I focus my experiencing and awareness on being
"a pioneer of Evolution in
learning to feel":
I let my Body vibrate and my Heart 'womb'
pain, shame, fear, boredom, powerlessness,
so feelings can >heal >guide>fulfill>evolve,
and ~~~ offer ~~~"goldmines"~~~ to us all!! "I
want you to feel everything, every little thing!"
A SUCCAH DIARY FRAGMENT[1992] Maryam, alias Christa-Rachel Bat-Adam, married Rachel
Rosenzweig, born Eva-Maria-Christa Guth
2002_07_24; last update: 2009_07_09
Glimpses into the beginnings
of the conception, birth and raising of my Desert Economy Vision
2009_07_09 : When I opened my computer in Arad this morning, the slide-show
exposed this photo, taken perhaps in 1995.
It is my Bedouin friend Hamda's daughter-in-law appearing above the crest
across the first (and so far last...) Succayah in the Zin-Wadi
From the beginning of November that year (1988),
"Manpower" could not find a job for me. I I utilized the time
to write the first draft of the vision, or the "project",
as I called it then more modestly - paying for the usage of a computer
somewhere.
At that time I did not believe, that I could realize
this project myself, so I tried to "sell" it to the "Nature
Reserves Authority", believing that they would be interested in
my first motive behind the project, the integration of Man with Nature.
Already on Dec. 12th I got an appointment with Uri Baidetz, then the
General Director of this Authority. I knew, that he appreciated me ever
since my
appearance before the board of the "Israel Land Authority"
in 1976, concerning my Bir'am Project.
..............
After that major "failure" in 1976 it
took me another 4 years of intense "Partnership
Work" to understand, that people are not able to turn adversaries
into partners as long as they do not really believe in self-determination
but continue to make themselves victims~~~
It was then - by the end of 1980 - that I decided
to retreat into my inner desert and find out, how I could work on
the root of so many maladies: self-victimization!
The Succah-Vision is - beyond its more obvious
aim of "Man's Integration with Nature" - the mature fruit
of this understanding:
the Succah is a situation,
where I and other creative people train
in becoming masters of our lives.
Though there was a real understanding on the
part of Uri Baidetz, ---the "Nature Reserves Authority" stated
later, that they had no interest in my idea, on the contrary, they were
opposed to it, since "Man is unable
to live with Nature harmoniously. Wherever Man is - Nature will be destroyed."
One good result of this meeting was, that Baidetz
sent me to Mitzpe-Ramon, and it was 3 days later, that I first made
the aquaintance of the Negev-Heights, and its little desert-town - so
far from any town or settlement.
It would fill many pages to tell the many things
that I learnt during those first 20 hours at Mitzpe-Ramon~~~
I understood, why Baidetz had sent me to
this town: exactly that week an affair had exploded which was to teach
me a lesson: a ranger, Motti Shamir, had lived a lonely year at the
Nature Reserve of the
Lotz Cisterns, until more and more people of the hippie kind found
out about the place, lived with him at his expense and slowly took
over, to the extent that the ranger had to ask his bosses to help
and drive his companions away. Since those guys had nowhere to go,
they were actually camping in town, when I arrived, and the affair
was the main issue in the talk of the many people I introduced myself
to. The message was clear:"See,
what is going to happen to you, if you pursue your idea of a place
in the desert."
I was extremely grateful to Uri Baidetz and to
Motti Shamir: the warning saved me from making the dire experience
myself. There will be a place in the desert for the hippi-kind too,
but not as long as the germ of "Succah in the Desert" is
still so vulnerable.
The second most important experience at Mitzpe-Ramon
was my encounter with Dan Rubin, the "soul" of the Nature
Reserves Authority and Uri Baidetz' friend. During that meeting in
Baidetz' Jerusalem office, he called his friend "Roibe"
in, introduced me and said:
"Rachel is right, we
should also offer possibilities "off the beaten track" for
those hikers who want that."
I then met Roibe again "by chance" at
the house of Ezri and Hanni Alon, two pillars in the N.R.A. and since
then my challenging friends. Though he was absolutely opposed to my
"project", he liked the Biblical image of "Abraham,
the desert host", and, despite himself, he gave me two advices,
which were to become the only major alterations in the original vision:
- One succah at a site, as you envision, cannot
work. There have to be at least ten succot.(
I decided upon seven).
- A five-year concession to the host of a succah
would break your rule of temporariness, because after 5 years a human
being feels attached, settled and unwilling to move on.
"What would be an optimal period of functioning as a host?"I asked.
"One year".
( I adopted this view-point as a guide-line.)
(To my deep distress I myself am still
living in my bus at the site of the first Succayah - against that
adopted rule, - I'll explain later, why the "child" still
fails to walk without me ~~~) This was written in winter
1992- two years before I
finally managed to part.
