Some people exercise patience. I exercise my wrath. As the docile person that I am (by long training, let it be said, not quite by temperament), living in Israel has provided me ample opportunity to insert in my diet a daily supplement of ire. Two things have factored into this equation, the first thereof being my by now famous through lamentation incessant lost of luggage. Vueling, the brave Aragonians, decided to place the luggage of everyone who was in the plane in another plane. When trying to describe such an enlightened feat, words fail me mystically —for surely we must acknowledge the sheer genius that must go into the avant-garde and non-chalant disregard for little England convention that consists in refusing to let the bags of an entire crowd fly to the same destination of the owners thereof. An insightful choice, an artist's hand can here be spotted.
Still, years of adhering austerely to the precepts of Roman Stoicism have made ill-fitted to react. I let it pass the first days, faithful in my disbelief of human nature, and even when three or four sunrises had tanned my back it still took me a significant effort to muster the appropriate tone of voice with which to jolt the guiltless call-center operator on the other side of the line, only to regret it and inescapably apologize and confess that I was indeed aware that the fault lie in something bigger, something bigger than either of us.
The weeks thence passed, and I have seen Seneca's words fly away from ears and heart. Israel has taught me rage. I am grateful, being as I am a believer that we should drink life to the lees, and moreover that a sin it is, if we should die still unknown to anything that is human. Beam me up, Achilles.
But something else, more insiduous yet meeker and tamer, gentler and fuckeduper, has branded my days with its flower. Let queuing be the subject of the following chapter. I will be forgiven for the affectation of British poshness involved in the use of this vocab. The British do, after all, use a different word. But being as I am in soul and substance closer to that North American exceptionalism than I am to the British, it would not beseem me their word to employ, for what happens here in Israel will scantly suffer to be called queue anyway.
Whatever. Consider the following proposition. You, hypocrite lecteur, stand. Yet not in vain you stay. Futile is not your wait. You hold your ground, because there resides in your id's desire a command that you buy coffee. Or toothpaste — nay!, even a pen (* "The following film is based on true events"). But how could you be mistaken thus, ever to believe that such a milquetoast thing as your unassuming heart could ever stand in the way of the minotaur élan and valiant heart of the Israeli? Who will clash against you, not human against mere human, but ensouled body against ensouled body, a live prefiguration of Holy Ragnarök, when shields and ailes galore shall be cloven, ere sink the shops and supermarkets of this mortal earth?
"Cloven" stands here to wit in the typological schema of course in place of the old lady's who has just arrived foot placed with a courage as grandiose as strategic in front of yours, that she may burst her loaf of bread before you dare set down your milk. The old lady, with Iliadic force, will be, whatever it takes, the best. She will be superior to all.
A heroic age for a heroic people, whose values perish not with them. The crone is the sacred relay of her own valour, a dragon's step in the tradition that's passed over to the young man, who proudly treads the footsteps of his elder. And who in turn shall lovingly teach the daughter how sweet it is, to forge your own fate, to cut the line, in the souq as in life.
As a great Greek poet once wrote,
«And we who have nothing shall teach them rage.»
("ἐμεῖς ποὺ τίποτε δὲν εἴχαμε θὰ τοὺς διδάξουμε τὴ γαλήνη.")
