Noah's Diary- 19th Day of Realization
Second Page
"Water
in the Wilderness" |
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Next morning, 2003_12_17; 9:00 AM; completed:
2003_12_18; 13:15
The following account will now be sculpted a
third time.
Yesterday I did a version in Hebrew, and earlier this morning a different
one in English.
I worked so intensely for 80 minutes that I forgot to click "save"
now and then.
Suddenly the electricity in the entire house collapsed and my work
was gone.
"Why are you doing this to me!" I blamed.
"Am I not supposed to sculpt this or are
people not supposed to read this?"
"On the contrary", came
the answer inside,
"you just now reached the proper
perspective:
the deeper meaning of your encounter with your water in your cave.
Now, in being forced to sculpt the experience all over again,
you may do this from this higher perspective all the way through."
I used the muteness of the computer to grasp towel and bathing-suit
and jog down to the
local pool.
Water again.
Most of that Sunday I had worked to improve on the
curtains,
which were supposed to protect my cave not only against the wind.
I tightened them all around, in the naive hope, that they would now
ward off the water.
Water was seeping along the round edges of the rock
gathering in tiny channels and holes in the ceiling
and dripping on the two carpeted mattresses below.
On the carpets I spread a nylon sheet
and under the stronger drippings I placed two plastic bowls,
one mainly used for cleaning the dishes,
the other intended for kneading bread.
Content with my cleverness I crept up to my Sodom bed
(this is the Hebrew expression
for the metaphorical Procrustes Bed),
[the famous Sodom
is located at the Dead Sea
further south...]
and finally fell asleep.
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Little did I take into account,
that Water could overwhelm me not only from above
but would undermine me from below.
Water - the element of the Emotions.
At 3 o'clock lightening and thunder woke
me up roughly.
I would have jumped into sitting,
were it not for the fear of hitting my head against the low
ceiling.
And then~~~~~~~
it started to pour.
~~~~~~And then
I heard a gentle sound, sweet and pleasant, just above and
behind my head.
I raised my head a little to grasp the flashlight and - uttered
a scream:
a tiny waterfall was merrily tracing its path through the
northern part of the rock
and came right down on where my head had lain.
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A later photo doesn't show the stream,
"only" the puddle.
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While lighting the kerosine
lamp, I tried to think frantically what to do.
I lifted half of the small iso-mat (for a real mattress there
is no room)
together with all its load
and folded it over the other half. |
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"All the load" - two blankets to pad the iso-mat, and a
blanket to cover with.
Inside my favorite, worn-out flannel sheet , a precious gift from
Abdul-Aziz,
one of the homeless Bedouins,
whom I trained to
become owners of a mobile hosting enterprise in Sinai,
That very day I had folded it in half and sown the two halfs together
so they would fit my Sodom-Bed.
And on top of all this - the little cushion.
The cushion, yes, and the grey light blanket,
with which I had covered the carved-out "shelf" on the little
slope,
with which the back of the cave ends!
When I flew to AUschwitz with "Lufthansa",
I found cushion and blanket on my seat.
I knew I would need them at Noah's Shore,
though I didn't know then, that they were meant for a cave.
I made Lufthansa "contribute" them to my peace project...
Kneeling on the lower step, still helpless and in
shock,
I realized, how that blanket and the slope underneath came alive with
water,
part of the slope even collapsed into the puddle where my bed had
been.
I hurriedly saved my Bible and some other books from
the shelf
and placed them above my pipi-bowl.
To the left of the puddle
the "shelf" and muddied Lufthansa carpet,
to its right part of a desert-carpet and my pipi-bowl for
the night
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Later there was time
to watch the beauty of the whirling water on my cave bed
For a moment I was scared.
Everyone who had visited me so far, had asked:
"Aren't you afraid, that the rock might
crush you?"
And more fear let me ask:
"Did I do wrong to the rock by digging underneath it,
just as I did wrong, when I dug
that pond around that spring in 1999?"
