Not Far Away - Page 4

Not Far Away - Page 4

Words Etched in Stone

Near Guide and I&I had a date this year that took 40 years to arrive. When last we met, we were wearing mortar boards and gowns for our high school graduation. There's a photo taken of us together, smiling among friends, ready to step into a Joycean world (framed for the likes of young artist, Stephen Daedalus):

Welcome O Life
We go to encounter for the millionth time
The reality of experience
And to forge in the smithy of our souls
The uncreated conscience of our race.

With this kind of chutzpah, I&I understands why it took 40 years to get my first date. So on this 'trip', we met in Jerusalem, where she lives and works and picked up talking, as if no time had passed between us. Over drinks and dinner, an old friend became a new friend and I&I could have stayed talking with her for days. For Near Guide, this was just another working day; tomorrow, she would be back at her job as a film archivist at Yad Vashem, the international Holocaust Memorial.

We tried to get to together a second time but plans didn't quite work out. So, Near Guide stayed with me in spirit, as I&I ventured among the grave stories, preserved forever in the hallowed halls of Yad Vashem. From within these corridors of silent screams and murdered dreams, my words can add but little meaning. Once outside again, beneath sacred skies, where earth and air and sun survive, there are these words, Biblical words, carved in stone and much alive:

I will put my breath into you and you shall live again, and I will set you upon your own soil. – Ezekiel 37:14.