Yom Kippur

dateline: Jerusalem, last week.
the man's name is Jamal al-Dirrah, his son is Mohammed. they were caught in the crossfire between Israeli troops and Palestinian stone-throwers and, soon after this picture was taken, Mohammed was killed. those holes on the concrete wall were made by bullets seconds before, as they were being strafed. the father survived, but was badly wounded.
[Salon article here...]

fittingly, today begins with rain. a cold, ghostly mist shrouds the eucalyptus trees as i look out, shaken into wakefulness by a bad dream.

in my nightmare i was mohammed, but instead of bullets i was being chased by two attacking tigers -- one brown, one black -- and i was running on some flat roofs. i jumped down into this dusty alley, only to find myself trapped, and the last thing i heard was the tiger's roar (i didn't know which one) as he jumped down to attack me.

i know i was mohammed in that dream because, ever since i saw that picture on the front page of a newspaper last week, it has been seared into my mind and i haven't been able to shake the image of the howling face of abject fear on the father's face, nor on that of his terrified child, moments before dying.

it's fitting to write about this today, as it's now Yom Kippur, a Jewish high holy day. all religions really ought to have a day of atonement; for Jews, Yom Kippur atones only for sins between man and G-d... but in my own personal, agnostic interpretation of deity and spirit, I believe that "God" is to be found in every person, and therefore sins committed against another person should also be brought to the forefront on a day such as this, and atoned for, if only by the fact that it is mentioned and brought to light.

Saturday afternoon...

we reach the running track above the Clark Kerr Campus and take a little break. Kass is feeling slightly winded, as the first part of our hike along the neighborhoods southeast of campus has been all uphill for several blocks. at the track we look down over a swimming pool where two students are doing laps, and beyond, to the roofs of the dorms at Clark Kerr. soon, we start walking again, and if Kass thought the previous part was steep, i shudder to think what she considers this one... as we don't rush, it's fine. besides, her vocal training, which incorporates breathing exercises, ought to come in handy for this aerobic jaunt.

on the trail now: three barefoot women walking down, they look Iranian or Turkish, and wear flowing muslin dresses the colors of dark wine... around the next bend a man with a guitar appears, leading two dogs... something from Spark's jacket sleeve comes apart, as he pulls and pulls on a piece of blue thread, unraveling... at the next steep part Quad chases a dream uphill, he runs with legs and feet splaying semi-sidewise and at the next flat area he stops, squats, out-of-breath, pointing to something down the gorge a ways. when we get there, we look at what he saw: it is a man sitting cross-legged on a blue blanket making wild twirling motions with his hands above his head, like he is in a trance. he is clearly tripping time away.

we reach the top of the hill, and would be able to see forever -- or at least as far as the Farallones -- were it not for the fog and haze today. as it is, we can at least see the barest outline of the Golden Gate Bridge, and the contrails of the F-18 jets of the Blue Angels as they perform for their Fleet Week show in the airspace above San Francisco. Spark can't see them, as he has neither eyeglasses nor contacts today, and he certainly can't see the white-on-graywhite marks the flying machines draw on the sky. above us, two hawks glide soundlessly and circle in the updraft, before wheeling steeply down onto the top of the highest trees in the ravine.

atoning...

obviously, i can't add much to the historical argument between Semitic brethren, exploding once more in bloody conflict in modern-day Jerusalem... i can only lament and decry it, as any thinking human being would. Jews and Arabs have been at it for millennia now, and it seems no amount of bloodshed -- or, much less, reason -- between the two has the power to stop it. still, in our modern, sped-up age of information flashing around the world in seconds, images still have the power to devastate, as the one of Mohammed above does, or this one of a Palestinian youth throwing a stone. makes me ask the basic questions: at whom? why?

and so it makes me think, in a roundabout but perfectly reasonable way, of the things i must atone for, myself. thinking about my dream too, made me ask: what did those tigers stand for? whom did i offend? whom did i enrage? what was i running from?

Sep Nov

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