| Email Edition | ContactNever thought I’d hear Safeway’s in-house music channel play “London Calling” this morning. But I sang along with it anyway.
IT FEELS GOOD to write again.
It has been just over six years since I last added to this blog (which once boasted a readership of about thirty people, each one beloved, with additional spikes when I linked to something else and readers traced the link) and am finally feeling confident again about writing. The hiatus was mostly caused by a long-term and largely unameliorated depression (and yes, I’m still disabled); but thank G?d, Wellbutrin, Ann and Torah, I seem to have found my way back. During that time, it was difficult for me to focus on anything beyond a sentence — yes, it was that bad — but I somehow always knew I’d take up The Metaphorager again. Or so I hoped, anyway.
The tagline for this blog is “All That’s News To Me, I Print.” It used to be “A Journal of Experiential Holiness and Snack Bar,” which is perhaps closer to the point (there is a lot of Jewish content here, after all), but there’s a raft of other stuff contained in its (so far) 623 posts: recipes, blog critiques, book reviews, cultural commentary, short stories, et al. I had fun writing it, and hope you had/have fun reading it.
I’m not going to predict what I’m going to post here; I posted the last post because it’s the first writing I have done in six years and wanted to share it with a wider variety of people than receive my synagogue’s newsletter (for which I wrote it); I have seen too many people organize events which they called the “First Annual Shindig” and never held another.
All I can say is that it feels good to write again. We’ll see what develops from here.
ONE THING I MISS ABOUT the pre-21st-century days is the sense of humanity plunging headlong toward some destination.
These days, that collective goal seems hellbound and handbasket-wrapped. But in the days and years leading up to 1/1/2000, the Great Rollover, that sense of heading toward something great and mysterious was sometimes almost palpable. Maybe it’s because we could see a deadline.
Deadlines are wonderful tools for focusing the mind. Without one, I find myself picking listlessly at the keyboard; with one, I have an excuse, however small, to get off the couch. And that’s important. Our planet’s emerging global culture is lacking something without that sense of notional and communal quasi-closure, and I would like to offer a replacement.
In just about 25 years, give or take a month (or, to put it more or less as accurately as I can, in
days:hours:etc.) an asteroid named Apophis will make its second pass at Earth and quite possibly collide with it. That’s about as dead a deadline as you can get, but it’s also a good chunk of time — it’s a quarter-century off, which is sort of good news for us would-be codgers as it obviates the need for Social Security and other obligations; it’s close enough to inspire the imagination, yet far enough to finally develop those %$#@! jetpacks. And it’s a great excuse, however small, to get off the couch.
April 13, 2036. I hope to see you there.
YOU MIGHT THINK WHITE FLAGS mean “Surrender,” but if you’re talking about Aaron Fein‘s “White Flags” art piece — all the world’s flags rendered full-size in white cloth and embroidery — you’d better not say so in a public forum, or I’ll reply:
(T)o me the whiteness connotes a sameness — on one level it doesn’t matter that they’re white so much as monocolor. White is also the simplest color — it reflects the entire spectrum, is purely non-differential, and leaves nothing out. All dyed cloth begins and ends in whiteness. (White is also a popular color for bedsheets, which addresses the artist’s point about the welcoming tent of Abraham: rest and comfort at the end of a journey. A journey that begins in difference but whose end is only reached by One.)
Anyway, just a few thoughts. I am completely gobsmacked by the beauty and simplicity (and perhaps sense of humor) about this project. Thank you Tablet for bringing it to us.
The project — which really must be seen to be appreciated; I doubt photos actually convey the sense and scope — is the topic of a nice write-up at http://www.tabletmag.com/arts-and-culture/77571/white-flags/. The artist’s website is http://www.aaronfein.com/.
“Do you honor the hole, or refill it with something?” (This may also apply to more than just the WTC memorial. Me, I vote for honoring the hole.)
EVEN AFTER TEN YEARS, THE memories and pain are still fresh when I think of them. I don’t think of them often.
My habit in those days was to check the Ha’aretz news ticker with my morning coffee. “Hmm… soccer teams doing well, banks not so much, road accidents, airplane flies into World Trade Center. Wait. What?” Read more »
EVIDENTLY, SHE WROTE A POEM in 1928 called “Dirge With Music.” I have not yet read any of her other works, but I hope they’re like this one. The last stanza says it all:
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
(Thanks to Rabbi David Wolpe for the quotation.)
BY OUR BEST CALCULATIONS, HISTORY began in Sumer when people first started writing things down (there are some examples of probable earlier scripts, but no one’s translated them yet). This would be about 6,000 years ago.
Let’s assume twenty-five years to the generation. That would be four generations per century. Six thousand years is sixty centuries is two-hundred forty generations.
Which means history began with your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandparents.
Kind of neat to think about.
GIVEN THE POSSIBILITY OF EARTH’S demise-by-asteroid in 25 years, we at The Metaphorager will be trying to stay awake, aware, conscious, intent, productive, or otherwise engaged for the next
days:hours:etc. (Live it up, fellow Earthlings.)
THERE MUST BE A WAY to get rich selling extra spaces as attachments for Scrabble boards…
QUIZ SHOW OVERHEARD ON THE TV as I entered the living room:
That’s right, ‘Illuminati’ is the answer! You’ve won $100!”
DO ANT THEOLOGIANS EXHORT THEIR multitudes against the fate awaiting them under Dante’s Magnifying Glass?
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