I didn’t have the energy to engage with what’s important. Instead I played a frippery on the Kaddish—an escapist kaddish that was jazzy in the sense of a plague. Not good jazz, not fun. No, the jazz you play when you don’t feel real jazz.
the bookstore
So. The bookstore the other day — One of Malkah’s favorite things to do on planet Earth was to go with the tzaddik on his frequent forays into the dark and gloomy bowels of used bookstores. Holmes Books, in San Francisco, was one of their favorites together. The tzaddik would give Malkah a whole…
daily kaddish: for Farzad Bastoft
A Kaddish for Farzad Bastoft, in reply to Mira’s, and with thoughts of the hopelessness of US foreign policy in the Middle East.
a kaddish for farzad bazoft, and also saddam hussein
I never met Saddam Hussein. But I wanted to. We were guests, actually, of Tariq Aziz — who was Foreign Minister at the time. Little known fact: they both share a birthday (one year apart): April 28th. It was my birthday. And we had just been detained. Pulled from the Baghdad airport just as we…
daily kaddish: for easyness
Tonight’s Kaddish is for the sense of loss we feel when easyness begins to require attention.
the inheritance
First they told me I was inheriting the biofather’s art supplies and his own paintings. Biofather was a Chinese painter. Then they found a new copy of the will, and next to my name was one word, in his handwriting — with an arrow to be clear: OMIT is what it said. And I thought,…
daily kaddish: yikes #2
This yikes-twice-over spoken Kaddish was my Kaddish for the time that didn’t need to pass before an important friend and I both talked and listened to each other.
the shikse makes charoset—and Elijah likes it
I had the chutzpah to challenge Mira to a charoset-off. Uff da.
daily kaddish: for those who die in bondage
On Erev Pesach, a Kaddish for those who don’t escape bondage—for those who have died in bondage, recently and throughout history, and especially for those who have died in the recent uprisings in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia…
daily kaddish: a moment of silence for the missing beat
In a lengthy, geeky post the other day, I wrote about discovering a missing beat in one bar of Lev Kogan’s “Kaddish.” Tonight’s Kaddish has a moment of silence where I think that missing beat ought to be.