Lately, I’ve been making lists. To put some order in my life, I list the things to do, things to buy, things to clean, things to explore…

Back in high school, the only lists I’ve been making were lists of my favorite bands/artists, which, as time went on, got covered in layers of liquid paper as my tastes changed and evolved. I remember that fateful day when I erased Michael Jackson from the number one spot and replaced him with Marilyn Manson. It was a rather scary moment, and it took all my utmost strength to bring myself to do it. Deep down I knew he has become my favorite and it was imperative for me to make it official… in my list.

Now the lists I do are watered down and always include the same elements:

-          Tomato

-          Breakfast

-          Tuna

-          Mayo

-          Milk

-          Yogurts

-          Chocolate

-          Junk food

 

Or:

-          Clean bathroom

-          Do laundry

-          Eat

-          Work on zine

-          Shower

-          Do nails, eyebrows

 

I don’t know if I make lists for fear of forgetting to eat or to shower. Glad I don’t need a reminder to breath. But somehow I feel as though if I make a list, once all these things are done, I can finally be happy or satisfied with my current state. Yet as I cross out the last item on the list, I don’t feel any better or any worse, and before I can enjoy some me-time, it’s time to go to sleep... which is basically the only me-time I get.

That’s what happens when you work six days a week, wake up at 5:30 a.m. to get to work at 7:00, work until 4:00 without a decent lunch break, taking bites from some random sandwich in between phone calls and demands from the boss, then walking home for about an hour, and being so tired and hungry that by the time I get home all I wanna do is have a drink of water to sustain my stomach and crash, and find myself waking up in a daze after nightfall wondering where I am and what year it is. So much for putting some order in my life.

If anything, I live in a steady, static, perfectly organized routine of disorder and self destruction.

Peace, love and thank the Mother Goddess for everlasting confusion.

If I become mad or afflicted by the Jerusalem syndrome, it is by my own doing and not by any of the people/books/musicians/entities mentioned below.

I have decided that I don't know God and that I don't know Satan and that I don't know any of their respective servants and I also do not intend on finding out who they are.

Instead, I have set out to make my own theory about all that.

It seems to have become such common knowledge that death is not the end, but rather the beginning of whatever else.

Yet people who have experienced death, have never lived to tell about it, and if they have, the damage to their brain has been so severe, they were unable to talk about it. However, wars are still raging between the different Schools of Thought that study the theory of post-mortem existence, also known as religions. Such wars will surely never end as there is no way to prove that one belief or the other is the ultimate one.

I know the Old Testament through and through, so much that I am bored with it, and so, I will not go into details. The New Testament, I am now in the process of reading, and find it to be quite intriguing. As for Satanic dogma, my sole sources consist of Wikipedia and Deicide records - mediocre sources at best.

But as I delve deeper and deeper into the religious rhetoric of these different takes on the afterlife, a single common theory echoes through: Life does not begin at birth and does not end at death.

In other words, we are not alive and we are not dead. We simply experience existence while traveling across different dimensions. As one cannot prove this theory any more than other dogmatic hypotheses by the various Schools of Thought, the assumption will have to remain assumed.

Yet if all religions agree on this assumption, is there still hope for peace on this one common ground and ignore the insignificant details that come along the way?

Surely the proponents of righteousness would wish for nothing more than peace and kindness to reign in this world, and the next, and the one after that, and so on. However, there are proponents of evil disguised as the righteous and they come by the hundreds of thousands from every single School of Thought. These hypocrites are on a quest for power and glory, and they wish the throne of these worlds to belong to them, disregarding their brethren, rejecting peace and denying kindness.

*Going mad*

*Becoming afflicted with the Jerusalem Syndrome*

As I am the Messiah of my own being and the Creator of my own demise, I shall now retreat to death with a self-contented smile.

Peace, love and Oh, ye of little faith!

 

Jerusalem Food Festival...

A place you probably wouldn't expect to find me... especially not goreging myself until my stomach begs to be put out of its misery.

But there I was tonight, eating like I haven't eaten in days.

It was great however. So my love/hate relationship with food has never been so confusing as it has been these past couple of days. As I said before, I hate eating because my digestive system fucks me over no matter what goes through it. On the other hand, I started to discover the joys of cooking.

