IT’S HIS INDEPENDENCE. IT’S watching him sleep. It’s his purring. It’s the feel and smell of his fur. (It’s also the smell of his paws.) It’s the way he closes his eyes when I pet him. It’s his occasional intense, extraneous-sound-ignoring focus. It’s the little gifts he brings. It’s his bonding-with-humans over a long period of time. It’s his gracefulness. It’s the way he demands attention and affection. It’s his wherever-the-humans-are sleeping preference. It’s his goofy self-amusement.
The Loudest Silence
THE TRICK IS: HOW TO scream at the top of your lungs without making a sound.
That’s one of the lessons taught by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, a Chasidic teacher who lived in Ukraine at the turn of the 19th century CE. R’ Nachman, who suffered deeply from depression throughout his life (and who once said, “It is a great mitzvah [religious obligation] always to be happy”), taught that one can release one’s emotions by focusing them into a “silent scream:”
Are We (still) Not Men?
Fig. 1
“Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO!” was revolutionary band DEVO‘s first album, replete with such underground wonders as “Uncontrollable Urge,” “Space Junk,” “Come Back Jonee,” a solid cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction,” and the anthemic “Jocko Homo” (the latter song making use of the album title as part of the chorus). Partly nihilistic, eminently danceable, the band’s message touted the “devolution” of modern humanity from its noble Homo sapiens roots to “monkey-men all / in business suits.”
Two Letters, One Torah
THE FIRST THING YOU NEED to know is that, in Hebrew, the letter D (dalet) looks a lot like the letter R (reish). It’s so easy to confuse the two, in fact, that Source Critics (those who see the Torah as knit together from several other texts) like to explain some of Torah’s eccentricities as scribal errors — handmade typos, if you will.
Now, I mainly hold to the Source Critics’ view of the Torah, in that I believe the text we have now is a redacted compendium of several older documents (a theory better known as the Documentary Hypothesis, or DH). Unlike the critics, however, I don’t believe the Redactor was slipshod; rather, that what we call “mistakes” were actually deliberate features, put there in order to keep us talking about the Torah for lo these many millennia. Case in point, the debate over Deuel vs. Reuel:
First Graf: The Illuminati Papers
THE LATE ROBERT ANTON WILSON is perhaps the greatest influence on my life and thought since even before Rabbi Akiva. His spirit is sprinkled here and there throughout this blog like raisins in a cake. A prolific author, RAW (as he’s known) wore many literary caps: conspiracy chaser, little-L libertarian, mind-expansionist, novelist, futurist, comedian, neophile, mystic, poet, prophet.
Don’t Look Up
OF ALL THE PET PEEVES this modern life offers, one of the most soul-sucking is checking out at the grocery store.
I’m specifically talking about the debit-card machine. Time was, you could fill the two-to-three-minute transaction with friendly banter; ask after the checker’s health and/or welfare; comment on how busy the day is; even chat about the house music. It doesn’t matter what — it’s a friendly benefit for both customer and checker. When you’re working retail, these little conversations help pass the time and break up the daily monotony.
365 Names of God: El Shaddai
EL SHADDAI is the name used primarily by the Biblical Patriarchs, usually translated as “God Almighty” and focusing on the deity’s providential or nurturing aspect. Scholars differ over whether “Shaddai” is cognate with similar Phoenician or Ugaritic words for mountains, breasts, or the act of sustaining. The last sense seems to best capture the Toraitic context.