Not Anonymous

Yom Ha’Shoah is an Israeli holiday Diaspora Jews have adopted, for obvious reasons.

It is commemorated on the 27th of Nisan, to be adjacent to the Hebrew date of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which occurred on April 19th to May 16th, 1943.

It was also made to be adjacent to the Israeli Independence Day, the anniversary of the creation of the State.

This is no coincidence.

I would love nothing more than for this day to be a day of reflection and memorial of the victims and survivors of the Shoah, wherein entire branches of my family tree were decimated. My grandfather had run away from Europe long before the war and he died decades before I ever met him. I will never know who the members of my family. Even if members of my grandfather’s family and community survived, their names have been lost.

But it isn’t a day of reflection and memory.

Tonight Prime Minister Netanyahu said that the Iran nuclear deal was proof the world had not learned its lessons from the Holocaust. This, whilst refugees from Sudan and Eritrea rot in a prison camp and are forcibly deported to Rwanda. This, whilst there is a displaced Palestinian population under siege in our back yard.

Tomorrow an air-raid siren will sound to remind us to stand still in a moment of silence for 6 million members of family.

An air-raid siren.

I know, I know, why can’t I just let this day be about the memory of Jews who were murdered by the Nazis and the survivors who heroically made it out alive.

The above is how that memory is desecrated. If you’re going to commemorate an Israeli holiday, know its cost.

יזכור.

Tumblr crosspost: http://stillnotanonymous.tumblr.com/post/116486214091/yom-hashoah-is-an-israeli-holiday-diaspora-jews

Holy Crap, I haven't written here since October.

That's a really long time for me and I hope most of you follow me on other social media or something? I hope I follow most of you. I'm mainly on twitter (@the_eumelia) these days, tumblr is a hell hole of despair.

Long form writing for me has gone by the wayside in a big way, I have much less time to meander on the text, I am really good at condensing my thoughts into 140 characters, who knew, what with the way I ramble on off line and here as well, historically.

Too many commas.

The thing is I always have DW and LJ tabs open on my browser. I feel secure in the knowledge that I still have these spaces that mean so much to me, that I hold so much of my history.

I'm an entirely different person now than I was ten years ago when I first opened an LJ. I was 20. Twenty fucking years old. I'm turning 30 in May. Thirty years. I'm so much less of an adult that I thought I was when I was 20 and fresh out of the IDF.

Thinking about what I've been through and actually done and accomplished over the past decade is actually extraordinary now that I think about it. But I'm looking forward to the next decade a whole lot more.

I'm financially independent, I'm living alone, I've recently adopted a cat (he is a beautiful tuxedo short hair who needed a home and whom, at 7 years, would have had a hard time of it) and I feel like I'm finally living the way I want.

A single, queer, crazy cat lady.

There's liberty in that and that's my message for this Passover.

I hope to write more here in the first year of my 30s.

Bless you friends and readers.

Hello friends and random readers.

I had a feverish moment in which I would connect my twitter and my journals, cross posting my tweets and my posts to each platform, but I think that would be bad.

I figure if there's something I want everyone on my twitter followers to see I could simply link manually. I opted out of connecting my tumblr to twitter for the same reason. Most of the things I've wanted to have read in a vaster way I'd link anyway, so I think I'll just keep doing that.

Last night there were 18 people in the house. We all ate. If you'd like to know what was on the menu, it was as follows and in approximate order of serving:

Apples and honey
Round challah loafs
Chopped liver
Chopped herring
Gefilteh fish
Chicken soup with kreplach (meat dumplings)
Pea soup
Brisket
Chicken wings
Chicken legs
Roasted vegetables
Roast potatoes
Chopped salad
Couscous
Fruit platter
Passion fruit custard (I think?)
Chocolate and honey brownies
Chocolate and honey cake

I collapsed into bed after the clean up (and a cup of coffee) in a heap of food coma, my god, there was a lot of food. And I ate more of it for a late lunch.

The meat cooked and consumed over the holidays are truly throwbacks to the sacrifices slaughtered in the name of god at the Temple. Noms.

I would have eaten earlier if it weren't for the fact that I'm working from home today, which is fine, I like my job, but wow, there was a lot of it this morning! I'm working more a little later on (in an hour) but then I'll be done and I have a weekend to lounge around in.

Four day holiday weekends are the best if you ask me.

Good evening.

It's the night before Erev Rosh Hashana (New Year's Eve) and I'm freakin' exhausted.

Those of you who follow me and are active on twitter will know of the saga of the window that has been haunting me since Friday morning.

What is the saga of the window you might ask? Let me tell you from the beginning.

My bedroom had carpeting put approximately 20-odd years ago. It was brown. In the late 1980's early 1990's I assume this was he height of floor fashion. I was a mite too young to appreciate it. Nevertheless it was brown. My parents decided my room needed a renovation and put in parquet. It looks lovely, really it does and it makes the room look bigger and lighter than the god-awful brown wall to wall carpeting - a thing I will never do in a home of my own, it is a horror to clean (when one bothers to do so) and collects dust and hair and insects.

Insects.

If you've been reading me for long enough, you know I have a terrible phobia of cockroaches. You see, last summer the humidity and temperature were ideal for these cretins to spread their wings and fly. And so father put a mesh net over the inside of my window as an attempt to keep the creepies out. It worked for the most part, but looked ugly as sin and it was a bitch to clean my shutters and window panes.

And so, along with a brand spanking new floor a new window was installed.

Only on Friday when everything was supposed to have been done at the same time, floor and window, there were malfunctions.

The window workman brought a torn net panel that was designed to be on the outside of my window to keep my mortal enemies outside my domain. So... it was decided he'd come back on Sunday.

Only on Sunday he decided he couldn't make it.

So he came on Monday. Only when I got back from work that evening I was told that he'd torn the mesh net again.

I swear, I felt like I was going to have a tantrum that rival my 2.5 year old niece! You see, all my stuff, all my property was in a pile in a living room while we waited for this incompetent ass to get his act together. I spent my nights in my childhood bedroom, where my nieces and nephews sleep when they come visit. It wasn't bad, but I was stressing out because it was taking so long and on the Saturday when I started cleaning up the floor and rearranging my bookshelves a baby cockroach flew on me.

It was creepy!

But this afternoon my mother sent my a text in which she told me "Tonight's the night!"

My reply was "Hallelujah! :)"

Yes, smiley included.

So tonight I sleep in my own bedroom, in my own bed, with all my stuff clean and tidy.

It was a rough week because as I said, I was stressing out and I everything was going wrong and my mom was resenting my bad mood, which made me resent her and her bad moods like fucking whoa!

But we got through it and it's now over.

Tomorrow the whole entire clan is coming over to celebrate Rosh Hashana. I'm so glad alcohol is a mitzvah.

August where have you gone?

I was elswhere on the internet. It's hard to break these kind of habits.

But next week it's Rosh Ha'Shana, and that's as good an arbitrary marker as any, right?

Good.

How is it Friday already? Time rushed by this week, but also not, it felt very very long and I don't really know why.

It was kind of a crummy week at work, I felt my boss' disappointment in me, but I hope I made up for it by working extra hard yesterday.

Still, I don't really want to care all that much about work, it's not the thing that gives me meaning in life, though I do spend the majority of my life in that office, and it helps when you do enjoy it.

Which I am. A lot. I also like the majority of my co-workers, but argh... it was a crummy week.

Unaided, maybe, by the fact that I really did my best to do as much editing as I could on the fic for fannish_advent/fannish_advent tomorrow and only finished it, like, minutes ago.

It's now with the beta again. My stories still need another once over before I feel confident to let the public see them.

It's really all about you, people.

As usual, on weeks where work consumes me as well as writing projects (of which I don't have that many much to the dismay of ideas banging at my brain) time seems to slip though fingers.

Add to that that tomorrow I've got a family Hanukkah gathering, because you know, it's a holiday and we love the holidays that includes scarfing on fried food, lighting fires (candles, but same-same) and getting chocolate money. I don't begrudge the fact that I've got my family around this week, but it's like I never have time to myself.

