THE BRAVE NEW LAND

What is Generation Y anyways? I mean, when I say it to myself, it comes out like this: ‘Generation why…?’ and that is a really good question too; don’t you think? To try and understand this, we may need to back up in the Latin alphabet a little. Generation X was the term that applied to the generation born between 1964 and 1981, right after the Baby-boom Generation (1946-1964). I was born at the very end of that generation, which is popularly attributed to post-WWII rampant baby making practices of the previous generation. My kids were born in Generation X, which is considered (according to a series of books that I ‘didn’t’ read by William Strauss and Neil Howe) the “Awakening” generation, a time when spiritual rebellion ensues. In this book series, the Baby Boom Generation (BB for short) is considered the “High Cycle” generation, in which a new order of human expansion is developed that replaces the older order. The BB Generation followed on the heels of the 2nd World War, which was c...

Of blackened iron pots and high flying towers Of rivers conniving for large yielding showers With crude formal judgment of fine and of gross Positioning our hind ends in front of the most We’ve seen the bend coming as it wound fore and aft But never once noticed the whole inner gap Always too late while looking askance And missing the hidden not taking a chance We said in foresight as it laughed with the sand on We’ll detach from the light with pure selfish abandon Our perceptions we isolated from genuine reality As the world stopped to be and peace was scurrility Under the sound of our bones hardly crackling We promptly forgot not to seek without hacking The bones are still tinkling hung from wind-chimes And the peace we forsook is still flipping show-times The jealousy’s searching the snaking of rivers The broad long and wide is cold and it quivers The bird is now swirling with heated discard And dodging the blows from haughty Canards The blackened pot iron is full of roast beas...

Dull, wet, waxing and waning, my hearing isn’t what it once was. Swimming in the deep blue Mediterranean lagoon, called ‘Generation,’ playing with bubbles like imaginary dolphins that float next to the Leviathan’s island ridgeback, I am privy to stories from the ‘next’ generation, stories of stairways long since buried by turbulent sands with oversized rodents trapped within. The big blue Mikveh is waiting, calm serene, and crystal blue, for the summer to begin and my ears to fill with brine and glorious cloud canopies. While swimming within the womb of the Universe, I can only think of one thing. It is a question that tumbles in my mind — somersaulting. It goes like this: Assuming that Mankind, the entire species both male and female, evolved from lower life forms, making their way up Darwin’s ladder, sliding along Occam’s razor, becoming human beings through a process of evolution of the physical and devolution of the spiritual, then how do we explain, within this paradigm of entropy...

Did you ever feel like you made the most perfect plan and implemented it to a tee, only to find that nothing, if not the exact opposite, actually occurred? Remember the Cone of Silence from Get Smart where Maxwell Smart, the goofy secret agent that fought the international organization of evil, Chaos, would insist with his superior, the Chief, to use the Cone of Silence? Then, do you remember when it was lowered over their heads, in order to hear each other they had to yell so that ‘we,’ on the outside, could hear everything that was said? I remember this being one of the most frustrating and at the same time hilarious things to watch. I sat there, maybe 13 or 14 years old, wanted to yell out at them that we could hear everything that they were saying, but even if I wasn’t on the other side of the TV screen, they wouldn’t have been able to hear anyways, because the Cone of Silence didn’t let any sound in! This is one of those things that, even though is quite ridiculous, has deep ramif...

The Middle East is getting hot. No, really, the air around here must be full of electric Kool-Aid or something. I mean, from the local hardware store, to the parliamentary building, and all the way downstream to my little family, we have been struggling to get along with each other for days now. For the last two weeks, the energy has gone up and down with rapidly decelerating acceleration, creating all kinds of interpersonal mayhem and sociological eddy current-crevasses. Even the dogs ran away and, for the first time since they have been our four-legged family additions, they had to spend the night in doggy-jail at the pound (at 300 Shekels apiece!). They just took off for a day on the town; I guess until the evil dog catcher snatched them from their revelry. Maybe it has something to do with the changing weather here in the Middle East, with sticky, sweaty, sloth-slug inclinations taking shape in our sub-consciousnesses. Or it could be the changing political climate that always invol...