#32

Milim Yafot K’eleh

Zeh lo omer she’ani lo af pa’am
zeh rak achshav az techakeh
ve’az avo k’sheya’avor haza’am
va’az ech’zor – k’sheyitbaher.

Zeh lo omer she’ani lo choshevet
aleicha bechol yom, kol sha’ah
adain ein shalvah ve’ein et hasheket
ki bechol makom olah muli d’mutcha.

Gam im kasheh li lehagid
milim yafot me’eleh
gam im lo matzati derech lehagid, shelcha
ted’a lach’shov she’rak otcha ani ohevet
ted’a balev ani tamid itcha
ted’a ani tamid tamid itcha.

Zeh lo omer she’kach ve’ein acheret
zo rak sufah beyom cholef
ve’az tir’eh ech k’shetizrach hashemesh
ashuv eleicha min hageshem hashotef.

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Beautiful Words from This

This does not mean that I never;
This is only now, so wait.
And then I will come when the anger has passed
And then I will return when it has cleared.

This does not mean that I never though
About you ever day, every hour.
Even so, there is no calm and there is no quiet
Because everywhere I am confronted with your tears.

And even if it is hard for me to find beautiful words from this,
And even if I did not find a road through which I come to you
You know now that you are the only one I love
You know in your heart that I will always be yours
You know that I am always, always yours.

This does not mean that it is this way and not another
Only that it is only a temporary ending.
And then you will see how the sun will shine
I will stay with you through the rain that washes clean.

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Perfect. Very perfect, it is agreed. But perfect in what way? I’ve actually been almost timid to post this song anywhere because I’m not sure why it’s perfect, nor how. It could be many things, to be sure. I’m not sure that it’s wise to allow myself to…or encourage myself to but…I should hope and never give up…giving up is for the weak of heart, and my god i’m not weak…fragile sometimes and in some ways but i’m not weak.

I dream. Did you know that? Sometimes dreams can be so prophetic and meaningful the power of the vision, I want to say, is stunning and leaves you with the breath of awe hanging on your lips. I’ve been having a few lately…usually they come to me in rapid-fire bursts for a very very short period of time….a couple days or so and then they’re gone for months or, more likely, years. Lately though…and by lately I mean within the past 5-6 or so months…i’ve been getting them about once every 1.5-2 months in very very short spurts. The messages are always the same, always the same though said in different ways, emphasized in different ways. Is this my path? Is this my duty in life, the road I am to walk?

I dream. I remember. Zachar means to actively remember. Not to think about once in a while, to keep it in your heart at all times, and if you ever lose sight of it to remember it at first chance. I dream. I remember. I feel. I know where I’m going. Just have to hold on to it….just have to actively remember and not let it go.

My dream was simple one. To the most casual of observers there would definately be the air of “you’re just looking for things that aren’t there” about the entire thing. But they wouldn’t know that the dream mirrors my life and the things that’ve led up to where I am as a person…nor the exactness and the crispness. Nor would they know of the stigma and the emotional emphasis on the dream….emotional emphasis you never ever feel in waking life except for the few moments in the morning as you wake but quickly fade. The meaning is there. The value was there. The message is there, I can feel it.

I was roving about….wandering around until I reached out and grasped the idea to grab on to the military….and I was enlisted and stationed on a naval base on a port. I carried out my function and felt a bit of worth in actually being the warrior I always knew I was capable of being but largely I was still empty. I could see and feel that nothing I was doing was really worth all that much….that anyone could do it and that if I disappeared someone would pick up my slack without any problems. There was just no worth in it. My admiration for being a warrior and that life was perhaps misguided. After some time I was pushed together with a girl…I didn’t know who she was or what she was doing there, but we were pushed together by my duties and by hers. Our relationship kicked off very nicely and it progressed from one where I pressured her to one where I let her mother me along, in a strange sort of way. I took queues from her and emulated and felt like a better person for it….and it started impacting the rest of my work and duties on the military platform. However there was always a huge threat looming over everything, though for a time i didn’t think it was going to happen. War. Tensions were high between us and the other country….even though I didn’t know the other country very well, I knew they’d hit the base and everything i was working for if it ever came to punches. I tried to avoid the war, but in the end it was too big for someone as small as me to single-handedly avert. It came. It came when we were out at sea….we got a radio that the base was torpedo’d and bombed and it was starting to slip into the sea….and that we had orders to regroup and form elsewhere. As soon as I caught wind of the radio, our cruiser was hit as well and it tilted and shook. I’m assuming a torpedo of some sort did it. My first thoughts were of the girl and no matter where I looked I couldn’t find her. Eventually i found her in my quarters, even though that was one of the last places I thought to look. I grabbed canteens, about 8 a piece of them (I had a stash for some reason), my medical kit and I told her to be ready to swim….we wouldn’t have time to get in the life boats as the place was already beginning to tilt and go under.

