We felt so disoriented after the yoga and meditation retreat that Matan and I managed to lose our way several times. Driving at the north of Israel, we reached areas not recognized by the GPS system of his iPhone. Since we were feeling pretty relaxed (him) and relieved (me) after the three intense days of the retreat we didn’t really mind getting lost.
Having spent so much time locked in our heads (me) and floating in space (him) – going back to noisy Tel-Aviv had to be “trippy”. The sun was setting while we were looking for the right road, and the landscape was so beautiful, so we didn’t mind all the u-turns and zig-zagging. A phone call from a mutual friend who just returned from a “tantra” retreat at the desert – made us crack out laughing, and provided more entertainment for us.
While we were mainly sitting and being (trying to concentrate on our breathe) – our friend experienced the Israeli-spiritual version of “Eyes Wide Shut”. 180 degrees from what we’ve been through… He was being caressed by 15 women lying blindfolded on his beck, jumped naked for hours, danced, danced, danced, and went through various bizarre and intimate experiences. While we were eating boring vegetarian food – he had feasts. While we were contemplating in silence, he was singing and dancing. When he told us he booked a vacation and that he’s going to Osho’s Ashram in India, we burst out laughing. It was so radically different from what we’ve been through…
There’s an unforgettable scene in a rather lame movie called “I heart Huckabees”
Jason Schwatzman plays an eco- activist who sings praise to a rock for simply existing. He stands in a parking lot and reads a poem: “you rock, rock” – he reads – for sitting and “is”ing. the name of the rock includes its essence – it rocks. it is. it is a rock. hence it rocks to be a rock. what sounds like such a simple thing – is not that easy for us humans, in order to rock, it often feels we need to do things, that being isn’t enough.
One of the lessons i’ve learned during the retreat was to be more attuned to both inner and external noises.
changing perspective helps.
going out of one’s comfort zone helps too.
breaking habits and changing our point of view on reality is so important.
In some of the pictures here Matan tried to look at the world from the point of view of an insect, of a flower, of grass.
I think we’re often missing things because we try to look at them from the outside, from a bird’s eye perspective, striving to learn more about the world by looking at things from a distance. Being more attuned to nature and to ourselves also implies looking at things from within, from below, closing the distance between us and what we’re looking on. I’m sure insects and flowers and grass experience the world differently, hear and see and feel in different colors and sounds. I bet rocks can also sense the world around them. I am sure that other than being (and rocking) they merge with their surrounding, hence, they do things merely by being.
Once upon a time I had over 10000 CDs in my house. My (ex-) boyfriend and I each worked for local branches of record companies (me – Universal Music and him Sony/ Warner Music) so obviously we both had a HUGE CD collection (although we were both obsessive CD buyers even before working in the music industry). I had a “modest” collection of about 1000+ CD’s and he had some 10,000 (not including vinyls). Those were the days when people were still buying CDs, and I remember how exciting it was to rush home from the record store and peel off the plastic wrap to listen to an album for the first time.
I
Derrida, Trauma, Photography and all that Jazz
D (my ex) LOVED things. HE loved buying CD’s almost as much as he loved listening to them. He loved possessing rarities and limited editions and had an amazing collection. Working in the radio and in the local music industry for years and being a music-head from birth, more or less birth (his earliest childhood memory: hearing “Breakfast in America” when he was about 1 a year old and pushing his crib towards the radio) – enabled him to have a magnificent collection.
Sebald Sebald Sebald (in English, Hebrew, German) but also some Dellilo, Foer, Hemon
In fact, our study walls were covered with CDs. One of the first things D did after moving in with me was to put up shelves (with some help from @OshikErnst), turning our study into a music room: a realm of CDs sorted alphabetically, but also by genre (Jazz, soundtracks, boxsets. Hebrew, etc). It was a very impressive “Wall of Fame”.
Freud, Lacan, Foucault and Art Catalogs (curated by Leah A)
We’re talking about the early 2000’s here. People were still buying CD’s, Napster was popular and music downloading and sharing were only beginning. What an age of innocence…
Did you know that the Hitler Bio can be helpful in preventing small-talk on airplanes? (a genius plan devised by my sista) - try it - it works!
The shelves and CD sorting were a project that lasted several weekends. When we decided to move to Canada it was clear to him that he was taking his collection with him. My task was simpler. I took only my favorite CDs and anything we had two or more of (I remember finding 4 copies of the first Destniy’s Child album…)ץ The rest was given to my younger sister who “inherited” the flat, our furniture, and the rest of our abandoned belongings (including the empty shelves in the study).
