Shivvetee Vessels and Shards

Two psychological observations

2012-01-26T14:43:00.000-05:00

These two pieces from my notebooks come nearly 35 years apart. One is from today, one from July, 1977.

1/26/12, 2 Shevat 5772, week of Bo
Four critical and fundamental errors in human analytical thinking:
1. The confusion of emotional attachment with ‘facticity’, truth; vis belief in God becomes dogma and supporting evidence (Bible) becomes incontrovertible; or, feelings of love can cause us to mis-see and misunderstand the person that is loved and the situation in which that love exists.
2. Confusion of emotional intensity for degree of certainty; vis the more comfort one derives from belief in God, the more certain one is of God’s existence; or, the more desperate our need for companionship, the more certain we may become that someone loves us.
3. The confusion that personal perspective is ‘true’ and co-equal with universal perspective; vis the certainty that whatever political beliefs one inclines towards, those beliefs are the correct (or better, CORRECT) way of understanding the situation.
4. The confusion that consciousness, observation, is an unmediated experience, and NOT an interpretive, filtered, and often profoundly limited or occulted experience; vis, the belief that what we see with our eyes is not merely real, but unimpeachable and unbiased ‘fact’.

Antidotes to ingest liberally:
1. facts all come with a point of view
2. observation and interpretation are co-equal
3. emotion is the carriage upon which all thought rides
4. there is no such thing as a single and pure emotion; all emotions resolve into other emotions

Trained philosophers and psychologists who reject or denigrate emotion and extol reason are equally subject to these four confusions. Emotion is a fact of consciousness, shaping and coloring it, whether it is obvious or not, whether it is intense or subtle, foregrounded or undertoned. It is there shaping, coloring, focusing, distorting, transforming, hiding the inputs of experience. Reason distinct from emotion is a conceptual illusion, a false ideal, a Newtonian distortion of the quantum mechanical nature of consciousness/reality. (I use ‘quantum mechanical’ here as a philosophical and psychological model of thought, and not merely as a way of studying matter and energy.)

7/3/77, Kayseri, Turkey
Symbolic thought:
Human consciousness is determined and constrained by density of thought. Density of thought means the number of conscious images and thoughts occurring in a given period. Even in highly exciting moments like the minutes before a race or curtain call, or the seconds before an auto-collision, there are only so many thoughts that consciously pass thru the mind. The actual number seems constrained by the normal activity of mental exertion The more one is able to concentrate, the more concentrated thoughts can be, ie, the denser the thoughts become. Like a thread or wire or beam that can hold so much tension [or transmit so much data - smb, 2012], so our consciousness can endure only so much stress. Beyond that limit it snaps, or blanks out; the system crashes. That limit can be extended by active practice of methods of concentration, however.

But this is the essential point: increased thought density does not work on a linear or algebraically continuous basis. At some point the many thoughts condense or merge into one or a few thoughts or images, like changing energy levels in an atom or molecule. One increases to a limit the number of thoughts per moment and then, remarkably, they condense into a symbol or archetype, and the working number of thoughts suddenly reduces [the ‘aha’ moment; epiphany] and the [potential] intensity of thought increases on an equivalent basis. This is a functional (phenomenological) description of the formation of symbols and symbolic thought.

Cover to my new ebook, The Atternen Jewz Talen, Era 1

2012-01-22T17:33:00.001-05:00

And here's a brief summary:

This book contains the opening pages of the diaries of the Eternal Jew (aka the Wandering Jew). In the opening scene he describes Jerusalem in his youth, as it was in 30 CE. He then recounts his meeting with a revolutionary named Jesus. Realizing he has left out some critical information, he turns back to the origins of humanity, telling what he knows about those early days.

This is not the Eternal Jew you might have heard about from unreliable or hate-mongering sources. He is a wise and engaging fellow, proudly Jewish, with a biting wit, and a wry but mystical view of worldly events and his place in them.

The story is told in two versions. The original text is an altered English where words and ideas morph, one into another, using a strictly phonetic spelling. To help the reader, however, a translation into standard English follows each stanza. As a further help, each stanza is followed by an embedded reading, so one can listen to the story, and read along at the same time.

The story is further enriched by beautiful graphics, and selected scans taken directly from the author's notebooks. The final chapter of the book is a collection of useful source material and links for further study and exploration.

Copyright info:
Text Copyright © 2012 for Stephen M. Berer
Audio Copyright © 2012 for Stephen M. Berer
Colorized images Copyright © 2012 for Stephen M. Berer

Back to the Crossroads. An Istanbul Journal.

2012-01-06T12:06:00.004-05:00

“...And I went to the crossroad, momma.
I looked east and west...”
– Robt. Johnson

We sank into a cloudbank. Couldn’t see a thing till we touched down. Mid afternoon and thick gray skies scowled like the grizzled faces of Turkish men. No reason to be intimidated. Got some bozuk para, literally “broken money”, Turkish for change, for our 100 lira bills, and bought 2 jetons each, one to enter the subway, one to transfer to the tramway. Thus we began to break the rust off our Turkish, lain dormant for years, and let ourselves get swept into the undertow of Istanbul.

Uncharacteristically, we were traveling heavy, a bag and a suitcase each. School. Writing. Work. The various boulders on our shoulders. We clambered onto the tram which was empty – not for long – taking up far more than our fair share of space. Now the visuals of Istanbul began to pour down on us, all the little shops, restaurants, vendors, narrow alleys, crisscrossing pedestrians packing the sidewalks and slithering through insane traffic.
The neon signs;
The half dressed women on posters and newspapers; fruit piled elegantly on vendor carts and at the entrance to fresh grocers;

the steaming buffets showing off orange lentil soup, cooked beans, various kinds of stuffed eggplant and zucchini (dolmas), lamb stews, roasted chicken, and, of course, the donar (gyro) grill sizzling and dripping its hot juices.
The textile district, revealing and concealing, looking west and looking east;
the jewelry district, bangles piled high, glinting gold and false gold;
the plumbing supply district, with toilets lining the streets, then faucets, then pipes and tools;
cables and electronics, candy, toys, borek; shop after little shop; flashing signs, electronic and neon; hand-painted signs hanging a-kilter from their mounts; placards and graffiti; all densely layered, as we coiled thru this city, often seedy, sometimes seeming to be put together, but just barely.
Then as we approached historic Istanbul, the ancient buildings began to appear;
walls of brick and stone rubble, sagging or disappearing into crumbling poured concrete structures;
gaping ruins;
ornate 19th century apartments, 4 and 5 stories tall as if we were in Warsaw or Budapest;
mosques, built in consecutive layers of stone and brick, their wide domes plated in lead, their single minarets with steep conical tops.

And finally, finally, with the tram totally dolmastir (stuffed, like a dolma), we began to descend to the Sultanahmet district, tourist haven with all its stunning Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman landmarks: Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, Beyazit Mosque, covered bazaar, hippodrome, Basilica cistern
where, back in the 70's all the hippies would meet at the Pudding Shop and room at the Hotel Gungor, with its dorm-style rooms, now long gone after multiple facelifts have miraculously converted funky Sultanahmet into the destination of choice for the well-heeled and the chichi set.

Unconcerned with our musings and sensory overload, the tram descended further, all the way down to the Bosporus (the Bos) and the Golden Horn, to Eminonu station and then across the Galata Bridge. Just beyond the bridge we pushed, shoved and bumbled our way off the tram at Karakoy.

Now the hard part. Our apartment was half way up Yuksek Kaldirim, an incredibly steep, narrow road winding its way from the water up to the heights of Istiklal Caddesi (pronounced Jahdessee), passing the Galata Tower along the way. But surprise! Reinforcements. Our son Josh and his girlfriend Rachael met us at the tram stop, and helped us drag our millstone baggage up the hill, and then up the 5 stories of our walk-up apartment building, 19 steps per story, 95 steps in all. Breathless, and certain of us perhaps a wee bit cranky, we arrived at the dingy landing of our apartment, our home for the next 11 days.

This is at least the 7th time I’ve been to Istanbul. The first time was in 1970. I cruised in on a motorcycle that time, on my way to Afghanistan (don’t ask why; you don’t want to know). Well, that first night in Istanbul I met up with a very friendly Turk who offered me all kinds of inducements and imbibements, (“yu, me brutherz, yu, me frenz; yu sleep me bed, yu eat me food, yu smoke...”) which, some hours later, resulted in me fleeing his apartment in not the best of conditions, while he staggered around waving a gun. Careening down innumerable stairs, banging on doors till I found the exit, and out to the street, I was now lost in the back alleys of Sultanahmet, out of the frying pan into the fire, because now 3 thugs in the alley began to chase me, loping, then running as they closed in on me, finally impossibly finding my way to the hippodrome, the Hotel Gungor just 200 yards away. I jumped into a group of 4 old gomers who were coming out of a tea house, but that didn’t deter the 3 thugs, who grabbed me, flashed their badges, and shouted “gimme the money, Lebowski” oops, wrong channel, “gimme yu hashish; now!; gimme, gimme!” and they rifled thru my pants, wallet, shirt, hippy headscarf, but surprise, I wasn’t holding, so they knocked me down (didn’t take much, the condition I was in), waved their guns at me, and threatened, “we gonna gech yu; we gonna gech yu!” Four hours of sleep, and I fled Istanbul at sunrise on my BSA 250, tail between my legs, back to Europe. Oh blissful, oh joyous, oh thankful, I crossed the border and was met by leering Greek soldiers, who asked me where I was hiding my hashish. And me grinning right back – I wanted to kiss those guys I was so happy to be outa Turkey – I said, “Me?? You think I’m crazy.”

Really!

The whole, unexpurgated version of that story was recorded in the following days, as “The Live Adventures of Paranoid Pete.” Sadly that manuscript has been lost. Three years later I hitched across Europe, making it to Istanbul in November, 1973. I was on my way to India and around the world. I didn’t turn back that time.

Nancy has been here well over a dozen times, including living here for about 10 months in 1982-83 while she did research for her dissertation. I joined her for about 4 months of that time, glorious travels they were, recorded in my book Ottoman Beachcombings (which you can find, read, download for free at my website, http://www.shivvetee.com/reading_room/toc_reading_room.html)

Josh, our older son, has been to Istanbul a fair few times, and studied for a semester at Bogazici (Bo-ozzachee, Turkish for “Bosporus”) University here. But for an ill-starred trip with his researching mother when he was 3, this was Cal’s maiden voyage to Bos-town. Josh was joined by his girlfriend Rachael, herself no stranger here, along with Rachael’s parents, Vic and Geri, rookies.

Our days were spent wandering the streets and alleys, going to important architectural sites and museums, seeking out classic and exotic places to eat, shopping in the covered bazaar (the Kapili Carsisi, pronounced koppala charshissa), taking a ferry ride up the Bos and back. (see my slideshow, https://picasaweb.google.com/109059116932561087569/IstanbulDecember2011)
I did a lot of writing, as did Cal. Josh and Nancy logged in a fair few hours working and meeting with professionals in their fields.

to be continued, maybe,
exploring the following topics, maybe:
Ara Café, a drink in the Para with Hemmingway, breakfast at Savoy
Ferry trip and Ortakoy
latkes and nightly hanukiah lighting
Istiklal at night
Explorations: Rustepasha, Pantokrator, Kucuk Hagia Sophia, Sulimaniya
Museum Shows: Osmanli Bankasi - Osman Hamdi Bey; Istanbul Modern, Jewish Museum
sweets from carts, incl door of our apartment building, halka tatlisi (the people’s sweet; circle dessert)

Narrow places, the world, and Rumi

2011-12-10T16:34:00.002-05:00

Here’s an interesting excerpt from Jalal u’din Rumi’s Mathnawi (Mesnavi), Nicholson translation, beginning of Book 3. While I might argue with Jally concerning his utter disdain, if not revulsion, for this world, this is a great analogy to open into his visions and open our eyes.

If anyone were to say to the embryo in the womb,
“Outside is a world exceedingly well-ordered,
A pleasant earth, broad and long,
Wherein are a hundred delights
And so many things to eat.
Mountains and seas and plains,
Fragrant orchards, gardens and sown fields.
A sky very lofty and full of light,
Sun and moonbeams and a hundred stars.
From the south-wind
And from the north-wind
And from the west-wind
The gardens have wedding-feasts and banquets.
Its marvels are beyond description:
Why art thou in tribulation in this darkness?
(Why) dost thou drink blood
On the gibbet of this narrow place (the womb)
In the midst of confinement and filth and pain?”

The embryo, in virtue of its present state,
Would be incredulous, and would turn away
From this message and would disbelieve it,
Saying, “This is absurd and is a deceit and delusion,”
Because the judgement of the blind has no imagination....

Just as in this world the elevated speak of that world
To the common folk, saying,
“This world is an exceedingly dark and narrow pit;
Outside is a world without scent or color.”
Naught entered into the ear of a single one of them
For desire is a barrier, huge and stout...
Debarred... it (the embryo) knows no breakfast but blood.

Atternen Jew, a fragment

2011-12-06T13:53:00.001-05:00

I haven't been posting much poetry lately because, sadly, if I post it here, most poetry journals consider it "published" and won't accept it as a submission. I consider that kind of policy objectionable and archaic, since, except for the very few, and I do mean VERY few widely read personal poetry blogs (that's an oxymoron, eh?), being published in a peer-reviewed journal is a completely different thing than posting to a personal blog. For all you journal editors reading this post, you need to change your policies today!

Ecchh (to quote Gurdjieff).

Anyway, here's an excerpt from something I'm editing right now, both in stevespell and below that, in normspell!!

The setting is 70 CE, Jerusalem is burning, and our hero is trapped by the Roman siege.

So thaer I wer, a messij a the Lor

Fleeyen frum the bernen Howzez a God.

Like Addom, az he stumbel thru the gaets ov Aden

Benum with exxess ov pannek an reproech;

Not aenjelz but annammel hedded men

Garden the gaets bak tu my Aden.

I heerz that the saje Zakkiy eskapen,

Hid in a koffen. That touk a plan.

Me, in the frenzeeyen aro an flame,

I goez tu leep frum a parappet,

A killen mysellz an dun with it.

An thaer! a bernen seej towwer.

I thro myselv intu the krumblen hulk,

Kliem down its ladderz an leep az it kollaps.

I muss hav loukt like a flamen demen

Flyen owt ov a piller a fiyer.

Soeljerz skatter. Sinjd an soutee

Az a blaksmiths help, I stumbel an tumbel

Down the skorcht Jerrusallem hilz.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So there I were, a messenger of the Lord

Fleeing from the burning House of God.

Like Adam, as he stumbled thru the gates of Eden

Benumbed with excess of panic and reproach.

Not angels but animal headed men

Guarding the gates back to my Eden.

I heard that the sage Zakkai escaped,

Hid in a coffin. That took a plan.

Me, in the frenzy of arrow and flame,

I goes to leap from a parapet,

To kill myself and done with it.

And there! a burning siege tower.

I throw myself into the crumbling hulk,

Climb down its ladders and leap as it collapses.

I must have looked like a flaming demon

Flying out of a pillar a fire.

Soldiers scatter. Singed and sooty

As a blacksmiths helper, I stumble and tumble

Down the scorched Jerusalem hills.

Jacob on the road

2011-11-24T14:00:00.002-05:00

Reading Zohar, Vayekhee 423

... Rav Yehuda said, “... Also, each of us is worthy that the Shekhinah will not depart from us.”...Rav Yosi said, “We have learned that a man should not rely on a miracle...” It is written that Ya’akov said, “If God will be with me,” referring to the union with the Shekhinah, “and will keep me in this way...”

I have always feared that I am alone.
Looking back, always at my side, You were there.
I am awlway feerz, I will be abbandon.
Loukeengz bak, side tu side, Yu ar thaer.

Last nite in the Hevvenlee Akkaddammee
I see, an the jujmenz ov this werl
Hav no vallewz. Thay ar shaddoez an illuezhen.
When I re-enter my Addomz
The shaddo taken solid form,
Illuezhen fule the empteeness a thot.
My eyes and my feelz, thay konvins me
The jujmenz ov this werlen
Ar the truth and the Werd.

My writing career, briefly

2011-11-02T18:20:00.000-04:00

My writing career spans forty years. From one perspective I am developing a Jewish and kabbalistic vision of the world, the mind, and the soul. From another perspective, I am composing long narrative poems that explore the clash between the real and the ideal, in the lives of historical figures and people I have known. From yet a third perspective, I am developing a new, more versatile language in which the complexity and multi-dimensionality of quantum mechanics is carved into the lens of language itself.

Or let me put it this way: I have spent the last 40 years writing poetry that re-visions and re-models not just the world we live in, but the language with which we see, describe, and understand that world. In the process I have created a new grammar to represent the fundamental indeterminacies at the horizons of thought. This has been a slow process requiring much persistence, not only because of its own inherent difficulties, but because of the difficulties it creates for readers, who have a challenging enough job deciphering the experiments and non-linearities of modern and post-modern writing. The result, though a challenge to many readers, allows my work to achieve layered and faceted perspectives that a traditional use of language inherently prohibits.

It seems that I am almost alone in spearheading the development of a language that can reflect and express the nature of quantum mechanics, both in physics and in consciousness. But I am not entirely alone. In 1980 David Bohm, the renowned physicist, published his last book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order. It is about the need to develop a new language in response to quantum mechanics! In 1980 I was already six years into my project to recreate English.

Contra Eliot and Pound, 2

2011-10-15T15:25:00.001-04:00

On August 15, 2008 I posted a response to some comments related to my poem Europa, Europa. I entitled that response "Contra Eliot and Pound", in which I condemned both authors, but especially Eliot for their anti-Semitism. That article can be found at:

http://shivvetee.blogspot.com/2008/08/contra-eliot-and-pound.html

Of the many things I didn't mention in that article was the poem by Emanuel Litvinoff, To T. S. Eliot, in which he takes Eliot to task for his anti-Semitism. Litvinoff died in early October of this year, and the New York Times published an article, eulogizing him. However, the article primarily focused on his poem To T. S. Eliot, and his criticism of Eliot. Here's a link to the article, and following the link, a few noteworthy excerpts from it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/books/emanuel-litvinoff-poet-dies-at-96.html?_r=1

The article begins:

Emanuel Litvinoff, an English-born Jewish poet known for his scathing verse indictment of T. S. Eliot’s anti-Semitism — and for reading it before an audience that happened to include Eliot — died on Sept. 24 at his home in London. He was 96. ...

But it was for his poem “To T. S. Eliot” that he was best remembered. Written after World War II and widely anthologized, it was a response to work by Eliot that contained unapologetic anti-Semitic elements. One such poem, “Burbank With a Baedeker: Bleistein With a Cigar,”...

This poem (Burbank ...) was first published in 1920. Before World War II, Mr. Litvinoff, who otherwise admired Eliot’s work, was prepared to dismiss it as simply another link in the venerable chain of British literary anti-Semitism.

Eliot chose to reprint the poem in his anthology “Selected Poems,” published in 1948. That, in the post-Holocaust world, struck Mr. Litvinoff as inexcusable. ...

In early 1951, Mr. Litvinoff was invited to take part in an illustrious public poetry reading at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. He brought the poem with him.

He had no idea, though, that just before he began reading it aloud, its subject would walk through the door. ...

By the time it was Mr. Litvinoff’s turn to read, he said afterward, he was keenly aware that the target of the corrosive lines he was about to utter was sitting in the audience. ...

When Mr. Litvinoff finished, as was widely reported, pandemonium ensued. The poet Stephen Spender stood up and denounced him for insulting Eliot, prompting others in the crowd to cry “Hear, hear” in assent. [And here I denounce Stephen Spender -- smb]

There was, however, a dissenting voice. Amid the tumult, a man in the back of the room was heard to mutter: “It’s a good poem. It’s a very good poem.”

The speaker was Thomas Stearns Eliot.

