Tag: It.

… can’t really be named, only experienced.

Sober Assessment

TWO-AND-A-HALF MONTHS AGO, I completed my tenth year of clear-eyed, clean-headed and grateful sobriety.

Now, when some people hear that, they might think, “Great, here comes the self-righteous lecture on the evils of intoxication.” But that won’t happen, at least not from me. I don’t and won’t disdain anyone else’s recreational or coping choices; frankly, they are none of my business, and refraining from inebriation is not a crusade that I feel either comfortable or qualified to pursue toward others.

Instead, I want to speak about the rarefied and addictive intoxicant that actually “saved” me, keeping me sane and healthy not just during the past decade but all of my life – and if you know me as well as you think you do, you can already guess what that is.

WRITING.

Not for nothing did Stephen King say of this 6,000-year-old-plus art: “Do it for the buzz.” There is an ineffable thrill in watching the words spill out onto paper or screen, an actual physical and mental rush only gotten from congealing thought into alphabetic form, that’s as hard to beat as it is to describe.

And the best part is, it’s free. Easily accessible. Shareable. No more watching my money go up in a cloud of marijuana smoke; no more furtively prowling dodgy neighborhoods; no more keeping it all to myself lest I run out.

Did I mention addictive? Once you start writing, you’re hooked for life. I sometimes find myself typing and typing until I fall asleep at the keyboard, literally unable to stop ’til I drop. (True story.) E.g., tonight: I meant to take advantage of the finally clear Sonoma skies and do a bit of long-delayed stargazing. But as I write this, it’s well after 10:30pm (or, if you prefer, 2230 hours) PDT and I’m already getting sleepy.

So before I trundle off to Dreamsville, I’ll leave you this hard-earned advice: Try not to let the Great American Novel (or Essay, or Blogpost) keep you from tending your other bodily needs. Otherwise, you may find yourself face down in a pool of your own ink – or even with “QWERTYUIOP” reverse-imprinted deeply into your throbbing forehead. Nighty night.

Aged I

LET’S SHIFT GEARS for a second and talk about something that’s been on my mind for a long but indeterminate while: in a word, aging.

Later this month, may the Force so will it, I’ll celebrate my 64th birthday. While momentous enough in itself, what’s even more of the moment is the matter of perspective this milestone brings.

I have now outlived several dear (and once-dear) friends and family members.

Many of the Hebrew-school children I taught when we first came to Sonoma are now out of college or vocational school and pursuing their own successful careers – some with children of their own.

I have seen my beloved hometown change from a quaint and sleepy rural community to a quaint and world-famous tourist playground. (Don’t get me wrong – it’s still by far the best place on Earth in which to live, filled with the best people to live with. It’s just … different, that’s all.)

And I have matured from a depressive but charmingly self-aggrandizing hophead to a joyful and sober social asset. (For some values of the term “social asset.”)

All these changes – particularly the sobriety – have helped me realize the fragility, continuity and inevitability of time and its cycles; it’s the sort of realization one can only derive from direct experience, and has also given me an appreciation of depth and focus. (And rocket-fueled my innate and sardonic sense of the absurd.) Most valuable of all is what the kids today call “radical acceptance” – a healthier byproduct than cynicism of struggling against the unchangeable – as well as a fierce love of life and its many inhabitants.

Wisdom? Enlightenment? Inner peace? I wouldn’t go that far, because I don’t know how to define or even recognize any of those. Let’s just call it a grateful and quiet delight in the simple, in the small, in the deep happiness of becoming and belonging. And we’ll leave it at that.

Cat Whispering

IT’S NOT ACTUALLY hard to become a Cat Whisperer, if you just follow these field-tested and foolproof steps:

1. When you first behold the cat, sweet-talk it: e.g., “Who’s the nice cat?” or “Hey, beautiful boy/girl!” or simply, “KITTY!”

2. Let the cat approach you instead of vice-versa, lest it bolt. (The first Rule of Thumb in any feline encounter: NEVER MAKE A CAT AFRAID OF YOU.)

3. Present to the cat the back of your motionless hand, without trying to reach out for it. (See Rule of Thumb above.)

4. Should you be blessed by having the cat rub its face on your hand, keep your hand motionless and enjoy its warm attentions for the duration.

5. When the cat, sensing your good intentions, rubs its side against your hand, shift your hand to its rump to give a few experimental skritches. Let the cat’s tail slide (loosely!) between your thumb and forefinger as it passes.

