Plums and Orchids-watercolor

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een paar schol eksters- weide vogels

sail needle magpie-meadow bird

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Aesop Fables-the fox who lost his tail

Basher al Badawi a fox unfortunately lost his tail and how it grieved him! He had called it some sweet names while he had it. My Milk and Honey,Sweet End and so on. The name he loved most was Jerusalem. But what can he do? He lost Jerusalem because he was very careless and accident prone. Having lost his pride all that he got was a handlength of beard which he hennaed it and thought it made him look holy. Then he went to other foxes and said,’See this radical new look! Call me Oozing bin Leaden. The foxes who had many other things in their mind looking after their families community and their business did not give ear to him. ‘We are moderates’, said they. ‘We obey Allah who gave us tails and you look out for yourself’. The fox with the beard was wroth and said ‘I will make your name stink! Because you didn’t do as I tell you!’
benny

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Shell-watercolor

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Parable: Three Sisters

Misery could not bear stay at home. So went she visiting. Wherever she went she announced herself thus, “I am Misery.” She came home all the more miserable because none wanted her company.
Her sister Joy thought she knew how to amuse herself. She sold everything she had and went visiting. She bought presents to give away. Wherever she went she said, “I am Joy!” She was wined and dined and she gave away all she had. At the end those who received her well inquired, “What did you say your name was?”
Joy thought she had wasted her time.
Happiness, the eldest sister went visiting. Wherever she went she announced, “Will you let me stay with you? ”and the house owner asked every time, “Who are you?”
“I am nobody.” At this many a door was slammed in her face.
In the end she knocked at one door. A man opened and was told the same she told some thousand times: ‘I am nobody, Just Happiness.’
The man replied, “I am also a nobody but I have my time to give. I have a body to keep the hearth blazing. Just you and me. You want that?”
She agreed and thus she stayed on. Later he observed that he had the best deal in his life.

benny

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Another Kind of Loving-dolphins

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A pair of lions-watercolor

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a tower-Ireland

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An Encounter

She was called Sin. Who gave her such a name I cannot say. Was it her professional name she would not say for silver or for my abject surrender to her wish the whole day. My persuasive speech and silver was wasted on her. She came in her street clothes a voluptuous red head on whom any dress didn’t do justice. I meant to keep aloof and keep the encounter strictly business like. No perfect specimen of her kind had I ever seen or made love to. Having bought love by galore from the day I became a man I knew I was the boss.
I placed directly an envelope into her hands. I noticed the dimple in her elbow and I could not help thinking she was well upholstered. She smiled and laid aside the envelope unopened with neither hauteur not rancor. ‘I will demand my price after my service.’ The rodomontade of a whore was not in her speech. It was more of woman of pleasure who had whole time to give pleasure and transport her clientele to dimensions they never had an inkling of. She knew it and the luxuriousness of oohs and ahhs during our sport was that of woman who was born to give pleasure.
Pleasure she could give like a tap running on and on. I asked her name and she said: Sin. Much to my annoyance she never budged. Her body could writhe and roll and add to the pleasure but her inner spirit was like a barbed wire, cutting and tearing my human frailties that must seek pleasure and pay and go on paying,- and in the end feel left out in the cold. She was correct and Sin chose to be correct.
She stuck to our contract; it was sealed over a written contract sealed and delivered to her three days before the encounter. She would surrender her body totally for the price she deemed fit. I knew how high the price was but that nothing compared to the wound in my innermost being. It was a rvage I could not bear. I wanted to her carnally and the knowledge was all that mattered. By midnight as she parted she merely nipped my earlobe so only I could hear it. ‘Price is paid for.’
The strangest sensation was the early hours of the night. Sin was completely erased from my thoughts! I slept like a log and the love-making had sunk into some dark pool like a boulder and not for once I could recall it. She had completely disappeared from memory.
In my forties I married a girl from the village where my ancestral house even now stands. Meanwhile I had become a man with power and influence and I was the Big Boss to great many.
Marriage of the Big Boss was an event and how the townsfolk bent backwards to make the wedding a success. I knew the bride knew my position and my prestige. She was docile and on the wedding night I would do my duties. One thing led to another and she was all for me to take. But the image of Sin lay before me. Incredible it was! My hair all stood on ends and sweat beaded on my fore head. The bride asked if anything was the matter. The shadow of Sin lay between and the lips of my bride had taken on the snarl of a cougar. However much I tried she just didn’t go away. My bride was all for sleeping off. But it was a vain hope. Sin had come back and she was demanding payment.
One night I just sneaked out of the house and I had not the heart to face the woman I had married. Let her live with the illusions she was married into power and prestige. I had paid the price Sin demanded. Her image merely would not go away was the price I paid.
benny

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The Rabbi Benn Weiss Stories-2

An Armenian in Paris

Rabbi Benn Weiss followed me close as we made for the exit. ‘I love Art and I know what I like,’ he had said while staring at the canvasses long and hard.
We came out into the sunshine. He asked, ‘What makes Beauty? Is it what is unattainable?’
I nodded. My companion asked, ‘Beauty! Is it because it speaks truth?’
‘Oh yes!’ I said appreciatively, ‘Rabbi, you know the words beauty, art and truth already. Only I need to teach how these connect one another. Once you know how you could be a professional art critic if you want to.’
As we crossed the busy street to the Metro in front of an art store, my companion was for buying a few books to get himself started. ‘Forget books. Forget what that guide at the Gallery was telling you.’ I told him, ‘She was far out Rabbi, but she was a peach.’
Rabbi Benn Weiss glared at me at which I suddenly stopped short. Next moment I called out, ‘See that old lady!’
I told him that I was going to explain art using her as a living example.
My companion who had his eye full of Rubenesque ladies looked at me aghast. ‘See her back is curved and how she leans on her stick?’
‘Is that beauty?’ my friend was skeptical.
‘Why not?’ I asked, ‘Does beauty only reside in a fine form and youth?’ ‘Or does it in my perception of it?’
I was in the mood to explain. ‘Think Rabbi Weiss, I do not know her from Adam. How come I suddenly think of my grandmother who has been dead for ages?’
‘She was most precious to me.’ I felt a lump in my throat and said, ‘This old woman represents a kind of truth to me. Because she is not a trick played on my eye I take it, she is a real human being’.
‘So she stands for truth,’ the Rabbi nodded his head appreciatively.
Rabbi intoned, ’But she is an ugly truth. Old Age is real and makes scarecrows…’
I cut in, ’That is besides the point. My grandmother, dead grandmother represents Truth and she is unattainable’.
‘So dying makes one beautiful?’ the rabbi wanted to know.
Ignoring it I explained, ‘Yet this frail woman down on her last legs brought her image to me.’
I knew Rabbi Benn Weiss didn’t understand me. So I said the truth this old woman carried, went radical changes to impress upon me truth of something else.’
The rabbi said, ’I never knew your grandmother was so important to you.’
I nodded gravely and said, ’I carry that loss. She can no longer make me feel good with her smile and words. But that old decrepit woman out of the blue made me reach that higher sphere, is no longer an idea but real.’
‘Aha,’ the rabbi said with a smile, ‘the old woman represents Beauty in the way she could make her truth connected with something else.’
‘Not just something, but my grandmother!’
‘Yes, if you say so, if you say so.’ he said impressed, ‘why don’t you write to your parents for a change? You can sms them if you want to.’
I said my art of life made me unattainable. ‘My parents want me to be still connected. So would the bill collector’.
‘I want to be alone, as said by the burglar to the cop,’ intoned the rabbi.

benny

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