I'm back, and yet...

I got back from Uman, Ukraine this morning about 11 hours ago, after 17 hours of driving, 14 hours of training, 12 hours of Budapesting and 5 hours of planing. I've been in bed ever since. But not sleeping as much as I would like.

If you want to kinda see what the scene is at the grave of Rebbe Nachman, here's a few YouTube videos from previous years. I don't know that any of them really capture the energy. Of course 2 days of Rosh Hashanah and Shabbat don't get filmed. I am surprised that this year's footage hasn't made it online yet. Give it a few days..

• check out the chubby kid dancing in the middle of this one
• a longer video, with Hebrew narration
• here's hundreds of people praying near the gravesite before Rosh Hashanah
• some dancing in the streets after the holiday

eventually i will get some photos of our trip from Rav Natan's sons.

After 10 days in Eastern Europe, I am, once again, all confused about, well, everything. I dunno what the heck is going on, or what I should be doing or where to go to investigate the millions of questions that spin through my mind all the time. I feel shattered. I spent about 3 hours in the Turkish baths in Budapest, the same place I went with Craig in '95. I just lay there, soaking in the water, feeling totally free, feeling that... that thing that comes up when I travel, that kernel of life that I can just about grasp. And then-

Yom Kippur is in three days. We'll see how that irons things out a bit...