When I parted from "Roibe", I was happy
to have found my match:
his thoughtful, wise opposition would have a fruitful effect on my own
thinking.
But four weeks later he suddenly died - a man exactly my age ~~~
The day I learnt about this death I was on one of
my many study-tours during those 10 months of pregnancy with the Succah
Vision.
This one was about "looking for natural
sources of water in the Negev".
Moshe
Klein,
the best friend
of Uri, my son-in-love,
one of the most independent and creative spirits I know, once
met me "by chance"
in a little restaurant
at Tel-Aviv Dizengoff Center, out of all places,
and
- learning about my idea - said: "I want
to support this idea
with all my heart".
A major milestone was the " Succah
Experiment"
with 14 participants, on July 20-22,1989.
20 years after the Landing on the Moon.
[I'm updating this page on July 9, 2009...] Each one built and lived in a simple succah
for 24 hours.
During the sharing in the closing circle
I suddenly knew,
that I was almost ready
and that on Jewish New Year (on Sept.26)
I would start.
There is deep significance for me in this triangle dance on
the edge of the Ramon-Crater, of the mathematician and inventive
educator Moshe Klein (right), Itamar Kashteil (lives partly
in Mitzpe-Ramon and partly in Paris) and Muhammed, a Bedouin,
who later changed his name to "Ha-adam Ha-universali"
- "The Universal Man".
Moshe had a car, and some weeks later we
made a two-day water-tour to the Negev.
I was very naive then about water, despite the information I was given
in 1984, when - while preparing for my mobile life - I asked a man from
the "Israel Water Authority" about the possibility of digging
wells far out in nature:
"In Israel all water to the depth of 180m is
contaminated."
Moshe and I stayed over night at Mimi Ron's place
at Merkaz Sapir in the Aravah, hoping that she, a botanist and desert
expert, would show us some water-places.
Mimi was Wardit's
friend, and she visited me during my first desert experience. It was
in Novembert 1987, when I wanted to challenge myself and find out,
if I could bear to be alone and not talk to anybody for days. The
desert, which did not mean anything to me then, seemed to be the right
place for this experiment.
The only desert person I knew about, was
Ariel, whose camel business at Mamshit
near Dimona was still in its infancy. I stayed at his site for 3 days,
still not alone, but together with two German pupils/friends of mine,
Utz and Margret, who wanted to experience the desert. When there was
too much noise from the phosphat-loaded freight-trains passing by
not far away, Ariel suggested that I move to a place above the Oasis
of Zin, below the "Scorpion-Ladder". A short-cut through
Oron proved to be too hazardous for my mobile home, but the attempt
gave us a chance to stand in awe in front of desert-marvels like the
water-holes of Yorqe'am and the Great Canyon, where we stayed overnight.
After the frightening drive-down to the Aravah
we found another excentric desert-place; Moshe Perlman and the almost
forsaken site of his kibbutz, a site which he had chosen opposite
"Edom" (Jordan) because of a prophecy in the Bible, that
from there the Messiah would come ~~~
The next day my supporters helped me to find
the place, indicated by Ariel, at a distance of 23 km from the next
settlement (Hatzeva), and - as we had agreed before - left me alone
~~~
It was then, that my eyes and ears and heart started
to open to the nakedness, the vastness, the silence, the purity of
the desert.
Diary 12/11/92
The experience , that for days on end there
was nobody to talk to or to listen to, turned out to be almost intoxicating!
I started to understand why the experience of silence in the desert
was so different from the one I had once made in town, when I was
a student: then - after less than 24 hours - I had to run down to
the street and just talk to any passer-by. But here - the air, the
earth, the atmosphere, everything was so full of life - yes, this
is what I felt; being filled, fulfilled~~~
I had only one problem, except for having to be
extremely prudent with my provisions: I wanted to do so many things
in this "Time without Pressure", that I always had to choose
between 3 or 5 things ~~~
One of them was an amusing game:
When I had moved only the most necessary "possessions"
to my tiny bus, I had given 500 books to the Tel-Hashomer "Hospice"
for people dying from cancer, in which I had worked as a volunteer
for some time. Now again too many books had accumulated, and I decided
to get rid of some 27 by burying them in caves, imagining how after
200 years somebody would excavate them~~~
Each day I took one book on my walk, each day
into a different direction - thus discovering one of the
most exciting qualities of the desert: that nothing limits your
sight, nothing stops your foot, you can always walk in 360 directions!
The aim of finding a cave or at least a niche for my book focused
my seeing! My game had no such intentions - but I found myself more
and more able to distinguish between different forms and colors
of rocks, stones, sands - I became sensitive to the ever changing
kaleidoskop of mountains, wadis and the sky, in short I became familiar
with the desert, I grew into it, I felt - at home~~~
When I had found a cave or a niche, I sat
in front of it, took the book, quite often connected with a person
or a situation that had helped shaping my life and my understanding
of life, and opened it one last time, letting my regard fall on
a sentence "by chance" and then writing this sentence
as a "prophecy" on the first page of the book. Past and
future merged in one, when I added the date of the day and buried
the book. A photograph and one last glance to absorb the near and
far environment, and I parted.
