Her Whole Darkness In Motion

By Meira bat Erachaim

The author's long and meandering road to find true love takes her from her home in South Africa to California, Alaska, China, and finally to Israel. Along the way she meets more than a few interesting people, has a few encounters with some less than friendly people, and learns more about herself whilst learning about new cultures. Shameless celebrity sightings include Nelson Mandela, Charlie Chaplin, Paul McCartney, Orson Welles, George Carlin, Woody Allen.

There are vivid descriptions of the places she has lived and the jobs she has had, including making propaganda films on the battlefields of Israel and crashing a helicopter in the Alaskan wilderness.

She questions the international media's proclivity for sensationalising American and Western European affairs while bestowing only negligible time to the other 90% of the world. Like people twice her age, she protests the rapid ascension of social media and its role in the obliteration of society as we know it.

The author discusses her dating life in a frank and often jocular manner, from the cute to the creepy. Names have not been changed to protect the guilty. Anybody who wishes to file suit for defamation of character may contact her attorneys, keeping in mind that they are institutional extortionists. They will return your call in six to eight months. Unless you buy them a drink first.

What is the difference between a mosquito and a lawyer? One is a blood sucking parasite. The other can fly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Meira bat Erachaim
• Release date: Jul 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311962027

Meira bat Erachaim

Meira bat Erachaim was born and raised in South Africa, went to university in the United States, and lived and worked in China before settling in Israel. She has worked as a helicopter pilot, documentary filmmaker, English teacher, and is currently a casualty extraction and medical evacuation combat support officer with the Israeli Air Force. In her spare time she climbs mountains, swims naked and irritates her mother.Her first published book, "Letters To Friends", received high praise from the five people who read it. Her second book, "Fortnight in the Philippines", details search and rescue missions in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan.

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Her Whole Darkness in Motion

By Meira bat Erachaim

Copyright © 2008-2013, 2014 Meira bat Erachaim

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 9781311962027

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

This book is protected under international copyright law and is licensed for personal use only. No part of this publication, including its cover artwork and photography, may be copied, reproduced in any format by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner.

To my bashert,

Without whose constant interruptions

this would have been finished much sooner.

Table of Contents

Introduction

How to Meet Your Bashert

On the Road and Hanging By a Song

Weapons of Mass Distraction

Cunning Linguists

That Kinda Noise Bill Don’t Tolerate

Where Shadows Fester

Shaking the Tree

Sailing On an Emerald Bay

About the Author

Introduction

If you know anything about me, or even if you have only read that newspaper article and think you know me, then you know that I want to have children. It is more important to me than I can adequately express. But I think it is pretty important to most people so I essentially have no need to explain.

The problem is that I really do not know how to raise children. I can imagine an ideal world but I am not stupid enough to think that things actually work out the way I want. I can hope and dream that my future daughter becomes prime minister but she could just as easily become a crack whore despite or because of my best intentions.

I had great parents and a wonderful childhood, so that is a pretty good foundation. I think. I have spent enough time around enough people to hear far too many childhood horror stories. It is a little hard to believe that so many people had it so bad. Unfortunately there are likely many more who had it even worse. If nothing else, my children will never be emotionally or physically abused by me and I will fight to the death anybody who tries to hurt them.

Pretty much all of the important things I know about life, love, family, right and wrong I learnt from my parents and grandparents. That all gets passed on to my children. I also get to add my own ideas to the mix. That is how it is supposed to work.

One thing my parents did with me that I would not want to do with my children is to move them around a lot. I think children need a place where they will always feel is home. Not just home as in wherever your family live but a homeland or hometown.

Jews are supposed to think of Israel as their homeland but I generally do not. I was not born here. I do not feel any deep connection beyond the historical context and the fact that my family live here.

Israel is a nice country to live in, with infinitely more freedom and democracy than a lot of others, and Jerusalem is a bit of a magical place, but I do not feel the deep spiritual connection to Israel that I am apparently supposed to have. I have touched HaKotel HaMa’aravi many times, and I think it great that people of any religion or race from all over the world can go to it, but I have never felt any electric shock to my heart or soul.

