Cherries and memories

For quite some time now I have been ruminating about the very subjective nature of memory . I was discussing this with my sister who lives in Israel. She is six years younger than me and so we have different memories of growing up in the same house.
For some reason, recently my auntie Rebecca came to mind. Ah, I know the reason. Someone in South Africa is working on a history of the Jewish families in South Africa, and my sister is in contact with this person. My sister is really the family archivist.  So we were discussing memory, and a wonderful memory bubbled to the surface of my mind. Sunday mornings in Berea with Auntie Becky. She was the mother of my dad's cousins, and about once a month we would go as a family to visit. her. I remember her flat with a long corridor along which my brother, sister, and myself would run. Auntie Becky had twinkly eyes and curly (possibly permed) grey hair. She always served us tea and these wonderful things she called 'heisenblozen' - like fried dough dipped into icing sugar. Whatever they were, she made them, and they were divine. You bit into the dough and it cracked on your tongue and you licked the icing sugar and it made everything sweet. My sister and I both remembered those things, and the taste of them. What she doesn't remember are Auntie Becky's cherries. Before we left she would take a bottle of brandy out from a closet - apparently she put cherries into this bottle. She would judiciously give each one of us children a cherry, and my parents would get two each. My memory after eating the little bomb is of sugar and fire and laughter and a warm feeling that overtook me
Why do I remember this? At this moment I have boiled together sugar, water, cardamon seeds, lemon juice and brandy and I have poured it over cherries (organic of course) which I pitted.
I cannot wait for them to be ready!

Artwork

OK - so I have not been writing a blog a week, (a promise quite recently made to me by me, and only now have I dared to put it on paper.) In my head of course, I have composed entries, but as you may have noticed, they don't get out of my head. However, I have not given up on creativity entirely. Below are examples of my artwork in chronological order. I began taking a class last year, the medium is acrylics.

These are my very first attempts at any artwork. I only discovered this new joy a year ago, and this is just one of the reasons there is not a weekly post. Hah.

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So Proud

I am totally intimidated by anything to do with electricity. More than intimidated, scared.
Many many years ago in South Africa I inserted a plug into a socket, and suddenly felt something moving through my hand and fingers, a strong internal current went up my arm. Whatever it was it was not pleasant, it hurt, and I didn't know what was happening. As the current buzzed it dawned upon me that it is to do with the cord in my hands.  I released it and the buzzing stopped, but pain continued, flowing in tunnels up my arm. I haven't touched an electric cord since.
One night in South Africa my brother called me to his bedroom. He had made an exciting discovery he wanted me to see - he licked his forefinger and touched it on the burning lightbulb next to his bead - we heard a sizzling sound and saw a tiny puff of steam. This was great, he then dipped his finger into a glass of water and touched it to the bulb - sizzle, a loud bang, sounds of glass breaking, then darkness. The lightbulb had exploded, luckily neither of us was hurt.
Out of necessity I replace light bulbs and put cords into sockets, but that is it.
The other night I came home and turned on TV - nothing, just a dark blue screen with the words 'no signal' flashing. I turned it off and tried again, same thing. I held down the power button on the cable box for 10 seconds, nothing. When I called AT&T I went through the normal lengthy frustrating process of answering the machines questions, pressing appropriate buttons etc. until eventually a human voice (sort of) took over from the robotic voice. This voice asked my name and then proceeded to say Nesta after almost every word that came out of his mouth. After trying this and that he said my box (transformer? transponder? - whatever it is called) is kaput. "That is technology, Nesta."
He then said they would send me a new box and said I would have to install it myself. He's got to be kidding, I thought, I can't set up this box - I don't know an in from an out cable, and I won't touch anything with electrical cords.   He said, "Nesta, it is easy to do.  When you get the box, Nesta, log on to AT&TUVerse/fix blah blah, Nesta. Otherwise you have to pay  for installation."
He  said he would have the box sent, Nesta, and then- I paid no attention as I was no longer listening .
When the box arrived the afternoon of the beginning of the Warriors final play off games I had every intention of running out into the driveway of my home and calling out for some young child to come and help me. But everyone was in school. My male neighbors were not home either.
I opened the cardboard container and pulled out the box and different cables. At the bottom were some written instructions.
I pulled them out and scrupulously followed each and every diagram , and read every written word.
I removed and replaced the coaxial (???) and did the same with the power cord and input cord.Then I pointed the remote at the TV and ........... yahooooooooooooooooooo, it worked!!!
I am inordinately proud of myself and feel like this is one of my crowning achievements!

