ranting

A Monarch’s Responsibilities

History is a vast and incomprehensible mystery to me in many ways. We have facts about things that have happened in the past – we have dates, records of events, paintings reproducing the faces involved in those events, poems and diaries devoted to giving opinions and preserving what happened in a biased manner. We have all these things. Mystery, to some people, seems like a wide-open book, its contents there for us to look through, sift for what interests us, and indulge ourselves in knowledge of old.

I don’t feel this way. In my opinion, history is full of so much that we don’t know and so much that I wish I could know. True, we know when Martin Luther began to speak and write about his emotions about being a monk and part of the Catholic Church. In his instance, we can find quite a lot of emotional and sentimental writings from his own pen, or maybe quill, and we can see into his mind, as far as he lets us.

But what about others? What about the farmers and the spinners and the dye-makers that England had in such profusion in the sixteenth century? What were the children running barefoot through the streets of London, so much smaller than it is today, thinking? What games were they playing? What was the man smuggling illegal documents from Europe into the English Empire thinking as he worked? Was he scared for his life or merely waiting to get paid so he could go home to his wife and child? What were the nuns, sequestered in their cloisters, talking about? How did they speak to their young students, and how did they infuse them with a love and a belief for the divine? Through fear? Through love? Through simply offering worship as a fact of life?

And if these so-called simple people’s lives aren’t interesting enough for historians to dwell on – well then, what about the monarchs? How could Henry VIII hold such power in his hands and play with it so lightly at times? What did Katherine of Aragon feel as she was condemned? We can guess, surely, but how can we know? What of Elizabeth? How did she feel when she was sought after for marriage through the years? Did she decide on her own to remain a single ruler in order to maintain a stable throne? Did she, perhaps, not find men pleasing in the manner she would have been expected to? Had she fallen in love with someone who never returned her love or never could?

It’s bad enough, thinking of the power that politicians and governments hold today. At least it’s distributed power, and is more or less given by the people. But monarchs… They were born. Some of them believed they were chosen by divinity to be kings or queens. They held so much power in their cupped hands, that they’d let some of it run through their fingers to those sitting at their feet, just waiting for a pearl or jewel to drop from those mighty hands. I can’t imagine how such responsibility could be held without driving the holder mad with indecision, worry, guilt. Such are the things that the annals of history can’t reveal to us. Thoughts, emotions, private sighs of elation or grief.

Leaving

Exactly a week from now, I’ll be on an airplane somewhere over the ocean, just a couple hours away from the shores of New York, my new home-state. My orientation week will begin on August 29th, move-in day, and my classes begin on September 7th. The new experiences that are looming in front of me are overwhelming but exciting and enticing nonetheless. I’ll be able to study again – bury my nose in books, strain my brain and hopefully become passionate about the new things I’ll be learning.

But as the time to go draws nearer and the free moments I have grow few and far between, I realize just how much I’m going to miss about living here. First, of course, is the simple physical aspect of my home – the apartment my mother and I live in and have lived in for thirteen years; the bookcases lining our walls and the messy lived-in atmosphere that permeates each and every room; the cats perching on the counters or sprawling on the beds, tummies up to catch the nonexistent breezes of late August.

Next, the people – my mother, my boyfriend and my friends. These are people who I care about and who care about me, people for whom I have great respect and with whom I enjoy spending my time. I know, of course, that I’ll be meeting new people and forming new friendships, but they won’t be able to replace my friends here, most of whom I’ve known for at least three years, and the rest of whom I’ve known since I was a tiny tot.

Finally, and this is the thing that shocks me most, I’m going to miss Israel. Yes, this place I bitch and complain about constantly – the rude people, the bad drivers, the unbearable heat and humidity of Tel Aviv, the pathetic winters – all this, I’m going to miss. Most of all, I’m going to miss the Hebrew language. Last night, when I couldn’t sleep and my mind was racing with the thoughts and worries that are forever nagging at me at this stressful time, I began reading a book that I’d bought at the Israeli book fair last year. It’s wonderful, absolutely amazing, and I realized that the roots of my love of writing come from writing in Hebrew. The first creative writing piece I did was in a seventh grade literature class – I wrote, basically on my own, a thirty page story for a big end of year assignment. A few years after that, I began writing poetry in Hebrew. I still have a page on a well known Israeli creative writing site with my poetry and a few short stories on it – all in Hebrew. My father, who wrote a book in Hebrew and was a gifted writer both in Hebrew and in English and who, incidentally, was very Israeli in so many little ways, was the first who told me that I had a gift for writing.

So yes. Despite everything I can say about this place, this country full of drama and upheaval and stupid religious wars, I will miss it. I’m glad that I’ll be able to come back here for my vacations.