When we were children, the stories used to end when the hero had found his or her mate, and they lived happily ever after. Watching most American movies it goes like that. There is that summit of the realization of expectation, and that is a good place to stop because otherwise you find out that there is a quick slide down and you have to climb the mountain again. Those who know what life is about, are very aware of this up and down nature of life, the roller coaster phenomenon, or as the Chassidic masters say, 'going down for the sake of going up'. I remember students of mine, who had lived together before getting married, surprising me with all the usual aggravations and heartbreak of the post honeymoon after getting married. I say surprising me, because I had had this false notion, that if they had lived together before getting married they would work out all the difficulties, and then once they did get married it would be smooth sailing from there on. But no, it was more like a love affair, with the ups and downs, and the hot and cold of it, followed by a marriage with all the pluses and minuses of that, afterwards.
I was reminded of that after my last little skirmish with the blog, in the beginning of March. I had resolved to going back to blogging after a few bumps in the road, and then got some letters that just about knocked me out of my chair. I know, I know, I shouldn't let a comment get me so upset… but when you're not feeling well, anything can get you upset, even a friend who was insulted because he didn't get a personal invite from you, instead of reading something on the blog. And so, overcome by sensitivity, I stopped writing for another long while.
All the while, though, I was working on my own web site, which is a combination of the many different aspects of my own existence in this universe. After checking out the internet, and the different possibilities of presenting yourself, I decided to build my own web site myself. It is a place where I can combine pictures and text in any way I desire to, and where I can express myself in both Hebrew and English. Aside from this blog, I also have a photoblog, and I remember one of my friends commenting to me about the frustration he felt when looking through my pictures and seeing some comments about one in particular, "but it wasn't in my language," he said. And though a lot of people do know English in Israel, and especially those who use the internet, it just fits that I would have a number of friends who don't care much for any other language but Hebrew, and have never bothered to learn any either. And this was a very close friend of mine. I was actually embarrassed by the incident.
So after gaining a little experience on the web, I started thinking about what would be most suitable for me, and one of the things that was clear, was that my web site would have to be like my home in cyberspace, a place where anyone who visited me would feel comfortable. And that definitely meant both Hebrew and English.
I have lived for over 30 years in the same apartment I live in today, in Jerusalem. I've never built a home myself, and I guess I hadn't given it that much thought. But when I started thinking about what my home in cyberspace would be like, I had to think about what a home is like, and what I want and what I need in a home. And so, three homes came to mind immediately, as models. First, my own home, in which I live all these years. And then, the holy temple, which is called "the home" by most Jews, when they refer to it. It was our collective home here in Jerusalem, and it was also considered the home of God. And third, the home of my dear friend Rafi, who built his own house with his own two hands, and I've always felt extremely comfortable in his home. No sooner did I start thinking about home building, than I realized that the home was divided into categories of intimacy, and spaces devoted to particular activities. The kitchen, for instance, with the gas burners, and the stove, and the refrigerator, and numerous closets for dishes and pots and pans. The living room to lounge around in, to listen to music, to read, and to entertain guests, the toilet, the bathroom, the work rooms, and the bed rooms, all of them with their specific functions, and we have a wash room too where we keep a washing machine for clothes etc.
At first thought, it seemed that I wouldn't need any of the rooms that were devoted to physical needs, since life in cyberspace was something of a spiritual experience. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that most of the physical aspects of life had their parallels in the consciousness of the mind. And that brings me to another thought. Many years ago, when I used to gobble up science fiction books and stories, much attention was given to the probability that soon great numbers of robots would exist in our world, and would change a lot of the way we lived. There were endless stories of robots, and they all looked like us. They were usually built in the image of man, and behaved pretty much as slaves, except that they weren't human, and that made it okay. They did all our work, and they could be our friends, but basically they were just machines so we didn't have to feel guilty about owning slaves. Since then, the robots have arrived, and in great numbers, just as those clever sci fi writers expected. But they weren't built in the image of man's body, but in the image of his brain. They are the personal computers we all use to read each other's blogs and so on. And more than friends, they have become a sort of inner room in which we deal with the world by proxy. This thought helped me deal with the problem of how to incorporate both Hebrew and English in my web site. I thought of the two lobes of the brain, very much alike but not identical, one of which is more connected with the control of the physical body, and one of which is more sensitive to the artistic and spiritual needs of the person. When you arrive at my web site, there is an oval button that says Hebrew in the Hebrew language. And anyone who presses that button, is immediately transported to the Hebrew side of the site, which has pretty much the same pictures as on the English side, but the occasional comments are in Hebrew. And the posts, in either of the two languages, are not really translations of what I wrote in the other language; they are more a representation of what I was thinking in that language. Because, as we've discussed in a previous post, there is a lot of interchange between the media and one's thought. We constantly influence and are influenced by all around us.
Anyone wishing to respond, is welcome to write me at:
humpict@017.net.il
