Her
hell was constant... but to think
she
could have sipped the drunken drink
of
wild oats, that nemesis,
that
joyful anagnorisis.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Goerne and Eschenbach, Disney Center 4.16.12
4.16.12
You are never prepared for the transformative moments in your life. I’ve had a few. The first time I saw Mesa Verde from the top of an adjacent mountain. Watching my family praying Mincha, each in his own spot, amidst the deserted ruins of
Such was the evening I spent at the
4.16.12
You are never prepared for the transformative moments in your life. I’ve had a few. The first time I saw Mesa Verde from the top of an adjacent mountain. Watching my family praying Mincha, each in his own spot, amidst the deserted ruins of
Such was the evening I spent at the
The world slowed down; we were transported to an age of complete identity with nature, ours and God’s: indivisibly water, woods, trees, emotions, imaginary relationships, thoughts and voices, and everywhere the color green, the color of life, love, springtime, growth and ultimately the grave, when our feelings cease to fluctuate and grass covers us all.
Goerne was consumed by his role. His utterly beautiful voice soared and softened and was one with his entire body which bent like a reed, straightened and writhed in the agony of delight, love, happiness, jealousy, bitterness, anger and utter sorrow. His face followed; it did not matter that he does not look like a lovelorn youth or that his accompanist wasn’t a foolish maiden. He had me utterly under his spell.
The
At the sweet, bitter end Goerne and Eschenbach slowed to their stop, and we all waited, waited, and waited… then, finally, they woke from their trance, faced the audience and we gathered up our strength to stand and applaud and bring them back until the two old loving friends walked away for the last time.
It was a performance that was hardly performance, and I with a few others bought a CD which normally would be found at half the price on Amazon, just to commemorate an evening of awe. The two great musicians came down, sat next to each other at a little table and beatifically, gratefully, signed their names on the CD. Yet it was us, the worshippers, who were saying Thank you, Thank you, and amazed at seeing them smile. How do you recover from an experience like that?
, with the aging Christoph Eschenbach transformed by our sheer imagination to the miller’s daughter, all the while sitting with intense concentration at his piano.The world slowed down; we were transported to an age of complete identity with nature, ours and God’s: indivisibly water, woods, trees, emotions, imaginary relationships, thoughts and voices, and everywhere the color green, the color of life, love, springtime, growth and ultimately the grave, when our feelings cease to fluctuate and grass covers us all.
Goerne was consumed by his role. His utterly beautiful voice soared and softened and was one with his entire body which bent like a reed, straightened and writhed in the agony of delight, love, happiness, jealousy, bitterness, anger and utter sorrow. His face followed; it did not matter that he does not look like a lovelorn youth or that his accompanist wasn’t a foolish maiden. He had me utterly under his spell.
The
At the sweet, bitter end Goerne and Eschenbach slowed to their stop, and we all waited, waited, and waited… then, finally, they woke from their trance, faced the audience and we gathered up our strength to stand and applaud and bring them back until the two old loving friends walked away for the last time.
It was a performance that was hardly performance, and I with a few others bought a CD which normally would be found at half the price on Amazon, just to commemorate an evening of awe. The two great musicians came down, sat next to each other at a little table and beatifically, gratefully, signed their names on the CD. Yet it was us, the worshippers, who were saying Thank you, Thank you, and amazed at seeing them smile. How do you recover from an experience like that?
Sunday, January 22, 2012
This Table Has Its History
This table has its history. And when
The final meal’s over and the mourners leave
Will anyone look down and say, “Goodbye old wood,”
Or try to save it, bound by images
Year in year out, pausing before the ax?
It came into our home
Already old, the oak brown grey,
On five legs crudely carved
Half pedestal, half turned,
By some old Amish farmer’s son who’d quit
Old plainness, for a modern family of four, perhaps
Expandable to six, but we
Came, saw and bought it, then
Moved far away and kept the extra leaves;
The table had to fit into our nook,
The one we nearly lost when fancy plans
Demanded that the table go, and marble slabs
Bring house and family more up to date.
Disaster struck, the day destruction came:
Disaster trumped destruction, and I sent
The workmen packing. Fancy change
Was now on hold. A sign it was
From heaven, which had whispered Halt!
When I envisioned chopping off the past.
