I Am Listening

For every teacher who ever felt helpless, and every student who ever felt hopeless:

I’m listening.

Thank you for trusting me.

How do you feel, right now?

If you ever… would you tell me first? Promise?

Do you want tea? Cookies? A listening ear? A hug? A poem?

Do you want happiness?

Do you want silence?  

Do you want one ear cocked towards you but all eyes averted?

Do you want nothing more than an occasional nod?

Do you want a deep and infinite abyss into which to drop your thoughts?

Do you want every word that has ever been written?

Do you want the words that haven’t?

I will write you joy, I will write your soul into happiness.

Do you want William Stafford’s thread and Mary Oliver’s forgiveness and David Whyte’s sweet darkness? I will read them all to you.

Do you want hordes of fiery letters, burning away the darkness?

Do you want oceans of cleansing words, washing away whatever stains your soul?

Do you want me to stand with a sword between you and your demons?

Do you want an army of caring to shield you from pain?

Do you want your nightmares unraveled and woven into dreams?

No, that is what I want.

Whatever you want, you must give it to yourself.

Whatever your soul, only you can write it.

Whatever your dreams, only you can shape them.

You have every potential and every word and every silence within you already.

You are exquisitely powerful.

In the meantime,

I have here, for you,

Tea.

A cookie.

A listening ear.

A hug. 
A poem.

To Every Man Who...

To every man who ever approached me when I didn’t want to be approached;

To every man who ever touched me without asking first;

To every man who ever shouted at me as I walked or ran or fled down the street;

To the first boy who ever called me a bitch;

To the stranger who stopped his car and took a picture of me through the open window when I was a teenager;

To the youth who grabbed my arm on my evening walk by Aker Brygge;

To the man who aimed his crotch at me on the bus so that it bumped me regularly, despite my well-positioned crochet hook;

To the older teacher who thought it was okay to wrap his arms around me from behind so that my neck pulsed in the crook of his elbow;

To the guy who came up beside me late one night on the Yarkon and slowed when I slowed and ran when I ran and only left when I whirled around in the opposite direction;

To the creepy colleague who walked into the principal’s office this week, saw me there alone editing a document, and said, “why, you look so pretty today, my principal”;

To the fellow poet who “bumped into me” at a poetry slam Wednesday night and then, apologizing, angled his body so that mine was squished into a corner and his leg against mine;

Congratulations. You now have a president who is a role model for your actions.

Congratulations. You are mainstream.

Congratulations. You are worming your way into my nightmares.

But:

To the first boy who ever called me a bitch: my best friend told me she was glad I was a bitch, it meant I was smarter than you (I was) and got things done (I did) and people listen to me (they do), and since then, I have never cared about being called a bitch.

To the stranger who stopped his car and took a picture of me through the open window: You started me thinking about rights and articulating to myself that others could not own an image of me without my permission—I advanced philosophically and morally because of you. 

To the youth who grabbed my arm on my evening walk by Aker Brygge: When I glared at you with all the fury I possess and you dropped my elbow like it was burning, I walked away with a feeling of power, and to this day am unafraid of walking alone at night.

To the older teacher who thought it was okay to wrap his arms around me from behind: You’ve been fired. I’m still here. And I’ve been promoted.

To the man who aimed his crotch at me on the bus so that it bumped me regularly: My boyfriend switched seats with me and refused to let me suffer, reminding me that men who view me as an object are not contagious.

To the guy who came up beside me late one night on the Yarkon and slowed when I slowed and ran when I ran and only left when I whirled around in the opposite direction: I am faster than you. I am stronger than you.

To the creepy colleague who walked into the principal’s office this week, saw me there alone editing a document, and said, “why, you look so pretty today, my principal”: I am not pretty. I refuse to be pretty.  You will see just how ugly I can be.

To the fellow poet who “bumped into me” at a poetry slam Wednesday night and then, apologizing, angled his body so that mine was squished into a corner and his leg against mine: I beat you in the poetry slam. I will beat you in every area, always.

