Chet: Early Post Today

chet

What have I learned about Chet today?

Well, I learned that it is a Zayin and a Vov linked together. Do you see it? And remember that vertical line that goes up on top of the other letters that represent God? Well the same applies here, only there is something a little bit different, because you can also write a chet like this:

chet

Weird, huh? You know why that is? It is because of the concept of “Touching but not touching,” Also known as hovering. No, not Hoovering – God is not a Vacuum! Well, maybe he is.

I mentioned this back when I was talking about the Aleph my first day out here in Joshua Tree.

In Genesis, when God created the heavens and the earth, there are distinct separations that are made between the sea and the sky, between the deep water, and the light water (there is a distinct passage about how he hovers over the water and creates the ‘expanse,” which is actually translated as the “firmament,” and it’s all about how the celestial water is definitely different from the sea water, etc.), the sea and the land and the distance and closeness between God and human beings – the spiritual world and the mortal world. It is quite clear. There is an “above” and there is a “below,” the “above” having to do with God’s world. 

In Kabbalah, Chet represents The Life Dynamic of Run and Return, meaning that there are these two levels of life: “Essential life” and “life to enliven.”

Think of God as the “Essential life,” of course. What else would he be between the two? Duh!

Something like mortal reality would be the “life to enliven.” Do you kinda get where I’m going here?

So, the letter Chet is the secret of “run and return.” It’s how God hovers over his creation, touching, but not touching, and all the Jewish souls connecting their lives that need to be enlivened with the essential life. It works two ways.

That’s what I got out of it anyway.

If I’m off base, then I’m off base.

And not to say that this is what I got out of the letter/my studying at all, But it got me thinking.

Very recently I lost my beloved aunt Susan. She had cancer. At first, it was diagnosed as breast cancer, actually Stage 4. That’s when they found it, so it was pretty bleak.

She went through super aggressive therapy, five rounds of chemo, back to back, during which time she told me several times, she was not afraid to die.

I was actually just writing about it this morning. I have been thinking about her a lot.

She was serious. She wasn’t trying to convince me, or herself, God or the universe. She really wasn’t afraid. I believed her. It wasn’t easy to believe, but I did. For her, she was ready for the outcome, whatever it was. She also had a strong belief in God. I wondered if that had anything to do with it.

I know people who have a very strong belief in God, but they are still scared to death to die.

I am basically scared to death to live. I will admit to it. I live my life in love, but I have to say, I’m afraid of everything. I live in fear. And while that fear motivates me to conquer it constantly – for instance, if I am scared to fly someplace alone, I’ll go do it just because I’m scared. If I am afraid to expose my weakness to strangers, I’ll show my vulnerabilities to anyone and everyone just because I fear it most. I’ll walk on fire because it scares me. I’ll make that line on the canvas because I think it’s stupid. You get the idea.

I do this because I desperately want to stop living my life in fear, and you know what, nothing works!

So I wonder, sometimes, if death is it. Is death the moment in time when I will finally “let go?” Where the anxiety of life finally leaves and you feel like you are falling back into a fresh, Downey pillow, with TRUST? Maybe then it would be something to look forward to. I wonder if Susie was not just unafraid, but if it was something like a relief she was looking towards?

Anyway, I wonder about these morbid things a lot, in case you can’t tell. I know I should not, but I do.

Maybe she knew there would be no more “hovering” from God, no more running back and forth. No more effort. Maybe it’s when God stops barely touching and finally touches you.

Just a nice, shiny thought to brighten your day! 🙂

Tomorrow is a New Day

Tomorrow morning I’ll be getting back to work. I’ll be studying the letter Chet, but not tonight. However, I have to admit that I skimmed the pages just a little bit and something caught my eye that was too much of a coincidence not to mention. It said, under “Worlds:”

  • The ascent of all worlds on Shabbat and their subsequent descent after Shabbat.

How weird is that? You know, today being the day after Shabbat and all?

Well I thought it was a coinkeedink.