Now never would I jettison my table. It
Was where our family of six would eat
Each meal, and had seen our bowls
Of cereal, tomato soups and plates,
Of toast and marmalade and tuna sandwiches
And pasta piled high, or eggs and
Pungent apple juice and mugs
Of milk and cups of coffee; grapes and cheese,
And children’s place mats showing maps
Or aleph bets or scores of dinosaurs
Not to forget the views of Hershey Park
Near Amish farms. When we ate meat
This table was draped decorously
With tablecloths depicting flowers, dragons, sunsets, but
On Passover with spring time greens and blues
When all the family would peel apples
Chop chopping them on maple chopping boards.
Each passing year the children grew
And little friends would chop and they grew too;
Apples browned by cinnamon and wine
Sat heaped in bowls: out came the camera.
And every week still at the end of Shabbat we
Crowd round our table for Havdallah, when
We hold the braided candle, see ahead
Six days that stretch for workaday affairs,
Then sniff the cinnamon or lavender to sweeten them.
Out comes the camera! The weeks,
Now years, stretch way behind us into albums, years
Gone by.
Today come little granddaughters who paint,
The wooden table often daubed with blue
While baby boys crawl underneath, picking
Crumbs that fell from Grandpa’s challah board
As we these latter years are two alone
For Shabbat meals, two old lovers,
Eating on our wooden table, in simplicity.
The Amish rebel never dreamed his work
Would bind us with a non-rebellious glue
And halt us with a heart-beat
From chopping off the past.
Nor did he know his table had a mythic past:
My memory, aged four, of Sarah, my great-grandmother
We all called Bobba, in her long black skirt
And apron, standing on the old stone floor
In London where the family
Had fled from Vitebsk in the year
That Queen Victoria died. She stood,
My ancient Bobba, chopping, clopping on her board
Upon her wooden table, onions, carrots, herbs,
All tumbled into steaming soups, and then the knife –
Where is it now? – lay like a coat of arms
Across the wood, all done. Our life was rich
And full of flavor, in that kitchen long ago
But lives on in my hands
Which wield my knife upon the board
And on my wooden table with the scents
Of soups and sounds of music, children and
The chop chop chopping on the warm brown wood.
Disaster, you were welcome – you breathed life
Into what really mattered – life is good.
LRH January 22, 2012
The final meal’s over and the mourners leave
Will anyone look down and say, “Goodbye old wood,”
Or try to save it, bound by images
Year in year out, pausing before the ax?
It came into our home
Already old, the oak brown grey,
On five legs crudely carved
Half pedestal, half turned,
By some old Amish farmer’s son who’d quit
Old plainness, for a modern family of four, perhaps
Expandable to six, but we
Came, saw and bought it, then
Moved far away and kept the extra leaves;
The table had to fit into our nook,
The one we nearly lost when fancy plans
Demanded that the table go, and marble slabs
Bring house and family more up to date.
Disaster struck, the day destruction came:
Disaster trumped destruction, and I sent
The workmen packing. Fancy change
Was now on hold. A sign it was
From heaven, which had whispered Halt!
When I envisioned chopping off the past.
Now never would I jettison my table. It
Was where our family of six would eat
Each meal, and had seen our bowls
Of cereal, tomato soups and plates,
Of toast and marmalade and tuna sandwiches
And pasta piled high, or eggs and
Pungent apple juice and mugs
Of milk and cups of coffee; grapes and cheese,
And children’s place mats showing maps
Or aleph bets or scores of dinosaurs
Not to forget the views of Hershey Park
Near Amish farms. When we ate meat
This table was draped decorously
With tablecloths depicting flowers, dragons, sunsets, but
On Passover with spring time greens and blues
When all the family would peel apples
Chop chopping them on maple chopping boards.
Each passing year the children grew
And little friends would chop and they grew too;
Apples browned by cinnamon and wine
Sat heaped in bowls: out came the camera.
And every week still at the end of Shabbat we
Crowd round our table for Havdallah, when
We hold the braided candle, see ahead
Six days that stretch for workaday affairs,
Then sniff the cinnamon or lavender to sweeten them.
Out comes the camera! The weeks,
Now years, stretch way behind us into albums, years
Gone by.
Today come little granddaughters who paint,
The wooden table often daubed with blue
While baby boys crawl underneath, picking
Crumbs that fell from Grandpa’s challah board
As we these latter years are two alone
For Shabbat meals, two old lovers,
Eating on our wooden table, in simplicity.
The Amish rebel never dreamed his work
Would bind us with a non-rebellious glue
And halt us with a heart-beat
From chopping off the past.
