EG

What is the word for a female mensch?  I just received notice of Emily's death through Havurah Shalom.  I wouldn't call her a friend because I'm socially challenged, but Emily helped me with my boys' bar mitvahs by singing and playing music, she organized interesting lunch lectures that I attended, her daughters worked in City Hall while I was there and her family had the beach house next to where I used to spend time.

She was young.  Another example of Billy Joel's adage.   Maybe it's that the hearts of the good beat more.


ps.  The funeral service was very moving.  Emily's death is a great loss for the community. Her life is aspirational for me.

The mother of beauty

The current notable death has been Aaron Swartz.  He was so articulate and right about things.  Is that what made life unbearable for him?  Or was there something he was wrong about that led to a fatal mistake?  People have criticized his parents for placing the blame on others, but I bet they tried their hardest to help him, even though they couldn't succeed. In a search for what it means to be spiritual in a Jewish context Tuesday, I found it difficult to understand the point of a poem and felt flippantly dismissed.  It doesn't seem possible to have a meaningful discussion of life and death in a room of strangers in the space of an hour. But the Rabbi who doesn't understand science is well-meaning.  Searching for a poem I can relate to, I found this, which reminds me of an old favorite song.  Sunday Morning
by Wallace Stevens
I Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice. She dreams a little, and she feels the dark Encroachment of that old catastrophe, As a calm darkens among water-lights. The pungent oranges and bright, green wings Seem things in some procession of the dead, Winding across wide water, without sound. The day is like wide water, without sound, Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet Over the seas, to silent Palestine, Dominion of the blood and sepulchre. II Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams? Shall she not find in comforts of the sun, In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else In any balm or beauty of the earth, Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven? Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms; gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; All pleasures and all pains, remembering The bough of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul. III Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth. No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind He moved among us, as a muttering king, Magnificent, would move among his hinds, Until our blood, commingling, virginal, With heaven, brought such requital to desire The very hinds discerned it, in a star. Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be The blood of paradise? And shall the earth Seem all of paradise that we shall know? The sky will be much friendlier then than now, A part of labor and a part of pain, And next in glory to enduring love, Not this dividing and indifferent blue. IV She says, "I am content when wakened birds, Before they fly, test the reality Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings; But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields Return no more, where, then, is paradise?" There is not any haunt of prophecy, Nor any old chimera of the grave, Neither the golden underground, nor isle Melodious, where spirits gat them home, Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured As April's green endures; or will endure Like her remembrance of awakened birds, Or her desire for June and evening, tipped By the consummation of the swallow's wings. V She says, "But in contentment I still feel The need of some imperishable bliss." Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams And our desires. Although she strews the leaves Of sure obliteration on our paths, The path sick sorrow took, the many paths Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love Whispered a little out of tenderness, She makes the willow shiver in the sun For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet. She causes boys to pile new plums and pears On disregarded plate. The maidens taste And stray impassioned in the littering leaves. VI Is there no change of death in paradise? Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs Hang always heavy in that perfect sky, Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth, With rivers like our own that seek for seas They never find, the same receding shores That never touch with inarticulate pang? Why set the pear upon those river-banks Or spice the shores with odors of the plum? Alas, that they should wear our colors there, The silken weavings of our afternoons, And pick the strings of our insipid lutes! Death is the mother of beauty, mystical, Within whose burning bosom we devise Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly. VII Supple and turbulent, a ring of men Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn Their boisterous devotion to the sun, Not as a god, but as a god might be, Naked among them, like a savage source. Their chant shall be a chant of paradise, Out of their blood, returning to the sky; And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice, The windy lake wherein their lord delights, The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills, That choir among themselves long afterward. They shall know well the heavenly fellowship Of men that perish and of summer morn. And whence they came and whither they shall go The dew upon their feet shall manifest. VIII She hears, upon that water without sound, A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine Is not the porch of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay." We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old dependency of day and night, Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable. Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; And, in the isolation of the sky, At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink, Downward to darkness, on extended wings.     Well-meaning--wanting to relate--connect to others. I haven't found answers to the  question "How to bear wanting imperishable bliss?" in Judaism and relied instead on the  Buddha's advice to not want. Upon reflection, I think the answer from the the Torah is that being part of the permanence of the book and tradition itself is the way to make lasting truth. If you want lasting love, love something that lasts.  Pick up something from the past and carry it on. (Don't love something which by it's nature is fleeting if you can't bear its loss.) But where is the joy in that?  It works for the people who've been treated well by the past and for the naive who don't realize that what seems to be lasting and true knowledge is probably a misinterpretation.  As the poet insurance lawyer points out, the sky will be more than blue when heaven's bloody desire is requited, but maybe the earth shall seem all of paradise that we know. I think the reconstructed people I was talking to were still trying to figure out their own personal feelings of loss.  We're all little grains of sand passing through to the bottom of the hourglass, nothing new or noteworthy to me about that.  But then according to some, I can't understand real pain. I had a theory that the increasing power of greed in our society stems from the fact that these days fewer thoughtful people spend Sunday mornings in church. Even if people don't believe in or need God, listening to a revered ordained person tell you to try to be selfless and having a community watching you hear the moral exhortations has to have a some influence on one's actions during the week.  The people who are still sitting in the pews now are more often listening to divisive messages of fear and pandering fundraising pitches.

New year blog direction

I thought I'd do birthdays this year, but facebook has made me overwhelmed with birthdays.  So I guess it will be death days.  The first one of the year was 1/5/2012  dear old D'oh was put to sleep, her mouth oozing with cancer, blind and mute.  I didn't realize it was Patrick's Yahrzeit when I made the vet appointment and wonder if I'll remember commemorate D'oh's death day more in the future because of it.

I felt kind of like the women who schedule their c-sections--selfishly putting my practical concerns ahead of the mysteries of life and death.  But it made sense, allowed D'oh's family to be with her at her last moments and avoided my having to deal with a dog corpse.

My ex gets the ashes, I get the clay paw print.    He seemed surprised that I viewed the euthanasia as similar to an abortion.  Isn't it?

There is a chance that a midget cat will come to live with me, but we'll see.

Happy New Year

I survived 2012, a year of anxiety.  Scathed, but no resolutions to break this time.

Our party seemed to fulfill the mission of providing fun for the attendees.  There was a game called Slip It In and prizes.  Some new friends and neighbors and some old friends too.  My old friends are MILFs.

My Jambalaya was praised by the deaf woman from Louisiana.  I hope it foreshadows a trip to the Big Easy this year.