[2002_07_24: The album I compiled of
these photos and quotations was burnt in the 1998 fire in the
Succayah]
Was this a kind of "conquering territory?"
The N.R.A. ranger, who came to drive me away,
did not know about this "crime". I stayed on - Mimi, who
had visited me for the first time - talked to him. But then more
busses with noisy tourists drove to the edge of the cliff above
the oasis, and I yearned to enter deeper into the desert. I made
my way back to the main Arava road, and drove some 30 km further
South.
Mimi helped me to find a vast site in Wadi Karkeshet
- very different from the one I had left - only 2 km away from Merkaz
Sapir, but except for a Bedouin on a camel and another one on a
motorbike I saw nobody during the rest of my 40 desert days.
There I finally experienced the difficult
situations everybody expects to find inthe
desert: getting lost in the middle of nowhere - climbing a slope,
a rock and not knowing how ever to get down again without falling
into the abyss, feeling forlorn and suddenly unable to cope with
past and future of one's life. Maya, my dog, was comforting me,
and when it became too hard, I walked to see Mimi and her children.
Still, the sound of the
silence, the violence of the wind,
the surprises of the ever new shapes and colors
of the desert earth and the desert clouds,
the movement of the sun and the moon and the stars,
and now the beauty of a flower,
a blooming bush in the midst of a crust of sand or rock
- all this would act as a sting,
until one day I would make the desert,
not a certain site in the desert,
but the desert everywhere
~~~~ my home~~~~
I left my bus at Mimi's and went straight to
one of the noisiest town of this planet, to Berlin - to help Channah,
a woman-friend, whom I thought would share my life and enhance my
creations, to make her move to Israel. Two months later - coming
from the ship in her minibus I brought her straight to Wadi Carqeshet.
Six additonal weeks in the desert, this
time in the spring - with exciting floods and waterfalls - just
imagine, you sit in your home, and you watch, how in the dry little
wadi next to you a sudden stream of water comes towards you and
fills the wadi to the brim. [All
photos burnt] Then more flowers sprang
up everywhere -"never did I see,
that in one winter there was a second blooming", said
Mimi. Channah, unlike me a natural "desert-child", though
born and raised in the city by some mistake, enjoyed it too. But
the relationship should have been ended then ~~~
Through all these pages the DESERT will be the one
pole and human dramas will be the other. "Life without children
is like masturbating", Idith said yesterday, being exhausted by
the joys and sorrows of growing with her first child. The same must
be true for living in the DESERT alone for more than 40 days. It is
in relationships where we become real.
Winter Images of the area in the Negev,
in which I realized a small part of my vision between November 1989
and April 1996
I discovered these images on the Internet in February 2008 and asked
the photographer by e-mail for permission.
The permission was not only not given, but I was threatened ...
So I've waited for a year - until February 20, 2009 - and inserted
those images without the name of the artist.
What a pity ....
It was In this ancient area with its 17 or
so "Lotz-Cisterns"
from the Nabatean time,
that I - In the beginning (Nov. 1988)- I had wanted to erect the (first)
model of my Desert-Economy-Vision.
(see also the question which arose 12 years later concerning
"A Nabatean reincarnation")
But a tour with the young man who had lived here for half a year as
a ranger convinced me,
that "Succah in the Desert"
should grow on virgin land, close to the Ramon-Crater
Here are some of my
own photos of snow in the desert - January 1992
The cabin in which I lived then - in Succah
in the Desert
Through the window of my cabin
A hike to the Ramon Crater
See
more of these images of snow in the desert - in January
1992
2010
On Shabbat, February 27, 2010,
Arad, before sunset
I felt, I needed to go into the desert.
I walked around the southern outskirts of my town.
I saw water in the wadi and was exhilarated.
Yes, there had been rain for two days and nights,
more than I'd ever experienced at Arad before.
I also was affected personally,
since the rain entered beneath the window,
down on my books, down the shelf on the mattress.
But rain is most welcome, in Israel in general
and in the Desert , in MY Desert, in particular.
Shortly before I could cut from
the convenient trail up to a street,
I saw the Full Moon over Dessert and Running Rain Water!
"Of course!" I said to myself, "It's the Eve
of Purim!"
I walked up that street, crossed Moab Street,
the main road through Arad to Massada,
and walked down towards my "Almond" neighborhood, past the
water-towers,
delighting in the lighted triangle synagogue:
Now I remember the human pyramid , at
which we posed in the entrance to the synagogue,
when 11 people from "The Walk about Love" came to my workshop
about "Self-Acceptance".
And I remember, that exactly today, Febr. 28, the
2010 "Walk about Love" has begun in Eilat...