There are rituals for writing that I try to abide by because they help facilitate the flow of words from fingers to keyboard but there are times in which I intentionally break them.
Sometimes it is to force myself out of the familiar comfort zones because you can’t be a writer if you limit your ability to work to perfect conditions.
It fits with my philosophy on teaching children how to sleep. When my children were little I wasn’t the parent who insisted on absolute silence during nap or night time.
I wanted them to learn to sleep under multiple conditions and that is how I like to be able to write.
Some of that has been spoiled by my having grown accustomed to using noise cancelling headphones and earbuds.
I like creating my own world and blocking out distractions but sometimes you can’t do that so I force myself to work in other conditions.
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I know the parents of some of the hostages in Gaza and more than a few mothers and fathers of soldiers.
Some of those parents have also been called up and so they find themselves alongside multiple family members in the kind of position you don’t often hear of in modern times.
So in addition to seeing pictures of siblings in uniform hugging each other upon the odd occasion they come across each other there are shots of fathers and sons doing the same.
It is surreal and if I said I hadn’t tried to picture what that would be like I would be lying. Won’t say I am not grateful the younger Mr. Wilner and I aren’t in this position.
If you are among the long time readers you’ll know this could have been a possibility.
That 16 year-old kid I used to be in the summer of ’85 stared at the soldiers walking around Jerusalem and figured that would be him one day.
He sat in Ritchie’s Pizza and discussed it on more than one occasion.
It is interesting to look back upon who I was then and fun to think about buying the t-shirt in the picture above. I can still see him in my reflection even if no one else does and hear him ask why we chose to go a different direction.
There is some guilt involved in thinking about others who took the steps that I didn’t take and who have more skin in the game than I do.
Haven’t figured out if the introspection and thoughts are because of the approach of middle age or if there is something else there.
It doesn’t keep me up at night because I can’t go backwards but I do think about whether that is where the future will take me.
All I am certain of is some big changes have already taken place and more are coming.
Today I think I found my 8x great-grandfather Chaim, and if I am correct he was born in Germany in 1650. Got a chunk of work to do to verify this but it is fascinating to me to think about.
Can’t imagine that almost 400 years ago he would have had any sense that so many generations later family would be looking back or living as we do.
Hell, for a couple of bucks I could hire a professional genealogist to help verify this and purchase a plane ticket to go visit the town in which he was born.
Looks like we were there for generations but that is just one segment of family, there are other countries that we are tied to as well.
But there are big gaps in other places so who and where we were varies as do the stories. Rabbis, tailors, musicians, peddlers, tradespeople-there is a whole variety of professions in there.
Sometimes I wonder how many of those ancestors had this restless wanderlust and how many traits we do or do not share.
Has me thinking again about home and where that really is or isn’t.
The Notebook Of The Secret Kingdom
Got a piece of fiction I have been playing around with on and off for around 20 years or so.
I write to you about my life, the mundane and the magical. I write to you about my hopes and dreams. I write to you about the things that I don’t speak of with others and I write to you about more than that. I write because it is how I maintain how my head and sense of self.
I write these letters never meaning to send but hoping that one day maybe I will.
Sometimes I think about whether it will be part of a big story of my life or just something that was a moment.
Sometimes I think about how social media changed things about life and the world. I heard a father telling his son a story at the gym that included “your mother unfriended me” and fragments about the reason why she did so.
Apparently he upset her and she decided they couldn’t be Facebook friends. The son asked how that was working since “you and mom share a room” and I snorted out loud.
Didn’t stick around long enough to hear the rest but laughed thinking about ridiculous it all sounds.
Maybe that is because I look at the lives people say they live on Facebook and the lives I know some of them are really living.
Some of them are more exciting than what is shared online and some are…less so.
