The I is in Israel

I spent six weeks in Israel the summer of 2009. It was one of the most amazing and definitive experiences of my life and served as the perfect bridge from homeschool and Hebrew school to college. One of our writing assignments near the end was to write about what it means to be Jewish. A lot of people despised it, many of us knew it was coming, and I just sat in the computer lab until it was finished.

No matter, as a prelude to the assignment, we were asked to walk around an area of Tel Aviv where we were visiting for the day and see what people living in Israel considered Jewish. We went up and down the streets in small groups. We walked to a cafe. We walked past soldiers. We sat down with some modern Orthodox Jews. It was exciting, yet nerve-wracking approaching strangers in a strange land (alright, it wasn’t that strange, but I’m naturally quiet, so it was surely an exercise in extroversion!). And then, with our classes, we sat down. And then they dumped it on us.

The essay doesn’t stand as my best example of writing (in rereading it, I feel it lacks an air of sophistication about its coherence and structure), but it reflected my evolving views on Judaism and being Jewish at the time, and for that, it did what was intended of it. I hadn’t ever had the intention of sharing it at the time, at least with none other than our teacher, and since length wasn’t it issue, it ended up becoming a fair bit longer than the bit I posted yesterday. So, without further ado, I present to you the essay I called “Recon.”

(Short for “reconfirmation,” of course.)

701 Words to Remember

“More Than a Moment”

It’s not that I don’t want to get married
it’s simply the fact that I can’t
but what would it matter even if I did
when I know how they all end anyways
Well I guess they don’t all end
but you know what I mean when I say
that most of them do go anyways.

Shattered

It was this day two years ago that my life changed forever. After living a double-life for longer than anyone should be forced to do so, I came to a terrifying realisation that I wasn’t just gay and Jewish, I was a gay Jew. The feeling that coursed through me brings to mind the stories of the shattered vessel of Kabbalistic fame, wherein God’s breadth was too great to be contained that it shattered what had tried so carefully to hold it in. I became that shattered vessel that day: I had so dearly longed to hold God within me, but his breadth was too great, and I shattered.

Trite as it may sound, I recall the moment very vividly, as if I were living it right now as I write these words: I’m standing in the middle of the sanctuary on the afternoon of Yom Kippur 5769. I’m fervently jumping between reading the Hebrew, which after weeks of study I’m finally starting to be able to understand, and the English when the service moves too fast for me to keep up. The Torah reading begins; I keep reading. And then I stop, my mind stuck on one passage, like a gear that has jarred the entire mechanism. For a moment I’m unable to think, unable to recall all the times I’ve read these words before, all those times as I child I read them on Yom Kippur and felt confused by them although I had not yet known why, and it’s like I’m reading them for the very first time:

“A man shall not lie with a man as he lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence.”

Ten Reasons to be Me

Humorous
I don’t always try to be funny, but I do tend to bring a little life to the party. Which is odd, seeing as how introverted I am inside, but I think in a way that’s the logic life demands: Those who don’t fight nor flee, resort to humor. My comedy isn’t always your cup of tea, but I’m bound to make everyone smile once in a while–even if you’re just smiling cause you proved me wrong when you didn’t smile. Oh, wait. You’re smiling now, aren’t you?

Kind
One of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received was now the summer before last on my trip to Israel. One of the other guys in my group was a little uncomfortable, being around the first real gay guy he ever knew, but the night before we all left, he told me he was really glad he’d gotten to know me because I was one of the nicest guys he’d ever met. That made my trip even more memorable than before.

Friendly
I’m horrible to keep in touch with, but it seems everyone wants me too–in only a little more than a year in school, I’ve met more people and made more connections than I thought were possible. Perhaps there are those who have more friends than I do, but it truly is quality over quantity here.

Completing the Square

I started this blog ten years ago. True, the calendar reads only six months today, but I began with a New Year’s special in which I looked back at the last ten years of my life. The ups, the downs. All of it. In all honesty, I had intended to post it on a forum I frequent (rather infrequently now, I’m afraid), but with a longstanding desire to start a blog of my own, it seemed the perfect time–and the perfect topic–to do so with.

So I did.

