Wax of the clay original

10" x 13" x 36" h.

The last time I saw her was two decades ago. It was for a brief hour as we sat side by side on a New York central park bench. Previously it was on a Jerusalem eve that, unknowingly for the last time, we touched and spoke and laughed and embraced and I beheld her magnificence. That was almost a decade before.

In the years since I have often wondered if she remembered me. If she wondered what became of me, as I did of her. I am sure if I had made the correct, utterly agonizing choice, and returned, today I would believe in love and destiny and faithfulness and it would all be so obvious and easy.. but a war intervened. If it had not I would probably be a lot blander and more boring, a believer in constancy. Ever since, I guess, in mental limbo toying with my imaginary maiden, leaving me the footloose and fancy free wanderer that I am.

The reality of her visage has long since faded. Even if I possesed the memory to preserve her image, time may have worked its changes and today I would probably pass her unrecognized in the street.

I often wonder if it was the perspective drawing, I did as I lay on my barrack bed at 198 battalion at Bir T'madeh in the Sinai, that triggered her interest and illustrious career in architecture and interior design.

Now I occasionally play with my lost mental image. Sometimes I have her hair tied in a bob and her neck extended and other times her ginger tinted golden hair is tied over in a dutch braid... In my mind I can make her whoever I want... Maybe I will recognize her... stranger things have happened...

Such as...her tantalizing me, across almost three decades, with a glimpse of her full and feminine and beautiful legs. No less, unwittingly, on my last birthday, with "Hi, Is it u? I am younger and older now".

And yet, even thought I have not heard it for twenty years, I remember the lilt of her voice as clearly as yesterday....and the clay talks to me!

and my quest to recognize her in the mud in my hands.. it will always produce the wonderful torsos to adorne with my other creations.

Hey...I have to admit.. life is strange and wonderful <grin>.