כתיבה וחתימה טובה

Here’s a family tale re-told for several millennia!

The first day of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, falls next week, Thursday 05 September 2013. May everyone who is celebrating have a great 5774.

Be well sealed!

Natalie Wood and Brian Fink

Technorati Tags: Jewish New Year 2013,Natalie Wood @ WoodPerfect,Natalie Wood,Brian Fink,Israel

msniw

‘Crying Wolf’

 

Wolf had arrived late and barely gestured in greeting.

 

“M’friends call me ‘Wolfie’. Who are you?”, he barked at the woman on the other side of the bullet-proof screen.

“Good morning, Herr Wolf. I’m Fräulein Roti Haube, your  court-appointed defence lawyer. In future, please try to arrive on time for our meetings as the authorities here at Stammheim Prison allow us only one half-hour a month”.

“O.K.”, said Wolf, tucking his tail between his legs as he sat down between his guards. “These men had forgotten they’d left me caged. So there was a last-minute fuss, fitting my chains and basket muzzle. But it’s all for show; a bit of theatre to impress you. Anyway,  I hope you’ve made more progress than my last lawyer”.

“I’ll be honest”, said Haube, riffling through the thick file balanced on her knee. “I’ve spent hours examining your case and it’s clear that until there’s an overall marked rise in your tribe’s population, you’re destined to live a long life in jail”.

“But I don’t understand. I’ve said if I can’t be free, I want to die”.

“Wolfie, I’m afraid that’s impossible under present legislation. Your family is in a peculiar position where you have us humans as both your only real enemy and your one true friend. According to the 1979 Berne Convention you can’t be executed because your clan’s not big enough to force us to curtail your activities”.

“’Activities’? Yeah! Those were the days,” mourned Wolf. “I still remember my final big raid with Silber Klaue when we were so desperate to feed our wives and kids after the long,  hard winter that we savaged twenty-seven sheep at a single farm.  Klaue managed to escape into the forest but I was captured because I’d gone lame. Funny though,  when I got here, even the  governor treated me with awe.

“‘Wolfie’, he said, patting the lid of my cage, ‘you and – er  – Klaue created the sort of blood-bath that would do the Mafia proud. You deserve a prize. I’ll start by keeping you in my office!’

“But I hate it there. I’m treated like a pet poodle. What’s more, I loathe hearing the staff use words like ‘cull’ instead of ‘execute’ or ‘shoot’. How would it look if we wolves said ‘let’s dine’? Klaue and I are strictly raw meat and water guys and on good days we each tore through ten kilos of a juicy boar or tender deer in a sitting”.

“So you feel you’ve been rendered – umm - impotent?”

“That’s not the half of it. Things here are now so bad I want to apply to the European Court of Lupine Rights to be allowed to die with dignity. I’ve become a laughing stock. Pure and simple”.

“But I don’t know why. You’ve got  the governor’s protection, so you’re well looked after and could live until you’re twenty – twice as long as in the wild”.

“That’s my worst nightmare!”, said Wolf. “The real problem? I’ll tell you: the governor’s taken on a trendy new doctor in the hospital wing who’s trying me on aversion therapy”.

“What on earth … ?”

“First, he clipped my claws and filed my fangs almost to the gum …”

“Then?”

”The worst bit’s so embarrassing,” said Wolf, his rasp dropping to the faintest whimper, “I’m going to put my muzzle to the speak-hole so I can whisper. Please lean forward”.

“Go on,”, said Haube, straining to hear him.

“I’m being made to eat vegan dinners. Every day,” said Wolf, his voice becoming fainter by the word, “I’m led kicking and howling into the canteen and force-fed grass and herbs while a comedian named ‘Sean Lamb’ looks on chuckling hard enough to shed  his fleece”.

“What’s he in here for?”

“Tale-bearing and lying,” mouthed Wolf, pausing while a guard dabbed his eyes. “He’d been pulled in for crying ‘wolf’. But the game’s up, Roti. Look who’s crying now!” 

