Skater Telos

So, after mentioning just the other day (was that yesterday?) that Dante’s Divine Comedy is one of my most-treasured books (which it is; I loved it so much that it wound up forming the basic architectual structure to my still-and-probably-always unpublished novel, and the poet himself was a character in the thing), I found something in this week’s SF Weekly about a couple of guys who have done a contemporary rewrite of the great epic poem. (The book-info link is here.) They’ve rewritten the thing entirely, with lines like “By then we had hiked further around the/mountain than I thought, but as you can tell,/I was kinda zoning out on all the art and stuff.” and “… I had that helpless feeling like when/ you’ve missed an exit on the freeway and every mile/passed seems wasted until you get turned around.” Inferno is set (naturally) in L.A., Purgatorio in San Francisco and–well, this I don’t understand at all, what can I say–Paradiso in New York. And the hero is wearing a hoodie with “Allegheri” on the back of his skateboard.

From what I’ve seen, the rewrite is cute and kind of fun. But, not surprisingly, it seems to lack the elegance, the mastery, the depth and profundity that is is dizzyingly present in the original. Could not hold a candle. But nonetheless, I’m amused, and may check them out anyway, for one of those days when I could use a little Neoplatonic hipster entertainment. When I want poetry so heady it makes me cry, I think I’ll still use the original, though, thanks.

blathering on books

I usually try to exercise some restraint when it comes to the meme thing that happens around the blogosphere, but as I was tagged specifically by Rachel at Velveteen Rabbi, and since it’s about books (oh no, not that) I figured I’d play.

Number of books I own:

Uh. No idea. Before I left for J’lem, I had one of those massive Ikea bookcases, a few overstuffed smaller ones and this fantastic, quite substantial inset bookcase on one of the walls of my apartment. I just shipped back like 9 boxes of books from Jerusalem–not all full up, since they’d be too heavy to schlep (so there are sweaters and stuff on top of the books) but pretty substantially-sized, I’d say. I have a lot of Jewy books. A lot. I also have lots of books about other religions and/or religious theory in general (with titles like Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, ’cause I’m geek like that), lots of literature, some poetry, a lot of books on art (either bought or inherited), some general feminist stuff and assorted other nonfiction. Yeah, I dunno.

Fortunately one of my teachers is giving away a couple bookcases and he said he’d hold them for me ’till I got back to town at the end of the summer. I’m getting an air conditioner in the deal too, hey!

Last book I read:
Well, I was in finals and then I’ve been in sort of transition and stuff, not a lot of high-minded reading happening lately, which is to say I re-read the last two Harry Potters on the plane and therebouts. But recently I’ve gotten back into Rudolph Otto’s The Idea of the Holy lately. I’ve also read a lot of pieces of other books I’ve already read, most notably a chunk from Carol Lee Flinders’ At the Root of This Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst. Her feminism is very different from mine–much more essentialist–but I still find a lot of what she has to say to be smart. I also read the last issue of Bitch magazine, ’cause we always heart the Bitch girls.

Last purchased:

Just yesterday, The Trouble with Islam : A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith by Irshad Manji. The woman in the bookstore smiled when I came in and gave me a creepy look when I checked out. I still wonder if it was because of the kippah and tzitzit and whether she thought I was looking for anti-Muslim fodder or something. I’m probably being paranoid, but still. It’s hard not to feel like a Zionist Imperialist in this town.
I’ve just started the book and am enjoying it so far. I’m very interested to see how she’ll handle the material–that is to say, I’m partly interested to hear what she has to say, and partly interested from a writerly perspective how she chooses to make her critiques and how effective or not it appears to be. More to come when I’ve finished it.

Books that mean a lot to me:

I’m not going to include sifrei kodesh on here, because then it’ll just get crazy. So assume the Torah, the Talmud, my siddurim, halakhic law codes of many varieties, and so forth. Here are some more. There are a lot. This is just a small sample of what I could think of off the top of my head. (Keep checking back here and maybe the list will change):

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
Kaddish and Other Poems, Allen Ginsberg
Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton
The Divine Comedy, Dante
The Stranger, Albert Camus (This book is less live and relevant for me today, but it had a tremendous impact on me as a teenager, so it still means a lot to me.)
Expecting Adam, Martha Beck
Love Poems, Yehuda Amichai

Tag five more:

Well, I’m reluctant to do this, but I’m gonna anyway. If you’ve already done the meme or want to (whether or not you are tagged), please post the URL in the comments below. In the meantime, Alana, AKMA, Mobius, Micah, Harry, consider yourself tagged if you want to be. After all, I’m in California, where non-consensual tagging is very highly frowned upon.

hungry in galus

I am so a walking hazard for marit ayin (the idea that you’re supposed to be careful about what you do, lest someone get the wrong idea about what you’re actually doing).

