Under the moon and stars

Begun the other night when Royce accidentally locked me out during my evening meditations and exercises. Polished this evening in honour of the passing Tu B'shvat, the birthday of the trees.

How with no pen or paper should i now compose?
Could I remember such sentences that wind
And unwind around the spool of my head?
Or, is that the essence of a verse
Built on stoic words?
Each stands alone as a tree
On the planes, each branch shouting out
its own self-descriptive name.

So, Royce had finally unlocked the back door,
my passage to warmth, but I quickly, once again,
Retreated to this frost-bitten evening. I returned
To that patch of nature by the traintracks, at the backyard's end.
This time with pad and pen, I tried to recall
That rhythm I had achieved with such undisciplined words,
Words that were beginning to fade beyond
Some twist in the horizon of time.
This is what I recorded in the moonlight:

The winter time trees whisper quietly to themselves,
Keeping secrets from such strange bedfellows
As the wind and the breeze.
Their seasons of love making are but blueprints
On the core of their sticky sap.
And still-green pines flaunt a flamboyant sexuality,
But even they take solace
In the wintery dreams of stored virility.

Saturday night's alright for fighting (at least, you can't do it on Shabbat!)

Is it bizarre that after the most enlightening Shabbat since sliced bread (In other words, in a little while) that I am still up at 5? Inspiration? Fear? Energy... or just plain old curiosity? Are any of them even different? So, After my roommates went to bed, I ended up spending the late hours schmoozing with my neighbours as they returned from their uptown activities...

When the girls had left briefly, 3 of the 5 dudes began wrestling. We maintained the presence of calm. They made attempts at the status of alpha male, but even when i left to come here to type, a decision had not been made. One made a claim, but no one acknowledged it. They boasted of their experiences and triumphs in the ring, at the bars, in their battlefields. "I haven't been in a fight since elementary school," myself.

I thought of how Moshe Rabbeinu fought the Egyptian slave driver and killed him ("Slave driver, you're tables are turned. Catch a fire! Youre going to get burned!" - Marley). That big, bad muther, and Moshe had some skill to put him in his place (my suggestion: from his days growing up as the prince in the palace training in strategy and principles, on the battlefield and in the room, with bodies and with minds) . I've always wanted to put people like that in their place. I try to do that with my mind. I try to do that only when it is constructive. I try to make sure I'm only helping. I try to, but don't always succeed. Moshe was supposedlly the humblest person ever. I like that belief. I like that notion. I like to agree with the midrashim and the potentials that spring forth from it. I thought tonight that the experience of wrestling, of physically getting beaten up is a humbling experience.

I want to believe that there should be midrashim about Moshe that talk about him as a wrestler, as a strategist. I want to believe that this was part of his humility, part of the experience that made hime Moshe. Of course, one might be able to just as much celebrate Shabbat, create art, exercise, meditate, or listen to reggae while typing a blog to cultivate humility. At least that is this one guy's humble opinion.

g'night? Shavua Tov!

A conversation between Royce and me

"I think I'm losing it."
"What is it?"
pause.
"uh, I don't know."
"Then you must've already lost it."
"huh..."

Musings on the Sh'ma pt. 1: A badge between your eyes

So, this is in reference to the artwork below.

It all comes back to the Sh'ma, the prayer that teaches Jews to love the Lord your G-d with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might. The prayer then goes on to enumerate the when and the where and the how this will be done. Amongst other things, the Sh'ma instructs that this message shall be binded to your arm as a sign and it shall be a badge between your eyes. This is learned out by the Rabbis within the practice of wearing Tefilin, boxes that contain the Sh'ma upon scrolls wrapped around the arm and the head with leather straps.

The artistic renderings refer to the piece about the eyes. I've always learned that the box worn above the brow is the badge about which the Sh'ma refers. So, my thoughts may very well be wrong in accordance with a more traditional Judaism. In any case, I see the badge as the pupil of the mind's eye. This is the intersection of the imagination and the actual vision as chanelled through the eyes (or other sensory receivers if we understand that vision can be affected by them as well).

In order to match this badge with the message of the Sh'ma, we wear the head tefilin that creates two new eyes. These hypothetical eyes (the box that rests just above the brow and the knot that rests under the jut at the top of the neck) help create the bubble of consciousness and define that badge within ourselves. This bubble of consciousness takes in all sensory perceptions within the context of these two imagined eyes, one pointing to Shamaim (the heavens) and one pointing inwards to that very particular self.

Within all this we must understand that this is a lifetime pursuit that should be wrought with questions and doubt based on this quandary: "How could I ever have enough knowledge of myself let alone the abstract deity to create a badge of focus within my mind's eye?" May each and every human being, however, have the chance to pursue these ever-changing definitions through their pain and their joy in this lifetime.

One Love, jeremy

"And it shall be as a badge between your eyes" 

Apparently Royce is a better drawer than I am (And that has nothing to do with him containing clothes) 

Follow: an invitation to the valley spirit

An invitation extended:

I like coffee, i like tea,
I'd like to hide away with you down by the sea,
Reading matching books on the beach, or at least
When the colours of the covers share a bond, but as lovers,
The contents of the chapters wouldn't recognize each other.
Like the dark spots learning from our minds' eyes,
Underneath we're going hunting for the perfect fitting inside,
A shared space like a ven diagram,
Considering the time across the places we could span.

