Alice

I look at the woman who just walked in the door. She is tall, with wide hips and narrow shoulders. She has soft bangs, straight teeth and a hesitant smile. She’s waiting for the world to pounce, to tell her to go home and never come out again.

She’s a supermarket cashier, a woman with a lilting Midwestern accent, acquired from a childhood spent in Ida-ho, who is now 20 years in Israel, living and breathing Hebrew, and fumbling for words in English.

She has children here, an ex-husband too, whose car she borrowed to come this evening, to share Reiki with strangers. Amazing how she has the confidence to bring people together to heal each other, but not to leave her job and pursue greater challenges, challenges she hungers for but will not think herself capable of conquering. She tells me of her flaws, of her shortcomings, of all the things that hold her back. But never stories of triumphs.

Alice reminds me of a version of myself I have long since buried, a woman who believed in everyone else but herself. Who saw beauty around her but never in the mirror. And yet, I can sense in Alice a quiet intelligence, curiosity and resilience. I suggest to her jobs, that I sense instinctively she would succeed in, but she dismisses each with new sets of self-doubts.

Every day, I see people employed in jobs that seem stultifying and exhausting—as security guards, truck drivers…even cashiers. I witness lives of seeming monotony and I marvel. Maybe it’s not that we have jobs that suit our abilities, or our hunger for challenge; rather, we do what we are willing to believe we are capable of, or what society deems we have the education or experience to manage. Maybe we are differentiated more by our belief in our ability than by our ability itself.

11.7.2009: Jerusalem Hotel

Yesh l’cha esh? Do you have a light? She asked.
Yes, they responded. I don’t think I had heard Hebrew in the Jerusalem Hotel before, but my friend lives in Tel Aviv, and there they don’t think about speaking different languages on different sides of the city.
And he paused…”May I inquire, why did you ask in Hebrew?”
Her reply…”well, we’re in Israel…”

22.6.09 Jerusalem Drag Show

Midnight in Jerusalem. The streets are quiet, dark, deserted. Peek around corners, though, and noise leaks out, betraying celebration.

This, too, is Jerusalem. Queens and kings parading and singing and flirting, cracking crude jokes. Laughter (some of it nervous) all around. Boys in kippahs, kissing. Girls embracing, dancing with abandon.

The show is over. In the corner, she removes her wig, bra, corset, stockings, and heels, and slips on her army fatigues. Furiously, she scrubs her face, ridding it of its proud femininity. In the morning, he is a soldier again.