The conversation went something like this:
Richard: the bill is 592NIS
Me: let’s just split it
Richard: Our share is a lot more than yours. How about if we pay 60% and you pay 40%?
Me: OK. Say 600NIS. Ten percent of that is 60; times 6 is 360; times 4 is 240. (to the young lady who waited on us) Put 360NIS on this card and 240NIS on this card. And add 15% on each card for the tip.
Figuring that all out in my head was about as time-consuming as tying one’s shoes – assuming you were with me in P.S. 80 and are still of sound mind. It was assumed by one and all that, in that old brick building on Mosholu Parkway in The Bronx, you would learn arithmetic as well as spelling and the fundamentals of English grammar. There was also art and music appreciation, because it was assumed these were important disciplines. Moreover, some of us were chosen to play an instrument, in my case the clarinet, which is why I have more than a nodding acquaintance with the layout of the treble clef (which came in very handy when I joined the ranks of Encore!) There are five lines, and the spaces between the lines correspond to the notes F-A-C-E (easy enough to remember). The notes on the five lines? E-G-B-D-F. Which becomes the mnemonic, Every good boy does fine, or better still by a lot, Every good boy deserves fun. Yes! Let’s work on that. Don’t we all deserve some fun? Which is all the segue I needed to get to the meat and potatoes of this article…
Read more: Every Good Boy — Part 1
We had survived the Winter of Our Discontent, when we had focused mainly on turning our new apartment into an actual home. True, we did get out and about once in a while. Barbara would trudge out almost every Tuesday to Tzomet Pat to hang out with Liel, our step-grand-daughter; I would arrive at Power Coffeeworks and the shuk on Thursdays; we would dutifully arrive at our medical appointments whenever, and so on. But little else, not much anyone would describe as more than the run-of-the-mill activities. And then, we were coming up to Pesach. We gotta do something over chol hamoed to get out of the house, or else what’s the point. (That was me using my most plaintive tone of voice.)
One thing we could do was go to the Israel Museum. Yes, like most of the museums in The Land, it would be free over chol hamoed and hence very crowded. And, yes, we are member of the museum and can go whenever we like. But we haven’t gone, so why don’t we? Besides, I’m especially interested in seeing the exhibit of Chris Marker’s photographs. If nothing else, we could vicariously travel the length and breadth of the country – at least how this French filmmaker saw it in 1960 when he was here making a documentary about our tiny country.
All of the prints were small, but, still, 120 was a sizable number and, with everything else in the exhibition, took some time to digest. That’s one things about photographs. If someone is actually interested in what’s going on – not just running around taking shots of everyone sticking their tongue out – after a while, the pictures being taken turn into historical documents. Because the world changes in sixty years. Certainly the Israel of today is very different from what it was in 1960.
But I was also looking at the pictures as someone who himself has traveled The Land, camera in hand – although first arriving twenty years after Marker. I couldn’t help thinking, some of my work is……. DON’T GO THERE! IT WON’T DO YOU ANY GOOD. Maybe you’ve had this experience: someone who’s not your parent, your rabbi, or an official pedagogue has taught you an invaluable life lesson, even an Invaluable Life Lesson. My mentor, Lou Bernstein, would assemble a group of his students, and we would go out together somewhere to photograph. And we would be standing next to each other, ostensibly photographing the same thing. But when we reassembled a week or so later and began showing the prints we had made, I didn’t see that. Where was I when you shot that? It was hard for us to fathom how differently we saw the same situation and how our photographs were not at all the same. That was Lou’s point. The only person you’re in competition with is yourself – a bit of wisdom I have never forgotten, and which has made my life a lot more pleasant and a lot less stressful. Let me do my thing, and you do yours. Marker’s photographs, made from negatives that were presumed lost for half a century, are now on display at the museum. Mine have been zealously guarded over the decades and kept in storage boxes, available for viewing in our living room. And I’m good with that.
One of my favorite images on display is of a group of teenagers leaning out a train window and looking at the photographer. Are some of them still alive? Supposing some smart person in the museum’s publicity department circulated the photograph with the question, Anyone recognize anybody in the picture? And then someone might show up and say, yeah, that’s me, second from the left. Then we could ask: do you remember why you were going to Tel Aviv on that fateful day? Or even better: Tell us how you got to be in Jerusalem in the first place. Where were you born and where did you grow up?
Barbara reminded me of the obvious. In today’s trains, the windows don’t open, so you can’t stick your head out. Even if they did – I hate to say it – today’s generation of pre-adults would be too busy on their phones to notice the presence of a man with a camera or anything else of note. But now is now and then was then. Which partially explains why some of us have chosen to pay attention and photograph what we see. Because what we see now will soon become what we saw then. That’s because time flies when you’re having fun.
To be continued, as we took ‘having fun’ seriously during the weeks that followed.
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