But that’s not what I am going to be talking about tonight. I wanted to talk about a couple different things, that is, if I can get them out of my head fast enough before I lose them. Before they fly off into the ether.

One of them is about my work out here. The roadblocks I have been running into and the things that have been out of my control. I have finally come to a point where I (I think) I can actually let them go. They are out of my control after all.

I have just been feeling a lot of pressure, perhaps I have mentioned before. I know I put this crap upon myself. It’s just that so many people have supported me on this endeavor and I feel that I need to work hard. I’m just not very good at giving myself any breaks.

But one mistake I have made before coming out here was the “daily regimen” I created. I don’t know what I was thinking!

My plan was to have my coffee, then:

  • Walk my dog
  • Study Kabbalah
  • Meditate
  • Do writing and sketching
  • Take photos
  • Make a few quick watercolors
  • Do a video diary
  • Get some outdoor video footage
  • Write a blog post
  • Eat dinner
  • Read the Torah
  • Go to Bed.

And that seemed reasonable to me. In fact, it seemed like a mellow day, like I could even fit in a nap or something.

Nope. I was totally kidding myself – and as usual, out of my cotton-pickin’ mind!

So far, I have been lucky if to squeeze in four or five of these things, and there hasn’t been time for naps. Forget it! I don’t know where the days are going. I think they are mostly going towards studying Kabbalah, formatting these way too long blog posts, and maybe a lot of writing too. And I mean lot of writing. Not that this is a bad thing. Writing is how I organize just about everything that is in my head.

In fact, I feel like I am getting a LOT accomplished, it’s just not “per the agenda.” It’s not what was scheduled! But that schedule was all self-imposed. It’s just that I kinda-sorta self-imposed it publicly.

You guys don’t care though, right? You understand that this is all a big long process.

It is a process! And so much is out of my control. Maybe it’s a good thing?

The camera, for one thing. I was so frustrated about it. I mean, I can hardly work it. I found out yesterday that it won’t charge! And the wind! The wind has finally calmed, but the camera won’t charge. So, trying to get footage – which has to be silent by the way since the mic won’t work while the camera is plugged in (remember the 60 cycle hum?), so I am looking for plugs all over the property.

That means I can’t venture off very far. So there you have it. It just sucks because I’m tethered to a short extension cord. Oh poor me.

So anyway – all of this being out of my control, I’ve meditated on it, and I just LET IT GO! …A little bit anyway. Ha!

And a lot opened up for me.

Inspiration for one thing.

I am so inspired about the installation. Did I already tell you that it’s just going to be a tent? No more stations like in the original plan. That’s all gone now.

I have streamlined the whole thing.

The tent is the theater for the film.

It’s going to be all about the film, which hopefully, is going to kick ass! It’s just a short, but you never know, maybe it will be something special. I have my hopes up. Now anyway.

The film will be about 15 minutes. Damn, have I mentioned this before? Am I having Deja vu? I’m probably just going crazy, as usual. The film is going to be about THIS. All of this. If that doesn’t make sense. It will eventually.

The tent will be covered in as much ephemera as I can possibly make: sketches, drawings, watercolors, notes, post-its, typed stories, blog entries, other people’s stories (please send them in!), photos, reference materials, just everything – all pinned to the outside of the tent.

The tent I really want is way, way outside of my budget, but I will make due with one within my budget UNLESS I can find the one I want on Ebay. This is the one I really want:

tent

But this thing is like $1200! I only budgeted $300 for a tent. I will find something that will work. I just like the aesthetic of this one, but I bet I can find a white canvas one in my budget because I am resourceful like that. 😉

I have also been thinking a lot about the paintings I am going to be making during the year once I get home and I am very excited about those. I pretty much know what I’m doing and it’s going to be different. Some people might not like it at all, but that’s the risk I’m willing to take.

I feel like I’ve said all this already!

Maybe it’s the mescaline again.

Anyways. Those are the going plans for now.

See you tomorrow.

