a proclamation of Queen Atomia-

Tonight I somehow managed (by default mostly) to watch part of the President's State of the Union address. As a general rule I find politics supremely dull namely because I am of the opinion that law makers know so little about the lives of their citizens, and I so little about the unique art of lawmaking. For the most part, my relationship with politics is founded on a mutual agreement of respectable distance. Tonight however, I caught glimpses of the President's speech and was simultaneously impressed and depressed by several statements.
I did like the overall theme of the evening, namely a proclamation toward healing a country of partisianship...bravo on the environmental friendly innovations too (if i could, i'd buy a hybrid too...even from Ford). Also liked the anti-human, and hybrid human cloning campaign (who could handle two of you?) although i think it needed to be put in less ambigious terms....
Strongly did not like the way compassion was intertwined with competition. In the very same breath that our dear ol' President (and I'm not affiliated with any pariah tribe) argued for more math and science he misplaced the entire focus of education. Our students do not spend their lifetimes studying in order to compete in global technological advancement. Competition does not breed reconciliation. The President intertwined notions of compassion, idealism and peace with global markets, competition and economic monopolies. The educational system is already built on the corporate model, we already teach kids in a "bank deposit" method [information deposited into the vacant minds of our students]. Innovation cannot be constricted to the outrageous confinments of scripted lessons. That's right. So before you going jumping down my throat- think! Does this make any sense?! Our kids are being taught by scripted lessons, to join the work force with their "creative" and "innovative" ideas??!! major flaw of logic (and I am the least of rational people) total display of fallacious thinking... Our students must compete with other nations...for more mandated tests... oh my gd. The life of a third grader in NYC has become unbearable, we are unleashing plagues of tests on students who can barely manage to read! I am all for AP classes throughout school, yes, some students need to be on a more rigorous program, but why stop at math and science?! What about the humanities? Reading, writing, social studies?? Louis Armstrong was not only the name of the man who landed on the moon....
As far as technology is concerned I understand why our competition starved nation must pursue excellence in math and science, but do not de-emphasize our need for learning and reaching a deeper understanding through literature, social studies and the arts. It infuriates me beyond words when the scholastic focus is solely on math and science...

Because I do not care to understand the intricacies of politics (and i mean that humbly not indifferently) I see legislation only in its actualization. As in now...more tests, more tests, more test anxiety, more failing students, more stress, more regulated curiculums, less choices, and more kids who cannot read and write. more decontextualized learning.
How we have misconstrued compassion and competition. How about working together for a change? And i don't mean that as a bleeding heart liberal (which I am not.) but as a teacher- why can't we emphasize classroom community, global community instead of dog-eat-dog world? How can the President preach anti-partisanship while articulating a need for greater competition and social division? At one point in the speech I couldn't help but think of that line from Orwell in 1984 "war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength"....

In other news, college schedule has worked out remarkably well. Am taking a brilliant chemistry class that I am currently infatuated with (lab coat, goggles and all), when trying to help kids out with chemistry at the Superhero store always used this site: www.uky.edu/Projects/Chemcomics/ its really cool, basically it tells you when each chemical/element etc. was used in the history of comic books (really fun to surf) also taking a history of jazz class that has turned out to be superb, a poli-sci profess obsessed with Chomsky, and a modern-brit class which lo and behond is a semester of Joyce etc. etc.... very pleased with it all, thank the Lord of Hosts-
I guess in the macro/micro universe, things do have a way of working out...let's hope.
[oh and as a disclaimer: the above is simply an opinion, an assessment not an attempt at omnipotent judgment] namastaei.

A good word is like a tree whose root is firmly fixed in the sky.

Shabbos was lovely, i mean how else could you describe 15 hours of sleep, family time, awesome food and uninterrupted reading? This week is Mama and Dad's 25th anniversary. Ma actually wore her vort dress (some very 1980 purple silk number) to celebrate.... unbelievable. only my ma can fit into the dress she wore 25 years and four children ago. now, those are the genes i want to inherit. As i get older, it amazes me how much i am becoming like my parents, and in the strangest ways. i have an uncanny ability to memorize lyrics just like my mom, got her exact eyelashes, and say the same corny things.. and remarkably still managed to inherit a love for old dusty records, solo traveling, and moments of quiet from my dad. ha! for all the attempts to assert your own, you really just end up as a strange hybrid of mom-dad and you. guess Gestalt psychology has a point: we are just a sum of the many parts.

