DREAMING / 1^st series

Dreaming / היינו כחולמים
(Written following the two series of performances titled “Dreaming”.)

We arrived at the intersection at sunset. The sky was a tinted grey screen, shredded by the sun’s hews of dense orange and liquid lemon.

The taxi’s sudden halt, at the red traffic light, tossed Nadia from the portable child’s car-seat onto her mother’s lap. When franticly she turned to her mother for a soothing compensation, she was torn away from Yasmin’s bosom, and was jolted towards the Canaan dog whose sturdy presence blocked her from hitting the vehicle’s door. As she crashed beside the fury body, the dog’s name “M-a-r-i-aaa-a” erupted from her throat, then wavered, then diminished and finally ended with a questioning quiver.

A young girl, who was crossing the road, was meticulous about stepping only on the white bars. When she raised her eyes in order to assess how many white bars remained ahead of her, she noticed a faint green gleam. She hastened towards the faint green gleam but did not change her commitment to step only on the white bars. When the faint green gleam was at her feet, at the tip of the shoe, she stomped on it with all her might. Feeling victorious, she proceeded to count each white bar she had crossed but when she reached the tenth white bar, she realized that she overlooked the faint green gleam. She counted again while taking each step with care and focusing her eyes, with intent, on each white bar. To her surprise, she saw that the faint greenish gleam shimmered on the seventh bar whose color was black. The young girl stomped on the faint green gleam again and smiled when she noticed the faint green gleam was on her shoe.

Now there was a slow movement of women, men and children, across the frame of the taxi’s window. In the deceptive twilight the women, men and children appeared as sculpted in a bas-relief stone. Only a thin crop of hair gathered in a pink ribbon waved out of the harsh stone. It was a small girl whose outstretched arm sprouted from the bottom of the window frame and clutched the wing of a blue skirt in front of her.

I was worried since I wanted to view a pastel colored mark which I knew lay on the grey triangular pedestrian island, at the end of the crossroad. I doubted the possibility of finding a gap in the stone bas-relief, within the interval of a single traffic light, by which I could glance at the pastel-colored mark on the grey pedestrian island. I had also dared to imagine that, by an unexpected instance, the very small girl’s outstretched arm would not grasp the wing of her mother’s skirt and thus create a small breach through which I could gain sight of the pastel-colored mark.
I thought that my last chance was when they will have reached the end of the crossroad; I hoped that the mere stepping onto the island would create a gap in the dense crowd and enable me to finally view the pastel-colored mark.

It was when the dog’s name -“M-a-r-i-aaa-a” – ended with a slight questioning quiver, that all the women, men and children had stepped onto the islands’ threshold. They stood with their backs to me and there was such a density that I could not fathom seeing the pastel-colored mark, through and beyond them.
I expected them to have walked, from the island’s threshold, straight forward, across the center of the island, then step down onto the second crossroad and finally on to the sidewalk where they would disperse, each to her or his own destination. But what had really happened was that the women, men and children turned from the island’s threshold, and walked beside and around the pastel-colored mark that lay on the pedestrian island. They, women, men and children, had noticed the rolled blanket with the pastel floral design that lay in the middle of the pedestrian island.

I was happy. The thought that crossed my mind was that the rolled blanked with the pastel floral design had gained a claim on this pedestrian island.