More on that public reading can be found by clicking the links in the excerpts above, at least one of which will take you here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot1VZD6b14U

Frederick Turner's "Let Be"

2011-10-09T21:29:00.000-04:00

If you don’t know of the brilliant poetry and philosophy of Frederick Turner, let me say a brief word here. He is author of, among many books, two stunning epic poems, The New World, and Genesis, and a philosophical/theological tour de force, Natural Religion. He is one of the great thinkers of our age, and after the dour and accusing voices of Eliot and Pound have long since been washed away, Turner’s visionary work will continue to stand as a towering beacon of knowledge and light.

His blog is: http://frederickturnerpoet.com/

While I seem to default to philosophizing with a hammer (to steal a beautiful image) Fred enlightens with delicate veils moved and removed. For example:

Let Be

Weeding, I disturb a bee
That is bumbling in the sages,
But she has forgiven me,
Goes off to the saxifrages.

There I will just let her be,
And, since bee-ing is her being,
She will go on being free,
She-ing while I go on me-ing.

“Let it be” was how the king
In that strange old myth or story
Gave the bee its sweet and sting,
Set the heavens in their glory:

Was it permit or command?
Do we own, or was he letting,
Are we in or out of hand?
Was he making or just betting?

So he gave himself away,
Changed from he-ing into she-ing,
Where his “shall” became her “may”,
Time born out of unforeseeing.

If I weed around the sage,
Letting it achieve its flower,
Do I make a kind of cage?
Do I claim a godlike power?

But the weeds are weeding me,
Cells that are, in acting, dying;
Sage-flowers fertilize the bee,
Every selling is a buying.

So creation is a cross,
“Let” and “be” in intersection,
Where the gain is in the loss,
And the death’s the resurrection.

© Frederick Turner; posted here with permission by the author

Aternen Jew: reading 2 video, redone

2011-09-22T16:04:00.002-04:00

On Sept 5 I posted my latest video montage of me reading from my poem The Atternen Jewz Talen. In this post I am embedding a revised version of the video, in which I used more professional video editing software to sharpen and clean up the effects.

About the video:

The visual component of the video is composed of classic art (which I have manipulated) to represent the story. It seems the use of historic art to tell, or retell a story, has rarely been done. Odd, eh? Jon Avnet, in The Uprising uses some important historical photos of the Warsaw Ghetto to construct some scenes. I'm sure other films have done the same, but I'm not privy. And then there's my favorite Simpsons episode, which integrates some impressionist paintings into Bart's deportation to France. Can you think of any other examples?

Here's the new version of The Atternen Jewz Talen, Reading 2, Take 2.

Is it possible? Turkey is moving towards war with Israel.

2011-09-11T15:52:00.000-04:00

Yes, it is possible!! The gears are already in motion, and the Turkish government has made statements (especially concerning warships to Gaza) that will make Erdogan and his party look cowardly or foolish if they back down.

I sent the following letter to my former senator and representative (since we, of DC, are unrepresented in Congress):

I am writing to you, hoping you are already taking serious and comprehensive action to counter the rogue behavior that Turkey is pursuing vis a vis Israel. Some of the obvious markers of that behavior are:
1. Erdogan has aligned his nation with a terrorist organization, Hamas.
2. He has broken full relations with Israel.
3. He has publicly declared that he will send Turkish warships to confront the Israeli blockade of Gaza, in the guise of accompanying "aid" ships.
4. He is meeting with Egyptian officials, as Egypt itself is driven by public and internal government pressure towards conflict with Israel. The likely intent of Erdogan's meeting is for the sake of creating an axis of aggression against Israel from north and south, and likely, with full Iranian and Syrian support.

We must not look on in disbelief or dismay as Erdogan actively moves towards war with Israel. He must be countered by forceful and unambiguous American and NATO pressure. Steps need to be taken immediately, and not merely cautionary pronouncements. We must begin plans to strip Turkey of its place in NATO and replace it with viable alternatives; solicit the help of the Turkish military, whose authority will be greatly diminished by downgrading Turkey in NATO; begin publicly arranging sanctions on trade against Turkey; move Europe forward on closing the door to Turkey's membership in the European Union; and expose the Turkish public to the severe and irresponsible consequences of their government's policies, urging them to exert public pressure to turn those policies around. Naturally, as a Congressperson you are aware of other, and likely better steps the US can and must take to turn Turkey from a path that, if not countered forcefully, may well lead to war with Israel.

I am counting on you to act with prescience and authority to respond to this rogue direction Turkish policy has taken. In my eyes, this is the most serious foreign policy issue the US and Israel face.

The Eternal Jew's Tale, Part 2, complete

2011-09-05T23:14:00.000-04:00

On August 3 I uploaded a preliminary version of Reading 2 of The Atternen Jewz Talen (The Eternal Jew's Tael). That upload was just the soundtrack and a single slide/image. This is the completed video, composed of 90 stills, and is 3 minutes and 7 seconds long.

The setting is Jerusalem, 33 CE. The Atternen Jew describes his meeting with a local revolutionary.

Your feedback is welcome and desired.

Atternen Jew: reading 2, preliminary

2011-08-03T22:16:00.000-04:00

This is a preliminary version of the second reading from The Atternen Jewz Taelen, without visual accompaniment. I'm not sure about the music underlays, and will build another version tomorrow. May also change the accent of the voice.

Your critical feedback, as ever, is desired, appreciated, and of great value to me.

Columbia River Gorge

2011-08-01T12:07:00.003-04:00

Recently back from the Columbia River Gorge on the border between Washington and Oregon. Ten years since we lived in the Northwest, but such beautiful, familiar, comforting scenes: mist, fog, she-rain, fir trees against fast scudding gray clouds. Yes, I know those impressions. They feel like home!

I, who have many homes and states of homelessness.

Along the road, abundance:

Our cabin at Sandhill Cottages, Carson. And I DO mean funky!

Nature preserve:

Osprey nest:

Me and the guys, upriver, when the day was still young and the earth was young:

And finally, ya never know who you might run acrosst. These are some guys we met at the Interpretive Center.

Berlin Montage

2011-07-31T16:51:00.002-04:00

A month of many travels.

Here are a few photos of Berlin. For me, a city emerging from genocide and self-immolation. Kind of like a country that went on a suicide bombing mission; the families on both sides are left to deal with the horror and evil of it all. Now, many signs of rebirth.

We rented a flat in East Berlin. A great building dating back to the 1890's, with large rooms and 12 foot high ceilings with massive, ornate, plaster crown mouldings. As you can see from the pictures, a neighborhood full of young, exuberant people. HA! Ghetto? Looks it, but I'd live there. Lots of clubs, coffee houses, street theater, arts and crafts coops/production shops, Turkish food stalls, Euro pizza, and, by coincidence, one of the centers of Berlin's extinguished Jewish life.

The Schoenhauser Allee Jewish graveyard was a 10 to 15 minute walk away, north and east. The graveyard is surrounded by a high wall. We arrived after 4pm and the gate was locked. The only way I could see inside was thru a small hole broken thru the concrete and brick wall:

The next day we returned, thanks to Nancy's insistence. No surprise, the cemetery was extensively desecrated during the war. This is one image of what we found:

We walked around the many acres of solemn quietude for about an hour. Perhaps once again these souls are finding peace here.

Nearby, the Rykestrasse Shul, entrance gate locked, and guarded by a policeman. And yet Jews are returning to the city, mostly from the former Soviet Union. Here we looked thru the gate to the shul across an enclosed courtyard.

I did not realize what remarkable museums and collections could be found in Berlin. As I mentioned in a Facebook post, it ranks with London, Paris, and New York, arguably the 4 greatest museum cities in the world. Some of the collections we visited: ancient Near East, Islamic, South and Southeast Asian, African, and a range of European arts and crafts. Just one detail from all this: a remarkable book from SE Asia, about 3 feet long:

And this detail from it:

So much more, but that will have to do for a taste. Tomorrow, the Columbia River gorge.

Drash on Khukkat

2011-07-03T17:01:00.002-04:00

I was so busy last week making my Aternen Jew video, I forgot to post this drash (analysis) I wrote for Parasha Khukkat, 2005 (Numbers/Viyekra 19:1 to 22:1).

Drash: Khukkat, 5765, July 9, 2005

Today's sidrah has an unbelievable number of huge issues in it, many absolutely inexplicable. Most obviously:

1) the Parah Adumah (the red heifer) and the whole issue of the transmission of tumah, whatever "tumah" is;

2) The death of Miriam, which is accompanied by a midrash so embedded and taken for granted, that one can hardly talk about Miriam without talking about water and particularly, a well that follows her like some kind of puppy.

3) The death of Aaron, a death laid out like a sacrificial ritual. The "ritual" includes the stripping of Aaron of his vestments, an event which in the modern sensibility generates emotions in the key of revulsion, but which, I might add, could also be seen as the foundational definition of a living will.

4) There's the punishment of Moses and Aaron which stands as a permanent challenge to those who insist the Torah (aka God) would never impose a punishment inappropriate to the crime.

5) This sidrah contains the mapping of the vast majority of moves the people made while in the wilderness. This is not mysterious, true, but it is embedded in an entirely fragmented and non-sequential narrative, which troubles not a few commentators. And finally, it contains

6) the military encounters with Sichon and Og, whom the midrash elevate to the status of giants.

That's quite a lineup of topics, all of which I am going pass over. I would like, instead, to look at 3 minor details and show how they provide a gorgeous little opening into the writing, editing, and literary history of this Book, a Book that for most of its existence has been forbidden to be viewed thru a literary lens.

Let me begin with what is far, and try to bring it near. Shemot Rabbah 5:22 explains that the Hebrew slaves had in their possession various scrolls, relating the incidents of the book of Bereishit (Genesis), which they would enjoy reading during their rest every Shabbat. So here is the midrash talking about early documents, written before Moses was born, telling the stories that Moses (et al) would eventually incorporate into this Divine and human collaboration we call Torah.

For me, this is the key to understanding how the Bible was written, and particularly these first 5 books. Like any major interdisciplinary text, I believe it was composed using multiple sources, over an extended period of time. This was not the result of some Ginsbergian 3 day binge. I imagine that Moses worked 40 years to put together a first comprehensive draft. But what does this have to do with our sidrah this week?

Khukkat is one of the few parshiot that provides tangible and clear references to Torah source texts. We're not talking about genealogical lists, or narrative subplots, or architecture plans, or ritual prescriptions, etc, etc. Every sidrah has this kind of thing in abundance embedded in the text. But in Khukkat we have more. First we have, in 21:14 what I believe is the only reference in Torah to a named external text: "Therefore the Book of the Wars of the Lord speaks of..." and Torah quotes this book for at least a verse and a half, and possibly more. Would that we had a full bibliography of source texts. I imagine it would read like a card catalog from the Rare and Ancient Books section of the Library of Alexandria.

Second, we have The Song of Khashbone, 21:27 thru 21:30. This enigmatic poem that Torah says, "the bards would recite" is worthy of a good long drash in itself. From Tannaitic authors to modern commentators, this poem is widely considered to be an Amorite text, borrowed and then tweaked for Israelite purposes.

And finally, my favorite literary detail: a song that reminds me in a very special way of a remarkable film, Andrei Rublev, by the Russian, Andrei Tarkovsky. I am speaking of the song or poem that is perhaps only 8 words long, and perhaps as much as 12 or even 14 words, found at 21:17 to 18. Here's one translation of the long (14 word) version, with it's introduction:

"17. Then Israel sang this song: Spring up, O well – sing to it – 18. The well which the chieftains dug, which the nobles of the people started with maces, with their own staffs. And from the wilderness a gift!"

The poem has a couple of words that create particular difficulty for the Hebrew reader and the translator, most notably "mekhokek," translated variously as "maces", "scepters," and "styluses of Law". But even disregarding this and the other hard words, the poem is not so easy to understand. Not a few commentators have suggested it is a murky tribute to Miriam's well. Or perhaps the people are praising Moses for striking the rock, objecting to God's punishment for this act. Maybe. But let's read it over again.

"Then Israel sang this song: Spring up, oh well. Respond! The well which the *chieftains* dug, which the *nobles of the people* started, with *maces*, with *their own* staffs."

What an ominously evocative beginning: "Uz y'sheer Yisroyel et ha-sheera ha-zote." Does that sound familiar? The song of the Sea begins, "Uz y'sheer MOSHE u'venay Yisroyel et ha-sheera ha-zote L'ADONAI. Our song today strips from acknowledgment both Moses and God! The midrash resorts to a mashal, a parable, to justify these notable deletions. But let us, instead, consider why Moses doesn't sing and God isn't addressed.

Who are these "chieftains" and these "nobles of the people." I suggest, we know them very well. We just read about them... last week. They are Korakh and the rebels, who with maces and with their own stylus's of law, challenged the existing order and the existing power structure. They had just learned (in Sh'lach Lecha) that they weren't getting out of the desert alive. For them the exodus didn't bring them to milk and honey.

So how is this song like the movie Andrei Rublev? Andrei Rublev is a deeply subversive movie, that utterly delegitimizes the existing Soviet government. But it makes its points so subtly that the censors sensed something out of order, but they just couldn't put their finger on it. In the end it was banned, with no reasons given, and it had to be smuggled out of the Soviet Union.

This song in Khukkat is really a literary bombshell, a powerful but subtle statement of rebellion. But I think it's in Torah, not because it was able to slip past Moses and his editors, but precisely because Moses (et. al.) wanted us receivers of Torah to know that all authority is subject to question. Korakh's rebellion was a popular uprising, and subtly Moses wanted us to know that perhaps his punishment was not so much about hitting rocks, but about striking down people.

Shabbat Shalom.

Aternen Jew: a reading; a video

2011-07-01T11:58:00.003-04:00

I have been preparing a series of recorded readings of my current work, The Mith ov the Aternen Jew, since, for some reason, many people seem to think my poetry is hard to read. Go figure!

I've been told that listening to the poetry makes it a lot easier to "decipher." My mother used to have my father (both of blessed memory) read them to her, and then she'd exclaim, "Oh, so THAT'S what he's saying! Why doesn't he WRITE it that way!"

As I've mentioned before, this is a retelling of a myth that is at least a thousand years old. It has morphed into innumerable versions, some anti-Semitic, some philo-Semitic, some using the symbolism and narrative to pursue existential and philosophical topics unburdened of religious charge! My poem is the first TRUE version. (smile). The section of the poem from which I have been preparing readings, is The Aternen Jewz Taelen, the Eternal Jew's version of history as he wanders around the Middle East and Europe. You might think of it as his diary.

So here's a short video, less than 3 minutes, to kick off the series. As always, your critical feedback is of great value to me, so don't hesitate to comment or email me.

Enjoy!!

This week's Torah reading

2011-06-16T20:24:00.005-04:00

Shelakh Lekha (Bamidbar/Numbers 13:1 - 15:41)

In Jewish liturgy, the Torah is divided into weekly portions, to be read sequentially throughout the year, beginning and ending on the holiday of Simkhat Torah. Which is to say, on Simkhat Torah we read the last verses of Devarim/Deuteronomy, and then the beginning verses of Beraysheet/Genesis. We then proceed to read the Torah in order over the course of the year, a Portion each week. Portions vary in length, but are usually between 2 and 5 chapters.

This week we read the portion Shelakh Lekha.

Questions:

What is the main event in this sidrah?
What is the main legal ruling in this sidrah?

Torah as a collection of documents:

The Torah is much more than a long narrative. It is a collection of many kinds of documents. Even the midrash (Canonical Rabbinic exegetical literature) acknowledges this:
Shemot Rabbah 5:22 explains that the Hebrew slaves had in their possession various scrolls, relating the incidents of the book of Beraysheet (Genesis), which they would enjoy reading during their rest every Shabbat.

Here is a list of the documents/components I found in this week's portion:
Scout narrative (chapts 13-14)
genealogy (13:4-15)
linguistic note (13:16): “Hoshayah” is past tense of helper/savior; Yehoshuah the future tense.
diplomacy/psychology: (13:17-20)
geography/place naming (13:21-24)
history (13:22): “and Hebron had been built... long before Tzoan (of) Mitzrayim.”
agricultural info (13:23)
myth: (13:28, 32-33): Anak and the giants
geography/nations: (13:29)
theophany (14:10-12)
logical debate (14:11-17) Moshe defeats God
divine events in nature (14:28-38)
military engagement (14:45)
directions for sacrificial rituals (15:1-14)
weights and measures (15:5-10)
moral dictate/law: (15:15-16)
ritual law/national taxation (15:19-21)
laws/procedures to seek atonement for sin (15:22-29)
laws for heretics/blasphemers (15:30-31)
precedent law (15:32-36)
laws/customs of tsitsit (fringes on garments). (15:38-39)
psychology (15:39) “[do] not go exploring after your own heart and after your own eyes... and become unfaithful to me”

Torah was written with acute attention to literary forms and styles:

Here are some motable literary details:

13:18 - “look at the land, what it is like.” Why the 2nd phrase? Literally: compare it to other places you’ve seen. Is it like Egypt or the wilderness?
13:22 - Hebron. Yet no mention of Machpelah, the burial place of the patriarchs and matriarchs. The 2 places are certainly connected, both early in Torah (Khiya Sarah) and in the midrash.
13:26-27 - “...came to Moshe and to Aaron and to the community.... They told him...” plural-singular conflict?
13:33 - “and so were we in their eyes.” Classic psychological projection. Indeed the opposite is true as we learn elsewhere, including directly from the Haftarah: the land was consumed with fear of the Israelites.
14:4 - After last week’s rebellion by Aaron and Miriam, now the community plots to replace/overthrow Moshe. He sways them, but next week, rebellion is the main narrative. Subtle hints of building discontent against Moshe.
14:18 - In Exodus, Moses discovers those attributes to be that God is "compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; yet God does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of parents upon children and children's children, upon the third and fourth generations" (Exodus 34:6-7). But in Sh'lach L'cha, Moses reorders God's attributes as "slow to anger and abounding in kindness; forgiving iniquity and transgression; yet not remitting all punishment, but visiting the iniquity of fathers upon children, upon the third and fourth generations" (Numbers 14:18). In so doing, Moses leaves out seven of God's attributes, including compassion, graciousness, and forgiving of sin. In addition, he begins with "slow to anger."

“the manna” is spelled exactly as “Haman.”

SMB Commentary:

As 10 of the 12 scouts were selected poorly, so very often in Jewish history, those we have chosen to represent us, do so poorly, setting their own interests and personalities as the standard for the community and its needs. This is particularly true when we select “notables” such as the rich and famous to represent us.

“Assembly! One law for you and for the sojourner that takes-up-sojourn, a law for the ages, throughout your generations: as (it is for) you, so will it be (for) the sojourner before the presence of YHVH....” (Numbers 15:15, Everett Fox trans.)
This is the foundational difference between paganism and the Judaic vision of One God. It is not the worship of idols, per se, that is wrong or evil. The part points to the Whole, so idol worship is merely an indirect means of worshiping the One. Rather, it is the fragmentation of the Whole that then justifies the establishment of “insider” and “outsider” values and laws. All forms of oppression are the direct result of having 2 or more classes of law based on group status (inside/outside, us/them, powerful/weak). Paganism is not about believing rocks and trees are God; few pagans were so deluded. Paganism is about holding to dual standards, and therefore it is as relevant (and prevalent) an evil today as in the time of Avraham and Moshe.

The rebellion(s) against God teach us that it is inherent in human nature to resist, as well as desire to follow the Divine Will. Our resistance/rebellion is a defining feature of relationship to God, and the course of that struggle determines the depth and value of our spiritual search and the extent of our holiness.

NGO’s, the EU, and anti-Zionism

2011-06-05T17:15:00.002-04:00

Israel is arguably the most vilified country in the world. This is no coincidence. Before the establishment of Israel, Jews were the most vilified people in the world! Anti-Zionism is simply a modern continuation of this long-standing form of bigotry. Jew hatred is much more than a religious issue. It is equally political, social, economic, and cultural. Anti-Zionism may have religious threads woven into it, but it is primarily a political cloak to Jew-hatred. Israel is vilified because it is a Jewish nation, not because of its policies and behaviors. This does NOT mean that Israel is above criticism. Far from it. Israel, like every nation, and every person, is deserving of plenty of criticism. But the hatred and vilification of Israel is of a different order.

