Fleeting

Over the last few days I sulked a bunch, did some work, tended the compost, played with babies, and the like. The poor blog feels very neglected. Sorry, blog. I also planned my forthcoming big travel week: Tel Aviv, Eilat, Petra, take 2. It’s starting to hit me that I only have less than a month left in Israel and that I haven’t done a lot of what I was hoping to accomplish. For Shabbat I’m staying with a friend I hadn’t seen in three years. It seems like everywhere I turn are people from past lives and lives unlived—this one I worked at retreat with, this one knows most of my high school class, this one went to college with my friends, and all the ones I’ve emailed for PresenTense for years but only met in person for the first time now. My brother plays for a flag football league made up of teams from the various American yeshivas. They play Saturday nights at Kraft Stadium, the first American football field in Israel, built in Sacher Park near the Knesset by Robert Kraft, owner of the Patriots. I went to watch their game and stood among the 18 year old boys cheering for their friends and fawning over the 18 year old girls. Good for them that they can find the comforts of home in this foreign land. They seem so young. And only a handful of years until they find themselves in the midst of their own quarter-life existential crises.


American football in Kraft Stadium, with the Patriots logo in the middle of the field.


The shuk at Machane Yehuda at night—a rarely seen view of a place everyone goes. Kinda eerie.