blog

Because we were fooling around with the usb microphone on my computer, in preparation for recording a professional reading, the computer complained when I had to get on zoom a few minutes later.  and it shut down its sound.  I was supposed to greet the editors of the latest arc, and say something about the Israel Association of Writers in English, and nothing came through.  After various attempts at fixing it, I gave up and went on my iphone, but i couldn’t see what was happening and became more and more frustrated as the evening went on.  i managed to read Erica Jong’s poem, and later mine, on the phone, but i didn’t get to frame the evening in any way, to put it in its official context,  and now i’m supposed to be meeting friends tomorrow morning and suddenly realized i will never manage to make up the work i missed this evening in preparation for a different zoom on sunday, because my grandchildren are coming for shabbat lunch.  Am I dancing at too many weddings with one toches. as they say in Yiddish?  You bet.

december 17, 2020 – dancing at too many weddings Read Post »

blog, poetry

The journal of the Israel Association of Writers in English, which I chair, is coming out very soon and the launch is tonight.  7:30 Israel time.  Email me for the link, but I fear you may be too late.  The theme is ‘kisses’. and there are so many people who want to hear about kisses it may be impossible to satisfy their curiosity.   For example, do you know there’s a difference between a Western kiss and an Arab kiss?  

december 17, 2020 – reading tonight and kisses Read Post »

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 »

blog

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 »

israeli politics

Even though it is a holiday, we have – suddenly –  begun to believe that covid may well come to an end, we are getting more careless and more pressed to complete all the things that we’ve neglected for the past year.  I say ‘we’ when it is just me, but i do feel it around me.  so my entries are a little shorter than usual… 

december 17, 2020 – falling behind Read Post »