blog, poetry

no – not out of our social distancing, not out of our relative isolation, but out of our usual schedule.  tomorrow we go back to Jisr El Zarcha and walk along the beach to Caesarea.  We will see  few people and many seagulls. 

The news about vaccinations has made me realize how frightened I am of living a normal life in the future.  What have I been doing all this time at home?  Where should I go if I can go anywhere I want?  Last week a friend asked me where we will go for our next vacation and I had no answer – no will.

november 16, 2020 – we’re breaking out Read Post »

israeli politics

iSince the beginning of March, when we returned from Egypt overwhelmed with the experience, I’ve been even more attuned to the archeological work all around the area.  we see so many discoveries and so many digs on our hikes on the Israel trail, but it only occurred to me when I heard the accouncement of the discoveries of 100 mummies in Sakara that we had heard something about it when we were there.  And we saw the dig, and we heard there were big discoveries there.  So much has happened in the past 50 thousand years or so.   but why are they discovering so much just now, while we’re all wondering about what will happen tomorrow?

november 15, 2020 – what are all these archeological discoveries? Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, poetry

I was waiting for the obituaries on Zach – it took people  a week to get it together and then everybody started talking.  Two main points that were repeated with the greatest frequency: 1. he was a very nasty man 2. He absolutely changed the face  of Hebrew poetry and even the way language is used.  I want to add another – his magic is impossible to translate.  I know he’s been translated, but I can’t find his magic in translation.   How do I know?  I’ve failed again and again.  His ability to fill simple words of every day speech with meaning and feeling was unparalleled.  here is one example.  

 

In the evening

when my girl said

get going

I went down the street to go

And I would go

and get confounded

go and get confounded

 

i opened the book of “Shirim Shomin” – Different poems, or Strange Poems – in 1974 – and this was the first poem, my first experience with poetry that could be called ‘modern’ in Hebrew.  No rhyme, no meter.  Only an incredibly beautiful sound that leads to incredibly beautiful sadness.

November 14, 2020 – Natan Zach Read Post »

blog, poetry, ,

“you can’t have love in a society that doesn’t love”: click here to hear me speak with Shlomi Hatuka

 

Shlomi broadcast this conversation a few months ago and now made it into a podcast.  I don’t like listening to myself, and heard in this dialogue in Hebrew that I was breathless all the time, and didn’t read very well.  But the subjects were fascinating.  Shlomi is very active in the Yemenite community and has been very prominent in the movement to uncover the truth about Yemenite children who disappeared after they were brought to Israel.  And yet we talked about what it is like to be a witness to the first generation.  it is nothing like second generation because it doesn’t talk about the effects on the individual, but it concentrate on witnessing the effects on survivors.  And then suddenly he shifted the subject to my next book in Hebrew, about love and sex.  And now that I think of it, my answer was the same as the previous subject.  I have a need to transmit what I witness.  

november 14, 2020 – A CONVERSATION ABOUT HOLOCAUST AND LOVE Read Post »

blog, poetry, , , ,

what did we discover in the languages we didn’t understand – the music of poetry. We still have to edit the video to make sure the Iranian participant is protected, but having the Persian wash over us, the Slovak, , the Hebrew, and the Yiddish, forced us to listen to sounds, and how words make music in and of themselves. When we actually have the film, we’ll post it.  Watch the faces of the participants – they are entranced.  I’ve been to zoom meetings where you watch people dying of boredom and maybe suddenly you hear the sound of snoring.  Here, everyone was leaning forward – trying to catch the words. 

november 13, 2020 – found in translation Read Post »

israeli politics

As I’m driving home from the doctor’s I hear the world news – one country after another closing down again because of the sharp spike.  I park and as I’m climbing up to my apartment,together with the stray cat that is still conquering her terror of human beings, and has agreed to come to our place for her daily lunch. And I hear my neighbor (a Mengele graduate) banging on her door and begging her daughter to open.  Her daughter isn’t home and not in good relations with her mother but our neighbor has lost her keys and is quite hysterical.  I try to get her to come to my place and figure out what to do, but she begins to scream she wants to die – she can’t take it anymore.  She has a son but she can’t remember anyone’s phone number and is way beyond being comforted.  She asks the teenager next door if she knows anything about where her keys have disappeared, and is told that a man knocked on her door and then took keys with him.  We look up the number of a locksmith and Ezi calls him.  He’ll be there in half an hour, I’m happy to report, and I take her outside to a nearby bench to wait.  (the cat has gone into hiding nearby, clearly disturbed) I promise to wait with her and she tell me more stories about the Holocaust – stories I haven’t heard in the more than 40 years I’ve known her.  It helps her calm down.   In the meantime Ezi has reached her son who is on his way, and she is even quiet, almost relaxed.  And then another neighbor comes by and says to her casually, “I’ve been looking for you.”  And he holds out the keys he found attached to her postbox.  By now she is beaming.  She has her keys and she has her loving neighbors around her.  She is 84, she tells us, and she tells the neighbor – “But you, you look like you’re getting older.”  He is eighty, but is in great shape, and he realizes she’s just trying to turn an embarrassing situation for her around to him, and makes a joke of her accusation. 

The catastrophe is over.  I realize that my pulse has been racing for the entire hour, the cat has given up on eating for the day, and the whole world outside my building has been forgotten.   

november 12, 2020 – the whole world and one person with a number on her arm Read Post »

israeli politics

i don’t remember a time of disorientation like this. Once I went on a ride with my son in some amusement park after which I was so confused I didn’t know if I was standing or lying down. I figured out what was right and left by touching the place on my left elbow where i had a scar from childhood, and from there I set myself straight. There was no pain or fear, just a necessity to put myself in a position of clarity again. i’m there again. More than ever before I read news, hoping i will get that certainty i had by touching my elbow.

november 11, 2020 – do you know where you are? Read Post »

israeli politics

Yesterday an interview with me was on podcast. of course it’s still there. the title is “Love can’t exist in a society that doesn’t love“.  It’s in hebrew, and you can click on that sentence  if you want to hear the entire hour, but in any case I didn’t explain enough of my point.  The interview concentrated on my erotic poetry and i guess I was comfortable by the time Shlomo Hatuka asked me how I write so easily about love and making love.  I said that I feel a responsibility to pass on what I have learned and still need to learn about relationships.  And that this is connected to individual relationships as well as political relationships.  I wanted to talk more about Buber’s concept of “distance and relation” – that in order to connect, we need to maintain equally dignified identities.  I would have gone on for hours on this subject, the way we have to work with ‘otherness’, accept others, and work with it.

 

november 10, 2020 – politics and love Read Post »