dangling dialogue

-- How is your French? he asked
- Pretty good.
-- Read L'Homme Revolte by Camus. It came out last year. You can get it in French.
- We are reading the same books, I said. Then I said, Not everyone who resorts to violence is a fool. Remember the story of Abraham lopping off the heads of the idols.
-- Yes, he said. I can understand violence if a person makes a rational decision that his world is utterly evil and irredeemable and that nothing in it is worth saving.
- Not many people can make a decision like that rationally.
-- They ought to read some good books.
- Marx read a lot of good books.
-- Marx was full of rage. Books don't do much good when you're that full of rage.
- We're all full of rage. That's something I've begun to think about these days. Who isn't full of rage?
-- Yes. But most people manage in one way or another to handle it.
- Why are people so full of rage? How would your friend Freud answer that?
-- With a lecture on sex and repression, and by drawing you a model of the id, ego, and superego.
- Would it help?
-- To some extent. It would begin to teach you how to become aware of yourself. That's what the soul is, I think. Self-awareness.
- The soul.
-- The crust is self-delusion. The soul is self-awareness.
-And if you're rebelling and are full of rage and don't have that self-awareness - what then?

-- You become a Marx..

outside it all, watching

Levi came over and asked me to join him in a dance. I got up and entered a circle of Hasidim with Levi at my side, and danced.

We danced around Danny, who stood clapping his hands and singing, and I looked at Danny and felt a part of myself slide out of the dance and look coldly at what I was doing, and heard it telling me how strange it was to be dancing with Hasidim, whose way of life I disliked, whose ideas were so different from mine, whose presence was destroying my world, I continued dancing, but for the rest of that night that part of me remained outside it all, watching.

-- familiarities on so many different levels. so many.
The most awesome is to slide out of the sliding out, and just be there.

in this moment

I feel freee

to breathe

and fly

How incredible to see the tangle in all and still experience the faith of just
this moment.

:') blesss blesss blesss

I feel

like it's irrational
and dangerous.
And why would I jump off a mountain; why would I free fall over what from here looks like a rocky ocean of endless dark blue...
Why would I leap off this jet and into the clouds without knowing clearly what lies below?
Why would I carry any of this out, when I suddenly, finally, feel a comforting sun surrounding me, soothing me, appeasing me, warming me,
right
here
where I am?

Why?

you will be eased

resolve
and fears
and commitments
and studiosity
and specialness
and dark light offices
and unfiltered filters of computers
and noise
noise
and then quiet
and ease
eased.

ììììĬìììì

oooooooh, it's a 'appy 'anookah for me, and, me hopes, thee. :')

Donna

sung by Joan Baez

how the winds are laughing...
But whoever treasures freedom,
Like the swallow has learned to fly..

Full version on youtube, but there's a precious melancholy about this live one..tx d for inspiration
c

I found myself intrigued by those books. They were written in a clear and on occasion almost exquisite prose style, the kind of style one rarely finds in works of philosophy and theology. And they were filled with blunt questions: Do you believe the world was created in six days? Do you believe in the order of creation given in the Bible? Do you believe Eve was created from Adam's rib? Do you believe in angels? Do you believe in the biblical account of the Revelation at Sinai? Do you believe in miracles? Do you believe that G-d guides the destiny of every living creatures? Do you believe that G-d talked, actually talked in the manner described in the Bible? How is one to react to the findings of archeology and anthropology and biology and astronomy and physics? How is one to react to the discoveries of modern biblical scholarship? How might one not believe literally in the Bible and still remain a traditional Jew? Are total belief or complete abandonment the only available choices, or is it possible to reinterpret ancient beliefs in a way that will make them relevant to the modern world and at the same time not cause one to abandon the tradition?

The problems he raised fascinated me.

They didn't fascinate me, though. They cast a calm and a frenzy over me. They cast a calm and a frenzy over me. over me.. in me.

got to go

I don't know where but I've got to got to go there, got to go there.
so high..


so low..
I don't know where but I've got to, got to go there

let it be soul

that we can't be convinced,
that we must hear it resonate within us, to the point that we can't deny it.
that we must simply learn it,
that by recognizing the profundity of each chapter, of each event... by recognizing the depth of each word we simply won't be able to deny it.

now I don't know if that's true. I don't know if I agree with the impossibility to deny it on such grounds.
but it was so incredible to hear as I was taking my seat. because it really was so heavy on my mind.

on loneliness, on Jacob's struggle which took place at night, of our journey through the darkness, of the unity of kindled spirits..
oh, let it be soul, let it be soul

Cain and Abel

Abel will open his eyes..

in me.

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white
sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length
she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come to
mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says,
"There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight, that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side.
She is just as able to bear her load
of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says,
"There, she is gone!"
there are other eyes watching her coming
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout,
"Here she comes!"

And that is dying.

—Henry van Dyke

the leaves of the Sycamores

Then there were the twilight weeks, a length of gray time between October and December when the weave formed in the summer seemed to come apart...

The patterns of our lives were being spun out in different worlds, and as the sycamores turned and the air grew cold the summer became a distant dream, and I could recall it sharply only in the very early mornings as I lay in my bed, no longer asleep but not yet fully awake.

At odd moments of the day... a disconnected piece of the summer would float slowly toward me and expand into dim memory... but the strange conjunction of events that had begun with the carnival appeared disentangled now, and the summer faded together with the leaves of the sycamores.

faded...faded

cocoon

it's a dark cocoon of confusion, i told her. it's cold and bare, but sometimes you don't have the liberty to choose a warm one, and anything that will wrap you up is better than being left out on a branch in winter.
shavuah tov means another shavuah :'(

he talked

Can you feel the sun, Reuven? Can you feel how hot it is? Did you know Giordano Bruno was burned alive in Rome in 1600 for writing that the stars were suns? Did you know the gases in the interior of the sun are more than ten million degrees Kelvin? That's hot. They burned him alive because he wrote that the were suns. I wonder what it's like to be burned alive. Fire on your feet and around your legs and the pain as the fire creeps up. When do you die when you're burned alive? I think about that sometimes. They cheated Bruno. They killed him for the truth. But he didn't cheat. He wrote the truth. You have to get killed sometimes but you can't cheat. The cheating never hurts the stars but your eyes get clouded. I really believe that. Your eyes get clouded and you can't see through the telescope, any kind of telescope. There are different kinds of telescopes. Did you know that? There are refracting telescopes and reflecting telescopes and there's the Schmidt telescope. I read about them in a book. Refracting telescopes are okay but you have to watch out for chromatic aberration. Reflecting telescopes don't have that problem. But they have other problems, lots of other different problems. God, listen to me talking. I can't stop talking. Why can't I stop talking? What was I saying? Problems. The Schmidt telescope has problems too. Everything has problems. There's nothing anywhere without problems. There's no one without problems. Look at the clouds. They're beautiful. God, they're beautiful. There's one that looks like someone burning. Yes. Someone is burning. Who doesn't have problems?

We sailed and he talked and then we were near the shoreline and he talked and I could make out clearly the trees and the boulders and summer homes and people on the lawns and a deer at the edge of the woods and still he talked. Then, quite suddenly, he was silent. We sailed in that silence the rest of the way to the dock.

----beep

hey, yknow what's so cool about answering machines? that no matter what mood you're in right now, on here you always sound so mellow and cheery, like - yourself. anyway, call me back.

my little box

s: [nice things plus '!, !' ]
me: I will pack those exclamation points up into a little box and carry them around with me.
s: [nice things]
me: that's positive. I will pack that into my little box as well.
s: and watch as the little box grows.

tx. I is will watch. :')