hodayot [thanksgivings] for today

7:10
My Body, my Partner, my God
I give thanks to our pregnancies and deliveries long ago...
I give thanks that you are a female body!
I give thanks that you helped us to survive my prolonged death-wish
so as to s

I'm grate-full for the 7 hours with Tomer,
including their pits (the experience with his torture-movie)
and their peaks (the talk about his desire for challenges)

I'm grate-full that the first rain of this year came down,
exactly when we began our journey from Bet Nehemia
to the birth at Neve Eitan!

Finetuning to my Present

Yesterday night, when we were all alone at Bet Nehemya,
Tomer asked me many question about the Nazis and the holocaust,
and this after I had read in "Tears of the Ancestors" all the way from Arad to him.
He had no patience for my attempt to inform him,
that , how and why the "Nazis" were not some kind of cult, as he had believed,
but the form of government and governance between 1933 and 1945.
What really occupies him, became visible in a sentence he said hesitantly:
"If I would have gone through that time, - life today would be more meaningful!"

At one time he agreed to let the self-timer of the camera take an idyllic photo of us.
After 3 attempts he mentioned "retro",
and though I'd never paid attention to this word awarely,
I suddenly knew what he meant and also that I have it on the camera.
So we made a "retro" photo.
Later he referred to this:
"The reason I like "retro" is, that it reminds me of the times,
when there was still something to do in the world,
not like today when kids watch TV, smoke, drink alcohol, take drugs,
because there is nothing else to do.
I only wish, that I won't win a million dollars,
because if I would, I would give in to the temptation and take them
and then would forever "sit in my fanaan".

"My parents are in a good situation, they have everything,
sometimes I wished to be a poor guy in a poor neighborhood,
or I would live in the seventies with a fatally sick mother to take care of."

"But then there is also a contradiction:
being at Bne-Arazim should be a challenge, but I'm also supposed to suffer there"

"But I heard, that you said:
all the pupils in your former school "Broshim" should undergo "Bne-Arazim".
But obviously that doesn't mean, that there IS something challenging
which would give you satisfaction when you cope with it , right?"

"Yes".

But he couldn't conceptualize what this something was.

Or : I was eating Immanuel's delicious soup, probably made of dla'at, pumpkin,
and tried to tell him, why I hated everything connected to pumpkin,
until I came in contact with Middle Eastern salty recipees.
For there in the village to which we were evacuated between 1944 and 1946,
we were leased a small spot of land,
where we grew pumkins, as the only fruit (fruit not vegetable!) available.
Tomer didn't let me finish my story:
"You yearned to eat something other than dla'at,
but if a child in a concentration camp would have seen you,
he would have been longing to have a piece of dla't,
and I - I long for a specific "punk" - skirt...."

I told him the story about Rami Harouvi [told on April 8]
and he totally identified with it:
"people keep telling me,
that I have great abilities, great powers,
but they do not give me a challenge,
on which I can test those."

He said all these things in a much clearer phrasing.

But most of these talks became accentuated after the following experience.
He asked: "Do you want us to see a movie?"
"If you have one which you know would be relevant for me, then yes."
A pity, that I didn't inquire myself - for it turned out,
that at the same time the program "Polygraph" was on Channel 2.
It would have been an opportunity to teach him my perspective of Reality Shows
in general, and of the "Polygraph" in particular.
But since nothing, but absolutely nothing happens by chance,
it was me who had to be taught something, something terrible.

The movie "Hostel" had been saved by Tomer,
probably without the knowledge of his father,
and during the manouvers of skipping parts, which I protested against too much (disgusting sex scenes right in the beginning , for instance),
he realized, that the movie was also shown "live" on channel "yes 3"
- at the same time!
"but why on earth should I see this!" I said ever so often - exasperated.
He even told me beforehand that the point was,
that those 3 American backpackers were viciously manouvered into a hostel
at Bratislava in Slowakia "one of the darkest places in Europe", explained Tomer,
where at some time they would be exposed and forced to sado-masochistic tortures.
The only reason I didn't stop the "show" earlier, was my wish to understand,
a) why Tomer was attracted to what was even more horrid
than his life-long attraction to horror-movies
b) why he wanted me to see it
("just bear with it a little longer" , he pleaded, "give it a chance"),
though he exactly foresaw how repugnant it would be for me.
When I could bear it no longer and demanded that he stop the movie
("I've seen it many times"....)
he saw me utterly shattered, so shattered, that after a while he got up,
walked to the kitchen, opened the fridge and said:
"elohim yishmor, ezae naezeq asiti!"
"May God guard! what damage have I done!"
"God will not guard, neither you nor me", I said bitterly,

"if I could do like others and blame you for being attracted to the dark,
it would be easy.
But as you know, I always ask myself:
why did I create this scene in my drama?
What has this yearning for "rigushim" , "excitement" of the worst kind,
to do with me?
Can't you see the connection with the holocaust and the Nazis?"

