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Archive Number 2494 | ||
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Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 09:21:15 -0700
Dvora wrote to me off-list: > >that's not fair, arousing my curiosity. What was the family name of those >Rishon settlers? We know their names, they are not anonymous. >Dvora Shurman in Tel Aviv But, Dvora That's just the point of my letter to Limor and the group. I don't know their names or their lives or anything, except a (now dead) self-trained archeologist named Yakov. I met some of them once in 1966, and now "they" are just like finding an old photograph in a box that your grandmother had stored away. You wipe off the dust and wonder what the people in the old picture have to do with you. "They" haven't been a part of "my" story until just now. Like my example of my father's "Yamagata Story". It took 50 years for that seed to sprout. So, they, too, are those desert seeds, waiting for the right congruence of time/circumstance/and soil condition (ie. experience) before taking root. Interesting process! Appropriate to keep in mind when working on gutsy stories. What is that famous T.S.Eliot quote about "Returning, to know the place for the first time."? Is anything about this resonant with your experiences in Rumania, Laura? Have you read Jonathan Safran Foer's book "Everything Is Illuminated", which concerns similar researching? There is a beautiful quote that I've wanted to share with the list for many months. Perhaps now is the time to dig it out: In his novel, the author is going to Ukraine to find the town and the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. He hires a 20-something translator whose father runs the "Tour" company and whose grandfather is their reluctant driver. The translator, in his strange English, has a correspondence with the author, Jonathan, concerned about how the author is portraying his Ukraine family who were caught between unimaginable horror and greed and the common selfishness of survival. In this quote, on P.145,the young man writes to the author: "...(This is why I forgive Father. I do not love him. I hate him. But I forgive him for everything.) I parrot: Grandfather is not a bad person, Jonathan. Everyone performs bad actions. I do. Father does. Even you do. A bad person is someone who does not lament his bad actions. Grandfather is now dying because of his. I beseech you to forgive us, and to make us better than we are. Make us good." Suddenly, the phrase: "the right of return" comes into my mind, followed by "the Prodigal Son" and Rumi's poem "Come, whoever you are...our's is not a caravan of despair". And Simon Weisenthal's exploration of forgiveness in his great book on perspectives: "The Sunflower". And Albert Camus' letter of protest against the death penalty in 1950's France, "Reflections on the Guillotine". And the ancient Greek process of ostracisim, and the same punishment in the Inuit movie, "The Fast Runner". It all goes back a really long way, I guess, in our human consciousness: being put out of the group (or, in the "out" group) meant subsistence survival or death. And yet, the first murderer in our Jewish/Christian/Moslem mythology, Cain, was not killed and was protected and enabled to survive, even in his separation. Kinda makes me think about ...something...???...???...'THE RIGHT OF RETURN"...??? I promise, Dvora and Limor, I'll let you know more about my Israeli "desert seeds" next week. Bobby _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8 is here: Try it free* for 2 months http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup | ||