This is probably a good preview of the Jewish year as well as a comment about how leaving college is disorienting.
To clarify, I mean Jewish Year. The High Holy Days, albeit tempered with the fear and chaos of leaving, were where and how they should be. I went to my favorite shul with two of my bestest Jewish buds who had come back to visit. We played such '70's-licious games as “Aliyah” and “Going Up.” And by played outdated board games, I'm sure I meant studied and reflected on our sins [no].
Downstate I was much too frazzled for Sukkot. I spent the whole week in-of-doors crying and hardly eating. The particular shame of this was that my home-town Jews had built their first sukkah out on their property. All of this is but a pale and sad comparison to the Cardboard-city (homelessness fundraiser) Sukkah I shared with Hillel in 2009/5770.
Halloween of 2010 was the first time I did not go trick-or-treating. I should probably grow out of that habit in my 20's anyway but not for starvation and sleep deprivation. Instead I wandered the mountains for miles on about 500 calories, avoided the saintly landlady in my shame of non-payment, checked my Spanish bank account approximately four increasingly disappointing times and tried (successfully) to not end myself.
In a weird turnabout, I spent T-day sharing a pleasant meal with my family. This is abnormal. I haven't partaken of Thanksgiving Dinner with my biological family since I was a Freshmen in High School. To me, Thanksgiving is the perfect holiday of neglect and exploration. It's a minor holiday, with practically no important significance. I can make it magical by spending it with my friends either emulating the traditional or by completely disregarding it.
Chanukah may or may not be a joke. I watched my favorite PBS tape but didn't light candles. I went to the synagogue's party but at this point, I was still a little shell-shocked by being back, explaining but never conveying what my exile had been like, and growing increasingly uncomfortable and uneasy by being unemployed.
Despite having converted to Judaism officially, two years prior, this is the first year I was away from home for December 25th. I really wanted to avoid it the year before—what with the fighting and the getting sick. I'm sure it was hard on my family to lack me. At this point in my yearly re-cap, I wish to make clear that these holidays (with the notable exception of Halloween in which I possibly came close to celebrating the festival in a dread-and-ironic manner) were not necessarily BAD days. It just seems that this is the year where nothing was as it had been.
By now I am employed and unfortunately, being the noob and the probie, means I work on the weekends. I work on Shabbat. One of the many blessings of Israel's covenental relationship with G-d is that our most important holiday comes once a week (Yom Kippur is called the “Sabbath of Sabbaths” and is therefore still delegated to the category of my Saturday lack-of-business). In Spain, this meant overwhelming loneliness only partially consoled by reading my entire prayer book and as much Tanakh as I could focus on. The distractions of my state-side life sometimes enrich and often distract from Shabbos. Also, now that I am no longer a student, I must meet the challenge of finding other ways to set this day aside. It had been my custom to do no homework. Now I have no homework all week; I don't begrudge this fact as it is wonderful but my week cannot be Shabbat, my week should be six days of not Shabbat and then one day of Shabbat. This one is still in progress but I'm on weekdays now, so hopefully it will progress...
My extra-academic existence puts me in a weird limbo trapped without a Hillel but not quite willing to commit to adulthood. Without my Hillel, at least this year, nothing could have made Tu B'shevat tolerable. It was a holiday that we developed together and I wasn't ready to do that seder without them. I have been unaware how much of my soul and celebration has been defined by my friends from Hillel and our blundering through Judaism.
Finally cognizant of this fact, I am trying to meet it head on. Purim is the first holiday I felt in control of celebrating this year. I used the dictates of sending festive gifts, by sending things to some of my like-aged and -minded friends who have spread around the country. Distance is no excuse for not sharing a holiday. Then in my affronting lack of Jewry between the ages of legal drinking and responsible drinking (which refers to getting trashed and being a buffoon; NO ONE SHOULD DRINK AND DRIVE EVER), I did the next best thing and substituted a bunch of gentile thespians. Who better to celebrate the drunkest night of Judaism with than the folks who sing me Fiddler on shabbos and are responsible for 96% of every drunken mistake and victory of my life? It was a win—kind of like stopping an evil vizier from genociding all of your people.
