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a wise person once said that the worst possible advice a born israeli can be given is be yourself because born israelis had better not be themselves god forbid! they are already too loud gesticulate complain protest and grumble too much they are too intense too absorbed too unruly all in all too much already! barukh was anxious five years ago as he entered the airplane he didn’t like himself and felt ashamed of himself not because of the aliyah but because of what had happened before for years because he had sold his soul to the devil and the devil didn’t pay him off so he didn’t only lose his soul but also the price of it he gave up everything for conformity in hungary but to no avail he couldn’t fit in and so he didn’t only lose conformity but also lost what he gave up for it himself (everything)  barukh arrived in israel
hoping that one day one of our days he would become an israeli not only on paper but by the looks of it too so all that anxiety and shame he had brought from hungary would be wiped out of him would disappear like forever he hoped if he had wanted it enough and had strived for it badly enough he could’ve divested himself of his galutnik background one hundred percent he could’ve ripped out the roots that linked him to the european diaspora and then he would’ve really become a born israeli at least as he saw born israelis intense absorbed unruly he hoped that he would speak hebrew without an accent that he would be unbroken and enthralled he hoped that he would be assimilated that he would blend in and disappear and he would never ever feel like an outsider again this is not what happened and poor barukh is about to accept it too he will never be a born israeli because he wasn’t born in israel and if he tries to act as if he was born here forcing matters taking on gestures and mannerisms that born israelis use then he will lose exactly what makes born israelis born israelis that they are who they are just the way they are for barukh who was born in a family of wandering arameans and whose ancestors always unconditionally believed in the power of assimilation it is difficult to accept that there are limits to how successfully he can become assimilated that no matter how much he wants to no matter how much he tries he won’t be a born israeli a wise person once said that the worst possible advice a born israeli can be given is be yourself! it took barukh five years in israel to understand and acknowledge and accept that the only way to permanently get rid of wipe out and destroy the anxiety and shame he had brought from hungary and simultaneously make him more or less like a born israeli: is not to try to be a born israeli if he gave up trying to be someone else than what he was who he was but rather would try to discover who he was and what he was then with all his might all his energy he would turn into what he was and who he was so much so that even the aforementioned wise person will tell him: barukh! dai! khalas! enough! don’t be yourself! this is too much already!
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because that way it is easier for him to tell the truth about himself don’t forget barukh is not an official poet only a self-appointed one he can’t simply put his pen on the paper and write that i'm a genius genius i believe in god and I believe that god believes in claude that's me that's me barukh hasn’t received a permit from the poets’ guild to claim that god believes in him or something to that effect barukh started to write poems for himself not like homer goethe francois villon fernando pessoa or william bloody shakespeare whose poems belong in school books so they are officially poets with capital letters barukh is not an official poet and as if that wasn’t enough neither rhymes nor rhythms can be found in his so-called poems so no surprises that those grown-ups who think of poetry as a kind of sealed official thing that has certain indispensable and well-known formal rules formal and procedural rules so these grown-ups there are plenty of them we all know people like them think that barukh is not a poet but just a „poet” and barukh doesn’t have the balls the chutzpah the courage the nerve to not give a shit about what these grown-ups say so he thinks of himself as just a „poet” and he is simply unable to put into writing something like that: i wanted to fool everybody whereas a real poet sometimes has to write stuff like that for the sake of the truth so barukh as a non-official and not very brave „poet” would rather hide behind the third person and write the truth from there: barukh wanted to fool everybody because that way it is easier for him  second stanza:
the other reason why barukh writes in the third person is that he doesn’t love himself enough he doesn’t love himself enough to write his poems and put them on the internet and say: lo and behold here I am barukh the poet give me a warm welcome because how he could ask others to do something that he himself cannot do because he i mean i cannot give myself a warm welcome because i myself think that i am just a „poet” written in all lowercase and in quotation marks so for me i mean for barukh it is much easier to write that: lo and behold this is barukh the poet give him a warm welcome much so much easier it is for me to love barukh and ask for love for him than for myself and it is much easier to write lovingly about my protagonist if it is not me but it’s him in the third person singular no surprises there it is much easier to love barukh than me |