“Four entered P’R’D’S’ — Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Acher (Elisha ben Abuyah),^[1] and Akiba. Ben Azzai looked and died; Ben Zoma looked and went mad; Acher destroyed the plants; Akiba entered in peace and departed in peace.”   Chagiga 14b

There are concepts which are known to the many and others which the few tarry over. The finest portion remains only for the discoverer. When the crown of a generation exhales, not all which exalts the master can be shared.

This is like a man who sanctifies a particular woman and they become as “one flesh.” The pair is known in public as husband and wife, they acquire a distinct set of halachos, some revealed, some private, for their new station while the deepest elements, both physically and emotionally, of their bond are properly hidden, the intimacy of their knowledge relative only to each other and to HaShem.

The verses in Bereshis 2:24/25 stating:

2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.

2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

They are bonded to one another as two forces escaping the entropy of mazal and revealing one new unit, one kingdom among the kingdoms of Israel. Gathered on this new madrega, as the tents of Your people, in their wholesome design, perfect, and Your crown is exalted. The verse follows that in their shared space, they are not ashamed from their nakedness, their individual vulnerability, as they would be in an inappropriate context.

This is the ahava raba, the great love. All of us alive today, cleaving, remain bound up in this matrimony between HaShem and Israel and her splendid myriads, each of us a cherished spouse and our secrets, between soul and G-d, arrive expressed in novel words of Torah, deeds, the intimacy hidden. For His beloved, the treasures are not hid away in vaults or labyrinth, but rather exposed, residing in the open as the Land sits between the nations’ furies, the people, scattered as a remnant in strange lands, and Your Torah, dwelling in the clay vessels of the humble, approachable to all who seek them with sincerity.

Megillah 31a

Rabbi Jochanan said, Wherever you find the greatness of the Holy One, blessed be He, there you find His humility. This is written in the Torah, repeated in the Prophets, and stated a third time in the Writings. It is written in the Torah: “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty and awe-inspiring God, who shows no favouritism and accepts no bribe.” Immediately afterwards it is written, “He upholds the cause of the orphan and widow, and loves the convert, giving him food and clothing.” It is repeated in the Prophets, as it says: “So says the High and Exalted One, who lives for ever and whose name is Holy: I live in a high and holy place, but also with the contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.” It is stated a third time in the Writings: “Sing to God, make music for His name, extol Him who rides the clouds – God is His name – and exult before Him.” Immediately afterwards it is written: “Father of the fatherless and judge of widows, is God in His holy habitation.”

Through this trait of modesty, the expression of humility reveals worlds and, as we say by Havdala, where you find His greatness, there too you discover His humility and because of that dynamic, the greatest portions of this world are “hidden” in broad daylight where few search for them.

 

It is with great trepidation and fear that I approach the words of our holy master and teacher the R’M’K, ztkl. How may I approach such grand ideas? It is true, the text speaks of uniform concepts generally acknowledged to exhibit an understanding of the Kabbala, yet our holy Master’s primary concern is to effect transformation of character, to enable the Soul’s shine to greater enhance the body; to elevate the student that he/she may emulate Hashem through the 13 middos revealed in the verses from Micah. To be m’kabel, is to be humble, without the hindering effects of pride, since what is not known, may not be limited and in this state does the tree grow from a seed, and its form might then be described since, from Adam till now, we are established to define this world.

It is important to not lose touch with the goal our teacher sets before us: gather and shine onto this world light, delivered through instruction from our holy teachings, to make this world worthy of the Other, hidden from us, Who desires our return. This begins in the self and is completed in that smallest space. We must relent in a quest for quantifiable greatness and realize, as heard from my master, R’Y’A’b’A, even the sigh of a person, made over thoughts of doing teshuva, is an atonement and elevates him beyond measure and as my master taught me HaShem dwells over the broken, the ill, the dying, who have lost the desire for those matters which distract from the Eternal. The quest we are set on, does not require renown, the greatest of our saints were repulsed by fame, honor, having a strong, loud, presence. It requires our receiving the world HaShem gives us through the manipulation of our primal selves, our instinctual trust of those matters which are impermanent, into a forbearance for the understanding and drawing nearer our G-d and His letters to us, the holy Torah. We are given a pithy statement and the rest is for us to unearth. Here, humility allows the student to place difficult and cryptic concepts into a practical context, for there is nothing which is removed from us, rather it dwells in us, as the wellspring at Hagar’s feet (When the angel showed the well to Hagar, it is said (v. 19) “then God opened her eyes,” to which the Rabbis comment that everyone is presumed to be blind until God opens their eyes (as the well did not “fall from the sky” but had been present the entire time. Her anguish and avoidance prevented her from seeing it). Another exposition learns from this that Hagar lacked faith in God. She was afraid that there would not be enough water and the well would dry up, and so she first filled the skin, and then gave Ishmael to drink. (Tamar Kadari)).

