I listen best at sunrise

or maybe that’s when my company is most chatty…..

here are some morning reflections, in an order that hopes to be easiest to follow

18/12

I know my experience is not common.

I was told most days of my childhood about what my bubi and Zeida and their 3 surviving siblings had to do to keep themselves alive, and told about how many couldn’t… and never once did the story end in a nation state.

the story ended in that’s why Zeida despite all the love in his heart and wits in his mind only knows how to vacuum the house for 3 hours when he comes over. And why you might catch him falling sleep standing up. it ended in that’s why Bubi blima was so mean, and why the cancer took her at age 57, it was all the grief in her lungs.

I know there were houses across the street and down the block and everywhere around me that were telling their stories, whatever they were and each of them ending in ‘land without a people’ and ‘desert bloom.’ I never once heard these words til I was 21 and told their untruth, but I know, I understand what was being said.

And still, it’s not until this day, this brand new ache all through me to touch any trace of my reflection older than the 2 generations I’ve only ever shared a land mass with, this hunt through every memorial and museum and cemetery and synogogue that will let me in even if only in a small back corner with a blocked view. This pressing my ear to the watershed of our over oxygenated blood. It is not until now that I feel what it is to have every morsel of history, of story torn by its roots and roped into this one conclusion.

when I listen I feel so certain that the numbers of descent far out weigh those who accept the connect the dots that has been made of 1,000 years of finely rendered survival. even if descent hails mostly from the other side of the calcium rich topsoil. But I would never try to argue about who gets to speak for the dead, I would never claim it is me. I am only asking, the tendrils of will I feel reaching for me, the cords I feel summoning me, the web tracing its sticky traps around the frayed ends of my having any idea what to do…. “what now?”

6/12

I need you to understand

there were those who knew, in their kishkes, what was coming, who wanted all of us to get out, to be safe, and there were those who were fighting to deny what some knew

the dream before the fall holds more prophecy than purity, some bodies already knew we were plummeting,

our galaxies of grief were not answers to a preexisting question, they were brand new questions we were so afraid to ask, and we were being shoved in any direction that was away from

no one was telling us it was okay to want to go home, no matter how crumpled she was, no one was listening if we said that is what we choose

the last to run were no longer trusted, we were supposed to have learned to know when it was time to run

but sometimes staying isn’t denial, sometimes it is refusal, sometimes it is knowing, to leave someone behind who will gather the remains

20/12

2002

the year my Zeida died, I don’t believe he’d ever placed his tired fingertips on a keyboard despite that I was already camping out in my college’s library overnight to finish typing up papers just before they were due

sometimes before I hear anything I can see wide eyes, like my listening has cracked a window into today, into seeing how we live now, some eyes seem more savvy at analyzing the new data, some more befuddled

my ask is always the same, do you know something, of how we got here, maybe some piece we have lost track of ?

I know, hurt people hurt people, I know accidents can seed intention, I know to follow the torn belonging, it is where infection begins, where the force of its spread incubates, but I still feel I’m missing an important angle

I know, it’s all hide and seek, when we consented we didn’t see it how we see it now, we didn’t hold the same balance of priorities

the small moments felt like small moments each a candle against the wide strokes of creation, worth their weight in transformations but inside the small moments is nothing small, nothing willing, nothing pulling us through, only away and back and anywhere but here

is it simply rededication we are waiting on? to tip the avalanche of metabolism, to scale the valley of knowing the way back is long overgrown but we can’t trick the sentinel into opening, the only code is a true yes

22/12

unknowing dark

over the years I have asked a few learned Jews who I deeply trust, where to find our sacred dark stories, and have been told more than once that our tradition has been, unfortunately, light focused, since the beginning

I recently got to do a close text study with a beloved teacher, Hadar Cohen, and I learned some things, I’m erupting to share…

first. in this ‘in the beginning’ we begin with heaven and earth, the earth is described as chaos and void in ways that leave much to be interpreted open space to be filled? teeming chaos to be ordered? we hear the concepts of surface and deep and darkness is here seemingly in this relationship, over the face of the deep. There was heaven, without requiring light, there was a chaos of void or a void of chaos, a wild earth without requiring light. (There was also wind, and water.)

light is god’s first big idea. god names it and it exists. god says it is good, this first innovation of god’s. next god separates light from dark. which means, whatever god made and named good was light in a form that existed together with the dark without any separation between them.

god is on a roll and keeps naming. the light is day and the dark is night, and these creations lead right into the first experience, first of evening, of dark, then of morning, and the first completion of a cycle

next god is feeling pretty bold, probably like quite a success, so god goes and re-creates those two we started with, heaven and earth, emphasizing that what we have is 2 waters, earth water, sky water and a powerful boundary to distinguish them. and another completion.

next we dig into that earth water, land and sea are distinguished, we have vegetation, varieties of seeds and fruits. And completion.

finally we arrive at the creation of 2 great lights, sun and moon. Our daylight and our nightlight. Which means whatever god created way back there a few days ago, some elemental presence of light, was something of its own, which the sun was an addition, an accent to.

when we reach beneath questions about how much god seems to value light vs dark because of one compliment not bestowed equally (god only seems to compliment what god adds to the feast) and instead turn to asking what teachings about darkness are offered in these lines, about what darkness is, this is what I hear:

darkness has always been, part of the raw, the wild, the source that is before and beyond any creation and destruction, she navigates between surface and the infinite depths they cover, like humans seeking god, but with a little more practice, she grazes the face of an infinite deep

in order for light to be created it had to be completely merged with darkness, it could only come into being in a form inseparable from the dark

only after being created in this way could light become her own autonomous presence, her own elemental existence, dancing through the darkness wearing her sparkliest (unmatching) earrings, sun and moon

perhaps offering herself as candle, as touchpoint through which we can try to relate to the vast incomprehensible unknowable infinite that is darkness, our elemental origin, our all that we are while we are barely able to touch our own reflection in her

so maybe it is the dark we need to pour our efforts into seeking, to feel, to know, to listen to, to learn from. maybe it is she who was midwife at the birth of creation that can show us how to birth something new