Prayers for the Broken - My Al Chet This Year

"L'shanah tovah tikatevi v' taihatemi”

May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.

There is the traditional Al Chet and then there is something more modern that I’ve encountered and I think it’s important because it grounds the sins from the formal and therefore the internal to the actual failures we commit during the year. The failures I have committed.

I need to remind people that a kind of personal god that looks like a human and has a form is not part of Judaisim – we use human shaped words to try to grasp something infinite – something not human. When humans use the word god the part of me that interacts with my religion hears a wordless/wordful thing that is “Universe”

God is not a magical sky fairy that is going to give me a puppy if I’m a good girl. The Universe is an immense thing that I struggle to engage with and understand and attempt to be the best human I can be inside of it. So the English formulation of “Ruler of the Universe” which is often used in translation is the one that speaks/works for me.

I am having immense difficulty with the things that represent Judaism in practice in the world being corrupted by specifically American duality and ideology. This is a day I will struggle with that some more.

One of the things that many people who aren’t religious practicitioners don’t know is the reason we say the Al Chet outloud during the day all together is because a sin cannot be forgiven unless it is admitted to outloud and publically.

But we say these things together to protect those who sinned so they can say it out loud without having to bear the burden or shame of it alone. We are all admitting to the sins because we are all people who share in the effects of the sin. In many cases we do actually bear the shared responsibility for allowing or condoning the sin as culturally acceptable or necessary in the first place.

So for all these things I ask forgiveness, in my version of public because right now it hurts to much to be in a prayer space – because there is currently no prayer space without politics and politics are nothing but methods of extraction for power interests  to enrich the already powerful.

And I have not figured out a way to stop that or stand against it yet – for that more than anything I beg forgiveness.

This was updated in 1978 – and it’s the one I’ll use tomorrow and here today.

We sin against You when we sin against ourselves.

For our failures of truth, Our God, Ruler of the Universe, we ask forgiveness.

For passing judgment without knowledge of the facts,

and for distorting facts to fit our theories.

For using the sins of others to excuse our own,

and for denying responsibility for our own misfortunes.

For condemning in our children the faults we tolerate in ourselves,

and for condemning in our parents the faults we tolerate in ourselves.

We sin against You when we sin against ourselves.

For our failures of justice, Our God, Ruler of the Universe, we ask forgiveness.

For keeping the poor in the chains of poverty,

and turning a deaf ear to the cry of the oppressed.

For using violence to maintain our power,

and for using violence to bring about change.

For waging aggressive war,

and for the sin of appeasing aggressors.

For obeying criminal orders,

and for the sin of silence and indifference.

For poisoning the air, and polluting land and sea,

and for all the evil means we employ to accomplish good ends.

We sin against You when we sin against ourselves.

For our failures of love, Our God, Ruler of the Universe, we ask forgiveness.

For confusing love with lust,

and for pursuing fleeting pleasure at the cost of lasting hurt.

For using others as a means to gratify our desires,

and as stepping-stones to further our ambitions.

For withholding love to control those we claim to love,

and shunting aside those whose youth or age disturbs us.

For hiding from others behind an armor of mistrust,

and for the cynicism which leads us to mistrust the reality of unselfish love.

Teach us to forgive ourselves for all these sins, O forgiving God, and help us to overcome them.

For all these sins, O God of mercy, forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement!

The sin we have committed against You by malicious gossip,

the sin we have committed against You by sexual immorality,

and the sin we have committed against You by gluttony.

The sin we have committed against You by narrow-mindedness,

the sin we have committed against You by fraud and falsehood,

and the sin we have committed against You by hating without cause.

The sin we have committed against You by our arrogance,

the sin we have committed against You by our indolence,

and the sin we have committed against You by our irreverence.

The sin we have committed against You by our hypocrisy,

the sin we have committed against You by passing judgment by others,

and the sin we have committed against You by exploiting the weak.

The sin we have committed against You by giving and taking bribes,

the sin we have committed against You by giving way to our hostile impulses,

and the sin we have committed against You by running to do evil.

For all these sins, O God of mercy, forgive us, parson us, grant us atonement!

Litany Source = Gates of Repentance:  The New Union Prayerbook for the Days of Awe (New York:  Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1978), pp. 327-331

Dance - Everyone's Watching

The introspection didn't start because of the numerous and plentiful articles and responses about "geek girls" and "girl gamers" and women in general. It started, like so many things start, with Madonna.

