death

Lucy’s Diary, May 25th

To be able to understand much of what is in here, you might want to, or need to, read the installment that precedes it in Alex’s blog. Here is the link: http://crystalgeek.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/journal-part-v/

May 25th, sometime after midnight, Pratt and Smith, under the covers in my room

Dearest Diary,

If my handwriting seems shaky, it’s because you’re currently nestled on my knees, which are also trying to hold the flashlight steady under the covers as I write. The girls yelled at me for having the light on when I came in here, hours after curfew of course [but the school understands and accepts this because of my needing to stay at the hospital every day]. As the library is closed, I have no choice but to huddle under my blankets and write in this most uncomfortable of situations. Forgive me for the discomfort I’m causing you, dear friend.

I’m oddly calm. I shouldn’t be calm, but I am. I suppose you’d like to know why I shouldn’t be calm, and I will indeed confide in you, but I don’t know how much I should, or can, or am allowed to write about this subjects that have recently been exposed to me.

Firstly, Micheal’s name isn’t Micheal. I’m not sure what his real name is, but he has told me to refer to him as R. and so I shall call him from now on. So R. is on the mend – he’s feeling much better, his bruises are slowly fading, and he should be released from the hospital in a day or two, a circumstance which will be difficult for me, because I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to see of him after he’s released. Miss Flynn believes that he really is a relative of mine, so I suppose she’ll let him visit me after study hours, and perhaps on our mornings off on Sundays I’ll be able to visit him wherever he’s staying right now.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m sure you want to know why I’m so certain that I have to keep seeing him. Well, let me share a bit of the secret then. I suppose, though, that I should start much farther back than what R. has told me tonight. I haven’t told him what I’m about to confide in you, Diary, and I’m not sure I should confide this in him, but I’ll think about it and see.

My parents died four years ago. Gruesomely, you may say. It was a car crash, and the media made out that Dad had been drunk and went off road, but it’s not true. The police told me right at first – before changing their story – that there had been a big truck coming towards them very fast [they could tell by the skid marks apparently] and that it seemed as if Dad had swerved so as to avoid the truck. There was a huge pool of oil right there, and the car slid and Mom and Dad went flying over the railing with the car into the field below where the car crashed upside down. You may wonder at my writing all this down this way. I haven’t repeated or talked of how they died for four years – at first, I tried convincing everyone that this was the true story, and I had to repeat it over and over and over again to get people to believe that Dad wasn’t drunk, but it was no use. The papers said it was a drunk-driving accident, and I gave up trying to tell people it wasn’t true. Since then, I’ve never talked about it.

Mom’s cousin, Clarisse, took me in. She’s the witch, the monster, the utter abomination of the human soul who is my legal guardian and it is she who sent me here, to Pratt and Smith. It is she to whom I now owe many thanks, though she’ll never hear me utter them.

If Clarisse hadn’t sent me here, I never would have met R. If I’d never have met R, I never would have found out that someone else besides my parents knew about the Parazelli, or suspected the existence of this group anyway. And now that I have met R, now that I know someone who has suffered a loss like mine at the hands of this foul group – because I know that Dad never drank when he drove, and I know that he and Mom had been dragging me around from college town to college town all of my childhood because they were trying to research and prove the existence of this most evil of cults, the Parazelli, who believe in bloodshed and evil as others believe in angels and beauty – now that I’ve met R and know he believes in them too, I finally have a way to avenge my parents. I finally have a way to continue their research, continue their work, and make them proud of me, their only, rather unruly, daughter.

Forgive me for getting your pages wet, my dearest confidante, my Diary, but I can’t help it. I don’t know whether it’s fear or relief I’m feeling right now, but I do know that I cannot part with R now – I mustn’t let him get too far away, and I have to get him to let me help, in whatever way I can.

Diary, my eyes are itching with the combination of my tears and tiredness. I shall leave you to your thoughts now, and hope you will not disapprove of my risking everything for this silly thing we humans call revenge.

I must speak with R. tomorrow. I simply must.

Good night, Diary, I hope your pages rest easily even with the heavy burden of knowledge I have put down in them tonight.

Yours, as ever,

Lucy

A Barber

In a small room with two mirrors, two swiveling chairs and three stationary ones, in a corner of Tel Aviv often overlooked by ordinary passerby, there is a barber. He seems a quiet man, a tactful man. Though it goes with his profession to be tactful and flattering as a rule, he seems rather sincere and serious when speaking of styles and colors.

Currently, it would be easy to make the mistake of thinking he was religious. The truth, if you inquire a bit, or if you hear him speaking to one of his regulars, is that his father has passed away, and he is in mourning. He is carrying out his mourning period, as is often done even by non-religious Jews, by not cutting his hair and beard and wearing a “Kipa”, a skullcap. The death of his father, not two weeks past, seems to weigh heavily upon him, because although his face lights up with a dazzling smile when greeting a true friend, it is fallen and tired the rest of the time.

All day long, he is on his feet without rest, charming and flattering the elderly women who come to get their hair dyed, joking with the men who come for a shave, welcoming in the stray stranger who finds his little shop. Despite being small, it is always overcrowded – he has dozens of regular customers, all popping in on their way to and from work, bringing their children and their dogs, making appointments on the fly or writing down their numbers for him to call them back and make proper engagements.

The warmth, the quiet chaos as customers change places constantly in the cramped shop, the kindness of the proprietor – all make the little spot a diamond in the rough of the Tel Aviv streets.

