Posts tagged "journal":

Journal

Journal

This June has been one of the rainiest on record (they said since 1957). One day during the week we had thundershowers intermittently for most of the day, combined with temperatures that were quite cool for this tiem of year.

On Friday I took advantage of a trip of Dorit to Modi'in, to come along and then catch a train to Tel Aviv, where I spent a couple of hours walking around and taking pictures. I visited the Carmel Market, where I used to buy the weekly groceries for the yoga centre when I first came to Tel Aviv. The market has changed a lot - it seems that nowadays it's more lucrative to sell bags, clothes and jewelry than vegetables and fruit.

On the trip I at first didn't find many good photos, and a couple of the ones that were good I decided not to publish. Later, when I reviewed them again, I found things that I liked. Sometimes, cropping an image produced something nice.

I am gradually working out what I consider to be an invasion of privacy. The dry legalities are clear: it's fine to publish photos of persons in public places as long as there is no profit motive. But, in a world where cameras are ubiquitous, sometimes it still feels wrong to be yet another character there to threaten someone's privacy. It does not give a good feeling.

But actually, the technique I am using makes it unlikely that I would ever come into confrontation with anyone. I'm only half-aware of the subjects that I am photographing, myself, and usually am not directly looking at them, so it's as if the camera has a mind of its own, and only later do I discover what it has captured. Also, with the camera slung around my neck, I look like the archetypal tourist - the perfect alibi. Finally, I am not publishing the results in any mainstream social media.

Open gallery full size

Fixing a leak

Around lunchtime, Regina called from the village office to ask if I'd tried to do anything about that leak that she'd told me about a week or two ago. "It shows 20 cubic meters for yesterday", she said "haval - that'll cost you a lot of money!"

The meters are connected to the water company's computers through the internet and Regina gets an alert if somebody's meter is reporting a leak.

Well, I did look around the last time she called but couldn't find anything. I had thought it was maybe a one-time thing.

But 20 cubic meters of water - and who knows how much previously, sounds like we are going to receive a phenomenal water bill!

I started my detective work first by pruning all the bushes that were preventing me from viewing the water meter, and then indeed, I saw the little cog wheel inside whizzing around like crazy, indicating a heavy flow, while all the taps were closed.

I circumambulated the property several times, turning off faucets here and there, but could discover nothing. So I decided to call the plumber - yes, he could come tomorrow morning. Fine. He suggested in the meantime I close off the water except when we need it.

Then, trying one more time to turn off one of the outdoor faucets leading into the house, it snapped completely. It was all rusty. Huge flow of water. I had to turn off everything immediately, further down the line.

Broken tap

Next thing was to go and buy some parts, which I did. Came home. Decided it was easier to make an emergency temporary repair that would provide water to half of the house. Did that.

But then something else happened. I saw a patch of muddy ground. Along where a plastic pipe runs underground parallel to the patio. Started to dig. Yes! The plastic pipe was cracked. That was a comparatively easy fix, though by now it was evening.

I cleared up, then showered my muddy self. Unfortunately it was a cold shower because I'd forgotten to open the hot water pipe. But it still felt great.

So tomorrow Samir, the plumber, will come and fix the broken tap and maybe some other rusty pipes.

Samir's a great guy, from the Palestinian part of Jerusalem. He lists himself as Samir Ezra, which at first I didn't understand - because Samir is an Arab name, while Ezra is a Jewish name.

But the Ezra in the name is for Ezra Nawi, the Jewish plumber he was partnered with. Nawi, besides being a plumber, was one of Israel's best known peace activists and human rights defenders, a colourful, wonderfully controversial character. There's a ream of information on Wikipedia, that reads like a chronicle of this country's human rights movement, with people like Uri Avneri, Amira Hass, Noam Chomsky, David Shulman all crossing paths with or intervening on behalf of Ezra Nawi at some point.

Even the front runner for the Irish presidency had to drop out of the race as a result of an intervention on behalf of Ezra Nawi.

Samir partnered with Ezra in the plumbing business, but unlike Ezra, who was known to charge exorbitant fees in order to fund his peace work, Samir's prices are very reasonable. Last time he came, he asked me to pay whatever I like - but I hadn't a clue what it ought to be. It took about 20 minutes for him to make up his mind, while squinting and scratching his head.

Afternoon in Tel Aviv

It's raining hard, though no water is coming out of the taps due to some problem with the water supply. Rain at the end of May is unusual it unusual in itself in these parts, except at the end of a khamsin, the weather phenomenon we had yesterday, with grey skies and 33° C heat.