This is my forty-second post. It’s not nearly as high as the 200,000,000 entries posted collectively amongst all WordPress blogs, but it’s still a nice start. It’s also exactly six posts higher than thirty-six, and if it’s not obvious already, that’s six squared–and for a mathematician like me, that’s a good sign! There’s also exactly six categories (one default, and five I actually use), three pages, and seventy-nine tags–the first three of which were gay, Jew, and writer.

Those three words sum me up rather well–and thereby most of my blog, too. In fact, when I was designing my header, I’d considered incorporating a Star of David and a male/male sign into it, but when I did so, it looked too busy and I decided it was best left as it was. That’s not to say either’s hard to find here–just look at the tags! Eleven relate directly to my being Jewish, and an additional three directly to my being gay (there’d be more to that list, too, but tags like “love” and “marriage” are just too vague).

I’ve also got three ongoing series that relate to each of them. Just this past week I started a series on equal rights and visibility with my post “A is Action”; six weeks ago I began looking at weekly verses from the Pirkei Avot and writing my thoughts about them with the post “Three Precepts”; and a staggering three months ago I started my first serial with the eponymous post “Super?”

To date I’ve had 1208 views of my blog–approximately 201 views a month, six views per day. My busiest day so far was April 29, with thirty-one views. It might not seem like a lot, but for me, any views at all is enough to keep me coming back.

And come back I intend to do! I’ve still got almost an entire five chapters of the Pirkei Avot to cover, not to mention three more parts of Super, twenty-five more letters, and ninety-nine more things to be thankful about!

I’m still a newbie. I might’ve been using the internet for as long as I can recall having it, but I’m still only six month into my blog. I’ve still got a lot of ground to cover, a lot of things to learn, and a lot of interesting things to say. I hope you’ll agree with me when I say I hope you’ll be there every step of the way. Just as we can ask whether or not a tree falling in the woods still makes a sound if there’s no one around to hear it, we can ask whether or not a blog makes any difference if there’s no one around to read it.

And maybe I can’t change the world, but I’d at least like to make a difference.

Gay Doesn’t Always Mean Happy

Class: ENG 111 Expository Writing

Assignment: Write a concept essay on a controversial issue.

Grade: 98/100 (A)

Date: November 2009

Halakhah and Homosexuality

Jacob is an Orthodox Jew. He thinks Benjamin is attractive, but because the Bible says homosexuality is a sin, he resists his impulses and tries to find his girlfriend Sarah more appealing. Meanwhile, Sam, a Conservative Jew from a nearby congregation, is studying to become a rabbi with the encouragement of his family and his boyfriend Dan. How is it that these two Jewish men lead such similar, yet drastically different lives? What causes Jacob to hide his homosexual feelings but allows Sam to live openly gay?

Jewish law, known as halakhah, is a uniting force among all Jews; however, what stands to be halakhically acceptable can vary greatly between different branches of Judaism. To understand how these two men living so closely to one another can be affected by Jewish law in such different ways today, we must turn back time to the dawn of Judaism and see how its system of law has developed and evolved ever since.

Judaism traces its roots to the time of the first patriarch, Abraham, who is estimated to have lived in the year 1800 BCE; however, the earliest historical record of Abraham’s descendants, then known as the Israelites, does not appear before 1200 BCE. Judaism’s main religious text is the Torah, or the Five Books of Moses in the Old Testament. Additionally, there is an oral Torah compiled in the fifth century that is known as the Talmud and includes multiple levels of commentary on the Torah and its laws. There is no single Jewish document more concerned with Jewish law than the Shulchan Arukh, “the set table,” a code of law written by Joseph Caro in the sixteenth century.

It is from these texts that Jewish law is derived. Known in Hebrew as halakhah, which comes from the verb “to walk,” Jewish law is literally “the path which one walks.” Jewish law governs every part of a Jew’s life, from the food they eat to their business affairs to the people they’re allowed to marry (and the people they’re not allowed to marry, as in Jacob’s and Sam’s cases), and even what roles a husband and wife should play in that marriage. Jewish law is broken into two categories: Halakhah d’oraita comprises the 613 commandments written in the Torah, while halakhah d’rabbanan refers to the laws enacted by Jewish sages and rabbis, beginning with the Talmud and continuing into modern times.

