Desert first.

Sufi dancing in the Negev

Baha'i Gardens

Haifa

The Seventh Day

Dressed modestly I stand, neck craned, beneath the towering bricks of the Kotel: the Western Wall. Women read from their books of prayer and place notes of desperation between the cracks of the calcite. A circle of young girls and young women and old women gather and begin to chant hymns, blessings. Men are heard through the divider, the tops of their covered heads are seen as they spin and skip about. Leaves in trees rattle, the rain drops fall heavily. A gust of wind rushes in from the east.  The wave falls upon the wall and sweeps back, pulling the crowd farther from shore. The feeling is tangible.

I walk to the stone basin where men mechanically wash away the evenings workings. Ariel and Jonathan stand with me. We wait for Lazer, aged thirteen. With Peyous curled beside his ears, a black hat and floor length coat, he greets us in the company of three older men in similar fashion. Away we are swept like small pebbles and legless crabs through the arab shuk. Spices and carpets heavy from the warm rain sag and we rush by. We are late for dinner. Rabbi Glazer is waiting. 

MooooOoo

Resting on the ties of ropes, nested into a hammock outside a hand-built cedar guest house on the Moshav of Avnei Eitan.

Round and round

Bus 417 from Barcol, Ramat Bet Shemesh (lit. 'house of the sun') to Tachanah, Jerusalem

Tachanah on the 943 to Nahal Samad, Raananah

Raananah to Tiberius, Tiberius north to the Golan

Wheelbarrow

I've been leftoutintherain.
I've been rustingundertheporch
collecting driedleavesandbrushandworms
and my joints have turnedtodust.
My woodenlimbshavesplintered,
I couldn't carry a branch ifyoudraggedmesideways
down the yard.

Let it pour.

There are potatoes roasting

A three month old girl is sitting in a chair that bounces slowly with a smooth, steady tempo. She dawns a suit of red velvet.

A three year old boy is fanning cards and pencils over the apartment's tile floor. He has already forgotten the trauma of the big red balloon. He is chewing, with an open mouth, dry sugared cereal.

An eight year old girl is in the bath, lathered and rinsed {and again} with handfuls of soap and a bottle's full-exhale of shampoo. Her day clothes are limp and scattered across the bathroom floor; pajamas awaiting her, folded, on the sink.

An established young gentleman is dicing sweet bell peppers in the kitchen. He yawns, rinses a cucumber and continues to chop with a knife that needs sharpening.

There is a mother with rolled sleeves moving from bathtub to kitchen, smoothing out the creases in the carpet and soothing wounds of lost balloons. Her voice carries into the corners of the high white ceilings and she lifts her nose to make sure the potatoes aren't burning.

Bet Shemesh, Israel

I am just a little olive growing darker in the sun

I'm far from the sea in the valleys of Jerusalem and the wind tempts me westward.

Effet mer.