Radio America

Driving from Westborough to Connecticut scanning the radio constantly - classic rock, country, hollow-pop, rear-view-vibrating-drum-and-bass. Realizing that I don't like most of what's on the radio, and thinking about what sort of music I do like.

I like soul music, and when I say soul, I mean music that comes up out of a place so deep that the player is amazed, at wonder, and full of thanks that he was given the opportunity to be the channel for this God-stuff - music that comes up from the depths, comes down like rain, or rips you open and leaves you breathless, crying.

I like exploration music - wondering what would hey happen if we jammed a little violin over this synth track, beat-box-harmonic, fusion, fantasy, tone-poems.

Fun is also good, time to time, switching up the rhythms, tapping on the lines of connection, breaking the fourth wall, playing with the medium, goin' into a little self-ironic brainspace.

And we can't forget beauty - masterworks, craftsmanship, those echoes of eternity somehow woven into metered measures by angels come in the form of men.

So that's it - it's gotta be real, or beautiful, or groundbreaking, or playful. Otherwise, why should I tune in just to be manipulated, drained, pandered to, or marketed?

Maybe it all comes down to one thing - it's gotta be alive.

Gimme Shelter (More Jerusalem Graffiti)

Shaken Loose and Reforming

About two months ago by landlord called me up and let me know that he needed me to leave my apartment. I'm happy to say that from the first moment, thank God, I looked at it as an opportunity.

I had such a great apartment...


that it would have taken a whole lot for me to shake myself out of there; this gave me the nudge that I apparently needed.

A lot of folks have passed through the old place. It had a great location, and a lot of space for people to crash out when they needed to. When I first looked at it, more than 3 years back, the sweet old woman who owns the place told me to go up and see if it 'found grace in my eyes.' It found grace in my eyes.

But there I was, out on the tiles. I started tossing around a couple of ideas. Rent again in the neighborhood? Look into buying a place in Jerusalem? Maybe move out to Bat Ayin. Hey, yeah - maybe move out to Bat Ayin.

I gave Rav Yehoshua a call and we started throwing around ideas of how I could make my way out to Bat Ayin. Turns out there's a rule on the books that says a single person can't live in the community, but the yeshiva has a sort of exemption to that policy. Barring major effort, I'd have to find a place in the Yeshiva. Probably best that way, anyway.

Now the problem is, the normal dorm rooms aren't exactly designed for guys like me who have taken on the roles of amateur scholar, geek, and housewife and come fully loaded with things like ovens, computers, and a whole world full of books. The place I crashed in last year wasn't quite going to do it.


So we started looking at the caravans out there, thinking maybe I could fix one of them up, and move myself and all of my craziness in there.


This one just screams out "potential", no? It did for me.

We lined up a contractor, and I started taking measurements. I have a love for all things design, and I stared having fun.


We got to work.


I was really fixated on a window. The above picture is of the wall that faces the view you see two pictures back. It's one of the best views in the world...but there's no window.

So I got down to business.

Worrying about small panes, low sills, the golden ratio, structural support, opening, air, etc. etc. etc.

I ended up with this window.


And then a big hole in the wall


When it came to the final decisions, worrying about price and timing, I had to scale back the fancy plan, a bit.


Meanwhile I'm packing everything into boxes. The first wave of boxes, everything was well organized, books boxed by theme, clothes by season, etc. By the end of it, I'm packing boxes like these:



Every few days I schelp'd out another carload of boxes and stuck 'em in a room I grabbed for the purpose, all the while scheming how all of this stuff would fit.



We went over schedule a bit, and had to do work during the nine days, the period leading up to Tisha B'Av, when the first and second temples were both destroyed. During this time, we don't generally look for projects to do. Since I was going to be out on the streets, and this was not a superfluous dwelling, we had reason enough to continue. I made sure to leave a spot unpainted...


After about a month's worth of work, the caravan's starting to look good.


And I'm on the move.



We moved the last load from Jerusalem last Monday, and I've been spending the week unpacking and sorting, forming and reforming. Digging the view and the sun and the small group of great folks holding down the fort out here for the summer.

The place is starting to come together.




Right now there are three rooms - living room/kitchen, bedroom, and dumping-ground-for-everything-else-room. I'm hoping to improve on that last one.

I'm really exited about the opportunity to be out here, in God Country, investing and encountering and experiencing and, with God's help, shaking some more assumptions loose to be able to grow beyond the boundaries of my current conceptions.

Great Titles

The Book of Knowledge
The Book of Love
The Book of Time
The Book of Women
The Book of Holiness
The Book of Vows
The Book of Seeds
The Book of Service
The Book of Encounters
The Book of Purity
The Book of Damage
The Book of Aquiring
The Book of Judgement
The Book of Judges

Great titles, no?

So what do you think these are?

Jerusalem Graffiti

Seven Alphabets of Why

It's about having a vision of what should be, and mourning that reality falls so far short of the vision. Tisha B'Av is about being in love with Zion and dying that she's still, in some ways, in ruins. It's mourning the people we should be, but aren't.

I went to the funeral, today, of Michael Levin. It was terrible and heart breaking and beautiful and tragic. His unit was there with the paratrooper's red berets, eyes of battle, some in casts, many probably headed back to battle. His family was there in a strange nightmare coming off of the plane to their dead son and men in uniform commending him in a language they couldn't understand. A lot of us came out not because we knew him, but because somehow, on a deeper level, we needed to know him. We were there for him? We were there for ourselves?

A friend of his from kibbutz said that the two of them had been talking a month ago, asking why it is that the good ones, the real strong ones, always seem to be the ones who die. Michael said, "Maybe the real war is up there, and God needs 'em"

God Speed, Michael. God Speed.

Sparks of Return

Ahhh. Familiar shoes.
[Interesting world familiar. It looks like it's a cousin of 'family'. What could be more familiar than family?]

Sitting in Jerusalem, feeling not very threatened at all by the war up north. Have to keep in mind what's a-brewin' so as to keep myself praying for our soldiers and our nation. Spent last week in the States, amazed by how much coverage our tussle gets. I wonder if they know why they pay so much attention to what goes on here. They probably think it's the oil. I think that there's a collective awareness, usually subconscious, that Israel is extra-historic. It's beyond history, beyond reason. People sense that what's happening here is the most important thing that could possibly be happening; they intuitively know that this is the center of the world.

So here I am returning to writing on these pages. What drew me back? A drive to write. I haven't been writing at all. Somehow this here blank screen gives me a push of motivation. It would be better if I wrote without the drive of people seeing what I write, but I don't think I'm there right now. I need something to write on up against.

Got a call about two months back that I have to leave my apartment, and with all the strings cut loose and the options open turned around and around and decided to head on out to Bat Ayin, this time for a longer stint. I'm refurbishing an old caravan there. The whole project called out my latent love for design, and I've been rolling around loving the sketching and measuring and plotting and getting re-acquainted with a pattern language and all this for a little caravan. I may have gone overboard. It's two more weeks to moving day and today I was out there watching all of the spackling and painting and drilling and admiring the new big hole that's been knocked in the wall for the window.

I'm looking forward to being out in nature, and I'm looking forward to being ten feet from the Beit Midrash, and I'm hoping that we'll be able to put together a fire burning presence of God group of wily holy geniuses out there to set the place alight.

God Speed and Good Grace to all the readers. Stay strong.