There are three categories of rabbinic law: Gezeirot are laws enacted to build a fence around the Torah; that is, to prevent one from accidentally violating one of the Torah’s 613 commandments. Takkanot are laws unrelated to Biblical laws that have been put into place for the welfare of the community. One such example of a ninth century takkanah is the law forbidding polygyny (taking multiple wives), which was allowed in the Torah but forbidden by the Catholic church in medieval Europe, under whose legislation Jews were ultimate subjected. The last category of halakhah is known as minhag and includes all the customs that have been ingrained into Jewish life even if not written as an official part of halakhah.

When it comes to homosexuality, Jewish law is both d’oraita and d’rabbanan: In Leviticus 18:22, the Bible explicitly says “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence.” This led medieval rabbis to enact a gezeirah proclaiming it illegal for two gay men to be even physically close, lest it lead them to breaking the Torah’s commandment.

Although halakhah aims to govern every aspect of a Jew’s personal and communal life, in today’s world where there exists no wholly Jewish government (even Israel’s government is riddled with influences of the secular), halakhah has historically been forced to be subordinate to the law of the state in which it is being determined, as has already been seen by the halakhic outlawing of polygyny in the ninth century. This often puts Jews under multiple legal systems, such as Jacob and Sam, residents of New York City, who are subject not only to halakhah, but also to New York state laws and federal laws of the United States of America.

This modern juxtaposition of religious and secular legal systems requires us to compare and contrast the legal positions of both. As has already been stated, traditional halakhah asserts that homosexual acts, including but not limited to sex between two males and same-sex marriages, are explicitly forbidden. New York law, however, differs on both accounts: New York sodomy laws were repealed in 1980 and removed completely in 2000. Furthermore, although same-sex marriages are not yet legal in New York, same-sex marriages performed elsewhere are recognized by state marriage laws. Observant Jews, however, typically follow the halakhic ruling when stricter than that of the governing legislation.

Jewish law differs not just from state law, but also within Judaism, which is why we see Jacob’s and Sam’s responses to being gay as drastically different as they are. Orthodox Jews like Jacob preserve halakhah and Jewish tradition in their most authentic—and thereby most restrictive—forms. In Orthodox communities, Jewish dietary laws are strictly followed, men and women are still separated while praying, and a gay man’s only option is celibacy or so-called reparative therapy. His goal typically remains the same: to have a wife and children.

In the most liberal branches of Judaism—the Reform, Reconstructionist, and Renewal movements—homosexuality has almost become a non-issue it is so widely accepted. According to the movement overviews compiled by Jewish Mosaic: The National Center for Gender and Sexual Diversity, all three movements have ordained gay and lesbian rabbis since the nineties and have universally supported same-sex civil marriages for just as long.

Conservative Jews like Sam have been caught in the middle of such extremes. In 1992, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS), who decide halakhah in the Conservative movement, passed the Consensus Statement on Homosexuality, which welcomed gays into the movement while adhering to the precedent that gays could not become rabbis or be married under Jewish law. It also stated that the decision of whether or not gays could serve on synagogue committees or lead religious services was to be determined by individual rabbis. In 2006, the CJLS revisited the issue and passed three conflicting responses, two favoring the traditional standpoint while the third supporting a greater welcome for gays in the Conservative movement, once more leaving the decision of which path to follow up to individual communities. With these new laws in place, the doors to the rabbinate were finally opened for gay and lesbian Conservative Jews and many rabbinical colleges changed their policies to reflect this.

But what would life be like if Jacob and Sam weren’t Jewish, but belonged some other faith? If they belonged to a liberal Protestant denomination, they might both live as comfortably as Sam does, but if part of a conservative Protestant denomination or Catholicism, they’d still be living like Jacob is. If Muslim, they could even be punished by death.

In conclusion, we can easily see that halakhah has been around since the birth of Judaism nearly four thousand years ago and has continued to evolve ever since. Jacob may continue to struggle with being gay while Sam rejoices in his acceptance into a renowned Jewish seminary, but despite the differences in how they interpret traditional halakhah, Jewish law still connects them to each other and to Jews everywhere around the world.

Addendum: Since writing this essay, I’ve learned that many gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews, although still subscribing to the laws of the Torah, are open about being gay and no longer pursue heterosexual relationships that would ultimately cause pain for both marriage partners. Nonetheless, the openness of these individuals varies greatly from person to person, and although some are comfortable having homosexual relationships, others are not. With something as personal as sexuality, no one standard can be set upon all people and be expected to apply to each of them equally. Hopefully, however, this trend signals a movement toward a more accepting Jewish community, for all Jews, whether Orthodox or otherwise.

