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...

On the way out of the house the other morning, my son Josh asked me if God helps when you ask for it. The answer that I gave him, thinking back on it, seemed to come from somewhere else. I said, “If you make the effort in your task, God will help you do it; if you don’t make the effort, the only choice that ‘you’ have left God is to try and teach you from ‘your’ mistake of not making the effort in the first place.” Josh smiled... and so did I… Relationships between people seem to make all the difference in the world, which is what I have been thinking about this week. Since I have been really busy with lots of things (and you know how it goes sometimes…), it has been really hard to find that quality time to spend with the people I love and care about. Sure, we ‘make’ time, but that, sadly, is exactly the point. We seem to put our creations in this world first; just think of it like this: ‘we MAKE time.’ You know, we are busy, multitasking people that have to get to work, finish that p...

I had a dream the other night that Gilad Shalit was released from terrorist captivity and not a soul even knew about it. Do you know who Gilad is? Well, if you don’t live in Israel, it is quite possible that you don’t, considering the weight the Western Media puts on pro-Hamas-Palestinian / anti-Israel-Semitism propaganda. About 5 years ago, just to fill in any gaps, two weeks after I moved halfway around the planet to start my life again for the third time, the Second Lebanon War broke out. It started when an ambush from the Palestinian terrorist organization that controls Gaza, Hamas, and a virtually simultaneous ambush from the Palestinian terrorist organization, Hezbollah, who control the Lebanese border, captured Israelis, including Gilad, by crossing the border into Israel. He is still believed to be alive, but we don’t know how well he is doing, since he has been refused any medical care from any outside institution. What I ‘do’ know is that as long as I have lived in Israel, h...

“Lenny!” said Stanley, “What was that rumble?” “Um,” answered Lenny, “I think it must have been another one of those unexplained phenomenon...s. Phenomenon has an ‘S’ at the end, doesn’t it?” “Lenny! Nu, watch what you’re doing! Hey! Look out! The treasure is rolling by itself! Catch it!” “Stanley, you are such a nudge... Why can’t you just let things be? You know, there are things in the world that can’t be explained; things like the ball of hot god-light and the dark cold sniffers, things like the water upside down and the village-people in the sky.” “Lenny! There it is again! What ‘was’ that?!” “OK, OK... I felt it that time too. Quick, get under the front of the treasure and I will stay at the back. We can stay like this for awhile, but don’t move! Yeah, like that. And Stanley, try to stay out of the brightness from the ball of hot god-light.” Meanwhile, 20 minutes have gone by in the world of the biggies. Stanley and Lenny are still motionless, hiding under their ball of dung, thi...

How strange it is to sit at the kitchen table, after lighting one little, tiny memorial candle, and cry. I don’t have any relatives that perished in the Holocaust. I do know people that had relatives that perished and I have friends that are one generation removed from those that escaped, barely. But... I was born a Goy that, somewhere along the way, joined the Jewish People and moved to Israel. I have cried about my dad’s death; I have cried about my mom’s illness; but, I didn’t think about those things at all while sitting at the kitchen table, sobbing with hesitant breaths. I think that I might have thought briefly about some level of pain and suffering... that I just could not even begin to fathom, and just stopped dead in my mind’s tracks. When I looked at the candle that I had lit, as it flickered in a tiny little way, I was instantly overwhelmed. There was no thought that drove the plunge. There was no signal that something had occurred to induce my spasms. I (as in me, my soul)...