Bo'u Nishtachaveh (Melody)

Some parts of the liturgy don't get enough airtime.  Psalm 95:6-7 is an example 😛

Writing about Reading

My friend SP (who writes an excellent blog at no power in the 'verse) recently shared with me one of her struggles: feeling obligated to write about every book she reads before she lets herself return it to the library (even to the point that she sometimes racks up library fines!).

Now, I certainly have my share of reading-related compulsions.  I keep a spreadsheet in my GoogleDocs with an alphabetized list of authors I like, and I try to read their works in chronological order of publication, resorting to interlibrary loan and field trips to research libraries as necessary.  I have other GoogleDocs for collecting quotes and for keeping track of books I want to read in the future.  Etc.  But until I listened to SP talk about it, I had never thought about whether I feel the need to write about each book that I read.  In my head, reading and writing constitute two fairly separate portions of my life -- but I'm starting to realize that I do have more of a need to connect the two activities than I previously realized.  This has become most evident in my foreign language reading.

Immobile

 in homage to the Yiddish poet A. Leyeles
 who published a poem of the same name
                  in New York in 1926

Standing under the awning of the trolley station
watching raindrops fall into puddles
poor drainage
troughs of water sloshing on the platform and between the tracks

the way the plashes bubble outward
creating intersecting perfect circles
an everyday miracle that for once seems miraculous to me.

It's not exactly the raindrops that amaze me, it's the circles.
I remember screensavers from the '90s
fluorescent circles plinking here and there on a black field
expanding to intersect, like these raindrops
imitating the electronic dance entitled Sonic or Ripple.

A whiff of geranium, the sunroom where the computer lived
full of leaves and light
and air colder than in other rooms.  At one end of the house
where I was already discovering my love of edges, corners
having my back to the wall
where I could not be caught in the middle of anything.

A chaise longue where I went to make long-distance phone calls
to read Harry Potter
to scratch rashes.  The computer, for homework
for wondering
for covering my tracks
and for the absorbing games I made up myself
like clicking all the tabs in file hierarchies to show all the subfolders
then going back and clicking them all again
so they'd telescope down into a one-page list.

After eight years of summer camp
the ninth we traded screennames
a suggestion that it didn't have to end just then, a portal with potential
like a hand-me-down tape player
later a Walkman, a beat-up Honda
each machine too good to be true
too free to be mine when it appeared.

Later, subways
all that mobility for only two dollars.
Dreams of trying to run through air thick as molasses
make me wonder now if it was never the house
but rather my own body that tied me down
so slow, so immobile
so much slower than eyes or words.
A dream of items, clothing, shampoo,
relentless, the wrong item coming to hand
so that I cannot finish showering and dressing
and be on my way.

But I seem to go places
even if I notice only when I get back
even if leaving is so hard every time.
Even if the stillness accompanies me
heavy, sinking, adhesive
when I am flying at five hundred knots.

I want to try running on my own two feet
so I can leave faster.

About Me

Devotion.

If you take my pen, I will hunt you down.

"...beyond even self-doubt no writer can justify ruthlessness for the sake of his work, because being human to the fullest possible extent is what his work demands of him." - May Sarton, A World of Light

"The world is too wounded/not to write..." - Rachel Klein, "For Joy"

"What I really wanted was every kind of life, and the writer’s life seemed the most inclusive." - Susan Sontag

"We can't accelerate our lives now beyond the normal.... No, what you must come to discover is where your own deepest need lies -- that is hard enough....We live by faith in the end, not by reason. If you are a real poet you'll never be sure -- there'll always be the enormous risk to take, the risk that you are following a will-o'-the-wisp, as my father used to say. And you may not even know when you die, whether you had the right to take the risk." - May Sarton, The Bridge of Years

"For must one not try to be at every instant the whole of what one would choose to be for eternity? To fail now, to be less than the utmost possible, was perhaps to fail for all eternity.” - May Sarton, The Bridge of Years

נשים מאוכזבות: דמויות נקביות ביצירות של עגנון, זרחי, ועוז

Note: I am not sure how good my written Hebrew was when I wrote this (probably not that great) but it was fun (REALLY REALLY fun) to try to write about the books in the language I read them in.

אני רוצה לכתוב על הסיפורים שקראתי הסמסטר. קשה לדעת איך להתחיל. הנה רשימה של טקסטים שקראתי:

סיפור על אהבה וחושך (עמוס עוז)

מיכאל שלי (עמוס עוז)

"בדמי ימיה" (ש"י עגנון)

"על שום מה" (ישראל זרחי)

מה שעיניין אותי ביותר בסיפורים אלה הוא מצב האישה, ובמיוחד מצב האישה המשׂכילה והרגישה. (אני יודעת, איזה הפתעה שזה עיניין אותי.) ממש מעניין שכל אחד מהסיפורים האלה כתוב על ידי גבר, אבל אף על פי כן כל אחד (חוץ מ"עד עולם") עסוק בענייני נשים. סיפור על אהבה וחושך מרוכז על מות אמו של המחבר, עמוס עוז, אישה כישרונית ורגישה עד להפליא שלמרות זאת הפסיקה את חייה בגיל צעיר (בת38). במיכאל שלי, עוז כותב מנקודת מבט של אישה נואשת, אמא אדישה, בת-זוג מוזרה שחיי-הנשואים שלה לא היו מוצלחים. "בדמי ימיה" של ש"י עגנון, סיפור שנראה לעמוס עוז כמו קשור לסיפור-חייה של אמו, הוא סיפור על בת צעירה ש"יורשת" את האהבה הלא-מוגשמת של אמה שמתה בגיל צעירה. ולאחרונה, ב"על שום מה," מספר ישראל זרחי בקול אישה על ההתפתחות וההתפרקות של אהבה שהתחילה, ואחר כך הפסיקה, כמעט כמו התקף.

כל סיפור מאלה מספר על אישה מאוכזבת מאהבה, ונדמה לי שבכל מקרה האכזבויות האלה נובעות מאכזבות עמוקות יותר – לכל אישה מהן (ובמיוחד לנשים בסיפורי עוז) חסרה ההזדמנות, או אולי אף הכוח הנחוץ, להגשים בחייהן את הדברים (היחסים, העבודות, ההשׂגים, החיים הפנימיים) שישׂביעו את רצונן.

Tov V'yachil (Two-Part Chant)

I like this verse of Lamentations because it expresses the value of silence and submission to the Divine, two spiritual practices which are important to me.  I also like the following two verses ( טוֹב לַגֶּבֶר, כִּי-יִשָּׂא עֹל בִּנְעוּרָיו.  יֵשֵׁב בָּדָד וְיִדֹּם, כִּי נָטַל עָלָיו.) which reiterate the emphasis on silence and emphasize that these instructions apply also to, or especially to, young people.  As a young person who practices a fair bit of silence, this feels like a good corrective to all those other messages (in Judaism and in other religions) that assert that mysticism is only for those in later stages of life.  It feels important to mention that this section of the chapter also emphasizes seeking and hoping for G!d (not just silent waiting).

Dvar Tefillah for Shacharit: Kedusha, Ahava Rabba, and Shema

Kedusha

I understand the liturgy of the Kedusha (specifically the short Kedusha that appears in Shacharit between yotzer or and or chadash) to be invoking three main aspects.

First, responsibility -- obviously, accepting the yoke of heaven is a huge responsibility.

Second, inevitability -- it is my experience that the yoke of heaven lands on us whether we want it or not. In my interpretation, the angels aren't DECIDING whether or not to take on the yoke. They're going to receive it no matter how they feel about it. But the burden is easier because they're together, and they're receiving it from each other.