6. If the cat turns and makes a beeline for your hand, repeat steps 3-6 until your new friend tires of these familiarities and leaves.

7. If, when you next see the cat, it runs to greet you, congratulations.

8. See?

The Handshake

THE UBER DRIVER’S HAND was warm and calloused, but its electric charge was unexpected.

It shouldn’t have been, though, since for the past forty-five minutes we had free-associated on topics that don’t lend themselves to easy or uncomplicated conversation: God, mind, the uselessness of AI, Self-realization (not a typo) and ego-death, gurus, the constancy of change, the Indian fashion-industry, meditation, capitalism, health and healing, life’s unpredictability, Hindu holyman Ramana Maharshi.

His car was a late-model Tesla – ironically, since we also agreed we shouldn’t colonize Mars – enroute to a faraway hospital, where my copilot was undergoing heart surgery. I told him this toward the end of the ride, and he reached back a ringed and metal-braceleted hand to take one of mine.

“Aw, man,” he said. “Blessings come from God.”

That was when something unexpected passed between us.

“For her,” he said with earnest intensity.

We conversed a bit more before pulling up to the hospital.

“Thank you,” I told him as I got out. “And thank you for your blessing.”

“Aw, man,” he said. “Blessings come from God.”

“Yes,” I replied. “But thank you for being the conduit.”

A few minutes later I stood next to my copilot’s bed. She had just come out of surgery, pale and weak-voiced and pained of expression. Her escape from the Beyond had been a close one, but her doctors were skilled. With a why-not-it-couldn’t-hurt shrug, I touched her leg with the hand the driver had grasped. Nothing unexpected this time, just a loving gesture of comfort.

Mind you, I am a skeptic in the original sense of the word: an open-minded soul who doesn’t chase after explanations of the inexplicable. And really, earnest handshakes are common enough. But over the next few hours, as she went from colorless and tentative to walking with me about the cardio unit, beaming a delighted smile at everything we passed, I wondered.

Perhaps that’s the way her sort of surgery is supposed to work. I like to think it does.

But on the other hand, every little bit helps.

Never Enough

AS A TEACHER of Jewish children and adults, it’s my job (and joy!) to soak up as much Torah as I can – in the broad sense of “Torah” as “the entire corpus of the Jewish textual tradition.”

Fortunately, there’s no end to it, which makes for some pretty challenging (and rewarding!) job security.

What dwells among those who study Torah together?

But Torah isn’t meant to be studied alone. As it happens, I am blessed (or, if you prefer, lucky) to be involved with a tightknit community of very learned and dedicated individuals, some of whom I’ve known for years, who continually teach me more than I can ever impart to them. Please allow me to introduce you.

The first group of Torah scholars hails from 2001, when my copilot had the great idea to study the weekly portion with our co-congregants on the Shabbat mornings that we weren’t studying with our rabbi once a month. We all met in our living room, and though many no longer walk this planet, others have taken their place, and the dozen-or-so of us now converse online (thank you, COVID) for ninety engrossing minutes every Saturday.

Around 2014, a handful of would-be learners commenced living-room meetings on Thursday mornings at the behest of RM, who wanted to study Mussar (Jewish ethical spirituality). Once again thanks to the pandemic, we shifted Zoomward for an hour on Wednesday mornings and collected a small number of fellow students. Though we’ve now worked our way back to Mussar, we’ve also tackled the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Ezekiel, as well as the pithy rabbinical wisdom of Pirkei Avot.

Then there’s the hourly dive into various texts with two veterans of the preceding collectives: Thursday mornings with RT (a wise and humble night-owl with whom I’m now learning one of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks‘ Torah commentaries), and TR (a brilliant and outspoken mathematician-philosopher with a taste for Maimonides) on Monday afternoons. For nearly two years, it has also been my great pleasure to study by phone for fifteen minutes on Wednesday mornings with BE, a hyper-articulate professional writer, as part of the ongoing program Partners in Protection. And just this past Wednesday, my longtime convalescent friend RR and I took up the weekly Torah portion – partly to learn, and mostly to take her mind off her poor health.

Our rabbis tell us that whenever people speak words of Torah together, the Shekhinah (Divine Presence) dwells among them. Whether or not that’s true, I do know what dwells among those who study together: joy. And isn’t that the same thing?

Favicon Plugin created by Jake Ruston's Wordpress Plugins - Powered by Briefcases and r4 ds card.