Do I still get to cry? The first year ends, and I’ve been living the dying over and over. Actually, it all started two years ago with her. And I just couldn’t get over it, and then, wham — the tzaddik is ill, the tzaddik is terminal, the tzaddik is gone. I think it’s time…
misunderstanding pessimism: a manifesto of sorts
The NYT has run a number of articles lately on optimism and pessimism, including one entitled, “Is your Dog an Optimist or a Pessimist.” Which was an incredibly depressing article. Another, which ran today (but disappeared before I could find it again) spent a lot of time explaining why optimists live longer. Go figure. Actually,…
missing her as I do — new orleans revisited
Maybe I don’t have any right to miss her as I do. Maybe the missing is reserved for what people conventionally call ‘family.’ For kin related by blood or marriage. And I am neither. She is ‘family’ in that other sense. The sense of what we call family. My home was her home. Her home…
zipping through the life cycle — a sufi parable
Nothing like your firstborn’s wedding to put the reality principle front and center, life cycle-wise. Ten seconds ago I was giving birth. Ten seconds from now I’ll be under a pile of dirt, or small particles blowing in the wind. Pop! We appear. Poof! We’re gone. This, says Tylor (that would be Sir Edward) is…
the tzaddik and the vavlings
A tzaddik walks into a bar, and … I really want to start that way, only the Tzaddik didn’t pick up the vav in a bar. The tzaddik has only been in a bar once in his life and that was when he was stranded (with a vavling, actually) in the middle of nowhere and…
check list for the living
When a good friend checked herself into a posh home for unencumbered elders … I stopped seeing her. This, despite that she now resided 60 miles closer than she had before. This despite my longstanding secret desire that she move those 60 miles closer. It took me over a year to visit her in the…
death in paradise
We hike in paradise on a daily basis. Slog though the sand on the cliffs overlooking the shore — and the sand gets deeper every year. Though every other year or so a truck comes by and tries to clear the trail some. The sand returns, carried by the wind. Someday, I’ll be slogging through…
on not wanting a ‘conversation with god’
Last night, I had another tetragrammaton moment, where all the elements — the yud, the hei, the vav, and the hei — come together, alchemically bound and perfect in every way. Well, it wasn’t that. There were only three of us, and I was the only hei, but never mind that. It’s not what I…
glossary, as requested (with apologies)
In no particular order, maybe this will help: shikse — (aka shiksa) — term of endearment (or not) for women of the non-Jewish persuasion. the most important sub-category is, of course, the shikse-goddess. shul — synagogue, small or large, in which members of the tribe congregate for ritual acts and moments of imposed solidarity. shabbes…
the rebbe and the wise little children
A friend and colleague posted this quote from Arthur Green on his blog and so, of course, I’ve struggled with it. Which is better than saying, yet again, that it pissed me off: “We would understand the entire course of evolution from the simplest life forms millions of years ago, to the great complexity of…