- Written on a bathroom wall
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2)
nir1- June 16th, 2011
You said, ‘I love you.’ Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? ‘I love you’ is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them. I did worship them but now I am alone on a rock hewn out of my own body.
- love, strings attached, skeletons
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- nir1
- January 21st, 2011
I love the piano, honest. I've been playing for decades and hope I never stop. Still, sitting in front of the beast, there is a huge physical separation - metal and wood - between me and the strings. When I undertook the adventure of studying harpsichord צ'מבלו at Reed, I was struck by the luminosity of sound. The strings are under less tension than on a piano so there is no need for the piano's hefty metal skeleton. Trying out the harpsichords at the San Francisco Conservatory, my friend who was then studying classical guitar there and is, perhaps, not the biggest fan of the harpsichord, suggested that it sounded like two skeletons copulating on a tin roof - kind of like a banjo. Kill joy! I made a list of the things I wanted to do while I was in the States this time. Appearing not once, not twice but thrice: learn to play the banjo. After the piano, playing banjo feels so intimate, so immediate.
Here are two songs. The first is a Breton lullaby, Toutouig
www.flickr.com/photos/98487722@N00/5371017361/
The second is Cold, Frosty Morning
www.flickr.com/photos/98487722@N00/5371465420/
I learned it as an old-timey tune from Mike Iverson. Originally a fiddle tune, it remembers the battle of Culloden Moor. On the morning of April 16, 1746 an English Army of 8,000 massacred a Scottish army of 7,000 ending the Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland.
- the brevity of it all
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- nir1
- October 28th, 2010
Yesterday, a child came out to wander
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
and tearful at the falling of a star
These last few weeks have been very sad and beautiful. My grandmother, my father's mom, died at a ripe old age (within spitting distance of the century mark), during the week in which we read the Torah portion, לך לך Lech Lecha, (Genesis 12:1–17:27) which begins: "God said to Abram, 'Go away from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you."Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There'll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is throughBecause my parents are also both gone (their memory is a blessing), I am saying kaddish for grandma, even though she was Roman Catholic and would probably be horrified by the idea. I need to do it. The version of the kaddish that mourners recite is called the Orphan's Kaddish (kaddish yatom קדיש יתום). While she lived a long, rich life and her death was no surprise, I am more than a little shocked at how much I'm feeling the loss. Grandma was the one who taught me about faith, made it possible for me to study piano and opened the world of books to me. Another piece of mourning her is that I'm not shaving. What is sprouting is decidedly not the same red beard that I wore during basic training in the IDF! It's funny how gray and white reinforce the brevity of life. Oddly enough, while I now look very much my age, the face I see in the mirror finally looks like the face I've known in my dreams since I was a wee lad.We can't return.We can only look behind
from where we came
Today, I read this week's portion, חיי שרה Chayei Sarah (Genesis 23:1-25:18), with tears in my eyes. "Sarah lived to be 127 years old. She died at Kiryat Arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went to mourn for Sarah and to weep over her." Because life and Torah are not just about endings, I will add that for the past two weeks, I have been taking care of Israeli friends' children while the couple is in Europe. With one more week to go, the kids and the cat are none too worse for the wear.
- spiritus mundi
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- nir1
- August 29th, 2010
Of weary days, made deeper exquisite,
By a fore-knowledge of unslumbrous night!
Maybe one has to be a Keats to get away with a word like unslumbrous. After the most relaxing, unplugged, caffeine-free Shabbat, I brewed myself a cup of joe last night, knowing full well that I might not sleep. I did, but only until about 4 a.m. when I awoke from yet another dream about living in Jerusalem. For the last few months, I've been nightly dreaming myself in Jerusalem ~ and each morning, I am again baffled when I wake up in Portland.
Years ago, when I did live in that City, I worked at the Jerusalem Post. Much-needed respite from more typical Middle East news could be had in the occasional quirky article about the Jerusalem Syndrome, an affliction which strikes otherwise upstanding visitors from abroad who, upon arriving in the Holy Land, throw off their clothes and walk down the freeway, proclaiming themselves to be the Second Coming. No, I kid you not. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_Syndrome
One article that seems to have struck a deep chord in me was about an older gentleman of a different ilk who saved for years to come on a tour of Israel. When his group reached Jerusalem, he jumped ship, so to speak, with nothing more than a small valise and a dream of spending his remaining years learning Torah. To really know me, you need to know thist story.
- זמנך עבר What's Next?
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- nir1
- August 18th, 2010
It's been a good five months since I updated this blog. Even I started to wonder if it would be a hiatus or an abandonment. I played piano for יום הזיכרון Yom Hazikaron (Israeli Memorial Day) and then, about 10 days later at the tail-end of April, found myself in the ER with דלק ראיות pneumonia and asthma, which kept me in bed for 7 or 8 weeks. I think that, after the holidays, I will probably leave lj and go in a different direction.
