Trees and Bats, Part 2

An old friend who happens to live upstairs from me stumbled upon me in the backyard yesterday morning, splayed out on a deck chair, drying my wet hair in the sun.

“I’m drying my hair,” I said to him, fly-away tendrils all over my face, and he said, “Yeah,” and smiled because it wasn’t his first encounter with me like this, head flipped over, madly scrunching my curls.

He was headed out, his bike helmet in hand, but we stood around and chatted all the same and delayed the friendly parting the morning would eventually make. “What’s new?” was the general topic of conversation, and we took turns every so often sharing what changes had passed since we last had spoken. 

“I went to Israel!” I beamed. This much he already knew and he smiled again and crossed his arms and said, “Yeah.” The crossing of the arms was the signal that I’d have the podium for as long as I wanted, and so I began to unravel the adventure that was 5 days in Tel Aviv, and how, unbeknownst to me, I would fall in love with the city and realize that I had to go back, and soon.

“There are giant trees there, just growing in the middle of the pedestrian promenades! Oh, and at twilight, these giant bats come out and fly all around the trees!”

“That’s fun,” he replied, arms still crossed.

A beat of silence passed between us.

Then I took a breath.

“Have you ever been somewhere, where you felt completely like yourself, more than any other place you’ve been?”

He said he hadn’t.

“That’s how I felt in Tel Aviv.”

I didn’t expect to hear myself say this out loud, for saying things out loud exposes what’s been said to all the doubts and admonishments and ridicule of the ego.

But my ego only stood back and listened, much like my friend.

“I was walking down the street there one day, when I suddenly realized how strong I felt, internally. I could sense it in my gait and hear it in my voice. I didn’t want to leave and almost burst into tears in the airport taxicab. It’s obvious that I have to go back.”

He stared at me for a moment, the smile fading from his face but not from his eyes, then shifted his weight between his feet and started telling me a story about a documentary he had recently watched about religious texts and the controversy of translation, etc.

Later that day, I revisited this exchange in my memory, recalling a time—in my early 20’s—when I had become convinced that finding the right city to live in would be the answer to all of my problems. I had become a city chaser. And when I wasn’t chasing the idea of a city, I was a city piner, pining for the promise of the city.

But at about year three of living back home with my parents during the height of the lockdowns, I became aware that it’s not really about “where” but “whom.”

Because people are everything.

I stopped caring about my address after that and became more concerned about what I was doing with my time, for that would certainly lead me to my people. My friend from upstairs is one such person whom I met from following my passions; my calling. 

But what if your calling intersects with a place? What if your calling and the sense you have of it, become heightened when you step foot on certain soil?

I always dreamed that I might one day know such certainty of place, but it seems I might have gotten the order of operations mixed up. For if my number one favorite thing to write about is love, and my number two (but also probably number one) favorite thing to write about is God, my third favorite thing to write about is Israel…

I scribbled this onto a scrap of paper three days ago: “In the middle of a Venn Diagram of ‘Love’ and ‘God’, there would be ‘Israel.’”

It’s a complicated subject, to be sure. But all the best subjects are elusive and nuanced; 

frustrating and heartbreaking;

totally beautiful in every way;

perfectly imperfect, and

complicated as f*ck.