My experiences are highly privileged. I have never been attacked by someone I could not fight off, never had to deal with more than casual sexism or, at the most, being touched by a stranger through my clothes. I have the blessing of nothing more than a residue of nightmares that pulse up again because a pussy-grabber was elected president. Many women don’t have the luxury of dismissing these sorts of moments in their lives, like I can.

My experiences made me stronger. They made me into the person I am today, a woman who travels alone abroad, who scores scholarships and grants, who competes and wins, who advances in the career she loves. If each moment made me tougher, more capable and resilient and powerful, then I wonder what four years of Trumped America will do to the women of America.

I find myself echoing Seth Meyers: Somewhere in America, someone’s daughter is our future first female president. And after four years of Trumped America, you men who grabbed and chased and pushed and hugged and bitched and bumped… you’d better be very, very afraid. Because we won’t be.

I Am Falling in Love With My Imperfections

Today I gave a student permission to be imperfect. She needed to hear it, and watching her relax as we talked gave me pause. Perhaps we should all be allowed to be imperfect. Not all of the time—after all, the pursuit of perfection occasionally slides into genius—but every so often, we need to just let things be.  I left my student with the intention of being imperfect, myself, for the rest of the day. I might even carry it over into tomorrow.

Yesterday, a shipment of books arrived at school. They came in bubble wrap, and my colleague and I went to town popping it. We jabbed it with scissors, twisted it together, and stomped on it gleefully. While joking around, I began thinking about what the headlines would say in different newspapers:

JPost: “East Jerusalemite goes on savage stabbing attack in school staffroom”

BBC: “Israeli Jew violently destroys shared resources”

Teacher Ed: “Teachers develop new bubble-wrap-popping curriculum as part of peace process”

It was none of those, just fun. Sometimes, popping bubble wrap is just popping bubble wrap.

Our school had its annual youth peace conference today. Students and teachers came from schools as far as Jordan and Gaza, as well as the West Bank and Israel. It was delightful to watch them all playing games together and settling down to serious workshops on peace and coexistence. But during an introductory session, I was jarred by one of our school’s Palestinian kids who said that his “struggle” (the ice breaker question) was “living with the enemy.”

I looked around. Was I the enemy? Were the other Israelis in the room? I don’t think of him, or Palestinians in general, as the enemy—is that a privilege that I have because I haven’t personally been attacked, only people I know? Or because I live in Tel Aviv and teach in a Palestinian-Israeli school and thus have the luxury of surrounding myself with people who insist that Palestinian terrorists are not representative of Palestinians? Or because I have the privilege of not feeling oppressed, merely attacked? Well. It brought back the reality of why we have this conference, and indeed, our school.

Today it rained for the first time since spring. Here, it always rains for the first time after sukkot, exactly when we start to pray for rain. There’s something about that that hits me right in my religious Zionism.  

This evening, my sister opened a conversation like this: “Do you know what the worst thing in the world is?”

I considered my recent history. “Being stuck in the bathroom without toilet paper? Running out of money on your rav kav while on the 186? Your physiotherapist forbidding running?”

Being one-upped, my sister had to take it to its natural place: “Genocide?”

“Nuclear holocaust?” I parried.

“Genocide is worse than nuclear holocaust because it isn’t fair.”

“Nuclear holocaust kills everyone, and it’s someone stupid’s fault. How is that not worse?”

“Because there’s no one around to notice it.”

“Genocide isn’t genocide without some bystanders. Is that it? Genocide is only bad if you’re around to hear about it and feel bad?”

It turns out the worst thing in the world was our other sister, who has not called or skyped or emailed in the past week. Yels, if you’re reading this, if you’re out there, please send a messenger pigeon.

