``The potential wrath of a significant other is not something to fool around with...especially if the other happens to be a "fearsome zionist"....probably end with him/her occupying your entire flat, you left with only your keys for memory, and don't forget about the verbal rocket attacks and surgical insult strikes...on the other hand, if you play it nice and conciliatory, you may be able to retain some claim to the meter radius around your couch and a temporary permit to travel to the bathroom or kitchen, if the other happens to be in a decent mood at the time...'' Bryan Alinsky
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This is fucking hilarious. I never thought of the Israeli-Palestinian feud as the terminal marriage of assured mutual destruction so typical of the aging US middle class. No wonder they identify with it.
This afternoon I was reading a book of short stories by Tillie Olsen I was given by Madame Bujes and they were stunning, especially the last one, Tell Me a Riddle. An aging Russian-Jewish couple torture each other to death in Santa Monica or maybe Venice in a small stucco flat near the beach---an ostensible paradise.
The opening goes like this:
``For forty-seven years they had been married. How deep back the stubborn, gnarled roots of the quarrel reached, no one could say---but only now, when tending to the needs of others no longer shackled them together, the roots swelled up visible, split the earth between them, and the tearing shook even to the children long since grown...''
CG