Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Silent Partner

I’ve aged. The neighborhood has aged.  Everybody I know has aged.  So it seems to me a little strange that hte guy I’ve never spoken to dosn’t seem to have aged a day.  I’ve dwecided to find it encouraging.  Otherwise I might hav eto kill him, but that just seems like an overreaction adn he doesn’t strike me as the overreactive type. 

I guess I first saw him not long after moving in, back in the early ‘90s.  I was somewhere near the house, on my block or thereabouts, when he caught my eye.  His thick jet black hair stood in striking contrast to his easy gleaming smile.  His dark eyes flashed brightly and his shoulder dipped slightly with a courteous nodding bow as we passed on the sidewalk. Dusky olive skin, low-key casual attire, and a firm steady gait - he greeted me so naturally that I had to ask myself if I already knew him from somewhere.  I didn’t, I concluded shortly, but I could have easily enough. Maybe I’d never see him again, but at that moment when we passed each other on my new sidewalk, his warm natue reached out to welcome me.  I appreciated it, and decided to introduce myself to him if ever I ran into him again. 

That chance came within a few weeks, when our paths crossed a second time a block or two from my home.  But I was busy or had a mouth full of food or something, so I forebore to say hello.  Same thing the next time, a few weeks after that.  It became a pattern.  Morning, afternoon, evening, night; right at my front door or down the block or out on the boulevard, our paths would cross and we’d share a smile and a nodding salutation.  In my tangential way I acknowledged with regret his infirmity when he broke a leg and was tottering around on crutches.  One morning we exhcanged grins as I loaded into the car before dawn for a trip to the gym, and then again late in the evening as I came home from some random soiree.  The synchronization of schedules would have perturbed me had I not already considered him an ally, a silent partner in my embrace of my community. 

And yes, the partnership was silent.  Beyond a syllable or two of greeting at most, we never spoke.  This is not to say that I was parochially asocial.  There were lots of people I spoke to - some friends, some mere neighborhood familiars like that guy who walks his dog or the lady with the cactuses.  We’ll chat for a minute, if we have the time, and then go on with our lives.  But not me and that guy I’ve never spoken to.  We never actually spoke. 

Not so long ago some friends from college visited town and we pulled together a bit of a supper out with as much of the old gang as we could assemble.  It weas a fairly big meetup for a bunch of guys who’d lived together twenty-three years ago. We gathered at a coffee house across the street from Q, where we’d be eating.  The Blue Danube is authentically eclectic, a tightly-wound, tightly-run bohemian hangout for going on forty years or more.  It’s pretty popular, too, so when we walked in, Jon and Brian and Billmo and Mande and Dave (and maybe Kim?) and Kel and me, we were walking into a small room already very full of furniture and people. 

One of those people, as fate would have it, was the guy I’ve never spoken to.  He was standing by the far wall, sipping a cappa and looking very comfortable.  Our eyes met again, as always; as always, we exchanged a congenial nod and grin.  We had never spoken but the circumstances seemed propitious.  The moment was ripe. It was time to speak to this stranger-friend, and I was going to make it happen. 

As I resolved to sept over and break our mutual silence at last, he started walking across the room toward me.  He had reached the same conclusion as I had, at the same time. I raised my and to greet him with a handshake in the middle of the crowded room.  He raised his hand too.  Then he seemed to veer to the left.  Things were happening quickly and not quite correctly, it seemed to me.  He was not meeting my gaze and his outstretched hand reached at an angle away from mine.  Was he going to miss the handshake?  He was!  He was walking right past me - and into the friendly handclasp ... of ... some random guy?  I glanced back into my group of friends and noticed another couple standing with us, strangers, a little younger than us maybe, but normal enough.  They looked for all the world as if they were part of my group, except of course that I’d never seen them before.  The guy I’ve never spoken to was shaking hands with this dude and greeting gladly the woman with him who’d arrived with us, but who were not actually part of “us.” He joined these interlopers with with obvious delight. 

As they peeled off for another part of the crowded coffee lounge, he did look back toward me for a moment and I thought I saw wry rue flash in his eyes. If so, it was reciprocated.  I fully intended to have a chuckle with him over it when next we had a co-locational moment, but that turned out to be inconvenient for some reason.  As were the next few chances I let go. Now it’s been quite some time since that night that I almost shook hands with the guy I’ve never spoken to, and it would no longer really be appropriate to make that an initial subject of conversation.  It’s not current any longer.  We have news to catch up on.  If we ever catch up on anything, I mean. 