We made it to the deck in the nick of time; the ship was about to slip under the seas in a tilt rapidly approaching 90 degrees. I pointed that I thought i saw land in the distance and I pointed…about 50 degrees to the left of the sun. We both said we’d make for it…not knowing exactly where we were in the scheme of things meant that this was our best chance for survival. After that it gets fuzzy….We got seperated somehow…I don’t know what happened, the ship lurched and I don’t know what happened to her, but I hit a corner of one of the ships structures and then I went down with the battleship. Have you ever been under the water when something very very large is sinking rapidly directly beneath you? Let me tell you….it pulls you down with an intense force….and I was dragged down very very far with this catastrophe, but I wasn’t willing to just give up and die….I swam and kicked and pushed with all my strength….and just when i felt my lungs were about the burst….I surfaced. The kiss of the air on my lungs was one of the sweet

est feelings I’ve ever had. But I wasn’t out of it….I couldn’t see the land anymore….so I looked at the sun….then started to swim in the direction of the that I thought i saw it in. Now I need to tell you about something in my past. The last time I’ve done serious swimming my chest froze up and my heart felt like it was going to burst about halfway across a lake perhaps a mile wide…I don’t know what it was….but then my arms felt like they were going to give out and my legs were weak as well. Maybe it’s simply because I was out of shape. Maybe it’s something more serious….maybe the coldness of the water shocked my system and my body couldn’t keep my heat up….but I felt like there was a strong chance I’d drown. Indeed, I was having trouble keeping my head above water….serious trouble. I told my friend I was swimming with to go slower because something was wrong….and he said he could swim me there if necessary, which i refused, and we eventually made it across. By the time we reached the other side my body was shaking moderately and i couldn’t stop….and I’ve never felt so weak in my entire life. I couldn’t even WALK correctly for a while there. And as i was swimming around from the sinkage of the cruiser….it started to happen again. I kept going and kept going though, I couldn’t let myself fail. My arms began to give out, just like before and I started to not be able to keep my head up….I would have to kick as powerful as I could (my legs were the only part of my body not to fail) and twist my body just so (somewhat like how a mermaid swims in movies) to push up take a deep breath and then hold it to keep going. Then someone yelled to me that the water was shallow enough to stand over here. It was the girl. I made it to her and sure enough…it was. I let the water prop me up and my legs and body shook as I weathered the effects of the fairly severe exhaustion (or whatever it was). I told her my dilemma and she understood; I had told her about my swim with Bob before. She told me if needed she’d carry me there; I knew she was a strong swimmer who spent a lot of time in the water, almost daily because she loved doing it…though I still didn’t want to weight her down. A storm was coming, though….and quickly. A fast violent thunderstorm, it seemed, was on it’s way. We needed to go….and what’s more is that we could see the land from here. So we made for it lest the waves dominate us and pull us under to our deaths. My problem kicked in almost immediately……she realized it and though I said if she had to, to just leave me behind, to take care of herself because she was better equipped to move on and to survive than I was, she swam underneath me and had me hold on to her shoulders and kick as much as i could (and I did try to, though I don’t think very effectively) and it taxed her. We passed over a reef….and a shark started to circle and come in close…I recognized it though I’m not sure she did….and I jabbed it with my foot as hard as I could to scare it off (sharks don’t like lively prey….they’re ‘wimps’ per se, picking on the slow, the young, the old, the sick, etc. They don’ tlike prey that might fight back….and sharp jabs seem to remind them of dolphins instinctively…dolphins will gang up on a shark preying on one of their own by jabbing them as hard as they can with their bodies over and over until the shark dies from the blows.) It was scary but I needed to for both of us…we were an ungainly shape and our swimming was slow and unnatural, like a sick fish or sea lion and it was going to attack…i just knew it would…I had to act for both of us and I did. It connected and the shark skittered off…surprised that it’s sick and weak prey could hit it with force. We got out from over the reef and the waves started to roll and bob us up and down like a fishing lure. She was starting to get tired….and we started slipping under and then bobbing up on top. I let go and tried to support her myself but it didn’t really work….but then somehow were were walking-depth and we just walked to the shore….and fell down on it in exhaustion. I realized the island was small…without any trees, too, so no food….and thus no water…I got the canteens, opened them, propped them in the sand so they’d fill with water around me and then capped them when full. It doesn’t seem like that’s a lot of work….but at the time it REALLY was.