The warm weather didn't stop me from joining D on her trip to Tel Aviv - she had to be there for an afternoon meeting in Tel Aviv but I just hung out at the beach, taking some photos (see more of them here), then settling down to sip beer, eat pita and hummus and read my e-book.

While doing so I had a curious encounter with a writer, who was walking along the sea front hawking his books. I don't think I've ever met an author selling his wares in the street, but I guess these are hard times. He had had one of them translated into English, so I purchased a copy.

In the tradition of Richard Bach and Paulo Coelho, The Book of Arkovia offers a timeless message of hope and inspiration. A modern philosophical classic, the Arkovian journey and its unique characters teach us the importance of self-image, unity, and the pursuit of true freedom in the face of oppression."

The ISKCON (Hare Krishna folks) are still around in Tel Aviv. Back in the 1970s they used be at 35 Hayarkon St, while our yoga centre was at number 45. Occasionally we would join them for an Indian meal.

The dancers put up a brave front, but the musical and vocal accompaniment was a bit raucous today; maybe they had been going at it for several hours already. None of those sweet gentle bhajans produced and popularized by George Harrison back in the day.

Scooters, auto-rikshaws, cycles, bikes, skate-boards - you never know what will come flying at you.

Cat burglers in plain sight.

Shavuot holiday

Jerusalem

Sometimes I aspire to the kind of life lived by Sri Aurobindo, in his later years, or Ramana Maharshi, in his earlier years, i.e. mostly in seclusion and never venturing out into the world. Perhaps I'd just go on long solitary walks, read, or spend time in meditation. I'm invariably cheerful in my own company.

In the morning I took advantage of the cool weather to do some basic yardwork - weed-whopping, hedge trimming, lawn mowing and path blowing, all with various parts of the Stihl Combi, a kind of Swiss army knife for gardening.

Afterwards, D had volunteered to attend a hearing at the supreme court involving the village, so I agreed to join her. It was an interesting experience, but ultimately the whole affair made me feel unhappy, and I wish I'd stayed at home.

Meanwhile the capital was busy with the stupid nationalistic March of Flags - from the bit that I saw of it, it looked like groups of indoctrinated school kids, bussed in from various settlements.

In the afternoon I took a nap. D went to visit neighbours and I made myself a meal of rice, tofu and tomato sauce, seasoned with moringa powder, shoyu and Tabasco, washed down with Israeli Gold Star beer.

I read a bit more of Mondiano's Cafe de la Jeunesse Perdue - I love the atmosphere of his novels.

I didn't listen to any music today! Maybe that's why I feel sub-optimal.

Afternoon walk

On my afternoon walk today I wore for the first time a pair of multifocal glasses that I just had made and picked up today. As anyone who has such lenses will be able to attest, the initial experience is a bit disconcerting, so walking out with them for the first time across uneven ground gave me a slightly drunk and giddy feeling. In addition, I was trying out some of my camera's special colour effects and filters, so it was a special kind of walk.

Further along, I came across a lovely stand of wild fennel, with its wonderful golden yellow colour.

Machsoum

I brought the Palestinian workers from the "machsoum" (army checkpost) in the morning at 6:15 as Tuesdays is the day I volunteer for that. They go back in the mid-afternoon but one of them, Issa, stayed behind to do a bit of side-work, gardening for my daughter, and I took him back at 6:15 in the evening, exactly 12 hours later. And that on a day that the temperature got up to 36°.

Actually community gardening was my job for a few year's, when I was Issa's age. In the summer I would start at dawn, take a long break from around 11:00 and then work again in the late afternoon. Issa said he also took a break today, so it's not as if he was working for 12 hours.

On the car journey back, I listened to an episode of Anita Anand and William Dalrympl's excellent "Empire" podcast. This one was about the Vikings. It opened with an unusual discovery, a bauble found at a Viking site in Derbyshire, UK that originated in India. Also present at the site were victims of human sacrifice, who were probably slaves. It turns out that the Vikings, besides their more well-known exploits, were involved with trade along the silk road and also traded in slaves throughout all the countries they visited.

The origin of the English word "slave" is "Slav". The Vikings were using the system of European rivers to make it as far south as Byzantium and maybe further. When it was not possible to travel consistently by river, they would haul their boats, or maybe slaves would haul their boats, from river to river.

