THE BRAVE NEW LAND

Redefining ones-self always consumes a lot of energy. Have you ever tried to turn over a new leaf? If so, you may understand a bit of what it takes to give yourself a makeover or even a complete overhaul. In honor of the New Year, I made a resolution to myself: “I am going to seek inner awareness and peace.” As lame as that sounds, it is funny that for the last 4 years or so I have been seeking just that, a complete makeover and what I believed to be inner awareness and peace. I learned almost constantly, I prayed as hard as I could, as often as I permitted myself, and I tapped the known knowledge bases that the available universe had to offer; but, I still found myself hovering just to one side of the center of free will. No matter what I tried, using only rational thought as my modus operandi, I could not break with the ever-constant relationship between stumbling doubt and immanent awareness…. No matter what I tried, I had to introduce belief, which just so happens is a c...

Yesterday, while perusing my emails, I received these remarkable 19th century sepia-tinted pictures by Timothy O'Sullivan showing the American West (thanks Baruch!), as it was charted for the first time. I began to look for places that I had been and found a few – rafting and kayaking down the Green and Yampa rivers, the scent and feel of the White House, an ancestral Pueblo Native American Anasazi cliff dwelling in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, and luxuriating in Pagosa Hot Springs, Colorado. Fascinating as each picture was, I was extremely intrigued by the photographs of Native Americans. I couldn’t shake the impression that they looked like rock bands, with a kind of collective style, but sporting individual ambiance and flare, predestined to go out of history in a blaze of glory. The most amazing thing, though, was that even with the sepia-tint pictures, I could see these wonderful human souls shining through. They were a people, living within the (then) present and obviousl...

My First Art Studio When I was young, I often thought to myself, "What is going on here; what is wrong with this world?" It seems to have taken 50 years to receive some kind of an answer... and the answer, as you might be guessing, didn't come easy, if it even exists at all. You see, I have spent my entire life 'tuning' into the frequencies of living, of Earth. That isn't to say that I 'did' tune in, but to say that I tried, day in and day out. This process of attempted tune started when I became an artist at the ripe age of 7, maybe 8, in Mr. 'Servant of the Bishop (SOTB) 's'  class. He was a tall man, maybe even taller than my father, who was just about two meters high (6' 6"). Keep in mind that this was an informative and influential time for me. I had even kissed my first girl in the playground that year, albeit unknown to her and, actually, it was on the top of the head. Funny, well… never mind... Anyways, in Mr.  ...

When the ball drops, do we really care? In that specific moment, when the drop-sound reverberates off of our self-awareness, we seem to be so engaged with our own expectations that we 'literally' convince ourselves that it is of utmost importance to pay attention, but we don't... We just say, "We did!" and then come up with a 'really' clever excuse to ourselves as to why we had to 'understand' it after-the-fact. That is living, but it seems that it is a not so much of an 'in the moment' type of living... As a case in point, for the last few months, I have been overwhelmed with the atrocity that continues to exist in the world, but have utterly 'refused' to acknowledge it… inwardly, that is. In Syria, for instance, the dictatorial government has recently waged an 'unrelenting' campaign of arrests and murders that has consumed tens of thousands of human beings, humanitarian aid volunteers, as well as most of the men ...

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 rebi...

Tzipori Mosaic I decided not to go to the wedding. It was at 3:30 on Friday afternoon for Heaven's sake… I mean, what were they thinking? How was the Rabbi even going to officiate the whole deal? Then I realized… This was not going to be a 'religious' affair; so, in my very special brand of finite wisdom, I conveniently forgot about it and made other Friday plans, which, happened to be ultimately (and rudely) interrupted by the appointment that we had… to get a smog check on our old car. Sheesh… the previous week, after waiting for about an hour and a half in the hot sun and spending about 300 shekels, it had failed… We were instructed by the guy at the garage to put this special German engine cleaner stuff in the tank and run it up and down the hills around here; we had only one day left to pass it — Friday. So, I put my plans on hold, crossed my fingers, and drove like a bat-outa-hell to get the last drop out of the German engine cleaner stuff before they plumbed ...

From glittering abandon, I seem to have been thrust into containment, confinement… condensed into something unreal, something beyond my comprehension. I wait. I look about me… and I wait. Time is still with me, but I seem to be able to feel it now. I wait and I feel. I look about me and I feel. Now I can hear too. A whisper is forming at the tip of my lobe. I can just make it out; it tickles… I giggle. I wait, I look about me, I feel, and now I giggle. The whisper is Truth. It is the truth that I knew of while floating in the space before, while gliding through glittering abandon. The truth feels different now. It feels slow, as it seeps into this place that… I am calling me. I call 'it' me... this place. The whisper is reaching out to me, getting stronger now. I think that I recognize the voice behind it. It is strong and quiet. It is patient. I wait, I look, I feel, I hear, I giggle. I realize when I hear the whisper that I am not real. I realize that I was real befor...

When I was a child, one of my earliest memories was of being isolated on a boiled sheet that had been laid over wall-to-wall gold shag carpeting in the middle of our ranch house living-room in El Toro, California. I did have my brother with me, but the world at large was off limits. We were infected. We, for a brief time, were sporting pulsing blemishes that itched to no end and, with our infantile perspective, had no end in sight. We were told at the time by our most trusted confidant, our mother, that we had the Chicken Pox… We were infected. My brother and I were isolated from all that we knew and our trusted mother had become our jailer. I remember her trying to change the sheet, yelling at us to move all of our toys, our precious building blocks, to the side, off the edge of the sheet. She was obviously flustered and expressing it with uncertain abandon. I was just confused. I mean, if we put the blocks on the carpet, how could we put them back onto the clean boiled shee...