Tag: moments

All that we ever really have.

Why I’m Called “Dances With Boulders”

FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS, a group of friends has made an annual equinoctial hike to a secret location for the sole purpose of … well, I can’t really say, since what fun is a secret society if you don’t keep it secret?

But one night at the bonfire … let me back up. The bonfire is some distance from the campground, with most of that distance along a sandy beach beneath an overtowering and rock-calving cliff. During the latter part of the evening, which stretched into the early hours of the next morning, some of our bonfire circle had drifted off in twos and threes so as not to be caught by the incoming tide. Continue reading “Why I’m Called “Dances With Boulders””

Aristotle’s Pernicious Hand

PEOPLE OF EARTH, HEAR ME: There are more than two ways out of this moment.

(Say it with me: “There are more than two ways out of this moment.”)

Some would have you believe that you can only go this way or that way. In fact, you may also go more ways than you can think. “You’re not going this way” doesn’t imply or mandate “you’re going that way.” As if that way were the only other way to go! Aside from this way, of course. Continue reading “Aristotle’s Pernicious Hand”

When Tefilin Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Lay Tefilin

Fig. 1.

March 14, 2011 (JTA) — An Alaska Airlines flight crew issued a security alert after three Mexican Orthodox Jews began praying with tefillin.

The flight attendants, who were concerned by the prayers being said aloud in Hebrew and the unfamiliar boxes with leather straps hanging from them, locked down the cockpit and radioed a security alert ahead to Los Angeles International Airport. (See: http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/03/14/3086391/alaska-airlines-detains-passengers-over-tefillin.)

(This sort of thing Nearly Happened To Me, in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport in early 2002: the onlookers were a couple of antsy early-morning passengers watching me “wrap up” in a terminal alcove. “It’s a Jewish prayer thing,” I said, and left it at that. They were mollified, I met my obligations, and the world survived another day.)

Unplug: Can You Do It?

LAST NIGHT I DREAMED I was drunk, belligerent and enjoying myself — not a good combination, nor one which I experience (or wish to experience) in real life. The subject of my tirade seems to have been the apologetic and paralyzing self-consciousness of the modern Jewish stereotype, and while I don’t remember exactly what I said I was truly “all het up” about it. (Which I occasionally am in real life, and maybe why it felt so good to express it.)

But that sense of muddy frustration evaporated when I discovered http://www.sabbathmanifesto.org/ and their call for a National Day of Unplugging from sundown March 4 to sundown March 5. Wondering what to do with your time? Ten suggestions are right here (from “Avoid technology” and “Get outside” to “Find silence” and “Give back”), but participants are also encouraged to create their own.

The basic idea is this: No one can run 24/7 without burning out, even someone as necessary and busy as you. So take a regular day off. See what’s within arm’s reach, and maybe rediscover who you are and what you’re doing here — or at the very least, take a well-earned nap. (Remember naps?)

(And if you found this via Facebook during one of many five-minute “just checking” sessions, you might just want to unplug right now.)

Compassionings

IT IS PRECISELY AT THAT moment when compassion seems most remote that it is most greatly needed. This principle is easier spoken than implemented — what isn’t? — but holds true not only for the individual, who is buffeted by a daily stream of bad news, but his or her logical and multiplex counterparts, arrayed in a social complex which seems to crumble by the day despite sincere effort. Some of us feel like we’re propping up a collapsing tent — but prop we must, because it’s what we do. If we are fools, as we even sometimes seem to ourselves, at least we’re getting some exercise. Maybe we’ll even glimpse Someone Else through the enshrouding folds.

Everyone you see is broken. Everyone needs at least a smile; some also need a job, or food, or shelter, or a reason to live. We are seeing heartbreak and pain on a massive and seemingly accelerating scale. We all need acknowledgment that we’re not alone — that our cry in the dark is at least heard, even if we are powerless to do more than cry, or listen.

We need each other, because we are all we have. So be kind to someone today. It may be their last, or yours.

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.

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