Together

Twelve years married today, almost 18 years together. I just adore that Sarge, and I believe he's my bashert, a Yiddish word for destiny--the one who is divinely ordained as one's soulmate.

I thought I'd revisit a poem by Allen Ginsberg, one of our favorite poets, that was read at our wedding party:


Song

The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.

Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human--
looks out of the heart
burning with purity--
for the burden of life
is love,

but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.

No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love--
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
--cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:

the weight is too heavy

--must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.

The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye--

yes, yes,
that's what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.

San Jose, 1954

Somber

It's hard to go about one's business (the dish-doing, the laundry and shopping, the dropping off and picking up at school and lessons) during the High Holy Days and not feel the weight of them--which is, I suppose, appropriate. It's the holiest time of year in the Jewish calendar, and the time when God is closest to us. If these days are a time for t'shuvah (repentance, or literally, turning), and self-awareness, and self-examination, they're also a time for remembering those who have gone before us, those who are no longer with us, the ancestors who are present only in odd and sometimes only half-remembered anecdotes and photos from the earliest days of photography, and the more recent losses which still hurt very much--this unbroken line that connects me to my family and my family's family and back as far as memory can go--

The Holy Days culminate in the Yiskor service on Yom Kippur, when we gather in synagogue to say prayers together especially for the lost ones, to formally and collectively remember--and it's a hard service to sit through--the children are sent outside to play, where they are almost but not quite oblivious to the tears and pain inside--I remember being shepherded back inside when Yiskor was done, seeing the tears on my grandparents' cheeks, and knowing in an inchoate way what those tears meant. And knowing that I would join them on the benches inside one day, and in the far future that I would sit there without them too.

So I think today is my day to remember names: Paisach, Manya, Moses, Benjamin, Katie, Libby, Tillie, Honey, Harold, Eva and Mac, Sidney, Oscar and Marion, Sam, Abby, Alexander, Michel, Ray...














The Lock Gate by Paul Celan

Above all this mourning
of yours: no
second heaven.

To a mouth
for which it was one of a thousand
I lost--
I lost a word
that had remained with me:
sister.

To the worship of many gods
I lost a word that was looking for me:
Kaddish.

Through
the lock gate I had to go
to save the word back
to the salt waters and
out and across:
Yiskor.

Blessing for a New Year

The Woman's Prayer

With these candles
We pray to God
The God of our fathers
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
To grant us good life and health
To all my dear ones
And the whole world

With these candles
We pray to God
The God of our mothers
Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel
To grant us good life and health
To all my dear ones and the whole world

May we all have a sweet year, full of peace and blessings!!

Rainy Night in Late September

2:12 a.m. and I cannot sleep, just can't. Partly it's my brain on overdrive from the late-night cup of coffee that I swore wouldn't keep me awake...but partly it's the rain drumming on the skylight and occasionally dropping down the chimney into the fireplace. I love rain, and I don't want to miss it. Dinner is covered and put away, the dishes washed, everyone else in the house tucked in safe for the night, and it's cozy here on my couch, in the low lamplight, the dog beside me. The noise of the expressway is just a distant rumble, but the rain is really here, bringing finally a fresh scent of fall.

I know I'm going to regret this in the morning, when Hedgie wakes me at 7 a.m. with a demand for waffles! But right now, I just can't bring myself to say goodnight...

I Won a Contest, and What a Contest it Was

Thrilled I am to tell you that I, Leah, have won a contest over at MJ's. You can find details and the link over at Just a Housewife.

Here's my prize:




Make of it what you will.

Haircut

I got a haircut today, and you know how that can make you feel like you're starting over...along with my overlong "flowing" tresses went some of my cares...right onto the East Village salon floor, swept away like crumbs on the High Holidays...



I look pretty serious here in my Ph.D./birth control glasses, but really I'm full of glee and light as air. Just trying to keep the buzz going a little longer...

Beautiful Day

Did you ever have a day so perfect and lovely that by the end of it you felt as if you'd drunk several glasses of good champagne? That was today.

We had made plans with Hedgehog's special friend, and his parents, to take the children to the Museum of Modern Art. Hedgie had never been to the MOMA before, and it is truly one of the most beautiful places on earth, so I was very excited to introduce her to it. Now, all parents know that often when you're excited about doing something with your child, and perhaps have a lot invested in the event, plans can go wretchedly awry--your kid is cranky, she ends up hating it, it's worse than no fun in the end--but this was a remarkable confluence of really good elements: I adore her little friend, he's just as bright and eccentric and kind as Hedgehog, and they really understand each other, you can see it in the way they hold hands and whisper and discuss books they love and concoct peculiar word games. Even better, his parents are two of my favorite people in the world, a rare couple who are capable of more than just staring at their child and discussing, ad nauseam, his habits...or worse yet, god forbid, real estate...or their jobs...(lord knows I can be as guilty of that)...they are so funny, so acerbic, so worldly without being pretentious, so much more than the sum of their child, their apartment, and their career...

