Noah's Diary- 4th Day of Realization (2003_11_29-2003_12_03) [re-read on kaf-tet b'November 2013]

The symbolic date this time was the 29th of November.
In 1947 this was the date, when the United Nations voted for the establishment of a Jewish State.
But AUschwitz-BirkenAU reinforced the already imprinted victimhood,
and except for the most sophisticated military force with which to hit "the enemy",
the immense creational powers of self-determination of the early Zionists are lost.
We still cling to sheer survival.
We are not yet able to truly live.
The Palestinians, on their part, call this day "al-nakba"," the catastrophe".
They never even experienced the surge of their creational powers.

This is, what both, Palestinians and Jews, have to learn or re-learn:
true self-respect, true self-determination.
The goal of "Noah's Shore" is meant to create the situation, the arena,
in which people, especially young people, can  t r a i n  in dreaming ...

Therefore I set out to the site, which chose itself as "Noah's Shore"
on the 29th of November.
I am grateful to the three people, who helped me on this first day,
and patient with three other people who only promised to do so.

Four days earlier I had hitchhiked to Noah's Shore for another preliminary examination.
I asked my last driver to let me off exactly next to the sculptures which indicate the Palestinian border.
Rarely anyone knows, that this is the border,
not even the many "Israeli Arabs" [as differentiated from "Palestinians" outside the 1967 borders],
who stop there on their way to Eilat, in order to watch the view.

Turning around I discovered a waterfall just across the road, ten meters to the north.
How strange, that I hadn't perceived it before.
"How wondrous!
Maybe the rainwater-gathering-system can start right here
and not beneath the waterfalls high up in the mountains, as I thought."
After I had surveyed the data of the site,
I returned to the sculptures,
and while approaching I hear:
"Do you want coffee?"

It was a family from Sikhneen, a large village in Western Galilee, on their way to a holiday in Eilat.
I realized - what a coincidence -that this day was the first day of Id-al-Fitr, the feast which closes the Ramadaan month of fasting.
Later I met more people, mainly from Nazareth, but also from Nahaf, a Bedueen village in the Galilee.
But the "sign from Heaven" was this invitation from Labiba Um Naaser, her husband Suhbi Abu Naaser, and two of their 7 children, Naaser and Hilaal.
First, because Sikhnin made sad history:
It's where in 1976, on the "Day of the Land" demonstration four people- from among seven - were killed by Jewish Israeli forces.
I was in the middle of working on my Bir'am Model, and on my way to Bir'am (in Upper Galilee) made a detour to Sikhnin to comfort the mourners.

Second, because the father was sharing with me his worry about Naaser, his mentally retarded son, who now lives in a hostel in the village. I saw, how difficult his coping with having "such a child" had been and I said - with a shining face and voice: "Know, that this son is a great gift for you! He draws out your powers of creativity and love." Utterly taken by surprise by my approach (I've tears welling up now) he changed his own approach and started to tell me, how happy Naaser is in the hostel, and that the combination of hostel and home next to each other works out just wonderfully. Saying this I also looked at Hilaal, who stood next to him above the Dead Sea... When Hilaal wanted to take my photo with my camera, I asked Labiba to pose with me. She said something about being a Muslim, who is not allowed to be photographed. But I urged her: "It is very, very important, that you , a mother, are on this photo." Great strength poured into my heart from this encounter.

Later that day I discovered "my" cave,
a huge boulder on the slope
between the road to Jerusalem above
and the army dust-road along the shore.
There was enough hollow space underneath,
to let me understand, that with digging
- I could make myself a place of living.
I was amazed.
This place was so much nicer than the dark cave, I had thought of before.
These miracles one after the other!
First the emerging of the peninsula,
then the discovery of the hot sulphur spring,
and now this airy, relatively comfortable cave!

 

Now, four days later, Micha, my youngest son, waited for us on the same site,
together with my grandchildren, Arnon and Ayelet.
"Us" , i.e. Hartmut and Eva, who moved to my town Modi'in 9 months ago.
I'm trying to win over Hartmut,
who has a PH.D. both in Judaism and in Physics and worked as a tour guide until the Palestinian Intifada,
to use his time of unemployment to reinvent the Gathering-Rainwater-Cystern-System.
Driving me and my equipment was a chance to get involved and to enjoy a wonderful trip.

After some "site-seeing" Hartmut and Micha started to dig out the "veranda" of the cave.
while I myself started with making steps from the road down.
"Making steps on a slope needs experience", I said and my son laughed: "You don't trust me."
After about an hour and a half enough space for my "bed" had be carved out by the men.
During the next two days I worked on a "second storey" inside the boulder.