Elizabeth Carlson, "IMPERFECTION"

I am falling in love
      with my imperfections
The way I never get the sink really clean,
forget to check my oil,
lose my car in parking lots,
miss appointments I have written down,
am just a little late.
I am learning to love
      the small bumps on my face
      the big bump of my nose,
      my hairless scalp,
chipped nail polish,
toes that overlap.
Learning to love
      the open-ended mystery
            of not knowing why
I am learning to fail
      to make lists,
      use my time wisely,
      read the books I should.
Instead I practice inconsistency,
      irrationality, forgetfulness.
Probably I should
hang my clothes neatly in the closet
all the shirts together, then the pants,
send Christmas cards, or better yet
a letter telling of
      my perfect family.
But I’d rather waste time
listening to the rain,
or lying underneath my cat
     learning to purr.
I used to fill every moment
     with something I could
          cross off later.
Perfect was
     the laundry done and folded
     all my papers graded
     the whole truth and nothing      but
Now the empty mind is what I seek
      the formless shape
      the strange      off center
      sometimes fictional
                                 me.

The Last Page

Question 1: (Fill in the Blank) The first page of the history book starts with “The…” The last page of the history book ends with “time.” 

That was the last exam I took in high school. I read the question, grinned, and set to work on my essay.

It was an exam that, in retrospect, was impossible for me to fail. It was an exam that said, “I believe in you. You will know what to write here. I don’t even have to give you a question; you will still come up with the answer.” With such encouragement, how could I write anything but a nuanced and detailed analysis of modern European history?

Four years earlier, the same teacher came up behind me during my first ever high school history exam, and asked me, as my pencil trembled in my shaking hand, “are you nervous?” Without waiting for an answer, she dug her fingers into my shoulders in a fierce simulation of a back rub, electrifying every ticklish nerve in my body. I spasmed hysterically in my seat, and, blissfully unaware of my discomfort, she whispered, “You can do it.”

And she kept saying it.

She was a teacher who gave me books.

Cowisms hung on her wall. They explained everything.

She introduced me to Woolf, to Bronte, to Margaret Atwood, to the Forsyte sagas and the world of fanfict by Jasper Fforde. She spent her free time talking with me about the books she’d given me. When I was kicked out of some other class, I wandered through the school to find her in the teacher’s lounge or library, to share literary sympathies, sure that eventually she would kick me right back into class. She left her classroom unlocked for me during lunch so I could lie on the floor and read. She gave me a few now-tattered pages that I still use: pages of literary questions, of literary terms, of poems.

In her class, we debated.  We debated God the most, and then our teenage idealized utopias, and the endings to our novels (it still upsets me to remember that Garret thinks Mrs. Mallard died of joy in “Story of an Hour”). We didn’t debate feminism. It was a given in her class. (How I wish she could have seen a female president!)

She pushed us. For her we wrote essays, memorized chapters, slept with the history book under our pillows. For her we gave speeches, acted out plays, and filled binders with notes on novels.  She was terrifying, and inspiring, and one day, when I lay feverish on the library couch, she used her free period to drive me home. I worked my hardest for her; even if it was a topic I didn’t care for, I couldn’t bear to disappoint her.

Often, when I stand in front of a classroom, I find myself channeling Mrs. Moskowitz. I had the most selfish of relationships with her: I was her student. I spent all those English and History classes concerned with what she could give me, with what she could push me to do. So it gives me the greatest satisfaction to pass on some of her essence in my own teaching; to demand greatness and foster debate and model feminism. And, most of all, to give students books, and to talk about them afterwards. For even after the last page, the story lives on.  

Baruch dayan emet. You will be missed, Mrs. Moskowitz.

Thoughts, Comments, Questions?

A teacher at the start of the school year has occasion to feel somewhat like Sisyphus, rolling a giant boulder of work up the hill. Of course, Sisyphus wasn’t interrupted by constant meetings, and probably would have lain down and cheerfully allowed the boulder to roll over him if he had been.

I am the worst in meetings. I think that having been a terribly disrespectful, misbehaving high school student makes me a better teacher, but when it comes to meetings, I’m at a disadvantage. I regress right back into terrible studenthood. I resist the notion of somebody having the right to bore me for a useless hour with every bone in my body. I can only hope that my sins of obvious inattention during meetings are paid for through the purgatory of attending them.

