Bat outta hel! October 21, 2008

I’m going to write this post quickly because I’m sitting on a cushioned chair. I’m still at my family friend’s place (long story), and they gave me a cushioned dining room chair to use at the computer. With all the hours of emailing, chatting, blogging, and youtubing I do, I got in my head that the cushion is slowly flattening. Surely a cushion meant for at most a couple of hours of dining cannot handle hours of online time wasting, and I didn’t want to ruin their chair set. Last time I was given this chair, I put it to the side and sat diagonally on a nearby bed to type instead. When my mom’s friend, the wife, came in and asked why I wasn’t using the chair, I told her my concern and she laughed… and laughed… I guess it’s pretty ridiculous, but I’m telling you, I can see a burekas-shaped butt imprint. So yes, I have a self-imposed time limit on this chair, and I really need to get back to Jerusalem tonight anyway! THE HOLIDAYS ARE OVER!

 

I finally went out to a club in Tel Aviv on Sunday night. Not exactly my type of place, but I drank gin, so I was happy. It was called Landen, and it’s supposedly a “hip” spot with a VIP list you need to be on to get in. It’s also located in the basement of a mall. I got there with a group of about 7 Israelis and one of them knew someone. A girl with bleached hear and a white sexy-nurse type dress was armed with a clipboard and checked off name after name. In usual Israeli style, there was no line, just a buzzing mass of striped button up shirts, platform sandals, and gelled hair inching its way towards her from every angle. She seemed to turn whichever direction she wanted in order to let in the next group. We waited for about 15 minutes before we could get in. I was ready to go to any other bar, but it wasn’t up to me.

 

Then one of the Israeli friends gave us the OK and flagged us over, bouncers checked our IDS and patted the bottoms of the girls’ handbags, and we walked in. From what I could remember, the bar was 65%, well, bar. Instead of having the bars against the walls, the entire center of a pretty large space was taken up by what looked like an octopus of connecting bar stations … at least that’s what it looked like after three gin tonics. The place itself was dark, the walls were brick, and there was a library of books in the back, which to me did not jive with the velvet rope attitude at the door. Yes, I flipped through the books. The only one I can remember is a an early 20th century German edition of Tom Sawyer. People crammed in around the perimeter of the space, and all there was to look at was the bar, the bartenders, and glittering rows of glasses. I really don’t understand the reasoning behind the set-up. Oh, and there was a bizarre pink bunny (I think) mascot sitting the bar and later dancing with people. Still, I drank, I danced, so overall I was happy, but the crowd there was didn’t seem all that special, even though they obviously were if they got in! As always happens on a good night, I did not have my camera on me.

 

Today, I went to a birthday picnic at an area in the Hulda Forest right next to the Barkan vineyards. It was beautiful there! Again, no camera on me. The picnic was for a 6 year old, so there were lots of kids, but there was also lots of good food, including some quiches my mom’s friend spent literally all night making. The party took an interesting turn when in the middle of everything, a bat flew out of one tree, though the crowd, and landed upside down on a branch of a tree right above the kids’ table. Kids screamed, adults pulled away, and then everyone circled around it to get a good look. It just hung there, with its little mouth twitching. It was the first time I have ever seen a bat in person. It was not pretty, but still fascinating. “It’s Batman! Don’t worry, it’s Batman!” some adults told the kids to placate them. Other adults tried to swing branches near the bat to shoo it away, but it would not move. About 15 minutes passed and the bat did not move an inch. I then walked over to my bag, which was on the ground close to the bat, and as I passed the bat, it flew right past me and nosedove on top of the recycling bag, where it laid twitching. “Is it dying?” I asked someone, but he shrugged. I think the adults knew it was but didn’t want to scare the kids. “It’s sleeping! It’s sleeping!” they kept saying. Now, I’m not sure how much I believe in omens, but having a dying bat sweep by me before it twitched to death did not feel right to me.

 

After that, I left to go use the restroom, so I’m not sure if the bat died, but when I came back the bag it landed on was moved far away, and I didn’t want to ask what happened since it seemed everyone wanted to forget it. I sat down near the picnic table and drank some Turkish coffee with sugar and cardamom (hel in Hebrew, yum). Then I heard a thud after 10 feet away, looked over and discovered that a bat had dropped down from the tree above and was now twitching on the ground. The same bat? Another bat? Why were bats dying around me? I moved away, and about 10 minutes later, I looked over and the bat was gone. I don’t know much about bats, but do they normally drop and twitch?

 

On the car ride home, everyone was tired. The husband has this habit of signalling his return to home by taking off his seatbelt a block before we get to the driveway. He does this every time. Whenever he does, I remind myself of my vague recollection of the statistic about most car accidents occuring near the home. Well, today I knew he was ready for a nap. “Oh, he is going to take off his seatbelt two blocks before the driveway…” and he did.