Wednesday, January 04, 2012,
The Miracle Revisited


I've made many tentative Chanukah videos over the past few months but none of them seemed right. One song by Kenny G. was beautiful, had a Jewish melody, and was from his holiday CD. It was Jewish but didn't seem right even as the title of one of the tracts was called Eternal Light.


Yet another one--a sweet but IMO rather sappy song called One Little Candle. That didn't seem right either. Do I sound like Goldilocks not finding the chair/song that was just right in the house of the three bears? I felt like that. The soup that was too cold, too, hot, just right. The bed that was too hard, too soft, just right.


I considered an entirely secular and quite popular song by an Irish singer but that one seemed wrong. I actually made of video using that song but deleted it from my You Tube channel. The video was made in anger as a small family I invited to my apartment totally stiffed me. Home alone for Chanukah:( Well, one night at least). But as the night went on I enjoyed myself, I became much more reflective. I knew what song I neeed for my Chanukah video. It's secular but from a very significant movie called ALIVE, the true story of the Miracle of the Andes, the survival of a plane crash. One of the heroes seemed to have no faith at whatsoever--he made comments such as "What's so great about hope?" After the search has been called off he says, "I have good news. They've called off the search...that means we're going to save ourselves."


Long story short Nando Parado was a man of great faith and he did save his friends.  I suppose in a Jewish context it was much like celebrating a miracle even as we're forbidden to rely on miracles.


I've written about ALIVE before but it was and always is. Two tracts in particular--the tender tract called Alberto (I think of it as a line in the movie spoken at a very sad moment at dawn--"Wake up, wake up everyone." Not urgent, not loud but everyone does wake up and listens to him. This was the song I ultimately chose from my Chanukah video.


This night of being home alone for Chanukah was actually beautiful. I took down the electric blue lights and blue garland and decided to put up another form of decoration aside from the menorah of course. My parents passed down a set of glasses etched with a family crest of sorts--an A within a diamond. Odd family "crest" but that's what we had. I had three of the glasses. My brother had the other six. Hmmm. That would make nine just like a menorah. Little problem though--I only had three and the one that stood out that would have made a great shamash was smaller than the rest. If I had the other six glasses I could have put the small shamash glass in front of the others, not as a tall leader but one in front leading the way.


Try as I might I couldn't find small blue votive candles to place in the glasses, only white ones. I used those. Much to my surprise the little votive reflected on the white wall in front of them. It was a large shadow of blue. Pure white reflecting through transparent glass created a large shadow of blue. I got my blue lights in a way (included in my final video.)


I visited Angola several times in the two or three weeks before Chanukah. My brother lives there (about 35 miles outside of the city) and my best friend's daughter. She has a pond on her property, home to eight beautiful white ducks. I've taken videos of the ducks when they were just little brown ducklings swimming in a kiddie pool.


The weather had been unusually warm in the high forties and these eight little white ducks also had me thinking about Chanukah and the menorah. Eight ducks swimming around. Eight seemed to be on my mind quite a bit. It made me think of the number of people on Noah's ark and how they survived in the water. An out there theory about why there are eight candles on a chanukiya but nevertheless mind thoughts and spirituality goes where it goes and absorbs what it absorbs.


My emotions are on the surface with this Chanukah video. Perfect song from a wonderfully religious movie. It's only gotten about 14 views (probably most of my views to see if the HD camera took good pictures). But that's okay. This video reflects my thoughts and emotions this year.




Off topic but I also made a water glitter globe for someone but decided to keep it as a gift to myself. I was sad to see all of the water globes in stores. All Christian. The Jewish ones online were primarily for children, so I made my own sort of. It took a while to figure out how to put a picture in it but it's kind of pretty. That was one of my Chanukah decorations too. Shake a water globe up, down and to the side and the glitter  fills the globe, the figures inside never lose their place.


I like that, too:) I secured a picture of my two favorite relatives in the globe. Again, my gift to myself. I also did some reading about the history of water/snow globes or domes and kept coming across the phrase "under glass" and how things of value were and are often kept under glass and still convey a sense of luxury, value and wealth.


I like that, too.

So there you have it--I managed to insert eight ducks, a song, and a water globe into a post game-post on Chanukah.
 
posted by Keli Ata
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