The Anglo Saxons too kept slaves, so the Vikings weren't special in that.

One of the few surviving accounts of the customs of the Vikings comes from an Arab source - he witnessed their social life and ceremonies, and wrote about them.

Everyday, I learn something new.

A wedding in Ethiopia

On the way back home from my late afternoon walk I met a fellow community member, B, who had just returned from Addis Ababa. I invited him in to tell us the story. He, his wife and daughter had been invited to Ethiopia for the wedding of G, who, years ago, they had taken into their household when he was a young refugee newly arrived from Eritrea. He had been at the time recovering from a gunshot wound sustained while crossing into Israel from the Egyptian border. Refugees were, at the time, at the mercy of dangerous people-smugglers - I'm not sure if he had been shot at by Egyptian soldiers, the Israeli army or the smugglers.

He fully recovered and later they managed to obtain for him asylum in Canada, where he started a business in Calgary. Recently, while there, he met another Eritrean woman in Ethiopia through video-conferencing, and they arranged to be married in Addis. Family members from both sides were present and finally B and his wife got to meet the mother of G (the former refugee). He said that it was a moving reunion for everyone, and a happy turn of events. G's family background turned out to be quite different from what B and his wife had imagined. He said they were warm, friendly, caring and intelligent, and they felt quite at home among them.

Independence Day Evening in Tel Aviv

Tuesday was my last day at work, so I'm now officially retired. I sat with Ira again, explaining a few more of the responsibilities and departed the office in the early afternoon.

This was also Israel's Memorial Day, which precedes its Independence Day which, because the Jewish Holidays extend from evening to evening, began at sundown. We currently have a foreign guest, so we took him to Tel Aviv to see the part celebration / part demonstration happening there, and were joined by H., first for a meal in an Italian restaurant.

It's the first time in memory that I've visited any kind of celebration for the Independence Day, and H said it was the first time for her too. It wasn't a pretty sight. Lots of children spraying foam at each other from cans that they later discarded in the streets, among other garbage left there - I guess there will be a massive clean up operation on Thursday morning.

This year the event was combined with the protest events that have been taking place for the last 3 or 4 months. Walking around Tel Aviv and joining the crowds, there were lots of opportunities to take photos, and I've already uploaded some of these.

My afternoon

In the afternoon I picked up from the local junction a Glaswegian photographer and sangha member doing a project over here (she sent the photo below from the bus stop at Latroun to make sure she was at the right one)

She joined us for lunch, while our grandchildren's TV programs blared out from different screens. Then D took her to Hares (West Bank village) - a bunch of Israelis, most of them Buddhist practitioners, went there to join Palestinians for the evening iftar meal. They do this every year. It was kind of the last moment in Ramadan, since the moon has been sighted and Eid al-Fitr will begin tomorrow. I decided not to go this time - I generally feel uncomfortable on such occasions, for some reason that I don't fully understand myself. I also didn't go for the iftar celebrations here in our village. This was one:

Instead I went for a long late afternoon walk in the woods and fields.

On my walk I continued listening to David Graeber & David Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything", which I find really interesting. A completely different look at some of the same history and pre-history covered by Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens.

(wild mustard flowers growing by side of the dirt road going down the hill)

I covered a lot of ground, both in the book and on my feet, and arrived home after dark at around 8:30, eating the leftovers from lunch time instead of the rich iftar fare: bit of salad, broccoli florets, half a pita, ball of labaneh with za'atar, and beetroot soup.

Journal

I am in the US for the last ten days. I came over because my brother was in hospital. He drove himself there just in time, in the middle of a heart attack; collapsing on the hospital floor. They gave him CPR and snapped him back, and, in the following days performed catheterization and angioplasty. However, he suffered another three cardiac arrests afterwards at the hospital, where he also needed CPR. I arrived just before they installed a device called an Implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), which is considered necessary in order resolve a problem known as arrhthmia, where the heart is not able to maintain its normal rhythms.

After this last operation, he has been all right. He was released a few days later with mainly bruises to show following the various procedures they administered. They sent him home with about 16 medicines, some of which he is supposed to take temporarily for a few days afterwards. He must change lifestyle habits that contributed to his medical emergency. The question, as always, is whether he will succeed.

In the early few days of my stay I stayed at a motel, then at an Air B&B within walking distance of the hospital. Afterwards I came to stay with my brother at his one bedroom basement apartment. We've been having long conversations. I think that a person that came so close to death but survived must have a reason to go on living. To place this in a spiritual frame, if someone almost died but has returned, there must be further karma that they need to work out in this life. My suggestion to him is that he will try to discover what more he needs, or desires, to further accomplish.

