Sometimes, seriously, I cannot BE BOTHERED. I feel like the person who made this cake. Here, I've done all this crap for you.. even though I also sort of wanted to.. but you don't appreciate it, so I've gone to bed.

The night before your 8th birthday, twitching in your sleep from excitement; you wake early out of pure anticipation for the day ahead and spy colourful, beautifully wrapped presents of intriguing shapes and sizes perched by your feet at the end of your bed. Your 8 year old hearts thumps to the beat of expectation, your hands start reaching for the presents when you realise - I can't open them until everybody else wakes up! I want to tear the ribbons off and... I... cant!

A deep well of love simmers inside me, untapped. I just want to tear the ribbon off. I want to go for picnics in the park with someone I love talking to, to lie next to them and laugh my head off and feel safe, comfortable, more complete. I want to make treasure hunts on someones' birthday and go to parties with someone who will take me home when I become that silly irrational. girl who says senseless things about penguins and Weltschmerz after one too many Vodka-cranberries. I want to give to somebody, to look after someone, make someone soup when they're sick or buy surprises for them on a Wednesday, just because... its' Wednesday.

Why has nobody else seen this film Water Babies? They speak in cockney accents, it's mostly about a chimney sweep called Thomas Aquinas Something or Other who follows these two thieves around the Yorkshire Dales plotting to steal from the rich folks at Harthover Hall. When they get there, he meets elfin-like girl Ellie who helps him escape from the nasty thief people.. but in the process is accused of being the thief and has to jump into a stream to escape. Because you know.. thats the only way out. Then the film turns into a cartoon and all the fish start singing.

It's brilliant! There are Liverpudlian otters and a creepy, hypnotist woman called Mrs.DoAsYouWouldBeDoneBy who keeps appearing at random moments. Thinking about it now, there must be a philosophical message to this bizarre film. The real St. Thomas Aquinas based his teachings on knowing G-d through both reason, and spiritual revelation. He claimed he once heard a voice from a cross speak directly to him. In the film, Tom wanders into Ellie's pristine, glaringly white bedroom and looks into a mirror. He touches his nose to check he's there, then asks Ellie what the cross on the wall is about.

I used to watch ths film with my little brother.. I think we just loved singing along with the camp green seahorse Terrence, the Scottish lobster and the nasty northern shark.

B'Tzad Yamin

A tree grew in my head there, now I have some whole tooth problem on the right side of my mouth. whats the story here? If I had to have some sort of 'belief' in alternative practices, then I 'believe' in the idea that physical problems are often symptomatic of a deeper spiritual problem.
I recently learned that breathing-related problems such as I have - asthma, being prone to chest infections - is, in a spiritual sense, down to some kind of relucatance to accept or taken in life. What does that even mean? Is it about foreign life - pregnancy? Or my own life? I sought advice from a person who I admire and trust, who wrote to me:

'In general – our ability to take in air is connected to our willingness to say YES to life in the body – with all that it takes. Sometimes deep fears from claiming your power in life creates these symptoms. '

If I 'believe' in these ideas, that minor physical problems can be pinned on something deeper, something uneasy in your soul or in your spiritual life, then I have to take on this advice. I need to address the ways I may not be 'claiming' power in my own life.
The person who gave me this advice, then recommended I go to a Rebirthing session. At first I ignored that part, the slightly scary/ridiculous part, that is. When I gave it some thought, I realised that the idea actually sits well with me. One school of thought behind psychotherapy recognises/adheres to the idea that adult behaviour/phobias/psychoses can be traced back not only to childhood - but even further back to the birth trauma. This may sound a little too spacy, but my birthing experience - obviously I don't remember a thing about it but as far as I know was quite straightforward - was a unique experience and event that occurred between myself and my parents. A special and unique experience - you will only ever be given birth to once!

My mother will always remember the details of each of her childrens' births, the stories before, how they reached the hospital, how easy or difficult our births were, peoples' reactions afterwards.. When my mother gave birth to me, my parents' lives changed, my siblings' lives changed, the pattern of many others peoples' lives changed in sequence.
Perhaps there are things my mum has never told me. Maybe it was a traumatic birth, maybe she had trouble in labour. Will knowing these things make me want to attend a Rebirthing session? I have to say no. When my mum flew back to London especially to have me, because she & my dad had put thought into where and how they wanted their 3rd child to be born, she did it out of love, out of love for children who were already born - she was giving them a sister - out of love for her husband, and out of her own very deep and special love for me, the child she had been carrying for nine months.

