Thursday, June 30, 2005

Cowboys and Indians

I dated someone in Israel.

He's a new oleh. In other words, an American ex-patriot.

19 and a child. Free with his emotions, beleiveing what he want

He be chasing his indians one day, and it won't be fun and games anymore

He'll have an M-4, bullets. Will his idealism stay, telling him this is the way the world hurts.

He's my friend, and I can't heal the battle wounds to be. I can't prevent scars, I can't stop the light in his eyes from going out every once in a while.

Although I disagree with him, who says I want war to change him? Who says it is good to watch death and suffering? Of the enemy, of his friends. I can't protect him in the end from how those lines will be crossed.

Yet I have to try and maintain that connection so his soul has a place to be soothed.

Even from far away.

posted by In the Lee of the Wind @ 5:43 PM 0 comments

Innocence

How do I stay innocent in this world?

I'm being drugged with information.

Should I know what I know? About sex, drugs, and alcohol. Or if not that, continue the process of gaining information?

It keeps me high, and crashes me low, becuase the only way to find out is through experience.

Innocence. Who even has it anymore?

I don't know so much about typical items, but as time goes on I can't protect my head.

Yet innocence is what we strive for.

and I can't keep mine.

posted by In the Lee of the Wind @ 5:06 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

The Signs on the Wall

Right now I am finishing up a year of learning in Israel.

Probably the most maturing thing was walking the streets. Midrasha isn't real, it is too idealized, the streets are.

I wish i had a camera to take photos of the roads and alleyways that litter Jerusalem.

Whereever I go, no matter how far I travel, the graffiti stared at you the most.

It's political, or anti-politics. Written up in bright colors, it explains the world around you.

Why is there MJ decorating Emek Refaim? Who put up the I heart wall in town? What is the meaning of che? Maybe we're more tired of the world around us than me thought.

The of course there is the explicit. Those that memoralize rabin, hitnatkut. Politics scream from the wall. The need for change cries at you.

I suppose people here feel more, ad there souls have been touched. The walls must absorab all that extra energy. But it is exhuasting to be on the streets. To empathise so much with the paint, the chalk upon the board.

At home, people were never this explicit. The politics never painted my streets. Violence and ownership did.

Who owns this land? Becuase the walls are fair to everyone here. Everyone's voices clouds your mind with their sound.

It leaves me perenally careful. Careful that one day, the walls will need to hold my song too. My sign upon the walls.

posted by In the Lee of the Wind @ 5:18 PM 0 comments

Thursday, June 23, 2005

A Time to Grow

I'm taking time away.

Until tuesday night.

I have things to do. With friends.

The boy from last night's essay, well I was drizzling tears as I wrote that. So I wrote to him via email, that right now I want to go travel the milky way on my own. Maybe I wll come back later. Right now, it hurts to much to comment on that comet with him.

I hope he doesn't mind. I hope he realizes how much it stings my already swollen and bruised back to tell him that I need to say "Peace unto your house" for now.

I wonder if I can stay strong to say that to him, for as I have also said, no matter what, he is a pillar of marble for me to lean on.

posted by In the Lee of the Wind @ 6:31 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Song of Songs

A pile of fragrant cedar wood encircles me.

That heap will be saturated with oils, oils of nard, myrrh, spice, cinnamon, aloe, saffron, and frankincense. It is studded with briar roses, dripping with perfume.

I am tied to a stake in the center with the vines of our groves, molded to a beam of cypress, A crown of henna marks me as one your daughters of Jerusalem. It will all be lit aflame soon. Burning with my desire.

I was meant to labor beside you, to dine on rasin-cakes, pomegranates, grapes, apples, wheat, and honey and to drink the finest wine.

I recall your eyes on me, full of light, with the image of me covered in jewels that make the weapons of God's army.

I smell incense rising. The fire has been lit by the dart we both shot. Leaves from my garden lick my feet.

Do you ever relive our first kiss? Headier than wine, you held my body close to yours, becuase I could no longer stay poised. You tried to carry across the snowdrifts that night, with your hands of gold. I wouldn't let you of course.

Red, yellow, and orange caress my face. Your essence fills the air, lashing out against me.

Through the blaze I see your shadow. Townsmen, friends, guards-why does he waver? Why one moment unavailable, the next minute my friend, and the third, an echo of the mandrakes you gave. You attribute the last to your manliness, further stoking the fires. What do you actually feel deep inside?

Like vines of thorns, perfumed fire is eating me alive.

And yet, if there was a real stake, a real gun, you would be the one to untie me, to keep me alive. Why?

In the end, that is why all the water from our springs instead banks this fire.

Save me. Please save me. Even if I never see you or speak to you again, at least it means I am not emblazed by you anymore. I need to become the gazelle you attribute to me and you the stag.

Help. For I am being burned alive in a hill of spices.

posted by In the Lee of the Wind @ 7:50 PM 0 comments

Blastocyte

One thing I am glad about with this open diary, is between the spaces, curves, and lines that make up these letters, words, and sentences, I have a world to become myself. I can think what I want to think. And here, it can burst forward like a sprout from a seed. Here I can voice secret thoughts and dreams, and limn my true image.

It means I need to illunimate the world I see, the people in it.

What if they want to see this? To behold in my illustrations?

Then how truthful can I be? Through my nom de guerre, I am free to effect. Through my name, my vitality is diminished into a box created by others.

Should I let people who are all tangled in the spider's web of social connections read this, and thereby diminish myself?

On the other hand do I actually have a voice if no one reads this? Part of the point is to touch others. I cannot do that if this remains a solitary voice that no one heeds.

What to do?

posted by In the Lee of the Wind @ 6:54 PM 0 comments

Leaves

I was told to write this blog by a friend of mine. He said it would ease my weary soul, plus improve my lackluster writing skills. While I know writing in general will help focus my thoughts, will it help me pick up the scattered leaves that is my life?

To be fair, I may not be picking up those scattered leaves, but chasing after them in the wind. The leaves of my politics, my friends, my inner being, all swirling in the wind like multi-colored foliage on a blustery day. Who am I? If I gather a bouquet of vermilion, apricot, and saffron blades, and pepper it with fall blooms, will I know?

Maybe I will find out here...

posted by In the Lee of the Wind @ 5:57 AM 0 comments