I forgot to mention... I'm back

Incase anyone has noticed the year-long gap between the last two posts, my final year of grad school is to blame there. Rather than run the rat race to the tenure track job that many of my beloved classmates ran (and won... mabrouk!) I went the non-traditional route and decided on a bit of a career shift and skills gathering endeavor. Not sure exactly where that shift is going, somewhere between human rights work and cultural programming... but the first move took me back to Palestine to take another look at the options here and to get my Arabic up to speed. Since this place is the subject of my MFA thesis, which is sitting in boxes and rolled up in tubes in 4 locations across 2 states and another country, I'm also hoping to find it a well-lit home in the cultural center of Ramallah in the near future. So I'm in a bit of a prediciment here, sitting right now in.. ahem.. Tel Aviv.. couldn't be further than the right starting point. I'll be moving to either Ramallah or Birzeit pretty soon and starting the Arabic class. This one will do it, I can feel it. All those others got me started but this one, coupled with three months in Ramallah, is going to seal the deal.

borderline schizophrenia

I don't want to downplay the seriousness of mental illness, so I should be upfront here and say that aside from the medium-to-low level depression that everyone seems to suffer from these days, I have a clean bill of health upstairs. Nonetheless, if I may take some reckless liberties some medical terms that I honestly don't know much about, I'm on my way to being a full fledged victim of multiple personality disorder - two to be specific. But don't be mistaken, they are not symmetrical and I'm doing the best I can to embrace one and forget the other. When I visited a nice acquantaince, hopefully soon-to-be friend, at Birzeit University last week, I was dreading the question that I have already heard several times over the past few weeks. Where are you staying? A benign question to most, but not when the answer involves crossing an internationally contested border that only a select few venture over and through. In the morning I'm waking up in Tel Aviv in a nicely chilled apartment (24C to be specific) and by the afternoon I'm struggling for cellphone reception on Birzeit University's campus in the village of Birzeit and sweating through my modest clothing. I'm not a liar, so I try to evade the question... I say I'll probably be staying in Birzeit once my Arabic class begins. But no, the question is NOW. So I preface my answer with the word, "actually." I'm staying in Tel Aviv. I cannot think a CIA Factbook eqivalent for this dichotomy. It certainly doesn't exist in the USA. Maybe, perhaps somewhere along the Mexico/US border, times one milion, but I doubt it. So the reaction I get, the best one I could possibly receive.. It's far. Psychologically, he's right on, geographically, not really. Depending on the checkpoint situation, which at Qalandia, seems to be fairly consistent, it's about a 2 1/2 hour trip. From Birzeit: a service taxi to Ramallah - a bus to Jerusalem - a ten minute walk - a serivce taxi to Tel Aviv - another one to my temporary place of residence. That ten minute walk is where my transformation takes place, and if you have any question to which direction I enjoy more, on the way to the Ramallah bound bus, it's downhill, but to Tel Aviv, uphill. Anyhow, back to borders and mental instability... having 2 lives is really draining. I'm looking forward to picking just one. I'll send another post from Ramallah in a few weeks.