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Cell-phone Photos: The View from Inside My Calling Plan

I may not be good at taking hints but maybe y’all would like a little something less wordacious while you gear up for a pre-pre-election monday, or whatever kind of monday you’re having in your neck of the woods.  Let’s start with a few photos of the chalk graffiti that shows up at Z’s favorite local playground:
One child left behind:

A warm welcome to RoboCat:

And it goes without saying:

As for this last one, when I was snapping the phone-pic a youth was watching me and read out the words, “I like pie.” I asked him, “who doesn’t?” He answered me with disarming frankness, “pie-haters.” He had me there. 

And now, some photos that are a little more intense:

These two are some photos of tents I saw in the presidio on my way from dropping Z off at preschool, heading to my shuttle bus.  You can see the old barracks in the distance, and one small sturdy square building, windowless and red-roofed.  I’d overlooked it many times in the past, it was just another little outbuilding and not terribly impressive.  But this particular day I took a moment to check it out a little more closely, from its heavy masonry walls to its arrow-slit windows, to the plaque by the front door that reads: Old Stone Powder Magazine: Constructed by the US Army after the Presidio was occupied by American forces.  Built of materials salvaged from earlier Spanish and Mexican structures, it dates back to the period of 1847-1862.” Now it seems like a much more interesting building to me, full of history and ordnance, a place seemingly built of other places that got blowed up.  It’s older than most anything else around town, and pretty sober and somber with its lack of poetry and extra staunchness.  It looks good with the historic tents.  It looks good anyway.  (Additionally, the artillery piece in the lower photo was taken from the Philipines after the Spanish American war - they blowed it up instead of letting us get their good thang.  Pungent stuff to view on my daily way to the bus stop.)

Finally, these pics are from the waterfront near my office - an old pier ("ghost piers,” they call them) and a new walking pier with the bridge behind it and a sculpture in front of it.  It’s a nice place to go if you need some pretty instant relaxation.  Or a giant metal spider.  I’ve had both kinds of days lately, to be honest with you.

Final note: on my way from a parking garage to a playground and kid’s creativity museum yesterday, Z and I walked past some guys gathering signatures and money, one with an “Obama/Biden” button, and one with a big poster of a black man with the word “HOPE” written under it.  I complained to them: “That guy is NOT Bob Hope!” They were laughing so hard they didn’t even ask me for money. 

Time to hit another playground and grab some grub for me and the youngster.  I’ll bring the words soon.  As if you were waiting. 

Thursday, October 23, 2008

DISASTER!

When my vitamin water burst last week in my messenger bag (and yes I clearly earned the karma, see if I learn anything) the casualties included my charming old writing notebook, which is okay because it was much less charming than old and really ready to be switched out.  Now the front cover is barely hanging on and I’ve already started toting a cool new book with pockets and a mellow retro look.  I got a lot out of the old notebook but this is not the time to be nostalgic.  It goes in the drawer with the others and I’m ready to move on. 

Except of course, I’ve got to transcribe what’s left in it.  That gives us three remaining old-book posts: something dumb, something painfully overwritten, and something surprisingly charming.  Let’s start with my strengths: today we will have something dumb. 

DISASTER!  I scared you, didn’t I?  No, it’s okay, but really, DISASTER! stalks us at every turn, lurks behind every tsunami, loiters ever more agressively in these days of nuclear proliferation and resurgent piracy.  Whether by fire, flood, tremor or EMP, we can be pretty sure that our world will soon be laid waste - and that our only salvation will be our own survival skills and preparation.  It’s all well and good to be a licensed ninja who can converse in all terrestrial languages, but if you don’t have what you need to get through the aftermath of devastation attendant upon all DISASTERS! worth the capitalization, all your multilingual ninjaism won’t help you for squat.  You need to prepare for DISASTER! if you want to survive.  You can bet that DISASTER! is preparing for you already. 

The problem with DISASTER! planning is that it is dull.  Checklists, buckets, tarps and latrine-sacks notwithstanding, some of the things people need to be prepared for DISASTER! are not as exciting as they could be.  They lack panache.  They lack bling.  They bore me, and of course they bore you too.  Consequently, none of us are prepared for DISASTER!.  So we will be incinerated with all the other losers, and that would be socially unacceptable.  A conundrum, would you say not?