To support that statement, consider the following:

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has historically attracted extraordinary, and largely disproportionate, international attention. Not because of its ferocity: The number of Palestinians killed by Israelis (and vice versa) over the past six decades is probably smaller than the 9,000 Muslim Bosnians massacred in Srebrenica in July 1995 by their Serb and Croatian compatriots and decidedly smaller than the death toll from other conflicts throughout the globe that range in the hundreds of thousands if not millions.

Nor has this obsession been driven by humanitarian considerations. Not only is the Gaza Strip not in the throes of a deep crisis, but the humanitarian situation there is better than in some of the countries whose ships have been sent on occasion to break "the siege" of Gaza. Infant mortality in the Gaza Strip, for example, is 17.71 per thousand births compared to Turkey's 24.84 or the global average of 44; life expectancy in Turkey is 72.23 years whereas in Gaza it is 73.68, much higher than the global average of 66.12, not to mention such Arab or Islamic countries as Yemen (63.36), Sudan (52.52), or Somalia (50). Even by more advanced indicators, such as personal computer use or Internet access, Gazans are in a much better position than many of the world's inhabitants. In the words of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, no Israel-lover by any stretch of imagination, "an average Congolese citizen would probably have sold his mother into slavery to be able to move to the West Bank."

Those two paragraphs are the opening (but for 1 prior paragraph) of an insightful and well-researched article, NGOs vs. Israel, by Ben-Dror Yemini, the opinion-editor of the Israeli daily Maariv. The full article can be found at Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2011, pp. 67-71,
http://www.meforum.org/2919/ngos-vs-israel
This article is worthy of your careful attention, whether you have a general interest to be well informed about this conflict, or you want to deepen your understanding of the subtle but pervasive reach of Jew-hatred.

Breakout Brick Wall, done

2011-06-05T13:58:00.000-04:00

Here are some details of the completed wall. The process took much longer than I expected; probably 30 hours or so. Had to work in small batches of mortar since placement of each brick was slow, occasionally needing more chisel work to fit the odd spaces. Totally fun.

Kristallnacht Sonata

2011-05-23T20:34:00.000-04:00

May 1 was Yom haShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Nov 9 is the commemoration date of Kristallnacht, the 1938 pogrom in Germany orchestrated by the nazi high command. Kristallnacht is often thought of as "the start" of the Shoah.

I presented the following piece a number of years ago during a Kristallnacht commemoration, and have wanted to record it ever since. I just purchased Mixcraft, an inexpensive but rather powerful software package for mixing tracks (and apparently images and video, as well). My first experiment was to produce a version of this, my Kristallnacht Sonata.

Since blogspot doesn't allow uploads of mp3's, I'm embedding a link to the sound file on my website. Here it is, but I'm not sure how it will work for you.

http://www.shivvetee.com/resources/KnachtSonata_v3.mp3

If you have problems with it, the recording can also be accessed directly by going to the Audio Room of my website, Shivvetee.com. Here's the link:

http://www.shivvetee.com/audio_room/shivvetee_audio_rm.html

Let me know what you think.

On a scrap of paper in an old notebook

2011-05-18T12:05:00.000-04:00

On a scrap of paper in an old notebook

Raw:

O fiery voice full of bitter song

and loud rumble.

Crashing voice that fills our cells with silence.

Lonely howling of our wolf soul

Seeking blood.

The perfection of my hands

That lets knowledge slip away

Like water into a well.

Faint splashes echoing in the blindness.

Pure light is strumming a mistuned guitar.

Pure sound. A taste of soft pear nectar.

Cooked:

...O fiery voice, full of twanging colors,

Reverbing static.

Crashing voice

And the faint trembling of a leaf.

Prophetic howling. O wolf voice.

And within it,

Gnawing on splintered bone.

The perfection of words,

That lets knowledge drip

Like water into a well.

Faint splashes echoing in blindness.

O pure light, strummed on a mistuned guitar.

Pure sound

With the tang of raw sienna...

Tyler, please analyze and comment! – smb

Breakout Brick Wall, progress

2011-05-16T17:02:00.000-04:00

Next layers of the wall:

Breakout Brick Wall

2011-05-05T20:30:00.000-04:00

Working in the style of Conrad Malicoat, the brilliant Provincetown artist and bricklayer, I am building a low wall to set off a small garden in our back yard. Conrad named his technique "breakout brick work". Thus the title of this post. The wall will eventually be 4 to 6 layers high, and another 8 feet long.

Hey, Rad, you remain an inspiration to me! Love to Annie.

Wallpaper project

2011-04-15T18:37:00.000-04:00

In our ongoing upgrade of our Washington row house, we did a little make-over on the pantry: painting the cabinets (which were an incredibly drab, exposed wood) and wallpapering the walls with a William Morris pattern. This little room, a bit over 100 square feet, as I recall, was a bear to wallpaper, with its skinny strips and numerous moulding and angled-wall cuts. Maybe 15-20 hours of work! And $350 for the wallpaper and supplies. Had we painted it: 2 hours max, and a little over a quart of paint. Ah, but what a difference!

Here are a couple of pics.
East wall, illuminated, taken from foyer.

East wall, unlit, taken from foyer.

East wall, from kitchen, looking into foyer.

North and west, from foyer.

Another north and west, from foyer.

The Eternal Jew's Tale, Part 2, current

2011-03-26T14:07:00.004-04:00

This excerpt from very recent work on The Mith ov the Atternen Jew is a little ramble on prophetic hearing, and what we can really know of the divine worlds, of the higher dimensions and infinities of what might be termed “Godthought”.

Mith ov the Atternen Jew

But doent immajjen we heeren kleer
An repeeten perfek wut moest a hewmenz
Kant heer at awl. Kant even immajjen.
Thats the kiend a hoggellee tok
That kno-nuttenz say, az if a manz
(Or even a woumen) kan kno an konvay
The divvine leengz. Konsidder this:
The hole a Torrah iz a seengel werden!
Taeks a thowzen yeer and a thowzen eer
In evree lan, awl them aenjel
Interpretten down tu the wiggelz ov the letterz
And even the meenz ov emptee spasen
Tu try tu expressen a seengel God thot.

Questions on this week's Torah reading

2011-03-25T19:57:00.002-04:00

This is the week of Torah reading Shemini, Viyekra/Leviticus chapters 9 thru 11. Here are 4 questions for the astute reader:
1.What have we directly inherited from the Temple sacrificial system?

2. What is the embedded narrative going on from the previous sidrah into this one? I use “embedded” here to mean: it’s clearly part of the text, but not so obvious.

3. What sacrifice will still be needed in (utopian times)(messianic times)?

4. What is the most important olah offering that has shaped post-Talmud-era Judaism?

Drash on Viyeekra

2011-03-07T19:49:00.002-05:00

Viyekra Drash

The following is a drash, an explication and interpretation of the sections of the Torah and Prophets that will be read this week in most synagogues around the world. Actually, I wrote it in the year 2000, and it happened to be a special Shabbat (Sabbath), with a different reading from Prophets than will be done this coming Shabbat, 3/12/2011 (6 Adar II, 5771 in the Jewish calendar). The Torah is broken down into portions, which are read sequentially throughout the year, so that once a year every Jewish congregation will have read the whole Torah from beginning to end. This coming week's portion is Viyikra, as it is known in Hebrew. It consists of the first five chapters of the book Leviticus.

This drash is not particularly daring, but I believe it nicely unpacks a difficult text, and contextualizes it in changing historical world-views. It’s rather long. I hope it holds your interest.

This Shabbat is Shabbat Viyekra. Viyekra, which means "And there called". An odd beginning, literally, "And there called to Moshe and there said, God, to him..." Already you know you're in deep water. So, let's step back, put on our life jackets, get our goggles, and start by sticking our toes in the surf.

We are beginning a new book of Torah this week. The book is also known as Viyekra. It is more familiarly known in English as Leviticus. The Rabbis often refer to it as Torot HaKohanim, "teachings to the Priests" (from God) and equally validly, "teachings by the Priests" (to the people). This is a book of instructions for managing the portable Mishkan, and later, the Temple. Literally an instruction manual, and it reads like one. Probably, there's very few of us who enjoy reading a lease, or a software user's guide. We read them not for the pleasure of the narrative, but for the knowledge, the skills, the power they give us.

The same is true here, in large measure. There is almost no narrative in this book, and in fact, the Torah is largely done with narrative. We came to Sinai, and almost everything up to that point was narrative, fascinating, completely pleasurable to read, full of wonders and poignant stories. At Sinai, the whole nature of the Torah changed, just as the whole nature of the Jewish people changed. Immediately after Sinai we get instructions to build a portable, but nonetheless spectacular Mishkan, a temple, a tent of meeting. Now the Mishkan's built, and we get detailed instructions for how we are to use it to worship, and use it to become a holy people.

This is really much like the pattern of most of our lives. When we're young our lives are defined by our adventures, what we do and what we fantasize. As we come to the point of taking responsibility for ourselves, we find a partner – the Sinai experience is often seen as a marriage ritual between us and God – and then we make a house for ourselves, as the people made the Mishkan. And then we get down to the details of establishing ourselves, building a knowledge base and and functional skills. And the parallels continue; this isn't a coincidence. If we desire, and we're fortunate, we have children. The book of Numbers is the counting of the generations, numbering our children, trying to pass on our mission to them, sending them off into their own new land. And Deuteronomy, Devarim in Hebrew, is a summing up and looking back. What have we accomplished, and what have we not accomplished.

So, the Torah is really a template for each of our individual lives, as well as our life together as a community, here in Victoria, and here in the world, spanning the millennia as Jews, as a holy people.

From this perspective, the minute details in Leviticus, Torot HaKohanim, Viyekra, have a value that may not be apparent on first blush. What is this instruction manual about? As I said, it's about managing the Temple, which is a template for managing our own spiritual lives. It is about proper worship of God, and about how to be holy. It's about preparing ourselves to deal with our incompleteness, our imperfections, our errors, and still have a working relationship with God, with our Divine Foundation.

"All the earth is Mine, but you shall be My kingdom of priests, and a holy nation." We are being taught to be the Priesthood to the world. This is a very serious instruction manual. And that's why this book is known as Torot HaKohanim, teaching to and by the Priests.

Still, this is a very difficult book to read. I have read it many times, and yet it always remained a mishmash to me. One thing blended into another, and I'd always walk away not really holding on to anything. So let me summarize the whole book, because this is what we're going to be dealing with for many weeks, and then I'll focus in.

The book is divided into two main portions. The first half deals with the many kinds of sacrifices, and the details of preparing and presenting them. It then goes on to address the issues of purity in the pursuit of holiness. That's part 1, thru chapter 16. Chapters 17-27 have been called the "Holiness Code." It builds from the commandments and laws given at Sinai, setting them in a framework of correct ritual and holiness. From another angle, the first half of the book is God's teachings TO the Kohanim. The second half is the Kohanim's teachings to the people.

Today's portion discusses the basic modes and classes of offerings, of sacrifices. It discusses what may be offered, and how it is to be offered. It discusses what the priest must do, and if and when the donor plays a part. And since the sacrificial system also had an important economic role, since it supplied the basic income and food for the priesthood, we learn here what parts would be burned, what parts the priests could keep, and what parts they had to share with the donor.

A particularly interesting detail has to do with the donor's passing a sacrificial animal to the priest. He/she had to lean into it, pressing with both hands. "Laying on of hands" is how it's often translated. The Hebrew, which you can see beginning the 4th verse of Chapter 1, is "samach" and elsewhere, "semikhah". Does that ring a bell to anyone? "Semikhah" is what we call rabbinic ordination. I believe the first example of this usage in Torah is when Moshe lays his hands on Yehoshua, Joshua, conferring leadership on him. We can understand this in a linear manner: a transference of spiritual responsibility, to the student no less than to the sacrificial animal, BUT we can also see this as an amazing linguistic and conceptual inversion. We go from sending an animal to its death, to conferring life and spiritual continuity on the next generation. And so, already in the Torah we see a movement from physical ritual to spiritual teaching. We pursue that line a little later.

I'd like to discuss the kinds of sacrifices because it's confusing and I've been reading these chapters for years and never could make much sense of it, but there so many other juicy things, that I think I'll talk instead about the transition from a sacrifice-based religion to a prayer-based religion, and how they are related, continuous, and intertwined.

But we need at least this bit of background. The term "sacrifice" in Hebrew has a general name: "Korbon". Chapter 1 describes the first kind of korbon, the Olah, often translated Holocaust, because, excepting the skin, the whole animal was completely burned; none was eaten. It is a KIND of sacrifice; it had more than one purpose, but it was never used to remove sin or guilt. "Olah" means "ascent" so it's a supplication. "Remember us. Be kind to us."

Oddly, both the terms Korbon and Holocaust came to be used to describe the destruction of European Jewry in our era. While Korbon quickly went out of use, Holocaust has become the most widely used and known term, but many object to it, because it has its origins in a sacred ritual, which seems entirely inappropriate. That is why many people, including myself, prefer the term Shoah, which means "destruction" and has no sacred or ritual antecedents in its usage.

So now we can look at our Haftorah portion. Actually, the normal Haftorah for today is Isaiah 43 and 44, an awesome portion, describing how the people have fallen away from holiness, and into idolatry, with extended images describing corrupted sacrificial rites. It begins like this: "You have not called on Me oh Ya'akov... nor did you honor Me with your sacrifices... And YET I will not remember your sins! Put Me in remembrance. Let us plead together. State your case that you may be vindicated!" Wow. Even more amazing perhaps is how Elie Wiesel and others turned this around, requiring God make vindication for the Shoah, for the Holocaust.

But we didn't read that portion today. Because it is Shabbat Zachor, the second of the special Shabbatot leading up to Pesach, we read an equally electrifying Haftorah, Shmuel 15. Shmuel is sent by God to tell Saul to destroy Amelek; to kill not only every single person, including elderly and children, but every living creature, all their cattle, to destroy their homes and everything in them. What does Saul do? He and the troops spare some of the choice animals, and take Agag the king, captive. The text says Saul had pity on Agag and on the best of the cattle and the finest objects. Is it pity, greed, or pride of interpretation: "I will decide what God intends." God informs Shmuel that Saul didn't follow the letter of the commandment. Shmuel goes to find Saul, and soon as Saul sees him says, "I have fulfilled the word of the Lord." And Shmuel responds, "What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears?" Is he referring to the sheep or Saul's jabber? Shmuel goes on, "Even if you are small in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel!" The responsibility of leadership. The responsibility of being a priesthood people. And then we hear something even more amazing from Shmuel: 15:22, the first major revision in prophetic literature of the course of our spiritual destiny: "Has the Lord as much desire in burnt-offerings and peace offerings, as in obeying the Voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than a peace offering, to listen intently for God's word is better than the fat of rams!" And the reading ends with Shmuel hacking Agag to pieces, not unlike some sacrificial slaughtering run amok. Yoy.

And thus we have been set on our spiritual journey. We have some problems here. We have a text with an extremely detailed accounting of sacrificial rituals, coupled with a legal code of incomparable justice and democracy. We have later parts of the text demanding slaughter, and genocide, juxtaposed against the most profoundly insightful and moral teachings. And here we are 3000 years later confronting this primitive ritual, sacrifice, that has become offensive to most of us. How do we cope with it? The problem is, we can't just read the text and say, "Nah, this is no good. This is wrong. I don't like this. This is politically incorrect. Let's throw it out."

This text is holy whether we say it came directly from God or indirectly through inspired prophets, or just that it's just a brilliant human thing. We have devoted ourselves to it for 3000 years. 150 generations devoted themselves to it, memorized it, interpreted it, died for it. It is at the foundation of our identity. And because it is so essential to us, we are obligated to do 2 things, at least: carry it forward intact, and make it relevant, even add new literature to it today.

I remember when I was in college it was the time of the Vietnam war. I remember seeing a veteran wearing a tee shirt that said: "Kill 'em all and let God sort it out." It was at once horrifying and completely understandable. And really, when you think about it, that is exactly what Saul was commanded to do. Are we still in that same place today? Some might say yes, but I don't think so. I think our history has created a new mandate for us.

From Shmuel on, the Prophets contrasted the demands of ethical behavior with sacrifice, insisting on the primacy of morality, not ritual. No prophet called for the end of sacrifice, at least not until the early 19th century, but Amos, Jeremiah, Shmuel, Isaiah, Hosea, and Micah all made strong arguments, demoting sacrifice to a place well below moral behavior. But it was not until the Roman destruction of the Temple that sacrifice ended. At that time the transition from a priesthood class to a priesthood religion was completed.

It's an interesting historical development. I don't have time for it here, but let me tell one story, a parable by Rabbi Levi, found in Leviticus Rabbah. "The son of a King became mentally confused and fell into the habit of eating carrion. Thus, the King ordered the servants to serve kosher meat at his table prepared from the same kinds of animals, so that the son might regain the habit of eating proper food. Similarly, Rabbi Levi continues, Israel became addicted to idolatry in Egypt, and in the desert they still brought offerings to goat demons. God said, 'Let them bring regular sacrifices to Me, and they will be protected from the tendency to idolatry.'" What's the point here? This 5th century rabbi is already saying sacrifice is a temporary means to wean us from idolatry. Once weaned, it could be dispensed with. Revolutionary ideas in those days, and it took another 1200 years before the Reform movement, followed 100 years later by the Convervative and Reconstructionist movements, to comprehensively renounce the idea that sacrifice might be re-instituted, should a 3rd Temple be built. I should mention, that many in the Orthodox movement find this rejection entirely unacceptable, given that such a significant portion of the Torah is devoted to sacrifice.

There's so much more to talk about. The sacrifices themselves; the problems and obscure parts of the text, including essential ritual details that have remained entirely unstated; the differences in Orthodox and Conservative siddurim relating to sacrifice. A more detailed tracking of the history of transition from sacrifice to prayer, and priest class to priest religion; related texts found in other cultures, that help us understand the international flavor of these rituals.

But let me end with a bibliography. I have 4 Chumashim: Samson Hirsch, Aryeh Kaplan, Fox, and the Reform Chumash by Plaut. Every one is a treasure chest of ideas and commentary. Plaut's is particularly good, altho the actual translation he uses is uninspired. Then there's the Jewish Publication Society's 5 volume commentary. Finally, the online sources are very expansive. I give my students a list of 4 sites, and I'd be glad to email them to anyone who requests. And these are the sources that will simply help you scratch the surface.

Shabbat shalom.

Addundum on sacrifices, with apologies for a little repetition from above.

First, I ask your indulgence. I think it appropriate to discuss the kinds of sacrifices described in our portion. The term "sacrifice" in Hebrew has a general name: "Korbon". Chapter 1 describes the first kind of korbon, the Olah, often translated Holocaust, because, excepting the skin, the whole animal was completely burned; none was eaten. It is a KIND of sacrifice; it had more than one purpose, but it was never used to remove sin or guilt. "Olah" means "ascent" so it's a supplication. "Remember us. Be kind to us."

Oddly, both the terms Korbon and Holocaust came to be used to describe the destruction of European Jewry in our era. While Korbon quickly went out of use, Holocaust has become the most widely used and known term, but many object to it, because it has its origins in a sacred ritual, which seems entirely inappropriate. That is why many people, including myself, prefer the term Shoah, which means "destruction" and has no sacred or ritual antecedents in its usage.

