Endless at times
after swimming,
I dry off and there are droplets appearing on my arms
and chest...have I been rained upon? Many times a day
I sit in a cool breeze and grass clippings attach themselves to my legs
like coconut shavings to frosting
Working here, my laptop for companionship
hot machine highlights the labour of this
don't want to do this work
sweat, worry, will I finish?
she said, Nothing is wrong with your life
you're just taking classes you don't like
I was dissapointed

We lived in the 8th eme, near the Canal
A lovely apartment we couldn't afford
our usual lifestyle
I did the shopping at the cheapest store I could find: Ed
Ed-day,  you say, and they sell life's basics
like milk with the date stamped on it
and I'm careful about the date
We were Parisienne
Life abroad isn't real, it doesn't matter
you are not you, known exactly
your mother tongue is the lingua franca of the world
but a gulf separates you from the cares of the real
people there, a gulf of culture, experience, genetics even
I am an odd mixture of religions and regions, strange even for New York
There I am a different species, which is good because it helps my normal
worries stand still, and I am able to be a spectator on life
like a child, I
notice every little nuance of the French day and I am put on hold
I keep to myself, my own thoughts as I can understand
so little of what swirls around me
and that is a burden lifted
I am not homesick and I watch with the same curiosity
Americans on the Champs Elysses,
recognizable by the men in boxy t-shirts
and the women in athletic shoes
I don't speak to them, they are foriegn to me now, too
we walk over centuries of experience, that have given a quiet wisdom
to this place and I learn every day, and the mistakes of the past
are right there under foot or in a museum
the scream and rage of the past has echoed for the last time
long ago, and something has been learned from it
France was right, "we are an old country, and a wise one,"
right before the second Gulf war
we didn't listen
Life has slowed down here,
In America we have that energy, that desire to create and make it
and we run ourselves ragged, into the ground, alone in our independence
no time for strangers but here, our friends take vacations and boldly
make a bridge to form a four day weekend and are proud of it
and invite us along for trips and long meals
and visits to old castles, now over run with "the people"
who enjoy the carved gardens and angular pools as much as
any aristocrat ever did
and I don't want to leave
I'm learning so much
but mostly I don't want to be real again
I don't want to be that American person with problems and no
excuses of distance and language and culture
and no excuses of the need for rest from the rat race
because in America, no one admits to that need
And one day in Ed the expiration date on the milk
is past our flight date
and I freeze in pain
knowing the milk will sit here
long after I am gone

He lurks inside, he does, or maybe he's a she
I'm not sure, only that he is out to destroy me
At every chance he gets, especially when I'm stressed or tired
he takes out his special steely barbs and spires
and into my organs he jabs and cuts
every aspect of my life, he says it *****
I bleed internally, the lashing goes on and on
It's like listening to some bad grating song
turned up way to loud, played way too long
sung by an evil diva/master death metal punk it doesn't matter
the only goal is my destruction, to take me out is its injunction
and the parasitic quality of him, as he lives inside
makes it worse, he is a part of me, no lie
he makes me hate myself and want to die

The heat of the laptop seeps through the Israeli pillow on my lap
My life on hold for the last few weeks, now about to be completely gone
for this last week
I'm a performing idiot for authorities I cannot see
participating in this hot steaming mess in the company
of little picture icons of other "students"
I didn't have to move yet to take these classes
which is good, since they started before my job ended
but I am living an isolated farce, of pressure coming through my wi fi
is it real?  the quiet, sweaty summer, my plans shelved for now
all fun awaits as I read, read, write in little responses in little boxes and have
take some video, upload to little boxes and
the unimaginable happened yesterday, my wifi was down
so I called and looked and sweated and finally took sleeping pills
hoping tomorrow the laptop on the footstool would come to life
and it did, so the process continues
reading,  sweating
little boxes of information returned to me
How I long to just meet these people, once, in a room

