Legends of Heartbreak and Epiphany in Tel Aviv

Tel Baruch Beach

legendsofheartbreakandepiphany — Wed, 02 May 2012 21:07:15 +0000

I come with my grandchild to the water’s edge, Tel Baruch beach. He is a two year old toddler. I hold him in my arms and together we look at the gigantic sea. After and quiet pause he turns his gaze to me and says: “I want to drink the sea”.

אני באה עם הנכד שלי לשפת הים, חוף תל ברוך. הוא תינוק בן שנתיים. אני מחזיקה אותו בזרועותיי ויחד אנחנו מסתכלים על הים הענק.
הוא מפנה אלי את המבט, אחרי רגע של שקט, ואומר לי
“אני רוצה לשתות את הים”

Filed under: Beginning of a beautiful friendship

Nachalat Binyamin, The Dolphinarium

Gabriela Vainsencher — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:06:29 +0000

It’s Dec. 31, 1999 and I’m driving from my hometown of Jerusalem to Tel Aviv with my love.
First destination: Nachal Binyamit, to the artist shuk. Objective: To buy a ring that symbolizes our decision to marry.
It’s hard to find a ring my size, small enough for me that won’t look too childish. Everyone suggests that I should order one and come back next week to get it. Next week?? That will be in the next millennium!! I’ve waited over 30 years, I want a ring NOW. We went through every stall, and finally found one. There wasn’t a happier person on earth than me.
Next destination: The Beach. It was getting late and we didn’t want to miss the last sunset of the millennium. On the Tel Aviv beach, we watched a round blazing sun descending for its last time into the sea, into the new millennium. The drum circle that had gathered on the beach sang to me a farewell song to my old life as a bachelorette, and the start of a new era.

Filed under: Victory achieved

The beach across the street from Hotel Miguel, 88 HaYarkon

Gabriela Vainsencher — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:04:05 +0000

November, 2011

I am sitting alone on the beach and it is sunset. I have just spent a beautiful week visiting a friend from my Taglit trip a year earlier. We were staying at Hotel Miguel, a shady little hotel, but right on the beach. He speaks little English and I speak little Hebrew but we shared an unexplainable connection. He has left for work and I am waiting to be picked up by another friend from Taglit. As I sit on the beach I think about the wonderful friendships I formed on my previous trip to Israel. I think about how different our lives are although we are the same age. I am a senior at an American university, studying for a semester in Rome, Italy and they are just finishing the army. In one way, however, it seems that we have all arrived at the same moment in life. We are beginning a new chapter of our lives, and we are free to go wherever our hearts take us. As I sit there I have an epiphany. I think that I can do anything, go anywhere, as long as I follow my heart. At this moment, while I watch the sun set the waves on fire, I feel at one with the universe and at one with these friends with whom I shared two weeks exploring Israel. We come from different places but we are all heading in the same direction.

Filed under: Epiphany, Unexpected feeling of oneness with the universe

Cafe Noach, Ha’Hashmonaim corner of Achad Ha’am

legendsofheartbreakandepiphany — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:56:54 +0000

Tomorrow my daughter is leaving to live in New York. A farewell brunch at her favorite place. Like always, a beautiful place, terrible service. Inside her omelet, served in a cast-iron skillet, is a shard of glass!! She says she is going to call the waitress over and say: “This is unacceptable! I can’t take it, I am leaving the country!” We all laugh, me also, while inside, I swallow the broken glass.

Filed under: Heartbreak

Gan Ha’Atsmaut

legendsofheartbreakandepiphany — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:56:24 +0000

For the daily run, instead of going down Nordau towards the Tayelet, then south to Mike’s Place, he decided to cross Gan Ha’Atsmaut and run down the sea shore, to watch the sunset. While he ran down the steps that go down to the sand, he saw an older man, maybe waiting for a sexual opportunity. He thought how pathetic it is, and in the moment he passed him, he saw it was his father. He kept running and running while inside the world was collapsing… Or maybe he just imagined it?

Filed under: Reality shattered

The Dolphinarium beach

legendsofheartbreakandepiphany — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:55:56 +0000

My boyfriend broke up with me after a year and a half. I was so heartbroken. I went to the beach to wash away my sorrows. I went to the Dolphinarium beach, as it was called at the time, where there is a breakwater. I climbed the rocks and watched the sea.
I was alone there as this was the mid nineties and no one came to that beach. It later became famed as the drummers beach. But in the mid nineties it was a sleepy fisherman’s beach.
A man with his dog came to sit by me, he seemed nice, but I was too heartbroken to appreciate his niceness. So I told him the story of me and my boyfriend, and how he decided to break up with me after a year and a half.

As I was telling him this, I felt a presence behind me, I turned around, it was the boyfriend, the ex boyfriend that is. The man who broke my heart. He too came to wash his sorrows from our breakup at this same beach. The nice man got up and excused us, and we were left to watch the sunset together. For the last time.

Filed under: Heartbreak

The garment district

legendsofheartbreakandepiphany — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:55:18 +0000

I went to the garment district, I think, a small area where there are a lot of fabric shops to buy the fabric for my wedding dress. My fiance and I went to travel and elope there in Israel, hoping to find our home. It wasn’t until years later that I had an epiphany, that Israel was not to be my new home. I haven’t been back since, it’s been over 7 years.

Filed under: Epiphany

Dizengoff

legendsofheartbreakandepiphany — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:54:47 +0000

Late, on a warm night in early spring, I ran down Dizengoff, with a close friend, and large black permanent marker in my bag. On walls, signs, and poles, I tagged the words “i ME mine,” after the song by George Harrison. After seeing images of “Know Hope” and various other illegal markings throughout the city, I became part of the inspirational delinquency, in an effort to remind myself, and those around me, to forfeit the cage of our own egos, our “I,” in search of something more meaningful outside of ourselves.

Filed under: Crime committed

Dizengoff Center, Shenkin, Hatayelet

legendsofheartbreakandepiphany — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:54:15 +0000

I was a teenager. I skipped school. I took the bus to the city and smoked cigarettes everywhere.

Filed under: Crime committed

Ben Gurion corner of Dizingoff

legendsofheartbreakandepiphany — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:53:16 +0000

I was 15 and came to Tel Aviv with my family and spent the summer at my Dad’s TA apartment, on Ben Gurion corner of Dizingoff. It was 1994 or 1995. My father had a sailboat in the marina that I used to love sailing. Our family made some new friends with another family from Herziliya. They were being nice to my grandfather who lived in a tiny shack there that was built in the 1920s and hasn’t changed since. Anyway, they had 3 beautiful, blond, muscular sons. I was at the height of puberty, felt totally awkward and totally crushing on two of them. My father invited them for a day of sailing on our little boat. It was a glorious day! Everyone laughed, a few people fell into the gross water in the marina, we ate watermelons and dropped anchor in the sea and all dove in to swim in the middle of the watery vastness, with the Tel Aviv horizon spread far in the distance. We sailed back at sunset, went to my father’s apartment, everyone showered and there was no more hot water left. Then we went to a “workers” restaurant and had a big table spread outside on the sidewalk. We ate pickles and shishlik and kebabs and I think it was the most delicious meal I had ever had.
I’m not sure if this was an “Unexpected feeling of oneness with the universe” but it definitely made me feel at one with myself. And my family, and my environment. A sense of belonging.

Filed under: Unexpected feeling of oneness with the universe