Letter from the beach, performance created in Israel 2007. A young palestinian boy reads the love letter below from the beach and rescue tower in Tel Aviv.
My Love
Many were the letters that I sent you. Some accusing and aggressive. I wanted you to understand how I have experienced the past years. In others I wrote about possible solutions and about all that has been good about our history. I wanted you to remember the circumstances of our strange love, how addiction and worries have been with us from the start, but also faith.
All this seems very distant now. We rarely speak anymore and I can’t recall the last time you came through my door just because you were passing by. I was waiting for you for a very long time, but you never came. Instead we silently divided the streets between us so as not to run into each other by mistake. In the end I became tired of all the waiting. I realized that you had found another way to move on, so I gave my key away and left the city.
The heat and loneliness of this place is driving me insane. I miss you more than you can possibly imagine. I’ve written pleading sentences and strung them together into a incoherent mass of text, which I couldn’t bring myself to send to you anyway.
I know that you hope for us to become fiends again, the way we were a long time ago, before everything escalated into madness. You’d like us to hang out in a more civilized way, if I only behaved less unreasonably. I don’t think that I’ve been unreasonable, and it makes me sad that you can’t see that we’ve never been friends in the way you’d like us to be, the uncomplicated way. There was always something at stake, always the possibility of win some or loose it all. Yesterday I erased everything I’d written and left just my bank account number. I liked it better without all the superfluous letters. I realised that it didn’t matter which arguments I could formulate, that too much has happened, too much has been said that can’t be taken back. Perhaps it wasn’t anyone’s fault. It felt good while it lasted, but as you’ve said before, I’m uncompromising on this issue. So therefore,
I refuse to accept the distance between us. Who decides what is possible if not we? I’m going to sit here on this beach an wait until you realise that you can not construct your reality by pretending that I’m not there, or by keeping me at arm’s length. I’ll stay here until you come walking over the sand to bring me back home.
Your sincerely