(For those interested in reading more, a works cited list is available.)

Day of Silence 2010

Yesterday, the sixteenth, was not just another calendar day, was not just any old Friday. Yesterday was the Day of Silence, a national youth movement to raise awareness about anti-GLBT bullying, name calling, and harassment in schools. Usually it’s done by mostly by high school groups, but college groups also participate, and ergo, I participated for the first time this year.

It wasn’t hard being silent. Let’s face it, until about a year ago, silent was my usual state of being. What was difficult, however, was what being silent entailed: When people held the door for me, I could not say “Thank you,” and if I were to hold the door for them, I’d be unable to say “You’re welcome” (a fact that unconsciously kept me from holding the door all day). Furthermore, this warranted impoliteness created an impasse when people asked me for help: I’m usually inclined to be helpful, but how could I respond?

My only option, at least the only one I could justify over the course of the day, was to communicate nontraditionally. When a classmate asked me if we had class that day, I passed him a Day of Silence card I’d printed, explaining why I wasn’t talking, then typed on the computer screen that we had an out-of-class assignment for the day. When the woman sitting next to me (I was in the library working on research) asked me how to find her student ID, I passed her the card and then showed her how to do it without talking.

The oddest part, and perhaps the funniest as well, was responding to others who were also participating in the Day of Silence. The GSA’s Vice-President and a few other members had created shirts saying “Day of Silence 4-16-2010″ on them, but due to the amount we had to make and the time we had to make them, some of them had to picked up on Friday morning. Mine was one of those (by request, of course; as the GSA’s president, I felt the other members should receive their shirts before I received mine). In any case, when I went into her classroom to get it, the moment was completely surreal. I could not talk, she could not talk, and we both knew the other certainly couldn’t talk. So she handed me my shirt, I used heart-shaped hand gestures to say I loved it, and then we hugged and were on our way. Later in the day, I ran into another member with her shirt on: I was behind her, and I knew I couldn’t call her, so I walked a little bit faster and waved to her. She smiled, we gave each other a thumbs-up, and a few minutes later when we parted ways, we waved once more. It was like a scene out of movie or something, so natural, yet completely unreal.

Not many people tried to talk to me over the course of the day, but I passed around the card nonetheless. Mostly I received good responses, an approving nod, or even an admission of having participated in the past. Only once did I seem to garner anything negative, but even then, it wasn’t as blatantly hateful as it could have been, so perhaps, beneath that seeming disapproval, some change could be seeded, yet to grow into something greater…tolerance at least, acceptance if we’re lucky.

That’s the theme of the day, in the end. To raise awareness, to spread the word. People can’t change what they can’t see, and they don’t see what they don’t want to see. So they have to be shown. Or in this case, silently told. It’s a small process, change for the better, but like anything worthwhile, it is, indeed, a process. Perhaps it’ll take years (and trust me, it already has) to make much change, but change it will, if only we keep at it and keep going. Soon enough then, change won’t be necessary, but will have already come.

The End of the Decade

In this final look at the last decade, everything comes full circle and my tale is finally told.

2008: The year my life ended (and simultaneously began)

I graduated from high school in May. I’d been homeschooled my entire life, and ergo I was the valedictorian by default. I had to write my speech five times before I settled upon something worthwhile that I actually liked. I had a small ceremony, only my family and a couple of friends. That’s not to say my schooling was finished, however; on the contrary, I continued to study mathematics and now also Hebrew. My love of the latter kept me interested in the language of God, but it was my love of physics and my intention to major in the field upon starting college that made me know I had to understand mathematics to a degree I never had before. Unintentionally along the way, I began to enjoy applied mathematics, but decided I could never be a physicist: although I’d come to like math, I could never make it through calculus.

The day before my graduation ceremony, I had my confirmation, during which I read Torah and gave a speech about what being Jewish meant to me. It took five rewrites to find something that was personal enough to be meaningful but general enough to be understood by the masses. In the end, I said being Jewish meant teaching and learning from everyone. In a way, that’s still what it means to me, but it now means so much more than just that. Perhaps I’ll elaborate some day.

