Black and White: Part One

In a moment I was called a bureaucrat and a dictator. I was told I’ve spent so much time up top I’ve forgotten how the people at the bottom still think. How they feel. How they live and die and prosper and are crushed, decimated, dessicated, turned to poison and ingested in the cannibalistic universe we live in. All these things in fewer words, but all these things nonetheless.

The truth is I haven’t forgotten. My hide has grown thicker. My skin has grown harder. My muscles, stronger; my bones, impassioned, have turned to steel. And my mind–that precious vestibule of unarticulated prowess–my mind has only sharpened as in these days of misery I live life. But I have not forgotten.

People don’t know me. Even when I see a man a hundred times a day, even when I share my deepest thoughts and my most hidden inclinations and my most obvious and embarrassing faults with him, he does not know me. Maybe I don’t speak as clearly as I think I speak. Or maybe, as is more probable, I’m simply deeper than I think I’m deep.

Says the Devil

Lately I’ve been in a sour mood. I’m going to be very honest and very blunt about the reasoning–and this will probably force into this mess the possibility of those I’m angry with seeing this and all that, but I’ve been clear about my anger with them already, so that’d be nothing new–and the reason is close-mindedness and intent to argue.

These both might seem patently vague, and perhaps they are, but I think both of them are cause for frustration, and unalleviated frustration does sow anger. It’s no doubt that I’m angry. I understand this. So do they.

What bothers me is the reason they cite: If I’m opposed, it’s not the worth the time to talk about it. Or if I’m inclined to agree, they want to play devil’s advocate.

Sela Dor

For MS and DD.

Lightning strikes behind me. I waver at the sound of thunder, the vibrations that pulse through my veins and throb against me like giant hands shaking me backwards and fore. I teeter upon this edge I stand. I struggle to maintain my balance when all the world is chaos in my midst.

There is a pool beneath me. It is an enchanted pool, one of wonders too deep to be probed by man’s mind, too profound to be made sense of by philosophers or astrologers. What resides within it is beyond all belief.

They call it Sela Dor. And when they speak of it, they tell this tale.

I is for It Gets Better

Back while I still pondering over what H is for, I felt I was for Invincible. I said to myself, being open, being confident, being who you are, makes you invincible, makes you impervious, makes you incredible. I felt of sharing: When I’m afraid, when I don’t think I can go on, I surround myself with positive things–with thoughts of my friends, thoughts of the great people in whose presence I stand, of the glory of God imbuing everything there is with his light and his love, and then I feel invincible and I can go on.

Last week, I began to wonder if I really is for invincible. Instead, I began to think I is for Individual. I felt of sharing: There is no greater bliss than of knowing who you are, all your faults, all your foibles, all your fortes. To understand what goes on inside is to make you impenetrable, insightful, indivisible. To feel, nay, to know what is hidden beneath your exterior, that part of us that we so often wrongly equate the entirely of “I”, is to open doors and possibilities and events that otherwise would remain lost forever. To be an Individual is perhaps among the greatest gift God has ever given us.

Today, although both of these statements stand true and always will–I am Invincible, I am Individual–I know that they are not all I is worth. I is worth a wealth of ideas, a well of inspiration, a river of incentive. I spoke the other night with a wonderful man, a man of whose nature and build I did not think even God could have crafted, and it made realize, in that strange way that unrelated events inspire worlds of difference, in the way that butterflies in Africa incite hurricanes in America, that I is well worth so much more than all of this.

For This One Moment

Yesterday I got carried away with art. I like art. I like it even more since I added another hundred or so plugins to Paint.net. I knew it would happen when my internet came back, but I hadn’t expected to spend so many hours playing with them all right away. Nor had I imagined we’d be going to the laundromat last night, chasing circles after my niece for an hour or so, and then spend a few more folding before, so exhausted, bed was the only option.

And today, my head feels like one red balloon floating to the moon, quoth Enya. Carry on, I dare say, carry on. This one will be interesting. As I feel half Luna and half drowsy, I don’t see it being any other way.

2.9 Rabbi Yoḥanan ben Zakkai received the tradition from Hillel and Shammai. This was a favorite teaching of his.

If you have studied much Torah, take no special credit for it since you were created for this very purpose.

I like to read the Hebrew with every week’s teaching. I usually just read the words, very rarely gaining much from them, but occasionally I’ll recognize a familiar shoresh (the three-letter root from which words are built, all sharing a common thread of significance) and remember a spark of verb conjugations or noun declensions and be able to fit the Hebrew with the English and know what it means. It makes me smile when I can do this.

More Than Mirrors

There’s few books on my “favorite books” list when you look at my profile on Facebook, at least for the number of entries present. Half of them are authors, for I tend to find individual books lacking in some way, small for the best of them, to be considered favorites, but an author presents a body of work, where the shortcomings of one are augmented by the facets of the others, so that all the areas I wish could be fulfilled are done so, and thus they have become a favorite in my eyes.