With two-thirds of the year behind me now, including an extra Adar, I'm beginning to grasp and revive my sense of holiday. I feel almost prepared to prepare for Passover. In the past, I hated Passover. I still have a theological qualm with any holiday that denies Jews bagels. Eventually, I realized the holiday is not about what we don't have but about having enough. Dayeinu. We thank G-d for constantly providing us with what we need. That's been the theme of my return. “At least I'm not in Spain.” I've been pretty ridiculously happy since my return. G-d could have delivered us from slavery...and left us in the desert alone. Instead, G-d gave us food and water and freedom.
G-d could have left me in Spain. Instead he gave me a landlady who fed and housed me. G-d made a bus attendant notice that I seemed out of place and directed me to my bus—just before it left without me. G-d inspired a gentile to run around and find me a safe place to sleep. G-d got me to ask just one more time about where the airport was so I wouldn't metro to the wrong stop and miss my flight. I have been delivered from slavery in exile through miracles.
All holidays are based on miracles. The High Holy days celebrate the miracle that we can always better ourselves. Thanksgiving is the miracle of holidays and how they can celebrate, and ignore, and change...just like people. Regardless of Jesus' status as messiah or god or zombie, Christmas is many miracles. Contextually it's the miracle of how high a family can rise from it's lowest lows (pregnant and homeless—a low my family has experienced). Chanukah is the constant miracle of how there are way fewer Chanukah-related fires than is probable...oh yeah and something about the Temple's re-dedication and some Maccabees. Tu B'shevat reflects the simple and pure miracle of nature and life. Trees are fuckin' awesome. Purim's miracle is joy and Shabbat's is rest. Passover has so many miracles to choose from but the most obvious are the passing over of the first born and our deliverance from slavery...and carbs.
Still to go? Shavuot. When G-d gave us Torah and we slept through it....we suck. The real miracle is that I can catch up on my lapsed Tanakh reading in a single night and still have time for cheesecake. The minor miracle is the uniting of scripture and people and logic.
There are other holidays and birthdays and weddings all with their own inherent miracles and nuances. This has been for me both the year of the blundering holiday blundering, but also the year where I think I learned the most about what or why holidays we have these days. They highlight their own miracles so that maybe we can be reminded of the miracles that happen everyday.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Fighting For Poverty
I am an illegal and sometimes I condone making false vows. I've lived in approximately eight apartments but have only signed two leases. My friends and/or I have signed leases with the full knowledge that we will not be true to our end—housing and cramming and feeding: more people inhabiting a space than signatures bleed on paper.
Uncle Sam makes it hard for me to be poor. When I think of the really impoverished, I picture families and groups crammed into rooms. In the midst of this most recent economic downturn, many of the “middle class” have realized and discovered and idealized aspects of poverty. In retrospect I can find in my personal history where the recession (whatever that means) happened. It involved me living in a sketchy, cold, unsafe and illegal house and not having enough money for food. I had one job at six hours a week and despite applying to EVERY where in town, no second job. This was the first time I didn't have enough food to eat. It would (and possibly will) happen to me again. I find that making WAY less than 5,000 a year allows me to live-what I consider- substantially well. A bunch of stupid looking buildings, representing over-paid, mostly white men, tell me I am impoverished; they want me to want what they have.
A typical stereotype about modern Americans is that we over-reach our bounds to consume and don't give jack thought to what going without is like. On my part—it's not for lack of trying. The Man keeps me down by trying to force me up.
I do not NEED to sleep in-of-doors; if I do NEED to sleep in-of-doors, I do not NEED a room, or a mattress or a couch. I certainly don't deny these things to others but after giving them up I do not seek to reclaim them. The government tells me I DO NEED. Surely, having a 7-member family share 1.2 rooms is a threat to sanitation and sanity but why do I have to have an address? Why do I have to live in one spot, defined by my habitation? If I am clean, healthy, maybe even happy, and I pay what taxes I can—how then, WHY then must the “land of the free” rape my freedom?
I find that being forced to live above my means an equal (and perhaps causal) denegration to being forced to live below them.
Uncle Sam makes it hard for me to be poor. When I think of the really impoverished, I picture families and groups crammed into rooms. In the midst of this most recent economic downturn, many of the “middle class” have realized and discovered and idealized aspects of poverty. In retrospect I can find in my personal history where the recession (whatever that means) happened. It involved me living in a sketchy, cold, unsafe and illegal house and not having enough money for food. I had one job at six hours a week and despite applying to EVERY where in town, no second job. This was the first time I didn't have enough food to eat. It would (and possibly will) happen to me again. I find that making WAY less than 5,000 a year allows me to live-what I consider- substantially well. A bunch of stupid looking buildings, representing over-paid, mostly white men, tell me I am impoverished; they want me to want what they have.
