Friday in Florentine

The streets of Florentine are shiny and dark by the time I leave Studio Naim where I'd come to attend a Jivamukti workshop with the visiting Dechen Thurman (of Robert Thurman fame). I'd been mostly practicing yoga on my own since arriving in Israel and so looked forward to some yogi camaraderie as well as Dechen's guidance. The class is great and I leave 3 hours later in a relaxed yet invigorated stupor - the perfect state of mind for Shabbat.

Outside the rain has already begun. Though still balmy, this is Fall in Tel Aviv (add some more gusts of wind and shave off another 10 degrees and you have your winter - ha). I'd been meaning to get to Florentine for a while. A cross between the East Village and Williamsburg, the neighborhood is classic "old Tel Aviv" - dilapidated yet full of character, as well as some of the city's funkiest bars and clubs. Basically, Downtown to my sister's "fancy" Uptown in North Tel Aviv, where I've been mostly stationed.

On a rainy Shabbat evening, however, Florentine is nothing but empty.  The street lamps are measly, barely lighting my way up the long avenues of Derech Shlomo then Yaffo to Nachlat Binyamin where I turn unto Rothschild Street. There the rain returns, slamming into the back of my jeans and soaking my Old Navy canvas sneakers. In a rare moment of prescient clarity, I'd remembered to bring my pink polka dotted umbrella (digging it out from one of my four suitcases still sitting in my sister's living room) and I huddle beneath it in the wet dark.

Rain on Rothschild

In a well timed text message, my sister suggests I take a cab in this weather. But I like walking and I don't mind the rain and besides my wet dark lonely predicament suits my mood. I've been in one for the past few days because my moods always just come and go at whim and here it is. This time though I've been waiting, knowing its arrival would inevitably coincide with the buzz of my Big Life Transition slowly giving way to the "reality" of my new routine.

Life transitions are exciting. It's taken me some practice but I see that now that I've been through a few. Like setting off for some far off land, they provide a rare opportunity to break out of boundaries and predictable patterns to experience life more... experientially. Since leaving my last job for Central America, I'd had a few months of that and know they changed my life forever. It had been a time full of travel, yoga, adventures, self-assessment and growth. I'd gone to Nicaragua and Guatemala then to Colorado to hike and be with good friends. Stepping out of my routine in New York for a while is also what helped me realize I wanted to move to Israel.

Now that I'm finally officially here, it's time to settle in and make some important decisions about what I want the new "reality" of this next chapter to look like. The adrenalin buzz of being in limbo is gone and on a wet rainy night with so many unanswered questions still looming - and so many suitcases still unpacked - it's easy to feel overwhelmed.

I remember what Dechen repeated as he guided our breathing and alignment throughout the evening. He was talking to all of us in the room but I clung to his words, pretending he had chosen his workshop's theme about connecting with our intention just for me.

"Really think about what you want," he kept saying, offering additional encouragement as we hovered - mindfully, patiently, gracefully - in each pose. "Then think about how you're going to get it. One breath at a time."

One breath at a time. This seemed like good advice. 

My tiny Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv is tiny. Although the complexity of the streets and the dense congestion makes it seems bigger than it is, along with the heat. In the Tel Aviv heat, even the smallest of distances expands because every movement feels like it is happening in slow motion. Being a native New Yorker, I am used to walking but the brisk pace that came most naturally to me there is changing as if inadvertently seeking to accomodate my smaller new surroundings. These days, by New York standards, I am practically ambling. Instead of jaywalking I wait with the others at the crosswalks for the lights to change. In New York this passage of time - especially with no actual cars in sight - would feel like eternity. Here we are all just waiting for the lights to change. As notoriously impatient as Israelis are, nobody seems to really notice or mind.

It’s still less than a month since I arrived in Tel Aviv but I’m adjusting to my new home with surprising ease. It’s tininess had been one of my major “concerns” about moving here - along with the heat and poor customer service. What it feels like instead is incredibly accessible. My sister happens to live on one of the main avenues in Tel Aviv’s so called “Center” which helps. Seven minutes that way is the schoolroom where my two year old nephew goes to gan. Nine minutes in another is the Ministry of Absorption where I need to process my identification papers. The city’s biggest shopping mall, Dizengoff Center, is about ten minutes away. A whopping 25 minutes walk north is the Marina with its nice beaches and cafes. 

Here my expert ability to zigzag through crowded streets or leap up and down subway staircases is useless.

In the midst of this new Tel Aviv life I notice my New Yorker predilections and attachements fall away. I hated New York for most of the reasons I loved it: its perpetually pulsing vibrancy; its alternately glamorous and gritty backdrops; its self-congratulatory hyperacute ON-ness. New York is larger than life and in it I felt small. The plethora of listings and emails and whole magazines about shows and openings and parties somehow all canceled each other out so that in the end I did nothing or not enough - paralyzed by options. This also made me feel small. New York was a movie set but in it I was merely an extra in a movie that was being made about somebody else’s life (most likely a Woody Allen movie considering I lived on the Upper West Side right by Central Park). 

In Tel Aviv I walk down streets among strangers who feel like kindred spirits. I’m not in a Hollywood movie, I’m in an Off-Broadway play and there is an unpoken agreement between us about the script. My sense of connection feels less about Jewishness then togetherness or purposefulness. Here we all are despite the various historic, geopolitical or economic odds. Like pedestrians the world over we rarely make eye contact as we pass, we don’t know each other’s names and sometimes we have outbursts. But familiarity and comfort has replaced the discomfitting undercurrent of anonymity that came with being a mere extra in New York.

I’ve started making plans with greater meticulousness. Because the entertainment pickings are slimmer here making plans requires preparation. I collect the glossy event calendars at cafes and scan the colorful posters posted throughout the city about upcoming festivals with absorption. This “old school” mode of information delivery reminds me of college. Although lacking the vast abundance of options I’m used to, Tel Aviv is so far inspiring me to be carefully selective instead of randomly spontaneous with how I spend my time. I am rediscovering cultural tastes and interests that had somehow gotten lost in the international arts and entertainment ocean of New York. I find several things that I’d like to attend in the weeks and months ahead and note them.

Within tiny Tel Aviv I am finding an expanse that has nothing to do with space but parts of me that are opening up inside. It is like getting reaquainted with someone I used to know. Admittedly this might have less to do with Israel then with this process of creating something new, this rare opportunity to break the set pattern of an existing life in order to more closely examine who I am and what I want against a different backdrop.  A backdrop that, in this case, happens to be rich with quality family time, a heightened awareness of my surroundings, the gratification of conscientious choices and all the potential that comes with new discoveries.

I recently had coffee with an Israeli artist in his 60s who’s spent most of his life in New York. Like many Israelis I’ve spoken to he seemed baffled by my decision to forgo everything New York has to offer for... this. This land of highly charged politics where everything is a constant challenge if not struggle and many smart Israelis are only looking for ways to get out. He asked me pointedly, “Are you trying to reinvent yourself?”

Yes and no. I believe we are all works-in-progress, ever changing and ever evolving hopefully for the better and wiser. If we’re lucky. Right now I welcome the revelations being in Israel affords. The relative smallness of Tel Aviv appeals to me as does the proximity of my sister and baby nephew and also the sea. My Israeli artist friend reminisces about the crisp coolness of Fall in New York and I miss that too. It is almost Halloween and I am watching sunsets on the beach. But just the other day the muggy Tel Aviv heat finally gave way to a breeze that stirs the branches of the trees lining Sderot Chen, and I can even wear a light jacket in the evenings. It may not be Fall in New York but in the aftermath of all that heat, the Tel Aviv air feels just perfect on my skin.