Alternatives

(Not a tree but a giant cactus on Kibbutz Yoav)


Continuing with our theme of dwellings, although this action-packed week involved dismantling our Sukka and returning to the warm security of the house, two events brought it home to me (excuse the pun) that there isn't only one way to live. We may be conditioned since birth to live the way everyone else in the Western world lives, but it's important to remember there are other options and they're not as cuckoo as they may at first appear, one just has to be open minded.

On the eve of the second holiday of Sukkot (Monday, basically) we did something I haven’t done for years but did every autumn without fail when I was a likkle girl. We went to the circus! Oh, the thrills of the big top, the clowns, the drum rolls, the sawdust on the floor (there wasn’t any, but I’m imagining). I can’t tell you who was more excited but as Natan, aged five, had to tell me to sit properly on my seat and stop dancing about, whooping and clapping, the answer to that may not be surprising.

When I was a girl (back in 1875) with pigtails and gappy teeth, the big difference was that circuses had animals. I can’t remember seeing lion’s mouths engulfing a ringmaster’s head but I do recall the glittering ladies with feathers on their hats doing balancing acts on cantering horses; dogs jumping through hoops and a sad old elephant circling the ring with a walking stick hooked around his ear. That, actually, was the last time I saw an animal at a circus and it was so sickening that by the time I left the tent, wiping my stinging eyes, I’d resolved to rescue him that night and bring him to live in our garden. I didn’t care how much I’d have to feed him or that he’d trample over Ma’s flowers: the only thing that stopped me was the frustrating realisation that he would no way fit behind me on the elongated seat of my Raleigh Chopper.





Monday was Dorolla Circus’s last show in Israel after eight months of touring the country. Nothing, nothing can compare to the incredible Archaos, a troupe of French punks and crusties whose show comprised of blowing cars up, juggling chain saws, breathing and juggling fire, the Wall of Death and other mind-bending feats during the late eighties and early nineties. They had so many acrobats and odd-looking mohican-ed, tattooed people climbing above you, running down the aisles wielding dangerous weapons and flying on trapezes in the coolest costumes, you didn’t know where to look first. Yes, yes; obviously I wanted to run away and join them – not only did I look like them with my unconventional dress sense, my defiant spray of dreadlocks and any cartilage that stayed still long enough pierced with silver rings, but man, I could juggle fire clubs! I was bendy enough to do back flips, I could handle a mouthful of oily kerosene to spit in a flame and I’d have happily learned other types of juggling if only they’d handed me three buzzing chainsaws to practise with. Dammit. Missed my calling.





Dorolla's was good, though: highly skilled Chinese acrobats and gymnasts performing feats of impressive flexibility involving the kind of danger that caused Maayan to cry, petrified she'd see twisted bones and death when she came to see fun. It was insanely hot under the big top with no air conditioning, no fans and no open tent flaps, but the reason the mothers were fanning themselves had more to do with the troupe of strapping African dudes with zebra-skinned loincloths, perky dreadlocks and the most acutely defined stomach and arm muscles I think I’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing. The old couple doing their ‘split second change of her outfit under a flag’ routine made me wonder if I’d flicked the channel to ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ by accident, but nonetheless, the kids loved it and munched delightedly on candy floss bigger than their heads that made me want to call the dentist, give her my credit card number and just pay her by direct debit for the rest of my life.

We reconsidered one of our old plans of training the children and creating a circus of our own to tour India and South America with, but at the mention of walking tight-ropes, doing contortion and handling snakes, they backed off. Kids these days have no inner drive, no sense of adventure. Mind you, wanting to run off and join the circus appeals to me less these days – I’m rusty at club juggling, I lost my fire sticks in Japan, I’m still bendy but I’m not fearless enough: risk and danger are for people who don't have kids like Natan who wants convoluted bedtime stories made up on the spot, which involve being alive in order to tell them. I’ve been on the open road and I’d go again at the drop of a plane ticket but I’d rather watch the circus than join it. Unless, of course, Archaos re-form; then, sod it, I'm off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXTUK4VbvZo


I’ve just come back from a birthday treat of a night away without the children, the scratching dog or the incessent needs of the house, which all mothers should do as frequently as possible. Without the husband is also a splendid treat but we went together to try to remember whose clothes they are taking up the other half of the wardrobe. We rarely cross paths now we have to work like normal people for the first time in our lives. It sucks, by the way, this working malarkey. Now I know why I ran away from it successfully until now. It doesn't make any sense, running around all week to make money to hand to landlords and electricity companies when you can live for free on a beach. There's more to life than working - there's a whole planet to explore! But then you have kids and they need schools, friends, stability and that means the rucksack gets relegated to the storeroom. Regular life is expensive, which is one of the reasons, I suppose, why the early European settlers in Israel in the fifties built kibbutzes.





Imagine, ladies, if you will: you don't do laundry any more - you take it to the laundry room and someone else does it and gives it back clean. You see your kids once a day and maybe at weekends because they're looked after and educated in the kids dorms before being given a little house of their own at fourteen. You don't cook, you eat in the dining rooms, and you don't pay rent or bills. You have your job and you do it - maybe in the fields, maybe in the kitchen - and everyone has the same as you, so there's no race to get ahead. It's extremely laid back on the kibbutz; its members are safe and supported - like being in a bubble. Clearly, a life like this isn't for everyone. I love my kids (most of the time) and I want to see them and be instrumental in brainwashing them into thinking how I want them to think, even though it's never going to work out as planned. When we used to say to people in Israel that we had four kids, they'd say, 'Col ha Kavod!', which, roughly translated, means 'Well bloody done!' In England, mothers said to me, 'What? Why? Are you a glutton for punishment? I'd rather hang myself.' The difference in mentality is startling - why do restaurants have to state that they're 'child friendly'? Landlords in England want young professionals in their houses, not families. The prejudice is shocking. Don't get me wrong - I'm elated to have a break from the noisy brats from time to time, but it doesn't mean I'm willing to hand them over to be brought up by others.

