Travel Log #31

March 15, 2010

'Tis the Ides of March. But other than taking note of the date, poor, ambitious, assassinated Caesar is not on my mind.

The temperature has climbed to the low nineties, although the weather reports that we'll be back in to the fifties in a day or so.

This is our last week at Dalyiot and I can't believe it. Part II went by so quickly. Now, I have to figure out how to pack and store my stuff again for the two weeks of break. Most likely, I will put most of it in a closet in Kfar Saba and bounce between there and Ashkelon for the duration, and perhaps a little bit in Zichron, which I haven't been to in nearly three months. Things will be different when I go back there.

Of course, now that my time in Yokneam is almost over, I am finally beginning to meet people and make friends. Just in time to leave. Well, Tel Aviv isn't far and I will hopefully be able to make it here on Sundays for the music workshop with Korin Allal. I have not mentioned this, but have been participating in this workshop for about three weeks now. Korin is one of the most famous Israeli singers out there.

We are put in groups of up to four in the workshop, given some kind of musical parameter, and pump out a song or a partial song in two hours. The third hour is presentation. Korin supervises and devises the lesson.

Meanwhile, I have been returning to a poetic mood, re-reading old poems, immersing myself in a lake of language where I feel at home. E.E. Cummings tops the list but Dylan Thomas is stuck in my head with his brilliant and most famous villanelle.

The nightmares continue regarding my return to America. But I must go, if only so that I might return. I must return. Here is the love of my life.

What drew me here, I now know, was only bait. I am no longer interested in it but it served its purpose. I spend my whole life tracing the origin of myths, including those of my own creation. I follow them because I believe that beneath every myth there lies a true story. Sometimes, though, the true story is also a myth and being a mythopoeticist, I believe in it willingly.

Yet mythologies are what layer over memory and memory is what consumes people all too often. Memory is the story we get lost in but I would like to hope that people can move beyond the essence of their memories and that the memory merely affects the shape of a person and does not become them.

I fear that my memory of Israel will become mythologized. There is no way to protect my memory from the dust and adulteration of myth. I finally find something that I can put my faith into and it is doomed, betrayed by circumstance. So I enjoy the present moment and deal with the consequences later.

March 19, 2010

The light coming through the blinds is something for which to be thankful. The world hasn't exploded and I've woken up to see another day.

Last night is was discovered that my body is its own worst enemy--more than a time bomb, it consumes itself. I am acidic, and glucose is out of control. I didn't even feel it.

Now I'm sitting here alone in the hospital ward because there are no rooms for me. If I let myself relax, I'll break down and I can't do that. Not now. Now when I have to be strong for not only myself but those who care about me.

Despite the news, I remain high on life, as always, although the ups-and-downs are crazy. My back holds the reminder that life is precious and when things seem terrible, they may very well be, but there is always another angle by which to view it.

The world is beautiful and I intend to remain in it in my mortal form for as long as possible.

My Seraphim have finally arrived, and lesser orders have gone for now.

"Only what you can take, Little Girl. Yet we are here," they say together.

"Is it really almost the end?"

"You have a Will. And you know that ends are only beginnings. We have sent you a gift, Little Girl, and you have pursued it. What are you thinking?"

"You are talking about the boy, aren't you?"

The angels nod. I say:

"You know how I think. I want it to be real. I want to trust completely. And I'm trying because you pointed me the way. Everything in the Prescient Dream came true. But how far does it go? And I'm afraid, because everything really good always comes at a definite end.

"I know I wished, when I really was a little girl, to die, because there was nothing and there was no one. What does a ten-year-old know?"

"A lot, darling," says Micha'el. "You let us save you. Over and over again. Life was seen as a gift because you wished it so. We only point the way. It is up to you to follow. At ten, you understood the Point of Time. You understood the language of Divinity. You understood what it meant to live. And you did. For we never really did save you. We merely aided in the saving of yourself."