His life-long interest has been photography, and he has given me an old camera, which I have been trying to study, with the help of YouTube and other sources. It's a Fujifilm X10.

Anyway, he assures me that this is the kind of camera that I have been looking for. Despite being released several years ago, it still gets excellent reviews. People recommend it for the type of photos I like to take: nature, travel, streets, self-documentation. It's small and tough enough to take anywhere, which is basically what I want - so I'm hopeful and eager to get out with it. The camera I've been using, a Panasonic Lumix DMC ZS45, developed a problem of dust within the lens or sensor, which leaves artifacts on the photos. Fixing it will be expensive, so there is a question of whether it's worthwhile. But I never really liked the results that that camera gave me. I like mainly its size and tiltable screen. Anyway, I'm glad I'm not buying another new camera, fresh from some factory in China.

Journal

Journal

For Christmas, one of my sons gave me a new set of in-ear noise cancelling bluetooth earphones, which are very nice; great in fact - they remain comfortable after hours of use and I'm not bothered by things like the TV.

I also bought myself another set of headphones, though fortunately with a different purpose - they come as part of a sleep mask and are comfortable for nights when I want to fall asleep to music or hear it through the night. Lately I've been doing ok without them - I always sleep better in winter: the womby effect of thick blankets, probably.

Most of my music continues to be long mixes that SoundCloud chooses for me: right now it's "May Peace be Everywhere in the World" - an almost 3 hour track by Andi Rietchel. No need for mainstream first-tier musicians with me. My mainstray is Cafe de Anatolia, especially the stuff mixed by Billy Esteban.

It may be a sign of the times that we spend a lot of time piping music to our ears. I have at least 7 functioning sets of headphones by now. Perhaps it's to drown out all the negativity around us. The toxic politicians and cruel, divisive politics. There are no doubt stronger drugs that people are resorting to.

I have three social media streams now; having set up Hubzilla and Epicyon on my VPS while continuing to use Akkoma on Disroot's server. I'm making sure to follow different people on each. However, I'm not so much enjoying the experience; maybe I've just fallen in with the wrong crowd. As for my own contribution, I haven't felt much like sharing anything of late, so I don't. I think I'm more interested in social media from a technical point of view; when it comes to actually using it, I find that I don't have a great deal to do there.

I have a greater interest in creating my own corner on the web, "a digital garden", so I keep thinking about that.

Saturday

On Saturday morning I fixed a few broken items with epoxy glue, but not a pair of shoes, whose sole has become partly detached. From watching a couple of YouTube videos, it looks like it will be better to buy a specialized glue for that - one that's waterproof and flexible.

In the afternoon I met with a German group, who have been touring NGOs and civil rights groups in the country. They were very interested and asked lots of questions about the village.

In the evening I continued to watch some more video interviews with Gregory David Roberts. Some of them were filmed a few years ago - like the CNN story - he toured around Mumbai with the reporter, visiting some of the places featured in the novel - including the Colaba Slum, where his character - and Roberts - had lived. He says in the interview that this particular slum, near the "World Trade Center" would soon be cleared and the residents relocated. That didn't happen, however the slum shown in the TV series based Shantaram was not filmed there on location. It was instead filmed near Bangkok, where "Shantaram’s crew rebuilt a shantytown, complete with a river running through the middle." I guess it's a lot easier to find money to create a fake slum than to re-house the residents of a real one.

Back home from Camino

We're back home from the Camino: this time the Camino Portugues. It went well, despite mishaps. The principle mishap was getting COVID about 3 days into the walk. Both I and D got it, by turn. It wasn't so significant - just fever and a cold for about 3 days - but it slowed us down. We mostly rested those days, and took private rooms, of course, rather than dorms, and wore masks everywhere.

So we didn't complete the planned 200+ kilometers, and did perhaps 160. The walking was the best part. Of the towns, we enjoyed visiting the old cities. Porto's amazing - and we spent about 3 days there - but overly touristic. Like other famous cities, it suffers badly from its popularity.

As we combined the coastal way with the traditional central route, we enjoyed both the coast and the inland areas. Inland, along the Portuguese and Spanish parts, often actually means wide river estuaries. These have been compared to the fjords of Norway.