As for kibbutz life, whenever hardship came our way, Ma used to tell us her overused, favourite story about an endangered species of deer that were given an enclosure and protected from the dangers of the wild, but then started dying one by one from boredom as they had no thrill or risk to keep them on their hooves. I think it was her way of saying, 'Yes, convent school girls can be utter bitches at times and yes, they may have smashed your ankle with a hockey stick and called you a lesbian but be grateful - you'd die of boredom if everyone was nice to you'.

Maybe she's right, though; maybe having everything done for you depletes one's enthusiasm and drive, but then again, that might be my conditioning speaking. I think I'd be bored senseless on a kibbutz because I crave action and variety, but most people are normal, feel content with continuity and security and are happy to live ordinary, comfortable lives.






(The wonderfully named Mother-in-law's seat.)


The lure of this otherwise not very exciting kibbutz (Yoav, between Kiryat Gat and Ashkelon) was the thermal hot springs. Despite it looking like an old cow shed (aestheticism is replaced by functionality in kibbutzes, it appears) we soaked in the sulphur-smelling, 39 degree thermal mineral pools, sat in the jacuzzi (sadly chlorinated) and had a waterfall-esque massage under the super-high-pressured jets, but the best part was the sauna and steam room and the reason the sauna was so good was because I met two huge Russian ladies in there. They ignored me to begin with, as you do when you're only in a swimming costume in a tiny, roasting wooden room inches away from complete strangers, but then they did the most bizarre thing: they opened a pot of honey, poured it onto their hands and started rubbing it on their faces. Eeuuw, I thought- how thick and sticky is that? And then one of them, noting the horrified look in my eyes, turned to me and offered me some.
'Umm...What does it do?' I asked.
'What can it not do? It's honey!'
'But isn't it sticky?'
'Try!'
She poured a large dollop into my hands and I tentatively rubbed it on my face, wincing, then on my arms and legs, wondering how I'd get to the shower without sticking to the bench. But to my surprise, it wasn't thick and gooey once I rubbed it into my sweaty face and the crystallised bits acted like skin peel. In fact, it completely disappeared, leaving no trace of stickiness whatsoever.
'Mmm,' I said, thrilled by the surprise of it actually being wonderful. 'In England, the Indian women put oil on their skin in the sauna,' I told her, 'but I've never seen anyone putting honey before.'
'In Russia, we put honey,' she said matter-of-factly, holding out the jar so I could add more to my thighs, 'sometimes with salt inside.'
'But honey's quite expensive,' I said, meaning, how the hell did you get hold of honey in the USSR?
'Never mind, I'm in Israel now,' she said. 'I came here in 1985 and went back to Moscow last year for the first time in twenty-five years. What a difference! Some of my friends live in houses with a lift inside and three floors - some people got very rich- and others live in a tiny room with no microwave, no washing machine and when I went to buy food they were so grateful. When it was communism, life was easy. No bills, no rent. Now life is very hard, but it used to be easy.'
'But didn't you have to queue for food for hours? The only communist country I've been to is China and if you want to buy a doll, there's only one in the shop, or one toy, or one kind of cloth.'
'Yes, of course, I wear this dress, so does she and so does she, but I told my friends they should have kept hold of that country as it was.'

So maybe what she was saying was that kibbutz life was good after all, or at least the communist ideal behind it was a good one, anyway. Most kibbutzes are anti-religious, however, so I'm not moving to one but I can see the plus sides. The kids would love it - the freedom that is, not the separation from Mummy - although I think these days they can come home at night and at weekends, which sounds fine by me. The mountain of washing subsides, there is no food to cook, everything is taken care of...

We cooked fish on the barbeque and talked about our days of absolute freedom and how it felt to give up everything, surrendering yourself to another possibility of life. Husband now wants to sell the car, buy a donkey, take the kids out of school and live in a tent forever, roaming the land like a Bedouin (I take back all I said about him having no ambition) and in order to sell this idea to me, he said, 'think of how many stories you'd have!'

Hmm.

I bought a pot of honey on the way home. I didn't tell him I have other ideas - not a family tent experience, which I imagine would be an unparalleled disaster, has no internet access and sounds far too much like hard work, but creating a utopia of a house: one with a roomful of cushions and bean bags; a study where no other people are allowed to enter and peer over my shoulder as I type; an amazing garden full of jasmine flowers and interesting cacti, and a sauna where I'll go and smooth honey with rock salt on myself when it gets cold outside. Communism didn't rub off on me, clearly, despite it being an admirable idea - but layers of skin did. My skin is so silky (I mean, more so than normal) but don't come too close -the whiff of sulphur is still detectable beneath my glowing epidermis.

Lastly, this is the concluding day of me being in my thirties, a place I've dwelled happily within for the last ten years. Maybe my utopia will materialise in this next decade - in fact, I'm resolute that it will and focusing on making it happen with all my might. One day, Please G-d, you'll be able to come and visit me, sit in the sauna and discover for yourself the wonders of a honey rub. I might be living in a tent on a dusty patch of scrub, or I might find my utopia, but whatever transpires over the next few years, I'll do my best to ensure it has a sauna attached.