Monday, September 3, 2018

The Journey Continued...


Netanya, second home:

crappy night shot

morning panorama

sunrise over the city


the next day, more Roman ruins.  Caesarea - where we spent more time disrespecting boundaries to get our feet in the Mediterranean than we did interacting with the history:



"look Mom, I touched it!"

one of Herod's many swimming pools



I found the pentagon-shaped canal interesting



after which, we headed to Jerusalem!


from the Mount of Olives


looking towards the Mount of Olives

Garden of Gethsemane on the other side of that church


Tomb of Absalom

Yay!  one of my favorite places - just inside the Jaffa Gate



some sub-par pics of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre:

entrance




Stone of Anointing

the mosaic behind the Stone depicting its use

the Aedicule - the tomb itself





Golgotha - the site of the Crucifixion



Chapel of St. Helena mosaic

ancient graffiti worship

in the shuk

all the things I want!


the Kotel:


paratroopers

the Wall

the Israel museum:

we found ourselves observed by these strange alien creatures...

...they appeared at random, out in public

Dead Sea scroll



scroll

fun with texture

a good exhibit

my son caught one!

'Iron Trees' by Ai Weiwei



model of the second temple



in the hotel restaurant:





 there ended the first week - stay tuned for the second half of the adventure, beginning with Masada and the Dead Sea!

Mediterrani


driving to Newark in the pouring rain.

hauling my aging mom and teen through Newark after not having traveled overseas for 20 years.

this nonsense:

on the way to the gate.  what the..?

had these weird faux brick breakaway walls with reprinted vintage pics and bad fake graffiti. 

found among the hollow displays of shot glasses t-shirts and mugs - dark chocolate with pop rocks?  sure, I'm in!

some pretty tasty albums, actually...

worst.  airline.  experience.  ever.

and I've done a good amount of traveling.

I have some negative words to say about United.

but we got there, and we made it to Tel Aviv to regroup.

at the Artplus, about which I have positive things to say.

then off to the kibbutz:

old tractor park

Tabor Oak

my dad's headstone

eitzim (olives) & carob growing next to each other in the cemetery

the tower marks the site of the original camp, Ayal.

the new front gate

these folks... 😊



Beit Keshet is Home.  it was So good to be there.



 we drove out to Tzippori one morning:

a mosaic stating 'enjoy life' by the toilet

the 'Mona Lisa of the Galilee' as they call her.  I think she's Ariadne, seeing as how it's a mosaic depicting Dionysus' life, including a scene of their 'marriage'

pretty fancy floor.  the white space with the black corner indicates where the couch goes

detail

archway

archway

from the tower

these are the grapes that grow over the porch of 'Dionysus House'

that's Dionysus' front porch, where his grapes grow over his terrace

a pomegranate amongst the sabra fruit

look at all that cactus, and all that fruit!

they're like dinosaurs...

but look, a baby!
household bath

 

mosaic everywhere - wonder what this says?

Roman road with chariot-wheel ruts in it (caution: slippery) and mosaic galleries on either sides, most likely for market stalls

and some of the mosaics the place is famous for:












the 'Orpheus Mosaic'

hang in there, this is only the first few days of the trip.  there's plenty more to come!

Monday, August 27, 2018

A Memory, Remembering


The Unused Portion (in case you haven't guessed) is on vacation, so I'm reposting this oldie-but-goodie because it was written about the place I'm going to be tomorrow. 

https://theunusedportion.blogspot.com/2011/10/rememberance.html

see you all soon, when I'm back state-side!

Monday, August 20, 2018

On the Road Again!


"You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” - Miriam Adeney



"I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” - Mary Anne Radmacher


"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." - Lao Tzu


"Traveling carries with it the curse of being at home everywhere and yet nowhere, for wherever one is, some part of oneself remains on another continent.” -Margot Fonteyn

"We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls." - Anais Nin


"One's destination is never a place, but always a new way of seeing things." - Henry Miller


"The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” - Eleanor Roosevelt




"Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” -Maya Angelou


"Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves." - Henry David Thoreau


"Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time.” -Hannah Arendt


"A nomad I will remain for life, in love with distant and uncharted places.” -Isabelle Eberhardt


"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." - Mark Twain


"As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.” - Margaret Mead




"Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” - Mary Ritter Beard


"For the born traveler, traveling is a besetting vice. Like other vices, it is imperious, demanding its victim's time, money, energy and the sacrifice of comfort." - Aldous Huxley


“As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.” - Virginia Woolf


"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." - Saint Augustine


"Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home." - Matsuo Basho


"The best education I have ever received was through travel." - Lisa Ling




"Travel makes one modest, you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world." - Gustave Flaubert

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

The Ghost of Poems Past


Snake Awakening


after (how many?) caresses

when our lips (finally) brushed

playing on the edge

of tension,

I tasted tobacco, beer, and stubble

went back for more

for his fingertips, and my longing

like an old lover, like how my fingertips

remembered the curve of his back

like the taste of my fear, shaking

low, like a snake awakening

an earthquake

opening

with his breath in my ear

lips on the back of my neck

a bite on my shoulder

his hand in my hair, pulling

a sigh from my throat

hands sliding

through moans

    

Dionysus

I called him, have called him

it was Solstice, he emerged

fully grown from his cave

to receive the goddess

and interrupt my dreams

in my bed

with offerings and ablutions

knocking me clean

into the next ecstasy, days

of weak knees, staring eyes, whimpering sighs

weeks to forget the way my womb

vibrated

to his touch

tobacco and beer

and stubble

on my tongue

my pleasure on his



these gods of summer,

these shadow plays!

ripen to bittersweet

while dancing thankful

across my skin.