The Path to a Healing Heart

Noticing the animals in this place, the cats that roam, the dogs that wander, the rooster that has now infiltrated my space, the ants, the flies, the mosquitoes, it's all clear - they have adapted and have become like the inhabitants of this place - taking on the characteristics of the people who live here. There is much infiltration of personal space by these species. There is fear domineering. Hunger has crazed most of them, where hunger springs forth behavior that borders on insane. Street cats plough into my dwelling, using the open door, jumping on tables, counters, ripping food from the pots and pans, till I began feeding them by throwing food out the window, then the rooster from who knows where got the message that there's free food and started showing up all hours of the day crowing and demanding its due. The flies they come in droves, sink their swarms in all places to hatch, high places. Then descend on all living and once living essences. Mosquitoes arrive as soon a...

Bitter olives purple their green days over, smashed a little to let them bleed as one, rolled into tubular glass jars soaking in brine, 4 weeks of changing. We are bitter, round, solid with a pit in our middle, turning with sun and stars, leaping with winds, brushing leaves and branches, slow, slow ripening. Through the salt and water, bruising and soaking, the process of metamorphosis Oil and sodium mixing it up creating sweet fruit tangy plucky, new chemis-tree. Soak the heart in tears Beat the ego into submission Trickle the harvest into a vessel Count the days Wash with water Annoint with oil Sweeten the bitter Transform the fruit and prepare the Tree for a New Year.

URGENT - URGENT - URGENT Ecological, environmental, animal activist and writer Joy Sherri must find an alternative housing solution within the next 2 weeks. A quiet, sweet-natured, harmony-minded, spiritual woman, she has been traveling and moving throughout Israel since her arrival in 2004. Throughout this time and in spite of experiencing great hardships and enduring some pretty traumatic experiences which include a terrorist attack, a car accident, the 2006 war and untold personal difficulties, Joy has maintained high spirits and has continued to champion for the rights of animals in Israel, promoting Aliyah, writing on various topics such as domestic violence in society, natural living, spiritual healing and wildlife conservation. In addition, she has also begun recording a CD of healing Judaic chants to help heal a nation of its wounds Will you help find a quiet place in nature for this good woman who only wishes to be of service and be a voice for the voiceless? Please contact wi...

This goes on daily. The smoke billows. Into homes. Lungs. Brains. Plastics burned. Car batteries. Now I've got him. Proof.

Perek Shira The Rooster says When the Holy One,Blessed Be He,comes to the righteous in the Garden of Eden,all the trees in the Garden of Eden scatter their spices they rejoice and sing paises,He then is aroused and sings praises(Zohar-Vayakhel 195b) 1st Call-Lift up your heads,O gates! And be lifted up,O everlasting doors!And The King of Glory shall come in.Who is this King of Glory? G-D Strong and Mighty.G-D in Battle!(Psalms 24:7-8) 2nd Call-Lift up your hands,O gates!Lift them up.O everlasting doors!And the king of glory shall come in.Who is He,this King of Glory?G-D of Hosts,He is the King of Glory,Selah!(Psalms 24:9-10) 3rd Call-Stand!O righteous ones,and busy yourselves with Torah,so that your reward shall be double in the World-To-Come! 4th Call-I have hoped for your salvation,O G-D.(Genesis 49:18) 5th Call-How long will you sleep,Lazy one? When will you arise from your sleep?(Proverbs 6:9) 6th Call-Do not love sleep,lest you come to poverty:Open your eyes,and you shall be sati...

Quit school after being covered with boils from my head to my legs and standing was too painful And the constant screaming at home was just Enough. I think also the repeated molestations had something to do with my just quitting the human race. At any rate, I left school in the 7th grade. Became a runaway before the term was coined in the Holy Land. At 18 married. Twenty birthed. 21 started to look for employment. Went for a typing class - circa 1983. Got my first *real* job working at Tadiran as a clerk for the electronics department. Semiconductors and other elements. I started then working with computers. A bit later forged out to start selling sandwiches, then started cleaning houses. It was a hard life living in the barrio called Pardess Katz, raising my kid and working with one hand up someone's toilet. 22 years old I lived in poverty though Was making some kind of living. I saved enough from working with sandwiches to buy a washing machine. Ventured out from that point to ma...

