When Worlds Collide

By Dnoll
Pit Viper in the Jungles of Borneo
Sitting here… reading the news on the Internet… I'm having a hard time remembering my travels in Indonesia and Malaysia last week, and the week before that, and the week before. I wanted to share so much about the people, the flora, the fauna… but alas… it may not be possible to do so without the sour taint of the kiss that I almost gave the tarmac upon my return to the Holy Land… last week…

While reading within the allotted WIFI zones at each airport that I leapfrogged through on my way home, Kuching, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Vienna… I grasped that the world was becoming quite insane, like I was entering more finite levels of chaos/civilization at each step along the way… I was happily coming home and realizing that in doing so… I was losing something important to the 'me' that I had discovered… along the way… interspersed with the people, the flora, the fauna…

I sit here now… sad to the core for the boys that have passed to the next world… while fighting these demons of death and destruction that live a couple hours, give or take, down the street from me. My youngest son, you see, is about to embark upon his one-time personalized soul-forging experience in the IDF (I love him so, so much) and my eldest has amassed a time there longer than the required amount, set by the standards of the civilized, democratic country that I have chosen to rear him in; but, he assures me that he has grown beyond my expectations and that it will ALL be ok… really good, in fact... and I totally, totally believe him.

I can still remember standing in the little, smelly back room of an idol shop in Borneo, listening to a smartly dressed youngster telling me about his experience as a child growing up in the jungle... with vipers, scorpions, monkeys, and more… This youngster grew up in a longhouse and his father used a machete to travel from one street to the next. This young man's grandfather was probably a head-hunter, violently quarreling over territory and turf… yet the youngster had transcended this violence, becoming a civilized salesman that spoke English to tourists… in the smelly backroom of an idol shop…

He told me a story of fatherhood there, in that backroom… He told me about his young obsession with his father's machete and his father's solution to the obvious danger of a child playing with weapons of destruction… He told me of the village shaman and the solution to his father's problem. The shaman would make a mask that the father would wear to teach the child. The smartly dressed youngster told me how the father would wear the mask, becoming something else, and scare him away from the machete… and how they would place the mask, this embodiment of a personalized fear, in strategic locations as the child grew into a smartly dressed young salesman, scaring him into a life of civilization using chaos… using chaos…

I saw a video of a father in Gaza teaching his young daughter how to leap out from behind a corner and shoot a machine gun, evidently at someone… She was so excited, like it was an intimate moment between them, sharing something wonderful together… I have to wonder if a very similar thing occurred to the young salesman's grandfather… when he was a child… maybe he was given a machete and told to wield it against a neighbor for interloping upon the grandfather's mango grove. Maybe…

In the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, evidently you can still buy Mein Kampf, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the Dearborn Independent by Henry Ford. I didn't see them, but I wasn’t looking either… The country is run by Islamists, but the people that I met were really nice, helpful, and really very sweet, however extremely brainwashed and ignorant about Jews, the Middle East, and Israel… The subject came up briefly on occasion, even though we found it necessary to withhold our Israeli identities (and our Jewish ones, for that matter), because of the lopsided government controlled news reports about the current crisis…

I sit here now, stories such as these spinning upon my consciousness, wondering who I am… I sit here writing words that may reach out to civilization, or not… I sit here and pray for the peace that has been promised to us all. I pray for a little girl holding a machine gun to find real love. I pray for a salesman born in the jungle that works in an idol shop to be able to let go of the demon in his mind, grown by a shaman's mask that his father still keeps. I pray that the families of the boys that have now passed to the other side can somehow find peace from their tremendous, inconceivable loss. And… I pray that my boys will find their way home, someday, to their loving parents' arms, having heroically saved the entire world from terror and chaos.

Shavua tov.

Popular posts from this blog

Raining Frogs, Mini Earth, and the Downhill Sesh

By Dnoll
Image
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...
Read more

From Pickles to Bubble Gum

By
Image
  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...
Read more

Gan Eden

By
Image
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.  
Read more

Am Israel Khai / עם ישראל חי

By
Image
  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...
Read more

Praying towards the West

By
Image
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...
Read more

Choosing Your Lot

By
Image
  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...
Read more

The Voice from In-between

By Dnoll
Image
The Collector Crazy… I am really feeling the time warp these days… I can’t believe it took me 6 years to get back to me, to my roots, to the ‘reason’ I now find myself in the Middle East. Yes, it is all connected. You see, when I was young, I realized that I was meant to explore the inner-space that rides the waves caused by physical space. It’s a kind of spiritual plain of existence that most just shrug-off as metaphysics or some such nonsense.  Haw… even I do it sometimes; you know, when reality just cakes up around the edges of your vision to the point that you just give in to the momentum of it all…? Crazy… Wow… I am in an art exhibition. I have never pushed the whole art front too much, always finding other ways to make a living; hence my endeavors with woodworking, writing, marcom & web design, and other assorted handyman-type sidetracks... To be honest with myself, I always wanted to move to New York, live in a loft, and paint while high on whatever drug sui...
Read more

Seed

By
Image
There’s a knowing left under the world that reminds me of me. I think it sometimes, this knowing, but it leaves soon thereafter, spitting nonsense into my memory of it being. The life it left always tilts my reservoir of love but never touches my lips up, never begs to begin. I sing, I dance, slamming it out unseen, but always tasting the wishing in which it began ~ image:  Etrog in Space, 10-2016  
Read more

Paper Plane

By
Image
The glee in her eyes told the story from the beginning to its end. Well, except the part where we all jumped into the air screaming… My young student stood at the back corner of the room, eyebrows pursed in concentration. She inched her way forward, begging my attention, with a paper plane she had folded; also begging… So, I agreed. She could throw it in one direction only, towards the garbage can in the opposite corner. She grinned before our lesson, and I knew she would try it. I breathed in as it flew, around one student, then another. It arced to and fro, ascending then dropping down, but (no way) just enough. Then it swooped up, stalled, and came down … exactly into the corner alcove… It landed perfectly into the trashcan that I had asked for, a hole in one. We all screamed as we jumped from our seats, TWO POINTS! And then our lesson began.
Read more

Conical Time

By
Image
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...
Read more