Far Away

Thanks so much to everyone who read the entry Back. It is difficult, I know, but not so hard as actually being detained there!
Why far away ?  I am now so far away from Israel.
It never ceases to be deeply unsettling, that feeling of being here and there simultaneously, and yet, as soon as I board the plane, the realization of the actual physical distance.
I have not been in Israel in springtime since I left, so very long ago. I always go back in the fall - Rosh Hashanah, when the countryside is brown and parched. I forgot the beautiful spring, especially this year after the winter's rains. Everything is green and lush. Every little patch of earth  is covered in flowers - in whites, oranges, reds, deep pinks, purples. To me if feels as if nature is compensating for the war of last year, and too many years past. She reminds us that there is beauty on this planet.
As always, it is so  comfortable to be with family and friends - everything familiar, and yet always different, always more ... more construction, more people, more roads...
I have not been on kibbutz for Remembrance Day since I left.  I find it very hard to put into words the feeling of being surrounded by warmth and love and belonging -  of  shared  memories, of a past that no one here in America can fathom.
And now, here I am, back with that ever constant ambivalence and dissonance. The holy trinity, Africa, Israel, America - and so it shall be.

Back

I am back, from where? some may ask.
I went back to Israel for 3 weeks. I shall write about my visit in an upcoming blog.
What I now want to write about, most urgently, is my one day visit to Holot - a detention center somewhere in the Negev desert - a two and a half hour bus ride from Tel Aviv.
When I posted pictures from Holot on Facebook, many asked about Holot. I posted a link to a website


Please go to this site where you will read about the refugees from Sudan and Eritrea in Israel. They also have a Facebook page where you can keep up with all that is happening, including the most recent demonstrations against discrimination in Israel - this most recent round is discrimination against Ethiopian Jews.
In other words, my friends, discrimination against people of color.
This detention camp is in the middle of the desert, opposite a large military base., and a prison where some refugees have been imprisoned.  There is no protection from the brutal sun, cold desert nights, harsh sand-filled winds, even rain which has left slippery clay-like pools.
The people detained there are refugees, men who fled violence and genocide. The word in Hebrew to describe them is no longer refugees - they are known as infiltrators, obviously a loaded word.
We went down there to show solidarity, to let them know they are not forgotten, and to listen to their stories.
Nearly all citizens of Israel have fled persecution and discrimination - how is it possible that this blight is allowed in our midst?
There are valiant volunteers from Israel who do as much as they can; teaching, offering legal aid, medical services, and so on. They are not just from Israel - on our bus were NGO workers from France, the Netherlands, volunteers from America,  and various other countries.
My niece has been volunteering with these refugees for a long time now and introduced me to her friends. How these people have maintained their humanity, humor, dignity, and compassion is beyond me. Each and everyone deserves our respect and care, in whichever way we are able to offer this.
The very least we can do is be aware of their plight.

Message

Straight from the fabled Akashic Records, (Shhhhhhh): Time and Space is where you chase things you pretend you don't have - love, friends, and abundance - while worrying about things you pretend you do have - problems, challenges, and issues. Until one day, you happen to notice the prophetic powers of pretending. In case that helps any. The above is the message I received today from the universe, interesting in the light of my conundrum

Stranger

Why does one decide to walk on a different side of the street on a particular day, at a particular time, for no apparent reason?
Today I did just that, I walked by people eating on the pavement outside a cafe  - I glanced at two men eating, walked by, did a double take, and walked back toward them.
Yet again, someone I haven't seen for a long time, not someone from a distant land, but from a distant time in the here and now. A time of drinking and good food.
After I posted the last entry I received an e-mail from a friend who had read it.
Firstly, I am so happy someone looks at my entries. I only rarely get any comments, so it is like sending out posts into a vast void. I sent out that post over the baffling constructs of space and time, and not so long after I received an e-mail from someone in Jerusalem wondering if I remember that time when . . .
And yes, of course I remember.
Many years ago, in another lifetime, I lived in Jerusalem. My neighbour was from America and we spent many hours over coffee and cigarettes. listening to music, and chatting, and he told me about New York, and its boroughs. I had never been to America, and never expected to go there. But I loved to imagine all the areas he spoke about.
Cut to quite a few years later.  I lived in New York and spent weeks and months walking the streets, remembering all he had described. One day, after having been there at least 7 months, I sat down in a cafe in Greenwich Village and wrote him a long letter telling him about all my new experiences that were somehow familiar to me because of him. I went to the post office and bought an airmail stamp and posted that letter just before I got on the subway to West 4. I exited at West 4 and climbed the steps to the exit. I looked up and saw a pair of legs descending the stairs and the gait looked strangely familiar. My gaze moved from the sneakers up, and there he was, my Jerusalem neighbor!
The universe and all the creatures in it are nothing but a bunch of sub atomic particles which move around, bump into each other, and continue moving around again.