Except today where I spent all my time drinking coffee, eating chocolate and cheese, and flailing at my fic.

That was my day. And my week. Same all when you think about it.

I'm so glad it's been boring for me (don't ask me about local politics).

Tumblr crosspost

I wrote this entry last night, but due to LJ feeling poorly, I'm posting this just as I'm heading out the door.

Maybe one of you will read it.

---

My brother asked me how work was and why I hadn't been writing about it.

My bitchy reply was that I was tired (sorry about that, big brother!)

And I am.

It's been a while since I worked these kind of hours. In fact, I'm pretty sure the last time I worked these kind of hours was way back when, when I was in the IDF!

So, yeah, tired.

Also, annoyed, because it was Remembrance Day eve last night and I told my 6 year old niece I would come see her participate in her school's ceremony - but I was stuck in the most massive traffic jam ever because the entire country was on the move in an attempt to get home before the ceremonies and the air siren that marks the start of the day sounded.

I ended up having to stand in the middle of the street as the siren sounded. I hate that.

I have a big distaste for the whole atmosphere of this day, considering I despise the glorification of death that this day requires, the compulsory heterosexuality of the day - because the dead soldier, who is always a man, will invariably leave behind a mother, a father and a wife/girlfriend - and everything is so bloody war mongering.

In any event, regarding my job. I now work for a big international company, to be known henceforth as The Company (yeah, not that Company... but it does sound mysterious, doesn't it?) in the capacity of content editor and SEO (that's search engine optimisation).

Being a n00b, I'm not actually doing much other than being trained and going through the database and learning things. My boss, to be known henceforth as Boss, is a bit impatient, I think, because I'm not the only new person on the team, so she's a bit stressed. But she is strict and I'm asking so many questions and I like having boundaries and an authority figure who I can identify with.

The floor is amazing, I love my colleagues. One of my best friends works there and he pushed my resume to Boss and he's been absolutely charming and helpful and it's so much fun to be able to be me among these people, as we're all a bunch of geeks!

One of my colleagues is a little, how do you say, not really into the whole slaty language thing and spelled out "bitch" in lieu of saying it and I, in a moment of complete id and fangirrlism, said: "bitca?" A la Xander Harris.

This began a 15 minutes discussion about Buffy, Dollhouse, Firefly, Joss in general, Farscape, Stargate, Battle Star Galactica, Star Trek and even Star Wars.

Boss, who is not into tv or sci-fi or anything like that concluded our status meeting with "Okay, good, and live long and prosper. That's what you people say to each other right?"

I was not the only one to do the Vulcan salute.

So yeah, I'm having a good time on my first week.

Hello my lovelies.

You may not have known or noticed, but I just returned from a weekend holiday with my entire family, all 14 of us.

It was an amazing time. From Thursday afternoon to Sunday morning, there wasn't a day in which I didn't frolic down the beach in my bikini and wade in the lake like sea water of the beach. The beach enclosed by several break waters so there are many islands to walk around on and many sand banks on which to play.

With four children running after their parents, aunts and uncles, this was good thing.

It was idyllic in a way you've only read in a Gerald Durrel book, in which family escapades can't help but turn minute and quiet at the fact that you can leave them behind by going to swing on the hammock hanging between two palm trees.

My father took me and the kids fishing and the sea was rough that day, it nearly swept my youngest nephew (7 years old) off the break water. It was great.

My niece (5 years old) was slightly more concerned (as was my dad - and yeah, so was I)so we went back to the beach so that we could fish the little baby fish by the boats moored by the holiday cottages and houses.

I spent most of my afternoons siesta-ing. I never nap in the afternoon, but the sea air and sun shine really take their toll.

My niece discovered my MP3 player and spent many minutes listening to the grand variety of Amanda Palmer, Amy Winehouse, Tori Amos, Sinead O'Connor, Bon Jovi, The Beatles, The Who, Hans Zimmer soundtracks, Joni Mitchell, Rammstein, Rasputina and Lady Gaga (among other things).

Apparently, "Gaga [her nickname for me] has the best music."

Believe me, being her musical educator is one of the more fun things to be.