Chapter 2 describes the second type of sacrifice, the "minkhah", which translates to "tribute" or "gift". It establishes the donor's subservience to God. Here again there is no expiation for sin or guilt with this sacrifice. Originally, Minkhah was a generic term. Both Kayin and Abel's sacrifices were called minkhah, even tho Abel's was animal, and Kayin's grain. Here, now, it is taking on a more specific character. Now it is NOT an animal sacrifice. It is a grain offering, more accurately wheat, and still more accurately, semolina, the best part of the wheat. It too was burned, but only a handful. Before burning, it was usually mixed with olive oil and frankincense. What was not burned was eaten by the priests, presumably without frankincense. Minkhah was a late afternoon or evening sacrifice, and it's name, and its intentionality have been transferred to the daily afternoon prayer service.

Chapter 3 brings us to the Zevakh, especially the Zevakh Sh'lamim, the "sacrifice of well being" or the "sacred gift of greeting". This was specifically a sacred meal, so altho some would be burned, the majority would be eaten by the priests WITH the donor. So, it was unlike the Olah in that much was not burned, and it was unlike the minkhah in that the donor also ate it. Also, it could even be eaten outside the sanctuary. These latter 2 differences also made it a step down in holiness.

So you can see the borders between these offeringss are hazy, with many shared components and some distinct ones. More importantly, because we don't do them anymore in any physical way, it's hard to see the value in trying to figure them out. It can be compared, perhaps to the laws of Kashrut for someone who doesn't keep kosher. You can eat meat and you can eat milk, but you can't eat milk and meat together. You can eat fish and you can eat meat, but again, not together. But just a second, you can eat milk and then you can eat meat, but not the reverse. You get the point. If you don't do this every day, it's definitely confusing, and it's hard to see the point why anyone would WANT to do it. So why do Jews do this? One reasone is because there's knowledge and meaning in the DOING that can't be derived from the ideas alone.

This parasha covers 2 more sacrifices, as well. These are specifically to expiate sin or guilt. They are called the Khattat and the asham sacrifices. These 2 sacrifices are meant to restore purity. In the Biblical context purity and sinlessness are equated, and impurity and sinfulness are equated. While the text talks a bit about the sacrificial ritual, more of it is devoted to defining the crime and its category. I could discuss these sacrifices at length, but let me say only this: sacrifice was NEVER meant for purposeful sins. You sinned; you were subject to punishment. Only if your sin was unintentional, or due to ignorance of the laws, could sacrifice be used as a PART of the expiation. You were still also subject to appropriate restitution, as Chapters 4 and 5 describe.

The Eternal Jew's Tale, Part 2.2

2011-03-05T16:01:00.002-05:00

Continuing from my previous post, Feb. 24, 2011, of Part II of The Atternen Jewz Tael. Introducing this poem in my last post, I said that here “the Jew recounts his wanderings after leaving Jerusalem.” Well, actually that’s not quite true. Jerusalem has just been destroyed by the Romans. So as he sets out from the ruined Temple of God, he reflects on previous “temples” and the human compulsion to create them. The first temple he describes (see the previous post) is Eden. And from there...

Well, we bilt it aggen, that goddee pallas.
Seemz we haf tu. Its wut we du,
Tryen a rememberz ar uther werlz
Tho we kant see kleer akross that horrize.
I meenz, yu theenk ar sensenz sho it awl?
Its not jes thru a darken glass
We seez, but thru a narrowee krak
And broke down intu slivverz a time
Thin az a rainboez shaddo. An then
Thaerz deth. Wut made arsellz a dans,
Slips awway an dansen elsware.
Libareez fule a such wunderenz
Ov ar feelenz an fakenz and faent rekawlz.
O, its reel ennuf, tho lakking a proov.

The Eternal Jew's Tale, Part 2.1

2011-02-24T15:16:00.005-05:00

I have begun Part II of The Atternen Jewz Tael. Part I is the Eternal Jew’s experiences with Jesus and the 4 time travelers who have wandered into Jerusalem and witness Jesus’ crucifixion. I have only posted 2 excerpts from Part I, altho I plan on posting more. However, here is the opening scene of Part II, in which the Jew recounts his wanderings after leaving Jerusalem.

The Aternen Jewz Tael, II

Jezes died an so mennee annuther
Werl redeemer, werl assalen,
Them az haks at the narrellee rooten
An overgroeth, the siklee vien
An poizen vien. But shooten evver
Renu. Tree ov Life it iz

No, the Lor doent keep ar Hevvenz simpel.
That poizennee vien a groethen an kleengen
Tu the Tree a Life. Its part a the sap.

Mezzuza completed

2011-02-14T17:01:00.011-05:00

On Feb. 1, 2011 I posted 3 images of a mezzuza I was working on. Here are a few more images, showing the stages of work up to completion.

About half the goldwork done, showing my agate burnisher and a chisel.

Another image, a little further along, with the leather covered pad for holding the gold leaf, some cut leaf, and the ceramic palette with special glue.

Almost done. With brushes and fine cutting tools.

Complete. Without good tweezers, don't even think about doing this.

A gift for my son on his birthday. May he go from strength to strength.

Memories of Jesus,2

2011-02-10T15:23:00.003-05:00

Continuing from my post of 12/30/10...

The Atternen Jewz Tael

"I heerz thay kot him in khoel ha-mowaed*
* The 4 intermediate days of Passover
"An taeks him owt tu the killen hill.
"He wok by my tinee shumaken shop
"In a rundown shuek for traedzmen like me.
"Kondukten by pikerz an sum rowdee frenz.
"Wen I seez him an breeng him a kup a dreenk.
"But sor depress he jes shake iz hed.

Work begins on a Mezzuza

2011-02-01T21:39:00.006-05:00

I have begun work on a mezzuza, technically a box that holds a parchment with 3 prayers inscribed on it. The parchment is the holy object and the mezzuza is just meant to protect it, but to do honor to the parchment (and thus, indirectly, to honor God), and to extend the virtue of the tradition through the act of adding beauty, the mezzuza is often highly decorated. A mezzuza is placed on the frame of a door to sanctify a house and to protect it. Minimally, the main entrance to the house should have a mezzuza, but many houses, like ours, have mezzuzot (plural) leading into all the main rooms.

Many mezzuzot are made of sterling silver, but I make them out of wood. I've used driftwood, mahogany, and exotics. This one is mahogany. Here are 3 images.
The first is simply the raw wood, cut to the right size:

The next step is to begin carving. Rather than a traditional image, I decided to simply accentuate the dramatic grain of the wood.

Now, some gold work:

I'll post images of the completed project, when it's ready.

Lilith in the Hills of Pittsburgh

2011-01-25T15:36:00.001-05:00

Thus begins my latest story, soon to be making the rounds looking for a publisher...

Lilith in the Hills of Pittsburgh

My father's old age consort, whom we all assumed was merely a stupid little woman who brought, perhaps, a few vestiges of sexual gratification to him after his wife of 61 years died, as it turns out, murdered him! Possessed by some re-ascendent shade of Lilith, she turned secretly wicked. Her breath, which stank by day, grew sulfurous in her miserable evenings, and her afternoon jabberings became babbled invocations at night. She poisoned him late one night. As he staggered from his bed in the first blush of dawn, a stroke according to the hospital alchemists, and as he stood there gaping at the foot of the bed, she sat up and laughed, watching and waiting. “Let us not hurry, Rutie dear. We will call the ambulance in due time, once enough vessels have burst in his brain.” Lilith possessed her, making her as wicked at night as she was (and still is) dull by day.

Ah, but I move ahead too fast.

Of course, we all know that Lilith is nonsense, but the study of nonsense is scholarship,* so let me present my scholarship to you.

The age of gullible citizens who will believe any folktale and bubba meisa** is long over. We live in an age of reason. If anything, we have progressed into shapes of disbelief that will no doubt make us appear as misshapen and absurd to future generations as our forebears do to us, who lived in hapless thrall.

“I howled last night at Maher and Stewart,” reports my teenage son. Yes, howled, as perhaps another generation howled at the moon and swore they saw the wandering Jew, that deathless fellow, walk the lath and stucco lanes of their hamlet. We are, as I have already mentioned, misshapen with cynicism.

Therefore it is with no small difficulty that I will try to convince you that spirits, dybbeks, and jinns can, and do, take possession of us and drag us about, even as was believed in the days of our vulnerable pre-Enlightenment credulity. Asmodeus roams the night skies behind our pre-frontal rationalities, naked and muttering to himself, while Woton plots ceaselessly to reestablish his fiefdom in the human soul. And we, possessed of such vast and high-minded reason, are certain their efforts are futile. Indeed, the most reasoning and enlightened of us laugh at the very thought of the existence of such phantoms. Thus may you understand the difficulty of my task.

* Recalling Saul Lieberman’s alleged introduction to Gershom Sholem’s lectures on Kabbalah
** Yiddish, and fairly literally: “old wive’s tale”

Memories of Jesus

2010-12-30T19:19:00.003-05:00

The myth of the Eternal Jew (my Aternen Jew) first appears in literature, to the best of our knowledge, in the 1200’s. Over the next 800 years the myth expanded into a vast range of storylines, but the original tale seems to have been set in Jerusalem, with Jesus on his way to Golgotha.

The following scene is an interview with the Aternen Jew, found in the Jerusalem Post, dated 3796 (according to the Hebrew calendar, or 35 CE according to the Gregorian calendar) (smile). As such, it would be the earliest firm evidence we have of Jesus’ existence. Alas, it is merely my poetry.

The Aternen Jewz Tael

“O, how the spreeng awashen the staenz
“A Jerrusallem in brillyen hewz.
“Kreemee wiets, streekt an brusht
“With okerz and madderz, gilden ejd.
“The aerz all fresh with florrelz and spise,
“Kardammom, lavvender, mer, and lime,
“An the skiez unberden ov thaer charkoel raenz,
“Now dens azherrite and ultra-marreen
“Like the mannueskripten frum Gent and Paree.

Transforming our psychological ground

2010-12-23T18:11:00.003-05:00

Our work:
Transforming the psychology of accumulation
To the psychology of sensitivity;
The psychology of control and conquest
To the psychology of empathy and compassion.

These are goals that cannot be framed in 12-step programs or 5 year plans. This is not a generation’s issue or a systemic flaw to be fixed with new laws or higher average wages. These are changes that work in evolutionary time, not human time, and our human engagement, if it is to be sustained, must be embedded in, and central to ideologies that have trans-generational endurance. I think specifically here of religious ideologies.

These ideals will come into direct conflict with political and economic desires, where accumulation of power and wealth is the guiding animus, and in which individuals are driven by nothing more than the dictates of self, which require an enemy, a competitor, or lower economic or social classes to motivate action and measure success. Respect and empathy, on the other hand, are values that require, in large measure, effacement of self, or more accurately, a higher sense of self. This is counter to our biological condition. Therefore, many will argue against the very viability of such an ideal, and those that argue for it will be working against a daunting gradient in biology.

However, I would argue that there is a counter-gradient in nature, a spiritual or divine gradient, more subtle than biology, and working on a longer wavelength, such that biology will appear dominant and more efficacious in generational time, but spirit will prevail in evolutionary time.

This is not mere fantasy or romanticism. It is now 2500 years since the Hebrew Prophets first articulated the basis for these ideals, and since then we see that for every cresting of political oppression and predatory economics, consistently and irresistibly there have arisen social, religious, political, and economic forces to counter and overthrow these regimes.

Witness: the re-emergence of Catholic faith in religiously eviscerated Poland, a re-emergence and resurgence strong enough to cast off the yoke of a superpower.

Witness: Marxist ideology, founded on deeply flawed sociological and psychological principles, which was yet able to swell in a single generation to effectively counter unrestrained predatory capitalism. Core principles of Marxism are now integral components of all high-functioning capitalistic systems, including unions and coops, workman’s comp and unemployment compensation, social security and universal health care. (Ironically, we do not yet see a similar, but opposite integration into most communist/Marxist systems, which remain predatory on the individual. However, Kerala state in India may be one of a few emerging counter-examples. Some might also argue that the Scandinavian countries are Marxist states that have successfully integrated capitalism.)

Witness: the emergence of a culturally, economically, and politically vibrant (and militarily powerful) Jewish state in the face of the most profound disaster to the Jewish people since the Roman destruction. Is there another example of such a reversal of fortune in all of history? Note also the rapid migration of anti-Jewish animus from Christian lands to Muslim lands, exposing the temporally local biological cross-currents and backwashes that are trying to counter the aeonic, spiritual tides of a Jewish national identity.

Indeed, I would argue that today the teaching of the Prophets is more well-known and more motivational than at any time in history, and that the force of their words, within and outside of religions, will increasingly shape political and economic systems.

Witness: the success of the American experiment based on prophetic ideals of freedom, justice, and equality, and of the value of the individual. America was founded to counter “divine right” and social and economic entitlement and ossification. The US continues to be a powerful magnet, drawing the best, brightest, and most idealistic from nations around the world, thus enhancing the likelihood of its continuing success. I would argue that America is the first example of a nation constituted on the prophetic ideals derived from the divine wavelengths valuing sensitivity and empathy over accumulation and power. The critical reader, of course, will immediately note how the biological cross-currents and backwashes of accumulation and power have swept across, and are disrupting these spiritual forces.

Myth of the Eternal Jew, 8

2010-12-15T23:43:00.001-05:00

Superimposed identities is an essential part of human consciousness. Embedded in The Mith ov the Aternen Jew, this is Part IX of a multi-part series exploring the confusion and conflict caused by the porous boundaries of identity.

IX.
Heer the seeng the erth an Seel.
The kludz a rumbel, the leev akwake.
Thay wisper an ressel and russel it bak.
The sferen slip, shell within shell.
This wun griend and that wun brake
An porz owt the wind, gust attumbel.
Heer the roer the moen the siy.
A throng a liets in branch and vien,
Twitterren, trillen, the milleyen tweets,
The throetee wissel, the cherp an cheep,
The sunlite shudderz, it spekkellee lienz
In a partakkel wave, a brillyens a bliend.

The Jew he sway az a vessel a waev.
The song an iz erth* in the sprayen a serf. * utherz say “berth”
That demennee Jew in iz stripen a shawlz
All trembellee reelen the see ov iz God.

All the saelz a Jakob spred owt tu see
Thaer blak-striep linnen praershawlz asway
In the gustee breezen on the praerful tide,
The Lor iz breethen an iz Seel a swell.

Thay bent an twisten tu the goddee stress,
Serchen the koedz for them hidden orderz.
O weeree an lone on errashennel waevz,
Them aenjelz aflownder, thaer weeng spred owt
In the fomee brakerz, thaer iyz aggast.
Hu kan take weeng? Hu mite yet fly?

Ov this, thaer jentil brutherz oenlee see
Theze brood a yidden, all stripee, all flappee,
All wind awwave on thay stormee seez.
Arrivven frum annuther lan or time,
Az if thay rizzen up frum aer grave.
Korrupt ov ling; pollute ov mine.
Louk how em raze aer satennee shawlz.
Ar foek astutter in a feerful pawl.

Interlocking Shins

2010-12-09T16:01:00.003-05:00

Here's another image, as I work on new mezzuzah designs (thanx, Dooz). The lower image is 10 interlocking shins. The upper image was my first exploration of the idea, plus a Magen David. I learned to use a geometric grid from studies of Islamic design techniques. A few of the results of those studies will be viewable on the soon to be completed upgrade of my website, Shivvetee.com.

Mezzuzah with grapevines

2010-12-09T12:16:00.005-05:00

Here's an image of a mezzuzah I'm planning on making. It will be carved in African mahogany, with the shin and star highlighted with gold leaf, and other details brought out with acrylic colors.

Divine Causality and human will

2010-11-25T14:13:00.001-05:00

The following poem seems to be an appropriate follow-up to the previous post. Actually, it was written a few months before I wrote the prolegomena, and oddly, it was not written in stevespell. Thus the title, assigning it to Jefferson as my way to honor him. The poem is part of The Pardaes Dokkumen, from the section Tranzkript ov the Hevvenlee Korten. You can find numerous other pieces from The Pardaes Dokkumen in this blog.

Found Beneath a Floorboard in Monticello

What is done in Ertha
That is true and good and compassionate
Is done also in the High Places
And established there in the Central Code.
But what is done here in Ertha
That is false or cruel or inaccurate
Is erased from Ertha
And barriers are erected in the High Places
That are compounded as those errors are repeated,
So that the good has amplified momentum
And what is not for good is increasingly diverted
And diminished in momentum.

However, even in the most corrupt actions
There are minute details of good.
Thus, as the ungood is thwarted,
Yet the fragments of good are promoted.

In all of our actions
Most is dross, to be cast off or thwarted
By the Divine Will.
But the pintele good,
Which is mostly poorly known to us,
Is amplified, that the Divine Will
Slowly, inexorably, works Its Purposes.

Those that act with most force in the world
Rarely achieve much good.
Those that act with most good in the world
Rarely act with force.

The measure of force required
Is a crude measure of an action's ungood.

Concerning the sacred and profane

2010-11-23T21:27:00.001-05:00

Prolegomena to Rebuilding our Moral Foundations

A fundamental distinction that human beings make
     is between the sacred and the profane,
     the moral and the evil,
     that is, between what is holy and “Godlike”
     and what is merely animal.
I believe it is a presumption and a lie
     to claim to know God's will, God's “desires”.
     But by evolving our understanding of the holy
     and pursuing its manifestations in our life
     we can approach, to some degree,
     a certitude of God's being
     and a sense of awareness of God's Presence.
The primary value in being aware of God's Presence
     is that it may help inspire us
     to higher ethical standards
     and it may help support us
     in times of grief and trouble.
Thus:

The Category of the Profane:
There is nothing holy about hatred.
There is nothing holy about anger.
There is nothing holy about violence.
There is nothing holy about bitterness.
There is nothing holy about cynicism.
There is nothing holy about controlling others.
This core of destructive emotions and behaviors
     all incline us towards the profane.

All of these emotions and behaviors
     are part of our being and part of our life.
We will express them sometimes, or often,
     And we must process them constantly,
     but there is, literally, nothing holy in them.
There will be times when such feelings
     may be an appropriate response
     to the world and its events,
     but because they may be appropriate responses
     does not make them holy,
     and therefore, they can never serve
     to elevate us towards the moral,
     and towards God's Presence.
     They are essentially degenerative.
Indeed, the more we feel and express them
     the further we will move away from God's Presence.
Finally, although there are times and situations
     when these feelings may be appropriate,
     even necessary,
When they become the guiding light
     of a person, a group, a nation, an ideology,
     they not only degenerate us morally,
     but they become a marker of a degenerative ideology
     and they can be called evil, unequivocally.
     As such, they become a dangerous enemy
     to the individual, the group, the species.

The Category Between Sacred and Profane:
This is the general realm of the existential,
     the psychological, and the social,
     and is the topic of many, if not most, books.
Most of what we feel and do
     is not inherently sacred or profane.
     Neither does it inherently move us
     towards evil or the moral.
Nonetheless, most of what we feel and do is driven
     by our sacred and profane feelings and motives,
     even though those motives
     may be hidden from our awareness.
Feelings and experiences such as
     fear, pain, suffering, and despair
     tend to damage the individual
     and stunt one's growth towards the sacred.
     It is uncommon for them to generate
     healing and growth
     although, in an environment of healing,
     later growth may occur.
This category of feeling, doing and experiencing –
     the human sitz-in-leben between sacred and profane –
     however compelling a topic of discussion,
     is not my topic here.

The Category of the Sacred:
Compassion strongly inclines us towards the holy.
Charity strongly inclines us towards the holy.
Love strongly inclines us towards the holy.
Prayer inclines us towards the holy.
Self-control inclines us towards the holy.
Respect inclines us towards the holy.
Gentleness inclines us towards the holy.
Some rituals will incline us towards the holy.
Art and creativity can incline us towards the holy.
Joy and pleasure can incline us towards the holy.

All of these emotions and behaviors
     are part of our being and our life.
We may express them sometimes, or often.
They seek to be constantly processed
     and integrated into our being
     although we may be largely unaware of them
     some or much of the time.
They do not originate from animal needs and drives,
     but animal needs and drives
     can sometimes express or further them.

