waiting, waiting During the three years in which I learned to move to the rhythm of flamenco, no less than the movement itself, our wonderful dancer teacher would emphasize - you have to wait. Waiting was part of the rhythm. Since years have passed, we no longer dance flamenco, but a friendship has formed between us until "waiting, waiting" has become a common language in the conversation.
Thus, the last week has been nerve wracking in our little nation. We are waiting. Waiting for why, we won't know. Waiting for us to be attacked? Aren't we under attack as well? Some say they are waiting for war - haven't we been at war for many months? Perhaps these days have come to remind that it could always be worse. It's like those you tell them you have a headache, so they always bring up and compare - I have both a headache and a backache!
Black azure / Natalie Birken
While we are "waiting for Godot", I read the azure black By Natalie Birken And I came to know that Shira, the heroine of her book, is also waiting. She is waiting for the days that will never return, for the functioning and loving husband she had before that IDF injury that left him present in his body but never again in his soul. The story of Shira Varez is our story, not only in the last and difficult months of the war. Natalie wrote her book long before swords Iron and somehow it came to us in a timely manner.
This week I played my daughter the great first recording of Dafna Armoni, and there is the song "We won't know about what", which he wrote and composed for her Hello Hanoch. One line got me, so accurate"Someone decided that everyone was going and you went. Even now it's summer, even then there was a war." And I find myself thinking about the jubilee of my years and how true this sentence is to all those wars that I have already had the chance to experience. I wonder how many women like Shira are around us, who lost a husband in these wars but did not officially lose him - he is breathing, but not alive. And how do we continue?
I read the first draft of this book in the summer of three years ago, precisely in other days, when there was no war and I was on a cruise in the dreamy Greek islands. Even then, when the story was raw and not necessarily finished, I fell in love with Shira, Erez and Omar.
Before you are afraid to take with you a book that sounds "heavy", remove your worry - because you want to read this book, you want to go through this process with Shira and Erez's parents, because Natalie has woven it so that you can learn this pain, be patient with the process and endure In anticipation of what is to come - will she choose to make a child from her husband's seed, knowing that he will not be there to raise it with her? Are she and Omar possible? What do we do with this life planter? With a gentle hand, the writer will take you on a path you didn't think you could contain, but together with her writing you will come out strengthened by the experience.
There is a Japanese art called "Kintsugi", with a message behind it that I find that moves me every time. When a tool breaks they don't throw it away but put it back together and fill the cracks with gold. When I read Blue Sky this week in the wonderful edited version, I realized how much good the three years that Natalie worked on it did for him, improving it and presenting it at its best to us, the readers. With coffee this morning, in my private kintsugi cup, I couldn't help but liken the experience of reading here to the fragments that the author fused into gold for us.
The quote that has been engraved in me and has been with me since the reading, which Omar said to Shira:
"So little heaven and so little comfort."
Regarding the question whether remains or is released In my private library, light blue and black remaining, not only in the name of the friendship between me and the author but mainly in the name of literature, this is one of the books that deserves to be taken from a shelf and returned to from time to time.
Book details:
Black Blue by Natalie Birken, Cinnamon Publishing, 2024.
And in the meantime, I wish you to be safe in your departure and arrival and that whatever it is that we are "waiting for", will soon disappear from the sky of our country.
Pleasant reading and may good words be by your side always,
Lily
The book sounds exciting and fascinating. As for those who are waiting, still waiting for us to return to Flamenco💃 Thank you for your words dear and talented sister.
I will lend you the book when it comes back from my mother, you will enjoy it.
And we will dance flamenco in the Fromkin house one day when the three of us retire there, Nurit will have no choice and she will be forced to dance with us again;)
Let's explain what is meant by "grabbing a shelf". Let's say at IKEA, where you buy shelves for hanging. So I understand - I go and grab a shelf. Actually even then, why should he be caught? Is this a train to 'catch'?
Catching, it's a game where you 'catch' other players by touching. So what is a shelf grabber? Touching the shelf?
I mean from the bookshelf. The reader doesn't know it's a bookshelf. Maybe you are grabbing a shelf because there is an earthquake and you wanted to hold on to the shelf? There is no such expression, occupying a shelf in the context of reading, or books. That's why we'll start from the section title. The shelf is not a train that needs to be grabbed, nor is it a railing that needs to be grabbed.
Physically you don't occupy a shelf. In the context of books, there is no lack of good expressions. Grab a shelf not in them.
Hello Yael,
For me this expression "grabs a shelf" was very real and I borrowed it for my section here.
You are welcome to read the opening column in which I told about this:
https://haipo.co.il/item/499412
Shabbat shalom and blessed, my love, an interesting book, good luck
Shabbat Tova Mushka 🤍
I'm saving the book for you to read as I promised :)