But the Voice told me, that the cave under the rock was meant to serve
as my abode,
and that the Water above me, beside me, around me , beneath me was
meant to be ~~~
a sign of the kind of redemption for which I am endeavoring so much,
the redemption of "the Mother",
of God's and humans' emotional aspect.
Cautiously I glided down to inspect the mess on the veranda.
Except for the drawer made of reeds in the corner,
everything was soaked in muddy water,
which came not only down the "staircase",
but - in tinier streams - also from the sides,
mocking all my wonderful curtain protection.
I pulled half of the carpeted mattresses
over the other half,
fumbled in the drawer to find the thin nylon-cape,
which my friend
Barbara in Germany had given me for the AUschwitz Retreat,
and looked for Micha's wondrous lawn-cutting digging tool.
But, alas, I had worked on carving out more steps to the road
above,
just the last hour before the dark, and left it somewhere
on the slope,
knowing that I would need to continue the work before sunrise.
With the now calmed-down rain dripping on my cape-covered
back,
the flashlight in my mouth,
and with only a small garden "digging spoon"
I cut out a little canal from the steps to my bed to the edge
of the cave ground,
where it falls off in a short steep slope towards the lower
rocks, towards the Sea.
I enjoyed watching, how the water - instead of deepening the
mud under the mattresses -
started to gather in the canal ,
which - in time - became about 150 cm long, 10 cm wide and
13-15 cm deep.
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When nothing more could be done, I took of
the muddied cape,
retrieved dry clothes from the drawer,
exchanged them for the wet and dirty ones,
with great effort, for I had no dry place to stand on,
and had the naive thought, that I could get some sleep after
all.
When I had unfolded my "bed" over the mud and crept
under the blanket,
grateful for finding the place underneath still dry,
my WATER laughed a big laugh
and the thundering, lightning and raining started all over
again,
except with more force than before.
I repeated all the former steps,
but when nothing could be done to save anything,
I had the guts to reach for the little basket with the most
vital utensils,
which I had placed safely on a rocky protrusion
and grasped my digital camera to catch the puddle, where before
was my bed.
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While trying to find the right angle,
a new sound of thunder reached my ear:
the waters had reached Noah's Waterfall
and the roar with which they fell into the abyss
was stronger than the roar of the Dead Sea,
when southern winds rush up from the Sea
and whip the waves dangerously against the shore.
Since that night the wind and the rain came from the north,
I couldn't hear the Sea at all, so loud was the waterfall.
This is the riverbed next to my cave,
but the water
which falls down on the mountain side of the road, is now
channeled
underneath the road
to the parallel canyon
as seen below,
some 20 m further north.
I could inspect both
only in the morning,
and again
- the camera does not convey
the steepness of the canyons
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I crept down , out of the cave,
to the northern abyss,
though I knew, I wouldn't be able to see anything.
It was pitch dark
and anyway, the canalisation pipes,
led to a canyon
beyond the one next to my cave.
"But I can record
it!"
I said to myself.
I climbed back
to reach for the digital recorder in my basket.
"Silly me! Why haven't I inserted
the new rechargable AAA batteries!"
a recent gift from Uri, my son-in-love.
I had charged the batteries alright in town, but - they
were empty.
I laughed at myself:
"HOw crazy you are:
you kneel in the mud in Noah's flood
and try to record sights and sounds
with digital devices!"
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While waiting for the yearned-for dawn,
I tried to figure out, what to do now.
Whom was I supposed to ask for help?
In other words: whom was my predicament supposed to involve in
the project?
During the first three years in my
mobile home, I learnt the hard way,
that whenever some device (water, electricity, gas, driving system)
broke down,
and I needed help,
it happened mainly,
because the available helper needed to come in contact with a
dreamer,
so as to be reminded of his own dreams.
It was Monday, and Shim'on, Tamir's father, was supposed to install
the solar system.