I have always admired Madonna, even when I wasn't fond of her music. I admired her ambition, sense of risk and willingness to go big or go home. I liked her tough girl art-chick persona in her early movies, Desperately Seeking Susan and Who's that Girl. I rooted for her even though I didn't buy her albums. They were occasionally fun to dance to, and since I was desperately trying to be an actor I knew all the words and could sing along because that's what you do. You learn ALL the things when you are an actor so that you can use them. Ironically, unironically, bitterly, joyously. You need to be able to feel all the things the way someone might feel them, even if you don't particularly. The first Madonna song I liked was "Like a Prayer" and I probably liked that song because it's true.

When the person I love calls my name it still feels a bit like a revelation - and like prayer sometimes it's intense, or sometimes it's a shock that you still notice or care, and sometimes its a reminder of transcendence. Sometimes it's home.

It's a funny thing about that lyric though. Like all callow youth and the default of all pop songs and everything Madonna it was interpreted by some of my peer group to be about sex, specifically about blowjobs, because of the chorus:


When you call my name it's like a little prayer 
I'm down on my knees, I wanna take you there 
In the midnight hour I can feel your power 
Just like a prayer you know I'll take you there 
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/m/madonna/like+a+prayer_20086915.html ] 


But that interpretation was made by a bunch of oversexed hormonal theatrical twenty somethings who were busy either creating their own spirituality or vociferously rejecting oppressive theologies. I do not say that last bit with snark. It was the era of AIDS. We were surrounded by a group called the "me generation" in the press and the rising of the Moral Majority in our politics and school system. Everyone was either letting us wander along or preaching at/to us.  We were diesnfranchised in the most literal sense being taught that "you can't fight city hall". The biggest joke at my school ( once again most likely because it was true) was that we wrote a longform article on the apathy of our student body and no one read it because they didn't care. Literally, no one even picked up our school paper.

Here's the part of the song you have to ignore in order to concentrate on the sex as subtext in Like A Prayer


Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone 
I hear you call my name 
And it feels like home


To accept that this song is only about relationships to other humans an not about something more; life, meaning, place, is to ignore that there's no relationship given, that there's no vision or contact with the subject of the song. It ignores that there might be a voice as metaphor that calls her name and the feeling is actually based in a religious feeling.

She wrote a song about her name being called. She made a video explicitly showing the conflicts of being called out by a suffering god and and and angry population and it was looked at not as a song truly about her personal expression/experience of the merging of the conflict/joy of that feeling and interacting with a suffering god in a world ignoring the god and abusing the symbols it was looked at as a publicity stunt to piss off religious people and a song about blowjobs. But that bit:

When you call my name


He said to him "Abraham"

It's like a little prayer

and he answered "Here I am."

Hinneni 

If I had put this allusion through it's paces at the diner after rehearsal while everyone was making blowjob jokes,  I wouldn't have been mocked but I would have been kind of looked at as a killjoy. And honestly at that time the idea that Madonna was genuinely interested in religion or spiritual fulfillment would have been taken as a joke.  If I had brought it up in a group of pagan women I would have been taken to task for a number of things, but one of them would have been why I thought that Madonna would want to express her experience and yearning and interaction of the divine with male symbols and patriarchy.

I am reminded of these situations by thinking about the discussions around women in leisure cultures now.

Most of my female pagan friends at the time admired her for owning her sexuality on her terms instead of exclusivley make defined ones. It's hard to remember now when all of her bits have been co-opted and digested and third wave feminism exists but what she was doing was self-defined.  In retrospect she might be the only mainstream popular act to do that because after her came the two terms to minimize discussion of sexuality or women in cultural consumption "Attention Whore" for those who incorporated their sexuality their persona and "White Knight" for any male who might defend pretty much any woman with a public persona. You can't discuss anything that uses sex and bodies in performance or marketing without having the labels thrown around for chilling effect.

It's still hard for women to admit their sexuality or discuss fluctuations in it without it falling into some pre-packaged trope. Madonna managed to be self defined until very, very recently. When she hit fifty the "cougar" became a sexual stereotype for women who were somewhere between milfs and crones. She and Dr. Ruth Westheimer were my early models for empowered women talking about sex on their terms to other women and whatever men cared to listen, but not for men. Really for them. For us, for little, evenutally growing up, me.

The other Madonna song I liked was "live to tell" .

Madonna is complicated, she's a social signifier, I was waiting, really to find out what would happen next. The two albums of hers I bought because I liked them and they actually spoke to me were Ray of Light and Music.

Most of those songs still speak to me. She's writing about subjects that mean something. By the time they came out while people were very confused and starting to spread crazy rumors about what Kabaalah was ( hint it's not it's own religion and SURPRISE Catholisicim has it's own Kabbalah ) no one by that time would be surprised that her work contained religion and sex intermingled, and even if they thought it was her shtick, most people actually assumed that she probably meant it, even if they now judged her for being crazy.

