blog, poetry

I miss making music.  i really do – reading a poem with music…   I’ve been recording poems with Robert Priest – he gives me instructions how to do it, and Ezi and I work on them, send them to him, and he gives us more instructions.  patiently.

Roy Yarkoni just sent me the link to where he put our Thin Lips album.  It’s here. the whole album for free.  

i even learned a bit about performing

as you can see here from a short clip

Roy went on to take my poetry and make three more albums with Panic Ensemble and they were very successful but I still think we would have been better alone.  Here’s one album

it would be great to hear what you think of these.  Lately I only get letters from people who want something from me.  

 

december 16, 2020 – music Read Post »

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Ever since I’ve lived here, December 15 is a holiday for me.  Why?  Because today is the day Ezi turns on the heat for the building.  When I first came to Israel the usual method of heating was a gasoline space heater.  you rolled it out to the balcony, closed the door, lit it, carefully, and then rolled it back to the living room.  Then we all sat around it to warm up.  After that gas heaters became popular, but I had an accident with one that scared me.  i was sitting by my little daughter’s bedside at night and because she was ill, I moved the gas heater close to the door of her room.  At some point I fell asleep and woke hours later to the strong smell of gas.  The pipe had come loose.   

Everything worked out in the end and I am probably the only one who remembers this incident.

But for 40 years I have been living in an apartment with heated floors, and I always rejoice on this day.  Heated floors are long out of fashion, and many apartments in our building have disconnected from it, but we stay with this old system because it is amazing.

This is a hot country, and most of our concerns are about keeping cool.  We don’t do it the inexpensive indigenous way, though, with thick walls and small windows, but with air conditioning.  But in the few months when it gets cold here, it’s very cold inside, and inevitably I get sick.

So forget about the miracle of Hanukah –  today is a holiday.  Definitely.  

 

december 15, 2020 – heating Read Post »

blog, poetry

i’m on a zoom evening with the Hebrew Writers association, but nothing is happening.  For the past hour we’ve been doing sound checks and lighting and only now it has begun.   Writers from Poland, Hungary, France, Argentina and Israel are watching each other, waiting their turn to read a poem about light.  my poem – is about a suitcase full of all our poems –

SUITCASE

 

Let me put the poems in a suitcase

and carry them with me everywhere —

like mulch, like dressing, I say:

Not separate spots of time, with their

renovating virtue, but blended —

losing all sense of separateness,

temperature, subject-object distinction

 

and when I pass through customs

and open the grip, the mist

will rise through the airport

transforming everyone who passes though–

coming or going.

 

 

 

 

 

december 14, 2020 – hebrew writers zoom Read Post »

blog, poetry

in the past few days some rules have changed on this site – technically.  or maybe i’ve just forgotten the rules, and it is not as easy for me to be spontaneous.  couldn’t even get the title to work today.  And if i have to have titles and follow rules, I just may have to find another way to express myself.  maybe I can find a free-dance class, one of those where older people are encouraged to find their core…

there were too many zooms for me to cope last night.  Tonight another zoom that I was informed about yesterday, that has me reading a poem in Hebrew about light.  I was informed when I received the invitation, and it sent me into a spin.  I spent the day trying to create a poem that would suit the subject, and when Ezi came home from the hospital and read it, he shrugged his shoulders – banal.  His hematological treatment, the cold I caught somewhere the day before that sent me to bed early, the vaccines –  all was forgotten.  the poem was trashed, and an older, less relevant poem replaced.  who knows if I made it in time to add it to the screen share.  

now I’ve got such a cold that if I joined the zooms I promised, I’d be broadcasting from my bed, wearing these fluffy white pajamas, my eiderdown pulled up to my chest, the Sambucol and a box of tissues on the bedside table, with an occasional glass tea, and speaking in a hoarse voice punctuated by coughs and sneezes.  

yes, I’m clutching my pearls.

 

 

 

 

december 14, 2020 – a taste of reality Read Post »

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There are always many stories to tell about traveling around Israel, but all the Saturday stories end with a traffic jam.   We left Rosh Pinna early, forgoing a final dip in the pool, but making sure we didn’t miss the misty view of Syria from Amuka

 

that may have been a mistake because on the way back we listened to Google for some reason.  it suggested a short cut through Dalit Al Karmel, and we were thrilled.  We love going through the forests and then the town.  But then I began to suspect something strange.  On the way there were more than the usual number of stands for Druze pita, and some of them had numerous cars parked all around.  Still, the trees and the wonderful view urged us on.

But when we reached the entrance to Dalit Al Karmel we were greeted by police cars and a few yellow-vested men, who welcomed us and then said,  “Sorry. but we’re a red village, and no one is allowed in.”  We wished them good health and turned the car around to join a spectacular row of cars inching their way back to the main highway.  

So instead of 2 hours we spent 5 on the way home, and our plans for resting the evening before Ezi’s visit to the hospital were shot.  

 

 

december 12, 2020 – the detour to Dalit El carmel Read Post »

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We’re on our way back to Tel Aviv soon, but walking in the fresh air of this town has been wonderfully refreshing, if quiet. 

i don’t mean the town or the art galleries, which I’ve seen before and have no patience for right now, or the wonderful restaurants – all closed right now, but the waters and the hills are so wonderful, and we’ve got each other to keep us busy.  More tomorrow.

december 12, 2020 – rosh pina Read Post »

blog, poetry,

When my late mother-in-law would travel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in the 1920’s, she would set out with her family in the late afternoon, after the hot sun had begun to descend, so the horses would not get tired.  hear.  By the evening they would reach the inn at Shaar Ha’Gai, Bab El Wad, and sleep there.  Early in the morning they would begin the ascent to Jerusalem, where her grandparents lived (On Yaffo Road, in the building with the lions where the police station is now).   Last year we drove there (30 minutes from Tel Aviv) and found that the inn was undergoing renovations.  I didn’t think about the song, “Bab El Wad,” from the War of Independence and the battle for Jerusalem.  Bab El Wad was the gate to the city.

באב אל וואד,
לנצח זכור נא את שמותינו,
שיירות פרצו בדרך אל העיר.
בצידי הדרך מוטלים מתינו.

  שלד הברזל שותק כמוי רעי

Bab al Wad
remember our names forever
convoys broke through on the way to the city

Our dead lie on the roadsides
The iron skeleton is as silent as my mates.

Today the building has been commemorated as a national  memorial.  I forgot to mention that the poem “Bad El Wad” was written by Haim Guri, the poet of the Palmach generation.  I wonder what he would have thought of the opening ceremony – he would probably have loved the fact that history was being foregrounded but hated the fact that the right had co-opted history.

november 29, 2020 – Bab el wad Read Post »