home world

I'm sitting on my own at Tazza D'oro in Neve Tzedek in Tel Aviv.

Never my favorite place around, I'm not quite sure why I'm here right now, this whole day had been so strange in it's muddiness. I plug the new lap top to the electricity socket using the American-Israeli adapter I bought at the airport a couple of days ago when I landed.

I'm drinking an Americano and a glass of water, the Americano taste a lot more like Israeli black coffee, and the water, though I can't explain how, taste so different then they are in New York. There's music playing, some mild ambiance and as I type in English, I'm trying not to listen to the Hebrew conversation of the waiters and the people in the table on the other side of the cafe.

When I was blogging more, from this city, sitting alone in restaurant, thinking and drawing and then rushing home to type my thought in, I often thought about how it would be to own a laptop and blog on the go, just pouring the experiences and thoughts into the keyboard rather then wait for that moment in which experience turns into memory, doing this now, from here, feels very strange.

The thing that baffles me the most is the familiarity of things, I still remember where everything is, walking in the street I avoid my old apartments, my most favorite and emotional places, tomorrow, maybe, I'll deal with those. For now I just walking around amazed at how nothing have changed.

The thing I feared the most, I think was to come here and realize I don't like it anymore, or worst, that the big city that used to engulf and engage me, became small, tiny, like that feeling one gets visiting one's old elementary school or grandparents old house and realize they have grown out it's limitation.

But no, it's what it is, the city, the streets, smells I was so familiar with I didn't even knew they existed, the air with it's sandy texture and the smell of the sea.

However, it is nothing like what it was, it is not my home and it does not feel like home, it feels like - I don't know, maybe it's impossible to explain for someone who has not immigrated, how some places, which are not home can be more familiar and comfortable then home, how in getting used to not being 100% familiar with my surrounding, my mind used to translate, it feels very odd or intrusive to be in a place where I don't have to.

Sort of like going out in a pair of pajamas or falling asleep in a crowded place.