Would you not say not, indeed!  But I have put my inconsiderable cerebral horsepower to this question, and have come up with the following ideas that will appeal to those who will only take action if it is the biggest action possible, and who would only care to survive DISASTER! if they could do so with style:

THE IMPRACTICAL GUIDE TO DISASTER! PREPAREDNESS!

* Take no chances with stockpiled water that tastes flat and lifeless - holy water never goes bad.  Make sure yours stays holy by having it blessed by the pope.  It won’t go stale in solid gold vacuum tubes.

* People store canned food but forget the can opener.  More effective and flexible is a thermal laser.  It opens food and cooks it at the same time, and you can use it for keratotamies after dessert. 

* If things are generally going well, a first-aid kit will cover your needs.  In a DISASTER! it will fall far short of requirements.  Instead, a full ER/OR combination should be constructed in your rumpus room, perhaps folding out from behind the dartboard or revealed by flipping over the air hockey table.  Hire professional medical staff or, better yet, install medical robots.

* Batteries wear out and have limited utility.  However, refining your own uranium and initiating cold fusion reactions as you shelter in place will provide you with both effectively unlimited power, and a fascinating project to keep you occupied during the long days ahead. 

* People get bored of board games and cards.  Far better for entertainment purposes as you wile away an indeterminate environmental recovery period, would be cryogenically frozen-and-defrostable operatic porn-star acrobats.  Alternatively, multi-purpose your medical androids, if space and food are at a premium. 

With these five tips in you mind, I suspect you consider yourself so well-prepared and impervious, that you will seek to trigger a DISASTER! just to try them out.  Well, don’t. 

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

this just in!

so this is rather out of my usual way of doing things here but I feel compelled to share the following incident:

I just got to work and I’m on my way down the hall to get a cup of coffee.  An IT dude enters the hallway ahead of me.  I tweak my collar out of my jacket lapel.  The IT guy brightens up and says, “Now you’re en plein air!” I choose to interpret this as a good sign, ambiguous though it may actually be.  Anticipation shapes eventuality, I always say, as of now. 

And since I’m here, Joanna, yeah, the candied pumpkin worked pretty well.  Slice up the pumpkin, cut slices into two-three inch chunks, clean those of pulp and skin, soak overnight in lime water (1 T/qt); rinse very well and then place in warm water to boil for five minutes; remove, cool and drain three hours; pierce (gently!) with a fork and cook with “equal weight of sugar” = covered in sugar at 300 for three hours.  I tossed in some cinnamon but I dont think it really dispersed evenly and frankly it wasn’t very good cinnamon but the candy came out like turkish delight.  I diced up a bunch and spooned it into bird’s custard as a topping/dessert cream at the sukkah party and people were ladling it over apple pie with breathless abandon; the crystalized pumpkin fibers wove all through the custard and the nuggets of glutinous candy stuck in your teeth so you could keep tasting them furtively till you gave in and spooned up more.  Hard to stop eating. 

And now to work. 

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Plumbing the Depths

First, a little catch-up: I’ve been busy as hell.  I’d like to be posting more; hell, I’d like to be writing more.  I’ve actually been using my precious writing-time on the bus to do work lately, that’s how bad it’s gotten.  But mixed in with reading Partnership Grant applications and reassessing the evaluation protocols with my friends at the Courts and redesigning the office website and negotiating a new contract for the bargaining unit and trying to get a few more stories up on FieldReport and starting to negotiate the possibility of a for-money writing gig, and stuff, I’ve had a chance to cook up some candied pumpkin and get out to the Harvest Festival (photos forthcoming) and have a delightful supper with a bunch of bloggy folk at Dave Francisco (organized courtesy of Blogography, as for which, Thanks Dave and the cards are awesome) at a pretty cool restaurant that allowed me to be in North Beach two weekends in a row.  I’d be happy to share details if you care to ask but I’m assuming you DO NOT so let’s not bother you with that.  Instead, I want to offer you a joke, a tip, and a rant.  Yay trifecta!

I am considering starting a company to sell clothes for yuppie Israelis.  I will call it El Al Bean. 

