For Halloween

Here are the rules:

Don't go into the Basement

Don't split up the party

Don't go into the attic.

I told you not to go into the attic!

You'll wake Him up . . . .

Now Cthulu is going to want another bedtime story .. . . .

Chat at the Cafe - Subject Aliens

Do you wonder what would happen if SF writers thought about the fact that Alien intelligences might exist and NOT CARE about us at all?

Like, no invasions, no improvements, no "save mankind" no "wow those earthling sure are entertaining". No "aliens make good pets" or aliens want to have sex wif our wimmens, use us as an ingredient. They would be there, maybe know about us already and not care, not because they were superior or inferior, just because they wouldn't care.

And then the story would be about the inability of humanity or at least some humans to accept that fact and keep trying to get the aliens attention in order to fulfill their preconceived notions and what would happen to us because of our inability to grasp the fact that their apathy and disinterest was real.

I think that we would rather be hated or oppressed than ignored, but we'd rather be liked and admired than hated or oppressed. I imagine that we would start thinking of ourselves as "human" and have a better tribal identity as one group of people, but the complete lack of recognition would be more than we could handle.

It's like only having one person on a island to talk to but they never talk to you. We'd fill in all the missing dialogue, unable to accept that the other person truly and for no personal reason doesn't care to engage.

Oh and they shouldn't look like anything on our planet either.

I doubt I'm the first person to think of it. I'm sure someone must have already written this. I'd be interested in if they managed to do it well. How hard would it be for a silly human to even conceive of something not interested in us, without being more powerful than us. I think we crave hierarchy.

Maybe this is a better conversation for the bar

Confessions

It is hard to admit that you are broken, but perhaps it is harder to admit that you are worn.

There is sympathy for broken, and the possibility of repair. 

But the reality of worn is that it feels like failure without cause.

And maybe I must admit to a bit of both. 

Which is crushing.

I am worn.

But I have a new brain. Perhaps it can patch up the old one and help it fly right. A Cat came along for the ride. 

I am crushed, and broken, and worn, but not invisible. 

Which is scary but it helps.  Thank you Lisa, for reminding me. 

With a Cat and a brain you could hardly disappear now could you? No? I didn't think so. 

Whyfore is this Brain Different than all other Brains?

So yesterday, I told the story about how the Poppets learned about Pesach, which is Passover. This is the next part of that story, so if you missed it you, can start here, assuming that you like to read things in order. 

Remember how Question Everything tried to convince Gingerbread that she was Chametz? I realized that Question knew what chametz was by that time but maybe not everyone reading does. The story goes that since the Pharaoh was known for changing his mind very suddenly, even after the really nasty plague with lots of death, everyone was still afraid that Pharaoh wouldn't really let anyone go, so even though they were supposed to have enough time to outfit  500,000 or so people for a journey to no-where Moses got a heads up to leave before the provisions were fully ready, so where bread usually had a chance to rise and most likely they used sourdough type starters, they left ASAP, which means the bread was flat and most likely really dense, like a fallen souffle. 

What it was not was leaven-free.  It had leavening in it that wasn't allowed to do what leavening does. So in remembrance of the speed with which they had to leave we cut out all leavening. So no yeast, baking soda or baking powder, even though baking soda and baking powder are minerals not leaving. Even the rabbis at OU will tell you that you can have baking powder now, but that's kind of freaky after so many years of doing it the other way, even if the other way was wrong so most Jews still eat the edible cardboard we call matzah exclusively.

Clearing the Chametz

This is the day that Choco Poppet arrived at the house, the frosting is a family recipe for Mocha Butter Rum Frosting. She approved and helped us make sure that none was left.    One of the really awesome things about the time leading up to Pesach is that you  bake a lot of cakes and cookies to use up all of the non-Pesadick stuff before the holiday.

So we were doing pretty well with the whole "no-Chametz" thing in the House, and we had reassured Gingerbread that she could stay since she contained no yeast, but it was still the day before, which is the day of the Seder because we're all Lunar like that,  and not only did I have to switch the EVERYTHING, I had to make all the food for the Seder itself.  I couldn't start cooking until the kitchen was switched. And then I had to go back to work because of the Things That Conspire.