In Porto, I was inspired by the museums, as I sometimes am. The National Museum in Porto was mostly closed for renovations, but had an amazing exhibition on Magellan - whose expedition was the first to circumnavigate the world. I had never considered the singularity of his attainments and courage - virtually discovering the Pacific Ocean (which he named) and then successfully navigating across it. His expected trans-Pacific voyage of "3 or 4 days" took 3 months and 20 days. Learning about the expanse of the oceans in comparison with the size of the land areas changed human perception of the planet. Magellan's voyage was really a leap into the unknown - more so than the voyages of Columbus, a few years earlier. I wonder if the men who sailed in those ships would have done so had they known what the voyage would entail? Of 5 ships and hundreds of men, only 18 made it around the world. The rest died of hunger, disease, in battles with indigenous peoples, or in mutinies. The men of one ship fled home earlier, escaping during the search for a passage through the straits at the bottom of Chile. Magellan himself perished in a battle in the Philippines. It was only a stroke of luck that the ship's chronicler, an Italian by the name of Antonio Pigafetta, made it home and spread the story.

We also visited the Seralves museum, which is on the outskirts of the city. There were several interesting exhibitions. A common theme, perhaps, was learning to see the world differently. This was true of the filmmakers shown, especially Manoel de Olveira - whose career spanned decades: he began making films in the silent era and continued till close to his death, at the age of 106. In the interviews, it was stated that he didn't believe in the reality of the world as most of us see it. The same idea - of learning to perceive the world in new ways - was there in all the other exhibitions, including those of Rui Chaves and Maria Antonia Leite Siza. The latter was a young artist of the '60s who died at the age of 32. The exhibition traces her drawings from the advent of her short career till close to her death. The covers of her bed, in which she enjoys to spend so much time in dreams becomes in the drawings a pupis, through which she rises like a butterfly. Agnès Varda is both a filmmaker and a photographer. In the exhibition is a work on potatoes, in which one sees this earthy vegetable transformed into an object of wonder. The images are shown in a room in which the floor is covered with actual potatoes, so that their fusty odour permeates the space.

I suppose that what art can do for us is to help us change our perception of the world, in this way. The museum is set in a beautiful park; and the park, as well as the architecture, enhances the same purpose.

For example, one of the features is a "treetop walk" that allows us to explore nature in a new way. And, back on ground level, there was a venerable chestnut tree, whose characteristic spiny fruit littered the entire surroundings like objects fallen from space. So the park, which we explored afterwards, helped to transport the inspiration gleaned from the exhibitions, outwards into nature.

Journal

New walk planned, film

It took several hours today to decide on a flight to Porto, in Portugal, in order to walk again on the Camino trail. Perhaps we will make it to Santiago on this one. Flights are expensive in this season - and increasingly immoral. But the only way to reach the European continent from this country is to fly, so it's either that or stay at home. At least when we reach our destination, our manner of vacation will be environmentally friendly. The trip is planned for September.

There was one film at the Jerusalem film festival that would not have been D or YS's cup of tea, but which I found interesting, so I saw it now: "Crimes of the Future", by David Cronenberg. The genre is somewhere between science fiction, horror and fantasy. Elegant and well acted, it is set in a future when the human body is adapting to the environmental crisis by gaining the ability to make evolutionary changes to itself. There is a political movement aiming to speed this process, while police and bureaucrats fear that humanity will mutate into a new species. At the intersection are two performance artists. One of these is growing in his scarred and mutilated belly new organs of unknown function. The couple exploit this capacity in performances of on-stage surgery where the organs are removed, while a wowed audience snaps away and films them. It's a fascinating and visually impressive movie, though sometimes difficult to watch.

2022-05-29 Solarpunk conference, "Children of Peace", diary

On Friday there was the DocAviv screening of "Children of Peace", a documentary made by Maayan Schwartz on the second generation of kids who grew up in the village. It's based on conversations with friends who grew up with Maayan. Some of them have returned to live in the village; some have made their home in different places around the world. A central theme of the film is the mixed identity that some of them feel, as people who have grown up with the narratives of both peoples and the ongoing conflict; the ways in which the conflict penetrates the village itself. It's a powerful film, I think, though it's hard to see it as someone who doesn't know the people and the village might.

After the film we went with son 2 and his partner, daughter and her friend, and a few others to sit in a café. My son and his partner have just reached a decision to try living apart for a while, so this was a bit sad for all of us. We met with an old friend B - a German theologist who decided that her home was in Israel and somehow succeeded to get residency here. She has a young daughter who she is raising as a single mom. She didn't choose an easy life but it seems to be working for them.