Yes folks, that was the joke.  The hint, now, is a sort of joke on me: iPods fare poorly in water.  Even if your water bottle breaks open in your messenger bag and just gets a little moisture in the general vicinity of the ‘pod, if you need to towel it off once you discover the issue, you are basically looking at turning it back in to Apple for a 10% discount on the new ‘pod you will have to buy.  And thus it is that my bonus-upgrade replacement of my original free iPod turned into $25 off on a new ‘pod classic.  It’s very sleek and full of extra memory and nice detailing but I would rather have kept the old pod and the delicious money it cost to buy one that didn’t have bi-hydrogen oxide all over its insides.  Bah.

The rant is below, in case you are tired of Joe the Plumber.  I am too, but I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about him till I get this off my chest. 

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Shuttle Stories

In the festival of delights that is my life these days, I seem to have lost an entire rather lengthy post.  In it I described in great detail my activities over the past few weekends, including more than ten shows I saw with many friends - old ones, new ones, and long-lost ones - at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass; now I’ll just let you look the damn stuff up yourself.  Then I mentioned the wonderful afternoon we spent with Chantel and her friends on a rooftop in Fishergraph Hill, eating hamburgers and drinking adult beverages (except for zach) and eating crispy chocolate freakout bars and watching the Blue Angels and other airborne entertainments at the annual airshow.  And I also talked a bit about the wonderful Yom Kippur services I attended, which were heartful and fulfilling.  I even mentioned the candied pumpkin I’m making (even at this moment). 

IT IS ALL GONE.  I logged in this evening and find I have posted nothing since last friday.  Bless you, god of blog, for eating my goddamn post.  I’ve got something else for you to eat if you dare show your stupid face around here anytime soon.  Which is to say, I’m going to re-transcribe the heart of my post from earlier today, which I hope you enjoy now that I’m typing it again for the second time.  It’s because I care, you jerks.  So read carefully and I’ll come back with a pop quiz, just as soon as I get a working phone number for your pop.  He’s a sneaky one, isn’t he?

It’s not that there are no stories on the new bus.  Even as I first noticed its relative dearth of human interest (compared, at least, to my prior route), I suspected that there was more going on than was meeting my untrained eye, and that time would soon sensitize me to the little dramas playing out around me even on my boring-ass shuttle ride to work.

I was right, too - the stories are there, they just play out smaller, or faster.  You’ve got to keep your eyes open on that 8 am downtown shuttle.  The buses are comfortable and the windows are heavily tinted, so it’s easy to lose focus.  And when you do, you miss things like this:

Tuesday morning broke sunny and muggy.  The bus was cruising inbound on Lombard, past endless little motels and eateries.  As we approached an intersection and came to a red-light stop, I saw a little covey of joggers pounding their way up the side street.  In true Marina fashion, they were slender, mostly blond, young, and stylishly kitted out in sharp jog togs.  They arrived at the corner as their traffic control turned yellow and paused for their signal, still cantering in place, each still personifying the “fresh-n-beautiful” aesthetic that is the hallmark of those privileged precincts. 

Perpendicularly came the hooker.  She was short and skinny, with dangerously tall shoes and a black dress that barely concealed her merchandise.  She looked good so far as that went, which wasn’t really very far when you got a look at her face, which was sufficiently pretty but unappealingly set in a grim and flinty scowl under her makeup and flouncy hair cut.  She walked swiftly, as if on her way somewhere to which she was already seriously late, and the bright sunlight seemed to leave her in a shadow of her own making. 

She reached the corner at the same time as the joggers, arrested in her walk of shame by an ironic red light.  She kept her eyes mostly down and shifted her weight from foot to platform-heeled foot, as if the sidewalk was electrocuting her.  The joggers, still prancing like Lipizzaners, gaped openly and slowly ceased moving.  For a moment, five hot joggers in spandex and eyeliner stood flatfooted and gawked at the whore, her face rigidly emotionless.  A world stood between them on that corner.  Two seconds later the light changed again and the bus rolled on. 

Or:

It was a heavy morning for my little shuttle.  All the seats filled up early and still the people kept piling on, all dressed for downtown offices, each wearing a carefully-crafted visage of dour self-absorption.  I watched them as they filled the aisle next to me, all full of vinegar and coffee.  The last to board at the start of the ride was a young man in a fitted business shirt and serious office slacks.  Tall, broadshouldered, and slim-waisted, his chiseled jaw was shaded faintly with stubble and his thick hair was neatly styled.  His eyes glinted as he made his way halfway down the aisle and took his place as the lead stand-ee, turning firmly on his heel to face forward as is the practice hereabouts. 

