Arad from the Seventh Floor

15 January 10 10:45 in Israel, the zOhn
Tags: Arad, Israel, WUJS, yhc

07 November 2000

In Arad, there are children and old people and cats cats cats, and all of these beings are all shapes and sizes and colors.  They are everywhere, at all times, in the sun and at night, talking, walking/running, playing.  There are also redheads of all sorts — real and imagined — on skin of all hues, and tight pants, and pupiks (belly buttons), pierced and un-pierced, on a range of ages.  Self-esteem runs rampant.

Everyone has a cell phone.  There is very little noise beyond the voices — though walking into the Merkaz changes that level drastically — and so little garbage and graffiti and decay that what is visible, stands out in contrast rather than fading into the background as the norm.

Bright, happy playgrounds are plentiful, also, in the middle of everywhere, and surrounded by benches for parents.  The whole town is outlined by gardens of red and deep pink and orange, and by wide, comfortable sidewalks, and by buildings with the colors of sandy, stony pinks and tans more of beaches and shells than of deserts, accented on occasion by sea-teal blue railings, & then more benches & more gardens.  There are no jarring colors & almost no neon; even public phones call attention only in a vivid melon.

The town’s interior is shaped unobtrusively by apartment complexes of all sizes, heights, and designs, eclectic but flowing together, carrying simple, varying, intriguing lines, and with skillfully-shaped terraces.  Windows often have almost-ornate curved cages that may be for protection but seem more to hold plants.  Fences are mostly low and for design and as trellises for more foliage.

The streets themselves are lined on both sides and on the medians by more bushes and trees and flowers; there are no parking meters or high rise lots — spaces are designated by a change in the pattern of the laid brick, like going from room to room in a house.

There is little car traffic, mostly very small cars with fast drivers.  There are no stop lights, only trust on the parts of both the drivers and the walkers, who are, after all, in the majority.

 

We walk often to Mizpe Moav (we just called it The Point), just 30 or so minutes through town until suddenly, we’re on the outskirts, coming out next to the oddly-failed and dilapidated Hotel Masada, and the street lights have ended well behind us.  We stand on what from our direction and perspective, is an outcropping of sand, and stare out into the rolling hills of more sand that make up the desert, and I get the same sense of immensity that I felt in California last January as I stood at the base of the mountains.  During the day, the Dead Sea is visible from this spot, and at any time, we can taste the salt on our lips as it claims the air.  But at night . . .

. . . at night the moon is so bright that it limns our shadows in perfect detail.  I stand there, fascinated by this phenomenon, and I get a flash that my image has been etched into the very sand of G/d’s country by the Hand of the Artist Who created the canvas . . .