2 thoughts on “The best part of Rapid City for me”

1. (continued) who can now appreciate how each stop on your journey, and each person you met, helped forge a particular part of your identiy and contributed to what and where you are today.
   I hope you got the very long story I sent. You are a gifted writer with great observations, keep with it, it is where you belong.

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2. You didn’t get the first part so I am resending it.
   Let me first introduce myself. I am a friend of your cousin, Lucille Altaras. I have known Lucille since I was 15. Lucille sent me your pictures and writings, and I was both impressed and moved by your writing and pictures. I hitchhiked across the country four times when I was young, and I recieved rides from people from all walks of life, farmers, business men, bored women, a guy in the mafia, hippies, a guy driving a stolen car, and many other colorful characters. I traveled across the south, when it was really the south, and it was dangerous for a jewish guy with long hair and a beard to be traveling the roads. On my journey I lived for a period on a commune, a farm, participated in the civil rights movement, and was an extra in a movie, and slept behind a billboard and in shelters.
   What I would like to convey to you is that twenty years from now you will look back on yur journey and the first thing you will say is “what the fuck was I doing,’ but when you reflect more deeply you will remember it as one of the most significant events in your life. I want to share with you a prospective of someone who experienced things like you are now now doing, but form the advantage of seeing it in retrospect. I would like to give you some things to think abut as you make your way on your journey because I can see that you are a very thoughtful and observant person.
   If you were not you, if you saw yuorself from the eyes of another, how would you see yourself. This is what you begin to wonder when you undertake a journey like you have chosen. You would see how each journey leads away from home. Away from your birth place, away from those who nutured you and that which made you what you are. Outward, away from yourself in so many directions. This is what you are now doing. But you will see that your journey is really a journey from within. From within, every journey leads in one direction. Toward within. Towards yourself. Closer and closer.
   When you travel like you are doing, you will find that it is like all journeys in life. There are journeys that are painful at times because there is struggle. Struggle to leave one place to reach another. Struggle to discern the good from the bad and put each in it’s proper place, struggle to face ugliness and replace it with beauty. But in each of these journeys, a sense of purpose emerges which transcends the pain and brings it’s own joy.
   Then there are journeys that seem to have no purpose. Where nothing appears to be accomplished, it all seems futile. There are no readily discernable answers.
   But every, every journey a person travels has the potential of taking them to a higher level. it is only that sometimes, the destination is a place so distant, so aloft, that you never could of imagined it until you arrived.
   In reality in every episode of your life, in evry moment and period of growth you experience, you are on a journey. Your every characteristic, your every talent and ability, and your every encounter, contributes to your reaching your destination. – to use your G-d given talents to accomplish your particular mission in life. And you are discoverying this as you travel, it is fast forward.
   I imagine that as you set out on your long trek as I did so many years ago, in your naivete you imagined the journey would be a straight one, with clearly delinated directions and sign posts. But you find that instead of a well-paved road, you encounter a bumpy, windy road. You find yourself changing lanes often, following detours and side roads, and stopping where you hadn’t planned, and even making some u-turns. Perhaps there aven times when you feel lost, confused and are not sure you want to continue on. Setbacks, your journey is full of them, as it will be in life. But each stop you make make, each rest, each encounter, each wrong turn is ultimately a point of learning in your journey forward. And you will learn from this, because each setback is meant to provide you with a new vantage point of perception, a new awareness and sensitivity on your journy of life. yu are learning by what you are now experiencing that every, every self-imposed limitation and constriction in your attitude and outlook must be overcome to reach your goals. This is all part of your journey across the land and it is also your personal journey, forward and onward.
   Life is like a journey frought with uncertainty, physical and spiritual danges, a constant searching to quench your soul. In the years to come, when you look back at all the places you stopped at on your journey, you will see them for what they truly were, challenges and opportunities that paved the way, rather than impeded your adavance through life. Rather than pitfalls and obstacles as which they may have been first experienced, you will recognize them as rungs on the ladder that have raised and elevated your prosective. This is the deeper significance of your jurney.
   At some point in your life you will re-experience your journey in a different light, not as a person venturing toward an unknown place on a long road, but as a woman who has attained her place in the world, and can now appreciate how each stop on the journey, each person you met, have forged a particular part of your identity and contributed to what and where you are today.
   You are a gifted writer, with the ability to observe and understand the world and people around you, do not let this slip away.
   David Chai Israel

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