First Time Outside SA – to the Land of Dreams: Approach all Experience with a view to reviving that sense of Magic, Wonder and Excitement.
Number 129: Reflecting here in Milnerton, Cape Town, 1/01/2022: What New Year resolutions?
“Ah, love, let us be true to one another! For the world which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful so new” YES! (1)
“Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain…”. NO! (1)
“Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight ‘twould win me….” YES! (2)
Continuing Decluttering is one resolution. Therapeutic! Past letters evoking memories and emotions of a long ago time…
The wondrous, magical, exciting 6 month 1975 post school period in Israel, before entering South African Navy, July ’75. First time outside South Africa!:
Four of us in one small Kibbutz Matzuba room. The icy mid-winter cement floor. Lighting the aged gas shower for hot water…
The exotic food – so different; No bus queues – pushing in; ancient aquaducts, walls, buildings. Blown away by Kotel; Yad Vashem; climbing Masada, experiencing the Dead Sea.
Trying to contact Pam and Janks, school friends at University on Mt Scopus: Almost impossible to make arrangements, with mobiles and internet still many decades away…
Eli of the Orange Orchards winning Purim prize for most original costume: A Suit! So incongruous and out of place.
Sleeping on beach in Eilat and Nueiba– No money for more sophisticated places. Incredible beauty of Red Sea’s multi coloured fish.
Orchards, working under Yeshayahu Cohen’s z”l guidance, Bananas; Turkeys. Especially the Orchards – dragging (new irrigation system) pipes under trees, painting them to protect from sun and of course the focused, intense Oranges & Grapefruit picking. Extra crates completed, above set quota, accumulate towards extra days leave to explore the Country.
The wonderfully warm Cohen family who adopted me as their Kibbutz child, generously inviting me into their home most afternoons for tea and delicious homemade pastries. Dina Rosen’s Hebrew lessons…
Core 2022 Resolution: Approach experience with a perspective and attitude of: wondrous, magical, new, exciting. A land of dreams… With a view to reviving deep delight…!!
(1) and (2) above extracts from “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold and “Kubla Kahn” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge