The feeling of love coats my insides, warms me while simultaneously making me fear the possibility of cold. The Middle East and you are interconnected, the two loves of my life. I can't give up one for another, it just wouldn't be fair to a place and a person that I care about so intimately.

The distance between us is a throbbing injury that never dulls its tud-tud-tud on my heart. You are such an example of the half of the Middle East that is foreign to me with your religion, while my time in Jerusalem made my fondness for Zionism grow.

"I find myself stuck in what has been instead of looking towards what can become.."

I don’t want to choose between the two of you. Can’t I continue to ignore the growing battle of religion/culture/family versus true love? The anxiety is worth one glimpse at your smile, one word of affection. My familial, religious, cultural homeland is directly in odds with all that you believe in. Can it be a subject we don’t discuss? Or must I choose for happiness: with my place or my heart? I am so conflicted. How can I know, sitting here behind a computer in the States while you live in the physical area of our discontent?

I guess I choose…

Across All Time and Space

You live so far away, yet I feel you close.

How can we be separated by time, space, and religion?

Just because I'm an American Jew and you're a Palestinian Atheist?

Everything has double meanings, everything can be a potentially fatal argument. 

"Middle East", "Israel", "Palestine": even the names of locations can be argued over. 

As Roland Barthes explains in "Work to Text", the words change simply with the alteration of the signifier. We each comes from alternate sides of one of the historically resilient issues. 

How can we ever agree on the issues of country, of place, of belonging, of home? Is home where my heart is (with you) or where I'm from? Should I give up my culture, my heritage, thousands of years of the struggles my family has gone through in order to live in our romantic bubble?

It is impossible to separate the essence of myself without my identity as a Jew. As someone who has visited Israel, I fell in love with the land simultaneously as I fell for you. When I'm back in America, I miss both the land and the person. 

"אני אוהבת אותך"

I love you. It applies to both.

How can I ever choose one? Or more devastating, give one up?

My heart is silent in response. 

Can I only revisit our Paris or settle down in a lovely cottage with you?

How do I know when we're done, if ever? We spend on opposite sides of a landmass, of a seemingly immovable space between us?

                                                                 me  ||   you
The simple questions of whether I love you goes beyond the yes and no, the black and the white. I have loved you more than I ever thought described the term; all encompassing, overbearing  that threatened to take over all that was me at times.

Now I'm unsure how I feel, and which person: the memory or the living, breathing human? You can't live with a ghost, you can't grow old with your past. At one point in my life, I would have chosen death over being separated from you. Now, I've chosen not to see you when I had the opportunity. It's just too soon; I can't put my feelings together into some semblance of a lucid idea. My emotions run ragged over the spectrum when it comes to you. I lack the knowledge or ability to organize them.

You represent so much of what I miss, have cried over for endless days and nights. Or do you? Are you this amazing if flawed counterpart to myself or just my Nadja, a dream constructed by my searching mind? My answer differs depending on the weather, the day of the week, if I ate breakfast that particular morning. There is some sort of feeling hidden inside me for you, but I can't figure out if it is the remnants or the rebirth of love. Can it be rebuilt or should it be left in the ruins?

All I know for certain is that innocence is gone. I cannot pretend that scars have not formed. Some days I feel it may be better to toss you aside, begin anew. Other days, I can't imagine life without you. Maybe one day the answer will appear. 

What are we fighting for?

Personal experiences illustrate the value of a place. A text inspired me to show you the history and beauty of the centuries of conflict.

An awe-inspiring site, right? If only you knew what it took to reach that view.

.מצדה

Masada, if you don't read hebrew, means fortress. It was the ancient fortress of Herod the Great. Trying to access it today is probably just as bad it was in the first century CE.

Five Miles from the bottom (see those tiny trees in the picture? Below that.) to the top.

Here is my experience. 

Get psyched up, ignore the repeat screams of your conscious "You're going to die!"
If One-balled Lance can bike the Tour de France, I can handle this.
Put on some music to make it go faster.

         Breathe in, out.
              Push it.
          Step up. Don't fall off the edge of the cliff with little to not safety features.
                                                             Simple stuff. 
When I finally reach the top, I look around.....wowwwwww.

So this is what everyone has been fighting over for thousands of years? I have to say, the view may be worth it. Almost. I feel this rush of accomplishment, a wave of success rolls over me. I stand at the top, arms up in the 'V' of VICTORY. I feel like I owned this mountain, made it mine. Then I stop...is this why everyone is fighting so much? They feel this ownership, this desire to possess. You fight so hard, so long; lives are lost: is there an end? Is it worth it to continue the losses? Looking out at the view, I see the physical end goal. My emotions are mixed.

Live and Let Die?

Will we ever be able to "live and let be," allow the idea of Namaste to seep into the world's conscience?  History is doomed to be repeated, we are taught. Why must that be? Is this cyclical horror a fact of life? Is it a symbol of the fallacies of man? Should we blindly accept the fact that to err is human, to kill is normal? 

Is there another way? The pacifists, the hippies, they roam around the Earth for decades proclaiming peace, love, and unity. It’s a heartbreaking reality where the longhaired, drug-addled men and women contain more knowledge than their custom attired, Ivy League educated counterparts enacting legislature that puts humans in harms way. Why is the disparity between the representatives and the common people so wide?

Human life is so fragile, yet a whole section of this planet has been in near constant upheaval for centuries. That uncertain landmass between Asia and Europe has directly lead to the loss of millions of lives. Are the religious lands and the landmarks that rest on it really that important to sacrifice precious souls?

Will the Middle East ever be a peaceful area? The Muslims, Christians, Jews, Bedouins, Druids, almost every major religious entity has laid claim onto sections of this area. What makes it the Mecca, the Holy Land? Why can’t we, like fictional character Sheldon Cooper, just move Jerusalem to Mexico? Is it impossible to settle what is considered the most important areas of the world?