WE ALL HAVE THOSE DAYS when everything goes wrong – but not always do we have someone looking over our shoulder while it does.
Prosatio Silban stifled an exasperated sigh. Mustn’t show my impatience, either with her or my circumstances, he thought. After all, it’s my long-practiced livelihood being decided here.
“Why did you turn off that stove-burner?” Nira Llirb asked, arching a disapproving eyebrow. “The beans are still cooking. And what’s this in the blue-rice pot?”
LAST WEEK AT THE GROCER’S, the guy ahead of me in line is good-naturedly chatting up the sales clerk when he catches sight of my yarmulke.
“What happened to the rest of your hat?” he asks.
Without missing a beat, I reply, “It fell off.”
His “damn! he got me!” gesture punctuates our mutual laughter. I love it when we humans play.
SOMETIMES, A SMALL MALADY CAN be a big problem.
Prosatio Silban groaned, sat up in his sleeping-berth, and put his head in his hands. If these hiccoughs don’t (hic) end soon, he thought, I will.
To be religious means to be honest, kind, and thoughtful. Anyone who lacks these qualities is not religious, no matter how careful one is in ritual observance.”
— Rabbi Marc D. Angel, introducing chapter 6 of Pirkei Avot
AS THE OLD SAYING GOES, “No one here gets out alive” – or unmarred.
“Where did you get that scar?” asked the woman with the flirtatious smile, indicating Prosatio Silban’s right hand.
The cook-errant raised one eyebrow and a mouth-corner. “D’you mean the calluses on my thumb and forefinger?” he asked. “That’s from holding a chop-knife all and every day for more than a quarter-century.”
AS THE WISE SAY: “Some aspirations should remain so.”
Prosatio Silban put the finishing touches on a plate of fidget-hen confit and pureed artichokes, and stood back to admire it. I don’t know how I do it, but I’m glad and grateful that I can, he thought in expectation of his longtime customer’s expression. Blessings to you, O Julchi, Goddess of Autodidactic Gastronomy!
With the steaming plate balanced on one raised hand, he descended his galleywagon’s three wooden steps, then sauntered over to a table-and-chairs where sat a pleasant-faced and stylish woman of his own middling years. He placed the dish before her with a flourish, and she sighed in anticipatory delight.
“I don’t know how you do it, Master Prosatio,” she said. “You never disappoint.”
Never allow what you cannot do to control what you can do.”
— Rabbi Avi Weiss
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