               As an aside:
               The common scientific blindness
               to that aspect of being
               that is not animal,
               but rather of the holy, of the divine,
               is a fundamental stumbling block
               to scientific accuracy
               in theory and practice.

Yet none of these feelings and behaviors
     are inherently holy.
Neither can these feelings and behaviors
     be purely and exclusively holy
     even if done in the most exemplary manner
     by the most exemplary person.
These feelings and behaviors are always mixed
     with profane feelings and behaviors,
     particularly the profane desire to control others.
For this reason, even these feelings and behaviors
     that incline to the holy
     can become a means to do profane and evil things.
For example:
     to claim that there is only one correct way
     to do sacred behaviors
     is a blatant falsehood,
     and an active means of controlling others,
     and is therefore, profane, and inclines to evil,
     even though the conscious intention
     is to guide to the holy.

Shaping Communities to Incline towards the Sacred:
It is appropriate to punish profane action.
It is inappropriate to punish profane feelings and thoughts.
It is appropriate to critically challenge
     profane feelings and thoughts by exploring their motives
     and their potential consequences.
Proper education will incline
     away from profane thoughts and behaviors
     and towards the sacred,
     but no education, however exemplary,
     is capable of eliminating profane feelings
     and behaviors.

It is inappropriate to punish a failure to do sacred actions.
It is appropriate to critically encourage
     sacred feelings and thoughts
     by exploring their mixed motives,
     and their potential consequences,
     sacred and profane.
It is appropriate to encourage sacred action
     so long as care is taken
     to understand and evaluate
     the non-sacred motives within every sacred action.

Homeostasis, evolution, and paganism

2010-11-14T17:02:00.002-05:00

What follows is a non-poetic restatement of the ideas in my poem “XIII” of “Pesez ov an Unrevelen Narrattiv”, which is a poem-series in my longer poem Mith ov the Aternen Jew.

While exploring the psychological roots of anti-Semitism, it has occurred to me that the contents of consciousness can be generated by interior workings of the body itself. Indeed, much of what we call myth (such as the various myths of the Jew, or the idea of Messiah, or ideas and stories about God or The Gods) may be seen as a narrativization of biological forces. This is not so strange as it might, at first, sound. The idea is derived by understanding that homeostasis and evolution are two conflicting forces in nature, and it is further substantiated by the circularity of consciousness. Let me explain.

Homeostasis is, to quote that intellectual cornerstone, Wikipedia,

...the property of a system, either open or closed, that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition. Typically used to refer to a living organism, the concept came from that of milieu interieur that was created by Claude Bernard and published in 1865. Multiple dynamic equilibrium adjustment and regulation mechanisms make homeostasis possible.

Thus, all living creatures rely on homeostasis, the body-mind’s attempt to survive by maintaining balance and stability in an environment that is inherently, and ultimately, destabilizing and destructive.

One of those forces that is pitted against homeostasis is evolution. Evolutionary changes reconfigure both interior and exterior biological “landscapes”, causing organisms to constantly rebalance and reconfigure their systems to optimize survival. Exterior evolutionary and environmental changes threaten an organism’s ability to survive by changing the conditions of the niche in which the organism lives. Interior evolutionary changes, that is evolutionary changes in an organism itself, directly confront the homeostatic systems that manage an organism. The organism’s own systems now must compete for control of resources and management functions. From a homeostatic “point of view”, evolutionary changes are invasive and threatening systems.

I would suggest that these interior stresses, while largely subconscious, yet get converted to narratives, as the mind seeks explanations for its stresses. This narrativization of biological stressors is not surprising. One of the conundrums (or ironies) of human consciousness is that we are bound by the circularity of our senses. We use our senses to observe what our senses are. We are not able to step out of ourselves, to step out of our bodies, and perceive what our senses really are, or what our senses are truly perceiving. The notion that our senses are merely windows on reality, while alluring, is unfortunately just a simplistic attempt to step out of our inherent circularity. Acknowledging this circularity, we are forced to the notion that our minds, as our senses, are interpreters and mythmakers, not raw observers. Our identities are myths, as are our ideologies. Thus, our biology will serve our mythmaking, as part of our general experience.

By the way, I use the term “myth” here both in its lesser sense as “illusion”, and in its more elevated sense as a foundational layer of consciousness. Our myths are full of illusion, and yet they can also be our best attempts to understand the circular reality into which we are bound. Thus, for me, “science” is also myth.

We humans are a species in the midst of evolutionary stresses, both interior and exterior. Our particular interior competitions and stresses generated by evolution amplify the exterior stresses of survival, causing a persistent tendency to build a narrative of ethnic invasion. Thus we have biological as well as social stresses tending to create myths of the “other”. This would help account for the persistence of anti-Semitism and its many underlying narratives, including its most modern incarnation, anti-Zionism – hatred of the idea of a Jewish nation.

One final detail, critical to my semi-narrative poem Mith ov the Aternen Jew. While evolution is generally believed to proceed randomly, evolutionary forces are well known to pursue gradients, that is, to fill niches in nature. In my poem I claim that there are gradients in nature that are working to eliminate paganistic thinking. In this case I define “pagan” not in the traditional religious way - the worship of idols and “false” gods - but in psychological terms. Paganistic thinking claims that law and ethics are relative and human productions, and that therefore, there is no one correct system of law or ethics.

I would argue that history suggests the opposite. It appears that humans are moving towards a singular and unified definition of law and ethics. Tribal borders and ethnicities are rapidly breaking down (the foundational cause of Islamic terrorism, by the way). In this process, languages, too are rapidly disappearing.

It seems the biblical prophets understood this particular gradient working on human consciousness, unabashedly claiming that one law and one moral standard would dominate the world. There now seems to be much evidence to that effect, even as we struggle to know, and to shape, what that law and ethics is. What were once prophetic statements that appeared to be arrogantly ethnocentric and wildly implausible, now seem to be the first harbingers of the obvious and the necessary.

Thus I say, there ARE gradients directing evolution, and it seems some of them became a source of ideological belief, long before there was evidence to substantiate them.

Myth of the Eternal Jew, 7

2010-11-13T20:53:00.001-05:00

Here’s a brief excerpt from The Mith ov the Aternen Jew, in which we meet the four brothers united in their hate of Jews. They will come and go in the narrative, commonly bringing some comic relief.

Sheep bleet an the sof klipklop
Az thaer keeper herdz them down the lane,
Thwak ov hiz swich uppon thaer baks.
Behiend him a donkee, hiz prodijjes piss.
Ammung the kobbelz it spatter an run,
Sparen not the brutherz sprawld in the dung.

Still ly thay drunk wile the sky groen pale,
An sleepee Jerusalem beginz tu exhale
The mixxen texcher ov fraegren and fume:
Frying fish an rotten flesh
The siklee sweet an moldee daets,
Goet an its rut, lemmen an tee,
The raenk porterz, thaer grunt and weez.
A flute maeks maree, the lilt an kroek
Ov voisez in aksent, lafter and kers.
The skweel a chieldz and the kaw ov kro.
Hammer on bronz, a kart its groen.

     "Yo Iven; yu Fritz; hay Paydro and Husson.
     "Drag yersellz frum the filth ov the roed.
     "How long in yur drunk will yu snor and spowt?
     "The tavern maetren haz throen yu owt."

from The Fawl ov Helloweez

2010-11-04T13:00:00.002-04:00

While working on Gottverdammerung, my notes indicated I needed a quote from an earlier book in the series, Bouk 5, The Fawl ov Helloweez. As I began to search for it, I read this opening scene and was blown away. Were these my words?? This is not an uncommon experience for me, and thus I have come to understand that I do not write these verses. They write me. I'll let your imagination decide on the source of them. The following excerpt from Bouk 5 will point to my own opinion on that matter.

A bit of context: Bouk 4 is the story of Justinian and Theodora, and Bouk 5 is the story of Abelard and Heloise. In this scene we are in the liminal or transmigrant space between them, elevated to the perspective of Ertha and Elmallah. Thus, Theodora and Heloise are incarnations of Ertha, as Justinian and Abelard are incarnations of Elmallah, the messenger of God, come to lift up Ertha from her lowly place.

A note on the layout of the text: indents indicate the various voices. Elmallah's words are given one indent; Ertha, 2; Theyodorra, 4; comments, 5.

Swooning Allong the Kurvacherz

                    Theyodorra lay on her bed, benummd
                    Frum exxosten ov emoshennel diskor.
                    She lay with her armz krosst on her chest
                    Az she woud in deth, in a kase ov stone.

Ertha opend her eyz. She staerd
For a moment at the ultra-vilet globe
In wich she lay; a bewtafful pattern
Ov liets surrownding. "Starz," she reyaliezd.
Her etherek boddee pulst, florressen.

Beside her Elmallah stoud, louking down,
Werree, kompashen, joy in hiz eyz.

                    Theyodorra opend her eyz. Az if
                    The sunrize had not yet begun; the werld
                    Wuz blurd, shadoez hung like nietmaerz.
                         Az if thay wer smoke
                         Frum a smoldering fiyer... -- Levvel 1:1
                    Her thots drifted in konvolving eddeez.
                    Her miend in superpozing boddeez

                    Justinneyan stoud abuv her skowling.
                    He muevd and disappeered in the tennuwus lite.
                    Theyodorra, grippt with revulzhen and feer,
                    Lay, unnabel tu stir or make a sownd.

Hors, Ertha wisperd, "How kan this be?
          "A moment aggo I had been abbandend
          "Tu a werld, a prizzen, an opake boddee
          "Huze bowndreez, huze wawlz koud not be breecht;
          "A karben web that koud not be torn
          "Withowt destroying the life it restraend."

     "Ertha, Ertha, in mennee boddeez
     "Livz the Sol ov the Lor and its hewman sensez.
     "Az the siv filterz sand; az kurtenz kut lite;
     "Az the boddee akts az a sheeth tu thot,
     "Restrikting superpozing lievz and werldz;
     "Yet eech filter iz permeyabbul.

     "Yu ar still passing thru Theyodorra
     "Tho her werld groez dim and her thots dizzolv
     "In yur hiyer perseptenz, like salt in wotter.
     "She iz not destroyed, but interleeving.
     "And within Theyodorra dwellz Innonna,
     "And within Innonna the dizzolved beingz
     "Kannot be distingwisht frum your awtonommek self."

Haf heering, Ertha gaezd at Elmallah,
Joy and releef washing over her fase
Like waevz in tide run, a slow immersen.
Behind hiz eyz a spirel ov starz
Wer terning, surrownding hiz hed like a krown.

                    Az if she wer lasht tu her bed, arching,
                    Aggenst her roeps, straening, fureyus
                    Tossing her hed from side tu side,
                    Still Theyodorra koud not withstand
                    The tiedz, and sank beneeth the waevz.

The spirel ov starz irrezistablee spinz,
Owtstreching its armz in the dans ov ajez,
Behiend Elmallah, a jyant vortex
Sentering arownd hiz etherek shaedz.
          "Yu hav alwayz been here," Ertha fienlee mermerd,
          "Tho time had passt and yu wer gon.
          "Now kumming tu see yur shape in awl shaeps
          "Yur thot in awl Thot, yur luv that endorz.
          "My yeerz allone have tellaskoept
          "Tu a moment, have dissappeerd and ar gon,
          "Like a grane ov salt dizzolvd in the see."

Tho the moshen ov the mereyad starz seemd randem,
Az Elmallah muevd, so thay tuu muevd,
A dimend korrona tu hiz silluwet;
Or perhaps it wuz he konforming tu the sky.

     "I am alwayz being, I am always reterning,
     "I am alwayz at thresh ov the Moment ov Bliss.
     "Yu ar alwayz krying, yu ar alwayz dying
     "Yu ar alwayz in need and rezisten my help.
     "Wen I hoeld yu, yu fade intu annuther boddee.
     "Wen I tuch yu, iz it assid, iz it ise I will feel?
     "How kan I make yur prezzens harmonek?
     "Wut yur eyz see, wut yur miend knoez,
     "It chaenjez in yur alkemmekkel moodz."

          "Not so! Yu ar kruwel! Yu meerlee make exkuse
          "For yur lak ov luv for me and my werld.
          "Yu hav kum heer, yu say, tu lift me up,
          "Tu leed me owt ov my artiffis ov babbel,
          "Tu press a messij intu my blud.
                         I will put my teaching into their inmost being,
                         and inscribe it upon their hearts.
                         -- Yermeyahu 31:33

          "But du yu lift me, or am I raezd?
          "A moment aggo I lay suspended
          "In an ultra-marrene dome ov lite.
          "Now it unjulaets in a brillyent arrorra,
          "Fraktelling spirelz ov sinnabbar and goeld.
          "Wut wuz wuns a sky, and meerlee a sky
          "Had bekum an intrakket, dazzling mozayek,
          "But now aggen it haz darkend and dulld."

                    In oppressiv sleep Theyodorra moend.
                    Swetting beneeth her velvet kwilts
                    She koud not wake up; she koud not even tern.

Like a distent sittee, seen long aggo,
Like a plase deskriebd in an aenshent powem,
Like a straenj land in a straenj dreem,
Ertha rememberd Theyodorra.
She shudderd and ternd bak tu Elmallah.

          "Am I uther than wut yur Lor kreyated?
          "Dizzolvd intu Naecher and fawlowing its kontorz
          "I kling tu the freedem tu think and tu akt.
          "And with that freedem I hav tryd tu chaenj
          "A werld that iz harsh. Ware I hav faeld,
          "The ellements prevael and I am tranzmuted;
          "I am batterd; I am skarrd; I am klose tu ruwin.
          "But in my struggel at leest I am free.
          "And woud yu withhoeld my freedem tuu?"

     "Wut iz the freedem that I mite withhoeld?
     "Duz a meteyer taring thru the sky hav freedem?
     "Duz the sun in its serkelz or the unrulee wind?
     "Deskribe the freedem ov the timmid deer
     "Hiding frum the woolf. Or the silent hunter
     "Hungree and bending thru the bloing sno.
     "And my oen krooked path inside this darkness...
     "Tell me wut du yu need tu be free?
     "Then tell me how I mite giv it tu yu."

          "Doent tell me nuthing iz free in this werl!
          "If that wer so, wy hav yu kum?
          "I nevver konsidderd wy befor,
          "But yu hav shoed me: Luv, Saekred Luv!
          "Yu hav torn a vale frum akross my eyz,
          "And my Sol haz opend tu a vast reflekten.
          "This yu hav dun! Kreyated my purpos!
          "Then you take it and say it wuz nevver thare!

          "Duz the bee reflekt uppon hiz stashen
          "And deside if he will gather hunnee?
          "But the beeten dog may fienlee revolt
          "And flee tu the forrest, tu be wield aggen.
          "How much mor ar we made free,
          "Hu kan speek with yu; hu kan hoeld yur luv?

          "But now yu lay annutherz thots,
          "Annutherz sinz intu my Sol,
          "And say, This tuu iz yurz. And mor!'
          "But I say, No! I will not karee!'
          "Take this Theyonorra frum me!
          "My steps ar not my oen enneemor.
          "Like a mule yu lode me till I fawl."

     "Ertha, wut yu say iz tru.
     "Yu hav sed it tu me; I'll repeet it tu yu,
     "And it will be like a bouk in yur Sol.
     "In eech ov yur ajez yu will studdee a porshen
     "Ov this treetis that I will kawl Yes and No.
                         (Note: in his incarnation as Abalard
                         this is a book he will write.)

     "In eech ov yur ajez yu will diskuvver
     "That yu ar not free, and yes yu ar.
     "The werl iz like a vizhuwel trik:
     "Yu kan see the staerwell az if frum abuv,
     "Or frum belo wen yu bleenk yur eyz.
     "Freedem iz but a twist ov perspektiv.
     "Ware yu ar iz hard but fixt;
     "Yur destinnaten iz wut iz at risk."

For moments and ajez Ertha ponderd; then:
          "Ware tu Elmallah? And how?"

The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming, seen 6

2010-10-28T17:56:00.004-04:00

As I mentioned in my post of 10/22, this is the opening scene of Bouk 6, Gottverdammerung, of The Song of Elmallahz Kumming.

Fragmenz ov the Rivka Sikel
     Ertha by the Side ov the Rode

Az if the twilite had not yet begun.
Thare on a hill ware the fool moon hung
Liefless and koeld in a parcht blak awlder,
She lay kerld up, her owtlienz obskure.
                    Az if the sunrize had not yet begun... -- Levvel 1:1

Like wisps ov smoke frum a smoeldering fiyer,
Gray and loopee in kaerless koyelz
Thay rize thru the charkoel awlder branchez,
Wile kriez faentlee tumbel down thru the hillz.

Az if it wer eevning and the faent kry ov loonz,
Made faenter by distant thunderz that shrowd
The marshland and peers the aer with terrerz;
So her kryz wer vage, misteereyus, raw.

     Az if a chield emerjen frum a hows
     In flaemz, moenz ov the dying behiend her,
     A straenjer laez a babee in her armz,
     And sez tu her, “Take this and run for help.”

Az if just annuther bereevd wouman
Beside a kart-path weeping allone;
But in that deseptivlee mundane snapshot
     A werl ov unnerthlee impressenz swerld,
     Driven this apparentlee hoemless wouman
     Beyond the borderz ov her feer.
                    Her mind holds an unrevealed focus
                    in spite of her great anxiety.
                    But what has she to fear?
                    – Comment

The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming, seen 1

2010-10-22T19:01:00.006-04:00

This post presents the first scene of Bouk 1 of The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming. This is work from over 15 years ago. You can find the whole poem, properly typeset, in the Reading Room of my website at http://www.shivvetee.com/. However, as I complete Bouk 6, Gottverdammerung, of The Song, (a work long overdue, I confess), I wanted to compare this opening scene to that of Bouk 6, which I will post in a day or so. I hope you will find it an interesting comparison.

So, Bouk 1, Seen 1:

In which Elmallah is overwhelmed by his first impressions of Ertha. He is not yet aware that it is his Presence that has amplified Ertha’s Life with so much more power, beauty, and desire than ever she possessed before. Who is this Elmallah? They are a Being -- compared to you and me -- whose orbit is much wider, whose horizons are far more distant, whose temperature is higher, whose velocity is faster, whose knowledge is not passed down from old time but is direct comprehension.
                    When our Lor comes down,
                    they make us change;
                    They make us greater.

Az if the sunrize
Had not yet begun
And thare on a hill,
Ware the ful moon hung
Entangeld in parcht akkasiyaz,
She muevd, her owtlienz obskure.
                    Elmallah, as he approaches Ertha,
                    is struck by her obscurity and illusoriness.
                    – Comment

Az if thay wer smoke,
Frum a smoldering fiyer
Koiling in kazhewal ternz
Like tendrilz abowt the akkasiya branchez,
Her thots drifted in that wilderness.

Az if erlee don
And the faent kry ov loonz
Made faenter by vaperz
That shrowd the salt marshez,
So her vois wuz vage, misteereyus.

Az if a wouman
Meerlee puling a brush thru her hare,
But in that deseptivlee simpel moshun
A meerreyad illuzhenz surrownded her prezzens,
Exerting thair powwer like a werlpull
Agenst my feer ov her inkoherens.
                    Her image has begun to sharpen
                    as he draws near, but fear stops him.
                    What has he to fear?
                    – Comment

Forbidden Fruit

2010-10-17T18:46:00.002-04:00

Written on Shabbat Lekh Lekha, in which Abram hears the call, 'Go Forth! Go Into Yourself!'

For Bidden and For Givven Frute

Az Addom and Khuvva* truj owt ov Eden
                              * “Khuvva”: the actual Hebrew for “Eve”
In all thaer shok an bitter sorro,
Khuvva she say, iyz down uppon her ertha,
          “I havven no regret for that wun taesten,
          “An woud du enneetheeng tu hav annuther.”
Then ternz he, Addom, an grunten laff.
          “We will fienden that tree, serten heer,
          “And du ar evvolueshenz* beneeth it.”
                              * Others say, “ablueshenz”

The Son Reunited tu Hiz Fater

2010-10-12T21:24:00.005-04:00

About 30 years ago I did a painting entitled The Son Reunited tu Hiz Fater. I gave it to my parents, and it hung in their house all those years until my dad died a year ago. It's now in my son Josh's house. It never occurred to me to photograph it until this morning. Josh just emailed me the image.

