For anyone who needs to hear this:
It is ok.
It's okay if you haven't showered in three days and you're wiping your nose with the omelet.
It's okay to let him lick the wall, there's calcium in that.
It's really nice to throw the washing machine off the balcony. You deserve to laugh too.
Write hateful letters to your neighbor from above.
Lock your husband on the balcony and put on headphones.
Do what your heart tells you.
You don't need lunch, steal from the supermarket and blame the kids.
You are also allowed to take a seat.
Run
Scream
Curse.
Make an insurance scam.
Get in the car and drive. Even if it's not yours.
You are allowed.
(Inspiration for plagiarism: Noa Shalit on Twitter)
• • •
A fourth week of war is drawing to a close, so what have I learned in the meantime?
Do not bind. How did Hanoch Levin write? "Oh, Jews, Jews with suitcases."
It's not for nothing that no one buys anything now, we've already done the terrible math in our heads about what can fit in the big suitcase. And no, it doesn't include a set of serving bowls from Urbanica. It's important to be optimistic, but a box full of prenatal jeans isn't optimism, it's more science fiction.
That commentary is not news and news is not interpretation. News is necessarily an unequivocal event that has happened. Not maybe, not on the face of it, not probably, not in my estimation. Interpretation is the analysis of events on the basis of the almost-always-missing knowledge that a person possesses. In fact, the people sitting in the studio don't know much more than we do, they're just more adept at talking about it.
That there's a real place called Dagestan and that maybe now it looks very stressful, but you know that in five or six years, an advertisement will pop up on Instagram for "a jeep trip in wild Dagestan," or "an attractive package for three nights in Dagestan, half board, including flights," and that Israelis will go there even though there's a travel warning from the Foreign Ministry, because it's a quarter of the price in Eilat and it's not yet packed with Israelis there ("Dude, For that price, you fly to an all-inclusive resort in Dagestan, serve six or seven meals a day and the kids are in a kids' club with an operator called Zaynab.")
Buy local. The supermarket chains have been abusing our farmers for years, but now it's no longer just a matter of patriotism, it's simply a healthy survival instinct. We need local agriculture, and we will only have one if we make sure in the store that the tomatoes are from a safe haven and not from Turkey. You can see if they have a green "crown" on their head, which means they're from here, or just ask. Then make sure there's someone around who has the strength to cut a salad, because the only food you've been consuming for a week is nougat pillows, which you lie to yourself have fiber in them.
Volunteering is the only thing that fills the soul and pleases the heart right now, but you have to think about new volunteering, because the soldiers no longer need underwear and the evacuated families organize on-call classes in case more artists try to come with a guitar and sing "Shefshef's Song" to them.
After adopting lone soldiers, lone dogs and lone Channel 14 commentators walking around lost in the studios, muttering that it's all Biden's fault, it's time to open our hearts and minds, and host a nice singer who hasn't had a job for a month and won't have a job for the foreseeable future and whose daughter keeps knocking on the door of her study to ask if Geffen's mother has already answered.
Now seriously: if you have (and probably have) neighbors who are spouses of permanent personnel and reservists, who climb the walls out of worry and take care of the children alone, you can make double the amount for lunch from time to time or offer to take the children to school for them. Take one task off their minds.
Having an off button on the phone. I've checked, and there's this on all types of phones, and if no one needs us right now, you can do the unreasonable thing and turn off the phone. It's true that this way we'll miss the (fascinating!) discussion on the subject of "Shakshuka - Israeli or Palestinian food?" and videos of Manny Mamtar's performances in front of soldiers, but I trust that we will succeed in coping. I can report that in the first two hours there is a kind of tingling in the hand and a general feeling that we forgot something, but then it passes and you can really concentrate on things, like we did at Nintenties.
That in his place, in their place, we would resign. Maybe now, maybe later, but that's what I would do, and that's what you would do. And you know I'm right.
• • •
Eyewitness Interview:
Reporter: "Tell us what you saw."
Eyewitness: "I was standing here, and suddenly I heard a big boom."
Reporter: "Well, thank you. Back to you in the studio."
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