I don't often go to Tel Aviv, so I'm usually surprised by all the changes. The number of high-rises that are going up and continuing to proliferate; the city's vibrancy and pluralism. For a comparatively small city (less than a million), it has a very complex human landscape, from very rich to very poor, with refugees from Africa, ex-pats from around the world, artists and counter-culture types, financiers, LBGT people, vagrants, beggars and sex workers; just about everything that you would see in larger capital cities around the world. But this is just my perspective as someone living in a small village. An interesting place to visit; happier where I am.

Yesterday there was the conference [1] on Solarpunk. I learned quite a lot. There were artists and visionaries that not only seem to spend their lives dreaming about an alternative reality that they have imagined down to the smallest detail, but who are finding practical ways to transition towards it. My take-away was the size and breadth of the maker and hacker community, who are finding and sharing home-grown solutions that could help replace capitalism and dependence. There's a great resource called Appropedia [2] that shares some of these.

Also yesterday we met R, who is back from Cyprus for a couple of weeks and is planning to go again as soon as his partner gets her visa. It's good to see that they are finding a solution in a nearby country that doesn't seem too culturally and geographically remote and fits both of their needs, perhaps. R is working on ways to distribute the book that they have been working on for a few years. They see it as not just a book but a vehicle for change.

[1] Solarpunk conference links. YouTube links below have been converted to Invidious redirects (see https://redirect.invidious.io/)

Real Solarpunk Technology

YouTube: https://redirect.invidious.io/R5o2SXBlQ9A

PeerTube: https://tube.tchncs.de/w/dckMS3s8t4iQ1DRMDdBk94

Empowering Future Communities

YouTube: https://redirect.invidious.io/x-KAjLCLaEE

PeerTube: https://tube.tchncs.de/w/gtAWuNwUGVAvcLyMYkDCj6

Is Solarpunk Just Another Style?

YouTube: https://redirect.invidious.io/U20OFV-M8V0

PeerTube: https://tube.tchncs.de/w/mttsLKtY3ZprrAJN89Sng9

What’s Holding Us Back from a Better Tomorrow?

YouTube: https://redirect.invidious.io/EqQhoWbM1z0

PeerTube: https://tube.tchncs.de/w/mB5oxCG7mH5FYbuUubN1uA

[2] Appropedia: https://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia

2022-05-27 Links of the day

In the firing zone: evictions begin in West Bank villages after court ruling https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/22/firing-zone-evictions-begin-west-bank-villages-court-ruling-masafer-yatta

Earlier this month, Israel’s supreme court finally ruled in a two-decade-old legal case over the area’s fate: the land can be repurposed for military use, upholding the Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF) argument that Palestinians living here could not prove they were resident before the firing zone was established in 1981. The decision – one of the most significant on expulsions since the occupation began in 1967 – paved the way for the eviction of everyone living here.

New evidence suggests Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in targeted attack by Israeli forces - CNN

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/24/middleeast/shireen-abu-akleh-jenin-killing-investigation-cmd-intl/index.html

Adds to similar conclusions by Bellingcat, the AP.

2022-04-15 Shelf-hanging fail | links

My daughter sent a photo of the shelf I hung for her a couple of years ago, above the bed where her 6-year old sleeps. The shelf collapsed while he was sleeping, though fortunately, with his head on the opposite side of the bed. Nobody woke up. This could have been serious! Shelves should never be hung over beds.

fallen shelf

2022-04-13 A walk | the blog | browsers | Signal messenger | links

I have been feeling a need for a bit of seclusion lately. Maybe because in Israel-Palestine the holiday season with its seasonal tensions is on us again. I went for a walk in the woods and fields today and ran into a battalion of boy/girl scouts. One of them - maybe their security detail - was waiting for me as I approached, with questions about where I lived, whether I was Jewish, how relations are between Jews and Arabs there - he got mostly a stony silence from me as I marched through. Luckily I'm harmless.

