On the Opposite Side of the World...

By Dnoll

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Praying towards the West

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Living on the edge between land and sea, in the State of California in the USA, was all I had ever known when I met my Basherit, the love of my life. We met for the first time in the doorway to our future home, the sun directly behind me as the portal opened to reveal the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. My head began to bobble, I noticed, unconsciously as if I were from far away, in the east, in India. The shadow I had cast allowed her to see me without squinting in the low-lying sun, as it made its way across our bright blue sky. She bobbled her head in return, saying later that the peculiar action was to maintain the effect of a halo around my head. But, we both understand only now that it was actually to preserve the vision of another world. Unknown to either of us at the time, we stood at the entrance to a portal, one which offered us a vision into the world to come. Living in the West, both of the continental United States and in the greater world, we had been raised stric...
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Am Israel Khai / עם ישראל חי

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  My Dad - He was the tallest man I knew of, not only physically, but mentally and spiritually. It wasn’t always very easy to talk with him, but when we did, and when I needed him, he was there for me completely, without any hesitation. He loved the garden, loved his wife, loved his children, and he loved his work. He was an urban planner that conceptualized a perfect society and implemented his and other’s ideas to build environments to sustain a perfect population of residents. And it worked, right up until the time when his job ended, 10 years before his forced retirement … due to corporate takeover. The American dream, of building from scratch a perfect world, a society that worked together for the needs of all its members, became sullied. Fear of not having enough and greed began to shake my father’s foundation of hard work and faith. My father grew up in a working class family, his birth father having left him and his mother when my father was only five years old. His stepf...
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Choosing Your Lot

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  Purim, Oct. 7, and Our Next Generation  -   I grew up in a world where I could be anything I wanted, back in Southern California, in the 70s and 80s. I had the freedom to explore what life might offer, and my parents encouraged me to play and to learn. I needed a foundation and chores, mind you, but a musical instrument was essential to grow up in the human world. I was encouraged to dress for success, too. My parents tried anything they could to give me the tools they thought I would need in life. I liked art, they noticed, so my parents introduced me to a commercial artist to learn the ropes. After a year of piano lessons with Mr. Stytska playing “On Top of Spaghetti,” I quit. From a lack of social graces, I was forced to dance with a broom at cotillion (etiquette classes for middle-school aged children), so I quit. I had my own plans, you see, which needed forming ASAP if I was to prove my worthiness to my own ego first, then others around me, and only then to...
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Conical Time

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The dirt at my feet swirled as I drove my favorite matchbox-car through it. My lap was open with my legs encompassing the hole I’d dug. I was living, and couldn’t stop. I had to do a number two, but shifted my heel to plug the eruption from ever occurring… ever. My lap and the hole I’d dug begged my attention with every moment occurring, and I drove and dug and drove again as my life unfolded. I was living, and the world around me sped forward, but never even registered into the realm I inhabited. I had stopped, and I was living. My friends went to accost pedophiles in the park, and I went along. We were in high school, young and tender beings. We wanted to live, we wanted something to happen. My Italian friend’s little brother did the deed, plunging into deep cover, sitting wantonly on a bench. We were all developed, being California surfers, so it was easy to see how perverts could bridge between ‘adult’ and a mere child. I watched as the mark put his arm around the kid, whispering s...
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From Pickles to Bubble Gum

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  I fell for it again today, the inevitable trap set for unwary teachers at the high school where I’m ever so slowly becoming an educator, and along the way developing some great relationships with the next generation of young Israeli leaders. This year had been a tough one, having met with my students for only a short period of time before we left for the holidays, and subsequently unable to return. By the end of Sukkot, we had all wrapped up a wonderful holiday season with family and friends, eaten and drunken far too much, and were ready for one more day of rest before the start of the real teaching season began, Sunday morning, October 8. Then, school was cancelled. It was far too dangerous, you see, to send kids out into our world. It was far too horrible to even comprehend what had happened. Each of us went into reaction mode, protecting our families, our neighborhoods, ourselves and each other, listening for the latest news, preparing for the worst, both mentally and physica...
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Raining Frogs, Mini Earth, and the Downhill Sesh

