12 January 2007
New year, new life, new mac
12 years ago I went to the Sinai with Joachim, our relationship was ending. I had started another one few months before with Renaud with whom I was very much in love but I had planned long before a trip to Israel with Joachim so we decided to go anyway. The trip was quite colourful and lovely, it was my way to be in Israel without a family context. This winter I went back to the Sinai with my friends Bertrand and Martin. It was very different, we were almost the only people in the bedoui camp, the weather was windy in the day and cold at night but it was real vacations, like I didn't take in quite a long time. All we did was reading, sleeping, playing cards, eating and sunbathing when it was possible. We also spent time in the Negev desert, the Dead Sea and Jerusalem. Tel-Aviv was our base and I enjoyed the city from the inhabitant perspective, staying at Lior's place in this dodgy, hip, curious district of Florentin. Although I travelled to Israel few times within the last 12 years, I connected this trip directly to the one I took with Joachim because of the Sinai. A way to look at the past with much fondness, without any nostalgia, with tenderness for the girl I was at 20. I got random news from Ibrahim, the Sudanese guy who had a camp in Tarabin where I stayed but who is now in Cairo but has another camp during the summer, norther of Tarabin because it's not like what it used to be.
Now Paris again, where I feel more and more comfortable, and is now my base for sure after my plans for Berlin failed. But even then, because I feel more stable, I imagine new plans to work around the world. I have an exhibition to prepare for Tokyo next August and I hope to spend more time in Japan in 2008 if the application I made with Julie for the artist-in-residence Villa Kujoyama gets accepted.
As the new year begins, I get excited by the potential in front of me - before I left for my winter vacations, I thought that my professional life and my love life were set at least for some time. I had to resee things as both these clear horizons shifted to dark in a radical way. But the positive thing is that it doesn't get as exciting as much as when you have to start all over. Which is why, first thing first, I ordered a new Macintosh. I'm sure my flatmate is happier with that choice than if I had gotten a dog instead.
--Joelle.
Now Paris again, where I feel more and more comfortable, and is now my base for sure after my plans for Berlin failed. But even then, because I feel more stable, I imagine new plans to work around the world. I have an exhibition to prepare for Tokyo next August and I hope to spend more time in Japan in 2008 if the application I made with Julie for the artist-in-residence Villa Kujoyama gets accepted.
As the new year begins, I get excited by the potential in front of me - before I left for my winter vacations, I thought that my professional life and my love life were set at least for some time. I had to resee things as both these clear horizons shifted to dark in a radical way. But the positive thing is that it doesn't get as exciting as much as when you have to start all over. Which is why, first thing first, I ordered a new Macintosh. I'm sure my flatmate is happier with that choice than if I had gotten a dog instead.
--Joelle.