I participated in NaNoWriMo again this November, reaching conclusions I could only draw through my characters, but it was in October that my life ended and a new soul was born: I’d been torn in two for years, one half Jewish, the other half gay, and this year at Yom Kippur—the Day of Atonement, the holiest day for all Jews—that chasm inside me was crushed and my two halves became whole in the most inharmonious collision at all possible. A gay Jew? It was unheard of—it simply could not exist! I stared toward the ark as the Torah was read, standing there, torn from God and sent asunder, and upon the parchment in my mind wrote the words of the day:

An abhorrence, you called it, this thing I call love
but you gave it to me, my creator
I stare at the gates as they swing shut above
I’ll repent for this sooner or later

I cried to sleep that night, when finally I was able to calm myself for sleep. But at the same time, the pain showed me the path to healing. I found people I could talk with, and I talked, and I researched, and I found patches to cover my wounds and strings with which to sew them shut. Not all the time could they keep the blood in, but no longer was the spiritual bleeding profuse. I could breathe again, and with every breath, I became closer the ultimate truth I now sought.

2009: The year that changed everything (for the last time)

I spent the early months of the year studying faith and facts, and through this I gained confidence in myself not only as a student of the sciences, but also as a budding scholar of Judaism. I became comfortable being gay and Jewish; I began coming out to more people, something I had never had the courage or the confidence to do beforehand. I was a new person, and would only continue to become newer as the year went on.

In April, for the first time in my life, I considered the prospect of becoming a rabbi. It had been suggested to me by both family and members of my congregation for as long as I could remember, but there was always something holding me back. Now that the chains had fallen, a doorway opened up to me, and a new path began. At the same time, in May, I wrote my first drash (commentary on the Torah) since my Bar Mitzvah seven years sooner.

In the summer I went to Israel on the Alexander Muss High School in Israel program. It helped me break out of my shell, become even more confident in myself; it taught my new ways to see the world, and for six short weeks I saw the glory of a world once only imagined. One of the scenes that stands out most: lying under the stars of the Negev, staring into the Milky Way, stuffy-nosed and sick from a newly discovered allergy to camels. Go figure. My luck.

I came back a better person, and no number of words will do it justice how much that trip changed me for the better and affected and influenced every second of my life thereafter.

Two weeks thereafter, in fact, I started college. I had great teachers, and I learned to appreciate history and sociology like never before, and I came to love math in ways I had never imagined possible. My love of math beforehand had been friendship at best; now it was intimacy. I changed my major from history and education to math and science education and Jewish studies. That defines me pretty well: the convergence of science and faith, teaching and learning.

That’s the definition of wolves, too: They’re savage in the face of danger, but similarly familial animals that teach their young with more love and compassion than some humans that I know of. They’re harbingers of dreams, guides in the astral plane. Likewise, I’m kindred to them. I’m a teacher, a guide, and family often means more to me than anything else in the world.

And I write. That’s altogether why I’m the Writingwolf. It’s in my blood. It’s who I am.

And Everything Changes Some Years

It’s only been in these past four years that I consider the person I am today to have become defined. Certainly, the past twelve or sixteen months have been paramount, but I can trace my way back four years to truly see the seeds of my soul starting to blossom. My life until that point had been critical nonetheless, the insemination of the ideal, the incubation of my coming identity, but in the end they have only been my foundation, not my superstructure. Now, however, with the foundation finally finished, I can at last begin to assume my truest self, my ultimatum, my ultima.

2006: The year that things kept changing, for the better

I was suicidal a lot this year, as I had been and would be for quite some time. There was much to this—my coming out to myself, my anguish thereof, my wish to change, to no longer be gay, all coupled with a particularly turbulent time in one of my longest-lasting, deepest friendships—but in the end, all that came to pass and better, brighter days came to follow.

Recall: My interest in Neopets. Fact: Neopets has a weekly periodical that publishes Neopet-themed stories, articles, comics, and series. I’d attempted to write for the Neopian Times before, but had been fruitless. This time, however, I got one in. My first of presently more than thirty pieces published in the Neopian Times. Truly I’ve grown as a writer since I started in 2002.

At the same time, I was invited to the Neopian Times Writers Forum, and the NTWF became a staple of my life. In addition to the priceless constructive criticism I’ve received there, I’ve made new friends, learned new things, and was first informed of NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month. That November, I joined thousands of other writers in an attempt to write a 50,000 word novel, but I went above and beyond and wrote 150,000 words, proving the theorem that quality is inversely proportional to quantity. But nonetheless, the challenge helped me grow not only as a writer, but also as a person, revealing to me things I had never known before.

