Sometimes, you can fall in love from a distance. Even from thousands of miles away. (After all, with technology nowadays, anything is possible.)
For many, it’s usually another person they fall in love with across the miles. For others, every now and then, it’s a city. At least, that’s how it’s been for me.
When I was a teenager, I fell in love with New York. A few films, some videos, maybe, and I had to go there. And after a few years, I finally did. College was nearby, so, at first, we hung out on day visits and weekend trips. (It was a classic commuter romance.) Then graduation completed, I went for it full-time.
In retrospect, we had a tempestuous relationship once I moved in: classic love-hate, really. We cohabitated for five years, but, honestly, I often wanted to call it quits not long after we started. Maybe, it was after the first year into it. Something would happen, and I’d be ready to jet. But New York is also incredibly addictive—like a drug. It takes you up, high, and then down, very often, in the same day—often, in the same hour. So, right when I had enough, the city would offer some amazing experience, and I’d stop from throwing in the towel. Admittedly, it was a hard relationship to break. Eventually, though, I decided to leave. I packed everything up—and I haven’t been back since. Not that I don’t love New York. I still do. I even feel nostalgic on occasion. It’s just that we just can’t live together.
Now, I’m almost 35, back at home, in Honolulu (no love affair here, believe me), and there’s a new object of my affection.
Tel Aviv.
I became officially enamored some time last year—during a time of mental wanderlust. Was it when I was watching a documentary—on Bauhaus and the city that never sleeps—when I knew I was in… love? With a city?
Yes. It was true. I had fallen in love with Tel Aviv. Or “Spring Mound,” as I’d come to learn the meaning of its name—one inspired by a passage in Ezekiel.
The feelings almost came out of nowhere. I saw images of white buildings, beaches, old Jaffa, the narrow streets of Neve Tzedek, even the Ayalon Highway zipping trough skyscrapers—and then people talking in English, French and Hebrew about this city they adore. And I knew. I just knew had to be there—in the White City.
I look back in my life and try to think there must’ve been some kind of antecedents for this romance. Maybe, it’s because, when I was a teenager, I listened to Ofra Haza. (I must’ve been the only one in all of the islands.) Or it was because of the one or two books I borrowed on Israel when I was in the fourth or fifth grade. But I don’t remember any references to Tel Aviv in them. Just Jerusalem and Shabbat and chicken soup. I don’t even recall why I borrowed those books. I’m not Jewish—and I wasn’t brought up with any devout admiration for the Holy Land.
It could’ve been something more recent, instead. Music, perhaps. When I discovered the Israeli band Metropolin and its song “Angels,” there was something in the chorus—in Hebrew—that could’ve set something off. The sound; the vibration of the guttural constants; the passionate, yet almost plaintive, sound of the man singing the chorus. Maybe, that was it.
But really, do I know why I’m in love with Tel Aviv? I don’t.
After all, do you really ever know the specific moment when you’re in love? Can you ever pinpoint the exact reason why you end up loving someone? You can’t. Love is beyond logic. It’s an emotion. Sometimes, it’s even a madness. And on occasion, you just need to let love take its course and see where it will take you.
Last year, I flirted with Tel Aviv from a distance. I talked about Tel Aviv a lot. I even started taking up Hebrew so I could eventually speak with the people of this city. I was like a man who had fallen in love with a person from only a photograph. At least, in the case of city, though, it’s much easier to recognize that a city is a myth, a collection of ideas, a seductive fiction—and that myth is just as valid as the reality of its hodgepodge of streets, buildings, traffic jams and sewers. For some reason, in comparison, it’s harder for us to accept the myths we create of people as such—instead of the marvelous, confusing beings of flesh and blood and feeling they actually are.
In the case of both cities and people, the myth can only lure you so far. At some point, you need to make a choice, take action. Despite the urging of friends to venture out, I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, make any definite plans to go to Tel Aviv. I’d just postpone my first visit to sometime later—in the future. (“It’s far… I don’t have enough vacation time… I don’t have enough money.”) To a certain extent, the excuses may have some degree truth, but when you truly want something, you’ll make it happen. Unless you let fear get in the way.
After all, it’s (seemingly) easier to love from a distance because there’s no risk of disappointment. It’s frightening to see cracks in the ideal, to see the dream disintegrate into a messy reality. Even when people don’t believe in God, many still have an idea of the sublime, of perfection, of their own personal Paradise. (Well, unless they’re nihilistic, of course.) And to approach the object of your love up close and see its real face totally unfiltered can be frightening. (I’ve heard some people have had that particular experience with Paris and had to leave under medical supervision on the way home after seeing the gritty side of the City of Lights, but that’s another story.) However, if you don’t take the plunge, you’re just left with a hazy dream—floating in a quagmire of unrealized possibilities and uneasy dissatisfaction.
So here I am in a new year—2014. And I’ve decided it’s time—to turn feelings into actions and head to Tel Aviv. In eighth months from now… in August. Outside constraints make an earlier trip more challenging, but eight months also give enough time to plan, get my own life in order and make for a visit to remember. To truly make the journey of 8,650 miles (well, that’s according to Google) entirely worth it.
There’s a reasonable chance I may be disappointed by Tel Aviv. There’s an equal chance I may have the time of my life in the non-stop city. It may just end up being an affair of a few days, a seasonal romance, or maybe something far longer. Who can say? But that’s the mystery of love. You never know where it ends.
And in my case, of all the places I could ever seek, it is Tel Aviv who has called me all the way across the world. Why shouldn’t I take the risk and see where we could go together?
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