Thursday, January 11, 2024

A Cold and Rainy Day

Today I went up to Shoresh, a community nestled in the hills of Jerusalem.  It was blustery, rainy, and FOGGY - reminding me  of the Bay Area.  Amongst some of the things I miss are the fog enshrouded bay and the gothic redwood groves.  I left knowing I would miss these vistas, but they are forever a part of me,  within me here and now. The perspective of space and place and time in which we carry out our lives is so linear, and compartmentalized,  but it is really not all packed into separate containers. Inside we carry our young selves, our present selves, our future selves, all co existing in a pool of place and time.

I can close my eyes and be in the bush in South Africa.  I am on the beach in Ramsgate and feel the hot golden beach sand burn my feet as I jump from towel to towel to the Indian ocean. I feel the waves crash down on me and carry me, laughing, to the shore. I smell that indescribable scent of a night along the northern California coast - an intoxicating mix of pine, smoke from wood cabins, redwoods, the tang of the delicately salted air from the Pacific.

Everything is here within me as I look at the TV and hear the opening statements of the trial against Israel in Den Haag.  I for one, am deeply saddened by the war and the countless (no, there is a definite count of Palestinian dead - 22,000) in Gaza, but why have no countries spoken about Hamas, and the horrors they perpetrate? Of the fact that Israel was attacked, pillaged, raped?  And the hostages?  My very being, with all that it contains, all the memories, the past and the present, cries out, but noone seems to hear.

No comments: