shalom chevre (friends),
so it appears that in calendar time pretty much a month has passed since i last wrote… it’s interesting how that happens… one day you are saying “i should probably write people soon” and then a month has gone by… and you are like (you are me in this case) “wow.. how do you update people on a month without boring them to death”… and so you are like “better just go for it…”
i left you off about to head to jordan, which i did.. i spent about a week there travelling with 2 friends and had a wonderful time.. we did many unique things that hundreds of other people were also doing at the same time 
we stayed in the famed wadi rum desert in a bedouin tent for a night and before going to sleep entertained the bedouin’s family with my dancing and my friend’s beatboxing, which was a huge hit for the 7 children… we then spent a few days in petra aka the most beautiful, unimaginable thing i have ever seen… google it for pictures.. basically, the nabataean’s carved buildings into mountains.. like crazy, massive, beautiful greek style buildings… into mountains… and then we finished this off with a night in amman where i met a new friend of a friend and was wined and dined middle-east style… i almost wrote right after that… at that time, the big thing on my mind was poverty… the bedouin family and a worker we met in petra, a wonderful, beautiful, friendly phillipino woman named mona who left her 10-year old son because her husband died to come work at a hotel in jordan for 5 years for the privilege of sending all of her paychecks back to the phillipines while she dined on ramen the whole time… and i was thinking.. what is this… i gallavant around the world, making friends say “wow it’s so beautiful what you are doing”… and then there is this… but as life so often does, it moved on and i forgot about all that stuff that i had felt “so deeply” for days… what is that? …….
so then im back in israel and i get to talking to a lot of people which i have been doing about this thing called shomer nagia, which means “keeping touch” which means not touching people of the opposite sex until you are married, and then only touching your spouse… it’s fairly common among orthodox jews and it struck me as the most fascinating, bizarre practice i had ever encountered… so i get back and get barraged with these people (moves in mysterious ways) and after a lot of debating and wondering and reading a great book called “the magic touch” (amazon it), i decided to try it… so i did that for 3 weeks until yesterday and it really really (for the time being anyway) gave me a whole new understanding of touch and flirting and the ways i manipulate people for touch and am manipulated and the games that i play… cuz basically, i really dont want to play any games at all and im looking for any and all ways to accomplish this… i could write on and on about this stuff but that book i mentioned is really well written and really short and if this sparks your interest at all, check it out.. basically for me, hooking up and getting physically involved with people as a means of starting a relationship has more and more started to make my soul shudder and im trying to figure out how to proceed from here… because at least in america, it’s just normal… and as much as i hate to admit it, i have a great fear of not being normal… but we’ll see… speaking of which,
i came to tel aviv yesterday (which is where i am now) to kind of get away from religion for a little while.. i felt a little inundated to say the least… and i had this grand plan of going to a club and just dancing it all out and having a great time and i did that but there was an emptiness to it…. i have a tendency toward great, short-lasting proclamations, but it sure did feel like something has shifted… like a big part of my self-identity in terms of “going out” and so forth is falling by the wayside… it just doesnt do it for me anymore… as much as i loved the dancing, which i did, i would have enjoyed it as much by myself in my room and probably would have enjoyed even more just talking to other people about life, which a club environment is sadly not conducive to…
other than that, i did a bunch of other stuff… went all over eretz israel with a friend i met the day before we left so that he could sightsee before we left and spent shabbat with a bunch of crazy (in a good way) chasidic guys who where the circle fur hats and sing like ive always dreamed people might sing…
the more important part, to me, have been the real back and forth i have been feeling about judaism… i spent a good week or two “yeshiva shopping” as they call it, which is, checking out schools that teach torah… there were aspects that i just fell in love with and felt like oh my god this is for me… i have to drop everything and im going to move to israel and that’s that and then without fail some comment would be made, about other religions, or how you have to practice judaism, or arabs, or “chosen people”, and i would just kind of shrink back and wonder what i had been so excited about.. this process has continued for me through today… of elation followed by confusion followed by calm followed by new elation etc… and i want to write about panicking and what do i do, but the process of writing it makes me realize “it’s ok”… im sure everybody’s going through something right now….
i also had a little epiphany about my dancing which was…. so, the show that i made in november was an autobiographical one-man show combining dance and monologue.. i combined them because i felt like i couldnt say the things i wanted to say through dance.. couldnt adequately express my soul… i realized that this is not exactly true… it’s more that the form i am currently working with is not enough for me to express those things and that ultimately, im going to have to abandon the form and find my own path.. this is probably THE scariest thing for me because i feel like im betraying my teachers and the dance by doing so, but regardless, scary as it may be for me (and im sure you may wonder what is scary about that… just believe me, for me it’s scary), i know sooner or later it’s what im going to have to do…
so, i feel…. ok.. kind of between ups and downs.. ive been reading a lot lately and just finished “jitterbug perfume” by tom robbins, solidifying mr. robbins as my favorite author.. i recommend this book more than i can say… i would like to create work at that level… whatever the work ends up being.. i feel like im moving in a direction, but not as fast or as clearly as id like, and im really praying right now for a teacher and a environment that promotes growth… i feel like how i had been living is not going to cut it anymore, and that a change is gonna come… but we’ll see… like i said, i have a tendency to strong, short-lived proclamations…
so, the “plan” is to go to egypt shortly, but even writing that i shudder a little at that plan word…. i feel like it always cuts off what the moment is presenting… i thing im rambling as a way to try to find a hook… i would really love to write something that you felt compelled to respond to… ill try this one…
i have a real fear of groups and allegiances and signing onto things… one of the things that made me feel ok about yoga/yogananda is that it’s a spiritual practice more than a religion/set of tenets… but i am really feeling a strong pull from judaism.. and an almost as strong push… for those of you who have dealt with these things, what conclusions have you come to in your own life… i hear so many things.. you need a discipline.. you need to just live… you need a teacher… a teacher will just try to turn you into them… follow god… there is no god… etc etc etc… there is a concept in judaism of hevrouta (im sure i just butchered the spelling) which means learning with a partner… almost like the stereotype of 2 jews arguing back and forth… it’s how the mindset works i think… that’s how you find truth is through discussion… so i guess im asking for you to be my hevrouta… what have you found for yourself??
so, if you read this whole thing, thanks…
much love and even greater gratitude for your presence in my life
brit
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