At the beginning it was a disaster. No matter what I would make, I would make an absolute mess and the food looked far from appetizing, and was either overcooked or undercooked or too salty or not salty enough... But recently, I managed to surprise myself with some pretty amazing dishes, quite easy and quick to make, and do not come in powder form with plenty of preservatives.

SO! Food festival was the place to be for a blooming cooker, who is looking to enhance her Moroccan roots. I thought I might get some ideas, but the baking workshops that were mentioned on the pamphlet were nowhere to be found... I guess I'll have to keep practicing my Moroccan cooked tomato salad until I get it right. Which sucks because I finally realized the secret ingredient is GARLIC! And I hate garlic so much, I might as well be a vampire...

Then again, I managed to overcome my fear of onions, as well as my fear of olive oil (in fact, I can't do anything in the kitchen without olive oil!) maybe someday I'll manage to overcome my fear of garlic as well.

Earlier today, one of my friends told me: "Food is dangerous." She was clearly meaning in terms of calories, but since that is never an issue when one is 163 cm tall and weighs 43.5 kilos, I decided to agree based on my experience with my retarded digestive system. I still enjoy eating because I noticed that not only does it somehow keep me alive, it also releases certain endorphines when I make it and it comes out just right.

Ughhhh....

Peace, love and food dillemma continues...

 

Ah! I ripped some more death metal shit. This was very necessary, especially since I nearly lost it this week with my rage tantrums.

Bleeding knuckels from punching doors and walls was the least of my problems as I felt my head bursting into flames.

Why you ask? No sensible reason at fucking all! I just found myself thrashing around my room, cursing my lungs out, throwing shit at the walls with the true and real attempt at breaking it. Thankfully, my roommates were not around, so I didn't risk scaring the living Christ out of them.

It was incredibly therapeutic, though... I should do that more often.

Seriously, some people reccomend soft music, scented candles and a warm bath to relax... but I know that shit like that only serves to infuriate me more because I see that as an attempt to push my frustration back down to the core of my being. My frustration is very real and should be released, and fucking soft music will not do.

DEATH METAL! That's the fucking way to do it. The gutteral growls, the flesh-grinding drums and the beheading guitar solos let my flames consume everything in sight before dying down and leaving nothing but ashes. In any case, after the whole storm died down, I felt this incredible feeling, like I had just risen to a completely separate plane of existance. My friend used the perfect word to describe it the other day: "Cleansed." That's exactly what I felt - cleansed with holy water, and what was an inferno burning inside me became some form of spiritual light emanating from my body. 

Besides that, I get amazing responses from many people about my writing, my zines and my writing and artistic productions. However, I can't manage to find a writing job. I realized that if I wanna work for some company in some writing position, I have to fit their standards and their style. This is why I can't manage to find a job. If I have to restrict myself, censore myself, edit myself, rework phrases over and over again, the end result will be a watered down, boring and senseless version of my capabilities.

This was one of my reasons for starting a feminist zine. I don't let myself be limited by editing and stylistic guidelines. I write what comes to mind and what feels right. Fuck professionalism, this is about expression, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, pure freedom that has been butchered by popular press and asshole editors driven by nothing but their insatiable thirst for money.

Long live zines! 

Peace, love and yes, my rage is definitely directed at you miserable parasitical ameobas pretending to be editors. Fuck you all, a million times over.

This is what will happen to your penis if you fuck with me.

 

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!

 

Metal show last Friday, Battle for Jerusalem... I was meaning to write about it sooner but I was too sore to do anything, and I still am. Which basically means the show was great. If I come back home with the ability to move my head and hear what you're saying it means the show was shit. If I come back home and am incapacitated for at least three days it means the show kicked major ass.

So this time I wasn't incapacitated, I was simply sore, which means the show didn't kick ass, but it was good, decent metal and that I had a relatively good time.

First band that came on was Dagor Dagorath. Even before they kicked into the first song, and were just standing still under the dim spotlights with faded smoke changing shapes in the air, they had an amazing stage presence, and somehow I felt a darker, more sinister presence, within this momentary stillness... I couldn't really put my finger on it, but it felt insanely empowering. They gave a pretty good performance, especially considering their lead singer is a woman and pulled some awesome black metal vocals throughout the entire set which unfortanately didn't last very long.

