Glass Jars

I’m alone with Volcan Baru, a coconut, and my first glass jar. Back home, drinking water out of glass jars was a real joy for me. One of those simple things that made me so happy. I’d take a jar and go outside, with the sun and the air tickling my water and glistening on the jar’s translucent beauty. Just holding a cool glass jar in my hands is quite a spiritual thing for me. It’s mine. I love being alone, to write, with a glass jar. 

I had a jar in California. When I was on my little speaking tour, Karen, David’s wife, gave me a glass jar. Maybe she also loves them. Maybe she just knew that I was a glass jar sort of girl. Karen gave it to me as a gift and I left it in Houston before heading out for Central America. As a backpacker, I knew my glass jar would not fare life on the road well. It’s waiting for me in a box in my mom’s guest bedroom in Houston. I hope to bring it back to Israel one day. One day, when I’m sitting in my backyard again, facing my mountain, I can hold my Karen glass jar in my hands. I will feel the energy and love of all that Karen and David mean to me, and I will write. 

We’re in a tiny cabin in Alto Boquete, Panama. For the first time in many months, we have settled down somewhere in a home that has our stuff dutifully scattered in every corner. We’ve well marked our new territory. And after our week with David Barron, in which he introduced us to the magic of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I now have a Welch’s Grape Jelly glass jar, cleaned and full of water, of my own. 

Back home, every six months, Kobi would wisely send me out for a week on my own. I cherished my semi-annual retreats. I would sleep, walk, drink water out of glass jars, and write. I’d eat all raw foods, and do tons of deep meditative soul work. I’d not speak to anyone and be in total silence the entire time. I would rise in the morning, go to bed at night, and nap whenever my body felt like it. I would clean through the layers of emotional pain that I’d managed to collect in those last months; and reach unresolved ditches hidden away from my youth. I would cry, and clean, and laugh, and clean. I would walk for hours and hours and hours. Nowhere in particular. Just walk, in silence, with myself. And in this magical bubble, I would write. My finest book writings have been produced on those silent retreats. 

And now, being on the road with our children all day, every day; I believe exasperates my soul-cleaning schedule. Now, with the kids all the time, I think my new schedule for reclusion begs for once in three months. I had my time, alone, in California. And though it was filled with meetings, speaking engagements, interviews, and radio shows; it was also filled with site-seeing, and adults conversations well into the night and over nice, calm dinners in which (not even once) were my thoughts and sentences interrupted by the needs of my children. How glorious it was. And now, again, I feel my soul, like the brake pads which wore thin and Kobi replaced last week, is calling me to go within. 

“Gabi,” she says, “Gabi, come be alone with me”. “Gabi,” she whispers, “we have work to do, it’s time to talk, you and I. Come, Gabi, come rest, come be silent, come write, come be, with me.”

And so, I’m alone today. Kobi has taken the kids fishing for the day. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a few hours alone. And so, I watch the  Panamanian clouds move in and about the crevices of the mightly Volcan Baru. I breathe. I type. I enter my soul. And I, very quietly, sip from my glass jar.

Posted in: Discovering Cool Places, Discovering Ourselves