When people ask me where my hometown is I more often than not say Cape Town. And I did not live there until I went to high school. I was not born there and only lived there for a few years. But I do not even remember the house we lived in when I was born, and only have vague memories and isolated images of Pretoria. How can that be my hometown?

I lived in seven houses in four cities in two countries by the time I was 18 years old. My parents had a nice little house overlooking Jameson Park in Durban for more than a few years but I left when I was 13 to attend school on the other side of the country.

At university everybody seemed to change apartments every year or even every semester. But at least we stayed in the same general area. My address changed multiple times but I used the same grocery store for four years.

After university I lived and worked in places that I never thought I would even visit. By the time I settled in Israel I had lived in almost a dozen different cities in four different countries on three continents.

Moving around and living in a variety of places helped shape my world view. For the better, I hope. I want my children to know that life exists beyond their neighbourhood. I want them to not only be able to spot countries very different from their own on a map but I also want them to know something about the people who live in those far removed places. I want them to know that not everybody has the same ideas about how to do things and what is right or wrong.

But I also want them to have a neighbourhood. I want them to have a place that they can always think of as home no matter where in the world they travel or live. I want them to experience a lasting sense of community. Not just in the Jewish sense but in the real world sense. That probably did not come out right but I know what I mean.

How to Meet Your Bashert

I began dating in high school, much to the consternation of my mother. I met the man I am going to marry when I was 27 years old, though I continued dating others for another four years. Much to the consternation of a lot of people. At 21 I was adamantly opposed to the idea of monogamy. There were just under two billion boys in the world. I did not see why I should limit myself to one at a time. By 31 I was ready for a husband, children, a house with a tree in the front yard. It was a long struggle to get from one end of the road to the other.

My sisters were always more traditional. Ellie met her bashert at university and they married as soon as she graduated. Their son was born a respectable year later. Dara knew one boy before she graduated. And not biblically. She dated rarely, and met her bashert at shul. They were actually introduced to each other by their rabbi. One cannot get more respectable than that.

Ria was always the more active sister. Though she was a rank amateur compared to me. She dated sporadically in high school, more at university, and began a series of steady relationships in her twenties. She met her bashert when she was 27 and they married a respectable three years later.

All of my mother’s daughters did as she said rather than as she did. Except me. My mother grew up in Switzerland, a relatively liberal country socially, during the 1960s, a socially liberal time for many. She experimented in ways that I could only imagine late at night.

One could argue that she did not want us to make the mistakes that she made; that when she met her bashert she would have preferred to have had a more traditional history. But it does not work that way. Teenagers and young adults cannot live vicariously through their mother’s exploits. They have to fall down on their own to know how it feels.

Now that I am on the brink of marriage I can look back on my own history and wonder what I should have done differently. But rather than see it all as a big fat waste of time since almost none of it led me to my bashert, I think it all helped me reach the point where I was ready to accept a sane and stable relationship. Had I dated more traditionally as my sisters had, I would likely still not be ready to settle down. I would probably not marry until I was 50 years old. That would make having children with that husband more than a little difficult.

Some would say that doing it my way was not ideal. And they are probably right. But there is precious little I can do about it now. I see no point in regretting the decisions of my past. Indeed, I embrace them. They were not always the right decisions, and more than a few of them hurt more than a few people, but all of those bumps in the road only make the journey more interesting.

I had my first kiss in junior high school. It was not really my first kiss. It was more like my first adult kiss. We were not adults but I know what I mean.

We were playing seven minutes in heaven. This was a popular game when I was growing up. I played it a few times over the years, with varying results. Jennifer Connelly was in a mediocre movie about it when she was a teenager but I do not think they actually played the game. It was a metaphor. There was also a great movie with the same title written by an American writer but it never saw the light of day. Such is the fate of the best writing.

There are several ways to play the game but the end result is that a boy and a girl, or two boys and two girls if you swing that way, end up in a wardrobe alone together for seven minutes. It could be seven minutes in heaven or it could be seven minutes in hell, depending on with whom you are trapped. And anything goes. Keep in mind that anything has a different meaning for young teenagers than it does for adults. At least it did when I was a teenager. I know that my definitions have broadened considerably since then.