The women in this household always love throwing a great party. that's a rational explanation why everyday here is a party. except tonight there's actually a real party. moo's in the midst of hosting a couple friends for her girlfriend's sweet 16. I'm hiding out and trying not to be the overly involved spinster sister, besides i get free homemade pizza (my sister is a wild culinary talent) and i got an excuse to make my infamous pudding ice cream cake (which is simply instant pudding and a box of vanilla ice cream- i am not so much a culinary wonder). i'm debating if i should go find an activity for people my age of sorts.... or not.

activity and food. how appropriate. shvat is the month of producing food. no seriously, besides for the fruit motif its the month of "correct eating" (each month has an action in addition to a letter etc.). the letter that represent this month is tzadik 'righteousness'. who is a righteous man? not the closeted spiritualist, not the Walden recluse, but the wo(man) who sows deep into the earth and reeps from that which the land has to offer. Nothing exists without a reason. There is nothing removed from the shadow of spirituality. Everything in this world exists for a purpose, the approach in which we communicate with it is simply a matter of method. The spiritual life can be categorized as a quest of methodology. How do you interact with the world? Do you engage in a dialogue with everything that Gd has created? Does the world enrich you? Strengthen you, in the same way food does? Is your body and soul so attune they simple reflect and enhance each other, feeding on what is the food of your soul?

The idea of this month is to learn how to eat correctly, i.e. righteously. meaning that the true test of our spirituality is whether we make eating (and all our mundane activities) a spiritual experience, or simply surrender to sensual gratification. By purifying our attitudes towards materiality, we become conduits for distributing Gd's beneficience to the world. We become planter, harvester and ultimately the tree itself. Aquarius, the great purifier...the great water distributor. In Tanya it discusses the element of water (and food for that matter). Notorious for its ability to nourish the far corners of the barren earth and somehow still desire to get carried away, to be lost in the superficiality of materialism... Its a good month to ask yourself if your life has depth or is simply an attempt to drown out your own potent potential for the fruition of great spirituality....So who and what is inspiring you to pour your bucket of water into the earth?? We are happiest when we utilize our potential. Ask anybody, we are always the happiest when we are doing The Thing, that which we were put on this earth to accomplish, that which only we could sow. Also the reason that this month belongs to Asher, the tribe that is noted and blessed for producing an abundance of food. That's when the Jewish people are happiest, (Asher means 'happy'), when they are well fed and actualizing their potential.
so do something proactive.
i learnt from my Dad that in order to grow a fruit tree (we got an apple orchard upstate) you need to understand that planting is mostly persistent patience, lucky weather and a lot of blessing...
so if you're going to eat an apple, eat the whole thing, and eat it right.
if you're going to live in this world, go... and live in it all the way, your way, and do it right.

the proper way to wear a borsalino.

my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell
and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal
tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of chrome and ex
-ecute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am becoming
something a little different, in fact
myself
Hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings.

one more cup of coffee for the road...

Now i am posting before 3am... I'm wondering if it will make an iota of a difference. I'm not sure if its just erratic word cohesion or some odd form of writer's block, like you are fooling around with the words in hopes of eventually, by default, getting the exact word that pinpoints that spark in your brain. So its like the Chochmah crashing around into to many manifestation of malfunctioning Binah, but nothing really connecting, never quite making it to the typerwriter. narly and yet so uncool. So i'm blogging pretty often (i hate vacation when i start to hate vacation) but i'm not saying all that much. i know a lot of people like that in the sans cyber world.... ;) its a sign (lighting hits) from the Good Lord that i should have stayed in the Holy Land. All my spring classes have been mysteriously dropped, vavooom! disappeared without a trace. No one knows what happened, but once your classes are gone they are unretrievable (cuz some other lucky dude already got my spots). So much for having early registration privileges.... now i'm stuck scraping off the bottom of the food chain (welcome to Amebaville). The only way i justify this major inconvience is by reconciling it with a divine providence of sorts. (I'm now waiting to win the lottery, or just NOT get hit by a bus) Enter The Lord of Hosts: hindy's crashed college schedule. nice entrance point for Divinity in the overall drama.