Devarim

30:12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us and fetch it for us, to tell [it] to us, so that we can fulfill it?”

 

30:13 Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us and fetch it for us, to tell [it] to us, so that we can fulfill it?”

 

30:14 Rather,[this] thing is very close to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can fulfill it.

 

In Pirke Avos, it is asked which trait is best and answered, the lev tov, for all other traits are elevated in its warmth. When we receive the world, as entities reflecting tov sholet ra, we increase the magnitude of light and good and increase the capacity for redemption to the worlds. This is far more powerful, despite being invisible, than actively cajoling the masses into political action, which generally increases strife since, when one opinion rules over another, for whatever purpose or intent, the under-thumb struggles for freedom, and to paraphrase from Sohlzhenitsyn in his Gulag Archipelago, they usually acquire it. This is the cycle of war in Exile.

When one dresses under the influence of the Tomer Devorah, and they recognize, see, the holiness of G-d’s creation emanating from each portion, each soul, in it’s proper manner, the world cannot help but be better. This is a personal redemption and alludes to the messianic day, that, while not knowing how this day will manifest, we understand certain choices will be so obvious, the yetzer hara will hold no sway just as today we shun from consuming the repulsive and those who do are considered mentally impaired.

In Brachos regarding Rebbe Meir and Bruriah, after davening for the hooligans to do teshuva, rather than be destroyed, the culprits do, in fact, come to teshuva. How could this be, if teshuva requires free will?

My master and teacher, R’Y’M’b’Y’A, shlit’a, taught regarding the amidah, all the brachas praise HaShem for what He provides us with, except one, the bracha for teshuva which states, HaShem desires it. The Abishter desires this from us! We can give to Him as well. Also, the Gemara, Brachos 33b states: “everything is in the hands of heaven except for fear of heaven.”  Obviously, these statements exist as goads to increase our understanding of G-d’s wisdom and it would be foolish to limit their meaning to superficial considerations when all of the world, this great garment, speaks of the wisdom our teachers have encapsulated via proverb and anecdote. By davening for the hooligans, Rebbe Meir and Bruriah generated more light into the world, that in turn made the decision to do teshuva more obvious to the group of delinquents and while still utilizing free will, their path toward a successful teshuva was less hindered with distortion, the decision more readily apparent. When you receive the world with correctly articulated kindness and compassion, the world, illumined, raises itself to you.

The most valuable things of the nations and their members are hidden, secreted away so they cannot be found by those who might wish to take them.

The most precious treasures of HaShem are placed in the open for those willing to seek them through humility.

Israel.
His Children.
The Torah.

Because of this, we recite on waking, modeh/ah, for when we open our eyes, per His generosity, we receive immediately that greatest portion, our living soul, and the capacity to comprehend His goodness.

My son, may he be blessed, asked, “Abba, can I learn the secrets of the Torah? Can I learn ALL of them?”

I answered him, though he is young, as I have written here today.

Ha, Yingele, they cannot be numbered and they are available to those who cry and toil over the holy letters, words, and passages of our Torah, and the words of the sages, those who increase Shalom, and whom goad the bent towards repentance or anger (none are ambivalent before them). Those having mastered silence.

These points of infinite light, gemstones valued beyond anything measurable, arrive without limit and are ever-present; even with the smallest portion, is the seeker elevated in riches, as the whole arrives from the crown of the Yud. For the discoverer, it is like drawing water from a river whose current never ceases, all the water is one but there is nothing which is not new.

