The Bubble

Assortment

Still life with a heart

Photo Friday's challenge this week is 'Accidental'.

Autumn leaves

Autumn in Toronto; the most magnificent artistic happening. All one has to do is step out into the world; the variety of shapes and colors is mesmerizing. The sun teases the clouds in a continuous game of Hide and Seek, deepening the infinite shades of orange, yellow, red, green, pink, purple - in an endless variation and shades.
The eyes are open wide. The heart - overflows.

Home-sick

On the way to school, where Daniel spends 2.5 hours every day at the Senior Kindergarten class:

Daniel: “What does “home-sick” mean”?
Hadas: “It means that someone misses his home. When I sometimes say, for example, that I miss Tel Aviv, and going to the beach, and granny, it means that I’m home-sick. Do you understand now?”
Daniel: “Yea, I do. When I’m at school, I’m home-sick.”

Zombies

An ordinary (?) Sunday afternoon, seen on our street.

Chaiya chaiya

Follow this link. Watch it several times - it gets better with each viewing.
Dance.

Strange fruits

Flameco

I remember this show last year; we saw it while visiting my family in Jerusalem. There was a French Music Festival going on and we felt intrigued by the set that included an accordion (an instrument I used to play when I was a kid), an oud, a bouzouki, a guitar, vocals, and percussion. It seemed like an interesting mix between east and west.

We sat on chairs that were organized in half circle around a dance floor, separating between the stage and the audience. It was a small club and the atmosphere was intimate and warm.

The music was hypnotic, gradually accelerating in rhythm and speed with the addition of hand clapping and Flamenco singing. The audience became more and more involved and moved by the music, clapping hands together with the band, moving in their seats, as if they found it hard to stay put– their bodies disobedient – wishing to jump to their feet and move.

When the show ended the audience clapped and cheered intensely calling for an encore. The group returned onstage and Thierry said in his broken English that they would give an encore on one condition: the audience had to join and dance.

People shyly left their seats and stood on the dance floor, starting cautiously to move , letting go, allowing the warm waves of the music take hold of their bodies.

A tall slim woman dressed in black, began, unexpectedly - clapping her hands, stomping her feet, moving her raven-black ponytail - to dance the Flamenco; clapping her hands, stomping her feet, lifting her long legs high in the air it was oblivious that she was a professional dancer. The crowd, surprised by this spontaneous epiphany, started slowly to gather around her; her movements becoming more and more intense as she conquered the dance floor. The singer, whom I imagined felt as surprised as we did by the dance’s magnificent energy and spontaneity, joined her, intensifying his singing and clapping in accordance to her movements, creating together a perfect unity: a passionate duet of desire; seducing and resisting, luring and pulling away.

I kept imagining them meeting after the show – the singer vowing his eternal love for this strange woman whom he first met that night and who conquered his heart. Would they live happily ever after? I wondered. It seemed like the right thing to do at the moment.

“It was terminal (sofani)” said a young woman to her friend at the end of the performance, using a Hebrew slang adjective to describe what is impossible to describe – perfection. 

In that day in Jerusalem, for a brief moment, the divine seemed to be within reach.

Castle in the sky

Casa Loma, Toronto. Where everything is an imitation of an imitation of an imitation. One wonders whether those tourists walking with the handsets in their hands listening to the history (?) of the place and what exactly is the hideous bed an imitation of (Henri IV?) - are actually actors doing an imitation of tourists walking in a museum.

On turning 40

An Email correspondence with my friend J.:

Hadas: "Oy! this birthday! don't even mention it!
H.
I do hope I won't get any phone calls tomorrow. One
foot in the grave and people are calling to congratulate you!

The horror of it all...(getting old and all that)."

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J.: "Dear Hadas,

Our sincerest condolences on your birthday. We wish
you a peaceful demise when the end finally comes.

your sympathetic friends,

J. and A."

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Hadas (the day after):

"Ha Ha Ha!
It turned out to be a wonderful day after all!
H."
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Daniel, in an incredulous tone: “You? Old? Why look at you! And look at daddy! You’re not old! You look like children!”