Yesterday, I was trying to work in coffee shops. That’s pretty much what I’m going to be doing all summer: trying to work. In coffee shops. In lots of different places. I wasn’t having much luck focusing at Caffe Strada, because there were too many people and stimuli around, and I had to get up to feed the meter every dang hour, which made it hard to get into a groove. So I trucked over to the north side of town, where I hoped parking would be better and I could just sit and work. I found a place with 2 hour parking. Okay, an improvement, but not by a lot. And then suddenly I was hungry. So I needed someplace close where I could just sit, get a salad, and do my thing.

I went into Saul’s Deli. I knew it wasn’t kosher. I only eat cold salads in non-kosher restauraunts. I asked to see a menu. They didn’t have anything good for me. The woman promised to whip up a special salad for me. I was irritated and cranky and didn’t feel like going on a search for edible food, so I agreed. I was in my kippah and tzitzit. She seated me in the window, right in front, so I could be an advertisement for the kosher deli that wasn’t really kosher. I’m pretty sure no clueless religious Jews saw me, assumed the place had supervision and went in and ordered meat, but I felt like a bad monkey anyway. Worst part about all of it is that it wasn’t even that good a salad. They were very nice about trying to accomodate me, but I still had to ask for stuff like 3 times. Sigh.

I forgot how hard it is to find food to eat when you don’t live in Jerusalem. Even in a city that I know well, the drama of finding a 100% vegetarian restauraunt (the kosher ones are few and far-between around here) is exhausting. Was it this exahusting before? I don’t remember. Certainly, I don’t remember hating having to drive this much. I think I just accepted it as a fact of life. But now, now I am not so hot about spending so much dang time in the car.

It’s a good thing I’m in such a fantastic city right now, or this would all be even more annoying.

And on that note, I think it’s time to seek out something for lunch.

Shabbos goyim and rabbanim

I’ve grown to really love the art of spending time with non-Jewish friends on Shabbat. On Thursday, I called my friend Emerson and asked if he was going to be around Saturday; I was staying in his neighborhood and would love to stop by. I turned up around 6:30 and he and his most excellent girlfriend D. immediately switched off whatever episode of Law & Order they were watching, and we got to the hanging out. Soon it was time for food. Emerson and I had reviewed the specifics of my Jewyness on Thurz (”Okay, right. I forgot you don’t talk on the phone–okay, right, just stop by. So… remind me again. You guys can, like, eat on the Sabbath, right?”) I explained that the whole Shabbos goy thing meant that I couldn’t ask them directly to do stuff, but passive-aggressive communication was sometimes acceptible. (The classic example is that you can’t ask a gentile to turn on the heat, but you can remark VERY LOUDLY about how chilly it’s become…) They were very cute about the whole thing. “Okay, so if we just haaaaapppen to order takeout from X restauraunt, and just haaaaaaaappen to order too much food, and some of it is lying around, might you haaaaappen to eat it? And what kind, exactly, would you be most likely to just happen to eat–just out of curiosity?” They just happened to stuff me silly with sushi.

D. also used the opportunity to ask me Silly Halakhic Questions (at some point I should collect the lot of them that I’ve gotten so far). Best one was, if you can genetically engineer a pig so that it has cloven hooves, can you eat it? What if you genetically engineer the pig so that it’s an entirely separate species entirely, and no longer actually a pig?
I answered the first one by saying that the prohibition against pork is from a specific pasok (rather than falling under a rule) so that would be a no. The second, I wasn’t so sure–there are two schools of thought with halakha, really. Some say if it’s not explicitly forbidden, it’s permitted (and New Strange Animal was not explicitly mentioned in the Torah) and others say if it’s not explicitly permitted, it’s forbidden. Hence the controversey around turkey, which is a New World bird and not around during the time of Chazal. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to eat it, in any case.

The Shabbos goy thing raises all these funny little dilemmas, especially now that I’ve studied the laws a little more in-depth. Earlier, right after shul, I had gone to say hi to my friend KS, and she asked me if I wanted tea or fizzy water. I did a little mental index in my head of saying I’d like tea = heating water = did I request her to do that, and is it different if she asks me what I want? Not being sure (and guessing this was the right decision in any case), I just took the fizzy water.

