Eilat again, Goodbye Neot Semadar

Last night, I said goodbye to everyone at Neot Semadar separately and then spent some time outside after everyone was asleep. I ran into Asaf, a cool guy who was only at the kibbutz the first few days and last few days I was there. He's writing a children's album about a machine that makes you fly when it hears good music and he likes Spinal Tap. Needless to say, our conversations are good.

We went to the dining room because he wanted a midnight snack. In the dining room, we discovered the electronic keyboard that they use to accompany the songs on Fridays. I turned on the organ sound and played "Organ Woman." He liked it. He gave me a pencil wrapped in paper tape that said "Keep on rocking, Asaf, Israel, 2008."

We weren't high, and, in fact, Asaf doesn't like drugs at all.

Hanging out with him was a good transition between the comfortable, insulated world of Neot Semadar and the rest of the world, I think. In Neot Semadar, I hang out with people for days and don't say much to them, and I play the upright piano alone in the practice room/library on the kibbutz. In the rest of the world, I talk for hours about Spinal Tap with people I've just met all the time, and play them organ songs as well.

I didn't get the sense that I was going back to the real me, or the world where I belong, or anything so dramatic as that- no, it was just a good transition.

I got on a bus to Eilat this morning, and it was full of Israeli kids going to school. They were watching a computer-generated kids show with a fat ogre, a slick-haired vampire/'50s bad-ass, and a red-haired princess with a light blue dress. It was my first contact with the world outside of Neot Semadar- the world where you pay people to take you far away and mass culture is a regular thing to encounter. It was sufficiently far out. I soon stopped thinking about how sad it was to leave the place. I also was happy not to have a camera with me. I noticed times when I would have attempted to get the perfect picture, and felt relieved that I didn't have to.

In Eilat, I've still enjoyed not having that extra burden of pulling a camera out of my pocket, but I've seen several camera stores and been tempted to buy a new one.

The thing that tempted me the most was this: a McDavid's and a Chief Sandwich next to each other. Two hilariously pseudo-American Israeli fast food establishments. And they were right next to each other. I thought of buying a disposable camera just for the occasion but I resisted. If I'm not going to have a camera, I'm going to try to go all the way.

Well, I will be asking people to take pictures of me. But it's the burden of carrying it around that I'm going to avoid if it's possible. I'm either in serious hobby photographer mode, or I'm in camera-less traveller mode, and the serious hobby photographer in me doesn't want to take pics with a disposable.

Flash forward: in two hours, I'll be in Jordan.