And if I sound like I just came back from a really awesome date, well I did...the museum was splendid, we ate lunch first in the cafe (parents, a visit to the art museum should always begin with lunch or a snack to fortify oneself), roamed around and looked at the Pop Art soup cans and the giant matchbook, and marveled over the Jasper Johns and Seurat, and the strange Louise Bourgeois skinny vagina sculptures, and the children were spell-bound by Rousseau's "Sleeping Gypsy," and asked each other, was the gypsy dreaming of the lion, or was the lion dreaming of the gypsy? Were the lion's eyes gentle or fierce?



and the grown-ups laughed over how much Gaugin liked those native women...so much better than hanging around in Van Gogh's ascetic narrow little bedroom...



And there was more food in the dappled sculpture garden, by the soft noise of the fountains, and so much laughter over the kids' heads...and the kids were tired but full of food and saturated paint colors and the movement of the sculpture...

And the subway ride home was crowded and peaceful, and Hedgehog leaned against me and closed her eyes, and murmured that the rocking was putting her to sleep.

I feel now as if I'd spent a day outside in the sunshine, I'm warm and there's a stillness inside me which is very rare indeed...

It was a beautiful day.

We Have Two Winners! Just because I couldn't stop at one...

The first soon-to-be proud owner of a pair of handknit socks in Koigu premium merino is...




KRISTEN!


Congratulations Kristen!


Details for Kristen: Now go to the previous post and then to the link to Koigu. You'll see all the gazillions of colors there--choose a first and second choice, and then please email me at theweatherinthestreets@gmail.com, letting me know your color choices, as well as your foot length in inches. Oh, and don't forget your address, so that this can get to you!

Edit: Simply because I couldn't stand to not spread the sock love a little more, and because I LOVE to knit socks, I have to choose a second winner to receive a pair of sock. So I put my names back into the random list generator, and the name that randomly came up first was, fittingly,


RANDOM CHICK!


Well, Random, same deal for you...go to the previous post, pick your top two colors, and shoot me an email with your choices, foot length, and address! Sock love will be yours!

Thanks so much to all who posted the wonderful descriptions of favorite childhood toys. I had such a good time reading them. Stop by anytime

And I must say, contests are fun! I'm brainstorming my next one, perhaps sooner than the 300-post mark.

200th Post and Sock Contest II

Well, it's officially the 200th time I've given myself license to maunder and meander on, covering any and all topics of greater and lesser import. Ah, blogging...

So, going along with tradition, and because I had such a good time knitting the last pair for the very sweet and talented Miss Kim (you can check out the socks here), I'm again holding an Every Hundredth Post Sock Contest. The winner will, as last time, receive a pair of socks knit by me, in the color of their choice, of Koigu Premium Merino.

May I say, as I did last time, that hand-knit socks are really quite a divine experience, if you've never received a pair. If you have, you know what I'm talking about. You just can't beat the spongy comfort and cuddly feeling.

What do you have to do to win these socks? Simply post a comment here, before midnight of Tuesday September 16th, telling us about your favorite childhood toy. I will have a random drawing on September 17th and let you know then who the winner is.

Everyone's welcome to post a comment, don't be shy!

And if you like, check out my other blog, Just a Housewife for another contest...

Memento

"If they are rebuilt, I will dance across again. I will dance across and people will look at the sky and they will believe again that mountains can move. They can move, you know. I have seen it."

--Philippe Petit


Edited: I tried so hard to be minimalist here, but I think simple eloquence will after all elude me. It's a sad day here in Brooklyn, NY. Still there's a visceral memory of fear and pain. I feel that anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach, that one does on the anniversary of something terrible. It was such an awful day, and now seven years later it's just a fragmented jumble--we didn't know then what was happening, or what was going to happen--my sister, at work near the Twin Towers, saw it happen from a window of her classroom--there was a confused cell phone call, in which I advised her to "catch a cab" home, not really understanding--instead she made it to the Williamsburg Bridge just ahead of the debris cloud, and ran across it--I remember our relief when the first military fighter jets flew over Manhattan--and that day and the next days I was home alone with baby Hedgie while Sarge worked round the clock, napping on cots when he could--and that night I camped out on the living room floor and listened to the unearthly quiet outside, like the whole world had died--later, walking in the city with my friend, the heart-stopping sight of the hundreds of missing persons fliers posted outside the New York Armory by family and friends, looking for lost loved ones who were by then all, every single one of them, ghosts...

Dear New York City, I'm still so sorry--dear secretaries and kitchen workers and lawyers and flight attendants--

and dear front line workers and soldiers, those in some cases unwilling and unwitting heroes:



Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling,
And took their wages, and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

A.E. Housman