THE BRAVE NEW LAND

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-step onto a crumb

Why am I so fixated on Gan Eden? I mean, what is the significance of the ‘origin story,’ anyways? We’re born, we live, and we move on… or does it end there? Come to think of it, does it even begin before this so-called “origin story” began? Like a Petri dish, it could keep on giving, growing old like compost and again sprouting anew like tiny seeds cracking, exploding into growth from imminent decomposition and death-overcoming, mamesh Noakh-replacing, just another new growth bloom descending. From one dimension to the next, riding the wake of living, life is only a conversation occurring at the fringe of reality, no matter the realm. Tohu’uVohu, as they say, or the fringe of no-thing we can identify becoming all things relevant to being, a ‘satiation’ of living. Gan Eden could really just be the incubator before sprouting, a hiatus ‘then’ birthing, just an awakening into transition. We could all have lived before and once done, will again live, ad infinitum every time.  When I bought

The Promised Land is a strange and difficult term. When moving half-way around the planet to Israel, I told myself that I was deserving of it, a life-change and midlife crisis all rolled up into one. Having converted to Judaism while living in Los Angeles, I was still trying to find my own Jewish roots after 15 years of raising my little Jewish family in Colorado. I had fled from the city when my first son was born, and became a member of Jewish Renewal in Boulder, but never really melded into the fold, I always felt. At least that is what I told myself to explain the difficulties I seemed to be having feeling normal, but really just feeling Jewish. At the time I felt that I needed to understand, more in depth, the roots of the tradition, or religion, or culture, or place of origin, or language, or … any and all of the missing pieces of who I destined myself to be; so, I searched.  I searched for many years to find a path in life that fit my own vision; a vision of the answers c

The Distance Among Us —  Creating distance is as easy as stepping into your own private dream-liner, fully stocked with aspirations on hold for a time not demanded by regular life. The same is true of actually dreaming, in the sense that the life we live over in that world is always on hold for later, sometime in the future of ‘my’ perception of ‘me.’ Like a vacation that has been had, almost, not stacking up, but nevertheless over, a reflection on the past that happened before the last little bit determines the energies to be spent on the next little bit, and into the future. Breathe … it’ll be okay. The masks we all wear protect us from many things, and they isolate us from others. Covering the face can cover the window to our inner-being, while protecting us from the bio-terrors around and unseen. This also prepares us for a launch into the next generation of us. Just like sleeping and dreaming, we store up our energies and breathe in to our souls, just enough, to light up a f

My vacation was cut short by work. I was informed that I would need to cease and desist my online lessons, which did happen for a week, but I was then informed that I would need to continue again. Scrambling to aspire, I rose to it all, completing the additional week of lessons prepared and delivered to hungry minds via my laptop in my studio. With Surf Chicken on the wall behind, I spoke about reading, vocabulary, various grammar points, and did just fine. I had much help from a great staff of great people (teachers are like that, you know), and I smiled a lot while delivering my lectures to more than 150 young minds on the other end of a computer line. Even trapped inside, I have it really good, which I’m never really sure how to gauge, since I’m mostly always beating to a different drum, it seems. Is it okay to say I’m doing okay? Is it offensive to speak about it while others suffer decay? Sometimes I just don’t know what to say, so I don’t. That is those silences you hear he

Paperboy, from Book of Zombie Apocalypse —  Today I hit my head on the freezer trying to pull out a bag of rotten cucumbers from the fridge below. My hands were full trying to get as much as I could in the least amount of trips from the kitchen counter and back. I was already frustrated, having installed two lighting fixtures after removing them both and swapping them with each other earlier in the day. They didn’t work to bring light where they were installed, so with my time I decided to correct it all. The fixtures were designed horribly, both of them, requiring that whoever wished to install them needed to stand on a ladder, balancing with a tiny screwdriver in one hand, the wire connectors in the other, and the fixture itself pinned between head and shoulder to keep it from pulling out wires and falling to the floor. One of them fell. Two bulbs were shattered below, across the kitchen’s hoard. But, I had to get to a Zoom meeting, so dropped everything to take the call. Th

Slick and traveling, I hopped onto a dream. Yes, it was mine too, admittedly. There’s a feeling inside of being trapped, being strangled … or … more specifically, being squeezed out in a specific unknown and desirably-felt direction. And I can’t resist but to slide into its gape of a jaw … slipping in and landing into a new development that becomes reality on the ground. I had a dream and it was shared by others, specifically my clinged-on, dreams I strangled in my sleep. But, arrived at … a wonderful freedom now exists, in my love, in my countenance, my expression. Yes; yes she is. Not the continent, but the woman. It’s a kind of love poem to the world, in the world, for the world … just … so damn knowing. Almonds grown as grains of sand, spreading underfoot and over horizons. I’ve been there, but not ‘there,’ where she’s going. Africa, Kenya to be specific. A village I haven’t been in, a land remote and being reeled in. Check out this link, to liberty and beyond; she’s going t

Glass House © Noll, June, 2015 —  Sliding down into the darkness of knowing, I’ve hit the bottom of midterm madness, grading papers and tests, and processing it all into the ether above. I’m made to post journal entries for a ministry upon high, education of bureaucracy-not-nigh. I’ll post it now, the last post made, just so someone says something, anything, in this strange new world I find myself swimming upon, flailing high in my own mind, and quite possibly a belly-flop towards hell: I’m almost done with midterm grades, at the end of grading 70+ material exams for high school and the last 40 or so video and written book reviews of 150 to watch, read, and grade. I have to post it all correctly to Smart-School along with all the other Google Docs and whatnot that need attention from ‘this’ novice English teacher. It’s a lot. I have good days and bad, today of which was more in the red than yesterday’s highs. Yesterday was quite lovely, as a matter of fact. So, I think Wednes