My room is slowly disassembling.  (Not really: being stripped of its frippery is a more accurate description.)  In three days, I will get on an airplane and a stranger will start sleeping in my bed.  Only briefly.  One month, even less.  I will only be out of the country for a little over two weeks, which is not so much time if you think about it.  But I'm leaving work for a month.  I'm putting all my odds and ends in boxes to shove into them into the utility closet.  I am preparing to say goodbye to normal life for a little while.

I have been panicking, the last couple days, because I was on the verge of getting sick, sick in a really nasty way that would have made it almost impossible to get on a plane on Saturday.  I didn't realize how much of myself I have hung on this trip until it became endangered: The pieces of me that have been living in London all this time.  The pieces of me that feel right and well only when sitting with Rawaan and Annie, as we gaze at each other in mutual adoration.  The pieces of me that hate going to work every day.  The pieces of me that love watching movies on airplanes. 

The danger seems to have passed.  I am still on a knife's edge, though I think now everything is okay.  And of course, it would be okay anyway.  Even if I had to push my flight back, I would still go.  Even if I didn't go, all of those pieces of me would survive.  They've survived the last year and a half, or longer, and they will keep surviving, waiting for their turn.  But I really do very much hope their turn comes on Saturday.

Work is ridiculous.  I want to say, it will be over soon, I will be gone, but I have a terrible feeling that even though I'll be gone it won't be over, and it will haunt me all through the month of December.  Maybe I am just overwhelmed right now though.  They won't be able to get to me when I am half a world away, unless I let them.

Oh, I finished NaNoWriMo!  Last Sunday.  I reached 50,000 words (plus 90 or so) and have not touched it since.  I have a lot of novel left to go, and I do want to write it, but I haven't had time.  Maybe on the airplane.  Maybe in Rawaan's garden, giggling and smoking shisha and scribbling away.

My boss just told me I work way too efficiently on all my projects.  Haha.  So far today I have updated by facebook profile, gone to a meeting at which I contributed nothing, looked at apartments on craigslist, and spent about an hour finishing up a summar of juvenile justice/race literature and reading about policing on American Indian reservations.  Apparently I got more done in that hour than I was supposed to do in three days.

On a more serious note.  I'm going to a protest after work about US support for the Israeli attacks on Lebanon.  The situation makes me very angry, and also very sad.  Two hundred Lebanese to twenty-four Israelis is a proportional response?  You know who else had a differential view of human life: the Nazis.  They killed ten French people for every German soldier killed by the resistance.  Of course, given Eastern Europeans, or Arabs, the Nazis would have taken a much harsher stance; 100 to 1, for instance.  The Israelis should be proud of their measured response.

(And no, contrary to what I just said, I don't think the Israelis are Nazis, and I do know that its a very complicated situation, and Hezbollah is also to blame, and I am sad for all the Israelis that have suffered in this situation.  But still.  There are lines you have to draw.)

I am sitting in Robin and Doug’s hotel room in Haifa, composing so that we can buy a short block of internet time and post everything in one go. Outside the dark harbor is framed by city lights. This morning we left Ein Gedi, where there were always birds singing (I, unlike Robin and Doug, felt no need to identify or classify them) and where bare desert hills framed us, to the west and east, across the expanse of the Dead Sea. We drove through five different climates today, an altitude change of some three thousand feet (the Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth, 1200 feet below sea level). Hills, desert, farmland, coastline. Okay, maybe just four.

In Haifa it rained, and I took a bath as an antidote to the cold and wet and then stood by my wall-length window wrapped up in towels, letting the thunder soaked air wash in with the blue and yellow lights of the city. Calm. Yesterday I received an Ayurvedic massage: hot stones placed beneath my palms and between my toes, and warm oil pouring on my forehead and into my hair.

Only two days left. We spent so long in Jerusalem, over a week, it felt like we had moved in. Now we are rushing, discarding whole cities as not worth the small time that remains to us.