Of all of the Madonna songs that fill up the cultural soundtrack of my life the one that I hear in the back of my head when I'm very, very still is the one that has these lines:

"When you're trying hard to be your best, could you be a little less"

Does anyone even know that song? Is it one of the ones that get forgotten because it's uncomfortable?

I don't actually play the song through at all. Over the last several years it's made me cry. Mostly because it's true. It's actually the only song or article or anything addressing the topic that feels like what I feel. She wrote it when she was approaching 40.

When you open up your mouth to speak
Could you be a little weak?


But she's not 40 anymore, she's 50 and when she was at the superbowl some other, very brave self defined woman who I admire for all the same reasons I admire Madonna wrote how disappointing it was that she was not embracing her age and seemed to be trying to reach backwards or fight aging in her superbowl performances.

And I wrote back to that woman through the lightness of tweeting that

it's hard 4 someone like me 2 figure out how 2 age in a way that's true 2 self. It must be x1000 for Madonna

And that performer agreed enough to retweet - amplifying my struggle and empathy to ALL of her followers who are quite dedicated. And I found myself worrying a tiny bit if there was a cost to defending something as nebulous as that fact that maybe it's just Madonna's turn to look around for who she is and how to be and find out nothing that fits. She can be sexual, and maternal, and flawed, and perfect and performing because ALL of our age and gender presentations are a performance.

And everyone is watching but the roles are narrowed. How do we explore the space? When do we admit that the construct of a public persona is just as authentic as the personal persona?

The difference is in the size of the audience, but here in the age of the internet all of our performance is the size of internationally sold out stadiums. We are all at the risk of suddenly being judged by the same number of people that will judge Madonna, just for a shorter period of time.

But that's a big thing to risk. We might trip up.

Other things are bubbling up right now about being a female and being in the now. This is it for this one though

"Do you know what it feels like for a girl"

Do we even admit what if feels like when we are still considered "girls" when we're looking to define ourselves post childrearing. Madonna was 40. Girl is much more complicated for me than bitch. I want to both claim and supersede it so that I can be seen as a whole person in the communities I operate in. But if I don't claim "girl" all of my tribe become slightly less visible ( even if I occasionally disagree with large percentages of that tribe).

You know what my male friends don't do? They don't refer to themselves as "boys".

I"m not sure I have an answer, I'm sure that this isn't my last exploration of this theme.

I am sure I want to dance.

Hineni

The Taunting - Cheapass Edition

Do you all remember The Taunting? It is my family's personalization of our Americanized Holiday celebration.

As time goes on and I study more, I am harboring a secret suspicion that Judah and the Macabees became a macho male veneer on a holiday that had been celebrated by Jews previously that celebrated Judith. I've done a presentation on Judith in art and history- she is fascinating in the mixed up worlds of art history and political history . . . . but that is another truly wonky, geeky, potentially controversial story - for another time and perhaps a different audience.

Questions like Judith burn through my brain - but the someone to tear through the questions with me, well that doesn't work out so well. Their brain would have to be burning too. It's tied up with Western religion and history and art and the role of women and the values of monarchy. Too complicated, to much trust needed to have the conversation. No one wants to play with me. . . . .

So my fevered brain and I put all of our energy into the Taunting instead. And indeed, Channuka snuck up on us this year, and I "lost" my job 4 days before it started, (it's not lost, just ending in a few weeks, but in the Meatworld the effect is the same) and I was far too optimistic about time estimates for some artwork I was trying to do. So as a result the Taunting was planned, but the execution was not out of Phase II:Find Key Elements. Phase I is Create The Theme.

Every year at the beginning of Channuka, I put all of the presents out at the first candle. They are numbered, there are 8 for each child (who aren't so childish anymore) and each present is a clue. Every Taunting has a Major Theme, and every night has a Minor Theme. You have to open the presents in order. The "big" present is always the 8th Candle.

The wrapping is part of the Theme - and last year it was Poppets. And Chinese Takeout Containers - My sister was the one to get the wrapping theme. It's an in joke. But this year, we opted for The Taunting - Slacker Edition:

As you can see things were ordered and arriving - instead of hiding the packages as they came in I stacked them all in front of the portal mirror and set the Poppets from Last Year's Taunting to guard them.

The Slacker Taunting actually is related to a legendary event called Slacker Camp. When My Perfectly Normal Husband was simply My Accountant Who I Brought With Me to the Desert, Because You Only Bring The Things You Really Need, we set up very elaborate, generous interactive performance art and helped everyone who needed it with their own.