Yesterday I was told that my poems make no sense and are not worth reading (people said and still say that about Sylivia Plath...[and a million others] too). ;) thanks petite pois (haha convoluted compliment). too bad. sayeth the Wizard of Oz (he's considering giving your heart to the TinMan). me bloggie, me scribbilage. and so goes it. (tho i wish you'd post your objections instead of sounding them out in smoke polluting Morse code). So i have a book in my head called "3 1/2 years", memoirs that are about the drama of my friends and I from the entombed ages of 16-19 (ah the image of your life in a lava lamp). I'm thinking of the major characters and character roles we got to work in....grandpa with the white glove, PIG (who i just saw yesterday chasing me down the street in his big ugly tinted car) Jack the Ripper, Hannah Barbarah, Leeser, Mir, Rosario, The Dude, Rick, Ferkie, Moe, Per, Yumsters, Nahama... etc. and of course me. doesn't it ever occur to you what a great story our lives would make? I think about it all the time... and i keep trying to start the damn thing. You just can't make some of this stuff up....I am all open to suggestions. So many starts and no beginnings.....ugh. all i have is bits and pieces, journal entries...all our yungun Pink Floyd interpetations, telepathic essays, looney tune cyber convos, and 12th grade Purple Haze innuendoes... it's quite hard to write about yourself as yourself, when you are still in the midst of the tale you are trying to write. hmmm...
speaking of books i cannot write, here's a book i cannot finish: picked up because it had teh coolest design on the cover (if you read enough you are allowed to judge a book by its cover once in a while) its really strange: Love in a Dead Language by Lee Seigel (figures.) its based on some board game of the Kumma Sutra, Twister-like and just a mess of stuff. kinda funny, in a he he chuckle dirty kinda way. but essentialy not very clever.
uhm. in search of a wedding dress (i've decided to wear a lilac wreath) for phaigy and phil's affair, if you meet one give it my number....

beyond the quil of nyquil

There are two roles i hate playing: patient and guest. personally i hate being sick and have never fully comprehended how anyone would ever want to be a hypocondriac. never got why anyone would want to be sick unless quarantined to bed by medical order and enforced by motherly demand. my sinus infection has been reassessed as the flu. my body and brain are exhausted even though i've done nothing all day- nothing but ping pong in the perception of sensation. very odd. i've never felt both hot and cold while being feverish and freezing...its actually pretty interesting once you get beyond the sickening side affects. think it was confucius that said sickness is the body outwardly expressing what is occurring inwardly or something to that affect. i believe that to be true. most sickness is simply an upset in balance, which infers that i must have been balanced at some point.
guess more meditation needed to work thru the life glitches, or maybe i just caught some damn bug in zurich. still, apparently it is possible to feel two opposite feelings simultaneously.... imagine if you could express this in the physical dimension.... it would be the possibilities of impossibility: you can be compelled/repelled, love/hate, selfish/selfess. a feat i studied in psychology class (tho usually that causes some neutral or single sensation) but never had the chance to experience.
so i am a guest to sickness at the moment. checked in for a reassessment and general tune-up. kinda works with this week's torah portion (talk about living with the times- corny but i am excused). so i escaped from my ward for a spell to spell... someone downloaded all this weird disco music on my Ipod. people always do that on my pod (helps me remember them) i'm thinking this was a rivky kraz song??? hmm....
it's going to be a long night unless i swallow some serious NyQuil soon. one of those long stretchy ones, where you are so tired you can do nothing but play the rerun episodes of your life in your head. i hate those. who likes reruns? i'm talking the major classics, like: a. holding your mother on your shoulders while she tried to pull down the frozen garage door before the motor blew up .b. the time you were running from the cops when you crashed your parents car into your neighbor's car and realized you didn't have a license .c. the time you woke up and the tooth fairy left her grocery list instead of a buck ..... and those are just the user friendly ones. here's a word of advice: never blog when you are deranged from common meds, alternative meds, vitamins and mother approved meds. never blog when you are not feeling all that stable (like an atom- Adom is never stable- we exist in the constancy of the movement but that's just my excuse). never blog if you are trying to escape the quiet of the night and the noise in your brain.
just to be safe. don't blog anymore.
talk about ping pong, israel just seems to bring out the reactionary in everything and everyone. it is The Edge. you've never experienced such sweet irony right to the last minute. oy gevalt. life has a funny way of beatin you down and just when you think you are about to start crying it twists the ending like an O. Henry story, just sneaks up on you, and in all your tangled non-yoga positions you are stuck. cuz you were going to cry but now you just have to laugh. you got that moment of suspension. you are both. you are feeling both things at once. kind of a psychological pickle.
so you realize how cookey you are by thinking anything in the first place. oh the drama of the everyday man (sounds like a hugo statement but i'm not sure). always thought that basic life makes the best plot line. aha! finally i realize why i have always hated sci-fi and fantasy (sorry rose you're solo there)... i knew something productive would come from this mess... visual clarity usually comes from the most catastrophic and engimatic of brain knots.