After three or four songs, there was a change of equipment and a band called Mind Corruption came on. They were... uh, how should I put this? They looked and sounded like something out of an Asterix and Obelix nightmare. The lead singer was the weirdest thing ever. He had a beard and glasses, which made him look like a religious Jew (which he of course wasn't because it was Friday night), and wore this kind of helmet with fur and horns and wielded a sword which at first I thought was plastic until he started swinging it around and the lights reflected off the blade. I was in the front row and felt like at any moment, this sword is slashing me across the face. Besides that, he was jumping around the stage like a little kid... it was completely absurd. The music was terrible, just as horrible as I thought it would be after hearing them on MySpace.

Then, Birth came on. Their vocalist was "meh," their drummer was "blah", their bassist was "ugh" and their guitarist was "wtf?!" I think the soundguy did a terrible job with the soundcheck because all I heard was the guitarist atrocious riffs. I barely heard the drums or the bass, whereas the vocalist I couldn't hear for shit!

Then, another change of equipment and it was the end of the world when Abrage came on stage. You know how in big metal shows, the crowd is usually standing in the first, second, third, fourth and sometimes the fifth lines before there is the mosh pit somewhere in the middle? Well in this case it was the first line and the pit right after that. With Abrage and their fucking asshole vocalist who kept encouraging the crowd to smash into each other by making cirlces with his index finger, the pit basically kept hitting people in the first row, including me.

So imagine being me - a 163 cm, 43.5 kilos woman. Now I'm already shitting my pants with those big ass bulls playing the human blender two feet behind me. What is worse than being thrown into the moshpit in my situation? Yes, having the pit thrown into ME. That's exactly what happened and I found myself flying face first onto the stage and landed on my elbows and thighs.

I got some sick bruises out of it, but basically after that happened, I slowly crawled to the back of the room right outside the danger zone.

I was in too much pain to really be paying attention to Abrage's music but I did manage to single out the guitarist who played suprisingly much better than all the other members. His talents should be put to better use in another band, seriously.

Another change of equipment and stage display, meanwhile the soundguy playbacked some other songs, including Blood on Your Hands, to which I said 'fuck this!' and headbanged my neck off. Wearing an Arch Enemy t-shirt, it was clearly my role.

Among the crowd, I was stunned to see four kids, not older than 11 or 12, one was wearing a Cradle of Filth shirt, another was wearing Dimmu Borgir, another was wearing Azamoth and the fourth was wearing some random black metal shirt with skulls and stuff. Two of them had long hair and were headbanging their little hearts out the entire show. Man, if only there were more Israeli kids like that!

In any case, Azamoth were the next band to come on. They were the typical black metal band with the black and white Kiss-style makeup. Their riffs were terrific and got me headbanging a little. But the singer's voice was lame. He sounded like a dying frog. All these other bands after Dagor Dagorath had much longer sets. Dagor played like three or four songs, whereas the others all played nine or 10 songs each. I was forced to suffer it waiting for the band I actually came to see - Arafel.

They came on after Azamoth and after a long change of scene and change of equipment. But it was worth the wait. Arafel kept me headbanging their entire set. They started with one of my favorite Arafel songs - On the Dark Way - and ended with another one of my favorite songs - Serpent Land. The way they incorporated the violin with the guitar solos was spectacular, and their riffs, ever changing throughout the songs, sent shivers of pure, dark pleasure down my spine.

The only thing that really disappointed me with all performances was that none of the drummers used a double bass but settled for a double pedal. And the drum kit itself was pretty basic. There were no extra tams or cymbals, no special percussion sounds... it was pretty basic and boring. That extra dimension that elaborate drums add to the sound of black or death metal was simply not there, and it was upsetting to say the least.

In any case, here I am with my sore neck and my nice, bruised up knees, looking forward to better days of Israeli metal, or simply for days where international metal bands decide to enlighten the Israeli crowd by coming to play here more often, goddamit!

