For the past two days, I’ve taken the train from Rehovot into Tel Aviv to explore a bit on my own. I especially liked Jaffa, with its views of the Mediterranean Sea, its ancient port, and its hilltop garden. I arrived as the adhan was called from the minaret tower around noon, and sat by the clock tower eating a pear pastry.  Unhindered by an official guide or an abundance of facts, I let myself cross to another time around every corner. It’s an odd feeling. You know, rationally, that you’re just a dopey tourist who doesn’t speak the language, but you also have this light-hearted, wistful empathy with the ghosts who still wander the narrow, steep streets.

Later I wandered into the flea market, where men hunched on stools and threw rapid games of backgammon. No object was too mundane or useless to be up for sale: old cell phones, TV remotes, battered pots, used shoes, vinyl records, and metal keys. A warren of market streets and alleys offered art, furniture, menorahs, dishes, locket watches, and jangly hip sashes for belly dancing. Since bargaining is the custom, no prices were marked, so I had no idea what anything was worth, not even in shekels.

I could identify with this sculpture at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

My favorite interaction involved a taxi driver. After my time in Jaffa, I walked up the seaside boulevard to downtown Tel Aviv, and when my feet gave out, I asked a cabbie for a ride to the Ha Hagana train station. He informed me he only traveled north, so that station was outside his range, but he urged me to be certain that no other driver charge me more than 30 shekels. He said that since I wasn’t from around here, another driver might take advantage. I thanked him and began walking away, and then turned back. “Could you take me to a train station that’s within your range?” I asked, since any station on the line would suffice. He agreed. When I climbed in, he said “I’m playing this for you,” and popped on Adele’s “Someone Like You.” Imagine rollicking through Tel Aviv in the back of a cab, listening to Adele with a cabbie who sings along.

Much of my time here has underscored how difficult it is to navigate an unfamiliar place without knowing the language or customs. I expected to find English because it’s one of the official languages of Israel, but it’s more of an afterthought to the Hebrew and Arabic, occasionally making an appearance on street signs and tourist shops.  For instance, I would have welcomed English announcements of stops on the trains when I couldn’t read the Hebrew. I’m not used to having my purse searched as it was four times today, or seeing college-aged women and men in uniform everywhere. When strangers spontaneously spoke to me, I had to smile and apologize because I didn’t understand them.

But it all worked out. True, I have only a superficial acquaintance with Jaffa and Tel Aviv, but I have a better understanding of myself in a strange place. I’m not afraid. I’m independent. I can learn. I will be kinder to aliens when they show up in my hometown.

On the Third Day of Christmas, we started exercising again, exchanged a sweater for the right size, baked potatoes and picked up a roasted chicken, mailed a late gift, worked the jigsaw puzzle, secured the back door against high winds, listened to Adele again, consumed more caramels, took out more recycling, and invited three guys to play computer games and spend the night. I am not working.  I have a friend who chucks out her tree on the 26^th every year, but we keep ours until Epiphany, and I love how the holiday lingers in the disarray of scattered gifts and relaxed family life.

December Sunlight

I have this theory that the problems of our lives expand to fill our attention.   Whatever the scale of the problem–how to pay the bills, or grade a pile of papers, or manage the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, or clear out a house to sell, or medicate a child’s fever–we focus our energies on that problem and try to solve it.  The nitty-gritty problems of our lives fill up our concentration and our hours, like ants under the lens of a magnifying glass.  They give us purpose, and make us feel competent when we solve them. When we can’t solve them, we feel troubled.

There’s danger in this for a writer like me who works at home, where the matter of daily life is A) what’s in my head, and B) what’s in my sightline.  I need to leave my house sometimes to be part of the world, listen to NPR, read the headlines, and otherwise actively remind myself to engage.  Otherwise, my life would be focused exclusively on the trivial and unimportant, but I would never know because those small worries would expand, masquerading as worthy.  Thoreau would say such a narrow focus is valid; he devoted pages to the observation of ants and beans growing in a field.  But is it enough for me?

Here’s what I’m focused on today: sick people in my family need tender care as they recover. I want to find new ways to demonstrate my love for my family without purchasing goods to prove it.  I have a short but time-intensive writing piece nearly complete.  I feel helpless to do anything useful for a friend of mine whose husband recently died.  I’m grateful that I was invited to sing carols at a retirement home tonight.

It’s a narrow focus, but Thoreau was right.  It is enough for now.  I hope to expand it in the future.