I don't mention Gerald Durrel for nothing, as I brought "My Family and Other Animals" with me to read during the down times and it's funny because it's true. Seeing as I was laughing out loud several times, I was asked to tell what I was reading and many laughs were had in return.

Despite the fact that we only came back today, only several hours ago in fact, I am hard pressed to tell what happened in what order. I remember we went for some activity on a different beach, but I can't remember if it was yesterday or the day before. I can't remember which day I slept for three hours and which day I spent the morning fishing (this may have been the same day).

This isn't to say that there weren't spats and tears and irritability - this is because this is a family holiday. But all was quickly forgotten, because there was fresh fish from a local village that were rubbed in lemon and garlic and grilled to a delicious flakiness on the brei (South African vernacular for barbecue) and a baby who learned to say syllables (guess who she calls "Gaga"? That's right, everybody!) and wave "bye-bye".

Not to mention the beach.

At the moment, I'm back in my room (the room I'll soon be leaving and coming back to only visit) nursing several red patches on my back and face, and blisters on my feet.

This, this weekend, feels like the New Year to me.

Shana Tovah.

It being the holiday season in my locale, it is a time of family and obligation.

Yesterday I was helping my mother arrange the place names for the seats, the name cards were a mess, so I quickly put all the couples and their children into smaller piles.

I was the only solo card.

Now, after an entire semester of studying the sociological aspect of singlehood and writing a 6000 word essay about the position of the single aunt in the extended-nuclear family for said course, you probably don't understand the feeling of sheer poignancy that came from seeing my name, alone, among the clumps of little families that make up my huge tribe.

I have no doubt that I'm not the only single person who has a family made up of couples and families and has felt this way. But I have been theorising about it, this position of mine in my family, the role I play of Dutiful Daughter, Doting Aunt (despite raising my voice a few times and having my cousin, a mother, come to make sure I haven't murdered her children) and Single Gay Relative.

I may be the only one who perceives myself this way. Who knows, maybe others do see me this way. Glass closet and all.

What has come to mind in my navel gazing about this, because I have been thinking about it the whole week, were the issues of "passing" and "flaunting" my sexuality in the context of my family.

My nuclear family are a paragon of harmony, support and TLC. Really, I couldn't have asked for a better family, really. My bitterness considering my coming out process and the crappy way I and [Southern!Girl] were treated when were together notwithstanding.

Being single and queer is easier than being queer in a relationship - man or woman. The invisibility I experience when I'm with a guy is painful because of the erasure of my identity and the culture I identify with. The all out double standard of being with a girl requires constant negotiation of what is appropriate or inappropriate behaviour in so many contexts.

It is sheer kismet that Spark In Darkness wrote about this very issue on his blog, where he writes about living your life through a filter:

Every question has to be passed through it, evasions and lies considered, examined and discarded or adapted. And damn if that isn't tiring, even now when I largely shut the filter down and try to answer without it – it still fires up and activates the closet instincts. Before when I nearly always used the filter it was even more draining – because everything someone said to me or I said back had to be run through the filter to ensure that the BIG DARK SECRET was hidden.

[...]that's before we get to simple things like the awful crime of kissing/touching and the dreadful decisions of whether it's ok to sit next to him or not – can we go out to dinner together or do we need to bring more people so it's not a date? Am I stood too close? Whose watching, who can see is anyone upset/angry/sitting on a cactus expression?

So, yeah, here's little ol' me “flaunting” my sexuality because not “flaunting” is a lot of work. I just don't have the energy not to flaunt.

I emphasised the last bit, because that pretty much hits the nail of the head. Sometimes, most of the time, we're asked to "tone it down", or stop making everything "about being QuILTBAG".

There are worse things that happen to gay people than being told by heteronormative society that we're disruptive and should shut up and suck it up, because you know, being beat up and murdered because you weren't quiet enough is worse than being escorted off a plane for kissing your partner.

But the incident with Leisha Hailey and the Southwest flight, brings to a head how careful we have to be in order to walk around unscathed.

