As I watched this class of kids training for the army I kept thinking – would I want to prepare for years ahead of hard labor? I’d probably want to stay in bed and watch movies. I watched the girl at the end of the line for hours keeping up with the crazy exercises – crawling the sand, running around in a circle – and couldn’t stop admiring her. Wouldn’t you? When she finally gets to basic training she’ll be so ready.
getting ready – August 31, 2022 Read Post »
so many people, like Richard, have been writing that they feel lost in this uncertain world, that I thought you might like this wonderful poem!
Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar.
MARY G. BERG AND DENNIS MALONEY
Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Traveler, there is no road;
only a ship’s wake on the sea.
august 31 – 2022 – traveler Read Post »
That’s what we need – magic. it may be the only thing that will save us now. so we went to the exhibit in Muza of “The Art of Enchantment”
and to me, the most enchanting thing was Victoria Hanna
and her magic spells from prayers, kabbalah. Everything else seemed to be ABOUT magic, not magic itself.
But it could very well be that I am prejudiced. After all, some of those charms had been used on me.
They didn’t work, but they connected me to something inside myself. Even though the charms brought me to an antithetical decision, I seem, eventually, to have gotten rid of the evil eye. It’s still in the neighborhood, but it is not sitting on me right now. tfu tfu tfu.
I’m also prejudiced because I’ve known Victoria for scores – ever since Ronen Shapira brought her over one evening, told us that she was wonderful, and then commanded her to sing, and her voice filled the room, the apartment, the house, the street.
I don’t think that even white magic is all good, but sometimes you need a little black magic to destroy evil.
Magic – August 30, 2022 Read Post »
“Everyone’s traveling!” the agent said, when I registered my COVID reluctance to sign on a trip to Japan. “It’s no worse there than here.” I know for a fact that he has no idea what he’s talking about and Japan has got the highest numbers it’s had the whole time. But like the comedian, Shelly Berman said when he saw the wing on his plane was on fire, and he didn’t mention it to the stewardess
I’d rather die than make an ass of himself. I signed the agreement. But boy am I going to get the best insurance I can find, and I’m taking a suitcase of medications.
But it’s true – everyone is traveling. All summer long the airport has been packed, and now that school is beginning it may slow down, but we are still not sure there’s not going to be a strike.
And that’s nothing compared to what is going on at our borders…
How are we living with this amazing uncertainty, that we have no sense of what will happen one day ahead of us.
to japan – august 29, 2022 Read Post »
I was thinking about writing about the heat. Sckuno del mut – deathly heat. But it seemed to me suddenly to be something I’ve complained about in the past. So I decided to skip writing tonight. And then I found that I wasn’t able to sleep without putting something online. It is my only real cure for insomnia…
try it
insomnia -august 29, 2022 Read Post »
We spent the day mostly with children – first our own kids and grandkids, and later with nieces and their kids. And as we were finally going home I began thinking of all the children we haven’t seen in so long and how informative it is to talk with children. From the youngest to the oldest – there was so much to learn. The silly world of extreme behavior on tik-tok, the stupid world of the army (where one of the grand-nieces is finishing her 2 years on the beach in the heat wave in long pants and thick t-shirts because the army ruled last year that the women have to dress conservatively), the challenging world of incurable diseases and caring for elderly, the dangerous world of the future – all the worlds that exist right next to us. I’ve been with friends my own age for so long: it is really time to expand our little universes just a bit.
Kids – a confession – August 27, 2022 Read Post »
Rafi Weichert hosted the evening, and as you can see he takes poetry really seriously, so I had to be alert. The preparations were incredibly intense and a lot of people were involved – but there were so many others who would have been involved if we had had the time. So one of my dreams came true – poetry went beyond language. Now I can just relax and figure out how to expand this concept. There are many well-beloved writers who anchor their work in the place they live – like Amichai and Mahfouz and Faulkner. Sabena Messag writes about the places in Israel, and how to save the environment here and it is very moving – but I want poetry to save humanity, to save the planet.
I know, I know, I’m sloppy and dyslexic and can never be a great writer, but I can still try.
5 languages – august 26, 2022 Read Post »
You should have been there. The municipal library was more than generous in its sponsoring of this evening and the staff was amazing. I had worked for days on a very complex powerpoint and the first thing I did was to drop the clicker I had brought and break it. The guys there went searching through the offices for another one and at the last minute came through with a substitute.
But I had other things to busy myself with. For example, the hall, down in the basement, had a very large anteroom where the books and refreshments were set up. All that needed arranging. There was an enormous amount of food, vegetables, cakes, breads, wine, etc. but with all the recent recalls of canned and frozen goods because of parts of animals and bugs, as well as a story about a family that got high on storebought mushrooms, I demanded that the staff taste everything five minutes before the evening began. You see how careful we were about keeping the lovers of literature happy.
my literary evening tonight – August 25, 2022 Read Post »