The House Reds usually live on the painted chest where Shabbat is celebrated, and hang out in the Shofar, which I'll explain some other time. but they knew that every Friday, we cover two loaves of bread, and light things on fire and sing with some wine.The Poppets really wanted to start ahead of time and the one thing they were pretty sure of is that they could put away the Challah cover.

 The bread was definitely chametz and so they figured they were safe getting started with that.  

I came home in time to see them sizing up the ingredient bowls in the cupbord, they were about to call Spike to go look up the instructions for what had to go and what could stay, but I was able to tell them that the Rabbis felt that glass, being transparent was OK as long as it was mikvahed.  Don't ask, it's another magic spell. Luckily I have a living stream nearby.

But then we got to the more complex part - remember that six set of dishes thing? Yeah. I tie off the dairy dishes, replace the meat and use my good china for the Seder and my other good china for dairy during Pesach. 

All of the regular meat dishes get put away and then out come the Passover dishes and silverware. 
                  When I was growing up we didn't do this.

But we did have special china for the Seder. There are two real world things that happen when you do this. One, your cabinets get fully cleaned once a year. You'd be surprised how you can manage to get dust bunnies even when you use a space every day. I freely admit that I would not have known that if it weren't for Pesach.

The other real life thing is the "religious heritage" one. By changing everything, on a timeline, even though it's not the same thing as our ancestors were doing, it disrupts our lives. It forces us not to relax into systems we take for granted, we have to spend a little more time thinking about how we're going to manage in the world and even in our own kitchen. We might not have everything we need because we didn't switch it in time.

I used to think the Rabbis were interfering nudnicks when they made up these rules, but that was when I didn't have the experience of following some of them. After a year or two, I realized that it was a "body lesson" forcing you to walk the walk of the story, in a small way. It was connected. It was connected to my grandmothers and their mothers, who did this for years, and my mother, who did not do it but still taught me that it could be done. It doesn't mean that the Rabbi's weren't interfering nudnicks, but it does mean that perhaps there is sometimes more value in things than I might recognize immediately.

There are lots of lessons about how to treat others and how to move on from being humiliated in the Exodus story. Some people handled it well, some did not and some, like most humans, did both. I love the fact that Torah does not hide the imperfections of messy humanity in these stories, nor does it claim perfection for God, who is depicted as not being omniscient, but it omnipotent. The modern religions, including mine, have difficulty with that but I respect it. 

We only see the fragments of something that could be a God, we might not be able to understand it, but I can change the dishes and remember that three millennia ago, the people that were there had held on to the idea of freedom after generations of slavery. That amazes me. It was not easy to follow through and they wanted to stay long enough for their bread to rise. Freedom was an abstract, bread was real. Freedom with no land was scary and bread was comfort and safety and health. 

I can change my kitchen for a week.  I am still connected to those terrified people 3 millennia ago who sort of knew what freedom was, but weren't really sure that it could happen for them, or that it should. They asked to go back.

How many times do we ask to go back instead of choose the path that will give us growth or freedom. How many times do we want to stay with the devil we know?

Moses and Pharaoh gave them very little choice. I would not have been Moses or Pharaoh. I'm sure that I would have been one of the women wondering how we were going to feed all these people on the road. God told us to move, and we still wanted to make bread, but God didn't promise us food until he was reminded that we needed it. That's who I would have been, the one reminding the Prophets and Politicians and Divinities that we needed to eat or we would die out there just as surely as Pharaoh would kill us all here.

This is what I think of when I change the dishes. I share some of this with the Poppets, who think it is fascinating and notice that the Passover Dishes are very pretty. We are beautifying the mitzvot again.

Everything seems to be in place, but if you read any of the links from yesterday's post you know it's almost inevitable that I left some chametz in the house by accident. Especially since I didn't vacuum out everywhere like I usually do. So the Rabbis, with whom I frequently disagree, but still respect for what they were trying to do, gave us something to cover our butts just in case.