***

As a short note on another topic, yes I have been paying attention to Sharon's illness and we have been discussing it, and no I did not cause him to fall ill, nor did I kill the pope. I just have bad timing. People here are very worked up - though less now than when it first happened. People are adjusting. I've learned more about Sharon than I ever knew before - he was a very marginal politician, villified for his role in earlier wars. Now he is the national father figure, and almost everyone we've talked to says this is a terrible tragedy for Israel (there are some dissenters on both the right and the left). I've decided I better stop traveling, at least to countries with elderly leaders.

Overheard in NYC:

Girl #1: I'd offer to set you up with him, but you're already occupied.
Girl #2: I am not occupied.
Girl #1: Please! You're so occupied, you're the Gaza Strip.
Girl #2: Don't you watch the news?

--111th & Broadway

Speaker’s Corner at Hyde Park is my new favorite thing. Every Sunday morning (and into afternoon), people come to a large cement area in the corner of Hyde Park with step ladders and stools and tell the world what they think of it. As Amir explained it, there are four basic categories these speakers fall into: Christians, Muslims, socialists and people railing against America. From what I saw, they were fairly accurate but inadequate categories. You can’t understand how fantastic it is until actually being there.

First of all, there are four or five speakers at any one time. People drift from one to another; speakers gather a crowd and then lose it. When we arrived the most interesting speaker was a guy with a sign declaring that he knew everything, who actually may be the only person who really didn’t fit into any of the categories. He said the key to life was “positivity” and that women were naturally more “positive” than men, basically because they’re practical. Men refuse to change on principle, and therefore are not positive. I can’t explain, I can only relate what he said. Then we drifted over to an Islamic man who sounded American and clearly came from the African-American preaching tradition. He was great, because his basic point was that it doesn’t matter what religion you are if you actually practice what you preach — all religions (though he only named the three big monotheistic religions) say one should love one’s neighbour as oneself, and that’s what’s important. He urged people to go to Egypt and visit the prisons instead of the pyramids, to see that even Muslims are hypocritical and as much as the West has problems, they have better human rights. He was very reasonable, but also energetic and a good speaker.

That was all just the warm up. Then the fun really began. A man was standing in the middle of the area without a stool, surrounded by a crowd of people, so we (Lily, Ashley and I) drifted over. The first thing I heard was “All the men have become gay.” This statement was soon explained. Apparently American women with their “education” and their “work” have forgotten how to please men. They don’t know how to kiss men, and they give bad blow jobs. Literally, he said that. American girls (oh, and Germans too) give bad blow jobs. Therefore, all American men have become gay (I guess American men give good blow jobs). As a consequence of all American men being gay, all American women have become lesbians. Or else we were lesbians, and that’s why we couldn’t give blow jobs, and why they became gay. I guess it’s sort of a vicious cycle really.

We were cracking up, I think for obvious reasons, and he spotted us and asked if we were Americans. I stepped forward and said that we were, and he asked if I was a lesbian. I told him no, at least, not that I know of, and he challenged me to prove it, ie come kiss him. Let me point out that this guy was in his 40s, bald, ugly, and incredibly offensive. I declined, as politely as possible. He then turned to the issue of food, by saying that since men are supposed to give up their seats on the tube to pregnant women, he’s been getting in trouble since all women look pregnant now. He then pointed to Lily, Ashley and I and said we all looked pregnant. At which point I told him I definitely wasn’t going to kiss him. Then he asked why women lie, and I told him very seriously that it was our nature, which was the only lie I told him. He then turned to how to fix the “woman” situation. We got through “stop educating women” and decided to go listen to someone else, at which point he yelled after us, “See! Americans!”

After a Christian and a socialist and another “Christian” wearing a bulletproof vest and repeating “God doesn’t love faggots. God doesn’t love sluts,” we drifted back towards the lesbian man, who was now doing a double act with an old guy wearing a huge painted sign proclaiming his love for all and who was busy telling a young married woman that she should leave her husband and run off with him because he would protect her on the streets of London, and because her red hair was so beautiful (meanwhile the lesbian guy was telling this girl and her husband that she lied to him and couldn’t satisfy him). Highlights included the lesbian guy asking another American girl to read a passage from Chomsky, and, after asking her if she could make chips, the old British guy yelling “You have to peel the potatoes!” Also the old British guy denying that America ruled the world, exclaiming “Britannia rules the world!” and then saying very indignantly “I am English! Every bit of me is English! Except these hips.”

