Posts tagged "journal":

Journal

Yesterday, New Years Eve we had a meal with/for the Moldovan workers building our house addition. Lots of meat, which D ordered from a Palestinian restaurant in Ramle since we never touch the stuff + tabouleh and other local salads. The building contractor brought the booze - a bottle of scotch and wines. They seemed to appreciate the occasion and tomorrow they have the day off. Moldovans are mainly Orthodox, but they don't seem to mind celebrating both dates.

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.

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!"

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.

Shavuot holiday

It's the Shavuot Jewish holiday today, so an excuse for a family meal.

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.

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.

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°.

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.

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.

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)

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.

Journal

We watched the film "Only the Animals" (Seules les Bêtes) directed by Dominik Moll. Wikipedia has a good article about without too many spoilers. I agree with what most of the critics say about it; I would also give it about 4 stars. It could be categorized as a black comedy; but it's many things. Not a feel-good film; all of the characters are suffering badly - all of them want something they can't get and therefore end up hurting each other.

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.

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.

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.

Journal

For several months, at all times of the day and night, there have been sounds of distant shots being fired. Seems to be hunters - probably of quail. On my walks, I've never seen or met a hunter, which leads me to imagine that these are deeply personal men, hiding somewhere in the undergrowth, unseen, vigilant, harboring a passion for killing things that keeps them up even through the summer night.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.