The doors closed and we rolled off to the next stop, where another small crowd was waiting for us.  The first to board was a slim young woman in trousers and blouse, her hair held back with a practical ring of elastic, her understated makeup putting a delicate blush on her sleepy, unsmiling cheeks.  As she came on board and noticed he next to whom she’d have to stand in the aisle, the drowse quickly faded from her face and the apathy evaporated from her small body.  She took a spot standing at a proxemically-appropriate distance from him and rotated into the proper front-facing orientation, a modest 18 inches or so separating her from the beefcake at her back. 

Still more commuters piled in and the aisle was filled quickly, forcing all those standing in it to crowd up a little more.  Mr. Studly took a step to the rear, and the woman in front of him hazarded a quick glance back to see where she was in relation to him.  People were bunching up near the door; she owed it to them to scootch a bit further back too.  A step and a half brought her into his immediate proximity; her shoulderblades were nearly brushing his burly pectorals and his large hands hung quietly right next to her hips He clenched his jaw and, with infinite patience, sighed softly, waiting for us to get moving again.  Her back so intimately close to him that she could surely feel the heat of his flesh through their clothes, she couldn’t help grinning broadly with illicit delight at the gift fate had brought her that morning.

That’ll have to do for now.  Best of luck with your respective Thursdays.  Mine promises to be a fresh coat of paint on the same old nard-vise.  You know how familiarity breeds contempt?  I’m getting real familiar with being busy.  And if I don’t get a chance to tell you in person, have a refreshing Festival of Tabernacles.  No, really!

Friday, October 10, 2008

Siding to Nowhere

This appears to have been one of those times that I built something up in my mind a little too grandly, but in my own defense, I think that’s what they intended. “One track” thinking does that to you sometimes.

Waa-Tee-Kaa undoubtedly once was fabulous. You can see its bygone grandeur in the wrought-iron guardrails, the leaded jewel-glass inserts over the windows, the understated opulence of the short, sharp syllables of the transliterated name which is itself evidence of manifest destiny and social superiority. Amid the plate-glass stuttering of the downtown office towers that surround the small courtyard where it stands marooned on a short length of transplanted, symbolic track, the train car promised a journey back to a gilded age’s most exclusive aerie.  It was the personal passenger coach of Big Daddy Bechtel and his brood of brooding Bechtel Boys - Wassily, Chaim and Raoul. Or whoever they were.

Because it’s not the people in particular I cared about - I was motivated not by biographical interest but by curiosity blended with avarice, a shameful jealousy over things I’ll never have and don’t quite understand, an incohate desire aroused by an intentionally deindividuated foil. And thus it was with clan Bechtel - who they were, personally, made no difference to me (assuming, of course, that they weren’t closet nazis or behind that whole subprime mortgage mess or anything like that). They were just industrialists, traversing the United States in the heyday of rail, living like the kings they’d have been if Social Darwinists had had their way, and when their travails took them to isolated outposts like desert riverbeds or forested mountaintops they’d plunk down Waa-Tee-Kaa and make a little campout with their coolies and cooks. Sounded sweet. I probably spent a little too much time imagining how sweet it was, but sometimes my brain had nothing better to do - and the car was just sitting there, after all, a few blocks from my office in the middle of my quotidian peregrinations, resting on an isolated pair of rails in a plaza fronting the Bechtel Building. It had been tempting me for years with visions of imagined oligarchic excess. It was a nucleus for fantasy.  I wondered what the truth would hold.  Short answer: not much.

Recently, I found myself walking past the Bechtel Plaza around lunchtime and found Waa-Tee-Kaa open for tours, as apparently it is on a daily basis at about that time. The car is mounted via a ramp that weaves, ADA-compliantly, back and forth in a gentle rise to the coach’s elevation several feet above ground level - a rather pedestrian affair of steel rods and concrete pads, uninspiring but sufficiently servicable for the circumstances.