There was one woman, who unfortunately was saying that different races had their parts of the world, and should stay in those parts. We decided that men are taught that when they want to talk a lot, it’s important and people should listen, and women are taught to 1) keep their opinions to themselves and 2) be practical, which is why there was only one crazy woman there and about twenty crazy men (spread out over the day).

Oh, and later there was a man who said olive oil would save your sexual potency, and drank some to prove it.

I just titled my history essay, which must mean I’m done. I should edit, but I hate editing on the computer — I need it spread out before me, on paper, to make sense of the structure. Maybe tomorrow. I’m sort of apathetic about it being good. As Lily pointed out earlier, No one will ever know. (except me, I’ll know. sigh.)

But I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about yesterday.

Another beautiful day. But this day was especially beautiful, because we went to the anti-war demonstration in Trafalgar Square. We woke up too late to march (we thought, though it turns out there were so many people that the end of the march didn’t leave Hyde Park until 2:30), so we went straight to the square and arrived before the large mass of people, thereby securing seats on one of the fountains. The sun was shining, people were handing out leaflets and newspapers and stickers and chalk to draw on the sidewalk. Drums in the distance, and white 20-something monks with dreadlocks danced with old South Asian men, round and round, big smiles everywhere. Hearts light. Empowerment. I took about 80 pictures. Apparently there have been 11 demonstrations against the war in London, and every single one on a sunny day. Lily and I decided that nature, or some higher being, must like peace, which makes sense anyway. I wore a skirt and flip flops and felt home in my bones. Teenage girls with signs kept running by in clumps and making me happy. A Green party member who is actually in Parliament spoke. I wish we had a Green party member of Congress. I wish we were more like Britain all around really. Politically, at least. I felt guiltily American and shouted lots of encouragement for anti-Bush statements, and held up my bag (“Sorry world, we tried”) a lot. I also bought a poster that says “Make tea, not war” which makes me extremely happy. Across the street we went to grab something to eat and a woman saw Lily’s shirt and said “San Francisco Mime Troupe!” and we shared an Americans-abroad-and-politically-active-against-America-but-still-miss-the-West-Coast moment. Later Lily called her mother and found out she had protested against Vietnam in Trafalgar Square, many years ago. Yay for generations of hippies. Yay for the little kids dancing in the fountain while people spoke, and the kids on father’s shoulders, and in strollers and holding up signs that said “girls for peace” in bright, flowery letters. Hope for the future.

There were serious moments of course — families who had lost sons in the war, Muslims who had been harassed or imprisoned, people talking about poverty and structural needs lots of important, heavy things. But there was music too, and a sense of power and community. Police lined the very outer edges, but they don’t carry guns, and were wearing their normal funny hats, very different than America. It was quite incredibly to be standing in the middle of a square built to celebrate imperialism and military power, calling for peace and justice, taking back the space. And it was sunny, did I mention that?

Today it became gray again, which I suppose turned out to be a good thing for me personally. I’m not sure I would have written my paper otherwise. Besides some reading I can’t do because the stupid libraries are closed on Sundays, and a few hours of classtime, I am now done until Easter break. I have my ticket to Paris, tickets for Liz and I to Rome, and a ticket from here to Seattle and back. In three days Mark is visiting, in four days Rawaan will be here, and then Europe! The future is bright. At least, my future is bright. Hopefully, everyone’s.

I’m in a state of denial, because I’ve just written 2500 words about women in Nazi Germany, and I don’t want to think about it. I’m thinking about signs instead, and sun on water, and vacation.

EDIT: I put up old pictures from the opera, and then I realized I was running out of space and the LJ photo service is a pain to upload to anyway, so I'm putting my pictures from the demonstration at Snapfish - I don't know if you need an invite to see them, but you can try going to http://www.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=21138124/t_=7483192 and hopefully it'll let anyone see them...