Provision

I crossed the road to the beach in front of my apartment building with no specific aim or purpose. As I strolled up and down sand, I was struck by the abundance of fruit and vegetables that had washed up. Here a yellow onion, there a cob of maize, then a small bunch of plump green grapes, an orange. A kohlrabi, another onion (this time purple), and some indeterminate greenery. A few ordinary pippins, and then, and then, the verdant green of a granny smith, well-knawed and thus much appreciated--the bite-marks a clear testimony to its flavour and quality.

I am reminded of a cab ride to work years ago, when the driver saw a sack of potatoes in the road ahead, and with great skill slowed down the van, opened his door, and snatched the spuds like an Afghan buzqashi player. The driver exclaimed the wonderful chips he was going to make that evening. One of the passengers, not excited himself about eating food found in the road, turned to the driver and said, "maybe someone hit a cow and it'll be lying in the road somewhere up ahead, and then you can have steak with your chips."

Provision!

Proximity Talks

Incessant stillness

Raging in a silent place

Dry, timeless, painful rage

A Very Special Welcome . . . Mat

Bibi, this doormat is suggested for your use. Please place it outside whatever room it is that you use to meet with envoys and potentates from the Golden West who come with thinly veiled threats and ponderous ultimata for the Jewish state concerning peace, borders, defence, walls, home-building, state-building, international law, and final solutions. Mr Prime Minister, make each and every one of them knows that this doormat was placed there just for them.

HEAVENLY SPOTLIGHTS: A Room with a View

One can see the most amazing things from the front window, without even having to rise from the recliner. Some use the giant, mind-numbing flatscreen tv as their window. Some prefer the rear window, and glimpses of wife-murderers and other mysteries. I'll stick with the front view. More edifying.

I haven't had a television most of my adult life, and didn't grow up with one in the family livingroom, as the centerpiece and gathering point of life in the house. This doesn't make me superior, or in any way wiser. There are more ways to be an idiot by choice than there are cable channels, and that's saying a lot. Just that Teleos-vision is more my style. The view of the sea and the sky from my window is a form of perfection, as in something complete, lacking nothing, whole in and of itself. I'd rather be attracted to the high places, the places of brightness and colour, than to those dank, spelunkian, torch-lite dungeons inhabited by television. True, by my own choice I have not plumbed the half-centimeter depths of the American sitcom, or the latest too clever British humour offering; I have never watched Albania's Got Talent! and I live without game shows. I am denied the pseudo-analytics of the polished but uneducated suits and hairdos of corporate altnewsland. The jabber-jabber of the pundit does not assail my ears.

I think I can live with this lack.

Or maybe I can live because of this lack . . .