December 20th's been and gone, and the Hebrew date of my father's death has also passed. The past couple of weeks were very strange, surreal and sad for me, but now that December is about to end I feel as if the wave of sorrow is lifting. I don't know what it was about this year that got me so hard. I started feeling the pain of his loss as early as November.

At work, I was designing a memorial book for a soldier who died during the Yom Kippur war, in October 20th 1973. It was extremely sad and moving, and while I was working on it, I often got chocked up and tearful. On the last page, there was a poem that really stayed with me, ,long after I finished the project (doesn't say who wrote it, but I believe it's the soldier's mother, as the song refers to her). This poem, in its simplicity, conveys many of the feelings I have for this whole death thing... The feelings I have for the date, the futility of mourning. So here it is, for the memory of my dad.

This is a very Israeli poem. I don't know if it translates well, but here you go:

Shekem Department Store, Tel-Aviv
October 20, 1978
A stooped-over woman writes a date on a check:  20/10/73.
'78 Madam, not '73,
exclaims the cashier, laughing…
freezes in his place, whispers…
What can one do Madam, what can one do…

As the dreaded December 20th draws near... I get more and more emotional and sensitive, and it's crazy.

Today I was looking at typography on one of my flickr groups. I like seeing what people are doing and discover talented graphic designers, and generally if you know me then you know I just get a major happy from typography. But sometimes… I get depressed when I'm confronted with the amazing talent of others, knowing that I'm not that good and I'll never be that good.

So today as I came across some really pretty design, I felt something that was more like anxiety, half way to, I don't know, a panic attack or something. That design wasn't that exceptional, but it was so pretty, it was so much different than anything I could have thought up, it was so much out of my league… I felt it as a pain in my chest. Freaky, right?

I would like to put this down to the general emotional state I'm in these days, due to the fact it's December, Month of Pain, but I don't know. Some of it is simply the frustration of not being good enough.

On other news, last Thursday, during my shift at the Crisis Center, ( I experienced my first prank-phone call to the hotline.  )

This morning, as I'm getting into work, and I'm about to go up the short flight of stairs leading to the office, a strange man stops me and asks if he could use my phone for a short call. He seems lost and I've already punched in, so I say, sure, and hand over my phone.

He matters a brief thank you, and proceeds to make THREE different phone calls, two of them to yell at the guy he is apparently waiting for, one to update his assistant or something. At which point I'm regretting letting this rude, loud man use my phone. I'm standing there, with my heavy weekend-bag, on the third step, waiting, he stands there, not looking at me, his body language almost dismissing me, making phone call after phone call. As if using my phone is a service I'm supposed to provide him.

After the third phone call he starts to make a forth one. I say - well? He replies - just one more, thanks. As if there was an agreement on my part. I say - I really need to get to my office. He finishes dialing, muttering - yeah, just a second.

Then, and I'm not making this up, this is a true account of the event, this strange rude man calls some woman, does a bit of small talk, and then berates her for not calling him, saying that she should call at least once a month or two, and that if she has a problem she should tell him. He knows everyone's busy, but really, it seems to him this is all one sided, and why should he be the one initiating all the time? It seems to him, that if he didn't call for a year, she wouldn't call for two.

And I'm standing there, gob smacked. It's obvious why this woman is not calling you, I want to scream at him, you're a disgusting pig of a man, and she's trying to dodge your calls, so don't use my phone to call her anonymously so she can't filter you!

He finishes this very inappropriate phone call, hands me my phone (though he gave it a thoughtful look before he did, as if considering a fifth phone call he needs to make), and leaves. No thank you, no sorry. I went up the stares, wanting nothing more than to sterilize my phone.

What exactly is the fuck, I ask?

Poll #1103153 rude phone-using man
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

wtf?

First of all, in my last post I moaned about not having time to have a haircut... well, I'm here to report that I totally ditched the last half hour of work (despite studio manager's protests) and went with my friend Ofra to the hairdresser. Got a haircut and blow-dried my hair and now it's all pretty. Hurray!

Then we both hurried to the convention. This year it was held in a center that is just across the street from the apartment where I lived most of my life, my mom's place. Which means I spent a lot of my childhood around that center, and the fact that the con is being held there is weird and somewhat freaky for me (but in a good way, I guess). Arriving at the auditorium, last visited by me when I was 12 years old and staring in my 6th grade end-of-year play... I was amused to see they haven't done a thing with it since those early 80s days. The tiny dressing room where the boys tried to catch the girls changing all those years ago looked (and smelled) exactly the same. Freaky!