A little miracle:
I had brought Uri's, my son-in-love's, tools, since both men had said, they didn't own any.
But then - searching in his rented house - Micha found a tool for cutting the edges of lawns.
Without this tool, the kind of which I had never seen before, I would not have been able to dig inside.
Here on the photo its reddish color makes a fine composition with the candle I brought from BirkenAU.


Arnon, who had enjoyed creating with the grey mud on the northern shore of the peninsula, finally came up to see my cave and to ask, if he could help.
During the last months he had been doing much "engineering" on the little model, which I had exhibited in my flat.

Down on the dust-road I had my last coffee (with milk),
and then had to let my loved-ones and my friends part.

my cave

The first night fell.
It was only 5:45 PM, when I had to stop working.
Nor could I move outside, since the steps up and down were not yet ready.
I fumbled with candles in a cut mineral bottle, as my Bedueen trainees in Sinai had taught me.
I failed. I needed to re-acquire my skill of coping with the wind.
I didn't have my old gas-flame [what's the term in English?] with me, to make tea.
A neighbor, who had been in need of it 2 years ago, had not yet returned it.
The view was magnificent: a growing moon playing with the clouds above the still Sea.
But the main problem, I had foreseen, was right there:
At home I would go to sleep at midnight.
I would work on my website or watch special programs on cable TV,
(which I , can you believe it, had been enjoying for 2 1/2 years, before I disconnected it now).
How would I be able to cope with this "nothingness in darkness"?

Tired from an overload of stress towards my new beginning,
I lay down at 8 o'clock,
only to be disturbed by some animal, which scared me.
Once it even jumped on my body.
Trying to chase it with my eyes in the dark,
I once caught his silhouette-

it was a fox!

Sad as I was, for having evicted this tenant from "my" cave,
my heart jumped with joy,
remembering my fox on my search for my "Holy Mountain" in Sinai 1994:

Waking up from another solitary night in "God's Ear" , I found myself in the surprising company of a ~~~ fox. Since I was terribly cold, I started walking right away. I was determined to find my sacred mountain this day, and I hoped, the fox would not leave me, and it didn't. It accompanied me - at a distance of about 10 meters, until I reached the first cliffs above my chosen wadi. I sat down on a cliff to rest and the fox sat beneath to watch me. I closed my eyes for some time. And when I opened them, the fox was gone. I am not an animal fan, but I knew that to American Indians animals are messengers. Since I was following an Indian way of healing and growing, I let myself be inspired and guided by their beliefs on this day.

The little prince learns from a fox

Back to 2003: Still, I kindly asked the fox to find another place.
It seems, that he did, for he did not appear the second night.
What disturbed my attempt to sleep the second night, was more difficult:
a constant slight breeze (not a storm!!!).
I finally put a scarf on my face.
When I breathed with my mouth open, I could get enough air.
But it was clear, that I needed to prepare my second-storey bed inside the cave.
And I figured out for hours, eyes wide open to the ceiling of my "veranda",
how I could close it by night with a nylon curtain.
I also knew, that I would have to go "home" before the next night,
so I could work on the two main problems:
light other than candles, and protection against wind, cold and rain.

The sunrise was a great compensation.

I got up, and worked on the steps downward. After an hour I gathered thin branches from dry shrubs and carried them up. I dug out a fire-place and fumbled with getting a fire started. Again- my former skills will have to be revived . But the next morning I had the fire going already when the sun had turned from orange to golden.

It would be a glorious day of physical work on my cave and the access to it.
Though the fear of what will have to be done "after that" keeps creeping up,
I enjoy the work.
I must take care, though, to not override my body, as I did in 1999.
I listen to my lower back and I am loving towards the joints of my hands.
I change postures frequently, and distribute the work between my hands equally.
I remind myself of Paula's contraction and releasing of my ring muscles (bladder and anus)
and I breathe and I sound, whenever I can remember.

But what should I do with the skin of my hands?
At home I had recently picked up a worker's glove on my Titorah-Hill,
but I needed it NOW, and I needed a pair.


Finally I decided to take a break,
using the pretext, that I wanted to retrieve the water bottles and the "Ma'moul",
-cookies baked for the feast and given to me by those Arab visitors on Id-el-Fitr.
I had hidden food and precious water in a "slick" , under a far-away stone.
To retrieve it meant to climb up the very, very steep slope
and - since climbing down was impossible - to walk around some 40 minutes to get back to my cave.