By Dnoll
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And the storm raged on… here in the Holy Land recently, lasting for about 3 days and flattening anything that was mildly at rust or untended, trees, buildings, signs, and cliff faces collapsed or just plain disappeared. Flash flood warnings in the Negev desert were in high effect and we all buttoned up our houses with whatever we had on tap. The fires that had just swept through the north were still smoldering and the ash of the ruin of many people’s entire lives hadn’t even begun to settle; all of this, and yet... we were happy —  the rain was finally coming. The crispy ground covering the Holy Land has been parched for years from a severe draught. The Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), where much of our water comes from, has been going down, down, down, and is in its 7th year of decent; it is now 85 cm. above the ‘black line,’ the line that we dread. The black line is below the lowest ‘red line,’ which we passed a while ago. Sinking below the black line means that we will not only n...
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Gan Eden

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We don’t exist in one time, we exist in all the times. Branching occurs naturally and we ride them all, encompassing each moment. We must only become aware of the path to arrive at perfection.  
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Unknown within Known in Uh... ~

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The Last Column ~  In every moment there is a question. Within every question there is a moment when each of us asks about the relevancy of each moment, and the awareness of existence. My computer screen is dirty because I haven’t learned how to clean it, and … likewise, my most current painting is bleeding beneath gesso from another artist’s work. It sits there on my easel now as I write about my birth parsha, Noakh. My school work sits lazily waiting for attention, and my drawing table languishes in mostly ill-attempt. The world around me is beautiful, but dormant, however wanting… And, all this is before the eruption about to occur. It’s an unknown, this eruption from the earth. We all know what follows: flamboyantly spouting doom and rebirth as we tremble and drown within the womb of our new lies, told and then reclaimed with the ignorance of stealth, revelry in the reality of rebirth… and into moments anew – ish.
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BoZa - Book of Zombie Apocalypse

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Chapter One: Black and White  —  Startling me every time, the alarm goes off and I think I must be dreaming. The thought of sleep rolls around in my head for a few breaths, then reality bites and I open my eyes with irritation searing at the morning darkness that permeates my tiny room. Clang-a-lang, clang-a-lang, clang-a-lang, the alarm keeps blaring, waking me from repetitious dreams that grant me peace and control to my worldview-asleep. Grumbling and moaning, I get up just like every other day, peeling back the sheet as if coiling back the seal to expose yet another can of fish to daylight. Breakfast is served. It is monotonous, monotone, just like the slippers I slide my bunion toes and greying-feet into.  Shuffling down the narrow hall, I can see the light staring through the door as the hollow orb of sun begins its slogging path across a vapid sky for the day. The light is also grey, even as I push back a spring-loaded screen-door and lower myself off the porch-ste...
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Prophesapathy

By Dnoll
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The other day, as I was praying, I looked out the sliding glass and saw one of the Arab workers, building a wall for a neighbor, across the street. We caught each other’s eye and looked briefly at one another, but right to the core. I realized, in that moment, that a whole world of ‘hidden to the naked eye’ information was flowing between us. My Tallit (prayer shawl) was up over my head with only my Tefillin (phylacteries) showing from under it. I knew that this man, this Muslim who was working across the street, saw deep into the nature of what I was attempting to do, that I was attempting to commune with the Creator of the Universe. He, after all, believes that there is ‘one’ Creator of everything too. In the second that we locked eyes, a praying Jew in the Holy Land and an Arab construction worker somewhere in the Middle East, it reminded me of a story I heard once about how in the 1700’s, the Vilna Goan, Rabbi Eliyahu Kramer of Vilna, was accused of assisting a Christian in abandon...
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