Soon there will be the Anthem fesitval though, where a nice array of international bands will be playing, but I won't be going due to lack of funds...

So let me rephrase my previous statement and say, here I am with my sore neck and nice, bruised up knees looking forward to better days of financial situation when I can afford to see international metal bands live here in Israel.

Peace, love and it's Fog, not Frog!

 

Dagor Dagorath:

         

Yesterday was Pride in Jerusalem. It was great, very colorful, very funny, very moving at times, excruciatingly hot, a lot of fun, people from all over the country, there were even some foreigners, it was just awesome. And what was great about it was that there weren't as many anti-protesters and not as many security officials.

What still sucks is that there still is an enormous amount of homophobia, even by moderates and secular Israelis.

 

 

My cousins are sill vehemently against it, fucking homophobes, born and raised. Yet, we still live in a democratic country, at least theoretically.

When people ask me how is it that I'm straight yet still go to GLBT marches and events, I say because I would do the same for any group of Jews who look to be accepted by their fellow Jews in their own Jewish nation. It only makes sense, doesn't it? Besides, I want my country to be democratic in practice, not only in theory, and by supporting different groups of people, especially the GLBT community whose sole struggle is for their right to love, this kind of democracy can be achieved. And lord knows Israel can use a bit more free love among so much animosity in all other areas of Israeli daily life.

Peace, love and אהבת חינם!

 

 

 

Last night I went to my first metal night in Jerusalem. It's surprising enough that there is one metal bar in Jerusalem, and it's even more suprising that now there are two.

I had to go experience it for myself and maybe, just maybe, have a little faith in the Holy City, that there is such a thing as a community of Jerusalemite Metalheads, hopefully comprising of more than just me and my ex (while neither of us are originally Jerusalemites to begin with).

And so, that's how I found myself in Scream Metal Bar on Shlomo Hamelech, downtown Jerusalem. It had all the appropriate cliches of a regular lounge - a classy bar, high tables and chairs, sofas, an upstairs section with some more sofas - with a touch of metal - posters of metal artists on the wall (including Angela Gossow), people dressed in black, metal chains, t-shirts of metal bands, mohawks, piercings and tattoos left and right, the bouncer dressed the same, and of course there was the music, loud and angry, just the way I like it.

I didn't know anybody there, so I decided to sit on the couch for a while and seeing as I am in Israel, somebody is bound to notice that I am along and walk up to me and strike up a conversation. Eventually, that's what happened. The people I spoke with were very nice, three men and a woman who seemed like they also came here alone and had just met randomly and started a conversation seeing as they all share a love for the same music blasting from the speakers.

The was, however, one problem (there's no shortage of these in Israel) - the ban on smoking in bars and restaurants certainly did not apply to Scream. EVERYONE, that is everyone except for the two dogs that were there, were smoking. By one hour, the place was going up in flames with all the smoke. I couldn't breath though all the windows (all two of them) were open, and my eyes were itching so bad I started tearing. Another thing that sucked was that despite their hardcore appearence, none of the metalheads were headbanging, which is what I was hoping to do that night until my neck would break. They were blown away when I told them I don't smoke, and were totally dumbstruck when I added that I also don't drink. So I decided to leave my fellow metalheads in their boring little hotbox and chose clean lungs. Safety first, right?

And so, with red eyes, a distant ring in my ears and cigarette smoke in my hair and clothes, I went on my merry way, in the middle of the night. I walked all the way home, which took about 30 minutes, hoping that the fresh midnight air would rid my clothes of the horrible stench. With my shoulders back, my head high, I walked, clutching a small bottle of pepper spray with my thumb on the trigger. Safety first, right?

The walk was in vain. The clothes and my hair still smelled horrible. The ring in my ears was getting faint, and my neck was not stiff. This was not how I was hoping the end the night.

Next weekend, at the Yellow Submarine, there are some local metal bands performing live. I paid 45 sheks to break my neck and my eardrums, this better be worth it.

Peace, love and "giving our blood to the Doomsday Machine!"

 

Oh yeah! And we're back with more of moi!