Then we went to a local event about 3 -4 weeks later and brought everything we needed and enough for lot of other people, and offered to share and give instructions but only performed the barest minimum needed. Those who had known us from the other events saw the art in it, and those who had just met us thought it was a brilliant conceit while they ate the steaks that we brought but they cooked.

It was interesting for us, because we are people who do, and help, and plan, and execute. It taught us things like letting go of complete control, and that if we give that out into the world, good people who are fun to hang out with will come to us and give us their enegry, work and company. However I must admit - we were only willing to do Slacker Camp once. It's not our nature.

So the same way Slacker Camp was not conducted in a vaccum, The Taunting - Cheapass Edition was also held within the context of Tauntings gone by. Good traditions grow new stories.

When the first Box arrived it was approximately 4 feet tall and 5 inches square and I had no time to unpack it so it stayed in the livingroom and I declared that the Cheapass Taunting had begun. The Boy asked if it was one gift but it actually contained several - it would take me three days to be able to get enough time to unpack it. The Taunting had begun! It Taunted me too.

On the First Candle I had a lovely stack of Amazon Boxes. ( because I'm a Prime Member and they deliver in two days with free shipping for me) and a few boxes from other places.

First Candle also happened to be Shabbat and it was such a Slacker Channuka that I hadn't bought candles for the Channukia ( menorahs) so we scavenged the leftovers from previous years.

However The Skeleton That Want's To Run A Florist Shop came up with a backup plan.

He likes to arrange things. He gathered a group of the minis and they put together Poppets Pretending to be a Menorah.

See - the mini wizard's wand is pretending to be the first candle and Wind is the Shamesh.

I reused the Chinese Food Gift Containers from last year's Taunting. See Slacker Channaka is Green!

We lit the regular candles, The Boy got a timepiece and The Girl got recycled kimono fabric made into fabulous shoelaces, which in turn ended up looking a lot like something Mini Poppets should dance with.

So they did.

Last year it was the Calender that caused Chaos because of the Great Holiday Overlap. This year the Chaos came because I was tricked into believing in The Week That Was Not There. But just you wait Calendar . . . . I'll get you my pretty, and your little ticking minutes too.

The Taunting can be messed with, but it cannot be stopped.

We emerged from the eight days victorious - The next entry or two will tell the story.

My Tzimmes Brings All the Boys to the Yard

Pronunciation Guide - Tzimmes (tzim-MESS)

Definition -slow cooked stewy-like goodness

My Tzimmes brings all the Boys to the Yard, and they're like

"It's better than yours"

Damn Right! It's better than yours.

I could teach you, but I'd have to charge.

But it's Rosh Hashanah and I'm feeling generous. So the Pumpkin Spice Poppet and I will teach you for the minor cost of your time and the pedagogic teaching that comes with the recipe.

Rosh Hashana this year falls on Shabbat. Shabbat is full of all sorts of rules. They're important. Rosh Hashana has a bunch of rules too. So when you get the "double mitzvah" of a holiday falling on Shabbat you get RulesFest. Although there are some rules that are I think in need of revisiting I am hesitant to tinker with the thing for everyone, because baselines in Judaism are about history and following the rules makes you walk the history.

Your people's past is your present and not just the stuff where everyone hates you. Keeping all the rules can isolate you from the outside world, which I do not approve of, but I do believe you should try to learn all the rules, before you make a decision on what is too much you need to know why it is there. This is one of the reasons organized Judaism is in a bit of a pickle right now. The people who created the movements of Reform, Conservative (Maosorti) and Modern Orthodox all had fully Orthodox educations. They were not reforming or modifying from rebellion but from a position of knowledge and a love of those laws.

But people now haven't really got the whole history of these laws, because frankly learning that much stuff takes a lot of time and most modern Jews outsource the intense studying to the rabbis, which creates a bit of an imbalance because rabbis were supposed to have day jobs and now they can't. They study so you don't have to. It's a lot of pressure. People just do what they say instead of understanding why they are saying it. It's too much power. Some of them crack. Save a rabbi - study Talmud.

I'll bet you're wondering what that has to do with Tzimmes. Everything.

Judaism is about Food and Fire. And Time.

Tzimmes takes care of all three.

Ingredients:

4 Large Sweet Potatoes - I use giant Yams. - Peeled and Diced

1 Butternut Squash - Small - Yes it has to be butternut - you can see the squash with Pumpkin Spice in the second picture - It looked smal to me. - Peeled and Diced

4 Granny Smith Apples - I believed that the first time I made this recipe and then I determined that they were incorrect - so I use 5. Peeled, Cored and Diced ( not so fast there pardner - read all the way through first)

Dried, pitted prunes - halved

1/3 cup of water

1/3 cup of Sweet Passover Wine ( I refuse to buy Maneshevitz Passover wine, I'm Jewish but I still have a palate dammit, I use King David when I'm making it for someone other than my family and just tried Port for when I'm making it for home. )

1/3 cup of sugar

1/2 a teaspoon of ground nutmeg

1/2 a teaspoon of ground ginger.