A typical stereotype about modern Americans is that we over-reach our bounds to consume and don't give jack thought to what going without is like. On my part—it's not for lack of trying. The Man keeps me down by trying to force me up.
I do not NEED to sleep in-of-doors; if I do NEED to sleep in-of-doors, I do not NEED a room, or a mattress or a couch. I certainly don't deny these things to others but after giving them up I do not seek to reclaim them. The government tells me I DO NEED. Surely, having a 7-member family share 1.2 rooms is a threat to sanitation and sanity but why do I have to have an address? Why do I have to live in one spot, defined by my habitation? If I am clean, healthy, maybe even happy, and I pay what taxes I can—how then, WHY then must the “land of the free” rape my freedom?
I find that being forced to live above my means an equal (and perhaps causal) denegration to being forced to live below them.
Green Children and their Van-uncle
My weird theatre friend-spouses are not enough family for me:
For the first time in about two years I am developing a possibly, inappropriately strong relationship with a plant. My neurotic amblings make me feel a hefty burden when I think of how I contracted my self to care for the life of this creature. I name it; I pet it; I sing to it and tell it thinkgs about the world it cannon seek itself nor hear from the tall and wide spread trees who slowly spread their newses along the wind. Fizzles McFinklestein is the first plant-child I have committed myself to followed by a yet-unnamed Snakeplant. Fizzles is tall, strong, healthy, straight-standing and true. He is also the first of his kind that will reciprocate to me via consumption.
Cuban oragano, he's not an herb but his leaves are good for munching. I feel like a cannibal. Defensively, I only sampled the few fallen bits that were the victims of cat-attack...
The snakeplant reciprocates, but in a plantier, more-passive way by cleaning our air. He also needs less from me. I suppose I just found myself lonelier with Nam Shak downstate. I reminisce about living with Moshe ( a jade plant and my longest chlorophyllic cohabitation) in my van and the potential of me and my newest off-shoots to sleep there again someday.
For the first time in about two years I am developing a possibly, inappropriately strong relationship with a plant. My neurotic amblings make me feel a hefty burden when I think of how I contracted my self to care for the life of this creature. I name it; I pet it; I sing to it and tell it thinkgs about the world it cannon seek itself nor hear from the tall and wide spread trees who slowly spread their newses along the wind. Fizzles McFinklestein is the first plant-child I have committed myself to followed by a yet-unnamed Snakeplant. Fizzles is tall, strong, healthy, straight-standing and true. He is also the first of his kind that will reciprocate to me via consumption.
Cuban oragano, he's not an herb but his leaves are good for munching. I feel like a cannibal. Defensively, I only sampled the few fallen bits that were the victims of cat-attack...
The snakeplant reciprocates, but in a plantier, more-passive way by cleaning our air. He also needs less from me. I suppose I just found myself lonelier with Nam Shak downstate. I reminisce about living with Moshe ( a jade plant and my longest chlorophyllic cohabitation) in my van and the potential of me and my newest off-shoots to sleep there again someday.
Le Poke
The Poke
Most commonly, well now most commonly available on the social networking site, Facebook, the Poke is a way to give affection, get attention, make innuendo or in other popular poking situations: it is the act of sex. The problem with the Facebook “poke” is that it is a word implying a concept once known as an action. At Ye Olde Porne Shoppe where I work, we're all about action.
Poking is a potentially aggressive act, with the thrusting and the contact. In my private life, which I keep VERY away from my day job, it usually means that I've been unjustly tickled because my friends think it's funny that I scream and giggle like a 6-year-old.
Where investigation means copulation:
We've often poked things we were unsure of: a cloth on the floor; creepy, robotic toys we don't know are still on; that guy passed out in the dorm's tv lounge. I find that when confronted with a wall of dildos and vibrators, many people are unsure. Then they are seduced by the “try me” circle of texture. Sometimes it's just a nub of material, others it is a mini-mouth willing to kiss their curious finger.
I'm sure somewhere, a psychologist, maybe a Freudian has a checklist of sexual encounter stages like the coping with grief list or the Cass sexual identity model. In the wall o' dil that we have there's approach, reconnaissance, reach, and contact.