Yes, for those of you who just joined us, this space was deleted because of a tiny 2 pixels photo of a cartoon depicting a nude woman just standing there doing shitall. In fact, we found traces of much more obscene nudity on other photos featured on this site, including a naked dominatrix with a male slave licking her boots, and a topless woman wearing a strap on dildo with a man giving her head (these were deleted upon the owner's own initiative of avoiding pissing off Windows Live once again).

Now why would Windows Live choose to delete this awesome cool space because of the pathetic 2 pixel cartoon and not the other crazy pics remains a mystery. In any case, Riot Grrrl is back, very unfortunately censored. But back nontheless.

Meanwhile, I was using this other space: http://hadass16.spaces.live.com

So you can check out what was going on while you were away.

And now to resume regular programing...

Fuck this, I'm hungry. I'll think of something to write later.

Peace, love, and freedom of expression shall prevail, you pathetic ameobas fucked beyond repair!

 

It seems like life-altering revelations only happen in movies. Like, somebody says something or does something that makes the other completely change his facial expression to express that he has seen the light and all of a sudden he's a brand new person, with a new purpose in life and a nice big smile on his face. That's bullshit. Nobody changes that drastically… unless it's the other way around. That is, being a happy, fun-loving person and experiencing something horrible that makes that person turn into a neurotic, depressed, angry basket case in a matter of minutes. It happened to him and almost simultaneously happened to me, as it has many other times in my life.

Regaining my senses during the other times always took about a year or two, and all the self-healing that I've achieved during that time would always be obliterated in an instant when I would experience yet another atrocious event. Over and fucking over again, two years to heal, two minutes to get completely fucked up again, another two years to heal again, and yet again fall into the abysmal hell with an even more powerful velocity than before, helplessly trying to find a way out of this solitary confinement shithole for another several years…

Is this God's idea of a joke? Is my life supposed to be an endless attempt to heal myself? Sure, we are all in a long process of self-burial, so healing entirely would be impossible because that would mean immortality, and frankly, I prefer any abysmal hell over that. But somehow, we managed to convince ourselves that if we are not dead, then we must be alive… and somehow, I just don't feel that.

Alive? Seriously, I feel far, far away from that.

There are things that make me feel alive but that are temporary and would make me feel even worse when they're over – drugs and sex, which are not always readily available and involve an enormous amount of risk. With drugs, when the high is over, the crash is horribly painful and terrifying. And with sex, an intense orgasm can suddenly make way for excruciating guilt and shame, and in my case also fear of abandonment.

Love cannot make me feel alive, not anymore. Love is uncertain in essence, and it is this uncertainty that terrifies me knowing that at any moment it could end. And fear, for me, is a feeling worse than anything.

Then there's music – my perfect addiction. The only risks that music involves is potential deafness if cranked up to ear-perforating levels, a sore neck if headbanging is inevitable, and a sore throat if growling along is also inevitable, but the spiritual effect is instantaneous and lasts longer than an orgasm or any given high. I trust music to never abandon me, unless my battery runs out, but that's irrelevant because I can always recharge it. Pain, fear, guilt, shame, all other negative energies dissipate and I rise into an aura of positive entities, that bring light into whatever abyss I fell into at that given time and show me the way out, even if for a little while.

So music does make me feel alive because I know that without it, I would have been dead, buried and forgotten long ago.

Still, I want to be able to use that positive feeling without fearing the inevitable cycle of pain-healing-pain. I want to feel alive while being able to feel pain, empathy and compassion without being entirely overtaken by it. I want to love passionately while avoiding the fear and the naiveté that may come along with that. I want to trust people even if I hate them.  

Enough already, I've fucking had it with this shit. I'm sick of my senses and lack thereof, sick of my core of pain, sick of this corpse I've been stuffed into against my will, sick of my psychological self-rape… I want to erase everything, and just be happy, be truly happy, once and for all.

It's not every day that I can start a blog out this way but here it is.

So I was having this MySpace message conversation with Angela Gossow about feminism and all, which by the way, totally rules. And I went around for about a week thinking about it more in depth and started branching out in all directions.

A while back I read The DaVinci Code, and all fabrications aside, what Dan Brown says in general makes absolute sense. The fact that a woman can bring a child into this world can make her almost divine. But what about a woman who cannot conceive children? Is she any less of a woman? Is she any less worthy of extolment?