"It's only a movie!"

"But if people want those kinds of movies, like you do,
they really yearn for those kinds of excitements,
because nothing else in life excites them any more.
The enormous uproar caused in our State
after those 3 drownings of 4 year old kids
- what hypocrisy is it!
for part of the same people will then go back to their thrillers,
which always deal with murder, or even to torture-movies like you do.
And the very same people - WE - will in the fitting circumstances do
what the Nazis have done.
Seeing God in your Eyes
[we had dedicated much time to this song, - see October 11!
and also much of the phone-talk with Yahel, his former music-teacher at "Broshim",
which Tomer initiated in order to make contact between Yahel and me,
was about that song)
does mean also this:
Feeling "lust", when we torture others.

How can I cope with this?

"It is absolutely stupefying what I attract into my drama through you!
We have chosen each other beyond life,
because we each believed that we can learn through the other.
And I've always seen you as my greatest teacher.
But time and again - after having been wounded by arrows from all directions
and found a way to heal and also to guard myself-
you find a new corner from which to shoot an arrow towards me.

"Nobody like you can make me feel powerless like that:
I so often feel , that I fail with you, that I've learnt nothing and know nothing,
that I don't understand anything, that I am powerless. And now this!
I cannot deal with "EVIL",
I've tried
(he doesn't know, of course, about all my attempts
to come to grips with the Godchannel info about the 2 kinds of evil
"Lucifer&Ahriman" on the one hand,
which are the results of "Spirit's" denials
and therefore can and must be redeemed,
and "Asuras", which cannot be redeemed and only want to sink into oblivion,
but which can only happen,
if I'm so whole, that there will be no gap, which attracts them. )

Tomer tried his best to soothe me.
"Let's see this and this funny movie!"
or "Let's have ice-cream!"

"No! I'm too devastated. I don't want to escape my feelings now!"

Then he played the piano, the few pieces which he -partly - still knows by heart.
After the first one, he said: "biqoret!", meaning: give me feedback.
"You play nicely and I do appreciate, that you try to balance what happened."

It not only soothed me, both the music and his endeavor,
it also inspired me with one, though a tiny, answer to my predicament.
"Even if you say, that you don't know why you wanted me to see this
[the simple explanation, that he wanted to shock me, is not valid in this case],
you want to convey me a message, this much is clear to me.
Perhaps you want me to see this dark side of you, so I won't be illusioned.
We had such good hours together,
especially with the song: "I saw God the other day",
and with your teacher-friend Yahel,
you could conceal from me, what is so revolting and repugnant to me.
But you didn't want me to be ignorant of this side in you.
I appreciate this, but I don't know what to do with it.
You keep talking about the Nazis and the holocaust,
it is clear to me, that you were around then, though I don't know on which side.
Just about everything today brought up associations in you to that.
I simply don't know, how to deal with this."

I don't remember, at what point I could relate to him "normally".
He said: "Tomorrow morning - do not bring this up again!"
"Of course, I'll put it aside. But I won't forget it. I have to cope with it."
He wanted me to sit with him on the veranda for the last of his 5 daily cigarettes.
It was there and then that he voiced his deep frustration with life.
"me-va'asim ha-hayim ha-elae".

I told him, that yes, the lack of lasting excitement and full-fill-ment
is the deepest reason not only for addictions, but also for violence.

"And the saddest thing is, that the very problem is still hidden from the eyes,
the eyes of philosophers, psychologists, artists, educators etc.
My deepest quest, at least since the age of 16, was,
what is it that will give a person satisfaction?
That's how I called it for many decades: "satisfaction".
Now I call it "lasting excitement and full-fill-ment",
[2013-01-08- Nowadays I call it "Zest-full-ness and Full-Fill-ment"!]
and I no longer trust, that it can come from "satisfying work",
as I believed for so long"

He said:
"Oh how I wished, that the time would be now,
that all the promised Messiahs, all the Gods etc. would combine
and cause something big to happen, to change,
and then some God would also tell me what I should do."

"That's exactly what no God will tell you.
You have that line in "I saw God the other Day", haven't you?"

"Yes".

"We were created with Free Will. "God" isn't interested in marionettes!"

I told him about the metaphor of the 3 groups of people who wait for a train to come

"And I belong to the third group, those who MAKE the train come,
and I hope, you'll belong to it too,
exactly by focusing on your frustration
and voicing this frustration:
perhaps you make this your most immediate challenge:
by something you write or act or play or sing ,
anything which will make your surroundings aware of what you suffer,
because this is what everyone else suffers from too!"

He ridiculed these examples a bit and backed off:

"I shall not give you any more examples.
I'll just repeat:
Since you are so aware and so outspoken on
what I call: the main "Condition for Heaven-on-Earth",
- excitement and full-fill-ment -
make the search for it your challenge,
which will match your abilities and your greatness!"