ILLE HIC EST RAPHAEL

TIMUIT QUO SOSPITE VINCI RERUM MAGNA PARENS ET MORIENTE MORI.

Here lies that Raphael, by whom in life, the great begetter of things feared lest she be overcome,

And at whose death Nature herself feared lest she die with him.

Epitaph of Raphael

(and el)

sun with empty air

In the early darkness of Greek winter afternoons, in rooms cold at the windows, I raise my hands to my face and smell Alex in my palms.

I long for memory to be spirit, but fear it is only skin. I fear that knowledge becomes instinct only to disappear with the body. For it is my body that remembers them, and though I have tried to erase Alex from my senses, tried to will my parents and Bella from my sleep, this will amounts to nothing, for my body betrays me in a second. I have lived many years without them. Yet it's the same winter afternoon that draws Bella close, so close I can feel her powerful hand on my own, feel her gentle fingers on my back, so close I can smell Mrs. Alperstein's lotion, so close I feel my father's hand and Athos's hand on my head and my mother's hands pulling down my jacket to straighten me out, so close I can feel Alex's arms reaching around me from behind, and upon me her maddeningly open eyes even as she disappears into sensation, and suddenly I'm afraid, and turn around in empty rooms.

~Anne Michaels

these days, these hours

even the re-awakened smell of eucalyptus and soup and spring refuse to soothe

me

also

ur heart is a moon

a full one. a big fat white orange of a heart, moon.

(12.2.09. emails.)

can you feel the wind

Can you feel the sigh of shabbos...

Can you feel the sighs of the six days of the week making place

for the sigh of shabbos

lecha dodi likrat kallah, pnei shabbat nekablah

hitoreri

breaths

but then אסתר שמיר sings to us.

and then things aren't better, but they're just, well, they just are. they continue to be. and with them, we.

בת של אבא

Baraka Bashad…

…May the Blessings BE!!!

i'm gonna be your friend

frosty winter warmth

and cider. :')

the sweetest thing i've in a while

I need to get my heart moving so I don't have a heart attack when I see you..

شويه, شويه

it's the only way to find higher ground

blesses abound :')

Kamala.

No, Samana, I am not afraid. Has a Samana or a Brahmin ever feared that someone could come and strike him and rob him of his knowledge, of his piety, of his power for depth of thought? No, because they belong to himself, and he can only give of them what he wishes, and if he wishes. That is exactly how it is with Kamala and with the pleasures of love. Fair and red are Kamala's lips, but try to kiss them against Kamala's will, and not one drop of sweetness will you obtain from them- although they know well how to give sweetness. You are an apt pupil, Siddhartha, so learn also this. One can beg, buy, be presented with and find love in the streets, but it can never be stolen. You have misunderstood. Yes, it would be a pity if a fine young man like you misunderstood.

"Maybe," said Siddhartha wearily, "I am like you. You cannot love either, otherwise how could you practice love as an art? Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret."

Siddhartha said:

-- What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

-- How is that? asked Govinda

-- When someone is seeking, said Siddhartha, it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, O worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose.

on communicating outside of the inside of your brain

it's like you're having this conversation about him with yourself for a few hours and you bring him in in middle
it can be confusing
(y)

breath

it's as if i'm writing from years later so far along over oceans and dead grassy hills and bare, flat mountains

why did i get here? why did i get here?

walk along this pebbled road with its rare sweetness but deep deep airlessness of the white gray sky on a day before friday in autumn

c

mmm learns

love this:

Prajñāpāramitā Sutra:

Thus, O Sariputa, all things, having the nature of emptiness, have no beginning and no ending. They are neither faultless nor not faultless; they are neither perfect nor imperfect. In emptiness there is no form, no sensation, no perception, no discrimination, noconsciousness. There is no eye, no ear, no nose, no smell, no tastes, no touch, no mental process, no object, no knowledge, no ignorance. There are no Noble Fourfold Truths; no pain, no cause of pain, no cessation of pain, no Noble Path leading to the cessation of pain. There is no decay, and no death, and no destruction of the motion of decay and of death. There is no knowledge of Nirvana, there is no obtaining of Nirvana,there is no not obtaining of Nirvana.”

