MAY YOU HAVE A SWEET, joyous, happy and rewarding New Year! And may your resolutions not prove too daunting; on reflection, may you not bog down in a swamp of self-recrimination. As the Talmud says, “All beginnings are difficult.” And…
Tag: moments
All that we ever really have.
5 Thoughts: A Wrinkle is Time
1. “WHERE DOES THE TIME GO?” I asked. And the answer came: “Away.” 2. There’s really not much one can say about the passing of time, just as there is not much that can be said about falling in love…
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…
Are We (still) Not Men?
FORTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK, my friend Ralfh came over to my apartment, held up an album cover, and said, “You have to hear this.” He slid out the vinyl disk, put it on the stereo, lowered the tone arm,…
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…
Night, Fog, and One Hell of a Bang
IF I HAD KNOWN THAT our galleon would collide with a freighter, I would have worn a life jacket. The time was February 1988. Through a curious series of circumstances, I had signed aboard the replica galleon Golden Hinde II…
Adventures of a Lidded Yid
“ARE YOU A PRIEST?” ASKED the workman as I passed through a local condoplex. “No, just a Jew,” I answered, smiling. “That’s good,” he said, also smiling, and went back to his repairs. He was not the first person who…
Fie on Death, and the Pale Horse He Rode In On
He was a man. Take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again. — William Shakespeare, Hamlet WHEN I FIRST MOVED INTO an Oakland apartment in 1986 with John Woods “Wheels” “Spoonhead” “Calvin Biggins” Wheeler,…
“When young people ask me about death, I tell them: ‘We die a little every day. When you get to be my age, you get used to it.'”
— Near-centenarian Richard Meyers
Not Like It Used To Was
Mom in the drug store Called out to her son: “Brooklyn!” Am I getting old?
#oldpunksneverdie
Never thought I’d hear Safeway’s in-house music channel play “London Calling” this morning. But I sang along with it anyway.
Haiku for Uncertain Weather
Slate-thin clouds cover shoulders that lately knew sun. Make up your mind, God.