People are always asking me what the biggest difference is between the work environment in Israel and North America, and I think I’ve finally figured it out: North Americans have a written civilization, and Israel, an oral culture. The frustration I feel about face-to-face communication stems from a number of sources. Of course, as a literature teacher, I appreciate the written word. As an OCDP-er, I appreciate consistent records. As a busy person, I appreciate the ease of reading communications at my leisure. As a professional, I appreciate the written document over the muttered coffee-urn comment. And, as an inveterate introvert, I prefer having the option of not actually talking to anyone over the age of 18 during the course of my workday.

High school students, however, are pretty fun game. They don’t mind being asked metaphysical questions in the middle of their lunch break, and are always ready to pause to laugh at some terrible irony or test a ridiculous theory. They are both deeply cynical and incurably idealistic. They resent time-wasting as much as I do. I adore my particular batch of kids.

We’re reading Half of a Yellow Sun in my higher-level class, and steering though shoals of racist generalization as the students search for specific insights. It’s fascinating to watch the dynamic between the kids raised in Africa, and those from Europe or the Americas. Kids from both backgrounds are really sensitive about race while others barely seem to notice it, with varying results of brutal stereotype or sweet naivety.  

The new students only really begin classes next week. Many of the second years from Arabic cultures have expressed a worry to me; apparently, the number of Israelis is more than double the number of Arabic kids this year. What will the nature of the school be, if we don’t have an equal number of representatives from both sides? Excitingly, we have our first Gazan student, the first student who received approval from the Israeli government to study in an Israeli school.

Students took the English diagnostic exam today. Most students are aiming for a high level English class, and so nearly the entire junior class—about 70 kids—crammed into two classrooms and wrote their first essays. The Gazan told me earnestly, afterwards, that it was “a really great exam,” leaving me wondering what on earth does happen in Gaza that kids from there can say such things with a straight face. 

Today, when I asked a student for feedback, she started chanting with me: “So. Thoughts? Comments? Questions?”

“—Huh? Um, do I say that a lot?” I asked her.

“At least once a class,” she responded.

“…” I cleverly replied.

“It’s okay. We like it.”

I was relieved to hear that my mantra is a request for feedback, and even more that they like it.

Ah well. Back to grading my stack of sixty-five diagnostic essays. Cheers to the teachers of the world as they start their year. May the copier always function, may the testing organizations die terrible deaths, and may the classroom full of busily inquiring students still light up at a poem.

A Breach

Eliyahu Hanavi has a white beard, rides a white bike, and wears a white cap with the brim torn.

“Never have I seen anyone who so wants to be alone,” he told me suddenly. I hadn’t seen him arrive on his white bike.

Startled, I glared a fuck-off at him, but he caught it in the palm of his hand and examined it closely.

“Never have I seen anyone so content in their own solitude,” he told me again.

“Please let me solide,” my curt nod responded. And now I scowled daggers at him.

He seized one deftly, flipped it around, and stabbed me on the middle finger that I’d foreborne from holding up. I started back in surprise, and flipped it up to examine the wound, while he rode off along the seashore, whistling.

I add it to my list of injuries. 
For I am bleeding from multiple places:

A hangnail,

A blister on my left ankle,

A nearly-cured scab on my right knee,

The place I flossed too hard last night,

And a million other wounds, invisible now, but quietly opening me to the world.

I tell a student, “don’t cut,” but sometimes I am claustrophobic in my own skin.

Sometimes when I have stumbled

Or walked into a wall again

Or crunched down on my own tongue

So that it cannot give me away,

I examine the breach with pleasure—

Now, now, the world will know me and I, it.

Even prophets can be mistaken.

The Best Day Ever

Are you okay?

Are you guys okay?

I saw him, he pulled over by CVS.

I’m calling the police.