What’s That You’re Zayin?

zayin

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 expo 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.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

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):

studio

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.

artstudioporch

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!

studionighttripod

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:

writersview

Here is the path where I begin my walk every morning. Not too shabby, eh?

path

Okay, I will end this here and get to work on the next blog entry.

You Say Vov, I Say Vav

vav

Whelp, I was studying the Vav today. And boy is it windy! It’s been windy every single day I’ve been here. And maybe I’ve mentioned it, but I probably haven’t told you that it’s been nearly record breaking winds. Every day!

Being outside has been nearly impossible. All the Benadryl in the world can’t help you. The dirt and sand just flies in your eyes, tree branches come barreling through the wind only to smack you in the face and break your flesh open, and the visibility just isn’t good at all. Benadryl doesn’t help that kinda thing at all.

I hear that tomorrow will be a better day though. No wind. No flesh-eating tree branches, etc.

So, I was right about that Vav being a ray of light, but I sure didn’t know how deep it was going to go, again! Of course, all these letters lead you down a rabbit hole that goes on forever and ever, and I am only skimming the surface really. One letter a day just doesn’t get you far when it comes to studying Kabbalah. Not even a little. I feel like a dope thinking I could have done that now – now that I know how many avenues of thought Kabbalah has alone! It’s the same as Judaism!

But of course! These are Jews we are talking about here. No one is going to agree on any one school of thought, or anything for that matter. I remember my family couldn’t even decide on what restaurant to go to. That alone took an hour at least! The places would pretty much be closed by the time we could all decide on one place to go to. And no one was really satisfied with their choice either.

That’s Judaism for ya.

It’s pretty easy for me to go down rabbit holes though, considering that I am so very green (and bunny-like), but today I went down the one having to do with Tzimtzum. Even if you just skim that whole subject, you can hardly get an idea of what it’s all about. It will twist your little mind into knots!

I can’t put this one in a “nutshell” for you this time folks! But what I can do is tell you some things I got out of it.

Like some of the validation on the art I have been doing up until now – up to the present. And the future. And the past!

I have made my negative past into a positive future, not just a positive present, and I have even brought the past into the NOW, changed it, and laid down a new future.

I know it seems like I just said the same thing twice, but I didn’t. Trust me.

Also: connectivity.

What I wasn’t able to get into last night because of all my bitching and moaning, was the top line of the Hei, which in a nutshell, represents God, but really, his connectivity throughout all of us, not exactly the separation like the higher and lower worlds I have mentioned before. That comes in more on the left side of the Hei in the action of the foot and in the absence of a connection from the foot – to the top line… 

hei

I am just quickly summing up the Hei here, because I didn’t do that last night, so I’m kinda rushing through it.

The right side of the Hei is us, and the power of our reach (our connectivity) through speech. And that left side, there’s that foot – representing action. But it’s not connected. As you can see, there is a space, and that space represents that nothingness I love so much, taking me back to Aleph, “The direct insight of Divine Truth; to be nothing.”

It’s that existential gap…

From the text I am reading:

The servant of God experiences the existential gap between his thoughts and deeds. Often he is unable to realize his inner intentions. Other times he is surprised by unexpected success. In both cases he feels the hand of God directing his deeds. The gap is the experience of the Divine Nothing, the source of all Creation in deed: something from nothing.

Okay, that’s Hei.

But back to Vav!

I had to fill you in on Hei because Vav is all about The Tzimtzum, not just a simple “ray of light” that I naively gathered before.

I once studied, once upon a time, some very basic physics. I was probably in my 20s, so I don’t remember a lot of it, but I remember how light, space and time all tied together, and you’d be shittin’ me if these early Lurianic Kabbalists knew anything about that in the 1500s, but apparently they did! Seriously! Classical Physics didn’t even start until the early 1600s. But somehow, even if it was just a theory or a guess – obviously it was a religious, creationist view – but they knew that light and time were connected (as light and space are).

Now I am stuck on whether or not I should link you to a physics page on that, or just leave it at that. …It’s based on Minkowski Space, which is all you really need to know.
Like I said – rabbit hole!

Yeah, Vav. Jeez! Who knew?

Here are some pictures I took today:

bigrock

bigrock2

jtree

OH! By the way, I am going to be observing Shabbos tomorrow, so you won’t hear from me until Saturday night.

Have a great one! See you Saturday!

Heis and Lows

het

Hei! How are you? Pretty crappy, but thanks for asking.

Today I studied the Hei. But maybe instead of getting into that, I’d rather tell you that today was FUCKED!

I’d ask you to excuse my French, but I’m not really that kind of wuss, so please, allow me to go on with my rant about how stupid I am, because I am.

Today, just about everything that could go wrong – did, and all because I wasn’t using my head. Well, some of the reason is due to the fact that I don’t have my own video cam with me. I’m sure I have mentioned this a few times now.

This morning I recorded a long video journal – one where I finally tell the story about my past issues surrounding my video camera. I have mentioned this before as well. I’ve almost disclosed it in fact. Or maybe I have, I really don’t know anymore. But there is a heavy story about how I had a grand plan to create an auto-documentary back in 2007, but that wound up in a suicide attempt.

So, I’m telling this story into the camera today – how my Sony has been sitting in its case for the last seven years, and I get into the part about how seeing my family behind the lens of a camera did something really bizarre to me. I mean, I had no idea the impact it was going to have on me. I couldn’t have guessed it, but it was really profound.

Anyway, I started to cry on video. I wasn’t even expecting to act or feel natural on camera, but the tears just came, and I was like, hey, this might be great footage for the film. Real tears! But in all seriousness, they were real. Still, it was all captured on video and I was glad to have taped it, until…

I hit the playback button.

Oh my God! The microphone was situated near my hair so a couple of my dreads were flopping and dragging across the mic the entire time!

The rest of the week I had been wearing my hair up. Today I had the thought: I should wear my hair down for once so people can really see this mop of dreadlocks.

What an idiot!  And not because I wanted you to see my hair, but because of where I placed my microphone. (I just want to clarify that. I’m not generally an idiot.)

But the sound is unbearable on the entire take. It’s unusable.

And that’s not the only dumb thing I did!

The day before yesterday, I cued up the camera to play back the last video diary, but I forgot that I did that!!! When I came in today, I just hit record!

In other words, I recorded over my last video diary – and it was a good one too! I didn’t do one on Tuesday, so it was extra precious.

After I threw a shit-fit, I calmed down. I have a piece of yarn that is tied around my wrist to remind me to do such things (calm myself down),  and read the camera manual instead. I tried to get to know the cam a little better. I read about how to charge it properly, which I needed to do finally, but when I tried to do that, it wasn’t working, and while it was plugged in, I could not record because there was a buzz on the mic while the camera was plugged in to the wall, which is apparently called a “60 cycle hum.”

After many, many attempts all day today to get that camera working the way I needed it to, and trust me, I tried until it was dark outside, I had to give up on that, and I was in no mood to draw – but I drew a few pictures anyway 😉 I just forgot my digital camera back in the main house, so I didn’t shoot them. Sorry – no pictures tonight.

‘Twas a frustrating day.

However! Something really GREAT transpired out of it all!

I may still be a bit blank on what my new paintings are going to look like, but I now know what my film is going to BE! And the installation too.

These days, for me, making decisions has never been so radiant and strong. I don’t know how else to explain that, but I guess I just did.

More on that later. I have to jot off to bed!

Dalet

I see a red door and I want it panted black.

Words from one of my favorite rock n roll songs that I always thought was political, but it’s not. It is, according to Mick Jagger, about a young girl’s funeral. That’s good enough for me. It’s a dark song. I’m the dark and brooding type, so it works.

But I started to sing this because of the door. I suppose I could have sung Paul McCartney’s (Wings) Let em In, but that is just so upbeat! You know, because of Paul. Paul is a bit of an optimist. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It was a good thing he was actually. It was a great balance for the Beatles and it made for the most perfect songwriting duo known to mankind. I was just more of a Lennon fan myself – for the very reason that Paul was a bit too much of a fluffy cloud.

But anyway, that door. Dalet is the door to the house, or rather, the opening to the house. If you’ve been following my blog, I’ve been studying the Hebrew letters and the Kabbalah.

The Dalet also represents the poor man that the Gimmel is running after to give charity to.

That sounds pretty funny that you would have to chase someone down to give them money, doesn’t it?

Remember I said before about how I have certain people in mind when I think about the Gimmel? Well, this might sound strange, but I think about the part of my relationship with my brother that has been strained in the past – although lately it has been quite healed – but I have thought about him as a Gimmel and about me as a Dalet, but not in the same context. I don’t think of him running after me. That’s not it. It’s hard to explain. …Trust me, he’s not running after me to give me any charity.

Like I said, it’s hard to explain, but what I can say is this: there’s actually a verse in Matthew that goes: “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Now whether you are a Christian or a Jew, or nothing in between, there is something to be said about that. I think about that verse a lot, as a “poor man” and as someone that usually runs away from charity! Ha! Yet, here I am in Joshua Tree on this quest, because of the charity of my friends and supporters. A charity of sorts anyway.

And speaking of mitzvahs, and the Dalet, here we go, right? Trust me, this ties together I think — into the poor man, the rich man, and in my mind, which has the bigger ego.

The Dalet has a lot to do with the consciousness of the ego, because many times in life we think that when we achieve big successes, it’s all about us. It’s all about how powerful we have become on our own alone. And we forget about this free will thing. That goes right out the window. We don’t give God any thought when these great things happen, yet we sure get pissed at him when the bad stuff occurs. (How could God let this horrible thing happen to me?!) 

We seem to acknowledge the God presence in times of struggle. I know I have noticed looking around for God during those times, probably every time. That’s when I need it.

The Talmud describes a situation where one man is carrying a heavy object and another man appears to be helping him by placing his hands under the object, when in truth the first man is carrying all the weight. The second man is referred to as “a merely apparent helper.” So are we, explains the Ba’al Shem Tov, in relation to God. Ultimately, all one’s strength comes from Above. Free choice is no more than the expression of one’s will to participate, as it were, in the Divine act. One merely places one’s hands under the weight carried exclusively by God.

Okay, I’m almost done with all this religious stuff. Well, I am done. I just wanted to say that I went down the biggest rabbit hole today when studying because I didn’t know what the Zohar was. Now I do!

Now for what I did in the studio today. Nothing!

Okay, I did some sketches, but not many! It was really a study day. Here are a few. I worked on a watercolor for a long time, but I don’t know how I feel about it yet.

shula

abstract2

abstract3

abstract4

Okay, this is me, signing off. See you tomorrow.

LOVE!

Who’s on Third?

gimel

What did I learn about Gimmel today?

Well, I will admit that I am still confused.

I know what it represents. That I am clear on. The sages believe it is the rich man running after the poor man ( specifically the Dalet), to give charity to.

The Gimmel is put together as a Vav with a Yud as its foot.

I have often drawn this as a character with actual “feet,” sometimes with sneakers, and I have known it to symbolize wealth. I have associated it with certain people I know. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I have, so I suppose I have had a strange bias against it.

I even painted Dan being born into a “Gimmel machine” on purpose, in hopes that the series of paintings I did about him would hopefully bring me wealth that year, which turned out to be a stupid thing to do.

birthofdan

But anyhow, on my studies today, I found that again, this letter has more to do with FREE WILL than anything else. Another letter that has to do with free will. It seems that free will is probably the greatest thing we have going for us. And there is something for me to learn in that – I just know there is!

In what I was reading today, well, I will quote some of it here:

The word “gimel” is derived from the word “gemul,” which in Hebrew means both the giving of reward as well as the giving of punishment. In Torah, both reward and punishment have the same ultimate aim – the rectification of the soul to merit to receive God’s light to the fullest extent.