I had dreaded this day, knowing how complicated this work would
be.
Now I would need to cancel his coming altogether.
Since I needed to get warm,
and since it was too early to call anyone,
I climbed up the steps, which were carved out already,
only to find what I had feared - that part of them had collapsed.
I passed those by
in order to get to digging those that were missing altogether..
If I couldn't complete this work somehow,
there was no chance to get all my heavily mudded stuff
up to the border sculptures.
There was no glorious sun bursting through the greyness
on that morning.
My cave looked miserable.
Why didn't the stones, heaped on its back, ward off the water?
I tightened my pocket around my waist,
with the camera and the still charged mobile phone,
and worked for more than an hour,
until I dared to call people.
First I called Saleh in the Fieldschool and asked,
if there still was a washing-machine
like there was
at our time there in 1999,
and if he could fetch me.
A washing-machine for all that mud!
What a stupid idea in the first place!
Saleh had visited the cave
on Friday,
not knowing, that because of my "detour" via the
Galilee
I would be back a day later,
and had left a box with delicious Halwa for me
in the middle of the cave,
- what a feat!
But this morning he could not help me.
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This was good, because it forced me to go back to my first
intuition,
which was to call Rabbi
Ohad of the "Makom" Community in Metzoqee.
Since I didn't want to push this potential partner,
I would not have called him for any other reason.
As I had guessed, he was just about to come down from Metzoqee
to drive his kids to the school at Mitzpe-Shalem.
"Can you help me?
Could you help me bring up all the stuff and wash it at your
place?"
Until he came, after some 25 minutes, a much more practical
idea had ripened.
I climbed up - without steps - and met him near the border
sculptures.
"Aren't you going to Jerusalem
this afternoon to give your lesson in Kabbalah?"
I feared he would say, yes, but I have things to do there
already in the morning.
But he didn't say that.
And after some organizing we fixed that I would wait here
with all my stuff, at 14:15.
Before parting, he told me:
"They caught Sadaam Hussein!"
He described, how they photographed the doctor picking out
lice from the dictator's hair.
"It is a shock for the whole Arab
world,
which means - more feelings of inferiority."
He had taken the words out of my brain:
"Yes", I said with
distress, "still more humiliation
for them,
which is so terribly harmful for us.
Why couldn't he have killed himself at least?"
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We parted and I looked at the step-less upper part of my
slope.
No chance for me to climb down the slippery stones and earth!
I decided to take it easy and walked all the way down the
asphalted road
and back on the dust road along the shore, a matter of 50
minutes.
When I called Shim'on to cancel his visit and work, he said,
that the radio had announced, the road was closed.
And , indeed, I hardly saw a local car, and then the police!
"Are you alright , madam?"
"Perfectly alright!"
"Do you live around here?"
I made a mute gesture with my head into some direction.
Luckily they didn't investigate further.
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11:40
I took
a break in sculpting, to cook and eat my special porridge,
and connected to the Internet to send some urgent e-mails.
There I received this photo, taken by Yanina in our AUschwitz
room.
Inserting it here, is meant to compensate for the fact,
that there was no one to document
my
wrestling with the "Water
in the Wilderness".
The bump on my head - "Cain's Sign",
which- contrary to people's belief - means,
that
nobody will be able to kill Cain,
was afflicted when I bent down through the car
door to kiss Barbara good-bye,
Barbara whose cape had protected me while I burrowed
the canal in the cave. |
I immensely enjoyed walking down the
eerily quiet road,
passing by the collapsed stones which often blocked the road,
remembering my tunes to the Biblical prophecies of the desert becoming
water ponds
[see and hear on the pages "Water
in the Wilderness" - Overview
"Desert Water Vision"]
photographing the sculptures which indicate the Israeli
border, through a puddle,
and rejoicing in the still streaming waterfall of
the Yishai (Jesse) desert river.
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