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Mother Earth has Struck at the Temples of Transiency

Mother Earth has struck, and by means of her messenger, angry Hephaestus, the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull, she reminds us how she can fasten Icarus's wings to the ground. We have all become accustomed to the swift and structured passage through the airport, until we briefly breathe the disconnected sense of being duty-free, free of any duty. However, during the last several days, thousands of weary travelers have been stranded, making airports their inconvenient, temporary home. The nonlocality and temporality of airports, as Temples of Transiency, sooth the restlessness of the Transient Personality, and suit him or her better than the temenos of the therapy room and the analytical relationship. For a moment, however, the airports have come to a standstill. Suddenly the swift transition between one non-place and another, has frozen. I wonder if postmodern man will, indeed, stop for a moment, to reflect on Mother Nature's messages, one of which may be the ...

Where does fantasy end, where does reality take over?

As reported in Haaretz newspaper, "Dozens of Palestinians clashed with Israeli police in East Jerusalem on Tuesday [March 16, 2010] on a 'day of rage' Hamas declared to protest Israel's consecration of an ancient synagogue in the city one day earlier. Palestinians hurled stones at police and burned tires and trash bins in several areas of East Jerusalem… … dozens of youths hurled stones at Border Police officers in the Shoafat refugee camp and in the neighborhoods of Isawiyah and Wadi Joz. Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby says police fired stun grenades to disperse dozens of protesters at one site. He said village elders helped end protests at another site. Police also arrested an Israeli rightist who sought to enter the Temple Mount compound and was refused by security forces. A police spokesman said some 3,000 officers were put on high alert … after Hamas announced, 'We call on the Palestinian people to regard Tuesday as a day of rage against the occupa...

The Society for Anxiety and the Postmodern Condition

Eliezer Shimeoni (E. S.) chairs the Society for Anxiety and the Postmodern Condition (SAPC). By his friends, he is variously referred to 'as es', or as 'es' (that is it, or id), or sometimes, in Hebrew, as esh, that is, fire. He has recently been the subject of a fictitious account, the novella Requiem : A Tale of Exile and Return , by Erel Shalit.