Then I found a quiet spot to read Ibn Arabi and do a bit of writing. It's a lovely season and was a beautiful day; the wild chrysanthemums are blooming and the thistles are starting to flower too. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera or a phone. Blogging

I have accumulated several issues to handle in the blog, when I find time/feel like doing something about it. I already mentioned making the font sizes larger. Yesterday I found a couple more articles on static blogs, and one of these mentioned Google Lighthouse - a Chrome extension which is an even greater stickler than the tests that I have been using. It discovered a couple of things to improve. the SEO rating - where my blog suffers most - does not interest me, and could never be very high when I have included "No Index, No follow" meta, but there are a couple of other things to take care of. Regarding RSS, either I will learn to write my own, or I will depend on WP, which I have been using for archiving in any case. There may even be a way of using WP solely for RSS, with no front-end blog interface - I will have to check that.

I was looking again at Genesis in Lagrange. Because it is solely text-based, habitually lacklustre textual blogs seem even less inspiring to me when viewed in Genesis. One day I might decide to use it, but not now. Although I'm not a particularly graphic-oriented person, I do find that the likelihood of my reading a blog is somewhat influenced by appearances, and I have an unproven hunch that this is true of many people.

"My stack will outlive yours" https://blog.steren.fr/2020/my-stack-will-outlive-yours/

"My Static Blog Publishing Setup and an Apology to RSS Subscribers" https://tdarb.org/blog/my-static-blog-publishing-setup.html

2022-04-05 Hubzilla | Deezer | Gardening

I updated my hubzilla to 7.2, which was painless, except I discovered that PhpMyAdmin had stopped working. Shrug. Not sure why; hoping it will fix itself through Debian updates. I normally use it to make backups, so I had to do a backup independently.

I have cancelled my Deezer subscription, because I found that I rarely used it. Although Deezer's audio-quality is superior, I found that SoundCloud does a better job of guessing my musical tastes. Surveillance has its benefits. Here in Israel-Palestine it is impossible to take out a paid subscription to SoundCloud, though for some reason I have never encountered an ad on the service. I use it quite a lot, but hardly ever listen to music that would be regarded as mainstream, at least not in western countries. My wife subscribes to Spotify, but doesn't listen to it much.

We are having hot weather all week (around 33 C today), as a result of the phenomenon known as hamsin. But fortunately the house is still cool from the winter, so, if we don't open the windows, it's nice inside. Outside, the citrus trees are in flower, with their characteristic fragrance. Yesterday I took the brush cutter to the winter weeds, trying to avoid cyclamen and a couple of other flowers. Soon it will be snake season.

2022-02-17 - Diary - a Turkish film - links

In the morning helped D prepare for her Day of Mindfulness at the Spiritual Center. In the daytime, I was at home. My son and his daughter brought the "family cleaner" to clean up the rooms they had been living in before moving into their new house. The mother of M said originally told me that he was from New Guinea, but it turned out he was from Konakri Guinea in West Africa. He has been spending time in Israel on-and-off for years, since 1988, and is now aged 56. He belongs to the Fulani tribe - which is huge - they are spread across more than 20 countries, all across to the Red Sea. Most are Muslim. He says that in Guinea, there are no inter-communal problems, unlike, say in Nigeria. But Guinea has a history of military coups and is currently again run by the military. He is planning to return again soon, as he has been away for awhile. He has one grand daughter, whose picture graces the wallpaper of his phone. They have a house in the city and another, a few hundred kilometers away in a village. He says that he enjoys the village the most; it's very green there and the family are farmers. We talked a little about music as I like a few musicians from neighbouring Mali - Kandia Kouyaté, Salif Keita, Ali Farka Touré, and he likes these too so I played him some of the music while he worked. He says that also in Guinea they have great musicians and told me a couple of the names to check out. Meanwhile he did a really good job of cleaning. I don't know if he has a profession besides cleaning, but he is quite a smart guy.

I too have been doing a lot of cleaning lately, at the office, after the arson attack there, so it's not just dirt, but nasty black soot. Zakariya and Mahmud have meanwhile painted so there is no lingering smell from the fire. It's been a good opportunity to get rid of a whole lot of material that has accumulated over the years, and I've been putting everything else back in order. After tidying up I will check and see if the computers still work and we will also bring in someone to clean windows, doors and everything that wasn't painted.

In the afternoon I had to take Yael home, as she had overnighted with us since Friday, and fetch the grandchildren. It's been a while since I was in Jerusalem, and so got a bit mixed up with the way - OsmAnd wasn't very helpful; it couldn't find the street, only the neighborhood, and then it wanted to send me off in a completely opposite direction, or, at least a direction that was counter-intuitive, so I ignored it.