The painting doesn't hold together as a whole, but it has some interesting details. Here's one. It's a field of gold leaf work with a spiral etched into it, and a portrait in the center, done in acrylics. From the lower right issues an energy field in gold leaf and acrylic. From the middle right the first letters of the painting's title, in reverse gold leaf calligraphy, can be made out.

This whole detail is about 3 inches square in the original painting.

Strolling the Appalachian Trail

2010-10-11T21:55:00.004-04:00

We took a 2 day trip to Shenandoah National Park, staying in a log cabin west of Luray, across the Shenandoah River. Here are some images of our stroll along the Appalachian Trail, Oct. 10, 2010.

Zeno's Paradox

2010-10-07T21:52:00.004-04:00

I have been fascinated by Zeno's Paradox for at least 4 decades, and there must be many dozens of musings scattered through my notebooks on the topic, including not a few solutions to the paradox. This is my latest musing.

5/15/2010, Shabbat Bemidbar, plane to DC
Reading Bohm, Implicate Order, pp. 199 to a third of the way down 201.

Zeno’s paradox, although appearing to pertain to motion, really is about consciousness and the perception of time. In consciousness, time is overlapping, like a series of semi-transparent images arrayed and overlapping each other. The term I have used is “superimposition” and in some cases “embedded,” while Bohm uses “enfolded.” As our sense of time is superimposed (a fundamental property of consciousness), so events are embedded in each other, and “now” includes some indeterminate component of “past” and “future.” The more expanded and expansive (expansen) our consciousness, the more the past and future is “embedden” in our “now.” Indeed, we must not think of time as a single thread, and in the same way, we must not think of consciousness as a single thread, or even as just a few threads. Our math, Aristotelian, Euclidean, as it is, distorts and misrepresents reality. We mathematically represent motion as a vector, but it is really multiple vectors, which in the calculus of consciousness are synthesized and unified, a simplification useful for most applications, but inaccurate as we begin to unpack the actual “workings” (in quotes because the term implies a mechanistic representation, and consciousness is not mechanistic) of consciousness and our awareness of minute periods of time and motion. When we try to stop-frame time, we realize it can’t be done. Just as a geometric point is a fiction, so is an instant in time. However, an instant in consciousness is not only an indeterminately short moment, it is a series or compilation of time frames, long and short, extending back, potentially thousands of years, or more, and forward in ways and “distances” we cannot calculate or comprehend.

Hercules overtakes the turtle because the geometric model that would restrain him with its infinite regression is fundamentally flawed. It posits time as a single line made up of an infinite number of tangent points. But time is not a single line, it is not even linear, and there are no such things as instants.

At my horizon, and hazy still:

1. Time is a complex superimposition of multiple frame-periods, individually discontinuous (?), and variable in their endurance/extension, (reified, integrated synthesized) by consciousness.

2. Human will/intentionality is the (necessity)(?) that generates this uni-dimensional synthesis, this illusion of a single thread of time, of moments, of motion, and of divisibility. I say will is what drives us to create the Euclidean illusions of time because will is what motivates us build, make tools, hunt, plan, and calculate, and all these functions require that time be simplified into one dimension in a series of causally connected moments.

3. Concepts and perceptions of predictability and control derive from archaic portions of consciousness that incline us to strip reality of its complexities.

Year number 5771

2010-10-06T19:36:00.003-04:00

This is a meditation on the holiday of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. This holiday, unlike the secular new year, is not about public celebration and inebriation, but rather, personal meditation and a desire for greater clarity. Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of a period called the Days of Awe, which is a 10 day period of atonement and renewal.

New to DC, I had no community among whom I wanted to spend these days, so instead I composed this poem. This is Part 1 of a 3 part poem.

BTW, this is year number 5771 according to the Jewish calendar. That number, based on calculations derived from the Bible and its genealogies, is the number of years since the world, and Adam, was created. While having no scientific-cosmological significance, it does have the virtue of being an attempt to be inclusive of all histories, nationalities, and ethnicities.

Rush HaShunnem 5771

I.
Hoemless, shuelless, lostful. In time tu kum
Wut will Hem Jujjen rekord on me?
Knowen, az we du, this iz the time tu kum,
That we ar thare an it iz now.

The five thowzanth, sevven hundreth,
And sevventee ferst ov now
Akkorden tu them kownterz a yeer an jennerratenz
Ov the Bouk a Kreyatenz, Braysheet*
                    * Rabbinic name for Genesis
Wen the ferst toklee Speren* dessenden frum Uddoniy.
                    * Targum Oenkelos
                    a targum being a translation of the Bible.

This the yeer, in all iz pasts an fewcherz,
And I allone in this garden
Not ware moest ar kongraggaten
Tu intoenz mellodeyus ov theze ten day.
I insted, a sakraffise led asside.

Theze five thowzen sevven hunnert
Sevventee wun faddemless moment
Ov Divvine Invadenz by ar Uddoniy,
Hem enterree intu an Addomful werdz.

Fathemfil werlz ov Hem kreyaten.
Intu the rivverree Now Hem por
Iz milk an hunnee, bownteeful longenz.
All ov us laden with sweet beleevenz,
Sharplee for battelz, this Divvine invaze.

Sum ov us kleegen tu ar lanlock goedz,
     Say Baal an Baldor,
     Say annammel tokkenz.
An sum at the hed ov Uddoniyz charge
Say thay ar wonten tu slotter them foek.

The Preesthoud strenthen thaer armz a Torra.
Not all bludee, not all Dethee,
Not by forsen, not in feersen
Will Uddoniy konkers be fownd.

Studdee the werden and studdee the werlen
And the lanlock goeden will submit themsel,
Groenen ov weeng, anjellek minyenz
Rizzen frum the nativ soyellen.

Yes, annuther yeeren in Divvine evazen
And I allone in this nativ gard,
My vois but a silent kord in the nusakh*,
                    * Melody and tonality of prayers,
                    particular to each Jewish holiday
Lone sakrafise that I am intoenz
Ov theze Awfild Dayz a Nu Yeer.

The 102 Voices

2010-09-21T09:11:00.007-04:00

I have come across a rare and ancient archeological find(!) while unpacking a hundred or so boxes into my study. (Re: our move from LA to DC).
In a box we recently removed from a storage locker in Pittsburgh remaining from when we packed up my parents' house after my dad died a year and a half ago, I found this poem, probably from 1971. It was mimeographed (yes, before photocopying became generally accessible!), which is to say, blue print, typewriter font, on a crumbling sheet of 16 lb. paper, brown and jagged around the edges.
One of my earliest extant poems.
The images come from many troubled dreams and troubled days. Oddly, I can still remember the context of many of these images. Dare I mention some? Vietnam War, hippies, drugs, revolutionary talk, a university campus, and I am immersed in surrealism, psychoanalytics, and dreams.
I will try to reproduce what the poem looks like, typos and blotted out lines included:

The 102 Voices

Time of light voices.

City traffic backing up
A jet landing
A dog howling
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx At a door a knock
Chains rattling
A radio and TV
Unsettled turning of an old man

An undercurrent of whispering.

Chopped Harleys on the expressway
A junkyard in the forest
A broken wine bottle
Children playing
The theatre is full
The one sitting opposite, his head gone
Others leaving

More voices.

An open library
A free museum
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
A green statue in a park
The light changes
A glass high school
A finger pointing
The inocent confess
Music in an auditorium
A dead cliché
People leaving a speech
A recurring fantasy
A nightmare
A thief protects a crying child
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Voices shouting in the night.

A doberman tearing at a fence
Forbidden country
The badlands of South Dakota
A rocky shoreline
A carriage stops
Those lying in the dust run off
A tornado walks east
Running steps on a bridge
Heard from below
A nude is being painted
A fire burning
A world created

Gottverdammerung, 5

2010-09-14T15:06:00.004-04:00

This poem is a brief flash of lightning in Gottverdammerung: In the End ov Time, Bouk 6 of my poem, The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming. The poem is set in the Shoah. You can read other scenes from this Bouk by clicking on the label “Shoah,” a screen or two below, on the right.

Technically, the poem tries to emulate the unfolding of a fractal geometric pattern.

Likwidz

Likwid data,
It drips thru yur feengz.

Likwid naeshen,
We slipt thru thaer faengz,
Afraed, fraed intu driplets.

Likwiddaeshen,
Ript thru thaer draeng; maengelled intu greefs,
Graevz in pitlets,
Blud drips and leengerz in ravveenz.

Likwid data.
It draenz in rivvulets, drips intu ravveenz.

Likwid naeshen.
Raenz and the leevz ar shivverreenz,
Runz intu rivvulets: greeverz, disappeererz, disseeverz.

Likwiddaten.
Leevz shivverreeng in thunderz,
Drippen a droplets intu deep ravveenz,
A disbeleeverz feengz reech frum a shallo graev.

Likwid,
Blud and feerz and diyer ideyaz.
Beleef drips intu ravveenz.
Feengz grip at oeld deseevenz.
A pepel kleengz tu frinjen, torn tu slivverz,
Drivven intu faenten shaedz a shaddo.
But duz not dissappeerz.

found this in my notebook

2010-09-07T10:00:00.002-04:00

Those that act with most force in the world
Rarely act for good (or achieve much good).
Those that act with most good in the world
Rarely act with force.

The measure of force required
Is a crude measure of an action's ungood.

Feuchtwanger's Eternal Jew

2010-09-05T21:39:00.002-04:00

Re-approaching the surface, half-drowned, after our move from LA to DC...

As you probably know, I am composing a longish narrative poem, exploring the myth of the “Eternal Jew,” a myth that has arisen in response to the Jew's inexplicable survival in a long and harsh exile. The existing literature on the subject has, interestingly, spanned the spectrum from philosemitic to antisemitic.

I believe the most definitive academic exploration of the subject is George K. Anderson's The Legend of the Wandering Jew, originally published in 1965. His review of the literature is arranged chronologically, and I have been plowing my way thru that tome, and am now up to the early 20th century. Curiously, however, in one of the other books I'm currently reading, The Jewish Caravan, subtitled “Great Stories of Twenty-five Centuries,” edited by Leo W. Schwartz, I just came across a variant of the myth written by Lion Feuchtwanger, entitled The Eternal Jew. I went to my Anderson, and altho he notes Feuchtwanger for an unexceptional excerpt on the topic from his novel Jud Süss, there is no reference to this 19 page story devoted exclusively to the topic. Shame on you, George.

The Feuchtwanger story is absolutely brilliant: laugh-out-loud funny, bitingly satiric (Feuchtwanger was declared literary enemy number one by Goebbels!), socially critical, psychologically penetrating, politically prescient, and knee-deep in historic and literary references. What a tour de force!

I thought you might enjoy a couple of short excerpts, all taken from a few pages at the end of the story:

A psychological insight:
“Antisemitism is a lifeless thing without a will of its own. If you only say the right kind of abracadabra then it is sure to become animated and active. It stands outside of all ethical evaluation. It is the sworn enemy of the spirit which withers in its presence....”

A sadly prescient scene:
After that the room began to expand as if by enchantment and became transformed into a vast square which reeked with smoke and blood. Towering heaps of Hebrew books were being burned. Stakes had been erected. They were so high they seemed to pierce the clouds. And the innumerable Jews that were tied to them were being toasted to a cinder. A chorus of priests were intoning: Gloria in excelsis Deo....”

Biting political satire:
“Why do you speak with such contempt of the 100% Germans?” he interrupted me. [100% Germans: the "racially pure" Germans that the nazis extolled]
“Contempt? Not that I am aware of. You might have said more correctly – compassion. As a schoolboy I had much to do with the sons of leading 100% German families. Many of them were upright, good natured, but endowed with moderate talents. In the study of languages and history, but particularly in German composition, they were hard put to get by. And several had to thank me for getting out of school a year sooner because they were God-fearing and adroit and copied from my notes.
But remarkably enough they all excelled in sports. … And these good athletes, but miserable logicians, who for decades have undertaken the guidance of German political life, are today as well the leaders of the German Nationalist movement.”

Social criticism (anyone in Iran, Turkey, Syria, Pakistan, et al listening?):
Only that nation whose national ambitions are greater than its ability to realize them, can deteriorate to such an extent as to wish to blame the Jews for something that every healthy nation accepts as a matter of pride: responsibility for its own deeds.

Some Jewish self-criticism:
“You of course notice that the Jews themselves do not take this sudden antisemitic explosion seriously.”
“What then are the Jews doing?”
“They are laughing.”
“They – what?”
“Yes. They are amused by the lack of talent and the grammatical errors of the antisemitic propagandists.”

And this made me laugh out loud, especially the puns on the suggested German names:
We had finally arrived at the home of the newlyweds.... Gertrud proudly exhibited the twins.
“What are their names?” I asked.
“The girl's name is Marie...”
“Marie! Pfui!” exclaimed the Eternal Jew. “That's a Hebrew name. It is a derivative of Miriam. You should have named her Frigg.”
“In any case you will like the boy's name. He is called Hans.”
“Hans! Pfui!” sneered the Eternal Jew. “It is also Hebrew and derived from Johanan. Why didn't you name him Teut?”
Marbod and Gertrud laughed heartily. “If the Jewish and the German are so well tangled together,” said Gertrud, “who can possibly unscramble them again?”

Wheeling and Dealings, part 7 of 7

2010-07-22T09:52:00.001-04:00

Wheeling and Dealings
5/20/2010

But what struck me most on this trip, beyond the details of personal travel narrative, and the philosophic excursions and spiritual geography, are the personal changes I felt, strange, unexpected, outside the frames of development and psychology I have read, and specifically this: I sat next to my son, not as a father, but as a partner, brother, friend, even a son at times, casting me into a new I, and thrusting him into a new he, and us in a new relationship, distinctly and exotically outside of time and history, I in a sixty year old body that had no sense of the passage of time and its progressively insistent fragility, I with my twenty-five year old son, who for all my love and all our experiences together, was totally new and liberated from any constraints of relative age, from his past, and from our past, as I entered a mystical, 5-geared rolling palace, a time-warp inside a dream world, stripped of its awesome and disorienting otherworldliness, and instead a natural, new reality, appropriate and familiar in all its discontinuity.

And it was evening and it was morning, and I picked up my scriber and took a shabbatlik breath, and I began to serve, to write.

A poem interlude

2010-07-21T16:23:00.005-04:00

An interlude here, before the 7th and last part of Wheeling and Dealings.
This poem is part of Gottesverdammerung, Bouk 6 of The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming. It came to me as a dream, and I have thus made it a dream-poem of the main character of the story, Rivka, a Jewish woman trying to escape the nazi death net. The poem is, as it were, a communique from an inmate of a concentration camp.

Kessim
                         A dream-poem dictated to Rivka
                         by Yitzkhak, her murdered husband.

     Sum string here, a butten thare,
     A shu lase, a skrap ov kloth.
     For a seel starving, a kup ov koffee,
     Just a littel sip will be enuf.

Ower lievz wer hanging on a fals ballans,
Delereyus kreecherz dansing on a galloez.
Sum wer unlukkee and got the noos;
The unlukkeyer wunz the mob set loos.

     Sum string here, a butten thare,
     A shu lase, a skrap ov kloth.
     For a werthless life hanging in the ballans
     A littel sip mite be enuf.

Seelz dying for a taest ov redempshen.
We toild, owwer feengerz sluggish and numm.
Ower feet freezing; owwer eyz blurrd;
We obsesst on a kup, steeming blak koffee.

     Sum string here, a butten thare,
     A shu lase, a skrap ov kloth.
     Peeking owt ov owwer shrunken boddeez,
     Theze skraps koud save, or a kup ov broth.

Louking down on owwer shrunken boddeez
Frum a hiyer plase – no feer, no lakk,
We prepaerd garments for the nu arrivelz,
Thaer lievz exchaenjd for a gram ov ragz.

     Sum string here, a butten thare,
     A shu lase, a skrap ov kloth.
     A seekret trezher karreed on the wind;
     Like a wiff ov koffee, then gon aggen.

Tu restraen the helldogz, a seekret kode.
Tu tok abowt praer wuz streng ferbode.
So we kawld it 'kessim', koffee, just a sip.
The wormth, the arroma, just the thot ov it.

Wheeling and Dealings, part 6 of 7

2010-07-21T09:47:00.002-04:00

Wheeling and Dealings
5/20/2010

Josh and I roll into Bloomington a few minutes after 5pm, unload the truck, sweating and grunting and stumbling our way with my parents’ things into his house, which, piece by piece grows odder, more dissonant, more gratifying, as their things reshape his house, so that his living room for me becomes a museum of living memories; a glass taken from a kitchen cabinet; silverware from a drawer – it was ugly in Monroeville, it's beautiful here; paintings on the wall – two pages from an illuminated Persian manuscript, the girl with her back to us, sitting on a bed playing guitar (my sister's first art purchase), the photo of my father as a little boy, riding a horse-drawn grocery wagon with his father; the skinny, taciturn secretary overseeing the room with her wrinkled glass panes; the massive couch (that was a bitch to carry); the samovar in the corner and its Magyar tea-drinking spirits; all allow me to once again sit with my parents, as I sit with my child who I admire and love with virtually no limits.

Now I take a slow, deep sixth breath.

Wheeling and Dealings, part 5 of 7

2010-07-20T08:53:00.000-04:00

Wheeling and Dealings
5/20/2010

But, in truth, it's not that one

because, how can I make a contract with myself?, how can I, or anyone be so divided?, and yet this is a common psychological representation, for me an example of inaccurate analysis, of sloppy use of language and an artificial architecture of introspection, long time shaping our psychology, at least back to Laing and others who explore in depth a “divided self,” creating false images, as if there is more than one mind, rather than a mind confronted with multiple options, uncertain, conflicted, confused by its choices, its decisions, its risks, of who to be and what to do, but like a sack full of all that we travel with, treasures, necessities, leaky containers, things we should have long ago discarded, trash and broken objects, a rumpled sack, a torn sack from which things are lost, but all that is in the sack, pressed together, perhaps grinding, perhaps breaking, all of this is what our self is made of, and this is its wholeness, however empty or overstuffed or jumbled the sack may be; and thus my contention: I cannot make a contract with myself! since such an idea is built on the illusion that I am also not-I; and yet, and yet... one identity can dominate another, can gobble up possibilities and prey on the needs of conflicting identities, as if, or until I am not-I, or I am hurting I...

But in this case, at least, no, Josh, I am not breaking a contract with myself, but with the One that sent me here, that lifted me from inconscience, however minute that lifting may have been, that inspired me and told me, “go forth and study this world and report back to Me; go forth and explore this world and reflect and evaluate all you see and offer it up to those who would listen, because what you see well, I will have shown you, and what you say well, I will have dictated, but what you mis-see and what you mis-tell will fall away, like chaff blown away by the wind, but after all, if the harvest is good, then grain will be gathered and Souls will be fed and strengthened; this I believe as a caster of seeds and a gleaner of sheaves, even tho I have planted and wandered on, and, having wandered, cannot perceive the harvest, altho in my rounds it appears that few have gathered what has grown behind me, and fewer, surely, perhaps none at all, are sustained by the produce; yes, I realize this, and worse, I realize that of the many wonders I have seen, perhaps all are but illusions, and all I have told is but chaff, yet this I believe: where I have shirked my contract, there will I be held accountable, but where I have served, God will know, and where I have served well, God will use it and increase it.

And I take a fifth breath.

Wheeling and Dealings, part 4 of 7

2010-07-19T08:17:00.000-04:00

Wheeling and Dealings
5/20/2010

Once we broke out of the Pittsburgh traffic, our ramblings really ramped up. “Ninety miles an hour, girl, is the speed I drive...”