Scenario - One day from the holiday of Sukkot till one week ago. Back of house in storage area, one Sherpa bag stolen. Without said bag, this writer cannot take cat through the fields, over the hills, over the highways and through traffic, on buses and on taxies to get to vet. Head held, prayers uttered, karma understood, another flinch of the soul. Forty emails to various people on Craigslists all over the United States - nothing. Bid one time on ebay, won, then seller decided to increase shipment at last moment. Purchase canceled. Cat continues to decline. Cat is taken in broken bag which unravels in mid travel cat half escapes in the middle of the Beer Sheva Tel Aviv road. Writer becomes hysterical and half-crazed. Week later, more angst, another ebay auction, bid, won, purchased, shipped. Shipment arrives - the bag is too small. Money down the drain. Cat continues to decline. Frantic emails across the world, please help, please help, please help. Find vet in Beit Dagan, kind enoug...

My daddy was a doctor of feet Came to knowing the tendons and bunions of all who paid him visits at his locales in the State of New York, he cut and smoothed, bathed and caressed, x-rayed and diagnosed, painted them with salves lavished them with jokes while bandaging and giving the best to each toe, nail and heel as they say - they don't make docs like him no more. One day he saw his daughter's feet. Must've been during the time when we met on the Tel Aviv coast. Six years of empty space between us. Enough time to pass for him to be a relic and for me to be an enigma. Still he looked at my dusty feet, unelegant in comparison to his daily lady patients, mine walked across continents and stood in mud in basic training, ran from rapists and broke in more than 4 places. Plain, flat, holding up the body that ran more times away than toward anything or anyone. And he said: *You have peasant feet*. *Oh* I said. Some place inside happy that a part of me was low-class and sad and u...

It's going. All of it. All the news and the Jews in it. All of the life styles. All of the sentiments. Just freeing myself from this entanglement called society here. In this place. It's been a process. I'm ready now to move on from this mental place, this physical space, this stance of living. Time to go. Without the load weighing on me. I will free myself up in wide open spaces and live the life I've dreamed about for so long. With my tribe. With my own people - or not. I have no qualms about living my dream out alone - in peace - without interference. I will dumpster dive and I will salvage. I will grow my own and there will be sharing and bartering. And no one will be there to judge me. Except G-d almighty. Smoke. Smog. Toxins. Evil. Goodbye. It wasn't nice knowing you. It was a frightful experience. And I am now wiser.

Didn't sleep last night. A total haul to make myself available to Jerusalem and git there. Physically. Just make the bus that involves walking distances, getting to another city and then waiting for the bus. Had my schedule. Started out at 4:00 am. Just to be sure. Then went into automatic. Dressed in paint spattered clothes (on the inside - but still I knew), found other odds and ends to don myself with. Wrapped my head in a scarf and mandatory sunglasses and hit the road at 7 something. Arrived at the next destination - waited another 10 minutes - bus came and we hit the road. I can't BEGIN to tell you - how utterly blown away I felt at FINALLY LEAVING this place and heading UP. It's been a LONG, dragged out, bloody, dusty, fiery, angst-ridden, pathetic time here and leaving it after a year and not seeing Jerusalem for almost 2 - well I was riveted to the window taking it all in, praying that the green trees, my pines, my blessed pines would remain with me as memory. The...

Solidified in my not moving Denseness, depression in the lobes the plague of darkness descended in it, the human lump unmoving Jerusalem waits for me, cannot Will not move, boogie down to it or up - is it? up to Jerusalem I heard only fire rises Got no fire in me - put out thanks so much. All of it Now an entity solely existing on hot air and chemical trails Come angel. Come on over. I am here for your taking. If you will - come on. I am here - languishing like a veal thrust into its cage I've stopped squirming there's nothing left to protest No stone to overturn I swear, my job is done here Ready - you hear? Ready! And if it should happen That I linger too long On this tree I will rot and fall And it's only a matter of seconds Till the deed is done Lump with a seed - I am, I am Here I go Falling. Here I go Fallen. Here I go in quicksand. I no longer exist. It is not for me. It is the remnant for which the world will continue. And I becomes *it* and family trees continue to...