This Tzimmes is important because you're not supposed to light a new flame on Shabbat, but you're not allowed to put out a flame that was left unextinguished after Shabbat starts. You are prohibited from doing "work" which was initially defined as things that were done to build the temple. One day a week, time was suspended and you could not "make" you had to "be" instead.

But of course there were logistics problems with just being - for instance apparently you were also supposed to celebrate with foods. There's a big deal between the Sadducees and the Pharisees about whether or not you were allowed to have a flame at all - since we have warm foods, that's how you know that the Pharisees won. For the record , the preaching that Jesus did in the red word bible indicates that he was on the Pharisees' side of the big arguments so when he was calling them out, it was more like when Democrats tell other Democrats that they're hypocrites because they aren't doing enough.

So yeah, we have warm food on Shabbat, because the Pharisees won, and the way we have it is by working like lunatics before sundown, having everything ready and keeping the ancient equivalent of a hot plate going. Then you put the Tzimmes on it and pretend you're not working to serve the meal. Because feeding people wasn't considered part of building, but you couldn't cook from scratch because that was creating, and the 7th day is a no-creation zone. But Rosh Hashanah is supposed to be an even fancier meal - so this recipe is full on FANCY.

This tzimmes is so beloved by my friends that I have been asked to supply it to several meals I will not be attending - I wasn't bragging. I was being fully and completely honest. My Tzimmes brings all the boys to the yard, and the vegetarians, and the foodies, and people who love sweet potatoes . . .

There are other Tzimmes that are meat based and savory. This is savory/sweet.

So here are some of the tricks - when you go to buy the large sweet potatoes get the really large mutant looking ones about the size of newborn baby heads. Cook them in the microwave at 8 minutes per potato - because they are huge. You'll still have to peel them but they will be the right consistency. I dice them in 1.5 inch chunks because they usually have to be served with a number of other foods that have been slow cooked and I like them to have some heft.

Butternut squash is a killer. I had never cooked one before I started making this Tzimmes. My first time I tried to cut the thing up raw. What did I know. Let me tell you, if you haven't tried this - the next time I want to use something for longsword practice it will be me throwing up butternut squashes and trying to see if I can hit them in motion. Why? Because I don't think the sword will do more than dent it if it's not cooked first. I may make armour out of it.

My mom told me to nuke the squash for 10 minutes and then try. Lesson the second, let it cool for about 15 minutes. I needed to make this on no notice once, and the only place I could find butternut squash was Whole Foods and they only had pre-cut. I've never found pre-cut butternut squash there again, but I was all about prayer at that moment. "Blessed art thou O Lord Our God, Ruler of the Universe who createst pre cut squash - amien" That I should live to see such wonder!

Obviously that Tzimmes was meant to be.

For the apples I actually use a tool that was meant to be used for blooming onions to make the wedges and core the apples. Then I cut the wedges in half. This is not really diced - but frankly diced apples in a slow cooked thing become applesauce.

And finally the pitted prunes. Here's what I didn't know. People won't buy prunes because they think they are for old people and no one, including old people thinks prunes are sexy. So I'm desperately looking for dried pitted prunes and thanks to the wonders of technology I call my mother from my cell phone when reaching near hysteria in the supermarket. She tells me that they're calling them sun dried plums now and they are in the area where they keep the raisins.

Wow - the more you know.

Thanks Mom. Of course she wanted to know what I was cooking that needed prunes. I told her I'd bring some up for next Passover. It was a hit. You know something is good when your mom likes it and she didn't give you the recipe herself.

So it's three years later and now I can sometimes find prunes that are actually called prunes.

Ok, so you have all your vegetative matter in a giant bowl - it needs to be giant because it's a lot of stuff.

I use medical gloves when I'm handling food, they're disposable, they prevent cross contamination and you can still feel what you're working with. I recommend this for the next step.

The recipe tells you to mix things in the large bowl - HA! You'll break your spoon. Mix it with your hands pulling through with your fingers while sliding them down the sides of the bowl and bringing them up from the bottom. Then keep moving things in the bowl around the same way you would do meatballs. When everything looks evenly distributed stop.

Now you take the sugar, nutmeg, and ginger and mix that together in a bowl. Sprinkle the mixture over your giant bowl of stuff and then do a little of the meatball mixing thing again.

