Biographical Sculptures
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Grand mother hood
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Jonathan
April 2003
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Some tamarisks were uprooted and dead
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The new shore exposes
the layers
of winter
and
summer
mud,
which is typical
for the Salt Sea
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"I
made a new steep path then down to the sea.
Now all the part of the shore, on which was that path, was broken
and gone."
[When I came back that day, back to the house at Modi'in where
I live, and entered the front door,
I pulled a local newspaper out of the box, unwittingly and intent
to throw it away unread as usually.
But while I skipped up the stairs, as usual, my eyes fell on
the first page: a strange photo
and a promo for the first article inside: about the sinking,
retreating, disappearing Salt Sea!
What has the Salt Sea to do with Modi'in?
Wasn't it written especially for me, and on that particular
day - especially for me?
I learnt some intriguing facts, I hadn't known, which now keep
inspiring my new dream.
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I was reminded of the "natural"
reason for the collapse of the shore:]
"The
sea level rose after all by 40 cm in this winter.
In summer 120 cm will evaporate again,
but this will not bring back my shore.
Even if that strange woman wouldn't have been there,
it wasn't fun as I had hoped.
Jonathan asked me to take the first bus home. "
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In the beginning Jonathan didn't even
want to go into the sea.
But when he watched me swimming, he wanted to join me.
I helped him to get down the tiny steep slope,
and suddenly he lay between my arms,
his head leaning on my shoulder.
I moved us gently in the water,
sometimes with the help of one hand,
but generally only with the feet - bicycle movements.
Sometimes I moved him right and left in round zigzags,
like a dolphin moves its tail.
Certainly longer than half an hour.
It was obvious, that he enjoyed it,
and confirmed it when asked."
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[Jonathan
never hugs me, he shuns all body contact me, he shuns ME.
And there he lay in my arms, as intimately as a baby at his mother's
breast.]
Suddenly I did make "Watsu"!
I told Jonathan later,
that the experience was not only pleasant but meaningful for
me.
That in March 1999 I took a nap on your bed
when my eyes fell on a newspaper clip
about WATSU, water-shiatsu.
The article also informed of a training course in the near
future.
I told Jonathan
that I took my last money, more than 400 $,
and learnt Watsu for a whole week."
Yesterday, when I started to sculpt
The Time of Fruition
I forced myself to read the white lines inside my self-dug
pool
["forced myself", for whenever I need to read something,
I've written an hour earlier, or a day, a week, a year, 30
years,
I'm up against a barrier of fear and shame,
for which I have no explanation or healing yet~~~].
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At the edge of the
Dead Sea sweet water sprang forth
I dug a pond to
contain it and cradle in it people to heal.
But I was not whole enough, I attracted the destroyers.
With the sinking of the sea level the spring disappeared.
My pond dried out, so why was I guided to learn Watsu?
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So "why was I guided to learn Watsu",
if I wasn't supposed to have that pool for applying it to people?
On our way back with the bus along the sea, I took a single shot through
the window.
Why this sight? Why then?
It was my first true, close, real, profound experience with the Salt
Sea.
Tamir had brought me to his
refuge, new springs on the shore below the Dragot Wadi.
9 months later, early 1999, while we were living still above the ridge
at Metzuqee-Dragot,
I attracted a horrible experience:
In order to check the possibilities of reaching the sea on a mountain
path, I had climbed down all the way by foot.
When I reached the shore at an unfamiliar spot, I figured, that there
would be just enough time before darkness,
to find a path - maybe - between the dense vegetation at that particular
shore and the rocky slope that led up to the road.
While tracing my steps on the discomforting earth, I got a phone-call
from my son.
I had to stop while listening, and lost 10 minutes of daylight.
I should have listened to myself and walked straight up to the road,
while it was still possible.
But I didn't listen to myself, as so often, when I get myself into
danger in nature.
Darkness engulfed me and I couldn't find a spot where to put my next
step.
So I decided to climb up the slope, which had become ominously steep
there.
I reached a rock, from where I could not climb further.
I panicked.
It's amusing, how I always want to die, but when it comes to it, I
say: "Not like this" 
I found a spot for half my bottom, and I knew I wouldn't be able to
cling on to it for long.
Of course, "the angels" were watching the situation to find
the right moment for stepping in.
I blessed my cell-phone.
The only number I could dial, was that of Ya'acov, out partner in
Tel-Aviv.
But soon enough, Tamir and a mountain guide drove down and rescued
me with a rope.
The next morning I went to the phone in the office and told someone
the story in all details.
The secretary, not my friend, reported the story to Oren, the manager.