In the evening we had a birthday party for one of the grandchildren and D. My daughter gave her a gift of earrings, the stone of which comes from meteorite fragments from the Campo del Cielo site in Argentina. I read about this: it seems that it's one of the world's most important meteorite sites, from a fall that happened 4,000 - 5,000 years ago. The meteorites are the heaviest ever found, being composed mostly of iron. The age of the material is about 4,5 billion years, going back to the formation of the solar system.

2022-02-09: A prodigious amount of paper

In North African and Middle Eastern countries, Jews traditionally preserve every scrap of paper in storage places called genizot - sometimes temporarily for formal ritual burial. I first learned of this from Amitav Ghosh's book, In an Antique Land - in which he describes his research in the Cairo Genizah, which is the most famous of them all.

Yesterday evening I spent a few hours at the office clearing the shelves of old files, pamphlets, reports, booklets, books. It is a difficult job, which evokes feelings that are somewhere between book-burning and gleeful liberation.

It came to me that too much is being written. People spend their whole lives writing reams of material that few people ever actually ever read - reports, manuals, guides, position statements and whatever put out by NGOs, religious organizations, academic institutions and governments. When it comes to throwing the material out it hits you. What a waste of time, of life, of energy and the earth's resources! It makes me ask myself what I am doing here too. Perhaps at least I should put an expiry date on this stuff.

Most of my reading and writing today is digital, at least, so it won't end up in landfill.

Journal

Finishing up my time here in the US. I think I will miss the quietude of being at home alone, and will not enjoy the bustle of being in a full household again. Coronavirus cases are sky-rocketing in Israel again, so I won't want to go out even after the period of home-isolation. I think I just want to live the rest of my life in quiet places; Neve Shalom or Auroville. There isn't much on offer outside of solitude. It's true that I need to keep my body more active, so that it doesn't grow weak and inflexible, but there are solutions for that.

I'm also finishing Sapiens, which is consistantly interesting.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon with Andrew, and in the evening he spoke extensively about our parents and opened up about his grief […]

I'm coming to understand how much we are not just free actors but are also products of what we ingest. In order to be free, we need to be able to break free of our addictions. They are deadly, or deadening. Culture, too, is a word that carries more meaning that that to which we ascribe to it. My parents were terribly trapped by their culture. My mother, particularly, had all the characteristics of a person who is continually trying to escape humble origins. She had internalized Britain's caste system, grown up in poor conditions, not received a complete education, and spent the rest of her life trying to live like role models who were probably from the film world, or at least a "well-to-do" person. Yet she felt completely insecure, could never settle in a place happily. Both my parents tried to escape their origins and yet constantly harked back to them, in a kind of love-hate relationship.

In some ways, I perhaps acquired some of the same traits, in that I too feel that I don't belong in the country-mentality of the place where I live. Yet with me, it is not that I secretly long to be in a "home country" because I don't really have one. I'm pretty much my own person - no doubt a product of various conditioning, like everyone, but my national identity is cosmopolitan I don't feel that I belong to a certain nature or place of origin. My attitude is also "exclusive", since I feel critical of the mainstream secular culture from a "spiritual" point of view, and critical of religions and cults from a secular point of view. I don't really want much to do wiht the world.

Popular culture of our era is a turn-off. I tried watching another American TV series on Netflix but decided again that it was too much for me - too extreme, too disgusting, I suppose. There's a certain I don't know what about our contemporary culture. Perhaps the producers of fiction make too many assumptions about what readers or viewers will like. The best way to avoid nasty surprises is just not to consume popular culture. Yogis always advise against it anyway. This is something that I already know, so I should just internalize it.

[…]

I hear trains only at night, when it's quiet, though the railroad seems to be quite near. The terrain here is flat, so there is no sound from the nearby busy main road as such, as in Neve Shalom. But sounds there are , certainly, more as a distant rumble; sometimes of planes. Sitting outside with Andrew a coupled of nights ago, he embarked on a sort of running commentary of the varioius sounds he could hear; about 70% of which were unheard by me, yet he showed his skill in being able to identify them; the kind of engine belonging to the kind of place, etc.

[…]

Registering auditory or visual impressions in this way is not what I was referring to when I wrote that we need to bring the full physical and historical context into our awareness in order that the consciousness of the moment will achieve depth. But it is the opposite of Arjuna's "I only see the bird". I suppose it's a matter of attitude, of appreciation and empathy. Each passing train, plane, June bug or fox is also Narayanaya. We are in this cosmos together and the Lord is in each of us.