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25 Days of Israel: Day 8 - The Rainbow Railroad

  • Writer: Jillian Joy
    Jillian Joy
  • Mar 10, 2023
  • 5 min read

This is Day 8 in a series of posts I have chosen to write during the time of my current - and last, for a while - trip to Israel in March 2023. My experience of Israel in these last 7 years of my residence has been vivid, inspiring, nerve wracking, debilitating, and wholly, precisely, profoundly the medicine I've needed. Words will not (yet) fully express the treasures I've received from my presence here, but I believe the commitment, challenge, and confidence of these 25 Days of Israel are a beautiful homage to their glory in my life.


I’ve discovered something very interesting lately about my writing abilities and inspiration. It seems that the best ideas and the freest flows happen when I am in the middle of moving with public transportation.


Specifically, my creative appetite seems to most enjoy trains, of nearly any type. In Berlin, we’re a big fan of the U-bahn (there’s something about the crossroads of Mehringdamm station that really particularly gets me), and the S-bahn isn’t too bad either. Especially as the weather gets warmer and I get closer to spending more full time there, I look forward to hopping on the ring-bahn and just going round and round for a few hours.


It seems that my best ideas and freest flows happen when I am in the middle of moving with public transportation.

In Israel, I’ve really been fired up along the commute between Binyamina and Tel Aviv, in either direction. It’s long enough to dive into a complete thought, but short enough to make me feel the pressure to open and close the piece within its time limits. 100%, it’s best when the sun is out - because the landscape is surprisingly more green than I usually expect Israel to look like. There’s always someone on the phone - sometimes louder than others - and usually small children around, but the overall atmosphere is quieter than in any other part of the country.


I’ve tried writing by hand in my journal on the train, and that didn’t turn out nearly as well as with my computer - there are still bumps and sways here and there ;) Despite that, overall, the train ride is quite physically smooth and I don’t feel sick as I look at my screen and write words the way it usually happens after a few minutes on the bus with my phone. (That said, when inspiration calls, even on the bus, I try to jump as quickly and as fully as I can for it - I’m whipped.)


Tree lined pathway on a sunny day
A beautiful tree-lined pathway in Binyamina on this gorgeous sunny day. This view always makes me feel like I'm coming home

Perhaps one of the most miraculous aspects of all, the train is probably the only thing I’ve encountered in Israel that runs on time, and is reliable in its ability to take you where you want to go. It’s a lovely complement to mingle with my creativity - a sense of efficiency and confidence as I sit in the comfortable (but usually very chilly) train car with a cheerful view. Whenever I’ve gotten words to paper while traveling between distant cities (mind you, Binyamina-Tel Aviv is only around 40 minutes, depending on your station, with the fastest train), I always exit the train uplifted and hopeful for the time ahead.


I didn’t start using the train regularly (or really, barely at all) until I moved short-term to Binyamina last October from my very Tel Avivit life. I was generously offered a room in a super amazing young couple’s house where I could take respite for a few months from disastrously high Tel Aviv rent and figure out my next steps. I thought I would be returning back to Binyamina at the beginning of March - actually, now - to stay for a couple of months until I could return back to Berlin, but… life took another turn and a different decision was made.


Wheel of a ship on blue door
Not a train, but I liked the imagery for this subject anyways

That decision was made, but I still find myself here, writing to you from the train to Binyamina, going up for one of my last visits to sort out the remainder of my belongings for the next phase. I was excited - or, at least, didn’t mind the prospect of this commute - because of the train rides ahead, but now that I’m sitting here again, laptop in front of me, I feel damn powerful.


I know this is nerdy to say, but I forgot how alive and vivid the most inspiring and creative times on this train can be. I’ve shared what I love about them above, but there’s ultimately a feeling beyond this which, indescribably, screams at me to mix things up and change my game here.


I forgot how alive and vivid the most inspiring and creative times on this train can be. There's a feeling which, indescribably, screams at me to mix things up and change my game.

I would say that Berlin has a more frequent and commonplace sense of this energy - and that’s largely why I’m heading there - but encountering and playing with that in Israel is extra special. It’s a contrast to a lot of its other (English-speaking) spaces, in my experience.


People in Israel are innovative; they are determined and clever and fiery passionate. Yet, I haven’t really seen this same bright, cheerful, delighted, uninhibited, rainbow creative spirit the way I feel it myself specifically on the train.


Cat sitting in suitcase helping pack
Just cat tax... my former cat roommate being useful and helping me pack

I’m grateful to be on one now, again with the sense that something great is coming. Of course, creation - manifestation - goes hand and hand with feeling and emotions, and trust. It’s not possible to bring your creations forth without being intimate and vulnerable with them before, during, and after their actualization. It’s not possible to feel all there is to feel without trusting the experience is not only safe, but for the highest good.


My feeling of this rainbow creation railroad therefore also encourages me to check in with myself about how I exercise my creative strengths on a regular basis, and where it is now obviously clear I can step up more for my light. It’s a question of understanding my existing trust and where I can gently stretch that to not simply “do more,” but, primarily, feel more on mine and my creations behalf.


Cat with head in a food bag
Be more like this bold boi - reach in and seize every last drop of experience you can from this world

Where can I take more responsibility, and hold an even clearer vision, in order to be the best caretaker of my creations - therefore, simultaneously myself - that I can be?


Today, I feel like something wants to break through, that there’s an energy ripe for me to uncover and bring forth. There’s something waiting, big, great, to be felt that also demands doing so in part in your presence. There’s a new dimension of my trust and my vision that needs to be named, now. And of course it all started on my commute.


Where can I take more responsibility, and hold an even clearer vision, in order to be the best caretaker of my creations - therefore, simultaneously myself - that I can be?

I was thinking about this when I got off the train in Binyamina, and again now as I head back (the day has lapsed from the start of this post until now). The answers to this question hold the key to my next evolutionary leap, and are worth exploring for a lifetime. For me, it points me towards the path of greater joy and brighter delight, and unquestionably, it’s the life I want to live.


Flowers in a garden along walkway
Smattering of blossoming flowers in Binyamina as the spring comes again. One of my favorite parts of life here

It’s magical to me that creative living happens everywhere, in all places at all times, when we ask inspiration to come to us and, more often, when we don’t. There’s the most accurate time and place for it - like Mehringdamm U-bahn station, or the Binyamina-Tel Aviv train line - and the most accurate time and place for the growth, trust, and intimacy that accompany it.


With that logic, remember: it’s always a good day to take a ride on the train.


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