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<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Dotted with wry humor and touched with tender, often heartbreaking revelations about human relationships, Etgar Keret\u2019s short stories use cannabis as a bridge to expose intimacy. In his newest work of short fiction, \u201cFly Already,\u201d the award-winning Israeli novelist and filmmaker includes two stories where a joint drives the narrative and the search for authentic human connection. Keret\u2019s concise writing style flows like poetry, like the aromatic steam lifting from a coffee cup or the smoke drifting off a joint during the first hit of the day. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe
\nfirst hit is the one that colors your world,\u201d Keret writes in the story
\nPineapple Crush. <\/p>\n
\u201cSave it for the Keret has appeared in the New Yorker<\/a>, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Paris Review and is a frequent contributor to public radio\u2019s \u201cThis American Life<\/a>.\u201d It was through his strong connection with his father Efraim Keret \u2014 who survived the Holocaust as a teenager by living in a hole in the ground with his family members for nearly two years \u2014 that he learned his first skills as a storyteller. A theme of his father\u2019s storytelling, parallel planes of reality, appear often in Keret\u2019s own work, which frequently includes relationships between parents and children, siblings or married couples combined within fantastical elements such as magicians or goldfish able to grant wishes.<\/p>\n \u201cAs His \u201cThere Through his father, and his older brother Nimrod Keret \u2014 who was a co-founder of Israel\u2019s political party dedicated to marijuana legalization, Keret wrote about cannabis for the first time within the Lives section of the New York Times. While Israel<\/a> is world-renowned for its cannabis research and medical marijuana programs and there is a relatively relaxed attitude towards cannabis use, marijuana remains an illegal substance in the country. <\/p>\n \u201cI To resolve this, the brothers smoked pot with their father, who was in his 70s at the time. <\/p>\n \u201cAfter Keret, who is now 52, wrote his first story at 19 following the suicide of a friend during their compulsory service in the Israeli Army. His brother Nimrod was the first person to read his work, a humorous tale described in Keret\u2019s 2006 memoir \u201cThe Seven Good Years<\/a>,\u201d and is someone he has always admired. But, despite his brother\u2019s ties to legalizing marijuana, Keret says he found cannabis through friends. <\/p>\n \u201cI think that I\u2019m kind of a goody two-shoes, kind of a suburb boy,\u201d he says. \u201cI was born in Ramat Gan, which is not far from Tel Aviv physically but it\u2019s a little bit far mentally. It\u2019s a little bit like a New Jersey to New York kind of thing. So I grew up in an environment where basically [people said that] people who smoke pot later use heroin and rape their sisters, you know? It was really what they taught me in school and being a good boy, if they would tell me about somebody who smoked pot, I would not get close to this guy because I knew at night that he was going to become the Incredible Hulk or Dracula.\u201d<\/p>\n Keret\u2019s \u201cI In \u201cRight next to me sat a beautiful and charming girl that I knew was way out of my league, you know? And she was smoking and for me, being kind of a guy who thinks about the angles, I thought to myself, \u2018If I smoke, I\u2019ll take the joint from her, so my fingers will touch her fingers \u2014 it will be even kind of allowed \u2014 and she smokes and after that I smoke, so I thought to myself you know, \u2018This is as close as I\u2019m going to get to kissing her so I might as well go for it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n And, as it so happens, Keret \u2014 who writes in Hebrew, has been translated into 40 different languages and has recently won both the Sapir Prize, Israel\u2019s most prestigious literary award, as well as an award from the Jewish Book Council for \u201cFly Away<\/a>\u201d \u2014 has some other critical moments of his career connected to marijuana. Keret smoked cannabis during his first reading in Israel, an experience that he conveys did not go well because he couldn\u2019t remember anything. He also smoked in front of an audience during the Happy Ending reading and music series in New York City, where the challenge for readers was to take a risk and to do something onstage that they\u2019ve never done before. In his performance for the series, which ran from 2003-2016, Keret smoked a joint on stage at Joe\u2019s Pub. The act got the series tossed from the venue for violating the city\u2019s smoking laws. <\/p>\n The As he told the New York Times, the accident was a moment which he summed up his impending death: \u201cAll in all what is happening now, my death, is just a glitch at the edge of the galaxy.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n The \u201cGlitch at the End of the Galaxy\u201d was then the \u201cFly Away\u201d collection\u2019s original title, and the name of the book in Hebrew. \u00a0In \u201cFly Away,\u201d another story title was also changed: the story named \u201cOne Gram Short<\/a>\u201d in English was called the \u201cGolden Heart Flower\u201d in Hebrew. <\/p>\n The \u201cWhat Keret \u201cAny As \u201cI But \u201cThis Keret \u201cThe idea of having fun and writing, it doesn\u2019t go well together because if I smoke a joint or if I have sex or if I eat a good cake then I wouldn\u2019t go and write because everything is OK now.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0does your favorite author write about cannabis?<\/p>\n The post The Golden Heart Flower<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Dotted with wry humor and touched with tender, often heartbreaking revelations about human relationships, Etgar Keret\u2019s short stories use cannabis as a bridge to expose intimacy. In his newest work of short fiction, \u201cFly Already,\u201d the award-winning Israeli novelist and filmmaker includes two stories where a joint drives the narrativeContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":41260,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,13273,99,13274,133,139,369,135],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41261,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41259\/revisions\/41261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nevening \u2014 and any piece of trash flickering across your TV screen will be