Still in Search of Lost Time
A year went by. My sis also decided to move to Canada. But she didn’t ship her belongings (nor did she have a massive CD collection she couldn’t part with – she’s got a more pragmatic attitude in some realms of life). A. threw away all the plastic jewel cases, bought a big CD case and kept only the discs themselves with the booklets. She brought it with her to Canada. Even today whenever I visit her, my heart still aches at the sight of my former CD collection.
from Dosto to "Nails" a contemporary Lit Mag
I still have BOXES filled with CDs and books in Canada. It’s been 2 1/2 years since I moved back to TLV and I still can’t bring myself to ship them back. I’m not sure why. I clearly don’t have anywhere to put those boxes, but it’s not that. Somehow I believe that if I haven’t opened those boxes in such a long time, I might as well live without them.
Bleak(er St.)
In my first years of traveling back and forth between Toronto and TLV I imported my most of my books back. I used to carry heavy suitcases filled with books, ask my family to help me carry, had to beg and befriend Custom Officers in order to avoid paying overweight fines.
Funny/ Weird Detective Novels and Some Poetry
But I never “imported” my CDs. They’re still there. And so is my stereo. I guess the two go hand in hand and that I now listen to music only from my computer or iPod, and my music collection is more virtual than physical. As Dylan put it – the times they are a-changing.
Warm Colors Work for ME
D’s CD collection is probably even bigger now (he works in the music industry in Canada). My sister is a proud Torontonian technophobe and doesn’t have an MP3 player. She doesn’t even use the mobile phone i left her (in Canada), she likes using Public PayPhones (for crying out loud!)
I keep some of the books here - just because i like their color
So, I engulf myself with books. Writing book reviews for Walla! sure helps, I got tons of books for free, but i am running out of space. Maybe Oshik can come over and build some more shelves for me…
It's beyond my understanding how come i have 3 copies at home of Sacks' Musicophilia. So i keep 1 by the bed - just in case
I know that i am partially to blame for the Rain Forests ruin. But isn’t paper more eco-friendly than plastic?
On my first day at Aniboom.com I chatted with Roey, an R & D person and a graduate of the Cognitive Sciences dept. at Bar-Ilan University. After our chat about the brain, the internet, and all that jazz, Roey lent me his copy of Laszlo Barabasi’s “Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means”, opening a window to a world that was new to me. I had never before thought I’d find math so fascinating, but Barabasi – a University of Notre Dame Physics professor – interconnects people, neurons, hubs, and websites in his study of networks. In the very first chapter he goes back to 18th-century Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler ’s “Graph theory” – which made perfect sense to me, despite never being too keen on math.
I am familiar with the ‘Königsberg Bridge’ problem – (also known as the “travelling agent” problem) where the city folks challenged themselves to find a walk through Königsberg that would cross every bridge once and only once. What I liked about the solution (in the context of the study of networks) is that finding this path does not depend on its existence. Meaning, it doesn’t matter if a route, a solution, or sought-after object exists at all– what matters is finding it.
Euler to the rescue
This assumption – which I find profoundly optimistic – brings to mind a passage from Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, a book I read in Thailand. Siddhartha makes an important distinction between searching and finding – “when someone is searching then it might easily happen that the only thing his eyes still see is that what he searches for, that he is unable to find anything, to let anything enter his mind, because he always thinks of nothing but the search, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed by the goal.” This sentence (searching is not finding) became a sort of revelation for me, as a girl who loses everything I get my hands on (including other people’s stuff…)
Needless to say, it’s not that I’ve stopped searching for all the things I’ve lost – I’ve merely shifted my attention to the things I FIND.
sunblock, iPod, Siddhartha - profound superficiality on the beach
Two favorite photography websites are dedicated to found photographs:
The first is - http://www.foundphotos.net/
founded (pun intended) after the website owner came across a folder of mp3’s and stumbled upon lots of digital camera photos. Instead of deleting them, he archived them online, and ever since, this website has been home to files accidentally uploaded to file-sharing programs.
Another favorite is – http://www.foundmagazine.com/ – which by now becaeme a cluster of books, a magazine, and a fantastic website all featuring found objects – post-its, photos, notes and letters, all found accidentally – whether on the street, in office trash cans, or piled up somewhere.
I was late. Alma was waiting. Damon Albarn was playing outside with his kids.
Alma is always on time. She got bored. she got angry. She almost asked for his autograph for me – considering whether “you suck, you’re late” was arsenic enough.
Then i arrived. Damon was gone but the exhibition was fun.
“The Rotators” are sound sculptures, or sound-art installations made by Tokyo-based sculptor and musician Ujino. The chaos in the Hayward Gallery produces a cacophony of noises – but overall the result is not as horrid as you may think. the work actually has a certain rhythm and it really is entertaining. A musical playground made up from domestic appliances.
Following the audience’s surprised expressions when they find out what the installations are made of is also part of the fun.
more than your average mixer
that mixer there really tied the room together
malma posing. her smile is s-o fake
guitar and a vaccum cleaner. don't try this at home
Still in Search of Lost Time
