Gritty and Graffitied Here

Up early, of course, in this pleasant Airbnb I’ve secured for myself here in Tel Aviv.  On the shelf is an anthology called “Tel Aviv Noir” edited by Etgar Keret.  There is a string of small lights that illuminates the room.  The wooden window isn’t fully closed and its cold outside, but its alright, beneath my big white comforter.  I am supposed to meet people and talk about work in China.  The situation just keeps getting worse and worse.  I should have started working on this power point on the plane, but instead I finished a book of Yehuda Amichai poetry, instead. 

The ride to Rehovot takes a good half-an-hour in the morning traffic.  Leaving the skyscrapers of downtown things appear generally suburban, with a mixture of buildings that have aged quickly or others that ought never to have been built.  This mix of flash and functional reminds me somehow of Taipei and Tiblisi and Tokyo as well as a half a dozen other cities of recent memory.  I’m in the back, banging out my slides that aren’t quite ready, and now he’s asking me if that building right there, is my destination.

Later that night I sail back into a flash building on Ha Arab’a street. And not long after I’m in another Gett taxi ride up to the town of Herzliya.  Good to see my old friend.  A big smile, shiny eyes.  The waiter is board with it all, but my schnitzel and my salad are wonderful.  We have Israeli wine that seems suitably Mediterranean.  And we find ourselves talking about children and how the adjust to relocation.  His from Manhattan to Tel Aviv, and mine from Beijing to New York. 

Later that night I reconnect with a friend at his apartment on Allenby Street.  All these streets have meaning.  Allenby was the British General who expelled the Turks from Jerusalem.  The town is gritty and graffitied here, like a safe facsimile of seventies, Lower East Side.  Walking home to my place along Rothschild, the housing stock improves and waxes atmospheric.  I consider stopping in on the bar we enjoyed last night but prudently return back in to the stark white Bauhaus room on the second floor where I’d started out my morning in. 

Thursday 02/06/20