In the Raw

Ah, enough about food. How much is there to say about food? Like Margaret Atwood's Edible Woman, I have narrowed and narrowed my view of what is food, until I delight in bright, raw, unplayed with fruits and vegetables. We stayed in beautiful Netanya today, ate lunch outside in hot sun, listening to the sea. A wonderful discovery. Reframe the polarity between Nomi and an Italian restaurant, and introduce to the Benino concept: Nomi! I wrote in an email to my big sister Susie, "Our main trademark is Beno and Nomi, a couple who loves life and good food and wine and each other. Zest for life, joie de vivre, a spacious, vibrant generosity of soul. And get this, our main job right now is auditioning chefs. Beno is bringing one home tonight to cook for Hava and David Lazar and us." Susie of course commented that it's a tough job, but.....

So last night's meal was rich and wined, and I am a Very Good Sport, and all that. But today, when Beno made exquisite platters for each of us, of bright asparagus, pepper crusted tuna, artichoke hearts, wild salad greens, giant capers, baby cukes and ruby red beets, realized the great potential in a push-me-pull-you comic tension between the Benino who loves pizza and fettucini and panini and caffe corretto and port, and this Nomi character who wants a pure platter where only Mother Nature can be credited for the creativity of each component. Put the two together, and magic is in the air.

What is the opposite of wroy@?

Nature has whimsical ways. Yoni and I agree that the most auditory person we know is our uncle and great uncle Roy. How we delight in chanting the do re me's of a certain Shubert quintet with him. Adam and I are hungrily, excitedly exploring the richness to be found in contradiction, the complementarity of opposites, the paradoxicality that births creativity. "I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes". (Walt Whitman).
Our uncle wroy@, who has embodied contradiction for so many over the years, celebrates a cranky, vociferous, sincere, surprised, grateful 92 years today. In some ways, it's like turning 2, I imagine. You look around, not really getting what all the fuss is about. You live in the here and now, and other people see to your basics. The world is again a blooming confusion. But, in contradiction, at 92 I can imagine the richness of one's narrative. I imagine that life starts looking like Roy's photographs showing the startling geometries of nature, symmetries of seashell imitating spiral staircase, church spires mirrored in the chambers of an amethyst. I imagine a oneness presents itself. Wisdom with tantrums. Contradiction that inspires your children and your grandchildren and your greatgrandchild to.......to contradiction, of course. Because that is what creating is all about.
Happy Birthday uncle wroy@

2 years in the land, continued

And sometimes there's the feeling that we're the violin players on the Titanic,
oblivious,
or maybe heightened by the dangers,
our music more lavish, our pirouettes higher,
because we won't live forever.

"Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin"
And if not now,
when?

Celebrating 2 years in the land

So much growing in two years, so many passages I never believed I'd experience in this lifetime. I'm sitting right now at a bistro table at Benino, looking out to fountains and Tel Aviv's lively beaches. All dream so far, and in dreams you can create a hundred different restaurants, all starring Benino, the child coming home to a spot just steps away from his childhood home. Becoming real will mean parting with some of our food fantasies.

Two years in the land. I have sat beside my sweet Rachel, transcribed her gorgeous, incoherent last words, kissed her lifeless cheek, and discovered that an intricate relation between mother-in-law and kalla continues its mystic dance long after the shiva is over. I have held my pelephone close, waiting for a son to call that he is safe after a war, and sat at a cafe gazing at his cheeks, his eyelashes, as he and his father exchange experiences I'll never understand. And I've realized that the mother of a soldier is also serving the Israeli army. I've flown to Canada and savoured family joy over Shlomo..............................................................