I have a problem with food. A big problem.

I don't know if it's some rare, weird type of eating disorder or whatever, but it's definitely a problem, and it's definitely related to food.

Simply put, I hate food, but I find myself eating nonstop.

I always have to be munching on something. Whenever I go for groceries, I always wanna buy everything, but end up buying a minimal amount of food, and when I get home, I curse myself for not having enough food.

Then I eat. Like a pig. Then I either get a stomach ache or I feel like vomiting. And I ask myself "For fuck's sake, I know that whatever goes through my esophegus is gonna lead to disaster, so why do I keep shoving down shit?!"

Then there are times when I'm on the bus and my digestive system, being the sadistic little prick it is, decides to make me suffer:

"Aaaaand the urge to piss.... NOW!"

Or:

"Aaaaaand the urge to take a dump... NOW!"

This happens, without fail, whenever I'm in a situation or a place when a bathroom is nowhere to be found.

At times like these I think I should stop eating altogether, or at least fast for some time. Sometimes I even consider getting weekly enemas as a way to keep my intestines clean and at least take away this one lethal weapon that my digestive system has to make me suffer.

What's even worse is that whenever there is a bathroom, the urge suddenly disappears. It's as if my digestive system knows that if I were to relieve myself, it would actually make me feel good, and seeing me having a good time is something my sadistic organism cannot stand.

Which can also explain the other things I do that can potentially make me feel good but end up hurting me instead: Like getting high (lately it's becoming a drag) or having sex (the process and the climax create this aweful pain I cannot explain)...

I wish we didn't have to eat. I wish we could be like reptiles getting our energy from the sun, or like plants who only need nature to survive.

But no, I'm a human being, very ironically born into a Moroccan family where food is litterally a way of life. Whenever I'm with my family, that's all we do. Sometimes I find myself asking them: "We're eating again?? But we just ate yesterday!"

Another thing that bothers me about food - we need it to survive, like oxygen. Yet we pay for it. We go to the grocery store to BUY something we need to survive. What if one day we were to buy oxygen? At the rate we pollute our planet, there is no doubt in my mind that at some point, oxygen will become scarce and people, being the greedy capitalist assholes they usually are, will find a way to make profit from it by making us pay ridiculous amounts of money to get a breath of fresh air, which we will eventually pay because we will have no choice.

I hate food.

God, I'd kill for a sunny side up right now.

Peace, love and fuck that, I want a waffle!

 

Yesterday was the first time I ever passed by a scene where an attack just took place. It was the second time this month an Arab construction worker decided to drive his tractor into the sidewalk and run people over, intentionally. The first time this happened, the tractor not only ran people over, but also toppled cars and a bus. Three people died. This second attack had no fatal casualties but dozens of people were injured.

This happened about six minutes before I had to go downtown to pick up my zines. The area where the attack took place is right on the way from my house to the center of town. But before I left my house, I decided to eat. So while eating I surfed the net a little and came across this breaking news story. I was shocked:

"Dude, I think this tuna sandwitch may have just saved my life!"

In any case, I went out a few minutes later and had to walk to and from the center of town because the busses were all derouted because of the attack. So I passed by the scene, many people stood around, journalists, cameras, TV vans, ambulances, police units and fire engines were all around, and in the middle of the closed street - the tractor. The driver was clearly dead, it was the only way to stop him.

It was so surreal. I already passed by many sites where attacks took place, especially in Jerusalem. Every two steps you take in the center of town, you see a memorial stone or a plaque on the wall reading "Here x number of souls were taken on (insert date) when a terrorist detonated himself, etc." But this time was different because the attack was still fresh, it just happened, which is what made it so surreal.

I'm not scared of such things really. Although I moved to Israel only two years ago, it sort of became part of my reality. I live in a war zone. And at any moment, I can die. And that's ok, because at least I know that I died happy and fulfilled, and fell on the holy ground of my foremothers and fathers.

Peace, love and is the tractor thing a new fad or something? 

I just realized how much I've been through in the past six months. Is it normal to go through so many ups and downs in such a short amount of time and still remain sane?

I realized that after a friend wrote to me after having been out of touch for those six months, and to summarize to her more or less what has happened since we last spoke, I found myself describing really terrible horrifying horse-balls-sucking things and really great awesome kickass things:

"I lost my job, I lost my boyfriend, nearly lost my mind, I went to therapy, I got a new apartment with two awesome roommates, two new jobs, I went on a trip to LA and Montreal, saw my favorite band in concert, went on a roadtrip with my awesome roommates..."

Yep. My last six months in a nutshell.

It's great to not get bored, you can never know what will happen tomorrow when you live in a place like Israel. Especially in Jerusalem. So random! Things can happen out of fucking nowhere. Things you can't imagine happening in any other situation, anywhere else in the world. Like some Breslev soldier with thick long sidelocks and a large white skullcap, with an M-16 hanging off one shoulder and a guitar hanging off the other. Or some skinny, barefoot random guy walking by you playing a flute like some kind of gypsy. Just like that, on the street. I love things like that most of the time, when they make me laugh and I thank the good lord because I wouldn't want to be anywhere else but right there on that street, looking at this random guy as he gallops away with his fluttering flute.

But there are some random things that happen that just make me wish to bury myself alive. These things are mostly related to my ex in one way or another, and they're not entirely random because they usually take place in an area where me and him would spend most of our time. So today I passed by the big Jerusalem Mall, Malcha, and got a whiff of something that smelled like my ex's perfume. Since smell is the strongest of the five senses in terms of memory, I had an endless flash of memories of my ex hitting me all at once: driving with him to the mall, laughing at the cops who just saw us drive past a red light and stood there dumbstruck, kidding with the guards at the entrance to the mall parking, making out in the car before walking to the door, walking around the mall, checking out CDs at Tower Records, going to the movies, going for junk food, checking out fish in the pet store, checking out cool (insanely expensive) home items at Golf and ZigZag, watching him try on various shirts and leather jackets at Castro...

It's not that I haven't gotten over him. It's that the memories are still so palpable, it is usually followed either by intense pain, panic, rage (at myself and at him) or just plain disgust. The thing is that my mind is usually racing with so many other things on a regular day, so thinking about him is becoming more and more rare. The fact that I'm getting used to not thinking about him anymore makes it that much harder for me when I DO think about him, especially when these thoughts are triggered by something as random and as unavoidable as a whiff of his perfume.

Maybe my therapist was right. Maybe all the other thoughts I have during the day are thoughts I use as a way to avoid the pain that lies beneath, and that pain eventually comes up when triggered. If so, I don't do it intentionally. The other synaptic charges are related to things I do on a daily basis - work, friends, food, dreams, music, the rare spiritual moments... - and since there are so many of those, there is no more time left for a nostalgic thought of my ex. So maybe it's unintentional, maybe it's an unconscious attempt to heal myself the only way I know how - growing a second skin, and pretending the first one (which is a pile of bloody, scarred and slashed flesh already) never existed.

Shit.

Admitting this is awefully painful. I guess it must be true then. So where do I go from here? To heal this pile of bloody pulp that used to be my skin would involve even more pain. But growing a second skin (which has gone pretty far already) would make me revert back to a time when I refused to feel anything for anybody, and prefered to be thought of as a cold, mean bitch than to risk getting hurt yet again.

Goddammit! Where's that random flute dude when you need him?

Peace, love and happy birthday to my Booxa!