Ultimately, I’m just glad that I have the chance to see the people I love, and that my people are so flexible and good-humored about all this stuff. ‘Cause it would be a bummer not to get to spend time with folks if I’m in the area and we’re both free, you know? And Shabbat is, in part, about good solid human connection. Lucky for me, I have lots of great humans with whom to connect.

In other news, my rabbi, Rabbi Alan Lew, is retiring in a week. I’ve known this for a while, but it seems that I’ve gotten into town just in time to catch him on his last two Shabbatot at the synagogue I’ve been attending since I was a 22 year-old thing turning up to Kabbalat Shabbat with short, bleach-blond hair, a wallet chain and an ambivalently athiest identity. He was the guy who connected the dots for me about all the mystical experiences I’d been having and Jewish practice, and Torah. He was the guy who nurtured me and guided me along this path, who encouraged me from early on to consider the rabbinate and then helped me get a whole bunch of tools that I’d need for this long, strange trip. He’s an extraordinarily gifted rabbi and teacher, and I’ve been very grateful to have him as such a strong influence. The good news is, I think he’s still going to be teaching around town and even at the meditation center he founded a while back, so there will still be opportunities for folks to take advantage of what he’s got to teach. But he won’t be at Beth Sholom anymore, and that’s a pretty big loss. Place just won’t be the same without him. Even though two other dear friends are now the chazzan and assistant rav there, it might be hard for me to go back there with that piece missing. Well, we’ll see. It was wonderful to be there this Shabbos and see lots of members of my old community, as much as anything. Time and change.

And so it flows.

Good things

Eucalyptus trees in the park.

A tiny lake surrounded by trees with a Chinese-style pagoda perched on the edge.

The Brain Wash cafe and laundramat.

Feminist businesses.

Friends who have finally moved into a place big enough for them.

The magic haircut guy, who, when I asked for a trim, gave me a trim (and not a brand-new hairdo).

Seeing a friend’s breathtakingly beautiful photographs of Utah and Colorado.

The sunshine out there. Not heat, just sunshine.

here, things are pastel and smell like seawater sometimes

There are certain places where you feel more yourself than other places. I don’t know why this is true, but it is. And after a long drive from the blinky-blinky city of bling to this other one in the north that is mellow and friendly, I feel much better.

I’ve done that drive up the 5 like a million times now. I’ve got my little routines down. Stopping at the grocery to get certain snacks and lunch-like food beforehand (the freeway in the middle of California not exactly being a haven for the kosher vegetarian), fixing a little makeshift backrest, arranging for my 5-6 hour entertainment (sadly, it didn’t work out for me to see my bro along the way this time, but hopefully he’ll come by to see me here in the next couple of weeks.) I didn’t even break out the book on tape I had brought, which is pretty good–music, a few phone conversations, and singing along to the nusach stuff I had brought (to learn certain liturgical melodies I don’t yet know) as long as I could stand it pretty much kept me occupied. It took an extra hour to get through the rainy rush-hour traffic, and then finally I arrived at the place of some friends who are out of town and kindly allowing me to house-sit. I actually have two housesitting gigs, so I’ll be bouncing between East Egg and West Egg as the schedule dictates.

I would love to get to see everyone while I’m up here. I am so not going to be able to see everyone. It’s just a pity. For one thing, I don’t have time, for another thing, I have a deep need to just hang out alone, to take the location in, to get, sort of, nutrients from this particular placenta into my system. And I’ve got, like, work to do, too. (For those of you tuning in, I used to live here, have more dear friends than is reasonable or fair up here, and this city is once of the places that will always be home to me. Maybe more than any other place. Or maybe another place will ever feel more like home. Dunno.) Interestingly, I’m staying now in the neighborhood (well, one of them) where I used to live, right near my shul and where a number of different incarnations of myself have wandered. Always fascinating to see to where we get pulled back, no?