I meandered to the landing on the heels of a young woman of pronounced urban sensibilities who was wearing a black hoodie and black chucks; she walked alone with no purse or bag, her face broadcasting skeptical curiosity as we separately ascended together to the entryway.  She went in first but left again fairly quickly, smirking in wry disappointment, so I had Waa-Tee-Kaa pretty much to myself. The car was laid out in a series of three rooms that opened off an aisle that ran down the left side.  Each room was entered through an elegant wood-trimmed archway.  In the first room was a central display plinth, exhibiting an antique surveyor’s transit from the early days of Bechtel glory.  There was also a comparative display of the weird clumsy canvas-and-resin hard hats of yore, and the sleek resin-and-canvas models in use today - all naturally inscribed prominently with the Bechtel name.  And let us not omit mention of the model of the Bechtel tanker ship.  That would be unforgiveable. 

The two other rooms followed suit, their walls lined with displays of enlarged photographs in spectacular living color, sentimental sepia, and gritty hard-hitting black and white, showing brash young men and grizzled old roughnecks forging bridges in mid-air and raising impossible edifices and otherwise wreaking civilization on the maidenhead of the wilderness.  They showed off the airport they’d built in Saudi Arabia that’s twice the size of San Francisco, and a refinery construction job three days upriver in darkest Papua New Guinea.  It was all very compelling, if that is the sort of thing that compels you.

And sometimes, amid these outsized pictorals of engineering audacity and nature-raping machismo, I’d see a shot of Big Papa Bechtel and/or his progeny - Adolph, Stucky and Wu-Tan. They’re invariably dressed in neckties and suits, looking terribly dour - as if their plunder of the planet might conceiveably run awry if they unclenched themselves for one instant.  They glowered out of their frames at me as Hoover Dam was hewn and Yosemite was laid open in the background behind them.  Surrounding them throughout the train car were more photos and models exemplifying their puissance and the instruments by which they achieved it.  I felt like I was supposed to be impressed.  I almost felt badly that I wasn’t. 

Waa-Tee-Kaa may once have been a rolling palace redolent of rare wines, imported cigars and rich living.  That is now all gone, in favor of pure corporate onanism.  All that remains of what once had been, were those leaded windows, their graceful arcs of blue and amber weaving together over clear plate panes that once looked out on dominion and in on splendor.  Now they gape, dazed, from a stranded antique, and the view outside is of asphalt, tour busses, and office buildings, not mountain chasms and wide-open spaces.  The view looking in, by the same token, is the same as you’d see in any corporate lobby anywhere in the financial district, testifying with equal eloquence to man’s enlightening relationship to the earth, as does any old train car on a siding to nowhere. 

cell phone photos:
waa-tee-kaa in situ:

visually if not thematically related: cable cars lined up at the terminus of the california street line, as seen on my walk to work from the shuttle-bus stop. These old cars are still in service, and what they lack in opulence they more than make up in authenticity. 

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Awesome - Canyon-style, not Pizza-style

We’re now at the trailing edge of the Days of Awe, the period from Rosh Hashona to Yom Kippur when we’re all supposed to, as the ancients advised us, get our shit together - for the next year, at least.  For literalists, there’s some kind of enormous book which we’re all editing at once, trying to ensure that we’re down for a year of good things.  You might call this the original cosmic wiki, but then again, you might not.  I’m not so literal about it, myself.  I prefer to think that this is my annual wake-up call, drawing my attention to what I say my priorities are, how my behavior demonstrates what my priorities really are, and maybe what I can do to narrow the gap between them.  We accept responsibility for the errors we have control over and we ask to be released from oaths we did not mean to take.  The ceremonies are full of uplifting stories and sobering ruminations.  I am not a very religious guy but these services seem to make a difference in my life and I am always glad to participate to the extent I’m able. 

For ten years or so I’ve gone to the East Bay to daven for the high holy days with a fantastic congregation in Berkeley, Chochmat HaLev.  But it’s quite a shlep and parking out there is a megabitch, so I have been looking for a local alternative.  I do live in a jewey ‘hood and there’s plenty of synagogues I could try to visit, but I was looking for something in particular, the unique “renewal” approach that blends old and new schools with a wide range of music, meditation, frankness and humor.  That’s a tough bill to fill but it turns out it was eminently fillable - Keneset HaLev is a congregation that holds its HH services in the county fair building at the arboretum in GG park, a pleasant 15 minute walk from my front door.  Crossing my fingers (in full recognition of the irony), I signed up for their gig. 