ARE YOU OKAY?

That’s all right, honey, you just breathe.

Put it in neutral—we’ll push you out of the intersection.

Neutral, not park.

Oh, it is? So why won’t it move?

You’d better get out of the car, there’s something leaking from the bottom. Was the air conditioning on?

Put your hazards on.

He just took off, but it’s all right, I got his license number.

You guys should come over to the side here.

Are the police coming?

See right here? The wheels won’t move because they’re both facing in—the right one got hit by the other car—that’s why. Was the air conditioning on? At all? Because… I know cars—I do cars. Oh, you’re so welcome.

Are you okay? Nobody hurt?

There come the fire truck.

You all right, ma’am? You both all right? Do you want me to check you? You sure? Where’s the other car? He’s gone?

Hey! Hey, Wengers! Do you guys want a ride home? I can pull around into the parking lot. You sure? Okay, take care!

Have you called a tow company? Good. We’re going to park the truck right next to you and place flares so nobody hits it twice.

Are you both all right?

Ah, here come the police. That’s all right, it was my pleasure. You just focus on the positive energy inside you.

What exactly happened, ma’am? And may I see your license and insurance information?

This has today’s date on it… Right now? You were on your way back from the BMV? Well, that’s funny. Well, not funny, exactly…

I wish that guy who just yelled out of his window had honked, too. Then I could have ticketed him.

Have a better day!

As the policeman pulled away with a wave out the window of his squad car, I thought about the phrases he must use with great care. Often, I’m sure, he can’t say, “have a good day.” “Have a better day” is a safe bet, in his line of work.

But as he rolled off, I wrapped my arms around my sister and thought that I was already having one of the better days of my life. My sister was fine, and had come through that terrifying half second when another car was heading into her side, a half-second in which I’d frantically thought, “Quick, we have to switch sea—“ She’d emerged with nothing more than laughter at the hysteric intensity with which I asked her, again and again, if she was okay. I was fine. Our car was even mostly fine, despite a severed tire rod that wouldn’t let it move.

In fact, it was one of the best days ever. A day of might-have-been gone fine. A day of pure appreciation for humanity, as I watched Columbusers filled with grace trying to help total strangers, a day of hugging my sister and loving her body for housing her spirit with such care, a day of touching base, in probably very incoherent ways, with the people that I suddenly needed, urgently, to touch base with, a day of deeply grateful conversations with G-d. A day I didn’t die. One of the best days ever.

______________________________

My sister just called me a drama queen for writing the above. Here's her take on the day:

You get into a car crash on your way home from renewing your license and about ten different Ohioans of every age, gender, and race converge around your busted vehicle to offer unsolicited love and advice. Somebody got the plate number of the dude who hit you, someone else is recommending “positive energy,” a homeless woman is giving the bemused cop testimony even though she didn’t see the crash, the Donatos pizza man is hugging your hyperventilating sister, and three skinny guys are trying to push the car out of the intersection. A fabulously hot fireman offers to “check you out” for injuries, and when your sister says no need, you’re like, “Oh, but… Okay.” 

Never change, Columbus.

Home is a Series of Habits

Yesterday I saw my baby sister for the first time in half a year, with no certainty about when I’ll next see her again beyond our 6:30 am breakfast date this Thursday, and naturally our conversation turned to our travels.

Here’s the thing about landing in America one year after making aliyah: I’m not really sure, I’m never sure anymore, about where I am. Or who I am.

Every time I walk off a plane, the shifting nature of my selves catches me by surprise. The first thing I want to do is stop, catch myself, sit alone until I remember all my truths. But no, one must live, one must shove one’s selves into a loosely fitting skin that hugs long-ago friends and try to maintain some coherence before the world.

