Get the hippie slap

Today is New Year's Eve, if you're Jewish. Israeli custom is that you call every single person in your phone book and wish them a happy Rosh Hashanna. The phone has been ringing all day in the house. Big FOOD is being prepared all over the country. We took a walk to the local mall to see the masses buying last minute flowers and bits of soap wrapped in pine-nuts and cellophane. And tonight we go to a big family meal celebration. Wish me luck.

Strange evening last night.

By the time we got home in the late early hours, I realised how much of a feverish rant I had bottled up. Effie poured a whisky and we sat and raged at the stupidity we had endured, and that I for one had felt too out of place to tackle head on.

We listened to whole load of objectionable nonsense from a disparate bunch of depressives, friends and neighbours. One of those evenings where (it seemed, at least) every opinion was just wrong; each individual laced with negativity and contagious self-destructiveness.

But it was a night of feeling unable to truly express my opinions. What are my opinions? Are they any more valid or listenable than the miserablist drivel we had to sit through last night? Are us relatively loved-up hippies simply offensive in our optimism? Is it even necessary to preach our beliefs? It's better to live them, no?

I think I got it easy coming home. My friends didn't, on the whole, try to destroy me.

First example, we listened to one friend explain sourly for hours, through a rehearsed vocabulary of psycho-therapy, about the pointlessness of life; of wishing destitution upon himself because it would be 'interesting'; of preparing for the worst while grimly hoping for the best. And top us all off, he wants to be a psychologist. God help us.

Zen masters would throw him out a window, leaving him bruised and damaged, and then ask "happy now?" I regretted not doing so. I let him drag me down, becoming increasingly worried that essentially I was dealing with a clinically depressed person and I was unsure I should even try to handle with that. Thankfully, Effie verbally slapped him and managed to retrieve some wisdom, pronouncing, amongst other things, "be careful what you wish for."

Also last night, I had to calmly, without irony and with an utterly repressed urge to just slap every ignorant face in the room, explain to deaf ears why my recent experience of living in a house without television was a total revelation. A creative explosion. A spiritual freedom. A truly bonding, shared free for all.

From this day onwards I cannot smile and feign understanding when people try to explain with a smugness, the merits of "switching off to a bit of mindless entertainment." Indeed, every (fucking!) day.

I loved being without television! Not a single night was wasted in Newcastle. Not a moment lost to the banality of televised advertising. Not a moment spent idly bitching about some tosspot presenter or the relative attractiveness levels of actors. The washing up was always achieved in the company of friends and loud music. Mealtimes enjoyed together with solemn enjoyment of food; with wit and with genuine thanks given to the cook.

It becomes clearer the more one avoids the poisonous realm of the hungry ghosts, that a life without television is a life lived.

Thankfully, we eventually made it to a jam session and enjoyed some beautiful moments of musical spontaneity and improvisation with Tal and Chen, before descending into a mire of song requests. "Play Dylan!" Sigh.

It is just saddening to see how few people seem interested in Effie's journey. She's essentially been two years away from home, travelling and working in Asia and Europe, finding God and coming home with a handsome boyfriend (tee hee) and a smile on her face. The overwhelming impression seems to be "what are you smiling about? Aren't you two breaking up anyway when you start uni in three weeks? Which you definitely are! Don't you dare think about doing something else...Alright big hair, back off..."

But we shall smile and be happy and face it with a sense of humour. What else to do?