Having recently found out that I have a genetic disease that can manifest itself in more a extreme nature for any offspring I may have, I'm terrified to bring any child into this world, with this condition which can render him or her clinically handicapped. There are pre-natal tests which can determine if a fetus inherited the condition, but in case the tests come out positive, the pregnancy should be terminated. So if one day I have to face either options - of bringing a handicapped child into this world or aborting it - I will go insane. And I mean, insane in the sense that I will have to go to an asylum. Basically what I'm considering is instead of risking going mental or risking endangering a child, I can resort to adoption, but I digress.

The fact that I can't bring myself to conceive a child, does that also make me any less of a woman?

Right now, the whole idea of the divinity of a woman seems a bit ridiculous, far-fetched and even discriminatory. I believe a woman should be respected, not worshipped. A woman is not a goddess, but she is a human being and should be treated as such.

This is what feminism should try to accomplish - to make those who treat women as sub-human, as property or as objects see women for who they are: human beings, and that they have the same rights every individual is entitled to.

Feminists who seek to make women into divine entities to be worshipped are missing the point of the equality between men and women.

Yes, saying "I'm a goddess, I kick ass, bow down, miserable males, for you are not worthy" may be empowering, but at the end of the day, we should recognize that we are only human, and we should thank God or Mother Earth for that.

Peace, love and I made an apple pie from the Tree of Knowledge! Yum!

Wow, ok I haven't written here in so long. Mostly because instead of writing about my life, I actually decided to go and live it. Smartest choice I ever made was moving to Israel because here, feelings are all out in the open with all their beauty and ugliness. Even if I don't work full time, I'm still functioning full time, and for once in my life I can find myself in times of extreme happiness - happiness overload, as I call it.

Not that I haven't had my bouts of depression here and there. Actually, because of those happiness overloads, the downside is that when I get depressed, I get REALLY depressed. Towards the end of last year, I dated this guy (I'll call him D) for two months and had some of the most beautiful time in my life. Despite the short-lived relationship, it was the deepest and most intense one, and I experienced feelings that I didn't even know existed - feelings that cannot be put into words, feelings that are by their very nature extreme as well as conflicting and confusing.

This is because D would do things and say things that would make me melt with satisfaction, love, trust, joy, but with overwhelming fear as well. So basically, when I was in his arms, I've never felt safer, but I've also never felt more afraid in my life - simply the fear of losing this cover of safety. D had some issues of his own, so I found myself going out of my way to make him happy, because it seemed that whatever I did had negative reprecussions and somehow made him feel insecure and offended at times.

After he broke up with me, I watched my world fall apart for the second time. The first time was in 2004 when my other boyfriend broke up with me. After having managed to rebuild myself with the help of feminism, riot grrrl music, writing and moving to Israel, D comes into my life and destroys me all over again. So I became such a mess that I went into therapy fearing that the next time I put a knife to my wrist, I might actually pull it.

Today, I am still in therapy and am doing much better, and am now resuming my happiness overloads, minus the fear of abandonment and loss. I am also healing with the help of feminism and riot grrrl as usual but this time I am attempting to avoid building a wall around myself as I have done in the past.

This wall provided me with much-needed protection, but it also kept me from expressing any emotions and rejected anyone who so much as looked my way. Now that this wall is broken, I just might be able to heal without closing myself off, and actually manage to express whatever feelings I have, without fearing the pain that may come along with it.

Aside from that, I've discovered many things about myself and my life that I haven't thought of before. Basically, these are things that I knew in the back of my mind but never thought of them in the way that I do now. My therapist makes me look at these experiences and see them for what they really are. Moving to Israel, for example, was something I saw as good, but I never saw it as a strength, as something I managed to do all on my own, while severing the dependent relationship I had with my parents. I also recently acknowleged the fact that I was raped, but I prefer not going into that. It was a very tough realization and I'm still trying to come to grips with it.

My psychological state scares me to the core. Although there are wonderful things I'm discovering about myself, it all comes with an enormous amount of pain. All these feelings are emerging like decomposed corpses on polluted shores, and need to be cleaned off and revived.