You’re not alone,

the sky’s curve

falling

into dusk’s net,

night’s veil drawn near;

scarcely time for breathing.

Our vanished joy, instead awestruck,

light, falls,

time ripples

into song

and dreams

like evening gatherings

spent with loved ones

lost.

“Fuck,” he said, fresh stepped into a pile of dog-shit on the corner of 186th and Laurel Hill Terrace during a time of cold beers, Black and Milds spliced with marijuana, and the declination of grammar.

After scraping the sole of his shoe along the curb, he pushed between two cars tightly parked. He hit the bodega down the block and dropped a few dollars on a quadruple espresso, cooled it with cream and chugged it walking down the block towards his apartment building.

The space of the studio quieted when he entered and with a slack pace he’d sit leaning back in the chair, feet on the desk set against the north/northeast corner windows of a top floor Washington Heights pre-WW2 apartment opening up to a view of everything north of his position in the Heights.

No tall structures rose to blot the view, no neighbors could peer in and so the large window remained without curtain and instead of a pressing city, a flat landscape of mostly moon grey building tops spread out, quilted above with a vast sky and he knew that G-d loved him.

The clouds, sometimes roiling, other times still, or set in a space drifting in uniform melancholy across the atmosphere, were portals for meditation. Time allowed infinite variety and when only a bright pale blue shone, he’d squint against the sun as day rolled slowly into night, into stars and wonders, his mind contemplating on these advancing distances, their slow waltz through space in time, but most importantly, he spoke with G-d during these meditations, in conversations unfurled without prejudice, reminiscing on those who were kings, like the best of their yolk, gathered to fathers wanting too.

He wrote out these conversations with Kerouacian diligence, their occurring by way of thoughts and forms, patterns and fractals, then flowing onto paper into piles of manuscripts scattered about the trail of his passage.

He could not keep up with them and worried about their archiving. But they would be, his master stated, to give his kids, his lovers, for posterity, a bit of the travels that took him from one end of the world to the other.

The thoughts always returned to the roundabout, that analog spinning mechanism on the playground. He remembered it from his youth, twirling, and his friends one by one jumping onto it; he could never time it right. Fear gnawed at him then, and today. He knew it wasn’t only a lack of timing.

A light pulse became present, not unlike the presence of amphetamines, but accompanied with visuals. A kind of inner grind, his teeth, hips, he had to flex his feet and caught a glimmer of light, bluish, in the corner of his eye. An electric star hiding in the upper left hand corner of his focus. The effect was mild, almost so he reveled in the subtlety, forgetting what was coming, how the reef springs onto the vessel’s hull.

Becoming fatigued, the event unraveled slowly. His sweat cooled in the room’s air which was fresh and moving, while his presence drifted with detachment; sounds coming on percussive, remote and rolling to and fro, slowly as tides, revealing and hiding pools of syncopated moments. Interspersed, as rocks jutting out from sandy shorelines, distorted sounds against a fluid audible. He knew, quietly, but he could never concede this, why she had thought him insane, the parallels were awfully uncanny.

Visually, the affectation arrives and he feels clammy. He feels outside his body, like cold nights under only sheets, as though he is lacking a shell and his soul is cooling, condensing into beads of euphoria desiring union. He is yet to become afraid and so must remember, force the recollection of what is coming. He senses it now, the turning welling up and he swallows the panic punching out of him. The door, he must slam it on the tentacled grip of this pariah, his body, the house in this room stretching, the isolation punishing him through gravity, till the door is bulging, the room is being squashed and that force is advancing, it is seeking him out.

Nobody to call as his fears increase, the anxiety pushing his guts out and nausea rising in him. His parents are exempted, his loves have fled him and the vast expanse of his faith, that dogged nature of his trust, infantryman like, ramped up with determined loyalty. He is alone and must overcome this riptide of fear pushing him down, crushing these cells into the dust. The emptiness, the pale glow of this barren room recalls the frightening solitude of his place, our Earth’s setting, on the water’s skin.