We woke up the next day and looked around, saw another island….were semi rested and we had water to slake our thirst. We decided we had to swim for it before hunger started to sap strength….this island was MUCH closer….and it was no problem for either of us. It had trees…and upon getting there….we noticed that it also was quite large. After some exploring we found water, a cliffside of sorts and wild pigs and birds and snakes and bugs. All in all the island was about 5 by 1. No people on it, but it had life; we were going to survive. The water flowing was from a natural well of some sort and it was pure and good to drink, if iron-ey. I set to work as best i could. She didn’t have much experience with living from the land and even though i’ve never DONE it, I knew HOW to on some levels…like how to make bows, how to make fire from bows, how to make fire-hardened stick-spears and to some extent technique on killing wild pigs…not to mention how to build shelters. And we lived. It was hard at first…very hard even, but we had each other and all the resources to survive and we did. We eventually got pretty intimate and sex was had and kisses were shared and it actually became a pretty nice situation. Despite the situation. It was more…pracitical and real, more worthwhile, more down to earth. Yeah, making clothing out of only large leaves is a bitch, but it’s rewarding and and of itself…hey, I made a skirt out of big thick leaves….I made this shelter, I’ve irrigated this river…..I speared this boar and we ate it. It’s all pretty rewarding. She eventually got pregnant, too. Giving birth w/o medical equipment or even that much knowledge was interesting. There was a lot of talk of where to do it…in the water? we had a mineral lake of sorts….and then he’d be clean. But what about bull sharks? You’d see them sometimes and they can survive in salt AND fresh water….and they’d be attracted by the blood….we wouldn’t necessarily be able to mvoe quick enough. We decided to just do it on the banks and wash off the baby with a carved cup with the water so he wasn’t so bloody. And it worked out fine. We talked, too, about him growing up in the situation….and how things were going to work out…we were thinking about it and talking and I remember looking in her eyes and seeing the sparkle in them as she held our child…and then I woke up.

Twas very powerful. I’ve left some parts out, and a great many of the details with the ship, the base, and then living on the island…it wasn’t like it was skimmed over, at least it didn’t seem to be that much…I remember how I made the grass skirt….I remember how I irrigated the land so we could grow more coconuts….i remembered penning the pigs in a rather large pen so hunting them wasn’t as difficult. I remember carving and making bows and failing over and over until I got the right wood, the right cut, the right tension, everything. It was all there. Vivid and strong and meaningful on levels other than the obvious.

So w

hat does it mean? Rarely are dreams obvious….it could mean a great many things, I won’t assume that it means exactly what it says, though it might. It could simple mean getting back to the roots of life and to the parts of me that are most truly me…to get back to who I am, to get back to the very conciousness that makes me me. It doesn’t necessarily mean living off the land, per se, at all. Just doing what needs to be done. Not living superfluously and not screwing around. It could mean other things, too. But I won’t get into that. As I said before, I’m not sure I should allow myself to hope, though I guess, in the end, that’s what I’ll do. So my response is simple…simple and obvious.

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Midabrim B’sheket

Daber elai milim p’shutot k’mo shehayinu pa’am
kshe’od katavta michtavim shel ahavah
k’mo shehayita mechabek nish’ar iti velo bore’ach
hayita ba mevi li perach

Daber elai milim p’shutot k’mo shehayinu pa’am
kshe’od hayita mistakel alai
nir’demet letzidchah k’mo shehayita do’eg
im tamid ehyeh shelchah

Pa’am hayinu medabrim me’at
hayinu medabrim besheket, medabrim leat
hayita mistakel li ba’einaim k’shedibarti itcha

Daber elai milim p’shutot k’mo shehayinu pa’am
kshe’od hayita mistakel alai
nir’demet letzidchah k’mo shehayita do’eg
im tamid ehyeh shelchah

Pa’am hayinu medabrim me’at
hayinu medabrim besheket, medabrim leat
hayita mistakel li ba’einaim k’shedibarti itcha

Techabek oti chazak ve’al tar’peh
yamim kashim ovrim
ani nofelet mehakoved al k’tefai
ani nofelet mehakoved al k’tefai

Pa’am hayinu medabrim me’at
hayinu medabrim besheket, medabrim leat
hayita mistakel li ba’einaim k’shedibarti itcha

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Talking Quietly

Talk to me in simple words as we were once
when you still wrote me love letters
as you’d embrace me, stayed with me, and didn’t run away
you’d come and bring me a flower

Talk to me in simple words as we were once
when you still gazed at me
as I was sleeping by your side as though you’d worry
whether I would always be yours

There was a time when we talked a little
talked silently, talked slowly
you looked into my eyes when I talked to you

Talk to me in simple words as we were once
when you still gazed at me
as I was sleeping by your side as though you’d worry
whether I would always be yours

There was a time when we talked a little
talked silently, talked slowly
you looked into my eyes when I talked to you

Hug me strongly and don’t let go
hard days are passing
I fall from the weight on my shoulders
I fall from the weight on my shoulders

There was a time when we talked a little
talked silently, talked slowly
you looked into my eyes when I talked to you