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Winter Romance

Rain patters down on the plastic roof outside the window. The breeze comes through the slats, fresh and delicious, bearing with it a smell of clean, sweet moisture. The sounds of the street are slightly muted, everything growing hushed in the soft rain. Even buses, with their monstrous thundering and their creaking halts, sound soft and polite as the drops come down lightly from the wispy gray clouds.

As the drizzle grows into a rain, the light seems brighter, more cheery. The small comforts of home – the sweatshirt flung on the back of the chair, the cat curled up in a ball on the couch – become more cozy and endearing by far. Even as the rain turns into a respectable downpour, the home becomes the perfect nest, wonderfully familiar, all of it softer around the edges somehow.

If only the rain could go on all night, it would accompany the soft light of the reading lamp and the soft rustle of pages as they are lovingly turned in their spine. A rain of this sort can only herald the sweetest and most comfortable of sleeps. If only it would go on all night.

But alas, all good things come to an end, and quickly, all too quickly, the autumn rain disappears, leaving behind it a comforting memory, a slight shiver of joy and a disappointed girl, who wanted to stay up all night reading with the rain.

Insperation in Unlikely Places

Boredom is the best inspiration there is to look around and see things you’d never look at otherwise, things you’d take absolutely no interest in. I discover this time and again when I’m in situations that I think at first I’d rather not be in. Today, as a cashier in my voluntary role at the convention I’ve been at for the past few days, I had one of the moments where I realized this. With nothing better to do, I took to people watching. Ah, the things you see!

A girl sitting on her father’s shoulders, obliviously sucking her thumb and looking curiously and bright-eyed around at people, while her father is fighting with her mother on the phone. A man, looking strangely at a volunteer, going up to her and asking for something and insisting on shaking her hand at the end of their talk, giving her a shifty-eyed look. A woman in a flowing maroon dress walking with her arms linked with those of her two friends, happily conversing and laughing with them, while pausing every now and then to give orders to people- she is one of the supervisors of the volunteers.

So many little stories happening all at once, all so full of emotions – anger, love, happiness, misery and agression. All these things happening in one not-so-large hall, all at the same time, and no one notices. No one will ever know just how many stories and events were going on that day, that minute even, all at the same time.

The Day of No Pollution

As evening falls outside my window, the sounds of the world shift. The ocean-like sounds of cars and buses whooshing past disappear, and instead falls a silence so intense that it is hardly broken even by bird sounds. Little by little though, a new sound dominates the city streets of Israel. The sound of a myriad little bells and rings and children’s screams and laughter.

Gone are the motors, and instead the steady pump of legs is the only mode of transportation, whether the legs are pushing pedals, rolling on wheels or walking all on their own. It’s Yom Kipur, the day to atone all sins, and the most dramatic thing about it is the taboo that dominates the country. No cars will drive tonight, nor tomorrow until sunset. No cars but ambulances and slow-moving police cars.

It is no wonder then that children and their bicycles rule the streets on this day. While the people who fast stay at home and guard their mouths from touching food or drink, the young – who aren’t actually required to fast by Jewish tradition until they’re thirteen – and the secular play in the empty streets to their hearts’ content.

A Thousand Words: So Much More Than A Picture

Three in the morning, the lit hands of the clock tell you. You glance down, uncaring. For why should you care? Nothing in the world is more important right now than the hero, the heroine, the man in the cloak or the maiden in distress. Nothing is more important than the dragon atacking the village or the homely man begging for food. Nothing at all.

You inhale the smell of the pages, the new white pages. Sometimes they’re old, dusty, crinkly, yellow pages. Those are the best. They smell like memories, they smell of thunderstorms and late nights and train-rides and parks. Those pages are a life unto themselves, wrapping in them so many words, so many emotions and stories.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Surely not. A picture could never come close to the feeling of reading a four page description of a landscape or a dinner table or an outfit. A picture cannot encompass the feelings of a desperate man or stranded woman or a wounded soldier.

Three in the morning, the lit hands of the clock tell you. You sigh, happily. As long as there are books in the world, you can be at peace.