Recently, as nomadmatan noticed, I seem to have all but abandoned this blog. I think that the last time I jotted anything here was half a month ago during פסח Passover. Work responsibilities (tying up the final loose ends of the book on Libya) and very minor health issues (I've started physical therapy for my right shoulder. In the end, the rotator cuff is in good shape and this is largely re-education) are causing a time crunch. Mostly, though, I have been busy with my decision to leave Israel. It is not a decision if there is only one viable choice or deciding factor. Thanks to tremendous help from friends on both sides of the sea, I will be Oregon-bound in less than six weeks. In the meantime, there is much to do, but mostly, people with whom I want to spend time. On Sunday evening, Jutta is coming up from Cairo!

Ages ago, I lived with writer Gregory Manin. He spoke to me once about his approach to the alchemy of transforming life into art and the necessity of letting time work its magic on the raw ingredients of experience and feeling. (Of course, perhaps he was just being polite as I imagine I probably had asked him if he ever wrote about me). I do not know what to say about the subtle, inner homecoming which has taken place for me during these past four years in Israel. I only know that it has not taken me in any of the directions I would have predicted or consciously desired. Situations, events (terrorism, war, strikes, roommates, health and the faint indirections of the heart), my work and my studies here already seem to have been largely a backdrop for this transmutation. I cannot imagine my life, however, without the catalyst and the blessing of friendships I hold so dear.

Hail, Abu Hassan! This is everything humus should be!
Check out this yummy food blog!

Last week, Avi took a day free from school and work and we set off on a trip. Ostensibly, we were headed to Jerusalem. While I love to go to the City, I mostly just wanted to enjoy the day with my friend, especially not knowing how many more we will have together for the time being. We found ourselves going south into Bat Yam instead of east, up to Jerusalem. Rather than get tangled up in the industrial jungle of Holon, we doubled back through Jaffa and stopped for a late breakfast at Abu Hassan's. (Such humus and fuul I surely will not find in Portland!). Eventually, with bellies full, we were on the road again.

We stopped along the way at the Trappist Abbey of Latroun which is in the foothills, midway between Jerusalem and the coast. The French Abbaye Notre Dame def Sept-Fons sent monks to the Land of Israel in 1889 to establish a contemplative monastic community. One hundred and nineteen years later, Latroun is still primarily a French community. They support themselves by producing honey, olive oil and a variety of wines: Gewurztraminer, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and a Muscat à petit grains (a kind of Muscat from Alsace).

Latroun

Thomas Merton Itai Michael

The church is elegantly austere inside. What can I say? Stone really works for me. We arrived in time for Mass. Chant and incense mingled, drifting upwards. I'd like to think that their celebration of the liturgy is this beautiful everyday. It was, however, the Feast of the Ascension. In many ways, this is a picture of my life: the mystery mix of faith, music, languages, intentional community, gardening; the family of choice, the intense yearning and the solace of silence.

Eric was here the other day. He's living in Haifa, but had been camping in the desert. He asked me if I had some Walt Whitman for him, but I came up empty-handed. Walt was gone before the first stone was layed at Latroun. A number of years ago, I translated some of my favorites into Hebrew. Fortunately, only the English remains.

Among the men and women the multitude,
I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,
Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child,
any nearer than I am, Some are baffled, but that one is not--that one knows me.

Ah lover and perfect equal,
I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections,
And I when I meet you mean to discover you by the like in you.

Unlike my lucky friend, Elke, who is forever winning contests, I just won what might be my first. (Okay, so, I did win a music composition competition once, but that was back practically in the Dark Ages). I was listening to Dr. Paul Camerata's SQPN podcast, SaintCast about "all things Saint-like." He has a regular segment called Saint Jeopardy in which he offers clues and some lucky listener comes up with the winning "question," usually in the form of 'Who is Saint X?' This time, I realized that I actually knew the answer.



The clue was that the "famous person" (ie., not a saint) was born on St. George's Feast Day. (You remember St. George and the dragon, right?). This "famous person" was quoted as having penned these lines:

O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on.

Now, you're probably saying, "way too easy! That's Shakespeare, (Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 2). I read it in high school!" Yep! I didn't win the big bucks, but I may have scored a SaintCast T-shirt...

