Eshkol Nevo - World Cup Wishes

There was only one small problem with that idea: I’d never been attracted to men (except for one erection I had during a ping-pong game with Shahar Cohen, a single, random erection, that I am willing to admit only in parenthesis).

No, I thought, pulling myself together, you need a saxophone. Something you can move towards. But what, damn it?! What?

*

I tried to go back to that bloody, unfinished thesis of mine. Perhaps there, I’d find a melody of meaning. The last philosopher I’d begun writing about, and stopped in the middle, was Martin Heidegger. In 1927, Heidegger published part one of his book, Being and Time , but the second part of that book never appeared, and Heidegger’s students claim that it was because of die Kehre , the change that occurred in his thinking. Beginning in the 1930s, he stopped analysing structures of acting, the structure of anxiety, perhaps under the influence of thinkers from the Far East he had been exposed to, and began to speak of contemplation, inner observation and openness to experience. Philosophy, he claimed, must return to the openness that characterised the pre-Socratic philosophers and wean itself of the desire to impose itself on things by force.

That was all well and good, but during the years he spoke about openness to experiences and how much he missed the simplicity of country life, Heidegger joined the Nazi Party. When he was the Nazi rector of the University of Freiburg, all democratic policies in the University were cancelled, three public book burnings were held and his former teacher, Edmund Husserl, was denied access to the library only because he was a Jew. In hearings held after the war, Heidegger denounced his actions during the Nazi period, but the French occupation government did not allow him to take a teaching position, claiming that his influence on students might be destructive.

*

I went over the dates again, perhaps I’d been mistaken. Perhaps not. All of Heidegger’s texts that spoke about openness to experience and deplored ‘efficiency for the sake of efficiency’, which characterises modern society, actually were written when he was a Nazi (he remained a member of that too-efficient movement to the last day of the Second World War).

Tell me please, Mr Heidegger — I’d ask him if I could — exactly what experiences were you referring to when you wrote about experiences we should be open to? Kristallnacht ?

Again, like the last time I tried to touch Heidegger, I had an overwhelming sense that I had to stop working on my thesis. If I couldn’t understand the metamorphosis of one philosopher, how could I put together a thesis that would include the metamorphoses of all of them? Even worse: perhaps Heidegger’s case proved that all my attempts to connect philosophers’ lives with their views were fundamentally mistaken, and I had to separate their private lives and their philosophical thought into two parallel lines that never meet? Or, in other words, to throw that fucking thesis into the rubbish bin. And that whole academic language too. There’s something depressing about it. Watery. Yes, the idea suddenly overcame me with devastating force, that thesis is killing me, everything is the fault of that thesis! All that research on people who changed keeps me from moving forward. Keeps me from breaking out of the corral, keeps me from finding a normal profession. Or love.

Out of despair, I deleted the file with my entire thesis from my computer.

Then I inserted the back-up disc and deleted it from there too.

I thought I’d feel enormously liberated. That the second I pressed the delete key, a wave of hope for a new beginning would wash over me.

For the first few seconds, I felt nothing. And right after that, I had a horrible anxiety attack.

(I should have known that would happen. That’s how it always is with me: only when I just lose something, do I start to really miss it.)

What have I done?! What have I done?! I shouted and turned the place upside down trying to find another disc on which I once saved part of the text. Or maybe not. I wasn’t sure. In the end, I found a dusty disc, but I didn’t have the courage to insert it into the computer and find out that it didn’t have the file with my thesis.

So I ran away. I went into the city to look for a saxophone, anything not to wither away at home, not to go crazy, but every place I went to was being frantically, feverishly renovated. The nearby avenue had been turned inside out. All the hidden ugliness, usually covered over with concrete and cement, was now exposed. I tried to make my way among the heavy sacks of sand, piles of bricks and the iron rods that were sticking up from the ground. Time sweated over me, the noise of drills deafened my thoughts, and I accidentally kicked a bucket of whitewash. A second later, I almost fell into one of the open pits that workers’ heads were popping out of. Hey, zombie, watch where you’re going, they shouted. I’ve hated the word zombie ever since the commander of Training Base One used it during the hearing to kick me out. But I didn’t answer them. I avoided another pit and with a great deal of difficulty reached the corner shop. I bought iced coffee and sat down on a bench to drink it, but it tasted like orange juice. A couple walked past me with their arms around each other, and the girl suddenly gave me a searching, sideways glance. It’s unbelievable, I thought. Even the couples in this city are always on the prowl. How can you find love that way? I went back to the shop and bought a tuna sandwich which, based on the picture on the menu, should have been tasty. But it had no taste at all. The deterioration of my sense of taste was freaking me out. There was something too symbolic about it. Someone stopped next to me with a squeal of brakes and asked: are you coming out of this parking space? And I thought he asked: are you going out of your mind? Someone with a drill stood next to me and started drilling, sending up a huge amount of dust. Huge amounts of dust were rising from everywhere I went that day in Tel Aviv. The dust entered my lungs with every step I took until I began to feel an attack coming on. The symptoms were familiar to me: a tingling in my nostrils, a growing itch between my chin and my throat.

I skulked back home and didn’t have the guts to go out again over the next few weeks.

Mornings were the hardest. I lay in bed like a corpse, limp but not relaxed. Dulled but not hurting. My thoughts kept unravelling at the edges and I couldn’t complete any of them. I was extinguished like a memorial candle whose wax is dripping, and yet everything was infused with the aura of a stage play. There was someone inside me watching the melodrama of it all from the wings.

Little things drove me crazy. Things were in the wrong places at home. One morning I moved a salt shaker five times, and in the end returned it to its original place in the kitchen. And another morning I took apart the shelf where the loudspeakers were and put it up near the door. Over and over again, I listened to a Chameleons CD that had come out two years ago (we didn’t know then that it would be their last). A shitty album, I’d said to Churchill when I finished listening to it the first time, and buried it under a pile, determined never to listen to it again. And here I was now, unable to listen to anything but muted, morose drums and faint, whining guitars. Introverted music alien to itself, weary, monotonous melodies that never took off, even at the chorus, and the lyrics that I hadn’t understood then, two years ago, now felt as if I’d written them myself –

Sleep without a sheet

Alone in my bed .

They’re renovating the street

But I’ll be gone

Before it’s done

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