Bolder folks will march up, unawed and poke—solid and firm pokes—as if it were their right. If it pleases them, they will poke and feel and move on to poke and prod other nubs and lips and circles of amusement. If they're present on business, they'll squish the packaging (Please Don't). These are the sexual people. This is not their sex, merely a hurdle between them and what might be the real thing.
I prefer to watch growth rather than practice. Like wide-eyed deer-babies, they step to the wall. Sometimes they stay a shelf back...usually until they realize that there's penises on everything (nothing's safe). Often, they will side to side and peruse this wonder. Most back off, or search or wait for some note of disapproval or disavowal. Maybe they fear their conservative, oppressive mother is secretly in our employ, waiting. At this point, some have decided it is safe; they poke with the best of them—it's usually not predatory but certainly with an air of confidence. For many, the quick sideways glance was not enough to assure them they were not in violation of some unknown law. They force a shaky arm and very seldom make eye-contact with the goal as if, when 'caught' they could claim ignorance of the action of their limbs.
“I didn't even see it happen.”
Both sides make contact. No one jumps at them, and if they were brave enough to pick some cavernous, cyberskin lips, they seem quite pleased to note they have not become an amputee.
By now they are well assured...proportionally, in the safety of their sexuality and repeat the process with different things. Sexuality has been breached. Will they buy anything that's not incense or a bumpersticker? Hell no. They might not even be able to meet a vibrator in the eye yet, but the gate is up and the race is ready to begin.
This is about as voyeristic as I get; I like that maybe I work at a place where people learn about themselves and their friends. It's like each tester spot is a button that makes noise, like keys on a piano or stops on a clarinet and people with their poking play a symphony throughout the day.
Most commonly, well now most commonly available on the social networking site, Facebook, the Poke is a way to give affection, get attention, make innuendo or in other popular poking situations: it is the act of sex. The problem with the Facebook “poke” is that it is a word implying a concept once known as an action. At Ye Olde Porne Shoppe where I work, we're all about action.
Poking is a potentially aggressive act, with the thrusting and the contact. In my private life, which I keep VERY away from my day job, it usually means that I've been unjustly tickled because my friends think it's funny that I scream and giggle like a 6-year-old.
Where investigation means copulation:
We've often poked things we were unsure of: a cloth on the floor; creepy, robotic toys we don't know are still on; that guy passed out in the dorm's tv lounge. I find that when confronted with a wall of dildos and vibrators, many people are unsure. Then they are seduced by the “try me” circle of texture. Sometimes it's just a nub of material, others it is a mini-mouth willing to kiss their curious finger.
I'm sure somewhere, a psychologist, maybe a Freudian has a checklist of sexual encounter stages like the coping with grief list or the Cass sexual identity model. In the wall o' dil that we have there's approach, reconnaissance, reach, and contact.
Bolder folks will march up, unawed and poke—solid and firm pokes—as if it were their right. If it pleases them, they will poke and feel and move on to poke and prod other nubs and lips and circles of amusement. If they're present on business, they'll squish the packaging (Please Don't). These are the sexual people. This is not their sex, merely a hurdle between them and what might be the real thing.
I prefer to watch growth rather than practice. Like wide-eyed deer-babies, they step to the wall. Sometimes they stay a shelf back...usually until they realize that there's penises on everything (nothing's safe). Often, they will side to side and peruse this wonder. Most back off, or search or wait for some note of disapproval or disavowal. Maybe they fear their conservative, oppressive mother is secretly in our employ, waiting. At this point, some have decided it is safe; they poke with the best of them—it's usually not predatory but certainly with an air of confidence. For many, the quick sideways glance was not enough to assure them they were not in violation of some unknown law. They force a shaky arm and very seldom make eye-contact with the goal as if, when 'caught' they could claim ignorance of the action of their limbs.
“I didn't even see it happen.”
Both sides make contact. No one jumps at them, and if they were brave enough to pick some cavernous, cyberskin lips, they seem quite pleased to note they have not become an amputee.
By now they are well assured...proportionally, in the safety of their sexuality and repeat the process with different things. Sexuality has been breached. Will they buy anything that's not incense or a bumpersticker? Hell no. They might not even be able to meet a vibrator in the eye yet, but the gate is up and the race is ready to begin.
This is about as voyeristic as I get; I like that maybe I work at a place where people learn about themselves and their friends. It's like each tester spot is a button that makes noise, like keys on a piano or stops on a clarinet and people with their poking play a symphony throughout the day.
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