From John Ferguson, ed., Encyclopedia of Mysticism (New York, 1977), p. 139.

Do you think God flirts with us?

(oh, y.r.)

hashem yishmor otach

"G-d is just a merchant trying to sell Shabbos." R' Shlomele (RT elc. tx u without u even knowing :') )

Sometimes I lay under the moon, in my tent, on the farm I never got to, and thank G-d I'm feeling.

embers of y-e-s

:') bless G-d.

haven't thought about this space for month

and it's not the three weeks

chan

walla. send

I sent myself a text message the other day. It read:

Don't becomeo elitist in your non elitism :) remember that.

I should send it to myself again.

Homeless

it takes a lot of strength to be weak ~mordechai

ל-י-א-ו-ר

How many times can you hop in one half minute?

השכל

השכל

השכל

.שכל

Heroes

I've never flown before in my life, and it shows exactly what you can do if you're a total psychotic.

~zelig.

lalalalallala

lalalalalallalallallalalala

lalallalalallalalalalalalala

lalallalallalalalallalallalal

lalalallalalalallalalla

lalallalallalallalallalallal

lalallalallalal

lalallalalalalllllalalallalallalala

lalallalalallalallalalalla

lalallalalallalalallala

lalallall

lalalallalallalallallalalallalallalla

lalallalal

lalallalalalla

lalallalalallalalla

lalalalla.

la.

la.

lala

.

sd: and even though you think it's better without the last sentence and/or that I should end it with a question, I think it's perfect.

:')

Life hurts, Ronnie.

yes. it can.

warmth to every creation, c

אתנחתא: periodicals reading room

לפעמים אני לא מצליחה להבין באיזו מדינה אני נמצאת.

"ופה, זה לא חדר שינה. זה, חדר של למידה לא פורמלית."

פשוט צחוקים

it would be very nice.

It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent Providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be.
Freud "The future of an illusion"

:)

goodbye academia? tear, tear.

?מי אתה

I'm listening to this song on repeat in this awesome library, with an open tanach and tears in my eyes..

and a smile on my face.

One day...

"makes you bop your head and open your heart at the same time."

http://www.box.net/shared/8z3soaf5q2

to Y, bless bless bless you with so much love.

בוקר, כוכב, ומרג'ורי

"I am not a concert pianist," snapped Mrs. Zelenko. "And that's why I can play Bach. When I play, it's as though Bach is listening, Bach himself, not twelve hundred yawning potbellied mink-coated perfumed idiots who don't know a piano from a ukulele."

"I love you. Don't you understand, you little torturer? You've executed the vengeance of your non-existent God on me."

-Do you think you'll marry again?
-No.
-That's nice and definite.
-Might as well live out the sunset this way.
-Sunset indeed! Thirty nine.
-I've outlived Keats, Mozart, Marlowe, Alexander the Great, and Jesus. I'm satisfied.

"Unfortunately, Marjorie, so far as I'm concerned, expressions like 'neurotic anxiety' are just educated noise. Who really knows what the affliction is, what it comes from, what it means? It's like a wart. You can describe it and you can treat it empirically, which is a three-dollar word for 'by guess and by God.' "

סטאשעשמיר and other painful spreads.

Why is it that dogma lies so much deeper in people's brain than actual intelligence? And why is it so so so painful? And why is it so painful? Why, why, why. Why so? and why So? painful.

oh hell. oh slacking trousering pantful hell.

and return to your cardboard box. go, return, and die and die-live in your goddamned cardboard box.

"remember that your head is also part of your body. and so is your heart. and you're making strides."
"and you're making me cry."
bless you t.

:') bless.

sleeve s and thing s

People keep getting engaged. NEW ENGAGEMENT. NEW ENGAGEMENT.

K'shemedabrim, k'shemishtamshim bemilim, hamamashi hofech lesimli. Zeh muzar. Afilu lichtov et zeh, zeh muzar.

Some people wear sleeves. Some sleeves wear people. Sleeves. Weary people. Wary people. Some sleeves ware weary people.

mm. he'eh, kol ha'inyan hu lishtot mashehu kar belev midbar