My hopes were well-satisfied.  Keneset HaLev consisted of about fifty or seventy souls, a fairly intimate crowd compared to my prior experience with Chochmat; they met in a small room off the main exhibit hall that was sparsely decorated with a small ark standing in a front corner in a hand-crocheted cover.  Kel, Z and I arrived about ten minutes early, during their preliminary chanting and meditation; up front were three “leaders” - a slender youngish bearded man with an etherial smile, a heavy-set older bearded man with a sly grin, and a lovely young woman who looked like La Gioconda (and who turned out to be the chazzan, or cantor - and also a performer with the SF Opera).  For twenty minutes Zach sat and listened, or quiety played.  This took us ten minutes into the services, at which point he sort of supernovaed and became unmanageable.  Kel gathered him up and took him home, but I was able to stay behind, for once.  And in staying, I was able to expose myself, over the course of the night and the following day, to the following nuggets of inspiration, which I (as is my wont) share here with those of you willing to wade through them and imbibe with me a few sips of the nectar of these special days. 

The evening service began when the bima (pulpit) crew stationed four shofar-blowers at the four corners of the room and called a “tikiah,” a long blast on the ram-antler horns that sound once a year with their call to prayer and introspection.  The shofar ceremony traditionally happens during the day services but they explained that they wanted everybody to hear it, even if they couldn’t come the next day, even if they had to leave early that night.  Zach was mesmerized by the sound that reverberated in each of our heads, through all of our hearts, that penetrated our souls despite our resistance to their call.  It’s an ancient and eerie sound.  Zach crawled under his chair and stuck his fingers in his ears, but he was grinning up at me for all he was worth.  It was shortly after this that he made a bee-line for the table with spare shofars, to grab one and try to blow it himself.  His fury at being denied this satisfaction was what led to his early departure, but at least he got to hear the sound that took down Jericho. 

The younger male leader reminded us toward the outset of the service that the word used for “god” in the liturgy is a placeholder.  The letters are not pronounceable, and the word we use in their place is best translated as “lord,” in the feudal sense.  He mentioned several other ways of making the reference to god, and urged us to use whatever word that made the most sense to us, regardless of what anyone else was saying.  Fill the god-shaped space in the prayers with the word that speaks to you, and make the generic statement personal to you.  I didn’t often take him up on that offer, but I appreciated the sense of freedom. 

A parable, from the older leader:  a young man and an old man meet in a train carriage.  They’re heading to the same town and start chatting.  The younger is very excited to attend a lecture by a famous scholar. The older man tells him, I know that guy - he’s really not all that.  He’s wrong a lot, and when he’s right it’s usually because he had good teachers who really knew what they were talking about.  The younger man, outraged by the insult to his esteemed instructor, punches the old man in the nose and storms out.  That night at the lecture, of course, he discovers that the old man he’d punched is in fact the scholar he sought to defend.  After the lecture he runs to the scholar and begs forgiveness but the old man says he can’t forgive him.  Why not?, the younger man pleads.  In reply the elder tells him, You are apologizing to me because you know that I’m a famous scholar, but when you punched me you thought I was a nobody.  So find a nobody, and ask him for forgiveness. 

The Unetana Tokef prayer consists mainly of a litany of boolean possibilities for the new year, most of which are rather somber.  Who will live, and who will die?  Who by starving, and who by thirst?  Who will find riches, and who will be cast down?  The list is lengthy and makes for rather heavy reading.  As I went through it I found my mind churning, and as I tried to take a mental step back and regain my concentration I found my own diad on the tip of my tongue: Who shall be dazzled by distraction, and who shall bless himself with focus?  Hunger and thirst, death by fire or drowning, many of the traditional references seem remote to me - but distraction and focus are my daily challenges.  I bet I keep this one handy for a few months, at least. 

The older leader spoke about the general theme of “awe” that’s prevalent during this time, and reflected that modern people don’t do awe very well.  The word “awesome” has lost all meaning.  The same word should not describe both the Grand Canyon, and a pizza you had last week.  However, in the overall interest of keeping things light and friendly, among the rebbes he quoted over the course of the services were Rav John Cleese, Rav Woody Allen, and Rav Buckaroo Banzai.  In the end, I think it’s all about the overthrusters, anyway. 

