Diary

I didn’t decide yet whether to travel anywhere, but should make up my mind soon, if I want to get away before the high season starts; I’m also not sure how much I may be needed at home during the summer months.

So, when I went on a long walk in the woods today, I decided to leave my mind free, rather than listen to a podcast or music, in case insight came.

None did, which is typical. When I’m walking in the woods, it’s hard to think about plans, or arrive at practical decisions. What I was thinking about, if anything, was that I’m quite happy to be doing what I’m doing. So is it actually necessary to go anywhere during this period? A time will come when I feel a pressing need, no doubt.

I thought also about my conception of the universe and the place we occupy in it. Today I was in three bookshops looking for a Hebrew translation of the Tao Te Ching, as D wanted to give it as a gift to someone. It seems to be a popular book here: all the sales assistants I spoke to knew it, and the first two shops had run out of copies. The second shop sent me to another branch of their chain, where she discovered that two copies remained. “It’s wonderful,” said the shop assistant.

The shops also carried a translation of the complete writings of Ramana Maharshi and D asked me to get that too, so I got it. On the cover, it has the Sanskrit word “Aham” (I).

So on my walk I also thought a little about Ramana. I have never felt drawn much to his method of self-inquiry. I’m probably more attracted to “affirmation”, the way of the mahavaykas. But it isn’t exactly that. My practice is more one of attempting to integrate the realisation of the error in our perception. Ahankara makes us conceive of ourselves as separated and limited, whereas in truth we are of the same substance as the universe, which expresses itself through us, as it does in every other being/element (sarvani bhutani). This oneness, this unity-verse, is worthy of devotion: not that of the individual + an object of worship. Devotion is a bhava, a state. The state of existence is itself wrapped up with the innate inclination to be worshipful. Bhakti, which is love, is the glue that holds everything together. That’s my approach, basically.

I did not find a proper guide in it, and sometimes I wish there would be one. Maybe I am myself the best guide, but so far I’m not impressed wtih the results.

Diary

In the morning picked up one of my grandchildren from the railway station in Modi’in (one of two such drives today, because in the evening I had to pick up son). I had a meeting with the accounts department people at the office, then spent the morning doing some cleaning and laundry (but then, forgot to hang the machine till about midnight, discovering it only on my room and lights out check.)

When D came home, she arrived with the negatives scanner I had ordered from China a couple of months ago. I was sure it was lost in the mail, and couldn’t do much about it because I had accidentally indicated that I’d received it. So that was a big surprise. With these orders from China, you never know whether it will arrive in a matter of weeks, or of months, or who will deliver it, or to where. The scanner is mainly for the archival work on old film at the office, but it can be useful for scanning personal film as well. I already tried it, and am quite happy with the results: the challenge is to keep dust away from the negatives, because the slightest speck of dust creates a white spot on the negative.

In the afternoon we visited our neighbours, where we said bye to R who is going back to the UK, where she and her husband are spending a year. In our neighbours’ yard, I found a good specimen of Lantana, a flower I’ve been wanting to photograph (above).

I was telling our neighbour about the interesting novel, “A Life of Holes”, which was narrated to Paul Bowles by Driss ben Hamed Charhadi, a poor and illiterate Moroccan, if Bowles can be believed. I think B would like it.

Travel plans?

I talked with D today about the possibility of continuing the Chemin Le Puy in France, from the point that I had left off in 2021, in Moissac. If I want to do that, it’s either now or in September-October. But we might want to go somewhere else at that time, such as India. I discovered that there are cheap flights to Barcelona, from where it is possible to take a train or a bus.

So it’s a possibility. I’m not sure I actually want to get away just now, because I’m enjoying being at home, but it could be nice. D might join me for part of the way.

Search

My default #search engine is SearX. But what’s the story with DuckDuckGo and Firefox? It used to be there as one of the options. When it disappeared, I installed the DDG extension; however this didn’t actually do anything. It did not include DDG as a search option and (fortunately) did not succeed to make DDG the default engine. Next I tried to include DDG in what should be the standard way: using FF’s OpenSearch option, but it seems that DDG does not play nicely with OpenSearch either. Further, its API no longer works with SearX, so it is not possible to receive DDG’s results in SearX. I no longer trust DDG – I also just read about the deal they made (though last year rescinded) with Microsoft.

Photos

I purchased an e-book, “X series Unlimited” by Dan Bailey and spent a few hours reading that today. I didn’t learn a lot from it so far, maybe because my particular X series Fujifilm Camera is one of the oldest and simplest among them. But I did learn a couple of things, all the same. On my afternoon walk I made some new experiments with settings, and I think I got some slightly better results.

Here are a few of the photos (the rest are in my photoblog).

I’m fascinated how some plants send out leaves that are initially red, and only later change colour.

I took a few like the above while playing with the settings for enriching shadows and increasing the exposure, while staying with an f11 aperture setting for good depth of field.

The above is a nest of the pine processionary caterpillar – characteristically in a young Canary pine.