Reward and punishment imply that man is free to choose between good and evil. 

After all this I get a bit foggy on the rest, but I get that giving and receiving is about free will, and that all just makes me want to think about it all more. I suppose I’m not finished meditating on this one folks.

So after all this studying, I went into the studio and finished up all my postcards for everyone and went into town and mailed them off. One was a handmade postcard for someone extra special.

nikki

I then wound up doing an extra long video diary. I don’t know why, but I got carried away.

Then I did a bunch of small, square drawings. I was really excited about a few of them. really excited.

Things are moving along!

Oh, and I took a shot of those Exodus bracelets like I promised, see?:

brace

I guess that’s it for tonight. I’m pretty tired and I have to pee at the moment.

Second Day Crawling

It was some kinda day today. Or maybe I should not say that.

I did not get as much done as I had hoped to, but I wonder if I’m going to be saying that every day. (Probably so, Joe.)

There is a friend I have in mind and I hope she is reading this blog entry tonight because I couldn’t help but think about her the entire time while studying today, while I was studying about the Kabbalah anyway. At least I did that! Other than that, I only got about five drawings – sketches really – done, plus a few photographs. No video footage today unfortunately.

I was studying and meditating on the letter Beit, which comes next in the Hebrew alphabet, and is also the first letter in the Torah, opening Genesis.

Most of you probably know, and I have known for a long while that Beit mainly means House, I did’t know how in depth – of course – all this gets.

And I hope all of you know that I am not giving out lessons here. I am merely learning these things and just writing out my stupid interpretations of how perceive this stuff, as some of it is a little poetic to me. None is quite literal. Although, I’m sure many do  take it literally. I do not. I am, and always have been, pretty secular, as a Jew. Only in the last decade have I become a little more serious about this religion. Or rather, “a little more interested,” might be a better way to put it.

My true calling for it was nostalgic; an early family connection that I missed very much when my grandma was still alive. I missed the traditions mostly. I missed when the family was closer and like a network of loving women. Since then, I felt lost, and sad. Once I found the right synagogue, I think that changed and my interest deepened.

But back to Beit,  the house business. Genesis begins with a BIG Beit.  God had specific intentions about his house and our house. It was the original intention as a matter of fact and that’s why  Genesis starts out that way, because it’s, of course, more than just a house,  it’s what dwells inside  the house.

You have to look at it in terms of God being a house. A really big, powerful and loving house. And you are a house too. And yes, the temples were/are the houses where we connected to God, but not really. We are the ones that dwell inside them. But what about when the Temple was destroyed?

The Torah details a description of the Tabernacle and its vessels: “They shall build me a Temple and I will dwell in them.” Not “in it,” but “in them” – in each and every Jew. Not the temples. I see it this way.

This following paragraph is for my friend. I’m cutting and pasting it right out of The Channels of the Creative Consciousness:

Beit is numerically equal to the word “ta’avah,” which means “desire” or “passion” (412). In general, “ta’avah” connotes a negative human property. However, in several places “ta’avah” denotes the positive passion of the tzadik, the righteous man. One passage in Proverbs states: “He will fulfill the passion of the tzadik,” and a second says: “the passions of tzadikim are only good.” The “ta’avah” of G-d, the “Tzadik of the world,” is altogether above reason and logic. At this level one cannot ask “why.” As expressed by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi: “About passion, there can be no question.” As G-d is the essence of good so His passion is “only good.”

Some more connections leading back to this letter – it has everything to do with FREE WILL, being able to make choices between right and wrong, what is best to bring happiness to your personal house. It even talks about how your house also represents your partner. Beit  is the second letter in the alphabet, so its Divine number is two. Being after Aleph,  and the two being you and your mate for life, this is the kind of partnership that is next to the one you have with God.

Okay, enough with all that, here are some of the pictures I took today that I LOVE the most!

abstract

artstudioporch

lightening

cave