home world

Every night she comes
To take me out to dreamland
When I'm with her, I'm the richest
Man in the town
She's a rose, she's the pearl
She's the spin on my world
All the stars make their wishes on her eyes
She's my Coney Island Baby
She's my Coney Island Girl

- Coney Island Baby, Tom Waits


One of the first thing that we did together a few days after I landed was to go into "Bed, Bath & beyond" - a huge store that looks like a combination between Ikea and a Supermarket. It was full of neon light and noisy, we went to the bed sheets section and got another pillow, for several days we were stealing the one pillow he had from one another in our sleep. He didn't need another pillow, he was living alone, now living with me, we needed another one. And so we went into the store and even though it was noisy and bright and rather ugly, we felt the importance of that moment, making the apartment suitable for both of us to live it.

Three weeks later, and we wake up in a bad with small feather falling all around us and we both sneeze. He take the pillow out of the pale blue pillow case and press it, feathers shoots through the fabric and speared around, there's no holes in it, the feathers just cuts their way through the woven fabric and into the room. He take the pillow from the bed and put it on the couch. That night we struggle for the one pillow in our sleep again.

We decide to take the motorcycle into the city and have it replaced next morning.

As I wake up and look to the sky, their color is deep blue, as if I can see into the skies forever, the air is crystal clear and there are some clouds in the sky, the shadows are as substantial as the light, all the buildings, everything, the room we live in, the road, people look exceptionally beautiful. The waitress that serves me pancakes for breakfast say what an amazing day it is, and I agree. I tell her how it just doesn't look real it's so beautiful how it looks like a postcard. I'm saying it, and I'm thinking about a specific postcard he send me a while ago, an old painted photo of the Williamsburg bridge from above the retro colors are brighter then anything existing in real life. and yet, looking outside, it all looks painted, fresh, unreal.

We get on the bike and start the drive through Metropolitan avenue toward Manhattan. I'm not used to the bike yet, I keep thinking, the only thing that's holding me to this mean of trasportation is my hands around his waist and my ass, I cling harder, I imagine how I can get distracted and just loose that grip and just drift into the air and onto the highway. I think about accidents and slides and oil stains on the road. But as we brow closer to the exist from Brooklyn I forget about it, it's just too beautiful to be worrying about stuff like accidents and death. The road opens as we go on the Bridge, the same one from the photo, and how it looks just like that, The big beautiful Domino Sugar factory on the Brooklyn side, houses industrial and apartment building, the train going in the middle of the bridge, I can hear it's sounds past the traffic and the helmet. And on the other side, a waterside park, houses, big building, the Empire state building from afar. I'm having one of those "Ho My God, I can't believe I'm in New York" moments and I look down, seeing a large boat passing underneath the bridge, and the sun glittering over the dark blue water.

We go into the city, the street become narrower, crowded with people and restaurants and stores, construction workers and business people on lunch breaks, the beautiful New york buildings all around me, I don't know where to look first. I want to tell him about everything I see and think but my voice wouldn't carry over the motorbike's noise and I don't want to distract him.

As we stop and go into the store, my ears are ringing, my body's slowly becoming less rigid and my mouth, still slightly open with amazement over that beautiful ride, it felt like being in a different world all together.

We replace the pillow quickly and go have lunch. We run some er rends and then he say "you know what can be fun, if we take the bike into Coney Island" and we sit in a restaurant and have coffee and wait till rush hour ends and then we stuff the pillow in the saddle bag on the bike and we take off.

As we go over the Manhattan Bridge and back into Brooklyn, the scenery changes again, we go into a Jewish orthodox neighborhood, where all the signs on the buildings are written in Idish, it's comforting to see those Hebrew letter even when I don't know what the words means, then the road open up to the water again, and we right  against the river, the sky fill with wispy clouds, almost transparent, and as we get closer to our destination, housed become smaller, and the sky clear, showing the amazing horizon line of sky touching water over where the river opens up into the sea.

We get there just as the sun set, the sky fill with blues and purples and pinks. We sit on the famous seaside that I've seen before in movies and photos, and it feels so peaceful even with the big amusement park behind, just looking at the sea, hearing the seagull cry and the sound of the waves - I remember how I used to go to the beach on my own in Tel Aviv to cry, to have that sensation of space of openness like the world have enough place it it to contain my tears. I look on the beach, the sand and sea and sky are so different in color then the sea I'm used to. But it is the same, it feels familiar even though I've never been there before.

We walk around, the park has this slight sleazy feel to it, it looks like an old circus or carnival, that's very beautiful to me, it's crowded, families run around starting to finish their day, the kids somewhere between exhausted and excited. The sky darkens, we sit on the sidewalk and look into it. feeling happy, content, happy to share with moment with one another. Happy to be together.