At passport control and customs, American officials asked if I’d brought anything back from my visit to Israel. “I’m on a visit,” I told them. “I live there now.” (No, of course I didn’t—one doesn’t interrupt the flow of customs officials to discourse on identity. When I didn’t move on quickly enough from one, he repeated, “have a good day, ma’am,” with a polite insistency that startled me in its meaning of “move the hell on.” You have a good day. I am going to have whatever kind of day I want, and at least four more seconds of it will be spent right here, shoving my passport into my backpack).

The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard says that home is not a place, home is a series of habits. I like that line. I’ve carried it with me from the US to Norway to Canada to the American South and back to Israel. I’ve carried it with me as I craft a running route, take out a library card, attend (or don’t) my weekly shiur, and find the one place in the city where I can be alone with nature. I wonder whether my craving for repetition stems from my tiny insistent feeling of perpetual displacement. 

Do you remember who you were in high school? 

What about people? Reuniting with childhood friends in the US reminds me how unmoored I am in Tel Aviv. Even if the Ohioans don’t know the extent to which I've chosen my life, we’ve plunged the depths of growing up together, and nothing ever replaces that intimacy. One of them always jokes with me as I move away from a city: “so, which two people are you taking with you from here?” It’s true—I rarely have energy to carry more than two friendships with me from any given period in my life. But childhood friends overwhelm that, flood me with nostalgic joy, and we settle into comfort that I briefly regret—this solidly rooted existence could have been mine.

Then, on my way to the airport, alone again, I remember my freedom abroad. The independence of touring Montmartre on my own schedule, of hiking Ulriken in silence so deep I can hear the ice crack beneath the lake, of writing in Tel Aviv squares without interruption or agenda, and settling deeper into my self, into the sense that whatever is here, is really, truly, me. Me without performance, me without audience, simply my self and a chance to get to know it. I have lived in many places, and it has let me find many goals to be conquered and love to be given and beauty to make my own.

Sometimes, I walk around dazed and confused by the lives I seem to have already lived. I catch a brief scent of Paris outside the new boulangerie on Allenby, or a runaway cloud above the Tel Baruch beach looks like a patch of West Virginian sky, or I bump into a TFAer in Jerusalem, and I have to pause, to reorient myself in a map, to jump into living here, wherever here is. 

Sisters carry sisters through the Louvre when their bad leg gives out

And then, of course, yesterday I saw my sister, one of two constants in my ever-shifting life, and went whirling back up the rabbit hole to lounge beside her on the bank, to talk about books without pictures or conversations, of snark-hunting, of ships and sealing wax. We constantly flip the ground out from under our own feet, in some odd effort to know things that we think we can’t know otherwise, but together we remember who we always are.

I Want to Invent It

A child passed me on the banks of the Seine. He looked back, retraced his steps, and threw his arms around me. His grin triggered mine. He shouldn’t have been there; a Colombian kid has no business being in Paris. Nor interrupting his teacher’s summer vacation.

I can’t lie; I didn’t want to see anybody I knew. I was exhausted after a sleepless night on a plane, in deep pain from sitting with my back scrunched up against the hard AirFrance seat, and not overly impressed with Paris’ massive buildings that stretched on for blocks without any of the self-conscious delicacy of a smaller, younger, or uglier city—and yet, seeing my student made Paris suddenly bloom.

“Can we take a selfie?” Of course. I’ll even smile.

He moved on, to join the cheers for France that were ricocheting off the arabesque-laden facades around us (this was still hours before France lost the Euro cup) and I moved off to see Paris through new eyes; an exquisitely beautiful, eternally posturing city that is meant to be not merely seen, but looked at.

The next morning, I lay on my back in the Tuileries, staring up at the sky and the clouds that I have so yearned for this past year. For a moment, all I could see was the sky—the Louvre, the Champs Elysees, the Quai d’Orsay were all hidden past the edges of my vision—and I had that sudden dissociative moment that hits travelers. All I could see was the sky—where was I? Which city? I panicked quietly, breathed in deeply, smelled Paris, and placed myself on a mental map.

