OMG, Sorry my blog titles are so insanely dorky. I can’t help it though. What can I say? I am an ultra dork.
I learned a lot about the letter Zayin today as a matter of fact, but if someone off the street asked me what it meant, I would tell them that I had absolutely no idea! This shit flies so far over my head, it’s impossible to even see what is flying over and above. What the hell was that?!
The truth is, I was reading from the book I have been studying all along, Channel of Creative Consciousness, by Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, and this morning when I got to Zayin, I did not like what I read. It was poop! I wound up searching out other people’s take on it, on this mystical letter, you know, to get a better understanding. And I did. What that understanding is, I could not tell you, but the first one made me kinda mad.
It put me in a place, back in time. I was 14. Yes, 14! That was when I was an angry feminist. There was a woman’s bookstore in Studio City (borderline Sherman Oaks) called Bread and Roses. I call it a “woman’s bookstore,” not a feminist bookstore, because it seemed like it was kind of like a “front.” Even the name of the shop! I think they even sold potpourri! Very froofy.
Yet the women that worked there had no problem rattling off titles from the top of their heads when I told them the kind of stuff I was looking for. Thinking about it now, I’m surprised they didn’t recommend S.C.U.M Manifesto! They weren’t that bad, I kid you!
But I read a ton of books from that store and learned about the history of women’s persecution, at least history with “proof,” and as far back as the 10th century in China with the whole “Lotus feet” deal (foot binding). Just anything that would push my anger scales past a 10 and keep me pissed off at practically all times until I decided to come out as a lesbian at 15.
But that’s another story. Maybe even another blog.
Let’s get back to what happened when I was reading about the Hebrew letter Zayin. It spoke of, mainly, the Zayin representing the “Woman of Valor.” That didn’t bug me so much, until it got into a bunch of hooey about the woman being the crown of her husband and stuff like, “She who does her husband’s will.”
Oh reeaally?
Now, I know the Torah is filled with all kinds of sexism, murder and punishments from God, and a jealous God at that, but that is not how I interpret the Bible. Never have, never will.
Personally, and it’s funny that I have turned this project into such an exposé of my religious beliefs – something I feel are so entirely personal and none of your fucking business, but I do feel that if you are going to take the Bible at its literal word, you’re as shallow and stupid as they come – since it’s a book as deep and mystical, and really unknowable, as a beautifully, well-written poem.
Only the authors know what they meant when they wrote it, in the specific words they used AND – what those hieroglyphs meant at that time. We can never fully know all that.
Since then, so much meaning has been foisted upon it all, and this is where all the existentialism comes in. You make your own meaning.
If you didn’t make your life have meaning, you wouldn’t have any reason to be here – so that is the “existential” question (and answer to), What is the meaning of life?
Whatever I am getting out of these studies could be “right,” could be “wrong,” but they make up my connection to the Torah, and that can’t be bad. They connect me to thousands of years of what courses through my DNA, and more so, my recent family that has come and gone. The traditions that have fallen away that I so desperately want back.
And blah blah blah. It brings me back home.
So as I was Zayin, The letter seemed awfully 1950s to me, and I wound up Googling more about it and found a wealth of other information I liked more, but yes, it has to do with women, but as the “Crown of Creation,” not so much a woman of valor. It also has a lot to so with the sexual organs. Maybe my book didn’t want to get so into that? I’m not sure. But because it has to do with Yesod, which the book does get into in another section – as one of the Divine Emanations or Sephirot, it does connect – but I wouldn’t have known that if I didn’t go searching Google style.
Anyway, Yseod, is the foundation in the Tree of Life, which makes sense since it has everything to do with creation. It goes back to CONNECTION again. (I have a feeling the moral to this whole story is going to be connection!)
Have I lost you? I probably have.
What about Joshua Tree?
Out here in the desert, the wind has died down FINALLY, and for the first time, I was able to film outside. I was getting scared that I wasn’t going to be able to do this at all since the wind just has not let up since I’ve been here. I come out here a lot and I’ve never seen anything like it! Not wind for five days straight, and not wind at 30 miles per hour.
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I wrote all that before sundown on Friday. I suppose I could have posted what I had, but I just wasn’t finished. I usually don’t even start my blog posts until late at night, but a few times I have been writing a little bit right after I study to get some notes out of my head, and it winds up as the skeleton for my blog post for later in the day.
The days are long here, when you are waiting for sundown. Sundown is also when the bobcats come out. I have to really keep my eye on Gemma.
Oops.. sorry I thought I had a pic of her, but it’s on my Nikon (my 35 mm old-skool camera) and I can’t see those pitures until I get back home and have them developed. She is a hard subject to photograph anyway, since she never looks into the camera when I say her name. She’s on my video diaries though. When it comes to those, she’s a real ham.
I also decided that I can’t stand how awful my drawings look when I photograph them in the studio. I am going to have to wait until I get home and scan the ones that fit in the scanner – and besides, I shouldn’t show you everything anyway, right? I’d like to keep it for the big reveal in the installation.
And I am going to talk about the installation in my next blog entry, so I sure hope you guys are following this snooze of a process through my project so far. It’s only going to get snoozier!
This is the studio I work in here, forgive me if I am starting to show duplicates of anything (it’s been hard to keep track of my photos – I have yet to organize them):
The studio also has a sizable porch where I do a lot of my meditating. I’ve done it here a few of the days anyway.
Here’s another interior at night, the view from the chair. Out that window are giant rocks. Well, there are rocks everywhere on this property!
There are a ton of beds in every room of this place, most likely because a lot of people stay on the property at once. It’s a rock climbers haven, and I imagine they like to do their expeditions in groups. Is it even called an “expedition” if it’s a rock climb? Or is that word only used for archaeologists? Whatever.
There are four beds in the main house, and it’s only a one bedroom home. There are more places to lay down than to sit! And that’s fine by me. 🙂 I so badly want to live here. The studio doesn’t have a bathroom, but I wouldn’t mind walking up the path to use the one in the writer’s house, which is a studio. It is just one room that fits a queen size bed and a bathroom, but it also fits a good sized desk in from of the bed at the window, where your view is basically this:
Here is the path where I begin my walk every morning. Not too shabby, eh?
Okay, I will end this here and get to work on the next blog entry.