the human spirit and Kleenex

I've returned from a two and half week suspension deep into the heart of Neverland. Lots of souvenirs from this trip, tons of writing, a terrible sinus infection, packs of Wrigley's peppermint gum, and the oddest of emotional revelations. Strange things tend to happen in that very strange country. I call Israel a strange place because it never welcomes its visitors. Jerusalem has always struck me as an indifferent female that breeds a certain contempt, an exhaustion with reality, a bewilderment of life as we live it. Strangely she is the mother that calls us home from our exile to better reprimand us Maybe that's why we go there. To feel that budding slap on our cheeks, to be reminded that we know so little about essential life, so little about the true world, and sadly so very little about our essential selves. Maybe we go there to be reminded of the depth and breadth of the struggling human spirit, to stumble as we travel the many valleys and mountaintops of the awkward soul. I'm not sure... but it strikes me that Israel is not the place to find what you are looking for, but to better realize that you are still looking for something... it is the place without answers, only questions.
The randomness of this entire adventure was welcoming, even if it took a while to get used to. I like that every now and then life throws me some ironic curve ball that still manages to stun me and leave me in shocked breathlessness. It's always funny when you compare the expectations before the trip with where you truly ended up on the flight home (of course while listening to that Armageddon song "Jetplane").
Last week there was majorly gross weather. Rain, rain, rain and that fierce cold that lodges in your bones and refuses to leave. I've been cold for over a week until I finally thawed out in my kitchen. For this reason I spent much of the time scribbling in The Coffee Bean (basically Starbux transplanted in Jerusalem) sans the caffeine (which i could no longer afford at that point [16 shekel a cup]). They also have the nicest cleanest toilets in the Ben Yehuda area (in case you were wondering). I met so many interesting and wonderful young men and women (if i call them kids i'll be stoned). I never got much into the younger crowd, and now that I sort of have, I must say that there are some seriously amazing people two steps behind us... let's see...
Spent some time with a lovely young lass (who i met randomly and was leaving that day at 5am) and a bellhop (those things you take your luggage into hotels with). Loaded up all our baggage and pulled a Trigger Happy TV. Went sailing all around Jerusalem (best hills on Rechov Hillel and biggest obstacle course Revhov Aggripas). a blast. people snapping away at us screaming lunatics. returned it (cuz she had to catch her flight) at about 2 am (after getting another freebie steak sandwich from New Deli). yum. good sandwich. good free fun...
also met up with Rivkah Naditch (who works at this adorable American bar called Sugar Hill). went home with her and slept with her cutie cat. fab fab. i have readjusted my previous notions on the feline race. nearly straight from airport went to little cousin Faigy's lechayim. so nice. only good times...blessings and lots of love.....
In conclusion-
nothing turned out the way i had initially planned it (as life usually does that)... apartment was uninhabitable, people failed to meet expectaions, and was forced to change dwelling places frequently, hell even the weather was highly uncooperative. Still, despite all this, the trip was really great simply because I was forced to ditch my plans, what i had thought before i got there and just go with it....wherever the IT ended up.
this trip affirmed my place in the school of thought that you learn the most when you least expect it, the damp cold-toes experiences that somehow impart a sense of warmth that you simply cannot pinpoint...
and by the way-
"you don't have a soul. you are a SOUL. you have a body."
c.s. lewis in the spirit of finding Alice in her very strange Wonderland.

from jerusalem to...

great shot, thanx kraz.

analysis of the purple haze

last night Jimmi Hendrix tribute at Barby in Tel Aviv.... brilliant finger work, riffs, and all other things guitar related. Essentially the music had nothing to do with Jimmi Hendrix but everything to do with celebrating Jimmi Hendrix's guitar... the Piamentas are seriously outer-planetary, absolutely incredible (in lack at this moment of sleep deprivation for another more enlightened term). So last night had 2am post-concert rehash resulted in an in-depth analysis of the purple haze... (which in my humble opinion has nothing to do with narcotics) interesting theory of tohu and tikun resulted from discussion on artisitc disposition and overall creativity.... here's my rundown:

Jimmi Hendrix- tohu
Bob Dylan- tikun
Pink Floyd- tohu
Led Zepplin- toss up but mostly tohu
Simon and Garfunkle- tikun
Bob Marley- tohu

interesting because music in general is a tohu force... (that's tohu not tofu). gdly energy (aka chassidus) is just overflowing in man's creative subconcious... cool cool very very cool.
will continue this possibly by per and yum cuz i am running on the negative.
shalom shalom... shalom shel sheket v'shalom shel shalvah.

the written cliche

for my poli-sci buddy.

the shrink-wrapped one...

just kidding.......

no really, i swear.

the unwritten cliche

half way across the world and i still can't escape cliches... square one has never been so boring, and so invigorating... still in the same ole cliche coffee shoppe, still sitting with the same cliche empty-eyed people, still writing with the same cliche paper and cliche pen. everyone writes in coffee shoppes, its like some trans-cultural paradigm "thou must scribble and sip". a requirement that carmel must atop carmel machiattos and "no shoes no service". still i raise my pen (cuz i am not sipping) here's to the life that is one big endless cliche in a coffee cup...

so at what point do you reconcile that even the extraordinary is ordinary? when do you finally learn that not everyone is open to living? why is it that for most part people convince themselves into believing that life is easier to comprehend when they object it? when they spend all their time resisting it? why do they think it is so much easier to live in the pretense of happiness, in the depravity that can only mimic love, joy, pain and fear?

life is in all the screw ups and in the monumental moments... that's how you know you are doing it right.... seize every mistake, every smidgen of joy, every shed of darkness and embrace it wholly with arms wide open. that's right. start over. again and again... changed and changing...

what would my life look like if i hadn't tripped up every few steps and examined the drops of blood on the gray pavement? if i hadn't reached curiously and held my sadness with scraped up palms? if i hadn't mistaken tears for rain and gotten lost in it?
break break break
until tears scourch indifferent skin, until the salt penetrates and burns. until the rivers stream down your face and purge you of your previously conceived and taught paradigms, until the sky collects the shards of inhibition and splits open, bare and open like the red sea in your heart.
until you know that what you think and what you feel is yours and yours alone... until the shards reflect your face alone...
let it be. let it happen. let the shards stand testament in the midnight sky, barred to the world as the monument of life, of living, of the vision that has pierced apathatic stubborness, and habitual unconciousness.
our life's sole purpose is to change. the path to the world is completely within the self. the road to eden is the road to comprehending the incomprehensible. and the only way to reach it is thru callused palms and hard-earned sweat, thru going into egypt and breaking free. thru taking a chance and making the biggest mistakes of your life.
but you can't teach people this. you can give life but you can't teach how to live. you can't teach people that it takes the greatest courage to live. you just can't. most of us tend to get very lost in the drone appeal, in the touristed existence... i can't get on a soap box in ben yehuda and beg people to "love, love, love" cuz its all we can ever do unconditionally, because we all may be gone in an hour and some of us will have so little to perpetuate our own eternity. to prove that we were here at all... i can't stop people and tell them to give in to their higher selves. to cross the threshold that defines living from non-living.
yes. it's easier not to be great. yes the great people are always those that live their dreams because dreams are not fantasy but the soul's and spirit's sole objective. it's easier to ignore it...its easier to give up the chance for Everything for the safety of Nothing. Because what Is, is Unreal.... because you can be afraid and unafraid, because you can comprehend both joy and sadness together, because you can love all things beautiful, tragic and trivial above all else.
life is unwritten. planned, maybe, on some alter dimensional universe, but for the most part, reality is an open book, a blank page, or more precisely in my world a suspended pen. we write the routine. we choose to fill in the habits, we dictate the schedule, we condition the conditioning.

i refuse to exist in the shadow of regret. if that makes me more susceptible to tragedy then i'll take it... i'll take it because it is the only way to know that what you are aiming for is not the habit, is not the expectancy, but the penetration of the dream itself. i'll take it because at least i am writing my own words, cliche as they may turn out to be....

skip skip skip to my loo, happy new year to you tooo