Old City

As my move to Tel Aviv approaches, I'm brooding.
Will I fit in? I don't have a tattoo or a dog or a bike? I'm getting nostalgic, thinking about memory...and how it functions...you remember someone, something or places, when there is a remnant that is left behind with you...it seems simple but unless there is a souvenir...we forget...we cut ties...it all becomes a haze...
The souvenirs, can weigh us down and become heavy...what do we take with us, what do we throw away? When making Aliyah after clearing out, and disposing of major sections of my life, I chanced upon the exhibition of Andy Warhol's Time Capsules which gave me a whole new perspective of how to view memory and objects. Now, I am again, going through my belongings, selecting, spring cleaning my mind and time capsuling other thoughts...

Here's what I am taking with me at the moment:

The Soundscape:
A Muezzin’s call to prayer, Church Bells ringing and a Wailing Wall
O’Jerusalem, I’m caught somewhere in amongst your layers
I am hard pressed to find some space to place my feet where someone great has not.
Technicolour dreams, play, stop and rewind, in my head
flavouring the memories to be sweeter than they really are.
I exhale, only to breathe you in, intoxicating; I am drunk on your presence…
There’s a wrinkled man who earned every line on his face,
he serves me Turkish coffee in a Moroccan glass cup, and I sober up.
In the hubbub of the Shuk, I see your face; I rotate, fragment and pixelate to focus.
in between the cracks, down the alley way echoes of your memory.
There are nine parts of beauty bestowed unto you and the prickly people
witness your crescendos in time, diminishing, diminuendos cycles of hope.
In charcoal sketches of a lover, rough and ready, a pureness that maybe divine
your beauty shines, hues of pink at sunset, of gold.
Beat, space, feet, pace…your cobblestone streets...
I’m a wandering, waiting for a prophetic vision, a star to guide me in your night and come to peace, I want a place inside you, ownership of a power greater than being.
Your naked roof tops ascending and the modern sky breaks through -
here you lie, eternal in my eyes.