The Magic Spell

When you do everything right and you follow the whole 4 week plan, the husband comes home on "eruv pesach" with 10 pieces of chametz that he brought in from outside the house. Then he hides them and everyone in the family has to find all 10 of them, they dust them up with a feather into a wooden spoon and burn the whole thing with a special blessing that basically says. "If we missed anything God, please pretend it's not there and we will too. Thanks bunches, really!" 

The Girl of the House, has at least once in her life used the fact that I recite this incantation every year as proof that I am not a Muggle. I continuously reassure her that I am an ordinary wife and mother, just like all the other wives and mothers out there. Then she saw Pippin. Now when I say it she just smirks.

For very complicated reasons, I have a ritual feather that was given to me by a Native American engineer, that I use for this ritual, so here's the weirdness, I wasn't going to do the ritual completely correctly this year, so I wouldn't use the purifying feather he gave me, because it wasn't right. God, if concerned at all, was certainly going to be OK with what I was doing, but I didn't want to disrespect the person who had answered me truthfully when I asked a question and made me a gift with that answer. No half-assed rituals with that gift. It would be wrong. (Of course the original practice had you burn the feather too. So my regular version had already modified the version my grandparents did. but hey, it's a living religion. )

My house was not cleaned in time for us to play Hide The Chametz. Which, by the way is a lot of fun when everyone in the family loves each other, but can be a battleground in dysfunctional orthodox families. I always think of that when I perform this ritual too. In the back of my head I am thankful that I can find my own way, with the support of those around me and that at least in my family my beliefs are used to empower me as opposed to disenfranchise me. I am thankful for that, and hopeful that others will be able to escape things that oppress them, even if those things are the religion that I love. 

This year the Yetzairs helped us with the magic spell. Sweet little Babalonyian Rabbis, they knew about the asshole husbands even back in the day, and this was one of the ways that they used to prevent domestic violence and emotional abuse, that's why some things that look really weird on the outside are supported even by extreme Jewish rationalists like Maimondes. 

So complicated, so much to teach. So much more to learn. It's important to know that the reason Rabbis who made the Talmud knew about asshole husbands was that occasionally one of them was the asshole husband. The Talmud doesn't hide that either, but your teacher might. Nobody's perfect, even if they are righteous. 

Now it was time to set the fortune cookie on fire. 

Judaism is all about Food and Fire. Sustenance and Spark and since we just had the spark it was time to move on to the sustenance part.

Cooking the Festive Meal

There is nothing more Jewish in the modern world than chicken soup with matzah balls. I have made them at Burning Man, my matzah balls have risen in the desert. Me and Miriam - we rock the desert lifestyle. Maybe someday I'll dance in the desert with Timbrel. The entire section of Leviticus that deals with the movement of the camp makes so much more sense after my sojourns in Black Rock. My real-life Rabbis are very supportive of my fusion of extreme art experience and Judaism. Once again, I am lucky, I know not everyone finds the support to dance on the edge of heresy in order to get closer to Being.

But Pesach needs to push me to the edge at least as far as Burning Man does. Otherwise I'm cheating. I need to increase my radical self reliance and push my art to it's limits. Violet helped make the soup and was fascinated while studying the color and interplay of radishes.

I made "from scratch" soup. I usually take short cuts. There were none this year. It is my personal penance for rushing everything else this holiday, I even let Whole Foods make the Charoset, which is incredibly obnoxious of me. I needed to make sure I did at least one thing right. And the right thing might as well be delicious.

Setting the Seder Table 

While the soup was cooking, it was time to bring out the things that will be used on the table to perform the Seder. There is a moment when you dip bitter herbs in salt water to remember the tears cried by our ancestors when they were slaves in Egypt and they could not ever imagine being free.
The Shamrock Poppet who came to the House by way of my Perfectly Normal Irish Mother-In-Law, suggested this year that I use another gift she had given me. 

The Tyrone Crystal bowl she had given me from her latest trip to Ireland had never been used for anything else, so we were able to put it's first appearance out on the Seder table. Also I think the Irish know a few things about tears and longing.  It was perfect. 

