Six Years and Paradoxical Perfection

By Dnoll

Today I celebrate having lived in the Holy Land for 6 years; that is exactly 6 times that the Earth has revolved around the Sun (give or take approximately .24 of a day x 6). These last 6 years, while riding the steady gyrations of Planet Earth from the middle of the Middle East, my life has changed in ways that I can 'only' reflect on now, meaning: there was absolutely no ability to have any foresight whatsoever on any of it. When I was fresh off the boat and strolling resolutely upon the banks of Ben Gurion International Airport, it had been the end of about one and a half trips around the sun, in which I underwent a kind of process to shed what I had built before, recreating an empty sphere of potential, very similar to the one that I was once born with almost 50 years ago. With this sphere of potential, I learned a new language, a new culture, a new religion, and a new profession. I even got married again to the 'same' wonderful woman! It was definitely a rebirth into the world, as my lips briefly caressed the tarmac after making Alyiah, climbing up to the heights of potential by emptying my ego and all that I believed that I was… before.

Many still wonder what drove me and my family to move to the heart of the Middle East and many more don’t even want to know, which at times can even include me. All I can recall is that I felt driven from the inside, somehow. There was no ‘Let’s move to a nicer place, a better place, a safer place, a more open place, maybe up on the big hill…” There was only the nagging feeling that I was in the ‘wrong’ place and time was running out… quickly. It made absolutely no sense at all! I lived in Boulder, Colorado! I had my own business and a 200 square meter studio! I rode my full suspension mountain bike to work, pulling a trailer carrying my three-legged dog and a laptop on my back! My kids were in the 'best' schools in the country! My wife had a thriving business of her own – run from the house, no less! Life was good, really good, but we all felt something was not right… something needed to shift.

It could have just been a midlife crisis, but that doesn’t account for my 11 and 14 year old son's feelings on the subject. The 11 year old was following suit, to some extent, but the 14 year old was leaving 'all' of his hard earned friends and 'all' of his dreams of what was to come – far – behind. I remember when he met me at Ben Gurion Airport on his bar mitzvah trip that, ultimately, sealed the deal for us all a year before. He ran to the airport entrance, as I arrived, and gave me a big hug, saying, "Dad! We love it here! We are going to 'move' here!!" Now, looking back through the rear-view mirror, I see that it must have all been meant to be. I am sitting here right now, writing a blog post that I could 'never' have attempted in Boulder. Yeah, I still have the woodworking bug and crave a perfectly air-dried chunk of Black Walnut or Bubinga to sink my freshly hand-sharpened Marples Chisel into… and I still visualize the home-made custom / combo Damar Varnish oil glaze as it stretches across a perfectly prepared and painted wood panel, only to eventually crack, ever so subtly, revealing the wonder of time, space, truth, and pure art in the world, but it was not to be… forever.

It must be kind of like living at the edge of dusk on the 6th day of Creation. It feels like that, anyways. Everything is fuzzy and shadowed. I can't quite make out what is moving towards me at, what I am attempting to perceive as a high rate of speed. All I can see is a blur, while the world goes black and then strobes to white-light and rousing truth. I am riding a sphere, standing in the middle of the Middle East. Six years have passed and I am a new person, not perfect, but trying. The cosmic blades of grass are whipping past me, sometimes slicing and sometimes caressing my rosy-red cheeks. Perfection is waiting, just on the other side of Paradox. I am waiting too, just like us all. We are waiting for the truth to reveal itself into the reality that we call ours. We are waiting for it, but… not really.

This week's parsha is Korach (Numbers 16-18), where the Earth opens its fiery jaws, gulps, and swallows the haughty down to the depths of Sheol. We learn that even the mighty (read holy) can fall… and fall harder than the rest of us. We learn that to live at a higher spiritual level can bring tremendous highs and that failure, while living on that level, can bring ultimate defeat. We also learn that, to the very end, we have a chance to succeed in our connection to the Truth – we can leap into the stratosphere and embrace the wonder of Creation. We can embrace God within the paradox of us. We can be… Truth.

I wonder what the next 6 years will bring. $&*#... I wonder what next year will bring… Life is moving 'so' fast nowadays that I can barely even remember the 15 years that I spent in Boulder, Colorado. Yeah, it's mantra time, "From Paradise to the Promised Land… from Paradise to the Promised Land… from Paradise to the Promised Land…" That about covers it; but, we all know that in the end, the real paradox is to understand the difference… the difference between the perfection of paradise and the promise of perfection.

Yalla Chavarim and Shabbat Shalom!!

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