I had my eye on a fair haired boy named Aaron. He was the cute boy that all the girls liked. In retrospect I can see that he was a jerk. Probably because he was the cute boy that all the girls liked. But at this age we cared less about personality and inner beauty and more about looks. Maybe not everybody but I did, as did all my friends and everybody I have ever known or heard about. And now there was the very real possibility that I would be spending seven minutes alone in the dark with this Adonis. This was the greatest game ever invented.

On this occasion we used a Twister spinner to choose partners. There are a million different ways to do it but this is what we did at this particular time. I hoped and prayed that on my turn the little arrow would land on the beautiful Aaron. I imagined what we would do for those seven minutes in the wardrobe. Keep in mind that my imagination was far less lascivious than it is today. My thoughts then were mostly of deep Oriental kisses followed immediately by happily ever after.

I do not know the etymology of the phrase Oriental kiss but having lived in China I can say with some certainty that the Chinese are not anywhere on the level of passionate bon vivants as the French or Brazilians.

Next up was some other girl, and her spin landed on Aaron. That bitch. While she was in the wardrobe with my rightful knight in shining armour I could see her stealing my wedding dress. This was the worst game ever invented. When the doors were opened my ex future husband’s hand was much farther up her skirt than you should ever let any boy’s hand get. They were not even going steady or anything. She obviously put some kind of whore spell on him.

When it was my turn I still wanted it to land on Aaron, despite his cheating ways. When I flipped the spinner it did not move in slow motion but it would have were it a movie, such was the suspense. This was my spin of destiny. All it had to do was land on Aaron and all my hopes and dreams would be answered and all my troubles would float away. With all the projecting we loaded on boys like Aaron it is no wonder they became jerks. That and all those knight stealing little whores.

After the longest spin in the history of Twister spinner spins the little arrow landed on Marik, whom I only vaguely knew existed. I was crushed. I fell off my cloud and landed face first onto the tarmac. At least that is what it seemed like. Years later I did the real thing and found that it is actually much more painful than what I thought as a child.

Cheered on by our hormonal peers, Marik and I dutifully made our way into the dark wardrobe. I was wallowing too much in my own broken dreams to notice that I was not his first choice either. Once locked away inside the wardrobe, Marik looked at me like I was not a whore and I looked at him like he was not Aaron. We spent the better part of those seven minutes not doing anything our parents would lose any sleep over.

Outside we could hear our friends taunting us. There were no sounds of wild animal lust coming from the wardrobe, and anticipation was high after the previous couple got some skirt action. Marik did not want to spend the rest of his life mocked for his inability to even get to first base whilst locked in a closet with a girl. He did the only thing a proud young man could do under the circumstances. He dared me to kiss him.

I have never been one to back down from a challenge. Afraid to kiss this not Aaron? Hardly. I fear no boy, especially one who is only trying to manipulate me to get what he wants. I showed him. I gave him the deepest, longest kiss he had ever had in his entire life. On the mouth no less. It was two seconds of pure strange. Somewhere between yucky and gross.

It was nothing like my teenage fantasies of kissing the boy of my dreams. There were no fireworks. The Earth continued rotating as usual. I did not suddenly become an adult. The only change I noticed was his saliva on my lips.

When the doors were thrust open our momentary burst of not exactly passion was over but we were still sitting too close together to be completely innocent. It was clear to everybody outside that something had happened inside. Maybe not up the skirt action but something.

Marik and I were now a couple, as was the fashion of the time. I was so over Aaron. He obviously liked whores and I was a good girl. I was sure Marik knew that from the seven minutes we had gone from total strangers to boyfriend and girlfriend.

Our relationship lasted forever. Almost three months.

We both improved our kissing techniques during our short time together but we never advanced any further. Our relationship was spectacularly uneventful. I would scarcely remember his existence were he not my first kiss. A more momentous first came with another boy not much later when we entered virgin territory.

I was 14 years old. He was almost 16. Our shul organised a camping trip to Blyde River Canyon. This was the first date I ever had out of town. It was not only out of town, it was out in the wilderness two thousand kilometres from home. For a city girl such as myself it was unusual to spend any amount of time with a boy in the pristine outdoors.

I was not an especially experienced dater at this point in my life, regardless of location. At age 14 it is difficult to find enough privacy to get to know another person. We were always surrounded by adults who took great pains to ensure that we never got to know each other too well. We saw the camping trip as an opportunity to have some time alone. We never explicitly discussed it but we both assumed we would consummate our relationship on this trip. We greatly underestimated the resolve of our chaperones.

Blyde River Canyon is one of the largest canyons in the world. It sits on the edge of the Drakensberge Escarpment in Mpumalanga, about 30 kilometres from Kruger National Park. This was back when Skukuza was the only airport operating to Kruger, and it was within the park itself, so we flew into Johannesburg and drove to the canyon. It is about 500 kilometres from what was then called Jan Smuts International Airport to the canyon.

The drive can take five hours, or seven if you are an overprotective adult chaperone with a minibus full of teenagers. But it is a good drive. Part of it is called the Panorama Route. And for good reason. If you have ever seen dramatic scenic pictures from South Africa they are likely either Cape Town or the Drakensberge.

From Lydenburg it is a quick drive to Sabie where the scenery truly gets spectacular. There are several stunning waterfalls from the Sabie, Blyde, Mac-Mac Rivers. We went swimming in Lone Creek and had lunch near the waterfall. For some time after this I dreamt we all took that swim in the nude. As teenagers are wont to do. But alas it was not so. I do not remember anybody suggesting it at the time and I am sure it is not the sort of thing the rabbi would have gone in for.

Today I cannot swim with a swimming costume on. It feels completely unnatural to me. At age 14 I was less aware of my environment and more accustomed to wet clothing. But I was bold enough to wear a two piece cozzie in front of everybody. I figured if I had it, and was looking forward to some quality time with the boyfriend, then I might as well flaunt it. Though at 14 none of us had much to flaunt.

On the Panorama Route just beyond the Pinnacle is God’s Window, with an amazing view of pretty much all of the lowveld. This has to be one of the best views in the world. I think this should be the second thing anybody who ever goes to South Africa sees. The first being Cape Town.

Opposite the Panorama Route are more waterfalls from the tributaries of Blyde River. Maybe not as famous as Mac-Mac or Bridal Veil Falls but still pretty impressive.

Further up the Blyde River is Bourke’s Luck Potholes, a series of large holes cut into the rock by the river. It truly is just like looking at large potholes in the canyon but it is a popular tourist spot so we stopped there for tea. Today it has all manner of shopping and food but at the time was only a few small stands and not enough indoor plumbing.

The boyfriend and I tried to sneak away for some snogging but the adults would have none of it. In retrospect I can appreciate their position but the sun would not have exploded if we spent five minutes alone. Nobody likes to be watched constantly and teenagers are no exception.

We spent the night in the canyon itself, near the Three Rondavels. After we set up our gear there was some time for us to be teenagers. We all divided ourselves into small groups and talked about the issues of the day.

Czechoslovakia ceased to exist that year. The European Union was born. The first democratic government meeting was held in South Africa. Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords. Israel and the Vatican established diplomatic relations for the first time in 2000 years. Bill Clinton became president of the United States. Canada got its first female prime minister. Buckingham Palace offered its first public tours. Canada lost its first female prime minister.

We discussed none of those things. Our conversations were more about which boys liked which girls and the latest temporary idols at the top of the pops.

I have always liked camping but I cannot imagine it was very fun for our chaperones. Hormonal teenagers in the woods away from their parents with endless hiding places for mischief cannot be an easy shrift for those responsible. My boyfriend and I could never get away from our friends or the adults, so my honour was never in danger. But we sure tried.

That would all change soon enough.

My years at university were some of the most interesting of my life. Up to this point I had gone to mostly schools for girls. Having boys in class or even on campus was different for me. My dating life changed drastically during the university years. It is like living your entire life near your favourite sweets shop. You like what they have but there is little variety. Suddenly you are living in the factory where there is every variety imaginable.

I would not say that I dated all that much at university. Certainly much more than I had before but much less than many of my classmates. I had a roommate freshman year who seemed to date a new boy every weekend. I was far more selective but I cannot say that my selections were always the best.

Where I went to school everybody could be classified into two groups; those whose parents paid for everything and those who were surviving on scholarships and student loans. My parents had agreed to pay up to the exact amount of tuition at a university twenty minutes from their home. But I wanted to go to the best film school I could get into. It just happened to be on the other side of the world. As a foreign student my tuition was higher than it was for the locals. I got a few scholarships but most of the fees were paid through student loans. The United States has a few very nice universities but they make you pay a fortune to go there.

The fact that I had to pay for much of my education myself and that I knew full well that a bill would come the second I graduated made me appreciate why I was there all the more. Many of my classmates were spending their parents’ money and took it all far less seriously as a consequence.

I have always heard that only the best and brightest go to university and that those who are a little less smart tend to spend less time at academic institutions. But I went to school with some of the dullest people I have ever met. There were more than a few highly intelligent people there as well but anybody who knows anything about spring break knows that today’s university students are not entirely society’s best and brightest.

When I was at university I met Jerry in my Cahiers du cinéma class. Like almost everybody else at school he wanted to be a filmmaker and thought that he would make the Great American Film one day. The last I heard of him he was doing some kind of retail work in Philadelphia. But at the time he was wide eyed and optimistic just like the rest of us.

Jerry had many ambitious ideas for all the great films he would make one day, and his enthusiasm made it easy to disregard how unlikely it was that anything would ever come to be. We had been in the same class for a few months before he asked me on a date. I would have said no for several reasons but the way he struggled with asking made me feel a little sorry for him. And I loved that he was very different from most of the other boys who approached me around campus.

Where I went to school the boys could easily be classified into two groups; the golden boys and the outcasts. The golden boys had an Aryan arrogance about them that always turned me off. They were used to having everything handed to them and were probably told incessantly by their mothers that they were gods.

When they asked you out on a date they fully expected a yes and were absolutely dumbfounded to ever hear no. I never met a single one who took rejection well. Most of the time they would say that I must be a lesbian or that they were not really interested anyway. Why they would ask me out one minute and be disinterested the next is beyond me. These are people who never developed healthy defence mechanisms. Once rejected they would say things like, I thought you were a smart girl and you should really smile more. They never got it.

A few times I was called a JAP by these faux Romeos. Fauxmeos? Now that will be on some TV programme and I will get no credit whatever. JAP has nothing to do with being from East Asia as I am not and do not appear so. It stands for Jewish American Princess. In this context it is supposed to be an insult but I just found it funny. I am not American and my parents never treated me like a princess. I do not fit any of the American stereotypes of what a Jew is supposed to be. Most Jews outside of America do not fit any of the American stereotypes of what a Jew is supposed to be.

The irony is that nobody at university ever thought I was American. I do not sound American in either vernacular or diction. People would usually think I was British, and I would hear some derogatory words against Brits.

Most Americans think my accent is British. I have never met a British person who agreed with that. One guy that I rejected even said it is true that all frogs are snobs, apparently not knowing the difference between derogatory terms for the British and French. Neither of which am I. That amused me for several reasons.

Jerry was not one of the golden boys. He was an outcast. Not quite a geek and not quite a nerd. He was a film geek but so was I, and I do not think he knew much about computers. He could talk to girls but not comfortably. He had no confidence and I found that appealing at the time. Now I would only be turned off. But a 20-year-old who lacks confidence is very different from a 40-year-old who lacks confidence. One can be endearing.

Our first date was just lunch on campus. He was awkward and nervous which I found cute. We talked about films we liked, films we hated, and spent about thirty minutes on mise-en-scène the way only pretentious film students can. The conversation never went beyond the cinema and it felt nothing like a date to me but I got the impression that this was probably the best date Jerry had ever had.

For our second date we actually left the school. He picked me up on campus in his 1988 Honda Civic. Where I went to school everybody could easily be classified into two groups; those with money and those without. If you drove a 1988 Honda Civic then you were definitely in the latter group. I had no car so anything was convenient to me. But I was a foreigner. Nobody expected me to have a car. Nobody even expected me to know how to drive