Now, it's already the 8th of Elul ~ so, Rosh Hashana is three weeks away (sundown on Wednesday, 8 September).
ח׳ באלול תש״ע
- Let me fly, oh! let me fly to Mt. Zion, Lord, Lord
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- nir1
- March 16th, 2010
In the early spring of 1979, I visited Jerusalem with one of my roommates on the kibbutz, a Swedish guy named Oke. We visited the Muslim, Christian, Armenian and Jewish quarters of the Old City. In the Jewish Quarter, there was a huge arch that had been erected just two years before, marking the place where the Hurva Synagogue had stood until it was destroyed by the Arab Legion in May 1948 during Israel's War of Independence. The recreated arch was one of four that used to support the great dome. While there have been synagogues on the site since the time of Yehuda ha-Nasi in the 2nd century CE, all I've ever know was the solitary arch until shortly before I left (almost 30 years after my first visit), when reconstruction of the building was well underway .
Happy Nissan!
The 19th century structure was designed under the supervision of the Ottoman architect, Assad Effendi in the neo-Byzantine style. From the laying of the cornerstone (1858) to its dedication (1864), the building of the synagogue, one of the tallest buildings in Jerusalem, took eight years.
Yesterday, the rebuilt Hurvah Synagogue, in the heart of the Jewish Quarter, was dedicated. This is the building-in-progress scene I last saw:
In other news, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is calling on Israel to "prove" its committment to peace following the Israeli announcement of its plan to build more homes in Jerusalem. The US Administration does not seem to be asking anything at all of the Palestinians.
To demonstrate their committment to peace, today, the Palestinians declared a Day of Rage, which involved attacking rioting in Jerusalm, attacking the police, and throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Jews, injuring more than 100 people. Buses were also attacked in Jaffa. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority's armed wing, al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade are seeking the PA's backing for a third intifada (uprising), a return to armed struggle against Israel and the release of terrorists arrested by Palestinian security forces. The speaker of the house of the Hamas parliament, Dr Ahmed Bahar, called on the Palestinians to plan suicide bombings and terror attacks on Israel. Palestinian violence doesn't seem to be as insulting to Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and the US Administration who continue to remain silent.
Trying to make sense of the US media's coverage of the Middle East...
- Julie
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- nir1
- March 5th, 2010
Last night, I went to hear singer-songwriter, Julie Geller in concert. I didn't know quite what to expect. She was billed as the singing granddaughter of a Rabbi Yona Geller, z"l, who was my rabbi about 25 years ago. For five bucks, I got a ticket, coffee and all-I-could-eat kosher brownies. Julie Geller is awesome! It turns out that she went to Harvard and then, to the New England Conservatory of Music. She hails from Colorado but she's also lived on the east coast and in Israel. She sang in both Hebrew and English. One song, Min Hametzar, drew lyrics from Psalm 118: "From a narrow space I called to God who answered me from an expansive space. God is with me, I have no fear."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Bf-10hVLpM
שבת שלום May your Shabbat be one of rest and expansiveness!
- Gloom & Golem
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- nir1
- February 26th, 2010
Scrambling to bake off my אוזני המן hamantaschen before sundown, I still wanted to check in here. My friend in NY who's snowed in for Shabbat, Sarit sent me a new recipe to try. I was feeling so up in the air about life, housing, work, prospects for the future. On Monday, I decided to go to a class at the kollel on the Maharal of Prague's ספר גבורות השם No golem, but plenty of good conversation. On Tuesday, my friend and nextdoor neighbor in Tel Aviv, Niko, met me at Powell's. I've really missed his friendship. I just got in from a long walk in the rain with the dogs. I'd love to climb into bed with a good book, but what I need to do is seek out a little community. So, I'm off to services.
שבת שלום וחג פורים שמח
Shabbat Shalom and Happy Purim!
- restoration
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- nir1
- February 9th, 2010
This week, I stepped up to help with the first steps of a neighborhood mosaic restoration. It turned out to be rather fun. The mosaic in question is about fish. Big fish! The wall the mosaic is on needs to be replaced but, fortunately, the homeowners want to preserve the the piece.
Whether the weather
turns worse changes whether we
weather the whether ~Gabriel
First, I gently cleaned the surface of the 16+ foot long piece, then, measured out and marked cut lines, and finally, covered it with an adhesive film to protect it during removal (which is scheduled to happen tomorrow) and covered the whole project in a tarp.
My housemate added the gratuitous, pink ribbion...
While we were working, I wondered fondly if my dear Hiawatha would smile...
www.opb.org/programs/artbeat/segments/view/456 (5:23)
- cráneo caliente
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- nir1
- January 4th, 2010
bikelovejones gave me a bike hat for Chanukah. Inevitably, hats don't fit me. This one not only fits my head comfortably, it fits easily under my helmet and it's even got cozy ear flaps. תודה רבה, בתיה
www.golemrocks.com/
