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Sex is better than alcohol
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My secret life as a resenter
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Some causes are more equal than others...
some causes are sexier than others....much easier to hand ou leaflets to "free Palestine" than to stop the genocides in the Congo or Darfur - because those don't have an audience
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Its so comforting to read about things I already know, whether its tarantino's filmography or Dinasours or great bridges or the second world war or the human body
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Unexamined belief: My talents handicap me as much as some other people's lack of talent handicaps them. see Baudelaire's "The Albatross"
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Idea for my year 9s. A website focussed on philosemitism which tracks and celebrates philosemitic incidents past and present.
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For some old age is a descent into the trivial
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Next year the world cup comes to South Africa, and will provide a great boost both to the sex tourism industry, the hunting "industry: (the I was-brutalised-in-boarding-school-so-now-I-shoot-animals- to-convince-myself-my-dick-isn't-too-small industry), and perhaps even the mugging and hijacking industries, while also providing many mostly honest people with many memorable moments and perhaps some extra and much needed cash as well...
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Gam begil 45 lo matzati nekudat achiza, velo yadati mi uma lehiyot.
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I find Australian call centre personal to be unapologetic, but helpful. I think this is a useful way to be.
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How can I contribute? What piece of the puzzle do I have?
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The mountain of autonomy is reached therough the valley of dependence; the fertile fields of depend dance are reached via the mountain pass of autonomy
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Feeling overwhelmed? Just because you can't do everything doesn't mean you can't do something. And often some-thing, just a single thing, is more than enough. Rest now in that.
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I said “yes” and I keep on saying “yes” – ken bakodesh chaziticha...
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Sir, I’m afraid your wife has been washed out to sea.
Oh my G?d – she had the car keys with her.
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then a busy street, the veins of the city
with people rushing to and fro
are like the red and white blood cells
doing their thing in my veins
that I do not worry about
or urge to get on with their work
and perhaps the collapse of bio diversity
is like someone who has taken too many antibiotics
and killed of all the helpful flora
in their guts
I am afraid to go back to Israel until I am firmly established in the Self, because the madness in Israel, and amongst its Molsem enemies, is so pervasive, the collectivist thinking, the identification with particular identities so convincing in that context, the fear so great, that I do not believe I would add anything of value and simply become part of the problem myself – in other words I do not trust myself…I can imagine being In Israel and squandering any resources I had accumulated in fultile doomed relationships that might be destructive, instead of nurturing relationships where I live my courage rather than my evasions…
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I want to be competent and I also want to know I’m competent, for if I am competent, but don’t know it, then I continue to live out my assumption that I’m incompetent
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Teaching Jewish Studies in a high school like Emanuel, with its synthetic 'do as a I say, not as I do' ethos is enough to ruin anyone's relationship with whatever Judaism they were in relationship with. (Albeit temporary ruination)
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The filmic representations of Israelis – even by many Israeli filmmakers, often seem to me to be strangely distorted. So in the Lemon Tree, where a wife says of her defence Minister hsband, he has killed many Arabs – which seems unconsciously to be pandering to some magnetic pull towards unuanced massly held ways of representing the conflict…and projecting onto the conflict…I have often felt that pull myself, to dumb down my discourse and use terms I imagine will be familiar to the thought patterns of my audience, merely because they have heard them many times. How to become a “free man” free of all these made up dramas to please, to appease, to defy etc etc….how to shed them all like a snake shedding its old skin, a penis shedding a condom and standing erect and naked like a lingam…
7th day of Hanukah, Tashsat, 28 November 2008,
As a post holocaust Jew living in a Western democracy I am pulled between two different consciousnesses. The desire to participate fully in all the opportunities offered by the open culture around me – to participate in it and build it and contribute to it – but a voice which also says live defensively and prepare for the “inevitable” hatred which, like blinds coming down in the eyes of once friendly neighbours – will inevitably resurface, especially in times of economic hardship like the ones we are now entering. So there is a war in my soul between the optimism that calls me to contribute and become part of a broader narrative – and the pessimism which says “look to your own as a survival strategy” – of course these kinds of thoughts ignore the fact that all survival is relative and that no one, no matter what strategy they adopt – survives. The theoretical world I live in is probably very different from the world of the stony giant slav we met in the British museum, who photographed his toddler son’s struggles and misues of an interactive exhibit with stoic indifference – but even my assumptions about the gap between my mental constructs and play play universe abnnd the “real” world out there (which I assume is cruel and destructive and indifferent) is also a made up mental construct….
All I want my published books to do for me is to create a platform for me so that I might have a measure of safety and be treated with a measure of dignity…so I “must” publish because this is how “the world” (my projection??) measures one
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Show man on wire to one of my classes – what a film
Alas, no time at the moment to sort and refine, I am forced by life to prioritise. They are
a) to turn away from my morbid thoughts and to build and build and build – this must be my enduring priority and unshakeable commitment
b) to always see the opportunities in the challenges around me
c) to register for the degree
d) to create a CV as a writer in residence
e) to send more poems to Australian literary magazines…including some translations of Alterman’s.
Put all of this up under personal notes…not for posting (or reading) yet.
Irrespective of the wicked and obtuse and unconscious anti-Semitism which accuses Israelis and Jews of all kinds of imaginary crimes – the standard ploy of anti-Semites gearing up for a pogram – first you delegitimize the Jews by making them faceless, and by lovingly dwelling on their imaginary crimes, by their unnatural ability to control and influence,…once you’ve built up the enemy in your mind then you go in and pillage and destroy and rape and murder..stealing whatever jews have created and build up by their hard work and initiative and enterprise ….and delighting in a mad orgy of killing and bloodletting, like the British soldiers who described their killing of Zulu people as “pig sticking….”
irrespective of this I must decry the mindset which characterises the Israeli right, and Jewish fascist movements such as kach, because they are as blind and unconscious as anything that gets thrown at us. The biggest threat to the democratic state of Israel is this mindset, who calls those who think otherwise “traitors” that stifles all debate, that calls for a them and us identity, which splits so the bad is always outside of us…yet all of this reactivity cannot be fought by taking a relative position and becoming one more pole of the debate….fighting reactivity with unconscious reactivity…how can it work…as Nisarghadaatta says,…I disapprove of the entire universe, not just a leapord skin.” so while I’d like to fight for so many causes, the burning priority is to understand myself and my own projections…eyze hu gibor..hakovesh et yitzro…not just his desire, but the unconscious creative processes which create a world which seems inimical to us…both the ancient Jewish texts and Nisarghadatta, return me to myself.
Knowing that human beings are thus, what actions can we take on a daily basis…the burden of useless knowledge…for one cannot live defensively 24 hours a day…the desire to relax and celebrate is too strong…better to love openly and die quickly than survive behind concrete walls…or is it??? This is the fears that haunt me.
In five years time
writer in residence or teaching Hebrew or head of informal education at a large congregation
Have published two more volumes of poetry
financially independent
live in a sustainable house somewhere and have created a documentary of its making
boys are happy and excel in some particular domain.
“I handle the Jew as a symbol of the tragic experience of man existentially. I try to see the Jew as a universal man. Every man is a Jew though he may not know it.”
Out of love I leave these musings behind – or at least set them aside for the moment – to create a safe house for my children – and their friends – and my friends…
