Those Who Know, Chuckle.
Hortatory self-aggrandizement.
At the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, I inhabited a world peopled (in part) by a cast-off group of fannish folk who sometimes chant together after consuming a quasi-alchemic formula during their quasi-religious rituals. “Trolle Sweate!” they chant, in inebriated consequence of quant suff. “Trolle Sweate!”
Continue reading “When The Troll Sweats, Bottle It”
IN THIS ELECTRONIC ME-FIRST age, it is both rare and a point of honor never to begin a blog post with “I.” (Nitpickery note: I mean the word and concept, not the letter. Yeesh.) Not that I’m not tempted — but it’s too easy, too prevalent (for my tastes) and symptomatic of what I find least attractive about Lower North American pop culture.
There is a blogger who epitomizes what I’m talking about, and whose (apparently non-ironic) advice for Internet success is “Tap into narcissism.” She makes an interesting point, but I think that only produces a pile of people shouting “Lookit me! Lookit! Lookit!” instead of offering something interesting.
I don’t want my art to be narcissistic; I’d rather have it said about me “Who is this guy?” than “Who does this guy think he is?” Better still would be, “What a great story! Who wrote it? And are there more?”
YESTERDAY, I POSTED A COMMENT to BoingBoing asking people to “Google ‘deconstructionist face-bullhorn’ (for) … where I stand on the whole horned-rim/hornrimmed/modern-equivalent-of-John-Lennon’s frames issue.” So far, 22 people have. Whee! (This post’s title is taken from a phenomenon well-known to after-hours Renaissance Pleasure Faire folk, whereby those standing at the bottom of the little valley need only howl once to provoke a full-throated choral reply from a horde of unseen collegial up-valleyites. And it never failed.)
(BECAUSE OF WORDPRESS, I’M REPUBLISHING this 2002 piece — it works better as a “post” than as a “page” — and although my kippa-wearing has become a bit less pronounced of late it still reflects my approach to finding a place in Judaism. If you’re not hot for apologetics or manifesti, you have my permission to read something else.)
Despite that I’ve worn a yarmulke most of the time since 2000, I don’t define myself as Orthodox. Or Reform. Or, for that matter, as Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal or otherwise adjectivally Jewish.
Continue reading ““Judaism As Art””
I Am a Religious Man Unthreatened By Science, Secularity And Reason • 2011.06.09 • 400 words
(IN FACT, THE WHOLE “REASON” I “am” “religious” in the first place is only due to a direct perception [some might say delusion] that the Universe is, in some essential and indescribable sense, alive and conscious. I can’t help seeing that, feeling a part of it, and celebrating it.)
(Also, as much as I love science [and I do!], I’m even more fascinated by rituals and customs, folkways, folklore, manners, stories, legends, and myths. Continue reading “I Am a Religious Man Unthreatened By Science, Secularity And Reason”
TUCKED INTO MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER’S BIBLE is a yellowed sheet of paper containing the flavor of living tradition.
In short, it’s my mom’s recipe for knubel borscht (pronounced “k’nubble”): beef simmered in beet soup and garlic. That’s it: three ingredients, plus heat and time. Perhaps in part due to its simplicity, or that I’ve been eating it for most of my childhood Pesachs, knubel borscht is satisfying on a soul level. It fills the house with a scent at once sweet and savory, fruity and meaty, and which may in fact prove to be the smell of Gan Eden should the requisite air-sampling technology be designed and utilized.
The recipe originally comes from “the old country” (in our case, my Polish g’g’father or his Romanian wife); the original calls for a large pot, 5 quarts of borscht, 7-1/2 pounds of bone-in chuck roast with a packet of soup bones, and a large head of peeled garlic. Add everything together, simmer three hours or more, skimming off the foam; serve on plate and in bowl.
For our Seder Monday night, I created a lower-portion variant which is just as pleasing in all the essentials and doesn’t really suffer for the lack of soup bones. Four ingredients counting the pan:
9″ Pyrex baking pan
1 pound brisket
Quart of borscht
Head of garlic
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Peel and chop garlic. Put brisket in pan fat side up (trim excess fat first). Sprinkle garlic on top, pour over borscht, seal with aluminum foil. Three hours later, you’ll need a knife to cut through the aroma and open the oven. Put the meat on a plate, the soup in a bowl, and revel in the small blessings by which G?d or the quantum membranes thereof sustain and nurture the world.
(PASS IT ON.) AND USE yours with care — they’re a non-renewable resource.
THERE’S NOTHING LIKE THE INTERNET to show you how unique you’re not.
ANOTHER BIRTHDAY.
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””
“ALL THAT’S NEWS TO ME, I print.”
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.)
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