Now I will go into the politics and history of kosher wine at some other time. Suffice it to say that it's cool and I sort of understand. It's a sacrament and you don't really want to drink a sacrament made by people who were trying to kill you. However the rules grew into something else, and that is a something else I find runs counter to what I believe Judaism is supposed to do. It's a rant of sorts and won't be indulged here.

Very much like I will not ask people to believe in my religion as long as they stop trying to get me to believe in theirs, I will not ask my co-religionists to compromise their understanding of the law to accomodate mine. So I will not sneak non-kosher wine into a Tzimmes I make for other people. Not even if I think they are righteous selfish pricks that are trying to bully people with how observant they are.

However, I damn well will use port instead of sweet passover wine in mine.

Taylor Fladgate makes a kosher Ruby Porto Cordovero. It's the first real kosher port.

I say with no irony at all - "Thank you God for making a world with such port in it!"

You pour the water and the wine over the things in the bowl and then you can try mixing with a spoon or tossing it like a really massive salad until all of the things are coated with the liquid and the sugar and the spice pretty evenly or you can do the meatball mix style again.

You'll be able to see when it looks right. Or your Poppet will let you know after the inspection.

Then you are supposed to place it in a pan. Yeah, right. You place it in two pans. Cover it tightly with tin foil and a lid if you have one.

Bake 1 hour at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Cool.

To serve reheat, then empty into a serving dish. Don't serve it out of the pan you cooked it in, the movement of the tzimmes into the serving dish squeezes the juice out of the fruit.

The alternative method it to take the whole shmagegee ( that's a technical term, folks) and put it in your electric crock pot. It will fill up a whole one of those suckers. Cook on medium for an hour and then turn it to low. Leave it there overnight. Come back from synagogue the next day, serve it for the festive meal that you pretend is getting there magically.

I love this recipe because it has the things you would use for fall, it has echos of American Thanksgiving, it echos and is appropriate for Passover - which is another "New Year" in the ritual calender (I'll explain that later too) and it allows me to fulfill an important part of being in a community which is sharing food and meals for the holidays.

So to bring this back to Food Fire and Time: a tzimmes lets you eat like kings without violating shabbat by prepping the food, lighting the fire and keeping through time.

I know you want it

The thing that makes me

What the boys go crazy for

They lose their minds

Cause I use good wines

I think it's time.

la la la la la la

Warm it up

la la la la la

The table's waiting

My Tzimmes brings all the Boys to the Yard, and they're like

"It's better than yours"

Damn Right! It's better than yours.

I could teach you, but I'd have to charge.

This is Elul

She's a little different. For one thing, her name has almost nothing to do with the meaning that the artist who made her was picturing.

Another thing is that she was an unexpected gift, a happy consequence of an action taken. A reminder that just because you aren't looking for things doesn't mean they aren't going to happen anyway.

The giver of the gift would not have thought of her having this name. Sometimes when the poppets arrive they wear their names themselves - The Coffee Poppets, The Greys, the Reds. Sometimes they acquire their names through acts - The Embarrassed Ambassador, The Most Adventurous Red. Sometimes they come from their creator because she needed to fill the space where their names were - Storm or Wind and then Lisa created what needed to be in the Storm space or the Wind space.

But this little one is Elul, and no one knew at all until she nudged along the edges and made it clear.

So she's the only Poppet in the House with a Not-Poppet name. At least so far.

Elul is the month before Tishrei, in the Hebrew calendar, the word derives from an Akkadian word for Harvest. Elul is when you wake up every morning to a warrior cry and open your soul prepare yourself for the 10 Days of Awe.

It is the month you visit the graves of loved ones to remember their spirits and inspire you to be more fully in the world now because time here is fleeting.

During Elul you prepare yourself to repair the things that you have broken and take stock so you can be honest with yourself and others about actions and consequences. Interestingly, although it is religious, it is not preparing yourself for being worthy of God's love, it is preparing yourself to be worthy of those who are around you here.

It is preparing yourself to be worthy, period.

I will be writing about religion for the next couple of days. It's my religion so there's no magical sky fairy or shiny castles on hills, or magical lands where dead people are happy or miserable. If you're looking for me to believe that you've got the wrong religious person - there is a really rough bar exam though.

If you're not into that you can skip me until next Tuesday. Yom Kippur will be over and the need to do this will be done.

Because I think in a very real way, this year the Poppets kept me from drifting away entirely. You cannot lie to a Poppet. So if I'm going to be real about this I shouldn't keep it separate from the blog and the poppets. If you liked the Passover with the Poppets entries, this will be similar, I'll share the history of what I'm doing, and the heresy of what I'm doing and why it matters.

