And Voilà!

©Orly Avineri

I like my walking without headphones plugged in my ears

Nostrils expand, gasp for air, trying to catch all the magnificence available in the surroundings of a singular and momentary path

And this path, may one moment be wholeheartedly chosen, and in another, not

I like my walking hard

To kick dust

Till it reaches my eyes.

And then to return the favor to the ground, with tears

Watering that dirt road, with gusto, like torrential rain, till they give into the ground

To make the desired mud

I pause, I sit down on the ground, I spread my legs, to feel it all underneath me

Then I get to work

To the task at hand, both

To the deep digging, to the loosening, to separate, to smooth, to reach mycelia

To find the dough down there to make my mud cakes

The doughs, the pastes hiding between roots,

Mine, and others, I examine the distances between them

How they feel in my hands, touch one another, where they meet

Marry, merrily

I then extract them from the ground

Scoop them up to the surface

To become raw materials for my mud cakes

I call them mud cakes, because where I come from there was no such word as ‘pie’

I call them mud cakes but also ‘the representation of creation’, understand it as you wish

Or may be the way I do, which is, those things I make

When no one is there, watching, giving a damn, and I am sitting in the midst of euphoria

Down there, in the ground, is the place where everything shoots, every love, begins

It’s also where it eventually ends

I like that what’s underneath me holds both, so eagerly, so lovingly

A sacred place, wouldn’t you agree?

Once I gently lay the raw material beside me, I pause, in awe of mud

Yes, you heard it, in awe of mud

I sit there, not as if waiting for a ride, but in a state of worshiping

Of honoring the ashes beside me: The sand, the mud, the paste, the dough

The earth, the soil

Etcetera

And with them all I make the cake

Once done, I sprinkle some stones on top

I then give it a name

I call it a mud cake, yes, but sometimes, a gravestone

A womb, or a grave marker, it’s interchangeable

Either way, I have a mud cake in front of me

And pride no one on earth, underneath earth, or even in the sky

Can take away from me

And voilà!

There it is: The essence of ‘making’

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🤎🤍🖤

Orly