Winter brought out the Matzah Plate that I had acquired quickly to handle a difficult situation. It reminds me of how far we in the house have come from our own story of Exodus. 

The Kindergarten Poppet throughly approves of our Matzah Cover. Remember the Challah cover that the Reds and Violet put away? This is the same thing, but for Matzah, it was made by the Boy in Kindergarten, it is finer than any silk and more beautiful than any tapestry. Especially now when he's many years older and looking towards the time he will leave. It's captured Time. There will never be another matzah cover on my table. If he has children, they can make one for him. When I'm no longer here they can have this one. But not until then.

 *

The Table is set. The Seder Plate has it's own story. I have not found the way to tell that story with distance yet, although it has been several years. Once we were slaves in Egypt, but now we are free. Once we were caught in bondage but now we can sing a great song, Alleluia.

It's close enough. 

But I do love my Seder Plate, and I love the fact that it's mine specifically. So now we will get to the part where the Orange Brain saves the Day. 

The Orange on the Seder Plate

There is a story, but it's not true.

That story goes, a Male Rabbi told a woman that a woman belongs on the Bimah like an Orange belongs on the Seder Plate. (Bimahs are where you lead services from/its like a pulpit but it's not). I never heard that story until I read it. 

I had heard a story that went like this, "A Rabbi told one of the student Rabbi's that gays belong in the synagogue like and Orange belongs on a Seder plate." That story was closer. The real story is this. While working to increase the inclusion of Gays and Lesbians in traditional Jewish practice, and activist female rabbi suggested that individuals show their support by putting a crust of bread on the Seder plate. A well known feminist Rabbi thought that this reinforced the idea that being homosexual was like being chametz, unacceptable, a violation of the law. She wanted to do  something that showed that just because the Rabbis who wrote the Talmud hadn't thought of it didn't mean it wasn't kosher.

So she said, why don't we place an orange on the Seder Plate. It's wonderful and delicious and appropriate and kosher. So I thought that was wonderful. My real life Rabbis taught me about the Orange. I usually use a mandarin orange, or a tangerine. It's been three years since my flavor of Judaism ruled that openly gay clergy could serve without restrictions and I think it's even more important to put the orange down now, so we remember that it wasn't always so. It's an important part of what I want my kids to think about when they are making seders of their own, or visiting other seders if they choose a different path than me. 

It was an hour before the Seder, I did not have an orange, no way of getting one. Then one of the Junior Partners pointed out that he happened to be orange.  

Even better, on all sorts of symbolic levels.  

So that is what happend at Passover at the House this year. Every year we tell the story of what happened in Egypt in the first person "This is what Elohim did for me, when he brought me out if Egypt". But we never tell the story of preparing. We should share it, we prepared in Egypt and we prepare each year and those stories are the stories of our families and ourselves. And it's families and individuals that make up a People. 

Having the Poppets made me think about each object and it's place in our Order, our personal Seder.  That's worth sharing here. Because when years go by, and the kids grow up and might forget why something was important to us, they can always find it here, in the wilderness of the internet. It's where you go after you've been freed. 

The Poppet Haggadah of Preparation for the House.

It's like writing names on the back of pictures. 

I wonder if we'll ever go back to a plain old orange on the Seder plate ever again?

The Ambassador Hires The Bilaterians Design Group

The Holiday break is over at last. The Ambassador's looking forward to getting on with his plans. Between the last inspection and the closing of the deal there were some nervous moments. There was a great deal of water damage and a bit of a to-do with the Historical Society about what they were, and were not, allowed to change. It seems that the metal underpinnings of the buildings rusted through, and depending on how extensive the changes were to the building, code requirements might mean that they will need to completely replace those structures. Doing so might result in full demolition, because as we all know when you open up walls and ceilings and such, you never know what else will be found inside. 

Algernon and His Poppet had performed the inspection back in December, and were quite candid with with Ambassador about the condition of the property. Given it's age and history, it is actually in relatively solid condition and quite reasonably priced, even given the current economic situation. Winter suggested to the Ambassador that he might want to hire Algernon's firm for the architecture and design. Especially since things were looking like they will be expanding. During the holiday, many other members of the Poppet community had arrived. Most of them had places to go, but some of them had expressed interest in the Sesame Street location. 