During the torah service, one scroll was withdrawn from the little ark for reading, with community aliot (which is the way I like it).  However, they also pulled out the second scroll and just handed it off to the congregation, so we could hold it and shnuggle a little.  The leader admitted that there’s a cult of veneration about the physical entity of the torah, but it’s really just a book - the important thing is what it stands for and what’s in it.  However, sitting on my little stacking chair, resting the parchment scrolls against my shoulder and inhaling its dusty animal ancientness, it was hard not to feel a personal connection.  When I eventually passed it along to the next people in the row, I did find myself a little lonely. 

Also during the torah service, the elder leader was expounding on the story that had been chanted in hebrew, the story of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar.  The story is a complicated and unpleasant one, and then we split up into one-on-one discussion groups to talk about it under the instruction of a psychotherapist, each of us trying to achieve our own comfort and understanding with it.  However, before any of that, the leader explained the basic facts of the story, describing the response of the patriarch at one point as, “Abraham is like, ‘no freaking way’!” We do have a prayer extolling the virtues of the patriarchs and matriarchs; ours is not an “ancestor-worshipping” religion, but that prayer reminds us that those people did some pretty crazy stuff and took some significant risks, physically and spiritually.  However, the “no freaking way!” reminded me in the midst of that, that they were really just people - not saints or angels or other questionable entities.  People do well, or poorly, or not at all sometimes.  That’s an example I can try to emulate - being a person. 

There’s one central prayer in the services called the Amidah.  This is a prayer to be said one-on-one, you to your holiness (be it god, heart, buddah, whatever).  It’s a lengthy plea for understanding, enlightenment, and harmony, to have the good sense to know what’s right and the strength to do it.  Usually I just pull my prayer shawl over my head, face east, and get into it, but this time we were in the FREAKING ARBORETUM so instead we all headed out together into a nearby meadow lined with redwoods and exotic trees.  Each of us found a place to stand and daven, and we each engaged the amidah at our own pace, in our own voice, with a connection through the earth under my feet and the boughs over my head to a larger and deeper world that has never been part of this process for me before.  It was deeply moving, at least up until the groundskeeping crew started chainsawing some overgrown shrubs nearby.  But that was okay too.  Sometimes nature brings challenges.  That’s the nature of nature. 

Finally, it is worth noting that much of the liturgy is set to tunes, some of which are very ancient and some of which have been re-written more recently.  My favorite tunes are a few that clearly come from the ‘60s or ‘70s, which I learned at summer camp and weekend retreats in my childhood - tunes that are soaring and beautiful and get to my emotional core in a way that always surprises me (since I don’t understand the hebrew words at all).  It’s been a long time since I’ve heard either of my very favorites of the favorites, the hippie-dippie versions of Shalom Rav and V’al Kulam.  Yes, we wound up singing them both.  For me, that alone would have made for a memorable and meaningful experience.  But it was not alone, and neither was I. 

Shana Tovah, blogopolis.  Hope you’re getting the most out of your days of awe.  And if not, don’t fret - there’s a whole year to work on it. 

For those who didn’t get to hear it last week, here’s a link to some shofar-blowing.  Tomorrow night is erev Yom Kippur.  The days of awe are coming to a close.  Lucky for me I got more than my share this year already. 

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Place-saver: Read On Elsewhere!

okay, the site’s been down for a week, during which time I did one hell of a lot of stuff and the site gathered a lot of spam.  The site, as you may infer from this postlet, has been restored to full functionality.  I have not, as evidenced by the two hours I spent last night on a spiritual post that evaporated into the ether whence it came.  So, bummer.  I’ll fill it back in when I get a chance but today there are more concerts so I’ve got to pack the picnics.  See you soon, and if you can’t wait for a little story from the hut of chuckles, visit one here: http://www.fieldreport.com/articles/1800 - I posted to FieldReport.com, which is a really cool site where you can rate stories by other writers and award them prizes up to a cool quarter-million buckaroos.  They saw fit to give me an intermediate-level prize for a story about a women’s football game, and it turns out they’re headquartered within an easy walk of my house.  So support the ‘hut, support the central Richmond District (and public health hospital complex adjacent thereto), and attention-starved authors nationwide.  And I’ll be back when I can with the good news about Rosh Hashona - personal renewal at services version.  And now, back to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival with the Paiges and Foxes and Nashes!