When St. George's mom became a widow, she returned home to 4th century Palestine and her hometown of Lydda -- known today as Lod. She raised the future St. George near the site of the future Ben Gurion International Airport. Her son grew up to be a Roman soldier like his dead dad, and a dragon-slayer to boot. George was tortured and executed on this date in 303 while still in his 20s, not for killing a fire-breathing reptile, but for becoming a Christian.

Below is a clip from the 1948 film of the 1943 Broadway musical, One Touch of Venus written by Ogden Nash and Kurt Weill. The Broadway production featured Mary Martin (who I saw as Peter Pan on the first TV program I ever watched), with choreography by Agnes de Milles. The film version stars 26 year old Ava Gardner and 30 year old Robert Walker. Two years later, he suddenly died in rather mysterious circumstances "after being administered an injection of sodium amytal by two doctors who appeared at his house." (If someone in a white coat comes to your house with a needle, slam the door!) So, what is the connection between St. George, Shakespeare and this clip? Today is St. George's Day and William Shakespeare is 444 years old. In (Much Ado about Nothing, Act II, Scene I), he gives Don Pedro, Prince of Arragon the famous line that Ogden Nash borrowed:

Don Pedro: Speak low, if you speak love.
Balthazar: Well, I would you did like me.
Margaret:  So would not I, for your own sake; for I have many ill qualities.
Balthazar: Which is one?
Margaret:  I say my prayers aloud.
Balthazar: I love you the better; the hearers may cry Amen.
Margaret:  God match me with a good dancer!
Balthazar: Amen.

A couple of hours ago, I watched the reception at the White House for Pope Benedict XVI. There was more than a touch of Americana, with a Revolutionary fife and drum corps on parade. Kathleen Battle was in good voice, singing to the accompaniment of harp. The brilliant brass fanfare made me think how little we hear this music today and what a shame that is. Growing up, there were loads of band concerts in the parks. Does that still happen? There were short welcoming speeches offered, first by President Bush (I wasn't quite prepared to hear him try his tongue at Latin: Pax tecum!) and then, by the Holy Father. After a rousing Battle Hymn of the Republic and Happy Birthday, (the Pope turned 81 today), they adjourned to the Oval Office. At that point, I went back to reading Ovid's tale of a cyclops in love while I waited:

Unum est in media lumen mihi fronte,
sed instar ingentis clipei. quid?
non haec omnia magnus Sol videt e caelo?
Soli tamen unicus orbis.

My forehead with a single eye is fill'd,
Round, as a ball, and ample, as a shield.
The glorious lamp of Heav'n, the radiant sun,
Is Nature's eye; and she's content with one.

(Metamorphoses, Book XIII)

Why do I have the feeling that, despite years of literary Arabic, I still feel more at home with Latin? Later, I got a chance to see what I had been waiting for: the Pope-mobile in action. If they painted it kelly green, it would sort of look like a John Deere tractor.


The Mercedes model has been retired, but the new one
which rolled down Pennsylvannia Ave looks more or less the same.


A thing of beauty!

After work today, I jumped on the train to go home. Why I am going to work, I don't know. Yes, I do. Money. I am a prostitute. Okay, make that an editor/translator who's right shoulder hurts like the dickens. It seems only a little better and, while the pain is tolerable during the daytime, the last week of nights has been misery. I don't think it's the time of day as much as the agony of assuming any position approximating horizontal. I've only slept a few hours, but I've sluiced out my tear ducts, and have discovered that after all my years of Zen practice, I can sleep sitting up - which is quite handy just now.

Somewhere between the university and my stop, I fell asleep on the train and ended up at the airport. I had to catch the next train back from whence I came. Okay, that has something to do with the bi-directional nature of train tracks, I guess. I decided once I boarded, however, to remain standing and not chance waking up in Nahariya. I met a lovely guy from the Congo who stands more than two meters tall. (I'd give him 6'6" or 6'7"). When I remembered that it had to be either the République démocratique du Congo or the République du Congo and switched to French, he seemed much more at ease and not so impossibly tall.

I came home for an hour, took a cold shower (it was over a 100 degrees outside and I was heading back out for a check up), and then, caught a bus into town to see the orthopedist. He spent a lot of time explaining my X-ray. It's not clear if my rotator cuff is actually torn; the inflamation has to subside and then, an ultra-sound will be done. He seemed to think that the calcification of an old injury was the culprit (my Australia). He gave me meds to try for a week, and I will report back on Friday. I don't want to jinx myself, but before seeing the doctor today, I could basically pat my belly and now I can raise my arms into a credible 5th position. I think I may sleep tonight! After the doctor, it was time to head home. I walked down Bugroshov Street towards the sea, and then, headed south until I got to the Opera and caught a bus.