He is not communicating well. The pressured speech, quick breaths hamper him, and he feels robbed of being normal at this stage, the wave of awe curling forward just over the wall of terror which falls on him first. He wakens in the battle goaded into exertion, realizing the peak has yet hastened it’s arrival and he’s suddenly afraid of what’s coming, since, as it is stated, “beginnings are always difficult.”

Washing his hands, his face, with soap first, after, through ritual, the reptilian markings of his animal-hood bloom into presence and he reads the ledger inscribed on his countenance. Light contorts around the object of focus, the outer parts moving, constricting, as though gravitational lensing has been microcosmed. The self washing out into fluid light, leaking onto the aged oak planks of his flooring as though the sun hides behind you and only the corona, fiery and fluid, licks at the space, accompanies the object, and suddenly, It arrives.

A terrible, crushing weight, as though the whole of the cosmos have drained into a point inside his being, forcing him down, breathless, gasping, clutching for an object to support him and he collapses onto the floor in raw, naked shame, the regret boiling out of him. The space presses down onto him, the arrogance of his want torn out of his heart, his mind unable to breathe, and he cries out with a torrential anguish, crumpled on the flat plane of wooden flooring, empty of value, lacking meaning and an embarrassment to his ancestors, his providers of light. He cannot catch his breath enough to sob and his eyes go blind with tears and still, facing this demise, he is afraid to confess lest it be real and final for all time.

The fire in him, that does not consume, speaks up, gently, nurturing and fills him, warming the hollow of his terror, saying,”if it be that final moment then do not hide, you are loved and desired.”

Suddenly, as though finally able to move forward, the shock lifts and he does so, with this personal redemption and vocalizes aloud that he knows from this spot he may never return and despite the shell of his person, he admits to the vulnerability that he will end, he will be known in light without the blankets of flesh that hide and all details become understood with excruciating exactness. He cries out in that moment fearing his soul will depart from the horror and pleads for mercy and compassion and understanding, that She return to him, in this moment, when he has struck a pinprick in the barrier that hides them from each other. He has provided Her with that She seeks out.

He loves Her, pours out his lacking, gives Her the neediness which animals despise, and returns the great love She exudes and he knows now they are lovers renewed and he laughs aloud.

Calmed by Her presence, he climbs the ladder to his bed, sits back, spine straight, against the wall, and swallows the isolation up until he arrives and understands that one new thing waiting all these millenia for discovery, a gift from the river’s current, and the place of Her reign increases and he is grateful, and for Her is the moment at its first breaching.

Keep digging, architect at the site, don’t quit. The find is present but obscured in the many layers of dust caked as dirt, dried, baked mud, and him, with delicately applied fingers, despite their awkward thickness, brushing away the crumble until that cherished Something lost is newly discovered, again.

Discovery is not creation but the Creator desires this discovering as though they are creations, worlds, even limited as it all is to these infinitesimal moments scarcely present in the great ribbon of our being.

Later, drunk on the come down, most importantly, alone, his thoughts focused on not losing this involvement, on remaining with the righteous masters that have departed, staying alive, he sought out, with desperation, to remain that child who found the wooded acres full of everything desirable worth finding.

But, he was beginning to understand the practical difficulty with aging. Gravity and time, the soul, the heaviness pressing into her, wearing away at the body and its splotches, bruises, failing components, until the form, finally at rest, lay hidden among the dusts, atoning.

And despite this, these meditations unravel, through nebulae, through process, the river’s flow never-ending.

If he had money

he had prostitutes drugs art

better to work friend.

Placing Hamsun’s, Growth of the Soil, onto the bathtub’s lip, submerging my head under the water, the silence blankets me and I don’t want to come up again.

Last night’s Chinese dinner, that with tip, came out to twenty four dollars, left me a twenty in my wallet, and nothing else. It’s better to evacuate the previous night’s dinner, than to just throw the money into the toilet, true, but the day after, hungry again, you could think, what’s the difference.

Yawning, running a bath, the day’s leap through southeastern windows, sunny, I’m tired and I have a check due me – just get motivated, pick it up. After rent and car payments, I would have enough for Chinese the rest of the week, or pizza, a small bag of smoke, beer or wine, and worrying about the future. Fortunately, attention deficiencies make moments everyday seem new and full of endless possibilities.