\nriveting. Puff it at midday, before you get on your bike, and the world around
\nyou will feel like one big adventure. Smoke it as soon as you wake up in the morning,
\nbefore your coffee, and it\u2019ll give you the energy to crawl out of bed or dive
\nback in for another few hours of sleep. The first hit of the day is like a
\nchildhood friend, a first love, a commercial for life. But it\u2019s different from
\nlife itself, which is something that, if I could have, I would have returned to
\nthe store ages ago. In the commercial it\u2019s made-to-order, all-inclusive,
\nfinger-licking, carefree living. After that first one, more hits will come
\nalong to help you soften reality and make the day more tolerable, but they
\nwon\u2019t feel the same.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/etgarkeretmarijuana.jpg\")
\na writer who writes a lot of very short fiction, I write about moments of
\nintimacy and moments of authenticity,\u201d Keret says over a WhatsApp call from his
\nhome in Tel Aviv. \u201cAll these kind of moments that are not driven by the force
\nof inertia but are, in a sense, a moment of revelation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nstories, he explains, involve people smoking pot in the same way he would
\ndescribe someone drinking coffee or smoking a cigarette.<\/p>\n
\nis something about pot smoking, that for me, it\u2019s something that becomes a
\nsegue to have a conversation that leads to exposing intimacy or weakness or creating
\nsome kind of bond between people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nwrote a story about how me and my brother go to my father to convince him to
\nvote for the legalize marijuana party,\u201d Keret says. \u201cSomething about the piece
\nwas that my father, who was a man with great integrity, he said I would feel
\nreally bad if I did not support [the legalize marijuana party] because my son
\nis one of its founders but, on the other hand, a lot of people told me that pot
\nis really, really bad and I never smoked any so I can\u2019t contradict that so I
\ndon\u2019t know what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nsmoking pot he said, \u2018To be honest, it\u2019s not half as good as whiskey, but to
\nmake it illegal is pure stupidity,\u2019\u201d Keret says.<\/p>\n
\ncompulsory service in the Israeli Army continued until he was 21 and, shortly
\nthereafter, he moved to Tel Aviv and got his start as an artist. <\/p>\n
\npublished my first book when I was 24,\u201d he says. \u201cI was introduced to many
\nfilmmakers, I started teaching in film school when I was about 25, so I kind of
\nmet more and more people that smoked cannabis.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nthe telling of the first time he smoked marijuana \u2014 an account he explained in
\nwhich he could be \u201creally honest\u201d because as he said this article would appear
\nin the U.S. where he doesn\u2019t know many people \u2014 sounds a bit like one of his
\nshort stories. The first time Keret tried cannabis he was in his early 20s and
\nat a distant friend\u2019s house.<\/p>\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/etgarkeretinterview.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\nimpetus of Keret\u2019s most recent story collection was a car crash he experienced
\nwhile on a book tour in the U.S. After suffering from his injuries sustained in
\nthat crash, Keret became a medical marijuana patient in Israel. <\/p>\n
\nstory involves a guy trying to secure a joint to impress a girl. As Keret
\ndescribes it, \u201cOne Gram Short\u201d is \u201cthe story of an Israeli hipster who kind of
\nhalf pretends to himself that he\u2019s living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There\u2019s no
\nMiddle East, there\u2019s no racism in this country, there\u2019s no Palestinian problems,
\nnothing. But on his quest of getting a bud so he can hit on a girl, he\u2019s
\ndragged to a place where he cannot deny anymore.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\nyou call a bud in English, we call a flower,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd there is a fairy
\ntale, which they always teach you in elementary school, which is about a child
\nwho goes on a quest to find the Golden Heart Flower. The term \u2018flower\u2019 in
\nHebrew is almost the standard. You wouldn\u2019t say to someone give me a gram or
\ngive me a little, you\u2019d say give me flower. And the funny thing about it is
\nbecause flower is such a common word\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\nsays there is even a popular pop song that includes lyrics about a couple going
\nthrough a breakup, and one says, \u201cIf you leave, please leave me flower.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nyoung person who lives in Tel Aviv really sees it as someone who breaks up with
\nhis girlfriend and says, \u2018Don\u2019t take all the pot with you,\u2019\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
\na writer in Hebrew, Keret works with an ancient language, one which he explains
\nhas gaps, but also \u2014 much like the language around cannabis culture \u2014 allows
\nwriters to invent new words.<\/p>\n
\nhave a term for if you smoke a joint and there is very little left, and you
\nkind of saved it, but it\u2019s only a couple of puffs \u2014 I call it bubs,\u201d Keret
\nsays. \u201cThat\u2019s the name of a character from \u2018The Wire.\u2019 He was a junky and what
\nI remember from him was always this kind of desperate urge to smoke. With a bubs,
\nit\u2019s kind of humiliating to smoke it because it\u2019s so little and with tobacco.
\nSo when I smoke it, I feel like more like junky. Because usually I\u2019d say, \u2018Eh,
\nnothing is left so I\u2019m not going to smoke it.\u2019 So when I smoke it, I say, \u2018OK,
\ngive me the bubs, which means that I admit my junkieness.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\nwhen it comes to inspiration, Keret says there have only been a few instances
\nin which he wrote high. <\/p>\n
\nis something that usually doesn\u2019t happen because I\u2019m usually a very stressed
\nand neurotic person, but when I smoke I relax,\u201d he says. \u201cI kind of deteriorate
\ninto writing positions. I write when nothing else works. After chewing my nails
\nand having a nervous breakdown and taking two Advils, I say, \u2018Oh fuck, OK I\u2019ll
\nwrite something.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\nsays that cannabis, perhaps, is too much fun to help with his creative process.<\/p>\n
\n
\nRead More: The Golden Heart Flower<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"