On Shabbat, people kept asking me: “You’re Canadian? American? Israeli?” Yes, yes, yes. Right now, recognizing only your Yiddishisms in the midst of French, your bentching at the ends of meals, your hiding of your kippah beneath a hat (and the pause in the middle of lunch: is that a “manifestation”? Should we stay inside? No, just a local sports game cheer—the fear of anti-Semitism takes a deep breath, swallows, lies down), your concern that I pack a sandwich in case the kosher food on the flight is bland, I am more Jewish than any of the above.

But this summer, I am also more American. Always before, in America, Canada, Norway, I opened the news and tried to hide the stabbing pain that hits when there’s a terrorist attack in Israel. Nobody will get it. Perhaps I have an obligation to explain to those who haven’t even heard it happened? But why should my people’s pain matter to them? Surely they have their own.

And then, this summer, the opposite: death after death, of Black Americans, of police officers, and the old rootless sense that the world is ending, once again, on a continent far away from me, once again, a place that I belong to, and that nobody around me has even noticed, and that if I try to tell them, they’ll say the same things that somehow seem to justify death, or to disqualify the fact that people are being murdered for their identity.

We sat on the rooftop of my friend’s friend’s apartment, watching the Eiffel Tower glow in sprays of fireworks for la fete nationale. Tchaikovsky played behind us. The fireworks were the best I’ve ever seen, the best of every July 4^th, every baseball game, every Disney World spectacular or Yom Haatzmaut celebration. It matched Paris’ general splendor. As the last spiral dissolved into smoke, we checked our phones. Nice. What happened in Nice?

One of the girls said that France is changing. She’s scared; what if this happens often? Every six months? I cringe and stifle my cavalier reaction; six months is not often. I live in Israel. But these deaths, on their national holiday, these deaths are horrible. Everyone wants to know: is it a terrorist attack? Is it indoctrination? Lack of education? Perhaps a book the murderer read.

In the famous Shakespeare and Company bookshop on the left bank of the Seine, I pick an Amos Oz off the shelves. How to Cure a Fanatic. I need to buy this. I need to teach this. My students will read:

“Rivers of coffee drunk together cannot extinguish the tragedy of two peoples claiming, and I think rightly claiming, the same small country as their one and only national homeland in the whole world. So, drinking coffee together is wonderful and I'm all for it, especially if it is Arabic coffee, which is infinitely better than Israeli coffee. But drinking coffee cannot do away with the trouble.”

Neither will simply sitting in class and practicing arithmetic together. And so, I think, I will take the plunge. They will also read Mahmoud Darwish and Rahel. They will consider that perhaps both peoples have a claim to the land, an idea that many people on either side find difficult to entertain. I feel freshly burdened by the Nice attacks, by the need for a BlackLivesMatter movement, by Hemingway’s Montmartre and Wilde’s tomb, even by the Da Vinci painting in the Grand Gallery that so snidely points towards the Mona Lisa with a mocking smile that says he knows what you’ve come for but after all, he’s ever so much cleverer than she, and has more that he won’t say, if anybody would pause to listen. The Enlightenment dreams of my youth reawaken to remind me that if I will do anything, will read, write, teach, I must do it with exultation, must pursue it like Pater’s hard, gemlike flame.

And so I get tremendously excited when I see tourists playing Pokemon Go in the Jardin de Luxembourg, because a year from now my students will be playing Literature Go and chasing after their favorite characters in real life.

On a rooftop in Paris, in the middle of a conversation about feminism and woman’s role, on which I am thrilled to eavesdrop in this land of Simone de Beauvoir, a philosophy student said, “I don’t want to do things out of tradition. If I fall in love, I want it to be like I invented it.”

I am more attached to tradition than she. And yet the words call to me. In this world, which seems to shift under my feet so relentlessly and often, with neither certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain, I ponder how, next year, I’ve got to teach kids literature and psychology and also, teach them how to live in a humanity where people kill each other for difference without becoming cold, cruel, or ruthlessly chauvinist. And to always, with the shocked newness which travel brings upon me, continue inventing myself.