Let There Be Peace

I was walking before and the idea of the emotional pains that we all have entered my head. And I imagined getting home and writing about the baggage of hurt we all carry. But now that I'm sitting listening to Peter Paul and Mary sing Rocky Road I think I've changed my mind.

Riding home on the bus I imagined sitting during the time before Shabbos and writing about the Parsha as I learned and put it together. I saw an interesting Ohr HaChayim, thought about writing it up. Probably, no.

Now Jim Croce is singing to the kind operator that there's no one there he really wants to talk to, he doesn't want his ex-friend Ray's number after all, the operator can keep the dime... When we were kids my brother (hslabw) got Photographs and Memories, from Korvettes. And I remember him telling me that he only knew one or two songs on it before getting it and not to tell our parents that. "Isn't that the way they say it goes? - But let's forget all that."

On Freshman retreat I did a skit with a colleague. We call it The Wayne Skit (it's his idea to use Wayne because it's never the name of our students). It's a good improv vehicle about two guys who each get a call, one about Wayne Schwartz' funeral the other about Wayne Goldstein's wedding. They meet on the train and share that they each heard about Wayne, but they think they each heard the same news about the same Wayne. So all these misnderstandings ensue. Before we meet we each do a bit alone, Bob Newhart style, when we get the news on the phone. In the three years we did it, I've played the one who gets the news about the Wayne who died. Someone asked me what I meant by one of the improvised lines - and I didn't know. It just came out of my head and mouth because it sounded funny. My character is getting the news and information from his mother and one of his responses was - "OK, I won't sit in the front row." Someone really wanted to know what it meant, but it doesn't work that way.

I just saw a commercial for HDDVD - "DVD like you've never seen it before, in high definition." Seven Wright has a cousin with HDADHD - he almost never focuses, but when he does it's unbelievable."

I've got rhubarb and strawberries (both with hashgachas p the wazoo) boiling - haven't made that in ages. Meals are set. Please G-d tonight I'll be a newborn who holds the name of my dear lost friend.

I'm waiting for a delivery. It's supposed to come by three, so it should be here soon (being that it's 3:30). And I'm waiting for Shabbos, while acting coolly disinterested.

A recent conversation brought these thoughts back to mind:

To me a neat poem is real, a clean toilet less so.

Yet, these things must be cared for

and so this morning I am cleaning house.

I like when things are ordered but making them so is not my forte.

Yet, I value the concept, and even the thing itself

and occasionally force myself to dive in - or more aptly, to wet my toes.

One of the odd jobs I did,

while spending my twenties in yeshiva in Jerusalem,

was that of pot washer. I did it a handful of times,

but it was for hours each time.

There was something otherworldly and

also uniquely real about the act of washing dishes.

The kitchen was an old school operation.

I wore a giant rubber apron and sprayed water

at high speeds onto large quantities of large cooking and eating utensils.

There seemed little choice but to throw myself totally in to the moment

and thus into the water and metal and rubber. And I sweated.

And it felt very different, very difficult, and very good.

As much as I am disinclined to doing housework

I sometimes think back to that yeshiva kitchen.

I just now sat on the floor of my bathroom scrubbing away.

And when it started to hurt I escaped to the computer.

But, perhaps if I go back, push, and sweat it out,

I'll get more of what I got in yeshiva that the learning didn't provide.

Perhaps as I return now to clean

I'll find something that this typing can't give me.

I'm not sure what it is, but I know it when I experience it.

Maybe it is the simple joy of hard physical labor.

Or it is simply a clear example of how effort can remove dirt and purify.

Perhaps it is the use of mostly body and a little bit mind,

as opposed to the writing process

which is the reverse (if the tapping of fingers counts at all).

What it is is good. And while I sigh as I leave my keyboard,

at the same time I am happy to go back to the floor to scrub some more.

;

.

I wish everyone a Shabbat Shalom.

May you and I be blessed to know peace.