Turning Purim Upside Down

Since I entered my sixtieth year, I have grown more in touch with the many maps of this body of mine. I picture a circulatory system, busy highways of red and blue. Main arteries are flowing smoothly, reads the traffic report. I will them to stay untangled, patent, as in the prayer. I map onto this body the bone structure, firm but with just enough bounce. Backbone is a flexing, giving multiplicity, never rigid. I map the kabbalah spheres, a Calder mobile of balancing forces, always rejuggling their weights, balancing big picture with detail, firmness with give, determination with acceptance, as above, so below, as in head's theory, so in body's practice. The first sixty years, I thought all of those were just schematic cartoons, the skeleton a Hallowe'en costume and the circulatory system a transparency in a children's book. I am ready to become transparent to myself, picture a food I eat becoming part of me. I wash the Purim masquerade off my face, put away the mask and the costume. And here I am, me: a persona, another mask paper- macheed out of old newspapers, memories, beliefs about what I should decide to be. Keep washing off the masks, the mappings. This world of our lives is a Purim, a masquerade, a cloak over the circulation of real essences. Main arteries are flowing smoothly. I will them to stay untangled, patent, as in the prayer.

You Answer Them with.....Spring

Driving to the Sea of Galilee today in sunshine, after the rains we have all been hoping for, we passed hills and fields of green green green, a flourishing Eretz Yisrael of wildflowers. And on the way home, as the sun was beginning to set, each flower glowed its own luminous red miracle. Or equation. Or chancy wierd random chaotic serendipitous splash. Or blossoming expression of an angel's gentle, "Grow! Grow!". Or evolutionarily adapted pigmentation sample refined by generations of victorious bee-attracting championship, let the fittest flower survive to reproduce into dazzling fields of sunlit delight. A field of pretty flowers proves each person's point of view: "And here is an example of evolution at its finest". Or, "proof exquisite of a divine designer". Or, "fractal geometry blossoms again". "Just look at this field of wildflowers. They prove my point."

And the flowers just smile wisely, knowing beyond knowing.

Or, more clearly, not needing to know.

The Geometry of Irises

Your sensuous symmetry!

The outrageous miracle of one huge purple black iris amongst the grasses would be aweinspiring, would bring hikers from afar to gaze at you. But cloned, you pop up here! here! and there's one over there! Look! I see a clump of them, over further!

Each wild iris is a work of delicate and flouncy imagination, a designer's flight of fancy, a spilling of the palette, a living breathing Mandelbrot equation flowering into purple mystery. And to spot them here and there in the fields is a delight to the irises of my eye.

Irises from Afar

Click on this photo to glimpse up close the feel of spotting wild irises amongst the grasses and wildflowers. Each one is its own treasure.

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Click on this and you'll see a whole bouquet of pictures. Also click on the iris closeup and examine its geometry up close. Israel this week is only wildflowers. The headlines should read:
Rubyred Anemones in the Galil! Wild Irises in Netanya! Come to Yad Mordecai, the poppies are blooming. Ask me. I'll write the real newspapers.

Central Coherence

A concept I learned at yesterday's Speech and Language conference resonates glorious clanging symbols with a delightful visit in the midst of the conference. Yes, my dear and deep friends Molly Ann and Henry (scroll through older posts and olderer posts here on the blog, and you'll see two stories and pictures of these treasurefriends of mine) came all the way to the luxurious hotel where the conference took place, just to sit cozily in the lovely hotel lobby's easy chairs, and visit ...........me! Their very presence lent continuity to my self-image. The Nomi they were visiting is the Nomi of Hamilton and of childhood and of wonder and of enthusiasm and of creative, trusting youth. I am a lucky "Oleh", newcomer to Israel. I am connected to wonderful family, even happened upon a grandnephew of my Zaidie on the train. (This often happens. This time it was Yoav, Zaidie's brother Shimon's grandson, Yossi Wolbromski's redheaded son). I am connected in ancient mythic ways with this land, and also in recent historic ways with cousins of Mommy, grandchildren of Daddy's father's halfbrothers (yes, two new Enkin babies were recently born in Israel). And still, there is a disconnect, as people meet me at almost-sixty, with a Canadian accent and too much please and thankyou, not enough directness, not enough hot pepper. They see me now, and have no child to connect me to, no continuity. Thank goodness for Molly Ann and Henry, who know who I can be, and who I will be, who believe in me and remind me, over and over again, that deep down and entirely, I believe in myself.