Otherwise, I day dream the various exit routines: diving out the window of my fourth floor apartment, stopping the car while crossing a bridge and flinging myself over the rail; the unhinged mania route like suddenly sawing at my neck with dull keys, or the two inch fishing blade on my belt as I walk towards my parked vehicle in the late mornings, but soon forgetting about those plans and thinking something good waits for me while rummaging through dust blanketed badlands like the soft tones of a Fender Stratocaster weeping, when played right.

The monitor glowed. I could see it from the open bathroom door, waiting for me, the electricity’s blue desire. But I hated the machine currently and angrily refused to engage her keys or to give her the tender tapping, morse code love of written expression, at this time.

The bathwater cooling, I rose up, dropping the water level, released the drain, and ran the shower to rinse off and finish bathing.

I would be meeting Thomas tonight, the cranky genre writer, who hated any opinion opposite his and only slow tortured those with like opinions, which could not have been worse, since you did not expect to have to defend yourself while agreeing. It also meant tactical agreement had to be well considered before opted as a strategy. Nevus would be joining, too.

Nevus, the nearly authentic, broken splotch of earnest attempting. Cigarettes, fast food, drinking – a tremendous amount of arguing would be going down tonight.

“Only the expectation of satiation provides an offer for romance…” That remark, stated by Nevus, was what stuck in my neighbor’s mind and she repeated it every time I saw her, telling me how funny he was. 

Having no money requires a youthful stamina – no romance, no insulation, swim the meridian. Beaten hearts, broke, the fracturing veneer readily apparent against the thick walls of affluence affording those with wealth the privatization of suffering while bureaucracy humiliates the vulnerable, whether brilliant or dull, the exposure mires them down in communal, statistic-like, antagonism. As Nevus often says, “Who doesn’t have a fear of stats?

I feel somewhere between the boldness of Henry VIII and Radiohead’s ‘Creep.’ Of course the far sweep of the former’s hyperbole dampens the strength of the latter’s presence – I can only hope!

A kind of wandering forbearance, Lord Stanley like, waiting for one or the other to prevail. That may be one of the deeper questions, as to which prevails; why, do I choose it? The line doesn’t seem small at the outset, rather the nearer one is to the edge, the sharper it becomes. For kings and their courts, it reckons the sword’s blade as literal, and for fools, disillusionment and isolation.

Rather than commit, why not fall somewhere in between, where lie possibilities of innumerable outcome? A spectrum of opportunities; the myriad of pathways emerging as river deltas.

Rubbish!

Some just overlook the best fruit, too self centered to hear the words spoken, too obstinate to know their most capable of friends because they’re unsure, they’re afraid and frozen outside of their blankets. They can’t know and so packs are formed to better hide from the necessities of loving and all the efforts these entail.

Later, the daylight ticked away past trailing horizons of sardine grey rooftop lines, we sat in the high, tin ceilinged room, the lighting, hard water yellow. Some of the eyes following a seam of pale amber plane, the wall sloping suddenly into gray shadows, darker against the space. Thomas sat, stiff spined, an Italian master. The room cocked out of symmetry, all of us drinking from watery scotches. This lapping for attention and the loneliness of misheard intent, quiet ripples on the pond’s surface, loves below, unseen, each hungry for affection and assuaged through contention.

The dialectic setting pragmatic hounds against the didactic viewing of cinema as literature, excepting Thomas whose harp, mostly on writing, was staunch in both his rejection and subsequent betrayal of the kind he felt amateur.

I was amateurish, mainly because I did not write for publishers, I mean, I hardly knew how! This would both confound and enrage Thomas, pushing out a kind of pressured speech like rant against not paying artists for their work. It was a desperate segue, true, but the point must be engaged, eventually, of course. I would not disagree, but, lacking an object to pummel, the anger would eventually find a target at the table, especially someone writing and not being paid, then the torrents ran undammed.

The table was round, thankfully, wise others stanching the exuberance. Nevus had a new girlfriend present, her aquiline profile caught in sports bar dim, stated, sweetly, a distinction between artistic writing and commercial writing.