The design firm was named Bilaterians Design Group, which the Ambassador liked because it was very inclusive. He engaged them to come up with a plan and put them in touch with the Coffee Poppets so they could consult on the Cafe space. As soon as the Holidays were over the Bilaterians finished all of their measuring and specifications. They got right to work on the preliminary sketches and ideas. When they were done, they called the Ambassador over to see a presentation by the Junior Partners.

The Ambassador was very impressed by the amount of natural light in the studio. The Bilaterians told him that they were much happier when they got to work with a lot of sunlight. Unbeknownst to the Bilaterrians Design Group, the Ambassador is on the receiving end of a certain amount of pressure to consider a new building in the middle of the block specifically for the Embassy, but he is a little embarrassed about the idea and thought it might be a bit too show-offish. However there is interest in other Poppets moving into the area. Jacko's were looking for someplace to be off-season, there is a new arrival who thinks there ought to be a flower shop, two out-of-towners (not poppet)  just moved to the area and are looking at starting an music and manga shop. There is an area nearby that could be cleared out for a park or a fairground. It was all getting to be too much!

However - the presentation put all his fears to rest - the Bilaterians have figured out a way to make the apartments bigger on the inside than the out. Still keeping the project expansion to himself , he hired the Bilaterians and settled down with Algernon and Winter for an indepth look at blueprints and budgets. If this goes well he could always commission them for the other things. Maybe it would be good for the neighborhood to have a park and a new building, but he could wait. If the Bilaterians were successful with these buildings, perhaps he will stay quietly in the first building for sentimental reasons. 

As for the Bilaterians - after the Ambassador left, Algernon, His Poppet and Junior Partners get to work checking the studio's equipment, since new machinery had arrived last month.  This project will help defray it's cost and the Ambassador seemed like a good sort. Algernon could practically smell the secrets on him though.  As they were moving on with the saftey cheklist Algernon mentioned this to His Poppet.

His Poppet was not surprised. He figured that Algernon liked the Ambassador and Winter because they had avoided the very obvious pun that could have marred the meeting. Of course, the Embarrassed Ambassador would have been terribly embarrassed just for thinking such a thing. Algernon's Poppet smiled a very secret smile when he plugged in the lathe . . . . it was such a secret, no one even knew Algernon's Poppet had a mouth. 

The Taunting - A Very Brainy Day

Last night was the Third Candle.  

Tonight is Christmas Eve, the complications of the Great Overlap are about to Begin. 

Last night the subtlety of the Taunting was displayed. Knowing gets you nothing. You can see that the take out boxes are larger, you can know that things are not predictable and yet - still the joy of surprise - Poppets do not travel alone. There is intellectual company and humans can play with their brains now too!

The Green Brain has entered into the spirit of celebration with her human immediately as they bonded over accessories. Green Brain, Green Bow - I believe she is a bit of a Diva.

The Orange Brain aides in it's own emergence . Like a Bunny in an easter egg, I wonder if there is something inherently and culturally Jewish about a brain in a take out box. It seems connected to me somehow. The Orange Brain is most likely a ninja brain. We used to dress it's human in orange so that he wouldn't disappear so easily. It just upped his DC check for you gamers out there. Both the brain and the human are adept at hiding in plain site long before TSR /Wizards of the Coast considered it a feat. It is as natural as breathing to the boy in our house. He has been trained to be seen by teachers and camp counselors, who've been known to consider reporting him to the police as a missing child, when he's been sitting  right in front of them, exactly where he is supposed to be. Maybe if he travels with his brain they'll be able to spot him? 

Perhaps not. 

The last time they really lost track of him he was walking around the public area with a deer skull on a stick looking for the TEVA teacher. He was wearing orange.

Here is the Third Candle Crew joining the First and Second Candle Crew. Tonight we will join the Perfectly Normal Side of the Family. They did not grow up with us and they tolerate us nicely.  One of them will get a Poppet. We'll see where it goes from there.