Living

5 Thoughts: Alternative Pleasantries

1. REGRET IS LIKE THE PROVERBIAL potato chip, which is why I am reluctant to taste even one. Living a reasonably full life keeps any real regret firmly in its place; i.e., away. Yet while I regret nothing, there are some experiences which I would like to have but either cannot or will not swap for whatever I’d have to sacrifice to realize them. Think of them as wistful might-have-beens or alternative pleasantries:

2. Steve Jobs doing his annual MacWorld thing. I have friends who are Mac users, and I have friends who are Mac addicts who never miss a product rollout. Yet I have never so much as seen a video of Mr. Jobs’ yearly tech unveilment. Something there is about consensual dedication to intelligent (or any) tools; it would be nice to see the Fearless Leader revealing to the faithful their latest obsession.

3. One more Grateful Dead show. I was never a full-on Deadhead, but would see them whenever they played to their Bay Area homebase, and whenever I could, mostly between 1981 and 1990; the best show I attended was three days at Laguna Seca Raceway in 1988, with camping and girls and everything. It’s true that “there is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert” — it would be nice to know that the last one was the last one.

4. A few years ago, one of the cable stations ran a couple daily episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This allowed for the taping of the entire series; they were also running daily Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes, but we didn’t know then how good (sometimes better) a series it was; or we could now curl up some evening at Quark’s (or, for the hardcore, Vic’s) without bugging Netflix.

5. I think I passed up a chance to see DEVO live in the late 1970s or early 1980s. But I saw them in the ’90s, which was in some cases more interesting due to all the middle-aged punks with their kids. So it all works out eventually.

Crit

Muse Ich

SOME SONGS JUST SOUND BEST on a transistor radio. (You know who you are.)

Torah

The Yad In The Kitchen

IN ONE OF OUR KITCHEN cabinets is a knot shaped like the Hebrew letter “yad.” It’s something we’ve lived with for 11 years but only pondered tonight.

Fig. 1.

According to some of Judaism’s lesser-publicized traditions, “yad” as the first letter of the yad-heh-vav-heh — God’s most holy name — is associated with the element of fire, the tongue of the flame of holy generation and inspiration, which is also the Godhead (that concentrated chunk of God located in the human soul). “Yad” also literally means “hand.” It is also the little sculptured wand (tipped by a hand and pointing finger) which indicate passages in the Torah, itself considered as one long Name of God.

Fig. 1.

So: Yad is the seat of intuition; it is also the hand guided by intuition, and which points to the Sourceless Source of that intuition (and everything else). In orbis veritas. That it’s on the flour cabinet, proves the divinity in food — and ingenuity.

Etc

Our Motto

“ALL THAT’S NEWS TO ME, I print.”

Writing

Seeing Her

ALL I REMEMBER NOW ARE images, and the intimate passion of an infinite love.

I remember the room of globes, of maps of worlds and wonders, soft with pillows and draped scarves. And She was there. And She knew me. And loved me. And told me I was Her own and always would be — “but it is not yet your time to be with Me.”

And She kissed me.

Her words, warm as her arms, were now cutting ice. I cried, I begged — I think I wailed. “No! Don’t leave me! Please! No!”

She told me she would see me again, one day. “I will not leave you. But you cannot be with me. Yet.”

I awoke sobbing, but comforted in Her absence — oh so small, and cold, next to Her presence! — by the knowledge that She loves me best of all Her lovers (although She loves all her lovers this way). And so I sit by the open window in springtime, listening for Her voice.

And still She walks the hidden retreats, where a ghost of love wraps me like a veil, like a scarf hung in a room full of globes where my Lady waits for me.

One day.

(They say every poet is slipped a glimpse of the Muse unadorned and transcendent, triumphant and radiant, loving, intimate and wise. I don’t know if this qualifies, but I dreamed this, as vividly as a sunset breeze, when I was 17 or 18. And I have never forgotten it.)