Lilith-tov (silliness)

I’m sitting in a huge bus with other girls my age. We are headed to a youth camp and I am very excited. I feel more like I am seated on a sofa and less like I am riding on a bus. I’m worried because I’m not wearing a seat belt. We are facing each other and not the front of the bus which allows for conversation. Everyone is talking but I am very quiet because I imagine myself as a projectile and worry about which girl I would fly into if the bus were to wreck.

The bus slows down and stops in front of a beach-themed restaurant. I look down at my bare feet. I’m sure that I can’t go in if I’m not wearing shoes. Just then I realize that I didn’t even pack for camp!

As I’m getting off the bus I confess my shoe-less state. A lady tells me, “That’s alright, we sell shoes here.” This is perfect because I love to shop! Inside, I find a section of the restaurant dedicated to boutique-cute clothing and footwear.

I expect to quickly purchase a pair of cheap flip-flops, since the restaurant has a beach theme, but the shoes look more like fancy boots. They are made of soft leather and they are decorated with real fur and jewels. The prices start at $80.00. If I spend $80.00 on shoes, I will have no money left for the rest of the trip.





I must have “shopped” too long because we are back on the bus and I don't remember eating. The girl seated across from me has straight black hair. She tells me, "Lie-lah had slanted eyes.” I realize that she is talking about Gutav Klimt’s painting, “The Tree of Life,” which I had looked at with much curiosity a few weeks before. How did she know? The girl has “slanted” eyes and looks just like “the other woman” in the painting. I realize that she isn’t just a stranger, or even a kid on the way to camp, but she is the daughter of the woman who wrote “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.” I had just read her reply, "Why I love my strict Chinese mom" the night before. The girl across from me is a combination of the Tiger-daughter and the lady in Klimt's painting. The contradiction reminds me that I am dreaming.

Awareness of the dream always wakes me up or puts me in a state of sleep paralysis.

Dreams are fun to decode. Last night, before I went to bed, I completed a second lesson of Hebrew. I remember thinking after the first lesson that the Hebrew word for night, lialah, reminded me of the name, Lilith, as mentioned in the Talmud. “Lilith,” and all that the name implies, was how I remembered the Hebrew word for “night.” Maybe my trick backfired because last night I told hubby, “Lilith-tov,” instead of "Lialah-tov."

Weeks ago I had wondered if Klimt’s painting was of Adam, Eve, and Lilith. I wondered that, but couldn’t find anything to confirm or dispel it. I wonder if unsatiated curiosities manifest in dreams because they have not been filed or solved. Are mysteries the stuff of dreams?

Dreams fascinate me.

Buckle up! The train of thought can't stay on track.

One evening I was bored so I began to follow tweeted links and ended up at an interesting article, “Slow Down,” over at The Beautiful Brain. It was a little write-up about how our perception of time can be distorted when we watch a slow-motion scene in a movie. It included a video montage which only took a few seconds to watch.



One of the links on the side of the webpage caught my eye, as it looked more interesting, “The Neuroscience of Avatar.” Gustav Klimt's "The Tree of Life" decorated the article.















I began to wonder about Gustav Klimt. If this was a painting of THE biblical Tree of Life, then who were the people in front of the tree? A couple seemed to be locked in embrace as another woman watched jealously from the other side of the canvas. From deep in the prison of my memory escaped the name, “Lilith.” I was off to search for more information about Lilith and Adam, and Adam and Eve. I had no idea that Lucifer himself might be a vertex in a love triangle.

On my way to the first couple, the other first couple, I found a web page warning of racism in the Talmud and then another site that explained the purpose of the Talmud. Midrash. Why don’t we have that? It would answer at least one of the questions posed by Legion over at the Victoria Advocate Online. Of course, answering that question would give us many more.

Back to triangles and The Tree of Life. If that was Lilith, she was clothed mostly in triangles while Adam and Eve were robed in geometrical shapes, mostly circles. The ground contained circular shapes; the branches of the tree coiled around and around... Lilith was not from the earth like the tree and Adam and Eve.

Speaking of circles and embrace, Henri Matisse was born on this date.

Anyway, back to that night: That night I had a dream about a painting similar to Grant Wood’s American Gothic.






























In my dream, the woman was made of water. Two men, not just the one with the pitchfork, were standing beside her with a look of malcontent. A love triangle? It was inspired by the occupants of the painting, The Tree of Life. I am not grasping the point of the dream.

The song from the video montage was beautiful. If you didn't watch the video montage earlier in this post, please listen to the song: Sigur Ros "Staralfur."

Another song that was in my head around this time was "Lunatic Fringe." Red Rider - Lunatic Fringe According to Wikipedia, "The song was inspired by a book about humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg and is about the rise of anti-Semitism in the 1970s." I figured it reminded me of the religious and political debates over at The VicAd - and myself as I feel I'm sort of on the fringe, at least when it comes to education.

And here is another song written by Tom Cochrane, the man who wrote "Lunatic Fringe," Life Is A Highway - Rascal Flatts Official Music Video

Be safe out there and Happy New Year!