2007: Avunculus

For a time I took Latin, and in Latin “avunculus” means uncle. When my sister told me she was having a baby, I asked, “You’re getting a puppy?” I was wrong, and in August I became an uncle at eighteen. It changed my life, adding a new level of complexity and responsibility to my life as I took up the task of babysitting multiple times a week, sometimes even daily. But I liked it. My niece quickly grew attached to me, and I grew even more attached to her.

I participated in NaNoWriMo again this year, for the first time including a gay character in one of my stories. Or perhaps they had always been there, but I had never noticed. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell. Regardless, I’d learned from my folly the year before that it’s much better to focus on a single story than try to connect four for a higher word count. At first intending to write the mythology that had been budding in my mind for seven years now, at the last moment two seemingly unconnected ideas merged together and formed the basis of what I would come to write: Two worlds, vying for power, and the six keepers torn between them. The story has potential, and even now I continue to edit it so that one day it might come to be published.

The year soon after came to a close, leaving left to tell the tale of two of the most influential years of my entire life. It was in 2008 and 2009 that I truly started coming into my own, and it is in my tale tomorrow that those who have met me within the past few months will finally see the person that they’ve come to know throughout this short and seemingly straightforward time.

Some Years Change Everything

Sometimes the stars say it all, and sometimes they don’t. But when they do, how much I wish I could just look up past the endless smog and see all the answers I seek. If only it really were the destination, not the journey, that mattered. The world would be a much better place. Or perhaps, the world wouldn’t be much a place at all.

2004: The year that changed everything (the second time)

If one phrase could sum up this year sufficiently, it’d be family issues. My grandmother died. My parents split up. We had to put our dog to sleep. I was big on poetry at the time, and I recall writing in my room as I listened to the argument that ended everything: “I want to sleep but I can’t close my eyes / I want to feel whole but there’s nothing inside / I’m ten feet under covers but still I’m freezing cold / I’m petrified in silence and there’s nothing I can hold.”

We had to move that year. I packed up my journal and said goodbye to the wild.

2005: The year that changed everything (for the third time)

I still wore the mask of a Jew, and being as that I could not bring myself to confess my conflicts of religion, I became a volunteer with my synagogue’s Hebrew school when my mother prompted me to do so. I skipped out on my first day and talked the whole two hours with a friend of mine from my own days in Hebrew school, but the second day I was there, I fell in love. I worked with two great teachers that year and became friends with each of the six third- and fourth-graders that I worked with as madrich (teacher’s aid), helping keep the children in line and do errands as needed. Most of all I began to notice another world of Judaism that I’d not known of nor been exposed to as a pre-adolescent child. As this new world opened up around me, I was slowly reabsorbed into the faith I had thought lost forever. A new Jew was born.

That year I also began attending our local Hebrew High School, and there was one student that captured my heart in a way I hadn’t know it could be captured. All my life I’d thought I’d have a wife and had explained away my lack of interest in girls with the saying that I just hadn’t met the right one yet, and then I met him. Single-handedly, he changed my life; with a handshake, he captured my heart forever.

Confusion was my first response. All the rest was summed up with the words “cherry blossom death.”

Those are vague, and I intend them to be. No one quite realizes how personal sexuality is, but also no one quite realizes how much it is a part of someone’s life and a part of their entire being, not just their sexual endeavors. In fact, sexuality is a misnomer, because it isn’t about sex. It’s about companionship, it’s about love, it’s about romance and intimacy. The story of my coming out to myself is a story all it’s own, but here it should be known that the journey was as important as the destination, that the end itself was a part of the means, and that the end and the journey are now synonymous as I continue forward in my own life, facing all the struggles of being gay, and being Jewish, and the unique challenges presented to me by being both. It’s an integral part of who I am, and much like at the dawn of  mathematics when no one could imagine what integrals were, and probably would have dismissed them if they had been told, my reaction to this integral part of me was much the same: It had always there, but I hadn’t always known it, and that was the challenge I was now meant to face.

Where in all this does the phrase “cherry blossom death” fit? Squarely in the middle, but as I’ve said, that’s a story for another day, and with only four years of the last decade left, that’s a story that will simply have to wait for another, later date to be told.