Real-time atonement - and this year is different. Just like Elul - a reminder, a messenger, a different little Poppet who I wanted to join us, but I wasn't sure I would be able to get her to come.

A harbinger of harvests and souls. Bring in your crops, take stock of your actions, judge your own soul.

The word for angel in Hebrew is the same word for messenger in military and civillian human terms. There is no differentiation in Torah between the two types so some translations made every messenger divine and some translations tried to figure it out from the text.

So is Kelly who sent me the poppet the angel, or is it the Poppet herself? By correct interpretation the answer would be both. Elul is your wake up call that Tishrei is coming.

Thank you Kelly, for sending her.

My angels are tiny, dressed in black, carrying the harvest calling for my soul.

Perfect.

Drinne's Big Adventure

Before I start this story I think it's important to note that once upon a time, many years ago, my body forgot a few things, like how to hold a pen, or stand without assistance, and eventually for a short, terrifying time how to walk at all.

And when it slowly carefully relearned all the really obvious things which it had forgotten, it took the better part of two years to find all the little things that the brain had jettisoned or reconfigured in order to get things like Mobility back in the picture.

It's part of this story, "What I am Doing On My Summer Vacation."

I made choices, I went to the beach and negotiated a truce, and I have relearned how to ride a bike.

Which is not as simple as it should be.

And now I have a bike of my very own.

It was an adventure.

The Most Adventurous Red approves.

It started because of The Boy, who needed a bike ( because Boys need Bikes) went to the store with my Dearest Friend to repair his bike, (because Dearest Friends need Bikes too). I figured since my Dearest Friend's bike is unique and collapsable that the people who could service it would be people I could trust to advise me on the proper bicycle for the Boy. It would need to work in our environment by the House but it would also need to be able to do well here, by the beach in the far Northeast, where we punctuate our lives.

It did not take us long, the man who helped us loves bikes and people and speaks in sounds my ear associates with childhood. The bikes are just as fancy as my overly competitive, yuppified, sports minded area, but they are presented plainly, no fancy words, no branding, no "exclusive 10 point measuring systems". I was happier there. I trusted this person. The Boy doesn't ask for much so I tend to be careful when he does.

He asked if we could get the bike so that he could use it here. After some thought, I agreed. The Boy and His Bike were meant to be, matched by the Massachusetts Bike Man. It only took two bikes before we found the Right One.

The Boy brought His Girl with him on this trip. A new and possibly dangerous thing to do, and we learned that His Girl did not ride. Hmmn, this is not ideal - Girls also need Bikes.

Bikes are independence where we are, because the buses are disjointed inefficient money soaks that add obstacles rather than opportunities. Everyone, besides me, offered to teach her.

I could not- I was fairly sure I no longer knew how to ride a bike. But I encouraged her, and on hearing her concerns and the phantoms she threw up offered to try to ride a bike with her. She thought that seeing a grown up who could not ride easily try to relearn might help.

The other adults travelling with me and the Massachusetts Bike Man all reassured me that if I used to ride, I will remember no matter how many decades, but only my Dearest Friend was there when my body had forgotten, and some of the times over the years when I had to fight to keep what I had relearned. Some things are not the same after that. There was no guarantee for me.

When we got out of the car to buy his bike, I saw it. I walked around it. I took pictures of it. But I didn't think I would do anything about it.

It reminded me of Burning Man, of studying religious texts, of art school, of my first bike, of time travel. It reminded me of hope. The kind of hope where you look at something in the window and hope that someday you'll be rich/talented/old/good enough to be able to own it.

Pressed-nose -against-the-window-hope.

I put it on the mental shelf. There were no guarantees, I am too old to pine at windows and even if I were not, I am too realistic to hope without some basis in reality.

Then on the very first day The Boy's Bike had an epic failure of tubing and heat and needed to go back to the bike shop, which with great metaphoric symbolism is called "YesterYear".

There is a six month service plan. His Girl went with us for the repair.

I've never seen a repair done so fast without a planned pit crew. They wheeled it in and the owner called out "This just rolled out this morning - let's get it back out NOW!"

It was like magic. My favorite kind, where the magic is because of extreme competence. God, I love it when that happens.

I did show His Girl the Very Pretty Bicycle. I will love her forever because when she saw it she said, "It looks like it was made for you!"

That is not what most people who know me would think.

Lined up with all the other bikes, it called out to me full of things past and present and future. The others were talking with the crew up by the repair, and we asked the Massachusetts Bike Man if I could sit on it. It was our third visit to his shop. He pulled it out of the line up for me and I sat to see what would happen when I did.

I was disoriented.

It was frightening.

The edges of the parts of my brain that had been affected by the Great Forgetting fluttered frantically trying to make sure that the simple act of supporting a bike while sitting on it did not cause me and the bike to go tumbling down in the very public lot.