He called me and said, that risking my life in such a way was reason
enough to evict me,
something which he had been considering for quite some time and would
carry out soon.
The very next day happened that horrifying event,
when 6 people did NOT risk their life,
but asked the ranger who lived in the same place as I and Tamir,
if it was alright to enter the Dragot Wadi, though rain had been announced.
The ranger said, there was no need to fear.
And indeed, no rain fell there in the Wadi.
But rain fell in Jerusalem, much, much rain rushed down like a tornado
and drowned three of the people.
Not mercifully right away, though.
The survivors told every detail of what the six of them went through,
before three of them couldn't hold on any longer.
An American, religious Jew, an Israeli woman, an Arab father from Bethlehem.
The members of a very left peace group.
We saw the survivors in the office, lying on the floor with exhaustion,
while the whole world went out to search, with lightening parachutes and helicopters.
Exactly for that night, Oren had planned to bring the team to a restaurant
in Jerusalem,
"but only if Rachel will come too".
I never found out, what he wanted, why at all, why with me, and why on that
night.
It was a gloomy evening.
They discovered the bodies the next day.
The helicopters landed on the hill directly above the canyon.
I couldn't help standing there, my heart gaping, my eyes aghast.
The cars from the "Khevra Qadisha" were ready to drive the bodies
away.
But this event didn't convince Oren,
that it hadn't been me who had risked her life.
I had only needed to attract a lesson.
But what lesson, I did not understand then.
More than 2 years later - in the Pyrenees
- I attracted the same lesson,
only many degrees more terrible, and it took not one , but
44 hours.
I learnt then, that if I would have gone
back on my traces in time,
I would have been safe.
Going backward sharply contradicts my pattern of "forward!"
Why did these memories come to my mind now?
Why did they pressure me to tell them again,
despite my clear priority of completing this page?
I feel enwrapped in whisperings
from many sources
and cannot put them into intelligable words.
Only one thing is sure
[emphasized on July 1, 2012]:
I don't need any pond to let water heal us.
There is the Salt Sea, the Mother's place.
I don't need to have ground under my feet
to hold and move a person in water,
the water holds me, as well as the person.
What is the most comfortable, warm swimming-pool compared
to the Salt Sea?
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But there is more.
I brought Jonathan to the
place of the self-dug pond , now covered with tamarisks,
as all the surroundings.
As can be seen on the photo made in April 2000,
when I lived
here for three and a half months,
there was not a single tamarisk anywhere around then.
Next to it is the place, which David and I carved out
for me to sleep on, in 1999.
It's where I collapsed and could not move for 7 days,
not even for peeing.
I must have told this story somewhere.
It is relevant for the point I want to make,
though I don't know yet what the point is.
The "rock" in what served as a "wall" in
my back
and as a base for the two-dimensional triangle tent,
held above me by poles from 9 AM to 4 AM,
when the sun would disappear behind the mountains,
this rock has started to crack.
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Two close-ups of the fissure and two very different close-ups of Jonathan,
after the intimate floating togetherness in the salty sea,
what does all this mean?
I am wondering,
why all the work that I'm pushed to "complete" before
the
closure of Healing-K.i.s.s. in 4 days,
has to do with water,
not any water, but the water
in the Syrian-African Rift,
even this sculpture, which is dedicated to my grandson,
or so I thought.
I feel that it wasn't me who guided Jonathan,
but Jonathan who guided me.
The continuation of my letter to his mother hints at the meaning,
but I am not yet able, nor do I want to sculpt it in English.
If this adventure with my grandson has meaning for the future,
it will find expression in a new site, very different from this one.
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I feel ashamed that this sculpture is more about
me than about Jonathan.
But this is in line with the fact, that I cannot "perceive"
Jonathan as he really is.
For me he is an actor in
my drama, whom I have cast into a certain
role,
which in turn is nothing but a projection and a reflection of me.
And, of course, I am the same for him.
But I'm carefully watching the gifts that come to me through him.
His name "Jo-Natan Shai", i.e. God-Gives a-Gift, fulfils itself.
I'll end my love story for Jonathan
with the third memory, the peaceful one:
It was in those 6 winter months
2000-2001,
when I lived in my pyramidal tent
in the garden of Jonathan's family.
In order to enter the
garden, my home,
I climbed over the fence between shrubs.
Once there was one of those terrible rows,
which cannot be avoided with Jonathan.
But this time it was worse than ever,
I saw Jonathan escaping across the fence.
I was scared.
So I climbed after him and followed him.
At a distance, not too close, not too far.
I was with him, when he walked,
I was with him, when he stood or sat down.
My eyes were on him with compassion.
And I never uttered a single word.
Not even , when he finally turned home.
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