That I understood, and could learn from. Then, in the pause of transition, I’d listen to Thomas berate, usually Nev., and think on the sloppily edited manuscripts stacked and published from his house with all sorts of typos. Not a few, including that epidemic scourge of properly spelled words incorrectly contexted by a lack of human observation. But I am just frustrated, punk rock ethos beguiling, and probably, like the others, loathing the lack of complete control.

The strongest arguments need repressed personalities to obtain that necessary amount of belligerence submission requires. It is just an unfortunate dynamic, doubtfully serendipitous, that, in the taut bondages sometimes catching us, the very same kind of victims are the greatest oppressors.

Nevus was an easy target. Earnest man-child, blindly caught in a perfectionist trap that he considered his own cultivating. Sweet, soulful warrior who lived with his Mom. I loved him dearly, his words strangled weaker talents, he resided as this ghostly prodigy singing the greatest love songs.

Nevus, nor Thomas, made much money. Thomas would jaw me in my friend’s absence. We were always broke, he would yarn, but unencumbered for years. Nevus and I would have conversations of this kind at three in the morning: “A person has to work at failure, same as success.”

“Thomas,” I would say, “you want fame, then artistry. Nevus and I covet your consistency, yes, but I look at Nevus and want to self-destruct like he does. My fear, though, is that it’d be no accident by me. And, after all that, Nevus thinks I’m some chieftain here to bring about a redemption. How absurd is all this!?”

The distraction. Fears of success. Those deep points all the analogies flow forward from, the metaphors, the myths. Archetypal musings, youth’s spring.  What is the world telling me, writing in secret, lost, seeking out the city, desiring the country?

Sometimes the conversations would twist a struggled weave, like a delivery boy, a bicyclist, plotting a wobbled course east up the hill on 187th between Wads. and Broad., blanketed in slush and ice.

“Did you really write, “a deep brooding overcame him…?”” Asks Thomas.

“Yeah, I did.” I say.

Thomas replied, “you weren’t mocked in English Comp 101 over phrases like that?” 

“I don’t know, not really. I don’t know. Probably -” I stammered.

“Purple, pure fucking purple,” says Thomas.

Of course, I should not have been baited, as drunk as I was:

“You are square. Set in all the mundane borders of the box and thick with obviousness.” Is all I could muster, which was saying something.

How did we get home?

I remember Thomas sat on the orange rust bench of the subway car, cheeks suddenly puffing out, then relaxed. He stared straight ahead and did it again, a noodle suddenly emerging from his mouth. Then it happened again, his cheeks puffed. Again.

He was swallowing his vomit, it was clear now. When the train stopped, Harlem at 125th street, he leapt up and holding his head out the doors, vomited a long stream of booze and Chinese food.

I was trying to keep from nodding off, keep from getting jumped. The arrival passed. The elevator arrived and we went from steam to winter. I walked the old sport to his door, he had fallen and cracked his nose the last time and I resolved to see him home. I kicked his cat back into the apartment when it tried to break out and trudged through the cold grey landscape back to my place, finishing the evening.

Before I knew it the door shut, I freed my limbs of winter wear and felt the heat blasting from the radiator. Mid January and my windows were opened. The hours, deconstructed into minutes, those fragmented into seconds, the time lost without any output. I could not be productive all the time, and this void could, G-d forbid, remove me from the world as an empty vessel. There in the dim light of my studio, the raucous cacophony of Charles Ives beating the walls, I rubbed swollen eyes and heard all the musings drowned out by 3/4 time waltzing.

I sat before the keyboard, drunk-typing. The title fell onto the screen amid room spinning derision, “I Don’t Want Cats, I want a Girlfriend.”

I laughed, typing, “He is the Buddha, and because of you, doubting something you cannot limit, this is true,” only stopping to piss into an empty two liter so as not to pause the muse.

In the end did we remain grounded, focused on an agenda? Probably the others, but I was too sick from alcohol to care much.

Rockets need boost to overcome the gravitational pull of earth, generated by a release of force through the form of combustion: fuel, fire, exhaust, thrust, motion, etc.: circuit.

We’d have to repent and make money, to live. There can be no other way.