Random Observations Over Time

After listening to Argentinian Ariel Ramirez's MISA CRIOLLA based on Indian and Spanish folklore. ".There is so much beauty in the world. Why do we have to go and destroy it"


May 5 2003
Tamara very upset when someone (young) started to decry the country. She told him that he had no right to say those things, and that the country was based on the lives of those who are no longer here. That almost every family had someone who was killed or had died for the country. And we were here in our own country and not somewhere in Europe where we would be killed again. He said 'forgive me' three times. Tamara said she was very emotional about it and then said that she also does not like what is going on in the country but that does not mean that the country itself should be decried.


When she was 5, the family had a Christmas tree and Tamara was bored so she decided the tree should look a different shape and set about remedying the situation. When her mother came home she was very angry, and all Tamara remembers to this day is that, without raising her voice, her mother said "you do not change the shape of what nature has given us."


When she was 6, she had strep throat, and because there were no antibiotics many children died of it. She was in a darkened room alone at night in their home across from the parliament building in the center of Kovna. Suddenly there was a funeral procession for a dignitary and they played the funeral march of Chopin. She remembers lying there listening to it, and to this day she has had a frightened respect for death.


Her mother used to collect old jewelry. When they tried to escape on the first invasion of the Germans, they were caught at the border. Her mother took the sack of jewels to one of the high SS officers and gave it to him, and he told his officers to let the family go. She saved the family for an additional two years. Tamara feels that there is a purpose for everything.


She remembers her father who she says she never really knew. He was very concerned with helping others as was her maternal grandfather. He was essential to the community, which became particularly true during the years in the Ghetto when with his blond hair he could go out of the Ghetto and bring back things needed. He was part of the governing council of the Ghetto. He was very liberal and also allowed his wife to do what she wanted although he spent most of his free time sitting quietly reading. Tamara remembers him always reading.


September 5 2004
Tonight after watching all the young soldiers on a TV show to raise money for education and other things, and seeing them singing and laughing, she said "Why can't we live side by side. It all started in '48 when the Arab nations refused to accept the partition. They wanted to push us into the sea. Even today it is sad that the two half brothers of Abraham have to fight each other. The Koran does not preach hatred. but tolerance of other beliefs. Since then. it has been people on both sides who wanted it all. It is terrible that kids should have to go and be killed and kill in Gaza and the West Bank. The land was for watering and the growing of flowers, not the spilling of blood.


September 26
Tamara came in and said that she feels that she does not have much time left and she feels very sad about it because she really wants to stay here for a bit longer.


Sept 29 04
She said that she was much too sensitive. Everything effected her. "I am so sensitive I can not take myself".


November 17
Tamara talked about how she feels life and the small things much more than she did when she was younger. Says she would not change it for anything even with the pains and problems. It is the small things that count like love when it is given to one person, who than gives it to another, and like a wave it spreads out.
She said that she did not have even one ounce of evil in her and I agree. She says that she remembers the potted flower that her father gave her when she was 5-6 much more than the piano which was given to her. People just do not understand how important the small tings in life are. A hug, telling someone I love you.


December 3
Tamara talking - art with intimacy and passion. Much art is with neither. The guitarist she remembers as a child sitting playing as though making love to the guitar and the music. Elsa Moranti - every word conveys such emotion and meaning. Intimacy with a person does not mean making love.
She is so involved with paintings that her whole self is in the paintings. That is why she loves Flamingo - such passion in the movements. She wants to come back as herself - only as a dancer.


Later that day
She said "What am I doing here? An old woman with the passion of a young girl. Says that she has had a deep feeling of sadness for the last two months.


About her paintings: She is doing the third painting accompanied by Rod Stewart's new Album American Ballads III.


She says that she looks at her initial painting and can see nothing. Slowly, slowly, people appear in the paint. She just walked into her room and there was a figure which wasn't there before. I said that he had a longer way to get here than the rest. The word is out - Tamara is doing a new painting. I do not remember her responding.

Dec 15 2004
Tamara woke up and said that she had been meditating or visualizing herself helping and living with a North American Indian Sculptor and his family and she was making a totem in a semi-desert place with a square hut and rugs on the floor which the wife had made.


Dec 16
She said that to plan life is not helpful. To have desires is the soul but life comes of itself.


Dec 19
Talked today about how as a nurse she stayed long after her shift was finished (in those days there was no overtime) to be sure that everyone was comfortable, had what they wanted and when she left the room everyone was smiling. That the essence of giving was something she had been born with. Her grandfather was like that.


Tamara always remembered Christmas time as a child. She
loved the atmosphere of it and in her adult life there was a period when she went to many of the capitols of Europe during Christmas time just to be there. Since she has been in Israel, she has never had a Christmas tree and this year she wanted one. I ordered it and she was very happy. It was a beautiful small living tree with two trunks. It has a soul.