Casual Warfare

If there is one thing that people who live in stable countries don’t understand, it’s how casually a country can slip in and out of war. Perhaps I’m being unfair though – perhaps it is only this odd country, a so-called “Holy Land,” that acts this way. This place, Israel, Palestine, The Land Where Jesus Walked – whatever you want to call it, it has been, and apparently forever will be, a battleground.

It is an extremely odd feeling to realize how casually and nonchalantly we accept the state of warfare and the murderous activities that suddenly flare up around us here. The most people seem to be doing is starting different Facebook groups, so now my inbox there is filled with invitations like: “Join the ‘Boycott all Israeli Arabs!’ group,” “Join the ‘I agree with Israel invading Gazza’ group,” and “Join the ‘Everyone change their profile pictures to the Israeli flag!’ group.”

It’s horrid. It’s horrible. It’s, most of all, weird. It’s not normal to sit at work and hear people getting phone calls about rockets landing in their cities of residence and not to have that bother you particularly. It’s not normal to see people joking on the inter-office emails about how they hope they won’t get blown up on their rides home. It’s not normal to need to wish your coworker to feel better when she leaves work early because of a cold and to tell her in the same breath to be careful and not to leave the house too much.

Every time this country slips casually into war, almost without my noticing, I feel that humankind must be insane.

Mistress Murder

Tick tock, tick tock,
Went the big red clock.
Tick tock, tick tock,
Went her heels on the dock.

Hush now, everyone,
Mistress Murder’s on the run,
Careful there, little ones,
If she sees you then you’re done.

Mistress Murder, eyes so red,
A thousand deaths upon her head.
On their souls she surely fed,
Bodies filled with bullets of lead.

They locked her up and sealed her tight,
But then she vanished in the night,
Leaving guards there dead of fright,
Mistress Murder’s out, alright!

Now Mistress Murder’s left the town,
But surely she’ll be back around.
Tonight though we will sleep so sound,
We’ve run her out, she’s gone to ground!

Two Years

My father died exactly two years ago. I can’t express how much I miss him. Really, I can’t. He was just the most amazing human being, and the most amazing father. He treated my brother and me as human beings, not as children, never as children. He respected us, and found so much to love and be proud of in us, which in turn made us happy, because we respected and loved him so very much.

His presence was so strong, even if he was silent. He always had the radio on, sometimes to good music and sometimes to bad, annoying music or loud and obnoxious talk shows. He never listened when it was on – he was always reading the paper or writing when the radio was on. But he didn’t like the house being silent. I think the most touching moments I’d ever seen my parents in was when a song they both loved came on, and they would start dancing together, bopping around and kissing and embarrassing my brother and I. I realize now, of course, that that was wonderful, so beautiful, so miraculous for two people to have been married for so long and to still have been so much in love.

My largest and most horrifying fear is that I’ll forget my father one day. Forget how it felt to walk hand in hand with him when I was little, forget how it was to be mad at him, forget how it was when he sang me his lullaby, forget how it was to watch him doing exercises and then sitting down to watch the news, forget how he read my papers for school and helped me improve them, forget the smell of his cigarettes and coffee in the morning and the cake or cookie he ate as his breakfast. I haven’t forgotten yet, no, but what if I will one day?

Bomb Country

Sirens pierce the air with their harsh sounds, sounding their half-melodic noise in the distance. First siren. Second, third. Mostly we ignore sirens, we just hear them and think, maybe for a split second, that something happened somewhere. Then we forget about it and get on with our lives. So it is most places, I believe. Sirens are so much a part of the background that we really don’t notice them much.

In Israel, it is often different. Sure, we ignore the first sound of those wailing tones. But when another and another join the first’s voice, we start to wonder. What has happened? Was there a bomb? Was there an attack somewhere? How many are dead this time? What political tangles will imerge now and how will the papers make it racist this time?

The Intifada has been over for quite a few years now, but still, we cannot forget the times when we would look at the front cover of the newspaper and count how many died last night and how many were wounded. All those deaths, for a squabble over some silly land. Israel, Holy Land indeed.

A Hellish Night Indeed

Drenched in sweat, tears leaking down my face, I woke up repeatedly from the most horrid night’s sleep I’ve had in memory. Tossing and turning and throwing blankets off and pulling them back on again, I could not get any rest.

In the books, in my lovely, loved books, the heroes always sleep badly before a battle, before a grand decision, when there’s a monarch’s life on the line or at least a wedding or something else significant the next day. For me? None of these. Today is not a special day, is not supposed to be anything special or life-altering or even exciting. No offense to Monday, the 20th of October.

So why? I have no answer. I just know that of all the nightmarish nights that I’ve endured – and I’ve had my fair share, believe me – this was the worst. I dreamt of my boyfriend dying, I dreamt of every mundane chore and how I cried through it because of his death. When I woke up from the dream, it took my a full ten minutes of lying in bed and sobbing to realize that it was just a dream. Even after that, I spent the next four hours until my alarm was to ring waking time and again thinking I was late, thinking it was a different day, panicking that it was afternoon and I’d missed the bus I’m to take.

Small wonder then, that I feel like I’ve been up all night running.

Ode to SNES

Love

Love

I plugged you in,
You seemed to work,
Until I discovered,
A little quirk.

Lines appeared
Upon the screen,
They made me sad
At what they did mean.

Earthbound, Batman,
Aladin and Racecar,
All worked slightly,
But not enough by far.

I shall not give up,
I refuse to, I do!
For I love you so much
That it’s almost not true.

So hang in there, SNES,
My consoling friend,
Don’t let this be
Your one final end.