8. And she counts, from thumb to little finger

Healy Langer

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1 , 2, 3, 4 ... 41, forty-one steps  And up to one hundred measured steps. The mind wants air so the body exhibits reciprocity and goes out. Emma-what, the plot got tangled up and here you found yourself in a crowded meeting with Abel Fich, a smoky coffee mixed with sour sweet of feta and mango juice, a kicking testimony to the pleasures of dawn.   

You look left, right, left again and cross. Abandoned sofas sunbathe on the street corners, new, large TV screen packages slide onto the road. Passover cleaning came earlier this year,  So they say, and the neighbors? Renewed. Surely they are now buried in their home, sailing-sailing, and on the horizon of the evening edition. It takes stubborn patience to be an obedient citizen in these moments, patience that is made possible mainly by more comfortable sofas - softer, upholstered in a sponge that remembers buttocks and a crooked back ...  

In step forty-nine you turn to Independence Street - you can see with your eyes that you are smiling - "there is actually poetic justice in this," you say - "all the wars and battles, all for the sake of the flowers. See how they dance eagerly on the traffic islands, dance - dance".

..67, 68, 69– no. The eyes catch up, looking for a feature to lean on. Between the balconies a young girl takes off laundry from the rope and forgets a black shirt. On the roof of the apartment above, the Likud flag proudly hangs on it, and on the same roof at a safe distance, the state flag bends down, as if embarrassed - also in blue and white. "Amazing! Someone here has come up with a marketing trend that just refuses to let go."

  To let go. . 92, 93, 94 - Ambulance sirens require attention, the dog pulls, you encounter a sign. By mistake, you forgot the helmet at home. Looks up contemptuously and here's an announcement  The eternal "Long live the Messianic King" - a picture of the late Rebbe of Lubavitch. The Messiah is dead, and some still believe in him.  

What do you believe in?

- "Enough. Now home."  

One, two, three, four ... Thirty - hand squeezing finger, thumb to little finger. Just like a baby holding Daddy's fingers, you're smiling again. Remember when we were kids and we still played with dolls? We drew faces on our fingers and built forts from blankets, counting the steps until we were already "big". And now a strange, almost betrayal feeling crept under the blanket. Because here, at the same speed at which a thought changes, you realize that any cleaning is a kind of smearing action. And yes, maybe you regret those wasted moments of washing the floor.

They say - to write you have to read, to speak you have to listen, you have to eat to grow ... - so now you eat. And you remember Grandma Zelda who raised her mother, who fed and contained her, and then the poet Zelda who explicitly imprinted a seal on her ship when she wrote about - "God's silence I will not fear what a man will do to me." And you go to bed reconciled, folding the worries of the day, covering yourself and converging to "this silence of God to me, I will not fear what man will do to me. This silence of God, I will not fear what man will do to me. This silence of God."

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101, 102, 103, 104.. .

-She inhales and exhales-

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In another hall