One of the five stand-alone novels (for the other four “books” are more appropriately book series, namely Harry Potter, the Chronicles of Narnia, the Lord of the Rings, and Percy Jackson & the Olympians) is Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carol (the other four books are The Thief of Always, by Clive Barker, the Princess Bride, by William Goldman, What is Mathematics? by Richard Courant, and Boy Meets Boy, by David Levithan, which wasn’t a phenomenal book, but I liked what it represented and what it idealized).

Before reading Through the Looking Glass, I read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and I must admit, sadly, that I didn’t find the latter book nearly as nice as the former, which is actually the latter, if you’ll kindly forgive my inversion of sentence structure, since it did me little good here.

My point in mentioning any of this is that, although Alice has gone through a mirror, that plane of which we’ve learned reflects flawlessly, she doesn’t at all reflect very much through it, does she?

Obvious Facts and Obscure Facets

If I say I’m going to break the trend by not including an introduction, but this very statement precedes the teaching and therefore carries the trend along, is the trend still kept or broken? No matter, just some musings, carry on.

2.6 This was another teaching of his:

A boor cannot be reverent;
An ignoramus cannot be pious;
A shy person cannot learn;
An ill-tempered person cannot teach;
Not everyone engrossed in business learns wisdom;
Where there are no worthy persons, strive to be a worthy person.

Hillel fascinates me. His attention to detail, his slightly skewed lessons that take some genuine thought to come together, his peculiar yet poetic way of phrasing things. If I should ever be a rabbi, I should like to be one like him. I suppose even if I never am a rabbi, I still will be a writer and a teacher, and these qualities of his I most invest my admiration in can still be mine someday. No matter, just some musings, carry on.

As you read this, should you be reading this around the time WordPress mechanically posts it as programmed (for, you see, the magic of the internet allows me to write this on Wednesday and post it on Saturday), I will be in a van destined for Jackson, Mississippi, for the ISJL Annual Education Conference. The ISJL, more verbosely known as the Institute of Southern Jewish Learning, provides my synagogue’s congregational school with our curriculum and most of the teachers are going. Obviously, I will be among them, but I mention this otherwise invisible temporal deception for one key point: That three of the six lines (that’s a whopping fifty-percent!) of this teaching concern, well, teaching. I find it ironically appropriate. The perfect lesson to learn before attending the conference.

I’m stoked.

A Song for the Seige of Society

Last week left me no time, but this week has left me plenty, and I’m happy to return to this once more. I must say, though, this teaching is not only longer than usual, it appears, but also a little more challenging to decipher. Why not take a look and see what you think?

2.2 Rabban Gamliel, son of Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Nassi, taught:

The study of Torah is commendable when combined with a gainful occupation, for when a person toils in both, sin is driven out of mind. Study alone without an occupation leads to idleness, and ultimately to sin. All who serve in behalf of the community should do so for Heaven’s sake. Their work will prosper because the inherited merit of our ancestors endures forever. God will abundantly reward them as though they had achieved it all through their own efforts.

From this, after reading it nearly half a dozen times, I derive two points of inflection: The first, that knowledge without purpose is not knowledge but misdirection, and the second, that progression built upon the work of others still remains a singular endeavor.

Both of these seem straightforward enough on their own, but I feel as if a straightforward solution is sometimes the easiest to miss. It’s too simple, we think, and therefore not important enough or else not significant enough. And trust me, both of these are quite important and quite significant enough, if only–as with any lesson–you look at it deeply enough.

So read on, my friend, and let’s see if we can decipher this one together.

Under the Tide: The Tragic and Comedic Tale of How I Danced With a Monkey and Had a Baby in My Sleep

I was skeptical, but I was also intrigued. Here I was last night, at the Phi Theta Kappa Carolinas Region Regional Conference: After our first general session and dinner, there was a presentation on…HYPNOTISM!

Like I said: Skeptical, but intrigued.

The Sweetest Thing

I’m a diehard romantic and apparently I’m picky. I don’t get what the one has to do with the other, and most of the time I really don’t care. I like most romantic comedies, even if there’s a ninety-percent chance I’ll predict the entire movie’s ending before it’s over. When I’m surprised, I love it. When I’m blown away, I’ve fallen in love.

Music is one of those things that seems for me to capture the moment the moment I’m feeling it. There’s always a song playing, whether on my headphones or the radio or on the ring tones of the classmate who never turned off their phone, that just in a few verses, in a single melody, can sum up life in a matter of seconds.

Then there’s those times when I’m standing at the white board, three markers of three different colors in my hands as I try to solve a determinant in some new way to check my other answer, and I see how it’s supposed to work out in the end, but I can be fairly certain that I’ve made a careless mistake in my algebra somewhere because, very clearly, it won’t add up correctly. And yet I see it all at once. The answer is right before me. It always is.

I thought I was going to be thankful for love today. But it seems like fate’s had its own way again.