Maybe there ARE questions I need to ask, that may answer my guru's questions about breathing, life, my reluctancy to LIVE. I won't be taking my birth back. It would be re-writing a formative and once in a lifetime (literally) experience - and it would be rewriting a part of my parents' lives, without their permission. My love for them and belief in their good intentions in creating me, is a belief in something that ultimately outweighs whatever weight I have lent to the idea of finding a way to the place where guf and neshama kiss.

May Hashem bless both my parents, bless them with good health, long life, love, nachas from all their children and grandchildren, and happiness.. ad mea v'esrim shana.

It's been far too long since I last blogged. I've moved cities, stumbled into despair and desperation that aliyah just wasnt working, almost ALMOST decided to make a rather big decision concerning the Y word (yeridah, in case there was any uncertainty) but have somehow found my way back to stability and routine. I could never have imagined craving either of those things, when I was 18.

I have a job! Rejoice! Not just any old job, either. A job working alongside lovely, funny people who take their work seriously but who nearly all made aliyah.. we have a connection. Not only this, but my previous job trained me so well for this one that it's almost as if it were pre-ordained. As if it had been decided already, that this is where I was headed.

Oh wait - He IS in charge...

In case I hadn't made it clear previously, eretz Yisrael is by no means an easy or lenient place to live. I'm not throwing in lenient to sound clever (does lenient make anyone sound clever?), but because I mean it. Nobody goes easy on you, nobody gives you a break. If you're religious and keep Shabbat, you spend your one real day off cooking/cleaning/running about like a headless chicken just in preparation for Rest. So much build-up, so much pressure directed towards this one day of the week on which I MUST rest can only result in one thing : a day of unreasonable anxiety. I seem to spend most shabbatot avoiding work-related, "6.15am alarm" thoughts. Oh how I miss Sundays.

I think it's possible that I don't smile as much as I used to, about being here. Things I found endearing when I first arrived, have become irritating. I suspected this may happen over time, I didn't think it would be as quick as a year. Except the other day, when I took a sherut took far in one direction and had no idea where I am. The driver calls his friend driving the sherut on the opposite side, who stopped especially to pick me up. Am unconvinced this would happen in England, theyd open the doors for you and wish you luck.. maybe not even that.

Every day, I walk home through a pedestrian street, closed off to cars. It's a special walk to and fro on Tuesdays, when the street market comes to Nachalat Binyamin.

I walk through as they set up at 7.30 in the morning and later as the weary vendors pack up at 5. I wander past jewellery stalls, glass photo frames, a young guy who sells photos he takes of Israel, an old hippie looking man with a long white beard selling brightly-coloured clocks for children. He sees me every week, I try and smile but he doesn't smile back.

One woman sells pink, fluffy, glittery decorations for girls' bedrooms and there's the guy who sells old movie posters frame by thick, dark paint in vibrant colours. The Nachalat Binyamin cats sit in throngs by open-doored cafes, waiting for scraps. The four elderly Russian ladies squeeze onto one bench, always pausing in converdation to eye not only my outfit, but all the women who walk past them.

It's a scene I love, I feel as if I am actually Hugh Grant at the beginning of Notting Hill, strolling through the market, the noises, the faces, the passing of the seasons. It makes me feel a little bit more alive, walking through that scene once a week.

I emerge from this wonderful windy street, onto the drudgery of Allenby. Open garbage bins, homeless men lie shoeless in the middle of kikar Shenkin, the Chabad chanukiah still taped to the metal pole leading to shuk HaCarmel.

I miss Jerusalem desperately, even when I remind myself how claustrophobic I felt living there. I feel myself being pulled towards frum people I spy on the streets of Tel Aviv. Though I may be wearing jeans, I feel more affinity with their sheitels and skirts, kippot and tzitzit than I do with the rabble and crowds of TA. Now, suddenly, it's the end of December and I have been here 11 months. Sometimes I feel elated and so privileged to be living here, to be independant - compared with so many unfortunate, deprived people living all over the globe. Inevitably, sometimes I cannot help but compare my own life to those of people I know, of my friends and then I WANT. I find things lacking, I find myself wanting, wanting, wanting.

After almost a year of living here, I have started to teach myself patience. Contentment is a long way off but first... patience.