A Wall of Light - Edeet Ravel [55]
On the way to the beach Mummy sees some stairs going down. She’s very curious about where they go. She says should we go see where those stairs lead? and I say yes and she says but then we’ll have to climb back up. She decides to go down anyhow. So we go down but when we get to the bottom there are more stairs! She can’t decide again.
Finally she decides to go down those stairs too. But when we get to the end there are even more stairs! Mummy says well that’s it and we go back up without ever finding out what was there. She was right about going up. It’s much harder than going down.
We walk to the beach and Mummy pays for a beach chair. She takes a bathing suit out of her bag and helps me put it on. She says you can play in the water but stay on the foam and she lies down on the chair and goes to sleep.
I sit on the soft foam and feel it with my fingers. I let the waves go over my legs. I look out at the sea and get the abracadabra feeling. That huge feeling of longing for something in the future. The longing makes me think of the song—
Oh the deep blue of the sea
Jerusalem I long for thee
Only the beginning of the song is beautiful. Then it changes and gets stupid.
I dig holes in the wet sand and collect pretty shells. I shake the shells in my hands. My favourites are the twisty ones with the pointy edge. I love the beach.
A man comes by yelling Artik Artik. He has a big box tied to his neck. Mummy wakes up and asks for two lemon Artiks. Lemon Artiks are much better than the popsicles in Canada. They’re softer and sweeter and more lemony. You have to eat them fast though. Otherwise they fall apart and drip on everything.
Mummy looks at her watch and says we have to go back. She isn’t happy about going back. I take off my bathing suit and get dressed. Mummy sings—
To Israel we came
Because we’re insane
and I laugh. The song is supposed to be—
To Israel we came
To plant and sow grain
Mummy laughs with me. We laugh all the way to the bus.
Diary of a Young Man
25 May 1922. An event perpetrated by the “Night Group” yesterday stirred up a great deal of anger among some of our families. When they woke up in the morning they saw the hut of the empty Children’s House, which we have just built, had been rearranged to resemble the room of a petit-bourgeois family: two neatly made beds with slippers placed beneath them; on the husband’s bed a pipe and various accessories typical of a petit-bourgeois family room.
The message is clear: families are beginning to isolate themselves from the life of the greater family—the commune.
Strong feelings have been aroused, and the behaviour of the “Night Group” is being labelled tactless, truly brutish! R. even cried at this piece of mischief.
15 June 1922. Our road work has ended and we have been moved to Nahalal to drain malaria-producing swamps. The hammer and chisel have been replaced by picks and shovels, highly unromantic tools.
Our work is so demanding that our Meetings are taken up entirely by discussions related to work. It can be quite boring. Isn’t it enough that we have to work all day, do we also have to discuss it at night?
But there are those among us, not many, for whom matters of work and economics are more important than the internal social life of the commune.
16 June 1922. For a while there have been rumours that some members consider a few other members unsuited to the commune.
Yesterday at the Meeting this rumour was brought out into the open by way of one person’s demand that 48 members be asked to leave, of our total of 80—among them founders of the commune who have been here since its inception.
He listed the 48 members. There was a big hue and cry and his suggestion was condemned, even though secretly there are those who support him. Thus the 48 are staying and now divisiveness has been created. Altogether, this member has extraordinary ideas.
Dori
Hang down your head Tom Dooley!
Hang down your head and