Oh how I'd love that
and from a San Francisco organization no less
a month in the Santa Cruz mountains, no less
the most liberal city in America no less
and last year's winner has his picture displayed
and it is not innovative or interesting or shocking but all too predictable
Like something I saw how long now has it been?  twenty five years ago...
how many times have I seen this picture
a white guy, looking very much the suffering, creating artiste
handsome, like an actor, but not an actor, a creator of meaning
of art, and he can't smile, but looks away from the camera
mimicking an ad for J. Crew
it's amazing how only white men can write about the important things in the world
and the background, how many times before have I seen it
a graffiti sprinkled nowhere in an urban jungle
somewhere where preppy white guys never go
street art, street communication created by people
who don't see this concrete as an exotic backdrop for their egoistic posing
but as a part of their lives, as part of their meaning, their world
and he stands there, in front of it,
Mr. Screenwriter, the gulf of culture separating him from that background
spans the entire country, or an entire universe
but the implication of the picture is: he is home here
this is who he is and he can emcompass everything, since white men
as we know, have a magic ability to understand and synthesize everyone
all genders, all races, all religions
the rest of us are merely stuck in our own myopic little worlds
of gender, race, socio-economic status
but these spanner of time and space and human difference, they can be anyone
they can understand and represent anyone
So I look at the picture
and think, I could apply, but I'm busy during the blissful month of the residency
but how dissapointing, that I feel looking at this picture, now online of course
that it is the same picture that I looked at over twenty five years ago
pinned to a film school wall
in Los Angeles, in New York, in those edgy more conservative places
and it is the same guy.  the white screenwriter artist who will write about me
and others and it will be a lie
and we are excluded.  all the rest of the human race.
but what he writes will be exalted as truth
when I know, that no matter how time he spends wandering
the foriegn worlds of ghettos and genders
the one thing he knows, the only thing he knows how to write about is
white guys, because he is no superhuman
he is like us.  He will write about white guys and there will be
more films about white guys, who are supposed to represent all of us
but they don't, because they are only human,
and can only represent themselves.

"She is such an excellent student in English,
and I'd ask her teachers why her grades were low
and they'd say she wouldn't turn anything in.  And
it was true, she'd say this isn't ready yet, it's not perfect."
Perfectionism.  That's it.  I don't have it, God knows
but after 500 years of therapy I can look any psychological ailment
in the face...now she's dropped out of college and
he is not happy, my former boss,
"she says it's a 'gap' year" like the British Royal Family takes after
prep school, to be sent to rope cows in the British Empire,
Be an Australian cowboy and post to the trot like a proper Englishman
He's right, it's not a gap year.  
He speaks so quietly, he has judged me so harshly
pathologized me, behaved as if he is perfect and I am nothing
this is quite a large crack in the perfect facade
and I'm still here wondering
so I do what the courageous do and I google perfectionism and
before long I gather details of a childhood spent trying to have accomplishments
so your parents will notice you, a childhood where your feelings aren't important
an emotionally impovershed childhood lacking mirroring, positive mirroring because
the parents were to wrapped up in other things or they didn't really care and suddenly
I understand why this boss of mine would dig into my very soul
because he is so much like my parents
and yet, so afraid, because if I can google this,
then so can he, so why doesn't he when he's the one
with the degree in psychology, so why am I the one
trying to figure out his daughter's problems
and I know the answer
I want to solve mine
Is it the Jew in me?  That kind of willingness to look into that vast
horrid place of self hatred and take a flashlight even and look
at the ****** mess of a psyche and try to attend to the wounds
to heal, the be willing to walk in, squishy entrails cut off
and ****** under my feet, to try to sew them back together
to get the whole system working again.
I want to e-mail her the articles I read about her
I want to heal her, I want him to read this and know
that he is known and he was not such a good father
and she needs help
but no.  it is only me I hope to understand
as I realize I am in the cave, the immensity of my own psyche
trying to understand it, fix it, yet again

"You never get closure in an abusive relationship"
the advocate looked at me, softly, as she could waiting to see the hard news
soak in
the other women in the room were silent
Their "hes" were still around town, coming in and out
interfering, lying low, but at least paying attention,
abandonment is worse than punishment I thought
I was on the other side of the world, a reverse time zone
falling into the abyss
He took my wedding ring and engagement ring out of my luggage
then brought it up the stairs to me
and waited for the shuttle to come
I hugged him, but he didn't hug back, he shoved the bags inside
I was crying, he was stone cold, he payed the driver of the "sherute"
the shuttle to the airport in Hebrew, people stared but I didn't
care anymore, I was so used to people staring as he now
spoke to me and offered me a cigarette in front of the Mercez Horev, the mall
siting on the ***** concrete benches watching the line of people having
their bags checked before going in
Here I was smoking like I'd done my army service and gotten bored
and smoked to relieve the boredom and the stress
then something would go wrong and he'd get up, screaming at me
in English, and I'd run after
I didn't look at anyone in the sherute but I just knew they felt sorry for me
as we pulled away, after twelve years together, the last I saw of him
was him heading down the stairs
and now, the people at that job
I am learning new things in my classes
and, for one crazy moment I think:
I want to share this with them
so I write to my former boss
and that's the last thing he would ever want from me
He is the smart one, I am not, no one is smarter than him
He will never listen to me
Like I hugged my husband
not knowing he'd stolen my engagement ring and my wedding band
just like the Tel Aviv lawyer told me he would
the end. you never get closure in an abusive relationship