6. Dave, who is my almost-date for two months, calls me to go on traintrack walks at least twice a week. We indulge hobo fantasies and dare to maintain eye contact for seconds upon end. Dave comes over and we sit on separate couches and - in all our melodramatic glory - gaze longingly at the negative space our knees create. I don't remember what he says, but it is something about the loveliness of parallel lines, the integrity of moving together without ever really touching. I soar with grateful relief and he only leaves after we have lingered on the curb long enough to make the not-touching painful.
7. Erev Christmas in D.C., P Street is totally rain-glistening empty. The 18 years I spent in yeshiva meant that because the schools stayed open in righteous defiance, Erev Christmas was no erev at all, but evening, a school night - homework, fishsticks, and all. I feel flung, clumsy, self-conscious about not quite getting the Chinese food/double feature references. I'm not quite sure how to be out tonight: what gifts, what prayers, what sacrament. Erev Christmas is not mine, but another excuse to pendulum-swing the pre-. I drink two cups of coffee and keep walking, walking: losing momentum at this point would be dangerous.
8. Your words are frenetic before your touch. Your touch is still and strangely sad. Your words ascend, careen upward, create an incline so steep it embarrasses entire cities, towering above the smallness of our sudden quiet knot, a mid-rush pause.
9. In Jerusalem, where they don't work on Fridays, I write sprawling romantic prose about the market on erev Shabbat. About the chalky spices, the screechy chickens, the breads, the squishy fruit underfoot, and the hot, chocolatey baked things. This is forgivable: I am young, and these things are not distilled for the benefit of the wide-eyed.
A squinty old man tramps through the crowd with his elbows and a foghorn, sounding a long, low note to punctuate the Sabbath's arrival, the end of the almost.
Like it or not, we are here.
Things that are sacred: handwritten manuscripts, plums, the Sabbath.
Things that are prefaced: handwritten manuscripts, plums, the Sabbath.
10. One quick layer below the surface of tension is something so substantial, it's heavy.
Preparation time is sacred. The generous foresight of its existence is staggeringly impressive. Friday finds us introducing ourselves to the idea of stopping. Erev finds us standing self-conscious in glistening streets, out of words, post-pre, ebbing raw from hover to touch.
October, 2003
August, 2003
June, 2003
May, 2003
April, 2003
Summer days, summer nights are gone...
New York, full of life, a cure for loneliness.
September, 2002
June, 2002
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From previous issues:
Finding a Place in the Minefield:
American Jews and the Situation
Samuel Hayim Brody
Meditation and Sensuality
Jay Michaelson
Not Mentioned
Hal Sirowitz