Eilat

May 24, 2012

Eilat, Israel

Here's what I've been doing the past few days:

Nadav and I decided to take a trip to the very south of Israel, a town called Eilat.  It is a beach town on the Red Sea, just across the water from Jordan.  The temperature is super hot, 108 degrees Fahrenheit at midday, but it doesn't feel as hot as India because the humidity is very low (desert climate).  Speaking of desert, our AC bus ride took us all the way through the desert on the way here - it was a bit eerie at times, not seeing anything except sand and date palms (for agriculture).  Yesterday night we went to the beach and had a beer while looking out at the water from one of the many restaurants.  It is very touristy, but also fun.  There was a busy market, music playing, rides to go on, and the colorful lights of the town reflecting off the water.  We have been couch surfing with a wonderful family - this is our second night here.  We cooked dinner for our hosts yesterday night.  The mother, Lara, is interested in Shamanism and dreams of taking her whole family (husband and three kids) to India someday for several months.  

Today Nadav and I took a bus to another beach, where we went snorkeling (pronounced "shnorkeling" in Hebrew).  It was great.  I saw bright blue, turquoise, purple, and yellow fish (parrot fish?), what looked like angel fish, urchins, a couple jellyfish, and other brightly colored small fish that I don't know the names of.  Wish I'd had a waterproof fish id card with me.  I loved watching the many kite surfers, with their colorful, parachute-like kites pulling them across the water on their boards, sometimes flying high above the waves for several seconds at a time.  It looks like a lot of fun, a sport I would like to learn someday.

Tomorrow morning we are going back to Tel Aviv, and may attend a drum circle on the beach there just before sunset.  Many Israelis who have been to India like to make music there on Friday nights to bring in the Shabbat (Sabbath). 

Shalom!

Melissa

Fragments

2012 ,May 21

Tel Aviv

Morning

I love the names of things which curl out from our tongues, pinching between our lips and teeth to pierce the echoless void between those we love and those we don't understand.

I love the epitome of recycling one's effort over the course of a storm.  We reuse the drops of rain, sloshed down in buckets over tin roofs and lightning rods jitterbugging in the dark, to bathe a new flower alive into sunshine.

I love the rebound call of infinite spring, awake at last from nighttime and a thousand miles away from home.

I love the crystalline look of a pale face, eyes staring out from behind black-rimmed glasses, topped with a crop of chestnut hair.

 "Half awake and half asleep," he said, no more knocking on the door of pleasure and expecting nothing in return.  A flock of doves rushed in on a breath of air, too cold for San Francisco in springtime.

Words are never forgotten once they are spoken; they hide in crevices of comfort before having a strange effect on the mind of the observer, as though they carry meaning beyond the brave candle flames which light the pathways of our own thought patterns.  Words edge up your skin like the blade of a knife, enticing soul memories out of their jars like flowers by your bedside, so you can smell your own fragrance as you drift off to sleep and awaken refreshed.

Light is a flight which never mastered the use of gravity. 

This rhythm is not mine, but a wreath on a door where people know they can enter the mystery by knocking three times and waiting to hear what is inside to receive them. 

Stream of Consciousness

20 May 2012
Evening
Tel Aviv

I want to teach you with the words of my soul so we can remember how to be alive, and return to our place in the abode of things. Tell me how you dream. Do you weave fabrics across a twisted loom, or crochet directly with your fingers from God's cat's cradle? I want to speak again with leather tongues and bootstraps made from rawhide. I don't want to lose myself again in you, but stay entwined in my own breathing, blood coursing through my veins and the crevasse of my heart, to light my candle-burning eyes awake with the fear that this may be the last moment I live or the first moment I die.

Can we speak ourselves alive together? Can we stop radiating soul sparks in such lonely places and come together again to feel divine?  Where did I go when I was not with you…back into my cave, or deep inside a mole-darkened tunnel?  These adventures never let God know how small or amazed I feel to continue walking, trembling, upon this path.

I don't know music other than the blind kiss of this irresistible storm which blows the blankets of my emotions off like leaves before a thunderbolt.

Will the day come when I stop trying to measure my soul against the vagaries of others? How is it that one minute I am black and dull, the next afraid or listless, then seized by a fury, emptied out, and spewing poetry from my ears? The questions will never end, not until the stars empty themselves of light, or the fingers of our galaxy forget to stroke the sun one last time. Each word is a personal memory, a masterpiece waiting to be created no matter how awake or asleep we are. Every fragment of lost soul will come home, or we will find it in the end, just you watch.

Even I don't know what destiny is, but I sense it the way a cat smells the tracks of a mouse under the garden bushes at midnight. There is a turning point, a place of balance between fear and excitement, drowning and elation, life and no-life. It is the simple (or not-so-simple) choice between who we are and who we choose to be; between who we think we are, who our parents, relatives, friends, or society thinks we are, and who we feel we are—in our bones, stomach, and intestines, in the soles of our feet waltzing out the door at 2 am to remind us that we know how to improvise.

This is the fire that calls us home. This is the water that cleanses us, the earth we grow upon, the air we breathe and fly into. We have not forgotten how to chase our own shadows down; we have just forgotten how to look at ourselves in the light. Maybe our little waltz would birth lightning and storms, anger brewed in strong black tea, or milk squeezed from Satan's tit. The truth is that I don't know where this writing is going, just as little as you do. We're both strangers here on this blank page, staring out at each other after another long day lived inside the solitude of our own minds.

These memories keep turning themselves into sparks and then I forget what is happening, at least in medical terms. My soul opens up to receive pieces of low-hanging light, I am visited by angels, and deep-glowing eyes stand out amidst a haze of cloud. I wonder if certain readers have come to know me in a different way by hearing these lines taken from inside my cocoon. How do I know what my insides look like until they are spilled out on a mural to paint, murmur, and stare befuddled at the colors they make? These poems will never end, nor will this experience. I just keep plugging and unplugging the metaphors, trying to get the amplitude right.