I'm going hunting like a bear on the mountain side.
Like a myth, I caught a glimpse once of its back side,
A realization of potential in the dips and the curves
And the way life swerves,
Turning steeply up a bend on a highway pass,
Going 40 East from Tennessee to North Cack.
The road was still wet and the dewey green
Fades to mystery
In the valley mist.

To which I then clarified:

a tangent on the above, this is the synthesis of an equation that melds (neologism?) Arthur Waley's English translation and Nissim Amon's Hebrew translation of the Tao Te Ching's 6th poem. The Valley Spirit (ruach ha'emek)

The valley spirit never dies.
Hidden in mystery, she
Is the ever open gateway
From which Heaven and Earth sprout forth.
Draw upon her, she is a bottomless, tireless well.

To which some might reply "ach, I've wasted too many days chasing that elusive waif." Lao Tzu might say the same, but in a different accent of course, and hopefully with less frustration.

I say:

She flees, she flees and I follow.
I flap wildly over bodies of water
That wear waves like a countenance of sorrow.
I rock intensity like death,
Having been bested and bringing my best
To the table. I could sail you
Gently on my wings if I fly at your pace.
Or if you'd like, You can get off and follow.

(slightly ahhhhlluding to my favourite pasuk of Torah, the second verse, the most mysterious verse - it is also the second verse of the Old School Bible (OSB = Torahlicious tastiness for your tummy) for all you non-Jewish readers. Feel free to fill your bellies here anytime. This all of course assumes that i have readers, which at this point in time, I am most certain that i do not.)

And it all comes together with Bjork's "the hunter" ("how Scandinavian of me," at least, i feel about as far from Scandinavia as I do from my ancestral Lithuania. but what a saweeeeet line). Can you imagine the song's beat pared down to nothing but a snare and an accordian? Play that in your mind as you read through all this.

A chicken scratch from my 3x5 spiral mead: Where's the wick at?

"You have permission to be alive again!"
"oh...
...thanks."

So, the pen grazes the page again, piercing words through the heart again. But artichokes don't die, they just go somewhere tasty. Tasty like the double-sided sky. I will dip one side in the butter sauce and smear horseradish mayonaise on the other. All the beautiful things in this world have two sides, just like your Hebrew face.

I used to work so hard to achieve symmetry in my Lego sculptures, ruffling through the box of pieces for that blue 2x2 to complete a left wing or to mirror a turret on the other side of the castle. Until finally I made a hand for my lover. She was (maybe still is) my lego queen.

The asymmetry of one hand turns me on, its open potential for that hidden unity- incomplete!

And your asymmetric face, when that one stray lip lifts off to one corner. You could stay that way forever, and still I would kiss it, then pull away to look into your distant eyes, your unsure eyes, as you pensively bight your bottom lip. And maybe as we stood nose to nose, that empty space wold provide a wine glass. And in in that negative space, in that absence, all i can do is raise a toast, a L'chaim - to life - a Kiddush (thanks and praise).

Now, all hallowed out, I ask, "Won't you fill me to the brim one more time? My veins aren't quite pumping fire and I have a hungry heart."

To which you reply, "No more fire. the wick will burn out."

A Writer's Aspirations

A bit about my semi-professional intentions:

I like words, hey, id even consider myself a writer, with the ambitions of becoming a wordsmith (or a wyrdsmythe as they called them in the old country) one day. Not only that but I am at the head of a new movement of literature (or atleast if Im at the tail, i cant tell my head from my ass, or my ass from a hole in the ground). I call it chicken scratch.

And sooner or later there will be a time when my conversations will not proceed thusly:

"hi i am jeremy, i am a writer."
"oh, yeah?" she says as she twirls her hair looking off at some bizarre uninterested angle at what must be a crack in the paint on the wall.
"yup."
"so what kind stuff do you write?" she might even look at me as she asks this question.
"what do you mean?"
"y'know, like do you write stories? poems?"
"Well, yes. A little bit of that, some commentary stuff too, but mostly I stick to chicken scratch."
"huh?" At which point that crack in the paint at which she was previously gazing would somehow open up and suck away all the witty and theoretical ideas that were flowing from my mouth like water from the rock.

But rather thusly:

"Hi i am jeremy, i write chicken scratch."
"holy shit! you dont look like you're down really, but hey, ya wanna exchange notebooks sometime? I know a guy on Vine and Withrow who has a chicken scratch party every Tuesday. You should come out sometime."

But seriously folks, it's all about the community, which is why i am here in the first place, unless of course by the time youve gotten around to reading this it's the last place, of course.

from my space to yours

Howdy gang,

so, I had this blog I started through the whole my space game. Im starting this new one to try and be more open with my words (not that anyone ever read them anyways). I will start off with some stuff from there and move on to wherever my whims take me.

The idea is to get ideas and poetry out into the world as a medium for communication.

**Please comment on anything and everything ESPECIALLY if you think something I have written is aestheticaly unpleasing (it sucks) or if it offends you.

As a side note, Willie Nelson has a reggae album called Countryman. It is the most awkwardly perfect sound for right now.