Wheeling and Dealings, part 2 of 7

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

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

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

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

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

The Architectonics of Poetry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.