The people who take bus #16 from the center of Tel Aviv south are mostly headed home to our neighborhood which has its own character. My neighbors are Jews from Yemen (singer Ofra Haza was from here), Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Iran, Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union (think of all the Stans in Central Asia); Arabs, students, Chabadniks; refugees from Sudan and other places in Africa; foreign workers from China, Thailand, and the Philippines. In short, we're a bit of a mix. When I hopped on the bus, I knew it would be crowded (sardines have nothing on us at rush hour), but I didn't know that the whole bus adventure would all be set to music today. The driver put on his favorite Yishai Levy tape and cranked up the volume. Way up. At first, there was some foot tapping, but by the first chorus all of us were singing. I mean, everybody. Even babies stopped nursing in order to chime in. People were dancing in the aisle. Folks who had never heard of Yishai Levy suddenly discovered that they actually knew every word to his song, Romantic Dance ריקוד רומנטי rikud romanti. "I don't understand how I fell in love with you, girl/One of your arrows hit me in the target/ and suddenly, I'm addicted to you - how did that happen?/You flipped my life over, from quiet to storm" True, not finely crafted literature, but we belted it out, nevertheless! It was one of those bonding experiences when life imitates...well, a musical, I guess!



Can you smell the cigar? It's 11:30 pm now and the temperature has dropped back down into the 80s. Time for bed and perchance to dream ~ horizontally.

I keep promising myself that I am no longer going to check the news. Oh, maybe I should be responsible and stay informed ~ but I don't want to hear about wars and rumors of Iranian nuclear holocausts to come. I don't want to hear about our former rapist president, or, from across the pond, a peanut farmer promising to take off his ex-president hat (how does one temporarily stop being an ex-President of the United States of America?!) in order to fly to Syria to hang with the leader of a certain terrorist organization. Did I need to know about yesterday's attack in which four Gazan terrorists crossed into Israel, killed two civilian workers at the border crossing station which supplies most of Gaza's fuel and then, tried to flee back to Gaza? Now, I am half expecting to read a headline like "Israel Tightens Siege on Gaza: Humanitarian Crisis Feared." Good grief.

The Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Danny Gillerman summed it up like this: "In the past 24 hours alone, more than 127 trucks, carrying medical equipment, diapers and basic food products were transferred from Israel to the Palestinian population in Gaza, via these crossing points, while at the same time, more than 50 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel, in addition to the murder of two Israelis at the fuel terminal."

Nope! No more news for me, thank you. I'm going to be an ostrich from now on. Yes, sir! Except then I would miss fun stuff like this story (I love the now only slightly futuristic renderings at the beginning of the clip):



"It's a shock no one thought of it before, but a new development to provide green electricity could change the way the world powers itself. An engineering team from the Technion in Haifa put together a cutting edge project that places solar panels on helium balloons. The balloons are then placed on a cable, and can be stacked one of top of the other. Prototypes are rough now, but the design should be easy to streamline. Designers think the first models could be available in the next year - with each balloon providing the same amount of electricity as 25 square meters of solar panels. That's enough to power a washer and dryer for an entire year!"

If you'll hold my hand
We'll chase your dream across the sky
For we can fly!
We can fly!

This will be brief as I am typing with my left hand. I probably should have been a lefty all along, of course, and would have been if only there had been one more pair of green-handled scissors in my kindergarten class. Friday, about 3 a.m., I woke up to the worst pain I have ever known and found that I coundn't move my right arm. Full stop. By Sunday morning, I was going out of my skull. I went to the doctor. She thought that I may have dislocated my arm and sent me to the מוקד לרפואה דחופה moked which is like the ER staffed with specialists. I was promptly dispatched to orthopedics, the to x-ray and then, back for treatment. Twenty minutes after the x-ray upstairs, I was admiring how photogenic I am on the inside. The doctor explained that the Strait of Gilbraltar was a big tear through a tendon in my right shoulder and that what looked ever so much like Australia was a continent of calcium. The combined result was pain. His temporary solution involved a very large needle and a drug called Diprospan. I would make a really bad drug addict. I left in a sling. My boss at the university asked me to come to work even if I am typing with just one hand. So, I am off!