I used the precarious and difficult climb to intuit a possible track for the future staircase
and designated it with "rujums", i.e. little piles of stones, as done by the desert people.

When I had reached the platform of the border sculptures,
I couldn't bear the garbage all around any longer.
I found several nylon bags and started to gather all the tissues, plastic cups, even cigarettes,
and lo! ----- a glove for the right hand!
It was stiff with oil and dirt, but this exactly suited my purpose of sweeping aside sand and stones.

I went on gathering disgusting rubbish,
and lo! - a glove for the left hand, a bigger one, and even stiffer than the first.
But now I could really, really work!
I was exhilarated by this new miracle.

And another miracle was yet ahead!
But first another incident needs to be given attention.
As I walked down south on the road, a car with a couple halted.
"Do you know, where the Authority starts?"
I thought, he meant "The Authority for the Protection of Nature Reserves", my big enemy in the past.
I started to say, "at the border point up there towards the south",
but this prompted him to explain: "I mean the Palestinian Authorithy".
Surprised I said: "HOw do you know, there is a border?
Almost no one knows this, not even the Israeli Arabs that came here for Id-al-Fitr."
When I explained the location, about 1 km north from where we talked, he asked;
"I don't want to pass to the side of the Authority, is there a checkpoint?"
"No, that's the whole point, the whole wonderful point!
There is no checkpoint.
I told you, people are not aware that this is a border."

I went on walking, happy, that while everywhere gigantic fences and wall rip the land of Israel apart,
"my" border will start to heal it all.

Will it!
I shiver with fear and shame because of this megalomania.

That night - back in my flat - I called a friend to update him about my new abode.
I said: "Between the borders", and he vehemently claimed:
"What are you talking about!
The border is near Nebi Musa, a few kms west of Jericho."
"No", I laughed, in order to not offend him, "the border is where I told you.
That Israel doesn't even dream of "giving back" that part of the Dead Sea to the Palestinians, is another matter.
But it will still be part of Palestine.
And my task now is to prepare the minds and souls for the simple truth,
that the road to Jerusalem will be safe for Israelis, even if it passes Palestine."

When I came back to the peninsula, enjoying the clear view of the Jordanian side of the Sea, I decided to spoil myself in my private spa, the hot sulphur spring. I talked about its discovery in the presentation of the Noah's Shore Vision. The shape seen on that photo has already changed. The deep hole, which I had filled up with about 200 stones - then, had managed to swallow all these stones into its bottomlessness. But I was no longer afraid, I or somebody else would drown in it. Splashing in my wonderful bath, I carved out more of the edges, so as to have more space for lying in the water comfortably and safely. In between I took a swim and a spin in the Sea, which proved to be already a bit cold . Then again I lay in the flat water, my head on the edge, on a child's shirt, discarded nearby. My strained back and joints relaxed. Oh yes, this spring and pond will provide a perfect part of the healing on Noah's Shore. And the miracle? I tested, if the sulphur water would work like a shower after the salty Sea. It did - and another problem was solved.

After another, even more difficult night because of the wind,
another, even more beautiful sunrise:


Again I rose at the moment caught by my camera,
and though Body told me to take it easier today,
I wanted to get warm and went on carving out the steps uphill.
I saw an old lidless thermos-bottle among the rubbish dispersed on the slope.
"I'll use this as a water-bottle , until I'll get myself an earthen jar", I said.
Washing dishes with a cup of water
or cleaning my intimate parts after peeing/shitting
is cumbersome with pouring water from a bottle.
I dug a hole for my jar next to the fire-place and my green thermos tea can.

My cell-phone still showed some charge.
(I hadn't have time to connect the charger of my new phone
- a gift from my children for my 65th birthday on August 15 this year -
to the small solar panel, I used for this purpose in 1999 and 2000)
I asked Yuval, my friend from my time in Ein-Gedi Fieldschool,
if he had still a friend there, whom I could call if I needed help.
"Only Saaleh, the Bedueen", he said, "he now works as the gardener there."

I thought it wise, to not call Saaleh, but to approach him face to face.