Nor did he know his table had a mythic past:
My memory, aged four, of Sarah, my great-grandmother
We all called Bobba, in her long black skirt
And apron, standing on the old stone floor
In London where the family
Had fled from Vitebsk in the year
That Queen Victoria died. She stood,
My ancient Bobba, chopping, clopping on her board
Upon her wooden table, onions, carrots, herbs,
All tumbled into steaming soups, and then the knife –
Where is it now? – lay like a coat of arms
Across the wood, all done. Our life was rich
And full of flavor, in that kitchen long ago
But lives on in my hands
Which wield my knife upon the board
And on my wooden table with the scents
Of soups and sounds of music, children and
The chop chop chopping on the warm brown wood.
Disaster, you were welcome – you breathed life
Into what really mattered – life is good.
LRH January 22, 2012
Monday, December 12, 2011
A History of Granny Turning Eight
A History of Granny turning 8
There was a tiny granny once. Oh no,
She wasn’t yet a granny, she would grow
Into a lady, mommy, then her son
Would marry a fine woman, and for fun
Make babies, not the least of whom were two,
The only girls so far for Granny (true),
And she and Grandpa said, they are the BEST
Granddaughters in our Californian nest
And even on the East Coast, USA
Where cousin boys and uncles, aunts all stay.
December 12th the girls were born ‘03,
In Mission Viejo, to their parents’ glee,
Admired by big brother Yoav, later
By brothers Avishai, Adin. They’d cater
To the brother-crew who like all boys
Loved roller coasters, rocket ships and noise.
The girls preferred nice dresses, hairstyles, books,
Wrote poems, plays, and kept their paints in nooks
Under the stairs, a secret hideaway
Where they could make-believe and girl-things play.
Today’s their birthday, 8th, hard to believe,
A great day for the twins, Ada and Eve;
(Or Eve and Ada, many aren’t quite sure…
They are quite different but share an allure).
I wonder how their friends will cheer and sing
At school, and if their Dad will ring
The doorbell, saying “I’ve come home with presents!”
(I hope it’s a white nanny goat or pheasants
That wake those thumpy neighbors up at six,
Or maybe a magician with some tricks!)
The story of my birthday.
I was eight
And woke for school but couldn’t go. Too late!
I’d caught the measles! Great-Gran Ada said
I had to stay at home and lie in bed!
Great-Grandpa Joe said, “Now you must lie still!”
And Dr. Fry said, “Oh she’s rather ill!”
I cried a bit because they drew the drapes,
I couldn’t read, the day passed darkly. Shapes
Loomed up at me, a dragon, then a bear
But they were just the wardrobe and a chair.
My Mum came in with eggs and milk and soup
And brushed my hair into an achey loop,
But worst of all was that I had a party
And truly I had no wish to be hearty!
My little sister Susan was aged two,
And not allowed to catch my Measels flu.
So after school my friends came to the door
And I could hear them on the lower floor
Say, “Where is Linda? What… no party, NO!”
They handed over presents then would go
Back up the garden path and shut the gate;
I’m sure their parents said, “You couldn’t wait?”
“No, here’s some birthday cake her Mummy gave!
She’s locked up with the Measels in her cave!”
The funny thing was upstairs in the dark
My room was happy, like a Noah’s Ark,
With toys and toast and Tibbles, my grey cat
Who purred and made me feel better. That
Was what I loved that day, with presents piled
Upon my eiderdown. My parents smiled
Because they saw I really didn’t need
Big parties, candles, noise: I was quite freed
From what most kids miss, and Great-Grandpa came
And made up stories with a funny name,
About Georgina at the circus, who,
Had great adventures and worked in a zoo;
He told more stories every single night
Until I was allowed to see the light
And read the books my friends brought that great day
When I turned 8. That’s why I always say
8 is my favorite number, did you know?
And do you have a special number? though
Each birthday’s special and if you count 4 years,
(For 12’s your date), you’ll be Bat Mitzvah, cheers!
You’ll be young ladies then, but Grandpa, I,
Will love you always, and the time will fly.
So… Happy Birthday, Eve and Ada dear!
Enjoy each day and night and EVERY YEAR!
XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXX
And one each for luck:X+X
Granny Linda
12.12.11
There was a tiny granny once. Oh no,
She wasn’t yet a granny, she would grow
Into a lady, mommy, then her son
Would marry a fine woman, and for fun
Make babies, not the least of whom were two,
The only girls so far for Granny (true),
And she and Grandpa said, they are the BEST
Granddaughters in our Californian nest
And even on the East Coast, USA
Where cousin boys and uncles, aunts all stay.
December 12th the girls were born ‘03,
In Mission Viejo, to their parents’ glee,
Admired by big brother Yoav, later
By brothers Avishai, Adin. They’d cater
To the brother-crew who like all boys
Loved roller coasters, rocket ships and noise.
The girls preferred nice dresses, hairstyles, books,
Wrote poems, plays, and kept their paints in nooks
Under the stairs, a secret hideaway
Where they could make-believe and girl-things play.
Today’s their birthday, 8th, hard to believe,
A great day for the twins, Ada and Eve;
(Or Eve and Ada, many aren’t quite sure…
They are quite different but share an allure).
I wonder how their friends will cheer and sing
At school, and if their Dad will ring
The doorbell, saying “I’ve come home with presents!”
(I hope it’s a white nanny goat or pheasants
That wake those thumpy neighbors up at six,
Or maybe a magician with some tricks!)
The story of my birthday.
I was eight
And woke for school but couldn’t go. Too late!
I’d caught the measles! Great-Gran Ada said
I had to stay at home and lie in bed!
Great-Grandpa Joe said, “Now you must lie still!”
And Dr. Fry said, “Oh she’s rather ill!”
I cried a bit because they drew the drapes,
I couldn’t read, the day passed darkly. Shapes
Loomed up at me, a dragon, then a bear
But they were just the wardrobe and a chair.
My Mum came in with eggs and milk and soup
And brushed my hair into an achey loop,
But worst of all was that I had a party
And truly I had no wish to be hearty!
My little sister Susan was aged two,
And not allowed to catch my Measels flu.
So after school my friends came to the door
And I could hear them on the lower floor
Say, “Where is Linda? What… no party, NO!”
They handed over presents then would go
Back up the garden path and shut the gate;
I’m sure their parents said, “You couldn’t wait?”
“No, here’s some birthday cake her Mummy gave!
She’s locked up with the Measels in her cave!”
The funny thing was upstairs in the dark
My room was happy, like a Noah’s Ark,
With toys and toast and Tibbles, my grey cat
Who purred and made me feel better. That
Was what I loved that day, with presents piled
Upon my eiderdown. My parents smiled
Because they saw I really didn’t need
Big parties, candles, noise: I was quite freed
From what most kids miss, and Great-Grandpa came
And made up stories with a funny name,
About Georgina at the circus, who,
Had great adventures and worked in a zoo;
He told more stories every single night
Until I was allowed to see the light
And read the books my friends brought that great day
When I turned 8. That’s why I always say
8 is my favorite number, did you know?
And do you have a special number? though
Each birthday’s special and if you count 4 years,
(For 12’s your date), you’ll be Bat Mitzvah, cheers!
You’ll be young ladies then, but Grandpa, I,
Will love you always, and the time will fly.
So… Happy Birthday, Eve and Ada dear!
Enjoy each day and night and EVERY YEAR!
XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXX
And one each for luck:X+X
Granny Linda
12.12.11
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Dreaming of Water
As I fall asleep I dream of water,
expansive, shallow, spreading over lawns
reflecting light and sparkling. Sometimes shorter
visions wake me, deep and hellish holes
of silent waters, still, reflecting nothing,
dug into my garden: grotesque moles
have undermined my home and let the flood
create a sinkhole, but I start awake
and drown the vision with my rushing blood.
We are mainly water, flesh not solid;
we delude ourselves: our spit, our tears
are what we really are. Beneath my eyelid
those glimpses that my dreams impose, imprint
unbidden, are my thoughts in sudden visions
deciding for me to abandon prose.
LRH
m"Sh March 13 2010
expansive, shallow, spreading over lawns
reflecting light and sparkling. Sometimes shorter
visions wake me, deep and hellish holes
of silent waters, still, reflecting nothing,
dug into my garden: grotesque moles
have undermined my home and let the flood
create a sinkhole, but I start awake
and drown the vision with my rushing blood.
We are mainly water, flesh not solid;
we delude ourselves: our spit, our tears
are what we really are. Beneath my eyelid
those glimpses that my dreams impose, imprint
unbidden, are my thoughts in sudden visions
deciding for me to abandon prose.
LRH
m"Sh March 13 2010
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