A Million Tomorrows / Yeshivat Hadar #3
If I were to someday lose my awareness of what I've said, what I've not yet said. If I were to someday lose most of my memories, to have my mind siphon off the things it decides are superfluous to my sense of self, my sense of narrative, my sense of meaning, of relationship, of connection. If I were to someday lose everything but that upon which I've dwelt, those hubs at the centers of thoughtwebs, those times that I circle back to, replaying, whether recapturing their happiness or seeing how things could have been different....Dry raincoat
The storm will strip away the last leaves. Throw them high in the air along with the plastic bags and cigarette butts and flatten them on the pavement. They were going to fall in the next few days anyway, and there’s nothing wrong with change coming a little sooner than expected. Like when you’re thinking of breaking up with someone and then find out they’re cheating on you, or moving across the country....Instinct
I untwist the connecting belt between two queue-marking poles, releasing the tension. The man in front of me says, "You must be a mother." I respond, "Someday, God willing." He says, as if I hadn't spoken, "That's something my mother would do."Yeshivat Hadar #2
The three-sided mobile hanging in my bedroom (a triptych of sorts, you could say) depicts a group of people (a kehila? an am?) standing on a cliff above a grassy land with a river running through it. I just realized while reattaching one of the chopsticks serving as a hanging post that I made the dirt of the cliff and the faces of the people out of the same sandpaper....Rediscovery
The cymbals hang in the stormy wind and they clang G-d! G-d! Let His name be part of everything! Bed squ[e]aks and rattling chains, the song of stars and the rustle of footsteps, let all praise G-d and be part of G-d's ways....Yeshivat Hadar #1
On Wednesday (i.e. yesterday), I started studying at Yeshivat Hadar, an egalitarian place of Jewish study on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I will be there for the duration of a school year, studying traditional texts, engaging in communal prayer, and working to spread learning and kindness in the city....The Yonahs
A few years ago, I started writing a story about two different Yonahs from Tana"kh: Yonah the dove, from Noah's Ark, and Yonah the Prophet, more commonly known in English as Jonah. I thought Yonah the dove would have much wisdom for Yonah the Prophet, but I have recently started thinking more about unsettled feelings and thoughts that the dove--as well as the dove-partner it presumably left behind--might have....A note to myself, 10/14/2009
life of a piano tunerspending all the time making sure each individual key sounds good
and good in relation to all the others
but never playing.
each of us working on one note
preparing for our souls to be played
Beat
Pale, pale hair, spiked hair, paler skin. A short black jacket bearing the word Corrupted.Passed him as I walked to the spot that I had chosen.
He waited for the train a yard or two away. Waited behind me. Waited next to me again....
I stood by
My Jewish sisters gathered at the Western Wall, and I stood by.Stood by and watched as they sang their prayers on Rosh Chodesh Av, praising God and defying the shouts they provoked. I had written about these women, described and extolled their fight, their desire to be unmarked, undivided, uninhibited in speaking to God as they wished, where they wished. I believed in their mission, was personally distraught over the crowdedness of the women’s side of the mechitza, over the restrictions I felt upon my chanting, my expression, my being. I supported their call for religious freedom. I had come to see them, to maybe add my voice to theirs. But I found, that day, that I could not stand with them....
I think I'm glad
We were already past 72nd Street. At one point I stumbled, caught myself, looked up at the man standing closest to me, hoped I hadn't run into him. Our coats were poofy enough that I might not have noticed. But he was not paying any mind.He started singing ever so quietly. Humming, perhaps. Wordless, but I knew it....
Washing potatoes (a poem)
That kind of hippie
Met new people tonight. The three of us sat in Whole Foods drinking coffee and hot chocolate.One asked me what I wanted to do in my life....
Comrades of a sort
First it was just us two, me and the boy with unkempt hair, a backpack, and a slightly feminine face, at the first stop on the 1 train. We were uncertain that the train was running - only saw one person on it - and from that moment of shared uncertainty onwards we were comrades of a sort....Questions for Angels
....הוא הולך פנימה. בחדר יושבים מלאכיםHe walks in. Angels sit in the room....
A Man with a Name (though I don't know it)
Sat next to himon the Greyhound bus
from New York to Maryland....
Haiku: New Jersey to Port Authority
We speak haikuand let the world keep turning.
Someone must witness....
My adventure in saying something to a stranger where I would normally not
So I walked into the subway.There was this guy past the turnstiles with red hair and a beard.
A short beard, very short.
Reddish orange, the beard....
Santas, and Other Causes for a Good Mood
There are many manners of riding on the subway. The headphone manner: you are not closed off from others through body language, but you make yourself separate, involved in a different world from the one around you, one that should only be intruded upon when necessary. The already involved manner: you are traveling with someone or someones - perhaps your child, your boyfriend, your posse - and are engaging in conversation or cuddling. The "I am trying to nap" manner....One of those nights
Tonight was one of those nights where I walked right past my train stop without noticing. Then again, I am not too familiar with Houston Street, so I might have missed the stop even if I had not been wrapped up in conversation with two fellow choristers....Yom Kippur 5767 (2006) - a prose poem
I faltered. Did we skip a paragraph? My eyes frantically searched the page as my finger skimmed line after line of Hebrew, and I wanted to take out a remote control and pause the service, but everyone continued chanting....Bellies
I love dancing blues with someone with a belly.A belly acts as another point of contact....
Vayera, and musings on stardust
To rule," "To sustain," "to judge" - all of these are used to translate the verb לשפט. I would generally say that this was a choice made in order to diversify the Hebrew, to make it seem that the two psalms end more differently than they do. But Friday night, I realized that the translator, consciously or not, had a point. In an ideal world, to rule is to judge, to judge is to sustain....Sometimes
Sometimes, when I squint my eyes, lights separate into drops of brightness, a honeycomb hexagon pattern forming in an array that dazzles and dances....Prayer, God, and Aphasia
This post will grow in the coming days. For now, two quotations from the ninth chapter of Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat....What would it be like to converse with God, to pray to God, if you believed that God was an aphasiac?...Blues Dancing
I love to blues dance.What is blues dance? Here are two examples....
Moods
I was in a rush today and made spaghetti for dinner. The spaghetti was almost cooked when I tried to open the jar of marinara sauce. I could not open it. Nor could I open the two other jars in the cabinet....Seeds of Peace, High Holidays, and Other Thoughts
Dear readers,An update - I am now in New York City, working for an awesome organization called Seeds of Peace, whose mission is "to help young people from regions of conflict develop the leadership skills necessary to advance reconciliation and coexistence"....
The New York City Subway
I love the metro.I love the bustle, the direction, the sheer mass of humanity. I love being squished into a standing position so I do not have to hold on. I love testing out my balance, standing as though on a skateboard in converse-type sneakers and dress pants....
On Widener Ledge
Was sitting on my Widener ledge, looking up at the sky between the leaves where I feel God present, playing guitar there for the first time. Didn't make eye contact with some who passed me by. Two men did come up to me....Writings, Fall 2005
So Mild, like clay that coats your tongue in sootthe musty mist clamours around me, seeping in
it moves in the wind, it is the wind visible
and heated, pressing upon my neck and calves....