Okay. On to my day. I need to go to the ocean today. And to see friends. And if I have time, to go to the one place in the world that I trust to get a haircut, that dodgy place up on Polk that charges $18 and it’s always good. (I try to get haircuts other places, but there’s about a 20% success rate when I do. So if I know I’m coming back up here, I. Just. Wait. It’s simply safer that way.) And then to go back and daven at that place where I absolutely came of age Jewishly, where I learned all the anything about any of this stuff and figured out where the God went in it, where they amusingly hired a couple of my friends as clergy after I left…. Should be a nice day. Though probably weird, too. Still not used to this America thing, though as my friend Emerson pointed out, the country is not going to stop being blinky and shiny and big anytime soon, so I have plenty of time to adjust to it on my own schedule.

still here, it seems

Still down here in Bavel. Been seeing friends, running errands, getting my Shavuos on (highlight: a friend’s shiur on breastmilk and Torah, which is generally SO not the kind of thing that would captivate me, except that she’s an excellent teacher and so it wound up being really quite interesting). I still feel kind of off, which could be anything from my body clock still being a bit confused to Shavuos to this no-caffiene thing to not enough water, who knows. In any case, I’ll be pointing my little green car north I think tomorrow, for the next leg of what will be a multi-legged summer. This summer I will be in lots of places. Well, two primarily, but as my summer plans call in part for driving up and down the West Coast, there will be lots of other stops in other places along the way, to see them because they are there, as well as to keep the butt from getting too sore. You know how it goes.

No word yet from my brother about whether or not he will be free to hang out with me if I detour to visit him tomorrow. It’d add another 2 1/2 or 3 hours to my trip if I went to see him, which I’m willing to do, but only if he’ll actually be around to play with me. He’s in the late stages of a PhD program and is doing one of those intensive seminar thingys to broaden his skillset, so I’m not sure if he’ll be granted a hall pass yet or what.

It’s still weird to be back. Wonderful, in terms of seeing people that I really care about, but weird. Everything is blinky and shiny. I got mauled in traffic today in the freeway. I was gone a whole year and didn’t miss freeway traffic once. Funny, that. Anyway, I get to spend the remainder of the summer in places that are less blinky and also have less freeway time for me, and this makes me happy. I’m happy to deal with the return to this other, frantic pace of life a little later, aka not now.

And on that note, it’s time to get offline.

well, I’m back

I said the shechichanu over my first California sushi in 11 months. Yes, I actually did.

I have a raging caffiene headache, which serves me right for getting so heavy on the sauce this last month. It’ll chill out in a few days, but for now, ug.

I’m in the process of trying to decide if I want to continue this blog or not. I feel somewhat ambivalent about it. On the one hand, I started it for a very specific purpose–to keep in touch a bit with friends and family while I was gone, to save having to decide whose email got spammed with some long letter and whose didn’t (like I know who’s going to be interested in that? It’s not always the people you would think.) And now that I’m back whence I came, part of me wants to just let this thing come to a fairly natural conclusion. On the other hand, there are plenty of things that I’ve enjoyed about blogging that will be constant for me–I’ll still be learning Torah, I’ll still be chewing on hard questions and I’ll still be be bumping into weird things that appeal to my ridiculous sense of humor that will seem, for that brief moment after encountering them, urgently important to share with the world. I’m still grumpy that I didn’t have my digital camera handy when I bumped into the pedestrian crossing signs in which the pedestrian was altered to be, variously, meditating or an angel sporting a big ol’ set of wings. (Yerushalmiim, they’re somewhere on Rachel Immeinu between Kovshei Katamon and Emek Refaim, walking towards Emek. Not that big a deal, but man were they cute.)

So I dunno. Maybe I’ll stop blogging. Maybe I’ll blog less. Maybe it’ll be just the same and you all won’t even notice that I’m in an entirely different country now. I guess we’ll just see what happens, won’t we?

ישראל יקרה,

להיתראות, ותודה על הדגים

Today

Woke early.

Went to Women at the Wall.

Went to school and studied for an hour (while drinking much coffee).

Took Talmud final.

Went to Israel Museum.

Saw Dead Sea stuff, and Ancient Near East stuff, including Pre-Israelite stuff (man, those maces that people carried around to whup each other are *vicious*) and First Temple and Second Temple and Mishnaic and Talmudic-Era stuff. Turns out that beautiful tiny pomegranate wand head is not from the First Temple, like we had all thought, which is sad, but it turns out they’ve found some other actual First Temple stuff, which is neat.

Came home. Have been packing, cleaning, doing laundry and, as patience for Israeli “customer service” allows, cancelling utilities. My friends who are taking this apartment have no idea how good they have it, esp. given the state in which I found this place.

There was visit from a friend to say goodbye for now.

Tonight there will be book-for-the-plane buying and dinner with another friend. The shuttle to the airport is due to arrive at 2am. Then I will be in the place where there is no time, or at least no particular time zone, for an extended period of time.