Some musings and memories of my childhood

I am beginning this journey as a sort of exploration of various themes which have preoccupied me over the years. Some of the themes that mean to me are music, opera, travel, human nature, artistic expression, aviation, human relationships, vision, brain science, and justice. 

My life has been characterized by moving, frequently moving from one place to another, from country to country. In that sense I am a bit of an itinerant, and as a result rather rootless. Themes of rootlessness also preoccupy me. This is natural, as a man who has in some ways, as a result of his own destiny, lot some of his ancestral roots, yet not the sense of purpose. The feeling of rootlessness has been unsettling to me at various junctures of my life but it is alas a reality of my life, for one reason or another. Perhaps it is the very nature of my lack of a permanent base that has prompted me to begin this exploration, I won't really know for sure.  

I was recently on a trip around the Baltic with 3 of my 4 children. One night, close to midnight, from the deck of a ship, I was taken by the midnight sun. The image of that moment below. I was moved to tears by the beauty of the midnight sun. The night's breeze was warm and the air pure and transparent. The horizon was equally split by air and water, the Gulf of Finland was crisp, the beauty of the moment beyond the singing of it. The feelings of the moment could be expressed simply in the thought that the image evoked. Every man is itinerant, every man is alone, every soul has to come to terms with his won solitude and the destiny. One can invoke the presence of various entities, physical and spiritual,  in one's life, in the end, one is always alone, the horizon is open, we are an accident of biology. With a mission. But a grain of sand in the universe we are...  But the fact is, this infinitesimally small accident of biology allows me to experience the beauty of the moment, even for a blink of an eye in the vast extent of the universe.

The feeling of the infinite. Midnight sun in the Gulf of Finland 2019

My life began in Bolivia, in the town of Cochabamba. The photo below was probably taken 6 months after my birth and it shows a happy mother, my beloved mother, Elena Pollak de Pless. She was a very proud Jewish mother. Must I say more?

One of my favorite photos of all times. My mother Z"L an I, at age of 6 months. Taken in 1963

My father, born in Germany, immigrated to Bolivia in 1938, at a very young age. The extraordinary socio-cultural phenomenon that is comprised by a small immigrant Jewish family in a deeply indigenous country is a phenomenon which I might explore at a later stage in this exercise. However, for now, it suffices to say that my first memories consist of playing with a cocker spaniel in a pressed-wood factory, the factory that was to be the first home of my family. Imbol, as the factory was known, was located at the "kilometer cero", the very beginning of the road between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. My father, who did't finish high-school and tried his luck as an optician, went to work as a truck driver carrying plywood across various regions of Bolivia. Ultimately he landed a job of manager of this factory. It was here that he was given the possibility of living in the apartment in front of the factory, on one of the most transited roads of the region.  I remember the traffic. I remember the trucks. And my parents listening to opera inside this small apartment. In front: the trucks coming and going.  Behind: the plywood factory. "La casa del kilometer cero", as my birthplace came to be known, was a sort of a bubble of German-Jewish life in a sea of Bolivian culture. The dichotomy left my soul marked forever.

So, what does the feeling of openness, of rootlessness, I experienced while looking at the horizon in the midnight sun, and memories of my childhood? My soul was marked by experiences at both places. Cochabamba. The Gulf of Finland. The midnight sun. An open heart. A dreamer's life.