Happy Birthday to P.D.Q. Bach who was born on this day in 1742. He was the 21st of J.S. Bach's 20 children. Like his illustrious father, PDQ died at the age of 65. I had hoped to make an in-house recording of his "O.K. Chorale" from the “Toot” Suite for calliope, four hands, S. 212. Short one calliope, (always an unfair disadvantage!), I momentarily thought about attempting his Art of the Ground Round for three baritones and discontinuo, S. 1.19/lb ~ which, of course, doesn't require a calliope ~ but what self-respecting vegan would make such a choice? I certainly considered a rendition I've been working up of PDQ's wonderfully woody Lip my Reeds (Prelude and Fugue for Four Bassoons), but it reminded me a tad too much of Bush the Elder. That realization, though, pointed me to the obvious choice: a few moments of silence and a bit of lull. Happy April 1st!



Twenty-nine years ago, I was working at l'Arche in Trosly-Breuil, (about 90 km north of Paris), a community founded by Jean Vanier and Père Thomas Philippe. There in France, I discovered that, instead of April Fool's Day, they celebrated Poisson d'avril (April Fish!) by coloring paper fish and attempting to unobtrusively affixe them with Scotch tape to the backs of unsuspecting "victims," who walk about the village modeling these fine fish ~ and wondering why people were snickering. I had become friendly with an elderly Catholic bishop who had chosen to hang his mitre at l'Arche and retire in the village. Some people in the community may have felt I wasn't appropriately respectful. After all, I shook his hand rather than kissing his ring, I never used the formal vous form (which I hadn't learned, yet) and I sometimes even touched his arm when we were talking. He was a really lovely guy and because he was so newly arrived, I was no longer the new kid on the block. I made him a special fish, hoping it would make him feel more a part of the l'Arche community in Trosly. The bishop's fish said: "archevêque" (archbishop). I was really shooting for "l'Evêque de l'Arche" (the Bishop of l'Arche...oops!). When I slapped it on his back, my l'Arche friends were properly scandalized, but the bishop thought it hilarious.

Those were gentle, beautiful days. It was there that I first met my dear friend, Armel. Jean-Baptiste taught me the subtleties of le jeu de boules, I joined the local choir, walked for hours in the forests along the Oise River and explored the little town of Creil, the city of Compiègne (where Joan of Arc had been imprisonned), and Senlis (where the 1966 classic King of Hearts, starring Alan Bates as Private Charles Plumpick was filmed). I also played piano in a trio with a flutist and an oboist. Where does the time go? It all passes pretty darn quick(ly)! Like P.D.Q. Bach, though, I am more alive today than ever before, even if I'm still coughing up my lungs! Well, Geoff suggests pineapple juice for peak pulmonary performance. So, I'm off on a quest for some jus d'ananas.

Despite age, agues, and the tyranny of geographical divide, it is joy to find someone else pointed in the same direction at the same moment. Thank you, foucaultonacid for the Colm Tóibín piece in The New York Times Review of Books. Today was another day of coughing up my lungs. Prayer, poetry and the bottomless cup of tea were my chief consolations.

Hart Crane's Repose of Rivers read by Adam Fitzgerald

Repose of Rivers

Chava Alberstein is a marvel. She was born in Poland in 1947 and came to Israel at the age of 4. Alberstein has been performing since she was 17 and sings in Hebrew, Yiddish and Arabic. Her first album came out in 1967. This new recording will be her 60th album! I think her voice only gets better.



Her new album is coming out at the end of the week. In honor of this, Ynet is posting a song everyday on their Hebrew site. Perhaps it will also be posted on their English-language site eventually, but why wait? Open this and click on the white arrow in the red circle to hear the title track, טבע האדם Teva ha-Adam, (Human Nature). In the last 5 years, she's put out an album every year. On this album, Alberstein is joined by Avi Liebowitz, who did much of the composing and arranging. Nadav Leviatan contributed the lyrics.

( Here are the words and a quick translation )

 
Do you know about this world-wide event? It started in Sydney, Australia and is spreading fast. It is symbolic, but sometimes symbols are powerful. It could be an occasion for a romantic, candle light dinner...

Lights Out for Planet Earth
http://www.earthhour.org/

Earth Hour, 29 March 2008 (this Saturday night) from 8-9 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_nYal31Pu0

In Israel, we're doing the event on Thursday night instead of on Saturday night (because of Shabbat, I guess). http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3519741,00.html