Touch Down Tel Aviv (Belatedly)

It's been over a month now since I arrive in Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport. I'm flipping through the pages of my journal and looking back into the blur of confusion, anticipation, and ignorance that accompanied me off the runway and into one of the most important, contentious, and fascinating region's of human history.

Though I contemplated doing so since accepting my Israel Fulbright Fellowship last spring, I've been reluctant to set up a blog and release my thoughts into the public domain for a number of reasons. First, I approach journaling as an extremely introspective and private experience, through which I sift through my thoughts and reactions and formulate the premature seeds of opinion. Blogs and diaries are often blurred, and in the age of uber-connectivity, I'm reluctant to release my premature and personal experience-based reactions to a vast and invisible community.

Second, the area in which I'm living is one of the most complicated, contentious, and multi-faceted zones of human existence. The centrality of this region to human existence is evidenced by everything from the bible, to the archaeological remains that dot the landscape, to the maps and kingdoms drawn and redrawn, to today's out of proportion onslaught of media coverage. Perhaps the linguistic turn theorists are right -- it does seem that there is no such thing as truth in today's Israel, only competing narratives and endlessly overlapping streams of stories and assertions. In a landscape the size of New Jersey, every piece of land and every hewn stone seems to have been claimed a thousand times over. This region gives the concept of legitimacy a whole new level of importance and complexity. Given the impassioned contentiousness of this area, I'm reluctant to add my own half-formulated viewpoints to the mix and make innocent or ignorant statements that could be taken as assertions. Words and claims here it seems must be chosen carefully.

My third reservation pertains to the general concept of blogging. Though I'm very supportive of and interested in the idea of citizen journalism and the empowering possibilities that this web-based medium can give to individual voices, I've been reluctant to engage personally. In part as mentioned before because a journal for me is a personal experience and I tend to guard my words and assertions closely before releasing them to a public I can't see and whose reactions I can't gauge. The careful editing and rewriting that goes into journalism and publication becomes almost impossible or irrelevant with this medium. The nature of the blog, which falls somewhere between public diary, published experience, and international citizen journalism would make a good subject of a media studies dissertation. In any case, what's clear is that it represents something new in medium and in reach, with beautiful and problematic possibilities, and I've been cautious about taking part until compelled by a reason that makes the medium particularly applicable to my experience and needs. Finally, given my tendency toward long sentences and journal-long journal entries, there's my fear and suspicion that blogging would become too time-absorbing or stressful, my entries too long to merit reading, and that the upkeep of a blog would negate or compete with the private journaling that is a very important part of my daily life.

So why the blog then? In the end, I decided to create a blog for both utilitarian and experimental reasons. Not being a big fan of sending out frequent mass emails, I can't possibly keep my friends and family as updated as I would like on my experiences abroad without recounting the same stories over and over in long emails and hand-exhausting letters. I hope that by writing a blog that encapsulates some of my daily experience and thinking, I'll be free to write communications that are more personal and frequent to my close companions. Second, the complicated nature of the region as I described above could be approached in two ways: either by withholding premature reactions or by diving into the stream of thoughts and opinions coming from every which way about the area. I do believe that a diversity of public opinions is vital and as I tend toward strong opinions and quirky, rather adventurous experiences, I'm going to experiment with adding my voice to the mix. There's the inevitable danger that by releasing so many voices, we lose our ability to filter. Nevertheless, technology creates new filters and in the end I don't expect that my blog will do anything more than makes some of my stories available to the friends I want them to reach. Finally, journals tend to disappear over time and some of the stories and thoughts that I write in them are narratives that I would like to share with others. This blog is my attempt then to share what have been and I hope and expect will continue to be some very interesting and unique experiences. I recognize the great privilege and fortune I have to spend a year in this area. I hope that this blog can be seen as one small in way in which I can give back.

So the bottom line is this: This blog comes with the disclaimer that it is inevitably and inherently one-sided. It is not meant to be anything more profound than a recounting of personal experience and some of the thoughts that it induces. If assertions are made, they shouldn't be taken as anything more than the premature and experience-based reactions of a quasi student. If entries are too long, feel free to skim. Dialogue about your own experiences and reactions if you are inclined. Frequency of postings will most likely be variable. And entertainment value is maybe hoped for but not promised.

With that, I'm releasing this blog into the uberscary and exciting public domain. Time to throw caution and skepticism to the wind and engage with a new and potentially powerful possibility. So happy reading and welcome to my year as a nomad and my wanderings in the Middle East. Enjoy! :-)