Friday, November 19, 2010

Los Angeles, Nonetheless, Is



The Biblical Mount Sinai (Hebrew: הר סיני, Har Sinai) is an ambiguously located mountain at which the Hebrew Bible states that the Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God. In certain biblical passages these events are described as having transpired at Mount Horeb. Sinai and Horeb are generally considered to refer to the same place although there is a small body of opinion that the two names may refer to different locations.

According to the biblical account, after leaving Egypt and crossing the Red Sea, the Israelites arrived to the ground below the holy mountain and gathered there in anticipation of the words of God. Even prior to the Israelite encounter with Sinai, the ground of the mountain was considered holy, when Moses first found the burning bush upon the mountain (named as Horeb in the first instance).

According to some biblical scholars, Horeb is thought to mean Glowing/Heat, which seems to be a reference to the sun, while Sinai may have derived from the name of Sin, the Sumerian deity of the moon, and thus Sinai and Horeb would be the mountain of the moon and sun, respectively.






Los Angeles is almost eight thousand
miles west—as the crow flies—of Mount Sinai.
That would make a fun documentary,
following a crow from Los Angeles
on a great circle flight to Mount Sinai.
Some actor or actress in a hushed voice
would speak over slow motion video
of the crow flying, “Nobody knows why
this crow is flying from Los Angeles
to Egypt, but the crow, nonetheless, is.”


Nobody knows, too, if the Mount Sinai
in Egypt is the one from the Bible.
You’d think people would have kept track of that
from generation to generation
but history is full of surprises.
The same Sun and Moon that moved in the sky
above all the Mount Sinai’s over there
move in the sky above Los Angeles.
Everyone knows where Los Angeles is,
although, like the crow, nobody knows why.












. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .



The Crow Equinox


Singing Is For The Birds



Los Angeles Is My Daisy



Trans Am Girl


“Yet Baghdad Is”



















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