THE BRAVE NEW LAND

My mind is quite sharp, but only at night. I roll over speed bumps with my face in the window. Upside and down-sized, backwards and forerunner, I fall down the hole and stand up tall. Under the grass, I watch the sky, which tick-tocks and sways, between tomorrow and yesterday. The style of today is far too farfetched, as I nod off another spin off, and my dreams are too busy, but nothing is done — apart from the moon. Jet lag is a very strange business... It is 4:39 in the morning two days after arriving home from my whirlwind homecoming trip to California. I woke this morning before four, no longer dreaming, but thinking. I started to mentally swagger and then to stumble over my to-do list that I forgot. I didn’t get any garlic salt when I was in the States. I forgot to buy deodorant... It popped into my head, the knowledge of reality, and I opened my eyes, to see the darkness again. When Hashem came to the nations of the world, He asked them each, one at a time, “Would you like my To...

Don’t worry; this blog is not going to be about wormholes... well, only a little bit I guess. You see, I ‘have’ been traveling through a time warp, both going back in time and leaping forward. My journey to the land that I lost started as I stepped off the plane and saw my little brother drive up to greet me in California. It was a whirlwind tour of emotions that felt as if it stretched through all of my ages. I played, once again, on my hillside playground where I was once hit in the face with a ‘sling-clod,’ I found an old clay friend looking out of the bushes at me from the yard of my childhood home, and I flew down the hills on my skateboard (technically I was in a car this time), like I was a kid with my whole life in front of me again. On my way to Yosemite for the final destination and the reason for my trip in time, visiting my mom, I stopped over in San Francisco for a brief but wonderful visit with one of my oldest friends that I haven’t seen in over 25 years. In only an hour...

I thought the month of dreams, Kislev, was supposed to be, like, two months ago… Yup, I had another strange dream the other night. It was a frigid, bone-chilling night and, sleeping without a shirt on, my shoulders got colder and colder as the night progressed into the wee hours of the morning. In my sleep, I shifted about and moved around, but in the end, the only thing that I accomplished was having a dream about lying on my surfboard in the middle of the sea. In the dream, it was still dark out, like I had paddled out to catch a few waves before the sunrise. Eventually, as I laid there on my stomach trying to keep my arms close to my sides, out of pure cold-driven desperation, I reached down and pulled the covers up over my shoulders. Now I found myself lying on a surfboard, floating on the dark cold water, with a blanket over me to keep me warm. I knew that something wasn’t quite right. In my dream, it never occurred to me that having a blanket over me while floating on the dark co...

I was running, all the while, looking over my shoulder, trying to get away — trying to hide from the searchers. I seemed to be better at moving quickly over high platforms and structures in the slippery rain then they were. I bounced and jumped, using previously unknown by me gymnastic abilities, trying to elude pursuit. I didn’t know why they were chasing me; I just knew that I ‘could’ get away and then I landed in the mud, sinking down to my waist. By squirming and rolling sideways I eventually freed myself, I found it was difficult to move and slow-going through the mud. Moving horizontally, rolling and inch-worming, I began to make some slow progress, trying not to sink back in. This also presented me with the opportunity not to be seen by those that were searching from above. The mud was like camouflage as it covered my clothes, hands, and face, and I slipp ed and flopped stealthily across the rain-pocked field of mud. I was brown and amorphous like the wet earth when I emerged on...