Plucked, crimped, sliced and crumpled Slivered, chopped, buried and resurrected Breathed, shunned, stomped and deserted Kicked, floored, punched and dispossessed. I am the knacker horse The hermit, the cistern dweller the ostracized, bitter water wailer the callow headed, the penny beggar sallow skinned dodger of leather boot kickers. Oh rains prick and soothe, fast and steady wash the gutter latrine shadows clinging Peel away the sweat, the lard, the smoke The soot, soil, blood and stragglers that suck. Semblance of all finality and blue bursts rushing with overturned granite fallow parched plain seeded, earth pregnantly green Fire up and load the helm, shock the cesspool clean.

I should have heeded a premonition I had yesterday morning - Friday. Just lost my level of consciousness, probably had an out of body experience - or lost my mind. Crumbled and crashed emotionally. Throughout the day, went through the motions of cleaning, cooking and trying not to think about dread, doom and put on a happy face, dammit. Somehow made it to candlighting, somehow made it to eating a very bare and cold meal. My cat, Jesse who was sick for 4 months now didn't come back home at nightfall and I felt I should be sitting shiva. Then I thought maybe Shabbat waives the laws of mourning. But I felt comfortable sitting on the floor anyway - on a cushion. Vascillating between feeling terrible and feeling some kind of relief that his suffering was finally over. I grabbed some holy books. Started praying for the ill. Felt some comfort there. Got up went out, called him, came back in. Back and forth at least 7 times. On the 8th I went to the backyard and there I saw what I can only...

Well, we all seem to be rolling with the same people lifetime after lifetime. It's the cookie-cutter precision perfection in lessons to be learning about relativity and cause and effect. And in the final analysis turning the stone heart into the flesh one. Scenario. Infant born into a family divided and seething from its core. One by one they leave, the infant in the clutches of a mother half in this world and half in the other, sainted and sodomized by life itself and the infant tossed between the sides that are shooting and sometimes she crashes to the ground for all the tossing and gets hit by ammo straight to the head and heart. Now - go make yourself a life out of that and heal and repair your relationships. You've got x amount of years to do that and all of your thoughts, actions and deeds will be recorded for eternity and everything you do, say or think will be shown to you - 10 fold. Go make a life. Go make some sense. Go make peace on earth, in mind, in heart. The gate...

Woman comes - wife of lord of the land. I told her I would be leaving within 3 months. 3 months. Wherever the road will take me. Please take me Home. photo by nstaeck

I am - with 4 cats. Three I brought with me from the States, one found and adopted in Kiryat Arba- we are family. They've moved with me 7 times since we arrived here. Seven times getting used to new surroundings, street cats attacking them - and the ailments that come with being under stress, immune systems compromised and the illnesses and follow. And I run to vets with them. Wherever I landed. And shlepped the kitty litter from Jerusalem to the caravan in Alon Shvut and dried wet sand in Kiryat Arba when there was no litter to be found. And vets. Vets. Vets. Vets and all that this entails. Money. Energy. Balance. Good cheer. Thankfulness and more understanding about how the body of a feline operates. And through it all -my Sherpa bag . I loved this bag. Before coming back to Israel - I chose the most luxurious bag I could find for the cat that would accompany me on the flight. The other 2 went into plastic containers in the belly of the plane. This bag had it all - the compartme...

Distant howling dogs cringe worthy The dry wind of November Bitter in its ancient existence A quick look at where the sharp shooting luminaries are tonight Branches fallen on the greening soil I know from the daylight I'm feeling my way around in the pitch black of the night lit by my little lamp that flickers and the arranged space lights a million light years away. Do branches just fall in the heat of the day or night because they must and the tree finds them a burden? Did arms bring them crashing onto the ground? The barks of the hounds echo like magnets of rare earth plunked down in a thousand chambers now called my brain they do not let up, stirred by my breathing, as only the crazed the starved and the bully would do. The air now has cleared 2 days of non stop burning, now I know they burn fields a quicker more efficient way of reducing plants to carbon, more black to the mix of gray cement, broken houses and exhaust pipes, the cacaphony of severity gone over the edge bringin...