Sunday, and i finished the book that i started to read and blog about last week, "When I Lived in Modern Times" by Linda Grant - a novel about migration that leads from London to Tel Aviv, and that parallels the world after World War2 with the world now, and explores some roots to Tel Aviv that i wasn't aware of.
Here's the scene with Eve arriving in Tel Aviv for the first time:
"We drove through orange groves until we reached the white city, and it was white, then. I had seen nothing like this before - how could I have done, a citizen of an old country? In was an entire town without past. All the side roads ran in straight lines... Then I saw appartment buildings of two or three or occasionally four storeys, all white, dazzling white, and against them the red flowers of oleander bushes.
I was in the newest place in the world, a town created for the new century by its political and artistic ideologues: the socialists and Zionists, the atheists and feminists who believed with a passion that it was the bon ton to be in the forefront of social progress an in a place where everything was possible, including a kind of rebirth of the human spirit."
Something I didn't know: the name of Tel Aviv is derived from a German utopian novel. What I knew, though, is that the architecture is based on the German Bauhaus. Like the Stuttgart Weissenhofsiedlung, which was created in 1927, a place i visited in 2009 (here's the blog).
It was both strange and fascinating to walk through the Corbusier house that they now turned into a museum. As in Tel Aviv, the place was carried by an idea of a better world architecture that went far beyond the houses.
The idea of creating a new way of living, of being, also connects to Vienna, and the art movement there: the Vienna Secession ("Sezession"). The Sezession had its centre in Vienna in the late 19th and early 20th century, and was set to re-design "everything from architecture to furniture, making art part of everyday life." (blog note with links )
Vienna - the language/place carnival too me there, too, in Georgia Panteli's short films that show how the city is perceived by newcomers and immigrants: Prelude in A minor.
Watching those, i wondered again how it would feel like to live abroad for a longer time, or to live in the middle of a mega city. i travel a lot, but that’s different. a friend of mine lives in Tel Aviv, though, and it was one of those coincidences in time that a letter from her arrived just i was reading Grant's book. in the letter, my friend described the current happenings and protests in Tel Aviv:
"The social protest you've been hearing about in the news - it is accelerating on a daily basis now, more and more people are out on the street, shouting and making their voice heard: the situation really is unbearable. We pay so much for rent, and we can't even think about buying a nice place to live in, even though we both have good earning jobs. And what with those who have kids and are a few years younger than us? Their situation is much worse.
And I think, people in Israel have been so busy in all the past years just thinking about survival, what with all the political situation, and the constant threat of war, that we allowed the situation to get worse and worse until somebody got up and decided to do something. And you know what – it wasn't anything organized.
It started with one girl in her 20's, living in the center of Tel Aviv, right where I was living, whose landlord decided to increase her rent once again. She got fed up, knowing that she won't be able to pay it, and decided she was going to live in a tent right on Rothschild Boulevard, near where she was living. A few of her friends decided to join her. And that was it. The trigger that was needed to get all the frustration and despair and fear that everybody was feeling out.
I don't know what will come out of it. But I want to believe that we can make a change. A profound change. So I am going to the main square in Tel Aviv tonight, together with ALL my friends, to protest. To make our voices heard. It's good to feel that you are doing something to make a better life for yourself, and not just sitting at home and complaining, as we did until now."
It's a theme that also is part of the book: the difficutly of ideals. Even in the new, modern city of Tel Aviv, there are slums growing. "How can human life degenerate so fast?" Evelyn ponders. "Why can't we live our idealism?"
Now for an ending line. maybe this quote, from the ending chapter: "Anyway, I hope to live to see the next century, and let's hope it is another kind altogether, one without labels."
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related links:
the first blog post on the book: shores, migration, modern times + a better world I
1 comment:
My dear friend, thanks for this post... I read it just now, one day after the biggest protest Israel had ever known - almost half a million people out on the streets, all over the country, saying one basic thing: The People demands social justice.
It felt incredibly powerful. And it was filled with hope, and joy, and a sense of community, of togetherness, that seemed to have been missed - even not knowingly, by this astranged generation, who was, for far too long, closed and sheltered behind thick walls, managing their communication through the net... it felt like a true revolution. One without violance and aggression, but rather a burst of creativity, of laughter, of vision and dreams.
I know that, no matter what will happen tomorrow or ext week, that it is indeed a revoluton - in the way people think, in the way they act, in the way they refuse to accept things as given and unchageable.
Sometimes you need to take a journey to the past, to the way things once were, to be awakened and see what the present has brought you to, and what you do not accept. And this is what is happening now. And hopefully, Tel Aviv will become whiter again :-)
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