Here I am
You know where it started when you turn your head and look back.
Monday, January 18, 2016
Thursday, January 7, 2016
No way back
Drawing a big empty square is the start,
And inside, windows
that with their curtains,
Tied back by pink
bows, look like half closed eyes.
One smaller rectangle in the middle,
For the door,
partly open, to let the air in.
Then a steep triangle set above,
Colored, mostly
inside the lines, crimson red.
The chimney, in the corner, still spits out
A swirling thin thread of gray puff.
Now the curving path that leads to the gate
With a slightly leaning back white picket fence.
I push the gate, how can I refuse to accept
Its open invitation, the white cat wraps
Around my legs, a silky scarf,
I give the swing a gentle push,
And get lost in the well-known squeak.
Some dead leaves crunch,
I am so close, so close to the open door,
I put my hand on the latch, and the door shuts tight,
How easy it was to be fooled,
To believe that there was ever a way back.
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Variations on the home theme
Homecoming
Low stone fence and
behind it
A small patch of
yellowing grass,
Some tired plants in
ceramic pots
Tree we planted when the
girls were young,
Is now looming over the
yard.
Crushed granite walkway
still
Leads to a wide entrance
of
Red brick, and a door
that
No longer wears our names.
I put my ear to the door
and listen,
Echoes of laughter
dispersing, spraying,
Ringing, bright and jingly.
Small feet tapping up and
down the stairs,
A delightful jumble of
kids and toys,
Barking dogs and sleepy
cats,
Perfect harmony of
banging doors and
Slamming windows, is it still there?
I knock and hold my
breath.
The hand marks of
strangers
Everywhere I look,
Do I know this place that
seems
The same, yet so altered
My eyes swim around,
Looking for a familiar
spot,
An anchor, to secure myself
to,
In these alien walls that
Once I called home.
Thursday, November 26, 2015
Going Back
Back
“And we, spectators always, everywhere,
looking at, never out of, everything!
It fills us. We arrange it. It collapses.
We re-arrange it, and collapse ourselves. “Rilke
looking at, never out of, everything!
It fills us. We arrange it. It collapses.
We re-arrange it, and collapse ourselves. “Rilke
We are leaving at the end of a summer that is no different than the twenty
that preceded it. When the decision to leave to the U.S takes shape and becomes
an action, it appears, to my husband and me, as if it was there all along. We
notice how the urgent need to go is consuming us, and everything around us. Our
earth toned brick house, at the edge of the Judean desert overlooking the
Dead-Sea, two cars, two cats, many friends and countless memories, are all left
behind. “Maybe only for a short time, a break, that’s all,” we tell ourselves,
and others, who nod, their eyes shifting, avoiding our faces, and the truth.
Following the footsteps
of others, an ongoing theme in many of mankind sagas, is always uplifting, even
if somewhat clichéd. Yet there is nothing of a banality in the way we
experience our journey. From the congested northeast, my husband’s former home,
we drive west to find a chosen place to spend the winter, or perhaps our life.
For several weeks, we follow the sun’s slow journey across the sky, and the
unending plains. The vastness of the land, until that moment only stories in books
about the big, wild west, becomes a vivid reality.
The lines in the maps we study
every evening turn, by morning, into fields and small towns that intrigue our
imagination. Every sign declares the date, in which a town was established, and how many people live
there, and we read them as chapters in a fascinating story. Is that the one?
Should we stop here? One night we stop in a
small town, in South Dakota, with a population of seven hundred people, in the
local diner we hear all about the school that was destroyed by fire, and the
new one being build. Could we live here, we wonder.
With the passing weeks and the changing sights we acquire a new sense of
assurance, a sense that we have lost touch with for a long time, and discover again. Almost like the
feeling that you have when you are young, that when true love will appear you
will be able to recognize it.
“The first wagon road to cross the Rocky
Mountains to the Inland of the Pacific Northwest,” I recite the words from the
travel guide one late afternoon when we reach the outlook on the Fourth of July
pass in the Rocky Mountains. The scene is as breathtaking as is the history of
the pass itself. I can picture the line of wagons stopping briefly on the
summit, exactly where we are standing taking in the view of the valley below,
lovingly hugging the sparkling lake. The beauty of the landscape goes straight
into my heart. From here the road, highway 90, zigzags down the mountain
roughly following the path built by U.S. Army Captain John Mullan in the spring
of 1859.
Northern Idaho is ‘it,’
we decide and for awhile embrace the differences between what was left behind,
and our new reality. We settle in an A frame next to the lake and change, while
at times hard to take, is exhilarating. In this profoundly religious part of
the world we are a novelty, those people from the ‘holy land’. Whatever the
reasons are and we don’t delve into them, the acceptance, and lack of cynicism
are like warm soothing dressings.
And then like any
fairy tale the story ends and reality takes hold. When we board the plane to go ‘back east’ we
promise ourselves (yet again) that we will be back. We still believe in it
while flying over the massive jagged rock formation, topped now with white caps
of fresh snow. It will be here, we believe, when we will come back like the
timeless nomads that we are crossing mountain passes into green valleys,
circling our wagons at the summit prepared for whatever comes our way.
***
I often wondered, and still
do, how things could have developed had we stayed in this small corner of
heavenly beauty and tranquility,
immersing our ‘lost and cynical souls’ in the deep set beliefs of those
around us. I will never know.
Less than two years we stayed in a house nesteled
against the backdrop of the mountains, and then we left and resumed our
journey that landed us in our current location in Maine.
This November we took another, quicker trip west.
When the mountains, higher then I remembered them, settled inside the car
windows I knew that they will follow us as loyal guardians all the way through
the passes, and then along the steep descend down to the valley ending at the
shores of the lake. I recognized the dense foliage that turns into a blur of
greens, and the sense of anticipation, or perhaps just the thin air that yanked
the breath off my lungs.
The Continental divide, Lookout and the Fourth of
July Passes, Lake Coeur d’Alene, I was back, like I promised myself twelve
years prior when we left, fourteen years since that day, so much like this one,
when these mountain views were the first sign that our journey reached its
destination.
The car climbed up the road, the trees, and
the mountain passes, same but entirely different. And I looked outside trying
to commence the feelings that generated the stories that for years we told
ourselves and others explaining our choice to stay, and then to leave. But I could
not, the magical moments did not happen again. The mountains were just
mountains, and the lake not different than hundreds I have seen since. I remained cold inside, distant, uncaring.
Maybe it is true that you cannot go back to the same place again, maybe the
passing time is not a reflection of what was, but a mirror showing you what you
want to see.
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