I told the Boy's Girl the truth, that I was shaky and having trouble keeping my balance, and I thanked the MBM and told him that I would practice riding back by the beach before I tried to ride around the parking lot. The one thing I was sure of is that I did not remember.

She told me she would learn if I would, because maybe then I would get that bike. I told her that I probably wouldn't be getting the bicycle, but it wasn't OK for me to feel the edges of Forgetting and just leave them there. Because if I leave it alone, the whole abyss lies under it and I won't know how deep it is. That is unacceptable. I cannot live like that.

I will not go gently.

So we would start from the beginning, together, me and the Boy's Girl.

We went back to the shipwright's house and had the first lesson.

First there were the parade of bikes to be tried. The Shipwright's House, like all the houses here collects bicycles. Tall ones, short ones, ancient ones, merely old ones and The Boy's Bike. The Boy and I are the same height now. We're both pretty tall with long legs, and his was the only one that fit. His bike is much more bike than I should be using. Oh well, nothing for that now. We found one for her.

At my insistance, we took our practice starts on the grass. My Perfectly Ordinary Husband demonstrated "push off" and then handed it to me and said "Ok - show me what you've got".

I admit, I'm not sure I would have tried going anywhere on my son's bike if it weren't for His Girl and the Very Pretty Bicycle. But I did try.

My son has a very nice bike. Much to my surprise, while all of the Forgetting Edges hovered around my balance center and my lungs, the act of pushing off helped me to find a new center, and I rode around the bush and remembered how to use a hand brake to stop.

It was only a little like remembering and nothing at all like learning. It was more like discovering. I discovered how I could ride a bike, even with the abyss underneath.

The Boy's Girl learned to ride the same day, within the hour.

I had forgotten how to breathe, but that happens a lot lately. I was able to use words and feelings and physical actions that helped The Boy's Girl be willing to take risks too. That and the inspiration of my shaky, wobbly, triumphant trip to and from the tennis courts, with occasional flashes of breathing.

I could ride a bike and not pass out. This was even bigger than riding in the first place!

My body, my brain and I have not all been on the same page for some time. We need a mediator, we need to readjust. We need to feed each other again and work towards something instead of trying to maintain equilibrium. We need measured successes, but with milestones we made ourselves.

We needed a bicycle. It's bigger on the inside than the out. I promise.

On the fourth trip, after the research, and the soul searching, and the permission to be selfish (I gave it to myself) I went back to the MBM and told him that I was going to get a bike, it didn't have to be the one I loved but it did have to be right. I trusted him. I would try what he thought was best for me and where I would be riding.

It ended up that the right bike was indeed the one I loved.

It's call the OM.

It makes me want to leave the porch. It makes me wonder if I'm good enough to ride on a wet road.

(No, not yet).

When the weather was clear I stopped the comfortable easy thing I was doing and took it out of the garage myself and went as far as I could.

I am learning.

I am willing to move.

I am learning to use a coaster break on a downhill slope.

I have learned how to apply heat to the bruises on the back of my left calf until I get it right.

(F=ma)

I am finding a pace where I can ride and breathe and still enjoy movement and air and environment.

I have a plan for when my bike goes home to practice around my neighborhood.

I will have the prettiest bike on my block, confusing the hell out of the people who see me leave for work each day in my black suits.

If I get good enough, I can ride my bike to work wearing my black suits, and my dark sunglasses, carrying my technology in a shock proof case.

The check at the security gate should be fun.

I can ride a bike.

Take that Universe, I got something new back, even at this late date.

Bet you didn't see that coming.

(I certainly didn't).

But you're welcome to come along with us for the ride.

It will be an adventure.

Today I Shall Be Brave

Because yesterday I was not.

And I wasn't brave for a large series of previous yesterdays.

And there are consequences for that.

I can only accept being afraid for so long and then when I look at the bottom where you are either broken or in denial, I tend to get very, very, angry.

But I am still afraid, and I will go there anyway.

Mostly because if I wait until I am not afraid, I may find that I am already broken.

And I will not tolerate that.

So I WILL go tonight, and find the light peeking out in between the scary, scary people and see if I can be there without self immolating.

It's never God that smites you with lightening when you go to services, it's your own internal combustion engine powered by whatever you power it with. Tiger, tiger Burning Bright.

So tonight will be Facing Consequences 1/Spontaneous Combustion 0.

The Odds however, are split between quietly sneaking out early vs being seen.

I have spent the better part of the year practicing invisibility. Now it's time to stop.

Even if I'm not ready. Especially if I'm not ready.

Prise de Fer