Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Need to make room for Hebrew

I am so filled with experiences and stories there isn't enough room for the wonders of Hebrew. This language that envelopes me here like a constantly reverberating life force.  It is truly a fascinating language. The words themselves express the culture, like Eskimos with snow.  It's fascinating to discover the links between words and words and words and childhood memorizations and words and the world around me. It's a backwards and forwards flow from the torah to the toe.  Real talking is slow coming with the fillings of 40 years within me.  I feel full.  It's time to make room for Hebrew, and it's time to write the stories. I hope you'll enjoy them.

 Today while Hollow was peeing in the street in the drizzling rain in my tiny quiet old and integrated neighborhood of hip Tel Avivians, old Yemenite families, wine bars and French families, an Ultra Orthodox old man with black garb and a well earned white beard rolled past me on a 4 wheeled scooter encased in a plastic bubble. I almost didn't look twice. Then I realized.

Then I passed a street and noticed a man with a talit (prayer shawl) and the religious markings of tassels hanging from his clothes and I noticed to myself that it was unusual that he was standing in the small neighborhood street and not inside the tiny Bet Knesset... then I turned another corner and a soldier just entering the neighborhood gently asked me if I knew where there was a synagogue. Everywhere was my instantaneous answer, and then of course I knew why the about to pray man was noticeably in the street, and I guided to soldier to his minyon.  And then I forgave Hollow for getting me out of bed 20 minutes before my alarm. Time and space flow here seemingly with purpose.

Of course my sense of time is not yet aligned here as old habits give way only with a fight. So I was speeding to class on the tayellet by the sea when I had another pondering.... more than usual here I find myself awkwardly dodging oncoming bikes without the obvious manner of avoiding collision.
Normally when to bicyclists come face to face in a moment of face on chicken it resolves itself by the inclination to go as cars go and each leans to the right and safely passes.  But if you live in a country with people from all over the world, how does the inclination to lean as cars lean help if you are face to face with someone from... England let's say....

It's a world gone afooch here....and every moment can be a discovery...

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