So when Body said: "Stop digging",
I stepped down the slope and walked south, this time on the dust-road.
After about 50 minutes I reached the entrance to the Field-School.
Before happy and painful memories started to sweep through me,
I had an exhilarating encounter with a herd of ibex on the background of the flowing waterfall of Nakhal David:

 

The barbed wire - so hated by me - is no obstacle for these animals

Up in the Field-School , while waiting for Saaleh, I watched too ibex-kids balancing on the fence of the observation-point:

And then Saaleh came towards me across the lawn which one of my jobs was for a time, to clean it - in exchange for having my abode there.
I was touched by the sadness of this human being,
detached from his Beduin society, and estranged to this place, since Yuval and other friends left,
forced to work there for minimal rewards because of the deteriorating economic situation in Israel.

"I'll bring you water, whenever you need it", he suggested, though I hadn't asked for it.
"You'll soon see, why you are here, Saaleh. Maybe it has to do with Noah's Shore".

Again - am I flying too high with my dreams?

When I came back, I had a long look on that natural salt/stone sculpture north of the peninsula.
Not only Arnon, but whoever saw it so far, immediately voiced his/her associations.
The most moving was the one, Hartmut had brought up.
"From the eastern side it looks like a sea monster,
but from the western side it looks like the Mother who lost her child,
a sculpture in Yad va-Shem [the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem]."
Hartmut, a German, married to an Israeli,
who first saw me - not daring to approach me - exactly 40 years ago
at the Institutum Judaicum in Tuebingen, Germany.

The last time I was in Yad va-Shem was in 1967.
But I was where those mothers...............and I sob.
"This is in line", I said to Hartmut, "with my knowing,
that the future pond has to be a replica of the Ashes' Pond in BirkenAU."

 

Without having been informed that rain and flooding were aspected,
[the conditions which I need to examine and which do not happen often],
I returned home, when darkness started.

On the phone I told Yanina, my friend, how the hardship of the evenings seems ridiculous compared for instance to what Marian wrote:

During the first years we slept on the ground

crammed together in an unimaginable fashion, squeezed close.

The whole room on its left side because that's the way the first man lay down.

If the first man lay down on his right side,

then everyone had to lie on his right side.

The head of the man in the second row on your knees,

and in that way you got five hundred sleeping in one stinking room.

By the door, a latrine barrel filled to the brim with urine and excrement.

And I'm there too.

Yanina, my friend, the holocaust surviver, said:
"How can I make you forget these associations?"
"But I don't want to forget them!"
"I know. So how can I make you want to forget them?"
"Don't want to make me want that.
It's not like 30-40 years ago,
when I felt guilty, whenever I felt happy.
For how can I be happy, when we let happen, what happened?
I do not feel guilty today, and I do accept and live happiness.
But I do want to feel the pain, as long as there are people in pain on this earth."

to the 12th day on Noah's shore , Dec. 2003

Kaf-tet be-November or the 29th of November 1947
2011

I was aware of the date long before, but did not intend to mark it in any special way.
Yet then - on Nov. 28- Boris, the oldest among my Arad Starchildren (now 25), called:
"I suddenly got leave for a day, tomorrow, if you want,  we could do something together".
His ideas: transcribing my historical casettes to the computer or studying the Bible.
Only a few hours later it "clicked": If his mother's car would be available to him,
we could go and visit all the places that are connected to the 29th of November.

And so the two of us reached Ein-Gedi>Nakhal David Nature Reserve at 12:30.
We both decided to leave the car there, - a chance, that it would not be stolen,
and to walk 90 min. to "Noah's Shore " - peninsula, sulphor-springs, my Cave.
I looked around, flooded by memories since my very first experience in 1960.
I enjoyed the tree or shrub of the Ziziphus Spinachristi [see "My Path, my Trees"]
and above it some 7 Tristram-Starlings [see how often I mention these on Healing-K.i.s.s.]


In the background - the youth hostel

Standing in front of the entry to the Nature Reserve, marked by its palmfrond covered Succah,
I marveled at the mountain, which I used to see everyday [Febr.-Oct. 1999] from the Fieldschool
(its edge is visible to the right above ]
See an uncompleted page in the 2003-2004 library of Noah's Shore, called "people",
where a small, but representative sample of my environment in 1999 can be seen

We left the parking-lot and climbed down to and along the beach north, hoping,
that this was still possible, though the water level has sunk by 8 meters since 2003,
We got stuck in mud and had to grope upwards, through the dense shrubs of tamarisks.
We did find the narrow, bumpy trail, on which I used to walk to my pond in the year 2000.
We reached the spot of the pond, but the pond itself, of course, was gone already in 2003.
The slope collapsed and fell 4 m into the depth. It's all covered with tamarisks and reed now.

Go on to the sculpture, which delves into the purpose of this adventure on the historical 29th of November, 2011