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"If you look and find sorrow,
- it is because I sorrow.
If you look and find anger,
- it is because I am angry.
If you look an find confusion,
- it is because I am confused.
If you look and find wisdom,
- it is because I am wise.
If you look and find yourself,
- it is because we are not so different.
If you look and find your soul,
- then carry me home inside of you..."

(With thanks to ‘Lady Anubis’ - Deviant Art)

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Technorati Tags: fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Crying Wolf,Wolves,1979 Bern Convention,Germany,Stammheim Prison

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 17 August 2013)

 

 

‘Vine Leaves’

“Friends,” said Anna rising to toast her guests, “on nights like this, Shakespearian lovers mused on ancient Troy, sighing how the wind kissed the trees but they made no sound”.

“Meanwhile”, said her partner  Dennis, “less than seven hundred miles from where we’re dining now in deepest rural Greece, citizens of biblical Israel yearned to sit under their own vines and fig trees – symbolic of an harmonious well-being never wholly realised”.

“Perhaps so”, said Mona,  a rabbi  from New York. “Study of the Hebrew bible shows time and again how lasting peace has been achieved only by totally annihilating the opposition!

“But”, she laughed, “a Saturday evening’s secular entertainment like this, in a vine trellised arbour like yours,  would be possible only after the Sabbath concluded. By then, the devout  would have  detected three stars in the darkened sky and blessed the new week with candlelight and sweet spice in a ritual shielding the holiness of the day of rest from the mundanities of the working week.

“I first visited the area as a student during the early 1960s with a non-Jewish friend who is now a respected  Christian theologian.

“She was wholly captivated from the first by many local customs, some of which reminded her of what she often saw when in my company. I ponder still, as modern Judaism developed, if it adopted universally popular Mediterranean habits and hallowed them by dogged daily use”.

“I’ve lived here for much of my adult life,” said Joe, a travel writer. “But my knowledge of local religious practice is still superficial.

“Instead, I’m eternally spellbound by these islands’ capacity for physical enchantment and will always treasure  their aura of ecstatic sensuality. No wonder tiny villages like Kalami in Corfu continue to attract romantic artists  and their adoring fans.

“I’m now aged 72 and still get a kick from witnessing the quite brazen procreation all around us! Everything - everyone – simply  pulsates with life and the potential of life. So unless it’s proven otherwise, I’ll die convinced these islands were the true and first  Eden”.

“But what of our younger guests, Aron and Emily? You’ve both been very quiet,” said Anna, now serving traditional desserts with thick, bitter coffee and Ouzo.

“Er, apologies for not joining the conversation,” said Aron. “Our bedroom window looks over a pond filled with frogs which woo lustily all night long. They’ve -  well, we’ve not  – had much sleep!”.

“Thanks for the wonderful food, Anna,” said Emily. “I’ve tried all the dishes here and if you don’t mind, I’d love to have the recipe for stuffed vine leaves.

“I’ll be using vines as a theme in a piece for a creative writing course I’m beginning in October and have heard that a ‘vignette’ is not only a decoration in  a book or  a ‘snapshot in words’. Apparently,  the term  began as ‘something that may be written on a vine leaf’. It’s supposed to focus on one element of a story, mood, character, setting, object, or perhaps in good hands, a rare blend of them all”.

“I know exactly what Joe meant earlier, said Anna’s mother, Carmel,  who’d just come home.

“On nights like this”, she said drawing up a chair, “when the weather  was almost too hot to bear,  my late husband, David  and I used the same room where Emily and Aron are - not sleeping this week!

“It’s secluded, so we’d drag the mattress onto the balcony where we’d make a love as dense as the overhanging vines, trembling like two tender  leaves in a freak summer storm. We never spoke, it was as though the mood would shrivel – blow away – from a gust of mere speech.

“Later,” she concluded, her large grey eyes laden with  regret,  “as we cuddled in devoted silence, David would fall asleep, his head resting against my bosom. So I’d lie still as a rock for hours, loath to have him stir. The next year Anna was born”.

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Vine Leaves,Greece

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 06 August 2013)