t understand what she meant,  for me that  word  had  a  concrete connotation. But now I suspect that with old age my mother started to experience a different kind of burden, one which consists of fears and worries and as a result she started to “to obsess.” According to the dictionary, the verb "to obsess" means “to have the mind excessively preoccupied with a single emotion or topic." I believe that she was disliked the fact that she could not push away those fears and worries.

As I advance in age, I am getting to be more like mother, physically I look  like her and mentally I often hear my mother ‘s phrases come out of my mouth. Generally I don’t mind this development; it makes me feel closer to her. But sometimes I too experience  that nagging presence of the burden, and now I begin to realize what it entails.

 I believe that my mother was always preoccupied with the issue of  personal freedom and was looking for ways to achieve and maintain it. Taking care of one's chores first was an easy way of doing it and she passed it on to us from an early age. But with this new type of burden freedom became harder to capture and then to keep. My mother never said it explicitly but I feel that what she disliked about old age was the gradual  loss of freedom.

 My mother had a wonderful sense of humor; her forte was to tell apropos stories and anecdotes. So apropos Passover and the Israelites’ long journey to achieve freedom,  I  wish to make my  journey lighter and hope  that it will not take me  40 years to be truly free.

The Unbearable Lightness of Freedom

 MAR.15.2013

The cinematic moment which symbolizes for me  loss of freedom is when Tomas, the protagonist in the film The Unbearable lightness of Being, 1988  ( based on the novel by Milan Kundera 1984 ),  returns to Czechoslovakia from the west, after the Soviet invasion, and his passport is confiscated at the border, leaving him stranded.

This is not a dramatic scene, quite the contrary, it presents a routine transaction, but the power here is in the implications of the trivial act:  not having a passport means that you are stranded and no longer free to come and go as you wish.  Perhaps I was so moved by this scene because it reminded me of different occasions when I too felt a loss of freedom. One example is when, at the end of the first day of basic training, I realized that no, I could not go home: I had to stay in the army for 20 more  months.

To this day whenever I recollect this scene from  The Unbearable I feel a pang of anxiety not unlike the one experienced when I first watched the film. But I find it hard to envision the picture of me, the unhappy  18 year old girl who could not go home. Although The Unbearable is a poignant film, it is hard to explain why  this  short scene remains more vivid in my mind than my own experience.

Wayne C. Booth in the Rhetoric of Fiction stresses the importance of Showing over Telling in fiction, and we all are familiar with the old saying  that one picture is worth a thousand words.

However, I believe that the strength of this scene is not only in the visuals: confiscating a  passport is a symbol of the arbitrariness of the totaliterian regime and the helplessness of the individual, who is stripped of a most basic freedom, in this case the freedom of mobility. 

 Sometimes we remember meaningful events that we have not personally experienced. Here I have appropriated the memory of life in post-invasion Czechoslovakia.  My family history provides me with an even stronger memory, my father left Nazi Germany in 1934 when he was 21 year old and never got to see his parents and his younger brother. They  were not free to leave Germany or to get a certificate to come to Israel, and they perished in the camps.

Whenever I think of  that  scene at the border, it gives me a chance to reenact, in a small way, that exact moment when freedom is taken away. Lucky for me I can push away the memory and go on with my life, I should not forget those who are not so fortunate.

The Gift Of Unexpected Time

My friend’s book club was cancelled last night. It was supposed to take place on a roof top inTel Aviv. But with rockets fired from Gaza hitting Tel Aviv, no one was willing to take the risk: a small price to pay in time of a new and unnecessary war. 

I asked my friend, the writer who runs it,  what she felt when she cancelled the book club. She had to think for a moment. So I explained that regardless of my positive attitude toward certain activities, I find myself happy and relieved when they are cancelled. She agreed, an unexpected time is always welcome even if we are not that busy.

 I view that free time as a special gift and treat it differently than normal time. Yet, often there is a price to pay for the cancellation and eventually I shall have to compensate for that free time by giving a make- up lesson, or arranging another appointment.

But my  friend commented that no matter how much money we lose by the cancellation the feeling of freedom is still present. She was right, when we lived in Texas I worked as a massage therapist for a chiropractor. I was a freelancer and was paid by appointments, so if people did not show up, even if they hadn’t given the necessary notification,  it was quite impossible to bill them. I remember that although I loved my job and realized that a missed appointment meant less money I felt happy that I was awarded extra 60 minutes just to sit, and think.

In Hebrew we often use the first part of the line from Proverbs 9, 17:  “Stolen waters are sweet (and bread eaten in secret is pleasant).” This unexpected free time always tastes much sweeter than a scheduled holiday. I remember how happy my whole family was, back when we lived in Iowa City, when school was cancelled on snow days.

I am trying to think of other, different examples when a cancellation did not bring about a sweet feeling of unexpected freedom.  What comes to mind is the recent cancellation of my friends’  visit to  Israel due to a sudden illness. 

Thus although I noted the unexpected free time, seven days to be exact,  that week was spent remembering and lamenting  all the different places that we didn’t visit. The truth was that I was worried about them and sad they they could not be here, especially as May is a great month to visit Israel.

It seems that an unexpected time is a desirable and sweet gift mostly when the cancelled activity is of a routine nature and not something special that we planned and really were looking forward to.

 And although it is unrelated, since I am speaking of cancellation I have to mention Red Room’s.  Here all the rules don’t apply:  Red Room was almost a routine activity, as I visited that site every day.  However, the cancellation of my future visits there,and the free time it will allow do not feel sweet, even not bitter sweet.  

I am sure that the Book of Proverbs could come up with a suitable line for that feeling as well.