As to the lecture - despite my concerns I think it went very well. At some points I felt I was coming on too intense, but the people who gave me feedback didn't say that (they might have been polite, though). I had to forgo all the clips I was going to show except one, because of time limitations and the fact that the sound didn't work so well (but the one I did get to show, the R. Tam Sessions, was the best one and some of the people there had never seen it before, so I wasn't too upset about the others). I got very Feminist Rage-y but I think they tolerated me well enough :)

After that me and Ofra and Dor were extremely hungry, so we kinda ditched the rest of the evening at the con and went to eat THE BEST PASTA EVER at a lovely place called Pasta Mia. It's a place I really love but now that I live on a different part of town I don't get to go there at all. And Dor and Ofra didn't know the place at all, so I had the pleasure of exposing them to a new restaurant that is both pleasant to sit in, has great staff and service, and where the food is soooo good. I think it is one of the few times where I suggested a place and it was a success and everyone enjoyed themselves and I didn't feel guilty or slightly anxious about the fact that I'm responsible for getting us there :)

Then we went home. It was midnight and I've done something I haven't done is years - went to sleep at midnight! And I slept for 8 hours straight, which my body didn't even believe is happening to it for real. I fell asleep instantly, despite the fact that my neighbor is up to his old tricks, which means he brought a girl home and immediately started pleasuring her loudly to the sounds of disgusting techno music... God, I hope that was just a one-night-stand, I don't think I can handle him having a girlfriend again.

Aaaannnd, that was my yesterday :)

It's Hanukah and the Buffy convention all at the same time - fun!

The only thing making this totally surreal is the fact that I'm working full days. I mean, common! It's Hanukah! And the Buffy con! I should be on holiday, spending the next day and a half listening to Joss-related lectures and making persuading people to join the Sunnydale Embassy in Israel, and selling merchandise of my own design at the booth. But nnnnoooooooo!

I have to work until five thirty; don't even have time to get the haircut I really want and need. And at Eight PM tonight, I'm giving a lecture. I've given lectures in Joss-related functions before, but this one is the most challenging and potentially embarrassing, as the topic I'm talking about is massive and I needed to do a lot of research to get all the facts right. Before I gave lectures on topics like fanfiction, or "Why Oz is The Perfect Boyfriend", or the whole thing with Firefly and whores ;).

They asked me to talk about Firefly and I honestly thought everything was said and I have nothing new or interesting to add. But I tried to look at it from a new point of view, and the one thing that has changed in my life in the past year and influenced me greatly is volunteering at the Tel Aviv Rape Crisis Center. When I made this connection suddenly the topic for my would-be lecture appeared before me, so simple and fascinated... so my lecture is about Trauma and Post-Trauma in the Firefly World. Cool, no?

I've never "studied" for a lecture before, and since I'm totally into the topic, it was fun (though, leaving most of the work to last night, the day before the lecture, was not on the smart side, to say the least. I finished at 6AM and am operating on 2 hours of sleep). For the first time I decided to use a PowerPoint presentation, just to make everything a little bit more structured for me and for the listeners. It was a very interesting process, because while I was constructing the lecture, I discovered things and the point of my "argument" changed. At first (and that's what it says on the blurb at the convention's web page) I was going to talk about the fact that the show talked about the trauma of the war, but hardly dealt with the post-trauma. However, it seems that River Tam is in a constant state of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and is acting almost to a T as a rape victim. I ended up talking also about the way a personal tragedy (rape, a so-called female problem) is considered by society to be less valid, than trauma that is conceived to be social-national (post-war trauma, mostly a male problem). I also ended up with a surprising conclusion about the well-being of Mal and River, regarding their state of PTSD. It seems that River, the "crazy girl", finds herself at the end of "Serenity" on the verge of the healing process, while Mal, seemingly the more balanced and functioning person of the two, is doing nothing to help himself out of the post-traumatic state. Oh, Mal…

Well, anyway. Wish me luck, it's a huge thing I've taken on, and I hope I get through it with minimum damage... Wish me luck!


***

On other news, I've put up some more London trip photos at the flickr account, so go take a look if you're into shiny things.

I found the movie to be

A couple of weeks ago monanotlisa  wrote in her journal something in German, and then she summerized it for us English speakers. She said she hates it when someone posts something in a lanugage she can't read. So this got me thinking, that most of the people reading this journal can't read Hebrew, and lately I've been posting in Hebrew, and maybe they hate that. 

So, here's a poll to find out. This is for the English-speakers, yes? You Hebrew guys don't bother. 

 ETA: If anyone can tell me why this poll isn't fucking working, I would appriciate it.