But I think I'm getting there... wherever "there" is.

Peace, love and "We Will Rise" from the dead.

Last night, I had a Friday night dinner at my friend's place.

We did the kiddush before the dinner and we did buddha after it.

So while we were tripping, outside on the balcony, someone went inside and when he came back out, he shut the glass door all the way. So basically we got locked outside on the balcony, all stoned, with no one to call for help.

Despite his highness, one of the guys climbed over the edge of the balcony and managed to go inside the house through the window.

Before that, I was beginning to think we would have to call the police (luckily one of us didn't leave his cellphone inside the house. And I was beginning to think I would stay on that balcony for the rest of my life and starve to death, and then someone would find us half dead on our balcony and we would make an appearance on "In Odder News" and/or "funniest home videos":

This just in! Five stupid stoners smoke themselves retarted and lock themselves outside their own home only to starve to death on their own balcony. Well I guess the Friday night dinner could have very well been my last.

But it wasn't!

The guy climbed in through the window and we all cheered and clapped our hands and hugged and the badtrip was over :-)

Definitely something to look back and laugh at.

Rules: Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following. They MUST be real places, names, things...NOTHING made up! If you can't think of anything, skip it. Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. And remember - you CAN'T use your name for the "boy/girl name" question.

 

1. Your Name: Hadass

2. Famous Artist/Band/Musician: Hole

3. A song: Heart-Shaped Box (by Nirvana)

4. 4 letter word: Hell

5. Colour: Hazel

6. Gifts/present: Heart-shaped box full of chocolate

7. Vehicle: Harley Davidson

8. Animal: Hippopotamus

9. TV Show: Home Makeover

10. Location: Haifa

11. Boy Name: Harel

12. Girl Name: Hila

13. Drink: Heineken

14. Occupation: Hairdresser

15. Sport: Hockey

16. Flower: Hibiscus

17. Celebrity: Halle Berry (same last initial too, hehe)

18. Food: Humus

19. Something found in a kitchen: Hot oven

20. Reason for Being Late: High (too easy, dude, it already happened to me)

21. Cartoon Character: Happy Tree Friends

22. Something You Shout: Holy Fuck!

23. Store: Home Center (the Israeli version of Home Depot)

I am officially an Editor-in-Chief...

I am also a journalist, an art director, a photographer, a promoter, a website editor, a copywriter, a publicist... and anything else pertaining to privately owning and running an independent, non-profit zine.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE IT! But I'm happy that I decided the zine would come out only every few months because otherwise, I would have a nervous breakdown and no money left.

In any case, the zine is called Fallopian Falafel - אשת חיל and it has to do with feminism in Israel. Now, I published only 100 copies of the first issue, which kinda sucks because I can't afford to publish more. Maybe someday when I manage to muster up the courage to also be an advertizer, I'll go and look for people to buy space in the paper and have money to publish more...

We'll see...

For now, if anyone is interested in collaborating with me, or submit anything to the zine or just find out more about it, you can contact me at editor@fallopianfalafel.com or visit the website at www.fallopianfalafel.com

You can also join the Yahoo group:

 

Enjoy!

Peace, love and ovarian shawarma!

 

An awesome chick band worth checking out:

 

 

I didn't write here in a while, so here are several updates:

1) I live in Jerusalem in the center of town

2) I still work for PMW

3) I'm going to visit Montreal in early April

4) I'm addicted to bubblewrap bubble popping

5) I acquired the taste of yogurt with pieces of fruit

6) I still hate beer

7) I still love Bailey's

8) I still abbhor cigarette smoke

9) I still fancy Buddha

10) I still think that Arch Enemy kicks Pink Floyd's ass in every possible aspect

11) I cheer for Beitar Yerushalayim in soccer

12) I still don't like hockey

13) I learned new marklar-related hebrew terms (i.e Satlan, shachta, rosh...)

14) I learned new hebrew expressions (i.e. kamut mischarit, beramot kashot, chole beishpuz...)

15) I still can't, for the life of me, figure out Israeli bureacracy

16) I like Facebook better then Windows Live Spaces - so screw this.

Peace, love and Strawberry Bio.