I mean, if you read the statement from Southwest Airline following the incident, you can't help but cringe:

Initial reports indicate that we received several passenger complaints characterizing the behavior as excessive. Our crew, responsible for the comfort of all Customers on board, approached the passengers based solely on behavior and not gender. The conversation escalated to a level that was better resolved on the ground, as opposed to in flight. We regret any circumstance where a passenger does not have a positive experience on Southwest and we are ready to work directly with the passengers involved to offer our heartfelt apologies for falling short of their expectations.

All emphasis is mine. It would be mind boggling if it wasn't such a typical framing of "gay behaviour" in public.

First of all, the passenger complaints? Really? You know how many times I've complained about a child running up and down the isles of a plane? Are you going to remove that child and its parents?! Boy that would be grand!
Never happen of course, after all, a child running up and down the isles is "natural". As is, you know, kissing and holding hands between a man and woman.

Two women, well, that's "excessive". Because it disrupts the "family oriented" flight, of heterosexual and nuclear clumps of couples and their children.

And of course one must not make the customers uncomfortable, I mean, it's not like gay people pay for services, or use the same methods of transport as straight people. *snort* of course not, we have our own airlines, our own cities, our own laws and regulations, you know... in those "clubs". We'd never imagine doing that in public.

Existing, that is.

Of course, despite Southwest's hypocrisy, they are a well known airline that discriminates against its customers.

Dorothy Snarker who wrote about this earlier this week mentioned that Southwest is the airline that kicked Kevin Smith (Director of "Dogma" and "Chasing Amy") off a flight for being fat and Billy Joe Armstrong (Green Day front man) for dressing in baggy pants.

Obviously, Southwest feels very strongly about its well dressed, straight and thin customers. Everyone else just isn't up to par for this airline.

These are incidents that have happened to celebrities. Just ponder that one for a moment.

Reading about the above and planning out this post, well, it makes my own single status a thing of visibility and invisibility. I break the pattern of pairings in my family, but I am rendered silent because talking about wanting to date or going on dates is "flaunting" and "disruptive" and sometimes I just don't have the energy to deal with that.

It's giving into homophobia.

And the homophobia exhibited by Southwest, by accepting the underlying assumption that a kiss between two women is disturbing to customers, but being called disgusting by other people is just something we should suck up, is so entrenched in the culture, practically every culture on earth, that I sometimes despair at thinking I'll get to see or feel, fundamental change in my lifetime.

Which was dashed out the window.

The past two weeks are hard for me. Not only because of the solemn occasions regarding the various memorial days, them being national Holocaust memorial day and Memorial day which is used as a precursor for Independence day, which is just coming to a close.

Both memorial days are commemorated by ceremonies and a nation wide two minute siren in which we are supposed to stand still and "think" about the dead.

I was never a fan of these events, but since my own experiences in the Second Lebanon War I pretty much loathe them. The people I know who died serving in the IDF or through terrorist attacks, I remember regardless as to whether I stop still in the middle of the street while an air raid siren pierces the air.
I think about the the genocide of my people (and everyone else who was systematically murdered due to who they were) a lot. Probably more than is healthy. I'm not into the whole Shoah as an academic interest or as an intersected period, I pretty much avoid thinking about it in that way.

Any way, the past two weeks have been about me avoiding the public radio, public television and I've basically removed Facebook from my life other than to get some invites and messages to community and activism events.

But I hate these ceremonies; I haven't been to a Holocaust memorial ceremony in years, I try to avoid being in public during the sirens and the one time a year I go to a Memorial day ceremony to listen to the names of the all the people who died during the various and sundry wars Israel has fought all I can think of is, predictably, Sinead O'Connor.

During my emotional turmoil in the months following the war, I listened to Sinead a lot. She had always been a favourite, but in that time I feel like she really saved me. And of the songs I listened to over and over and over again and to which I'm listening now is "Drink Before The War".

( Lyrics )

And well, when listening to elementary school children read out the names of the dead and read poems about soldiers who die in glory but are sorely, sorely missed... I can never help but be moved and think, "look what we're being prepared for".

I don't know if that's cynical or just sad.

But the glory of Jingo is not one I participate in with a whole heart.
Mostly, I just like the fireworks.