All the Beautiful People

Today things finally felt like they’re back to usual.

This made me happy. It was only a few moments after leaving my religion class that I came to my statistics classroom and as I walked toward my seat and saw familiar faces and one of my best friends I thought to myself, It’s good to be back in my old seat. To be honest, after two weeks of not being in class, I was afraid I might not have a seat to return to. I’ve witnessed it happen plenty of times before: Someone stops showing up to class and after an absence or two, someone else moves forward into the more favorable seat. It happened to half the class in chemistry. It happened with the boy I liked in precalculus. And we had worked together during class, so his loss was especially poignant.

Later in the day I felt something unusual. Something not just beyond two standard deviations from the mean, but something uncanny, something I haven’t felt in a long time, something that changes how we see the world and in fact changes the very world we see itself. And as I walked into the cafeteria, an overwhelming sense of gratitude filled me from head to toe as I realized what it was that I felt and I said, Today, today I know what I’m thankful for.

I am thankful for temperance.

“Editorials” and Other Poems

Last week my creative writing class moved from screenwriting to poetry–and now I’m rolling in the poems and have finally amassed a number of reasonably good enough ones to share here! I’m quite incredibly excited by this, I’ve felt these pages have been rather empty of art lately, and I’ve been eager to add something here for a while.

Today I also completed my screenplay–a forbidden romance with a philosophical slant entitled “Sinners and Sine Waves”–and after I’ve edited it sufficiently, I’ll begin posting it serially for a few weeks. But in the mean time, please enjoy some word-wrought poetry!

Suppose I Never Ever Met You

For the sake of introduction, I feel I should say something here. However, it is not in me tonight. I’ve had a long day. From studying, to studying, and all the myriad things in between I just don’t feel like talking about, I never thought the day would become so drawn out. I’m glad I’m here, to finally put my mind on something tangible, something sensible. Some days these things just seem lacking in general. Some days you just know what I mean.

2.17 Rabbi Yose taught:

The property of others should be as precious to you as your own;
Perfect yourself in the study of Torah–it will not come to you by inheritance;
let all your deeds be for Heaven’s sake.

I took a class with my rabbi once. I can’t remember what it was about, I’ve taken a few with him, but I remember the way he put it: All sins in the Bible can be traced back to one–the sin of stealing. Murder is stealing another’s life; adultery is stealing another’s wife; even idolatry can be described as stealing from God what is due to him and giving it unto another. It’s a perfect philosophy, in a way, and this teaching makes me think of it.

In the Pen, Dance

There’s a certain sense of liberation that comes with the end of a relationship. It’s an odd feeling, since one would imagine there’d be no such sense after a break-up, but those who would imagine this are perhaps exceptions, or else have not had such a relationship before. I am not here to judge. Only to observe.

For all intents and purposes, my last relationship was perfect. He was everything I could want in a man, and he said I was equally as much as he could ask for. Even with nearly five thousand miles between us, we made it an impressive six months before things came to a halting end. That’s still about a hundred and eighty days longer than any of my in-person relationships have lasted. So where’s the irony in that?

What’s most curious for me is the general lack of sadness I feel. When I broke up with my first boyfriend (of two months, for those asking), I was devastated in my reserved way of feeling emotions. Yet, in all honesty, that was an end I had not foreseen, whereas this was an ending I had made peace with before it had happened.

Again, where’s the irony in that?

I Heart New York

Growing up I was like most little Jewish boys, I suppose: I dreamed of someday having my own family, a good wife, a few children, going to services on all the major holidays, going through the melodies like rote, work in the mornings, love in the mid-morning hours of the night. I had crushes on girls in my class, because they seemed to be images of the perfect future girlfriend and wife that my typical Jewish upbringing had instilled in me.

I forget when my fantasies became unhinged, when my own personal and still unconscious desires began to take over the cultural ones that had attached to my blood and filled my veins. I recall, walking in the EUC while my sister was at college, thinking I’d have a son someday, my wife having left (in retrospect, I don’t think I ever gave a reason why she would leave; in fact, I don’t know if the leaving part was even her doing, I just recall us having a son, and then the relationship being no more; I was never her husband in my mind, only my son’s father).

My other imaginings were only even more complex. So strange, in retrospect, that I really don’t know how or why it took me so many years to identify what they truly represented. A good example: If I played through this image in my mind, my so-called son would somehow transform into a man my own age, and together we’d raise a family of two or three other children. It took the mask of family units I understood to show me unconsciously what I’d always desired: A family headed with two men, two husbands, a union that was completely foreign in my childhood.

Now that I’m older, some things have changed, yet others stayed the same.

H is for Ḥaverim

These past four days I was attending the ISJL Education Conference, the ISJL being shorthand for the Institute of Southern Jewish Life, the organization that provides Hebrew school curriculum and other services to over sixty congregations in thirteen southern states. It was a gathering of at least a hundred, if not two hundred, Jews from more cities than I’d ever heard of and it was wonderful.

We had a fellow from the ISJL who visits every few months. It’s just part of the program, you could say. One thing she told me often is that I must, that I absolutely without a doubt had to meet the ISJL staff rabbi, one Rabbi Marshal Klaven. He was unlike any other rabbi I’d ever meet, she said, and I’d like him.

I did like him. And he really was unlike any other rabbi I’d ever met.

Building Utopias in Five Easy Steps

It’s curious. This morning I went to a B’not Mitzvah for two girls who I helped teach in the fourth grade when I was their madrich. When I got to the synagogue, I ran into our director of adult education. She asked me if I was finished for the summer yet, so I told her I had been since the middle of May and was now researching colleges. She asked what I was studying and I told her math. Then she asked if I knew someone, and I didn’t, but I recognized his name as someone my sister had had confirmation with years ago. He went to U of M and has since gotten his doctorate in math.

Funny things, these connections we make.

After the wonderful service, I ended up sitting at a table during our luncheon with people I hadn’t known. So since mingling is not my strong suit (and for no reason, at the time), I introduced myself. The first couple wasn’t Jewish, but they were neighbors of one my students. I like to think my hospitality made a favorable impression, not to mention they were good conversation nonetheless: He was a photographer and had done Bar Mitzvot up in Raleigh at Beth Meyer. Did I mention NCSU is one of my top choices? Did I mention it’s in Raleigh?

The second couple was engaged in conversation with the others, on the far side of the table with whom I had not easily introduced myself (distance solely our only separator). I overheard them saying their children had attended Elon and Chapel Hill (you can only guess where I’m going with this) and I inquired further, to lovely responses.

How curious indeed. Here I am, looking intently at colleges, and I stumble into not one, not two, but three relevant conversations when I had expected none! It’s almost as if it were all preparing me for today’s teaching. And, by the way, did I mention I love Hillel?

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.

An End to the Silence

Time escapes me. I’ve started about half a dozen posts since my last one (please don’t make me admit how long it’s been–quite sadly, I’d be too ashamed to look myself), but I’ve finished none of them. I’ve had weekend events, weekday events, homework to keep up with–and every time the outlook looks good, my teachers announce a test and the cycle begins again.

I strongly wanted to write a post about the Day of Silence, which was Friday the fifteenth. Our GSA got t-shirts to wear, and I didn’t say a word to my friends all day. (Sadly my vow was broken for the period during which I was conducting interviews for the new student ambassadors, but otherwise, I was remarkably silent all day.) And I think I touched a few people. I think I spread my message to a few people that just didn’t know of it beforehand. And it was progress. A first step of a greater change that could come.

But of course, with more tests and more homework than I’ve ever had to fathom before, time ran away with the spoon and the stopwatch leapt over the moon.

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.