AlwaysSababa

AlwaysSababa began as a T-Shirt. Somewhat of a backwards way to begin life, but there you go. Back in 2006, Noé Martinez, a 16 year old freshman at Washington State University, created a T-shirt to sell to his friends in the Jewish students' group. The shirt was black and had a Latin-flavored graffiti style logo that said "Always" in English and "Sababa" (סבבה) in Hebrew. His mom, Lisha Sterling, fronted the money for his little shirt making venture, and got a few shirts out of the deal for herself and some friends.

Listen to Audio Version

There is a town in Israel with a very special character indeed. It's not a particularly spiritual place, any more so than other parts of Israel. It has no ancient ruins of significant historical interest. It is not the home or birthplace of any historical figure, revered rabbi or possible deity. No, this town is special in a way unlike all the other cities, villages, settlements and towns in Israel. Petach Tikvah doesn't exist.

This week I've gotten a bunch of new toys to play with either from work or because of it. The toys came together and sparked some inspiration and today I'm launching a new site within the AlwaysSababa domain: http://streamingisrael.alwayssababa.com.

Standing at the edge
Of time,
Whispers climb,
The cliffs of silence
Where we stand together,
Complicit,
In a crime we did not witness
Because we chose
To close our eyes.

Daniel was in his room, standing in front of the mirrored closet doors while he worked out with his nunchuks. Isaac and I stood in the doorway transfixed by his display of utter coolness. The sticks whipped around his body. He flipped them over one shoulder and then the other, changing hands, changing sticks with the same hand, twirling them around with menace.

Eventually, he got tired of having us in his doorway, so he told us to go away with a sharp, “Fuck off, gnats!”

Homeless, no where to go, no where to hide,
Those poor souls that have no homes.

Why, I ask myself,
Why, must the taxes get higher and higher every year.

Why, I ask myself,
Why can't we live in peace and harmony

Instead we must live in chaos and war.

"Wake up!" My mother stood at the door to my room and yelled, "It's 6:30. You have to get up and get ready to go to Mrs. Buzaglo's."

Isaac popped up like a jack-in-the-box and flipped himself down from the top bunk onto the floor. He ripped the covers off his sister and she yelled wordlessly at him. She tried to punch him, but missed, and then she reached down for the blankets to pull them back up again. My mom was gone from the doorway already, so she didn't see and didn't care. The two of them could continue their battle without interruption.

The most common cause of death in my family is suicide. My uncle on my father's side has already announced that he plans to go that way. He considers it a rational choice. He'd rather die by his own hand when he feels good and ready than slowly by the hand of nature. The choice wasn't so rational, even on the face of it, for either of my mother's sisters.

A long, long time ago - some say about 20,000 years ago, but really no one knows exactly how long ago it was - this land was all ice and water. It was much colder then than it is now. It was the end of an ice age, in fact. Well, maybe not the end, but certainly getting on toward the end. Glaciers were melting, and with the melt came great disasters.

The two angels were walking on either side of a woman with long black hair and chestnut brown eyes. The woman was wearing a hospital gown, but she didn't look ill at all. In fact, she looked like she was about 22 or 23 and in perfect shape. She had a serious look on her face, like she was worried about something. None of the three spoke, but it was clear just by looking that they were all aware of each other, and were walking together. Where they were going, however, was anyone's guess.

In fact, none of the three of them had really figured that out yet.