My City Is Always An Ocean

For my birthday, back in October, my parents (TSLABW) sent me an e-card with personal, sincere, articulate words that touched me in just the right way. Over the summer - about three months before receiving that card - I wrote a poem, which included these words:

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Sitting on a jetty at the edge of Ocean City
Thinking my city is always an ocean
I sit perched and yearn from a distance
for that sailboat spot beyond the sand and tide
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It struck me that the card from Mom and Dad filled the screen with an image of blue sky touching blue sea with a sailboat floating across the horizon. The boat wouldn't stop - kept sailing from one side of the water to the other.

My friend (who together with her late husband Aaron Bulman, has been dear to me for about twenty years) sent me a Birthday card. I was moved just by seeing an envelope in my mailbox that wasn't from Verizon. Then it got even better.

The card's cover pictured sky meeting sea with a small sail boat - identical, in my mind, to the one my parents navigated my way - in rapid motion, shooting across the horizon. The cover image was accompanied by these words: "Birthdays are for cherishing the last year's journey - and joyously anticipating the next." And inside: "May the year ahead unfold into a beautiful journey that leads to everything your heart desires."
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On Sukkot, during a profound, surprise birthday celebration my friend's mother presented me with a card. I became flummoxed when I opened the envelope and saw three boats with their large sails fully open as they jettisoned joyously across a sea caught meeting sky. Beside the large, active boats was a little box with one sailboat in it - the same one that, in my mind, was on the other cards.

Shortly after my birthday I was looking for a space on my wall for a gift; an artful, tasteful, originally framed rendition of one of my poems. While considering where this gift fit, I remembered that I had an 8 year old shrink wrapped print of a painting hung in a clip on, K-Mart blue plastic frame (purchased at the giant K-Mart in Honesdale, the one near Moshava) over my desk. The K-Mart print rested to the right of a framed article from the Bergen Record (which catches my eye from time to time as I write at my desk, unlike the K-Mart painting that I hadn't paid attention to in years) about my being a rabbi, teacher, and comedian. (One of the smartest businesses I've ever encountered is a company in Florida that scans the papers daily for human interest stories and then contacts the people the articles are about and asks them if they'd like to purchase a tastefully matted oak wood framed version of the piece with a shingle included stating where and when and in what paper the story was featured). The K-Mart print never grabbed me. I decided to take it down and replace it with my beautiful gift of a frame which contains a poem of mine about feeling enclosed by layer within layer within - you get it.

As I removed the old print (pictured above) , Three Sailboats by Laforet, I noticed that all the sails were down. That seemed providential, that I'd take down the inactive sails at a time when all these lively sailboats were being floated by me.

The next day in school, when I used the expression "even keeled," which I often do - a student asked me if I ever sailed, said he highly recommended it. "Why do you ask?" I asked. He told me that keel is a sailing expression.

A few days later I was talking to a friend and mentor in his home and noticed that behind him on his shelf was a giant model of a boat with many sails.

Shortly after that I went to my email page and the ad on top was an ad for going boating.

And then I remembered being a kid and listening in my neighbor's apartment to my favorite record about sailing and how I wanted to be a sailor. My family went over the Throggs Neck Bridge often and when I'd see the boats on those Sundays on the way to Grandma and Grandpa's house I'd never fail to say that I wanted to be a sailor when I grew up.

Recently I was in the home of dear friends and noticed a sailboat on a plate hanging over the sink. And then I was in a car on the West Side Highway and wrote a tanka about the sailboat alongside the ride (which I just deleted from this post via an accidental click, and now it seems to be gone forever).

I'm not sure what to make of all these sailboats. I've waited almost 6 months to post this. Sukkot is too soon gone and Pesach is a short trail of breadcrumbs away. The other day I looked through a box of cards I have for various occasions. I found one with a sailboat on it and thought, maybe it's just a common image and there's nothing to make of my seeing them all over. But I don't think so. I think, even if they are common, it's new to me to be noticing the sailboats again.

Tonight I heard a shiur in memory of my dear friend Aaron Bulman, of blessed memory on the occasion of his seventh (sic) yahrtzeit. I miss him so much. The shiur was about the power of speech. Aaron was a master of words. I came home from the shiur feeling sad. I sat and mourned a bit. Then I watched the end of Monsoon wedding, a film I think Aaron would have loved.

I had no intention of posting this tonight. A compulsion to post it just took hold of me, though I was thinking of never posting it. It has something to do with Aaron and my knowing that he wants me to lift my sails to freedom.

I've put off this post for a long time, but now I'm letting it sail. Better done then perfect. May this Pesach unfold into a beautiful journey that leads to everything good our hearts desire.