I slightly edited all of the above in LightZone – a free open source photo editing program. I am beginning to like this program. One thing I notice is that, unlike in Darktable, the styles or presets are arranged in a logical order, and it’s also possible to modify the style’s effect on an image manually. It is simpler to use and it is easier to create a workflow. Of course, it is by no means as powerful as Darktable.

Jerusalem

Sometimes I aspire to the kind of life lived by Sri Aurobindo, in his later years, or Ramana Maharshi, in his earlier years, i.e. mostly in seclusion and never venturing out into the world. Perhaps I’d just go on long solitary walks, read, or spend time in meditation. I’m invariably cheerful in my own company.

In the morning I took advantage of the cool weather to do some basic yardwork – weed-whopping, hedge trimming, lawn mowing and path blowing, all with various parts of the Stihl Combi, a kind of Swiss army knife for gardening.

Afterwards, D had volunteered to attend a hearing at the supreme court involving the village, so I agreed to join her. It was an interesting experience, but ultimately the whole affair made me feel unhappy, and I wish I’d stayed at home.

Meanwhile the capital was busy with the stupid nationalistic March of Flags – from the bit that I saw of it, it looked like groups of indoctrinated school kids, bussed in from various settlements.

In the afternoon I took a nap. D went to visit neighbours and I made myself a meal of rice, tofu and tomato sauce, seasoned with moringa powder, shoyu and Tabasco, washed down with Israeli Gold Star beer.

I read a bit more of Mondiano’s Cafe de la Jeunesse Perdue – I love the atmosphere of his novels.

I didn’t listen to any music today! Maybe that’s why I feel sub-optimal.

Afternoon walk

On my afternoon walk today I wore for the first time a pair of multifocal glasses that I just had made and picked up today. As anyone who has such lenses will be able to attest, the initial experience is a bit disconcerting, so walking out with them for the first time across uneven ground gave me a slightly drunk and giddy feeling. In addition, I was trying out some of my camera’s special colour effects and filters, so it was a special kind of walk.

Further along, I came across a lovely stand of wild fennel, with its wonderful golden yellow colour.

Machsoum

I brought the Palestinian workers from the “machsoum” (army checkpost) in the morning at 6:15 as Tuesdays is the day I volunteer for that. They go back in the mid-afternoon but one of them, Issa, stayed behind to do a bit of side-work, gardening for my daughter, and I took him back at 6:15 in the evening, exactly 12 hours later. And that on a day that the temperature got up to 36°.

Actually community gardening was my job for a few year’s, when I was Issa’s age. In the summer I would start at dawn, take a long break from around 11:00 and then work again in the late afternoon. Issa said he also took a break today, so it’s not as if he was working for 12 hours.

On the car journey back, I listened to an episode of Anita Anand and William Dalrympl’s excellent “Empire” podcast. This one was about the Vikings. It opened with an unusual discovery, a bauble found at a Viking site in Derbyshire, UK that originated in India. Also present at the site were victims of human sacrifice, who were probably slaves. It turns out that the Vikings, besides their more well-known exploits, were involved with trade along the silk road and also traded in slaves throughout all the countries they visited.

The origin of the English word “slave” is “Slav”. The Vikings were using the system of European rivers to make it as far south as Byzantium and maybe further. When it was not possible to travel consistently by river, they would haul their boats, or maybe slaves would haul their boats, from river to river.

The Anglo Saxons too kept slaves, so the Vikings weren’t special in that.

One of the few surviving accounts of the customs of the Vikings comes from an Arab source – he witnessed their social life and ceremonies, and wrote about them.

Everyday, I learn something new.

Pronunciation

Dancing lights caused by moving camera, at airport

Reality

Mindfulness retreat

Returned from a mindfulness retreat at Kibbutz Inbar, near Mghar, in the Galilee. It was restful, and fairly intimate, with about 30 participants in all. I didn’t photograph the retreat itself, but went for a walk this morning and took some photos on a walk around the kibbutz and nearby.

more photos

Veganism

In the early 2000s, when I first visited Plum Village, the mindfulness practice community near Bordeaux, it was vegetarian. In some of the meals they would include eggs and dairy products, then, as a response to climate change, Thich Nhat Hanh and the community members decided that Plum Village would observe a vegan diet. That was how the retreat I just attended was also conducted. As someone at the end of the retreat calculated, that was 360 delicious meals prepared without the use of animal products.

I learn from Greta Thunberg’s new book (“The Climate Book” that “shifting towards a plant-based diet could save us up to 8 billion tonnes of CO2 every year. The land requirements of meat and dairy production are equivalent to an area the size of North and South America combined.”

Thich Nhat Hanh was a little ahead of the mainstream in his understanding and adaptation to the climate emergency, but actually, the book that first turned me on to vegetarianism, after leaving my parents’ home in the ’70s, was “Diet for a Small Planet”, which was written in 1971 by Frances Moore Lappé. That was really far ahead in its promotion of a vegetarian diet for the good of the planet.