THE BRAVE NEW LAND

This morning, I began to dwell on the fact that my mom has been in the hospital, dying of cancer, and that a new twist has arisen. The doctor and nurses are no longer able, legally, to give out any information over the phone, unless it goes through her new, younger husband. Not going to dwell on that one... The nurse that I spoke with (just about, but not quite) said, "You don't have time to fly here from Israel."   Of course, that tells me that my mom is on death's doorstep and I won't be able to sit on the side of her bed and ask her questions about the other side, like I had done with my father ( click here forthe blog-post link ). I have to be OK with my last few conversations with her. I have to be OK… I just have to be. This morning, while praying to the Master of the Universe, I had a thought about how all of Humanity is a kind of cancer, sort of like how Mr. Smith in the Matrix explains it, but not so superficially. He explained it as if humans wer...

I almost kept going this morning… I was on my way to work, walking down the road next to the 1870 farmer's town of Zichron Yaakov, where I live, and thought, "What if I kept going, all the way to Fureidis, the Arab town at the bottom of the hill. Fureidis was named by the Crusaders when they passed through, looking around at the beautiful hills and calling it Paradise – the Arabs mispronounced it, since they can't pronounce 'P.' I almost kept going, even beyond Fureidis. I thought, "I should just keep going, all the way to Dor Beach, where Napoleonic ships still sit under the waves. The last time I was down at Dor Beach in the middle of winter, it was right after a huge storm and up the coast at Kibbutz Nahsholim, the hillside covered with ancient ruins from the Romans and Philistines had collapsed into the Mediterranean Sea. I wondered what it looks like now – with exposed artifacts and ancient stonework, maybe… I almost kept going this morning… I thought,...

Life has its ups and downs. I am starting to wonder if I am going through male menopause or something. Not to make little of female menopause, since I have absolutely 'no' idea what that must be like (kind of like giving birth); but, I just seemed to have been getting overwhelmed on every level imaginable over the last few months. My wonderfully insightful wife tells me that it must have something to do with my mother, who has been battling cancer, mental illness, and spiritual dismemberment. But, it is more than just that. For instance, when my mom began her most recent downward self-awakening realization, it was about the same time as my son was fighting for his position in the IDF. For those of you that don't know, he was in the Pilot's Course, not because he enjoyed flying or had dreamed about it for his entire life, but because he just found himself there. He passed all the tests and got in. He didn't like flying. Even when he was a kid he hated roller-coaste...