Josh, he's mapping out South Central Asia by language, politics, history, and culture, Caucasus overlapped in Aryan migration and Tartar conflicts, inexplicable compatibilities, mixed into Josh's own inexplicable incompatibilities, and his compulsion to see and record the grammars and grammothers of the region.

Now that he's warmed up, Josh powers on in high gear,

you see, there's personal folklore in every moment, but especially life cycle events, and the recording of people’s narratives, as strangely coincident, Rach falls out of her dream of photo journalism as a career in empathy and relationship, realizing it's a life of move-in – shoot – forget 'em – blow your horn, as she wakes up disillusioned, and takes a game-changing move towards recording personal stories for the sake of healing; not quite folklore, but close – examples: a journey thru addiction; the death of a sibling; surviving cancer; recording the last days and weeks of a patient in hospice – and from there to the virtue, the value, the need for families and individuals to record their histories in regular intervals, and construct extended genealogies built from images and recorded statements, talking not just about favorite foods and favorite colors, but rather, moments of change, success and failures, where we are going, where we have been, what we want and what we avoid, and in other words the perception of forces that have shaped both our interior and exterior lives, and what kinds of tools and software and professional guidance is necessary and possible to produce this (now that's folklore, by the way),

and from there after a long moment’s silence considering wide fields of bright flowering yellow clover and the verdant rolling landscapes of scrub-lined fields and second growth woodlands, such a contrast to the parched straw and washed-out olive shades of SoCal and Yemen, I hesitate and dive into my recurrent discontents and thoughts to drop out of my safe and affluent life, to live in an Airstream (I found a nice one online for 5000 bucks) as an old bohemian/hippy recluse, with limited need of money, it's so easy to take that mental step, but the next step is all bramble: wanting to be local to a vibrant culture, especially Jewish, searching the country and the world to find such a place and realizing that if it exists I don't know where, even or especially in Israel; which led to Josh asking, 'why my discontent?,' and without much delay – should I talk about it?, how should I tell it?, is this the truth or just a layer on something deeper and truer? – my answer that I am not fulfilling my contract, and he, 'the contract with yourself?,' and me, 'yes, that one.'

And a fourth breath.

Wheeling and Dealings, part 3 of 7

2010-07-18T09:15:00.000-04:00

Wheeling and Dealings
5/20/2010

The next morning we set off on foot, slip-sliding away with suitcase and backpack down a muddy embankment between the hotel parking lot and the truck rental office, affirming my status as a trucker, not a CEO, and where, appropriately, the rental agent discovered that my driver’s license had expired. Shite! I had imagined I’d do all the driving, but, flip-flop, splish-splash, and I was a co-pilot, with nothing more to do than give directions, help with lane-changes, do food prep (primarily, unwrapping the remaining sandwich). East, down Rt. 22 past the Miracle Mile and up Mosside a half mile to the storage locker, a stone’s throw from my father’s office (may his memory be a blessing) where we loaded the truck, which turned out to be vastly larger than we needed, and we were on the road by 9:30am.

Over a curb or two, onto the Parkway West, past the slag heap by the Squirrel Hill Tunnel that is now a vast condo patch, down along the river thru downtown, over the Fort Pitt Bridge and thru the tunnel, whining the transmission into full scream up the Duquesne Heights, swerving onto 79 South (almost missed that one), detoured east thru downtown Wheeling, whoa! that ole girl never seems to throw off her lingering air of depression,

and on autopilot out 70 East, where I would take a third breath.

Wheeling and Dealings, part 2 of 7

2010-07-17T09:50:00.000-04:00

Wheeling and Dealings
5/20/2010

Josh and I took a shuttle van to Monroeville, the last stop. Our conversation was a pastiche of little revelations about our dealings and seeings, ranging from the far-flung to the near-crazy: South Central Asia, to Israel, to our schools, to inner compulsions, swirled into bad music on the radio, and fellow passengers’ blurtings and bleatings, tho it's fair to reflect that, most likely to them, we were the bleaters and blurters.

Our hotel was next to Pirmanti’s (as it’s pronounced, tho not spelled). It was 11:30pm, and concerned for road food, we went over to see if they were open. Inside, we downed a couple of vodkas and ordered three monster fish sandwiches to go (you know, the ones with double cheese, don't spare the tartar, and an order of fries and coleslaw dumped right into the sandwich), of which we immediately gobbled two, while we continued our bleatings and blurtings, in more detailed forms of revelation and magical realism: courses in dominant and endangered central Asian languages; exotic places we have explored, especially Yemen, Hevron, hell, the Grand Canyon; bizarre examples of student behavior that can be observed on any given day in any given classroom; lesson plans that included Bedouin mosques and non-violent resistance; Potok and The Chosen and Hebrew and Modernity; brothers, sisters, mothers, and lovers, but not D.H. Lawrence; moves to Bloomington and DC and the narrow and empty spaces in both of those places.

We were asleep within minutes of returning to the hotel, allowing for the time to take a second breath.

Wheeling and Dealings, part 1

2010-07-16T17:19:00.000-04:00

In mid-May my son and I each flew from our various places to Pittsburgh, where we rented a truck and moved the remaining portion of my parents' estate to his house in Bloomington. Here's how I recorded the trip, its multiple breaths...

Wheeling and Dealings

5/20/2010
Bloomington, in an empty bedroom, and an airport

After flying across country on Saturday, Shabbat Bemidbar, to look at a dozen or more houses in DC and decide we didn’t like any of them and then flying back on Sunday, a long gulp of Israeli coffee and facing Monday at school, I then returned to the snaking security lines, the undressing – shoes, belts, phones, keys, coins, watch, kippa – and the public display of all I was carrying, so I might be packed into a plane, I among so many other misfits – we humans being very poorly designed to fit into the narrow and mishapen spaces airlines allocate to us -- to find myself (as if I had lost myself) in Pittsburgh, where I waited four hours at the airport to meet Josh, my son.

And that was one breath, although at the time I imagined myself gasping and panting like some hapless greyhound 2 minutes past the boom when the gates swing open.

Anti-Zionist flotilla, and Israel's dilemma

2010-05-31T23:01:00.001-04:00

My son and I had this exchange on facebook:

Josh Berer
hey, I'm sick of all these people dissing Israel! Israel has the right to defend its borders... from unarmed international aid workers.... in international waters... wait.

Stephen Berer
... oh wait again... unarmed?

Josh Berer
and you would kill everyone who didnt share your viewpoint. tell me, when people brand israel a pariah state do you scratch your head and wonder why? or does this look like the actions of a government that cares about a meaningful peace with her neighbors? or one that aspires to be a light unto the nations? when Israel talks about how much she wants peace but the palestinians just won't have it, do actions like these just disappear from your memory?
24 minutes ago

Stephen Berer
easy to talk and criticize from the comfort of the US. This event has made me sick, but Israel has to impress more people than liberals. It has to impress the Jew-hating, Israel-hating politicos from Europe, that they play hardball with Israel at their peril. It has to let Iran know that public opinion will not shape Israel's policies, and it will not be intimidated by ANYONE. It has to let Hezbollah and Hamas know that it will defend it's positions aggressively, ruthlessly, if necessary. Honestly Josh, Israel doesn't need to give a good goddam about your opinion or mine. It has more important fish to fry. Sorry bud.

Invocation for Mithz ov the Atternen Jew

2010-05-30T16:20:00.000-04:00

Opening scene for Miths ov the Atternen Jew

Yu hav ask me tu preparen a jernee,
An report tu Yu ov wut iz my seen*.
* Utherz sayd “wut I am seez”
Heren the Pardaes Lanz ov the bliend;
Heren the Perdaeshen howlz in the holeez.
All superpozen theze lifenz abloen
By rowdee winz akross seez unfathem.
Heren thay werdenz ov Yur markabbel werlz
Twisten the vois a wun a Yur Addomz,
A man hu kno not Yur holee tung
But speken it ennee wayz. Here me Lor!
Taken wut iz goud and punnish me not
For how I miss tell and miss take wut iz Yuez.
Heren my jernee ov Yur testen pepelz
Az Yu ar rekwiyer, a long-aggo send me
Intu the inner rumen* Yur Pallas.
* Utherz sayz “ruwen”

Kabbalistic wise men, 2

2010-05-29T22:55:00.000-04:00

Here's part 2 of Plowmen Hav Taelz. Part 1 was posted May 4, 2010.

Plowmen Hav Taelz, Part 2

The street sweep say in hiz koffen spit,
“Wut iz the feelz the hav no soyel,
“Ware Addom iz plowman and Addom the plowd?
“So plowd he kan barelee stand in iz wind;
“He bent tu iz feelz, hiz boddeez a trembel.
“Yet, a pass ov him plow, an mennee feeldz ferro.”

“Wut iz the seed that iz skatter this plowwen?
“Like meteyor fallerz thru the sky he plunj
“Intu poolz ov rippellen lite, till the werk
“Him komplete, and Addom aggen iz arrest
“In a garden ware serpenz ar delietning the Eve.”

“This iz the Torrah ov Addom a-dans,
“Gronen ov the feelz that he mus plant.”

The ox will say with a muten louk,
“My seel tu iz groen! I wuns wuz a man,
“With a littel prik tu plow in the feelz.
“Tuday he drag it ware the femaelz ar feed,
“Tumarro the haroez, dens the klod;
“No telling the day he will spred hiz seed!
“Him ov narro shoelder, ov spindellee arm;
“Iz dullish hed porz forth no horn*.
* utherz say: “Lite” or “Gloree”

“Ah, galdlee I am not a man ennee mor,
“But an ox, huze seel iz all hide an hoof.
“My way is straet; the berden a law
“Uppon my brod shoeld iz a miysteree yoke.
“Frivvolus emoeshen, I kno nun ov that!
“Just a studdee strenth and a temper az vile
“Az the erth that wimperz az I thrust an plow.”

The ox duz nun ov Torrah kno
But he skribe it krude in a krouked ro.

Tree, Grand Canyon

2010-05-22T20:09:00.000-04:00

The Architectonics of Poetry

2010-05-22T19:17:00.000-04:00

sketched 5/9/2010
descending Bright Angel Trail, Grand Canyon

As Cal and I began our hike down the Bright Angel Trail, it struck me, overlooking the Canyon, that here, in the presence of time-defiant carvings, vaster, more slowly and minutely sculpted than any imaginable human endeavor, that in this scene of staggering contrasts, one may postulate and reflect upon the most significant distinction between American and European culture.

I will speak specifically of poetry.

In broad strokes, we may say that Europe has inherited and developed highly structured, metered, rhymed, and decorative forms of poetic expression. The many forms this has taken yet reflect a unifying, underlying purpose: that the human enterprise is about managing and controlling nature. It is a poetry of architectonics, asserting the human rejection of randomness, insignificance, minuteness. Even where, in this body of work, the human enterprise, personally or on a grand scale pales or fails, still, the divine and especially the messianic is tangent and prepared to assume authority. Yes, that is it: the structuring of European poetry represents a literature of an authoritarian human will conquering nature, and where that fails, of divine interventions that either shape or crush us.

Not so the quintessential American poetry, vis, Whitman, Neihardt, Jeffers, Turner, Thoreau (as if prose poetry), and their intellectual and spiritual colleagues in Bierstadt, Moran, Cole, Remington. The architectonics of their art are not driven by or contained in the formalities of fixed structures. Their vision is an outpouring of an epic narrative, following the non-linear and unexpected contours of consciousness, and emulating nature, rather than trying to control, restructure, or geometricize it. Natural beauty and natural structure are the virtue of this art and its vision, and the divine is not tangent or removed or above, nor waiting to intervene with redemptions and punishments, but embedded and present, immanent. And as the divine is immanent, so is the human responsibility to moral action, here, now, not deferred, not waiting for a messiah, but acting with a messianic agency.

Thus my meandering thoughts as we climb down the steep trail that follows native contours, crossing paths with speakers of a dozen languages or more, the California Condor brooding silently overhead, cliffs and steep drops but a step or two away, awestruck and inspired, thinking of this conflicted, flawed, and glorious nation and the unexpected changes it has generated in the human soul, in the human word.

Plowmen and donkey drivers - Kabbalistic wise men

2010-05-04T23:52:00.000-04:00

The following 2 stanzas are part of a series of poems in Pardaes Dokkumen, in the section Plowmen at Faer. Donkey drivers and other lowly tradespeople appear in the Zohar occasionally, often as messianic figures or hidden holy men. You can decide for yourself who they are here:

Plowmen Hav Taelz

A donkee driver sed,
“I met a plowman reterning frum feeldz,
“Hu sed, ‘This partikkuler vallee a fludz,
     “‘And the oxxen ar serlee and I hav plow
     “‘The muk and klay intu thik slerree.
     “‘Up tu my waest I hav groen and drivven
     “‘The beests, foemen at nostrel and kikken;
     “‘The plow in my handz a sord tu the erth.
     “‘That iz the Torrah ov my narro vale.
     “‘The ferro ar fludden and no wun dissern
     “‘The seed frum the staen in the eenkee lien
     “‘I skrach on a serf a this limminal feeld.’”

A wotter kareyer then pord iz dreenk,
“I met a plowman a reternen frum feelz.
“He sez, ‘For jennerratenz I the plow this expanz.
     “‘My ling ar groen in its oxxide dust.
     “‘In morning iz sault iz kurst on my iy.
     “‘My fout print pressen in dune and drift.
     “‘My skin a reenkelz az my plowwen reenkelz.
     “‘Wut I du tu the lan, it duz tu me.
     “‘That iz the Torrah ov this endless ekspan.
     “‘The sun and the wind strips us ov breth.
     “‘We kut owwer ferro; it shaeps ar deth’”

Watchmen

2010-04-28T20:20:00.000-04:00

Battle not with monsters
Lest ye become a monster,

And if you gaze into the abyss
The abyss gazes also into you.

Nietzsche, as quoted in Watchmen, p.28

Song ov Elmallahz Kumming, Part 6

2010-04-24T20:44:00.000-04:00

I began my epic, 6 part poem, The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming in the early 1990's, and completed almost all of the writing by about 2000. I also completed fair copies of the first 5 books by about 2000. However, Book 6, set in the Shoah (the Holocaust), remained as a rough copy only. I continue to work on it. The following poem, written in 2004, was an attempt to pull the poem's many strands together into a narrative ending, while allowing the poem's non-narrative threads to defy a sense of completeness.

In this scene you will find the main character on the run from the nazi death-grip. One thing you will need to know: she was asked to carry a Torah scroll to the Yishuv (Jewish settlements) in Palestine. She accepted this burden unwillingly, and to cope with its weight, and as a layer of protection, she wrapped it around her body. Thus her comment in this scene:
          “I kan unrap this parchmen skin,
          “Remoov it, re-roel it, delivver it. Dun!”

And thus...

Sleeping by Day, Nietmaerz all Nite

Nite and its deth dans. The dog men sirkel,
The tooth men, the slavver men,
The howling, rifel, toyfel men.
Heer the skreem, the long traen rumbel.
A berd skreechez and the aer iz torn
By a fleeting, fluttering fether. It fallz.
A flashlite bliendz her; deth skwod and deth grip...

She waeks. The sun iz glaring thru the brush
Krying, “Jew, Jew!” It points and akkuzez,
Ware she kerl, bareed in a mownd a ded leef.
Slolee she ternz, but the leevz erupt
In kersez and showting. She frezez. The throng
Ov akkuzerz tern mute. Thaer deth-state prevaelz.
Thay retern tu thaer erth, tu thaer fodder-land dreemz.
The wind lifts them and kareez them awway,
Skipping down a kartpath allong a feeld.
Thay flutter akross a swampee streem,
And intu the owtskerts ov a haf-bernd town.
All iz kwiyet. Aproeching its senter,
Oeld men on bieks, wimmen kriskrossing
The streets, peering in windo, smoking.
The smellz ov koffee and baking bred
Leenger in the aer. Awtum leevz
Liften by a gust ov wind, ar kareed...

She openz her iyz, liez still, liez bareed
In the mustee leevz. The sun haz driften
Far tu the west. Now klowdee, now windee,
The forres iz all allive, arrussel.
Konfuezd, she slolee emerj frum leef-tume.

On a distant hill a minnerret and dome.
The aer iz worm. She kannot understan.
But az sleep a-faden, she rememmer. Yes!
She wuz krossen frum Libnon intu Gallallee.
She evaded the Brits and the Arab zhendarmz.
A Jewish settelmen shoud not be far.
Stund, exxosted, she lay bak down.

She theenks, “I kan unrap this parchmen skin,
     “Remoov it, re-roel it, delivver it. Dun!”
She woud reech tu her aenkel but all she kan du
Iz groen and seenk bak in shrowden leevz.*
                    * Eeka d’omray “dreemz;”
                    * Eeka d’omray “lievz.”

She waeks wuns mor, kerreld in her dreemz,
Her greefs, her kersez, her proffettek hope.
Rapt in her Torra, its sollewbel eenk
Smeerz in her skin, so intu her Seel.
Yet tu go on, she knoez not how far.
The darkness, the embedden Prezzens, it kawlz.

Spiritual Assents

2010-04-17T00:03:00.000-04:00

The following is from Pardaes Dokkumen, Plowmen at Faer.

Breeng Forth Maze frum the Feel
               Roesh Khodesh Adar tu Shuvvuwoet, 5765

A skriber wuns sed tu sum men in Pardaes:
The trueth e full ov hewman debree
Like the Addom in yu that iz ballas yur Seel;
Wut part iz karben, wut part khorbon*?
                    * Hebrew: burnt offering
Wut part taken, wut part tekun**?
                    ** Hebrew: repair/re-form
Wut part bane, wut part bone***?
                    *** utherz say “bonay”, Hebrew: build

The trueth iz a thred, it maezlike weev
Akross the mobeyus warp ov yur Addom
And its Shaddiy Seel, wun an the same.
Thro off this worp; unwaev* yur sellz!
                    * utherz say “unweev”
And then kan yu tell me hu yu ar?
And then kan yu tell me wy yu ar heer?
Kan yu even tell me if yu ar heer?

Learned at a Facing History seminar

2010-04-13T00:41:00.000-04:00

As a teacher, one of the most important resources and teaching methods I have encountered is the Facing History and Ourselves approach (http://www.facing.org/home). They describe themselves as "Helping classrooms and communities worldwide link the past to moral choices today."

In an online seminar I am currently taking with them I came across the writings of Eboo Patel, an American Muslim from India. Among his many accomplishments, he is the founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core. I don't often post other people's writings here, but this little anecdote is worth repeating many times. He writes:

When I was in college, I had the sudden realization that all of my heroes were people of deep faith: Dorothy Day, the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Malcolm X, the Aga Khan. Moreover, they were all of different faiths. A little more research revealed two additional insights. First, This reading contains excerpts from Eboo Patel’s, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. religious cooperation had been central to the work of most of these faith heroes. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. partnered with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in the struggle for civil rights. Mahatma Gandhi stated that Hindu Muslim unity was just as important to him as a free India. Second, each of my faith heroes assumed an important leadership role at a young age. King was only twenty-six years old when he led the Montgomery bus boycott. Gandhi was even younger when he started his movement against unjust laws in early-twentieth-century South Africa.

. . . In high school, the group I ate lunch with included a Cuban Jew, a Nigerian Evangelical, and an Indian Hindu. We were all devout to a degree, but we almost never talked about our religions with one another. Often somebody would announce at the table that he couldn’t eat a certain kind of food, or any food at all, for a period of time. We all knew religion hovered behind this, but nobody ever offered any explanation deeper than “my mom said,” and nobody ever asked for one.

