Mental Health Day
This morning, I decided against going to the movies. Nothing called to me. Nothing that was in the neighborhood, that is, and showing early. I might have hopped down to the Angelika for a 12:30 show of Vers le sud, but, no, I didn't want to cut that far into the afternoon. The Night Listener and Zoom were neighborhood possibilities, as was Half Nelson at Lincoln Center. But I was in no mood to budge. It was easier just to do the next thing on my housekeeping list - change the sheets - and to see what happened next.
What happened next was a little writing, followed by a treat, lunch at a local café where the croques are superb and the martinis just the way I like them. I used to do that sort of thing all the time, but now I never do - largely because it takes too much time, and time is finally something that is precious to me. Today, though, I needed the break. A handful of positive trends and projects have left me, momentarily, mentally exhausted - which is no doubt why I couldn't get to the movies. And I was quite shocked to realize, late last night, that I hadn't even noticed that I hadn't written a Book Review review for Wednesday. (And yet the world did not come to an end.) I must be in second-week-of-vacation mode (even though I'm hardly relaxing) - basket-case time.
At lunch, I read about a book that I must obtain, the only question's being how. Michel Warschawski's On the Border (translated by Levi Laub; orginally Sur la frontière) can be had from Amazon - for forty dollars! It can be had, in the original French, for about nine euros, but the shipping tacks on a further eleven. The calculus of evaluating the gap of fifteen dollars (or so - I haven't paid attention to exchange rates lately) couldn't be more delicate. I save money and get the original text if I order from Amazon.fr; I get a book I'll more quickly finish from Amazon.com. Meanwhile, I'm asking myself why a book that was published in France and the United States at the end of 2004, and in Britain a year ago May, is being reviewed in the 3 August 2006 issue of the London Review of Books. I don't think that it's simple dilatoriness. Michel Warschawski is a lonely thinker; most of his fellow Israelis hate and condemn him. A true cosmopolitan, M Warschawski envisions an Israel of citizens, not Jews, while, at the same time, he is no secularist. He has demonstrated on behalf of ultrareligious neighborhoods for the banning of automobiles on the Sabbath, even though he himself is an atheist. I think that M Warschawski understands something about human nature that political leaders especially have been determined not to learn: extreme differences of opinion can coexist where there is true respect. Instead, the leadership on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict have turned their followers into identical groups whose only difference is over the symbol that will signify complete triumph: the Star of David or the Crescent.
I got so involved with Adam Shatz's review that I completely forget to feel European and sophisticated, sipping martinis in a café while reading about important books in an international publication. I know what it is: I gave up smoking.