This silent pact relieved all of us. We were not equipped with a language that allowed us to explain our faith to others or to ask about anyone else’s. Back then, I thought little about the dangers lurking within this absence. A few years after we graduated, my Jewish friend reminded me of a dark time during our adolescence. There were a group of kids in our high school who, for several weeks, took up scrawling anti-Semitic slurs on classroom desks and making obscene statements about Jews in the hallways. I did not confront them. I did not comfort my Jewish friend. I knew little about what Judaism meant to him, less about the emotional effects of anti-Semitism, and next to nothing about how to stop religious bigotry. So I averted my eyes and avoided my friend, because I couldn’t stand to face him.

A few years later, he described to me the fear he had experienced coming to school those days, and his utter loneliness as he had watched his close friends simply stand by. Hearing him recount his suffering and my complicity is the single most humiliating experience of my life. I did not know it in high school, but my silence was betrayal: betrayal of Islam, which calls upon Muslims to be courageous and compassionate in the face of injustice; betrayal of America, a nation that relies on its citizens to hold up the bridges of pluralism when others try to destroy them; betrayal of India, a country that has too often seen blood flow in its cities and villages when extremists target minorities and others fail to protect them. My friend needed more than my silent presence at the lunch table.

Pluralism is not a default position, an autopilot mode. Pluralism is an intentional commitment that is imprinted through action. It requires deliberate engagement with difference, outspoken loyalty to others, and proactive protection in the breach. You have to choose to step off the faith line onto the side of pluralism, and then you have to make your voice heard. To follow Robert Frost, it is easy to see the death of pluralism in the fire of a suicide bombing. But the ice of silence will kill it just as well.

Atternen Jewz

2010-04-01T19:14:00.000-04:00

This from 3/22/10, 7 Nissan 5770, week ov Tzav, continues to explore the place of the Jew in consciousness. "The Jew" is such a mythically charged idea that to understand anti-Semitism (and certain aspects of philo-Semitism) requires more, much more, than just a knowledge of politics, history, and religions.

I Am In Yuez

I am in yuez, but I am not yuez.
I the standen az the dorren yur Seel.

Wen yu open that dorz, yu a let me inz.
     The vizhennaerz ammung yuez, report ov my seez.
     “O wunness o goudness o divvine harmenneez!”
Wen that dorren openz all ov itsell,
     I louks inside an shout akross yur waeslanz
     Reporten sumz ov my seez in yu.

Trembenz and wunderz shake yur grownd.
Yu kannot a standen tu my ups and downz.
     An Aenjel a Deth I am for the dyen.
     Hu groen week, say I korrup thaer kine.
     Thay see almoes nuthen, the massez a bliend.
     Hu aspiyern tu Godz kallen me saevyaer.
     Hem standen in Tempel kallz me khuvvaer*.
                    *Hebrew for 'friend' or 'partner'

I dreamed I was the Eternal Jew

2010-03-19T01:25:00.000-04:00

This vignette for Miths a the Atternen Jew was composed using a collection of dream images from the last 3 nights: mountains as collections of female bodies and their defilement, hawks on the ground willing to be petted, cats that obey like dogs but look like rats...
I sketched this out tonight, so it's totally raw and unreflected, unedited, unrefined.

I, the atternen Jew attunen
Tu yu, my temperen boddeez.
Untuend we ar tu the seelee dans,
The misstep, pushstep, feerstep tunen;
All bruzen, kissen, grabber tuch:
All tern awway unfeelen much
Ov all em densen krowden dansee wayz.

Owt uppon the windee hiets
I push my way, I klimen slip.
Heer the hillz a skulpten song,
A Greeshen korrus, bak tu bak,
Bellee bellee, arm in arm.
A rownd an soft an perfek karvz
Ov brest an cheek a lip an thi.
A shudderree ov pinee need,
Ov meddo dansen bumbelbee,
Ov larksperr an shooten star.
Thaer haer ablone, theze windee hiets,
Dellakkut thaer wiendee harts:
Mownten like a krowd a nuden wimmen.

How the buffallo in herden tramp
The roden trak, the trampel manz
Dig an plow an ragged skar.
O theze wimmen! All thaer bewteez
Dragd in harroez, stript an ript.

An then the rapenz tern awway.
Dun thaer wermee deedz.
In werdee legelleze thay say,
“Nuthing harmd. Soon forgot.
“An all theze bewteez wuns aggen will song.”

But I, the ternen Jew, I heerz
The silens in the kavvern hillz,
The hoks affonnen like a dog,
The kro, he fat; obedeyen rat.
I seez the tromma stichez
On a pale an blochee skinz.
I the witness; I the tellz.
An yu, my boddeez, all ov this
Yu knoez, yu seez, yu heerz,
Even in yur bitterress deny.

Rethinking Grammar

2010-02-27T20:19:00.000-05:00

I was sitting on the bus going to work, annotating George K. Anderson's The Legend of the Wandering Jew. My mind drifted away from the text, to my act of annotation, and from there to the grammatical form of the word “annotation.” It's a simple word, a noun. And of course, a noun is a person, place, thing, state, or quality; or more fully, as most dictionaries will remind you, the subject or object of a sentence that can be modified into plural and possessive. But that definition hardly begins to describe the grammatical function that the word “annotation” implies.

Consider. It's root is “note”, , which can be either a noun or a verb, but in this case I'll call it a noun. However, by adding the prefix “an-” it is transformed into a verb, which is thence retransformed back into a noun with the suffix “-tion”! Those ambiguities and transformations all are processed instantly by our minds, and are equally instantly ignored as we read a sentence with the word “annotation” in it.

Now, I ask you, is “annotation” a noun, and if so, what is a noun?!

The more I explore stevespell, the more I realize that the apparently strange and foreign grammars and constructions embedded in it, such as noun-verbs like “annotaten”, are neither strange nor foreign. We simply choose to ignore the complexity that already exists in the language. In actuality, like the quantum mechanical electron, our words are constantly changing forms and states, and we are hard-pressed to know when they're particles and when they're waves and when they're something else entirely.

Of course, back here in the real world, my 7th grade English teacher, Mrs. Newton, will wag her crooked finger in my face and scold me with nary a second thought, “I'll have none of that, young man! A noun is a noun, and you better be able to diagram it correctly on the next test, or you'll be back in the corner sitting by yourself again!”

Another thing Mrs. Newton doesn't know: I like sitting by myself.

Quantum Mechanics and Language

2010-02-14T19:45:00.000-05:00

Upon reading David Bohm's Wholeness and the Implicate Order.

From the first paragraph of Bohm's introduction to Wholeness and the Implicate Order, I realized that what he was theorizing about in this book, published in 1980, I was concurrently developing in my poetry since the mid 70's. You can find many of my short essays on language and consciousness on this blog or at my website, shivvetee.com. If you are unfamiliar with my thoughts on this topic, I suggest you begin with a pleasant and easy little essay, “Wy I Rite So Funnee” at:
Wy I Rite So Funnee
If you want to then go deeper, you can explore some of the labels on this blog, such as 'complexity,' 'phenomenology,' and 'poetics,' or you can jump right to this link which is a partial summary of my various posts:
Literary Complexity

Bohm's path emerged from quantum mechanics; mine from phenomenology and consciousness, but both of us realized the necessity of interdisciplinary analysis. My ideas have been greatly influenced by the development of quantum mechanics over the 20th century, as Bohm's have been by phenomenology and the philosophy of consciousness.

Consider this statement by Bohm, who is widely regarded one of the Illuminati of quantum mechanics:
"It is clear that in reflecting on and pondering the nature of movement, both in thought and in the object of thought, one comes inevitably to the question of wholeness or totality. The notion that the one who thinks (the Ego) is at least in principle completely separate from and independent of the reality that he thinks about is of course firmly embedded in our entire tradition.... But this confronts us with a very difficult challenge: How are we to think coherently of a single, unbroken, flowing actuality of existence as a whole, containing both thought (consciousness) and external reality as we experience it?" (Bohm, p. x of Introduction, 1981 paperback, Routledge, Kegan, Paul Ltd.)

He then goes on two pages later:
"In chapter 2 we go into the role of language in bringing about fragmentation of thought.... We then inquire whether it is possible to experiment with new language forms in which the basic role will be given to the verb rather than the noun. Such forms will have as their content a series of actions that flow and merge into each other, without sharp separations or breaks." (ibid, p. xii)

Now consider this excerpt from my mid-80's essay, “Wy I Rite so Funnee”:
"My second intention with stevespell was more ambitious and radical. I wanted to develop a grammar in which subject and predicate, object and action were merged. I had heard that this was possible in Sanskrit, and it seemed intuitively right to me. Surely, the actor and the action are not two separate things, but aspects of one thing.... Perhaps our language was creating unnatural distinctions between actor and action, or between past, present, and future."

In chapter 1, p. 9, Bohm explores his first love, quantum mechanics.
"In a more detailed description the atom is, in many ways, seen to behave as much like a wave as a particle. It can perhaps best be regarded as a poorly defined cloud, dependent for its particular form on the whole environment, including the observing instruments. Thus, one can no longer maintain the division between the observer and observed (which is implicit in the atomistic view that regards each of these as separate aggregates of atoms)."

Here we see the confluence of quantum mechanics and consciousness in two important areas.

First, Bohm, working from Heisenberg, says that, in atomic spaces, the act of observation affects what is observed. We see this in precisely the same way phenomenologically. The act of self observation modifies what is observed (our thoughts). The closer we observe ourselves, the more completely our act of observation is what we see, obscuring and obstructing a free flow of thought. This is a precise corollary to Heisenberg's principle that when we observe phenomena at the atomic level, the more accurately we desire to know where a given object is, the more inaccurate our understanding of where it is going.

Second, just as at atomic level observation we see the breakdown of the “division between the observer and observed,” so we see in consciousness that there is no clear division between individuals. This is quite obvious by observing the transmission of emotion from one person to another. An individual shouting angrily at another causes an immediate and visceral reaction, usually either anger or fear in like measure. This transmission is not based on proximity, and can be verbal or non-verbal. Two people shouting at each other will each become increasingly disturbed, while an onlooker, to whom their anger is not directed, can observe dispassionately. I have also often observed in myself, when sitting silently with someone who is extremely anxious, that although I am not consciously aware of their anxiety, I will find myself inexplicably anxious, inexplicable, that is, until I ask them, “are you anxious or nervous?” Their answer almost always confirms that what I am feeling is their emotion!

I will offer one more example of the confluence between quantum mechanics and consciousness using Bohm's observations as a starting point. On pp. 9-10 he says:
"What is needed in a relativistic theory is to give up altogether the notion that the world is constituted of basic objects or 'building blocks.' Rather, one has to view the world in terms of universal flux of events and processes. Thus,... instead of thinking of a particle, one is to think of a 'world tube.'
This world tube represents an infinitely complex process of a structure in movement and development which is centred in a region indicated by the boundaries of the tube. However, even outside the tube, each 'particle' has a field that extends through space and merges with the fields of other particles."

Let me now rewrite the second paragraph, speaking of human beings rather than atomic particles:
"This human body represents an infinitely complex process of a structure in movement and development which is centred in a region indicated by the boundaries of the body. However, even outside the body, each 'ego' has a field that extends through space and merges with the fields of other egos."

These overlapping fields are not limited to atomic and subatomic particles and emotional sensitivities. I would posit that the very nature of consciousness is represented better by behaviors described by quantum mechanics than by any Euclidean or Newtonian model. Therefore, time, also must be understood in a quantum mechanical way, since time is a product of consciousness. While the ego is focused into a present moment, that looks back into a past and forward to a future, human consciousness itself is not so bounded. Events of the past can have a profound effect on present behavior without there being any direct series of causal connections. Consciousness connects past, present, and future into a single interactive continuum with multiple, direct causalities.

Our language is structured to make concrete distinctions between objects, between objects and the actions that connect them, and between moments in time. These distinctions can be a helpful artifice, but they misrepresent the true behavior of objects in motion (events in time), and thought (consciousness). Bohm postulates a more active, fluid, verb-based language, but that is insufficient. Stevespell attempts a more comprehensive interleaving of objects, events, and time periods. I would call it a quantum mechanical language, which attempts to represent the more complex, non-Euclidean, interactive causalities operating in the human observation of the mental and physical worlds.

In sum, as we begin to peer into the atomic world, where matter “sublimates” into energy and energy “condenses” into matter, we are also observing the workings of consciousness as it articulates the foundations of space-time. This more accurate observational ability that evolved in the 20th century, shattered our ancient world-views (Aristotelian, Euclidean, Newtonian). Now we are beginning to understand that our further development is inhibited by our language, which also needs to evolve to represent this new, subtler understanding of our world.

Wy I Rite So Funnee

2010-02-13T19:16:00.000-05:00

This pleasant little essay, entitled "Wy I Rite So Funnee" was my first statement about the transformations I'm applying to the English language, and was written sometime in the mid 1980's. You can find it on my website, www.shivvetee.com, but since I'm reorganizing that site, I thought I'd post it here too, because I'm going to make reference to it in my next post.

Wy du I rite so funnee?

This question has been asked of me consistently, since I began altering standard spelling and grammar back in the mid 1970's. It has been asked politely and it has been asked with expletives undeleted. Readers and editors have been offended and confused by it, as well as delighted by it. A friendly but critical colleague from the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange dubbed it “stevespell” many years ago, and that has become my preferred name for it.

Sometimes I feel I am hewing the words out of wood or stone, rough approximations to a deeper, more accurate language. Sometimes I feel like I am taking the “found art” of English, and refining and polishing it. Sometimes the words are like very soft clay in my hands, oozing through my fingers. Sometimes the words are like nuggets of gold discovered as I sift through gravel and fast running water. Stevespell has allowed me to discover new words, new meanings in words, and new relationships between words, and it has become one of the modalities of my creativity.

I realize that to many readers, my language appears idiosyncratic, obscure, and nearly impenetrable. Yet, when I am writing, I feel like I am speaking in an “English” that underlays the infinite variations and personal morphologies that are illusorily lumped together into a single language. People question stevespell, as if “English” were a pre-existing, complete, and unalterable phenomenon in nature, and I am breaking the rules. I am not breaking the rules; I am discovering them; I am extending them.

Here’s the metaphor that I keep coming back to: most people think of words as if they were bricks. They think of words as hard, clearly shaped, baked clay units. They’re made in some factory somewhere – doesn’t matter where or with what clay – to be used to build permanent things. I think of words as soft clay, easily shaped and re-shaped, mostly used to build impermanent things in impermanent and poorly designed ways. It is the rare structure, indeed, that survives these harsh conditions that we build in.

I have two friends in Provincetown, Conrad and Anne, who are among the most beautiful people in the world. One of the tricks Conrad likes to play on the world is to sculpt in brick, in ways that appear to defy gravity. When you see these sculptures, you are forced to wonder: are these “bricks” really styrofoam, or are they real bricks somehow being held up with invisible wires? You bricklayers, when was the last time you made a brick float in air?

Stevespell evolved organically. You can find two relatively early examples of it in the Reading Room on my website, shivvetee: the poem In the Harvest ov Nations and the story “A Pilgrimmage to Mecca.” Compare those writings to In the Ruwenz ov the Tempel, I Herd...! At least to me, the language in them seems so normal, so unadventurous. To my eyes they also lack a certain sparkle and intensity. And yet, those writings, too, generated questions and controversy not unlike what I hear regarding my most recent work.

My earliest intention was two-fold. First, I wanted to normalize English spelling to spoken English. This seemed easy to accomplish, in my naivete. I soon discovered that I wasn’t the first to try such a project. For example, the Chicago Tribune attempted to partially normalize English, only to be booed into submission. On top of that, normalization presented all kinds of new problems. Conjugational and etymological continuities often had to be stretched or abandoned. And what was I to do with regional and national accents? If a written-spoken normalization had been my only motive, I too would have quit the project. But that is not the case. By the way, if you study the evolution of my spellings you will see that I have progressively moved towards a normalization that reflects my accent.

My second intention with stevespell was more ambitious and radical. I wanted to develop a grammar in which subject and predicate, object and action were merged. I had heard that this was possible in Sanskrit, and it seemed intuitively right to me. Surely, the actor and the action are not two separate things, but aspects of one thing. Later, when I began to learn Hebrew, I saw how root words and the absence of written vowels were used to create dynamic, interweaving structures of sound, meaning, and perspective. But English, and most European languages, don’t have (or don’t focus on) these kinds of conceptual tools. Perhaps our language was creating unnatural distinctions between actor and action, or between past, present, and future. So I began to work the clay, and I found that the possibility of merging noun and verb in English was waiting patiently just below the surface. Actually we are doing it all the time! Colloquial usage commonly slurs the “ing” verb form into “in,” as in “I’m goin’ to the store.” Superimpose this on the form that converts a verb into a noun using “-ence” (as in “transcend” to “transcendence”), and, presto, yu ar the transenden ov normel Eenglish!

Critics pointed out to me two other inter-related and important effects of stevespell. First, it forced them to read more slowly. This really annoys a lot of people. We have so much to do, and so much to read, we don’t have time to crawl along, actually paying attention to individual words. But just a second. That’s precisely what poetry is about! It’s about paying attention to each word; hearing them, considering them, going back and reading phrases again and maybe even again, slowly proceeding, and ohmigosh, actually enjoying the sensuality of language. I hope you speed demons don’t have sex the way you read, trying to get done as quickly as possible. I much prefer to read slowly, sensuously, seductively engaged with each word.

The other complaint I got, a complaint by another poet, mind you, was that my poetry forced him to read my work aloud if he wanted to understand it. Darn, that annoyed him. Say what?? That too is exactly what poetry is about: hearing the words, speaking the words, creating not a fleeting shadow of a thought as you rush on through a zillion words a minute, but resonating the words through the very bones of your body, from the chest outward. I remember a wicked northeaster on Cape Cod one February. I was living alone in my parent’s cottage on the beach. The waves were thundering, battering the seawall mercilessly; the wind was howling furiously and pummeling the walls. The curtains were swaying and the cracks in the walls were whistling, and me, I was reading Blake’s Jerusalem, screaming it at the top of my lungs, for hours, until the storm faded around dawn. It was one of the most glorious nights of my life. And I swear, Willy B. was right there with me belting it out, the two of us laughing till we could hardly breathe, then reading on.

So, you’re not breaking my heart if you have to read slowly, and if you even have to read my poetry aloud to get it. That’s what you’re supposed to do with poetry.

There is at least one more effect intended by stevespell. Poetic language has ebbed and flowed for thousands of years between the use of heightened, formal language, and the use of colloquial, simplified language. Often, when language is used to convey a sense of the sacred, it tends towards the formal, and this may easily become awkward or stilted. Nonetheless, I want to separate my poetry from mundane and secular literature. Whether or not I succeed and achieve a sense of the sacred in my poetry is for you to decide, but that, too, is part of my intention.

symmetry

2009-12-28T18:57:00.000-05:00

This is a fragment from a long meditation on symmetry, which will be included The Pardaes Dokkumen, a manuscript I hope to soon complete.

epigraph:
The hardest part of preparing for the days of Redemption is the need to break every symmetry, responding to each energy not with its opposite and not in kind, but by dissipating what is negative and amplifying what is positive.

How kwiklee the eevning disroebz the morning,
Hu but momentz befor had rizzen frum her bed.
     Like a chield hu seez her destin huzban,
     He iz just a littel boy on hiz way tu skool;
     Now beneeth the khoupa* he take her hand.
                              * marriage canopy
So haz the eevning taken my hand
And led me intu the shaddoez ov God.

Myth of the Eternal Jew, 2

2009-12-05T20:38:00.000-05:00

This little excerpt for Miths ov the Ternel Jew shines a light on the scene where the cobbler who offers Jesus a drink, goes back to work as Jesus continues on his way to Golgotha:

... And the Messiya sit in iz dark vawlt,
Iz tap, tap, tap on the soel;
Iz stich on stich, bienden the layerren pees,
Thong in hand, song an song,
Kobbelz he all day az the rabbel showt
An stomp in its serkus wayz.
Thay follo the Eterna Jew up the street
Tu woch him dy, hung on a pole,
Woch him dy intu life.