This Holiday Season

I was about five (because I was still living in an apartment when I wrote it) when I wrote and set to a tune the words, "There's a fish on a dish on a table on a floor on a ceiling of the people next door, next door." At 12 I scribbled on my notebook during Mrs. Levine's class, "What are you doing tomorrow? Do you have some time I can borrow?" Soon after that I started saving poetry scraps in a red box that originally held a bar mitzvah present sweater.

It's always funny to me (not ha-ha) when people say they can't keep up a blog because they don't know what to write about, that it doesn't flow. I need to keep my urge wrapped in gauze in order not to spend every waking hour writing.

It's going on five years now for this blog and things have changed and stayed the same. There was a pocket when there were no comments, and to the best of my knowledge no one was reading. Then the blogger formerly known as Mirty installed two stat counters and I saw that people were reading. Sometimes I'm secure enough to feel that the writing is enough for me, and just in case I need to know it the fact is that people read too, and if that's not enough I do I have a nice treasure trove of comments. Those moments of confidence are good times.

I'm going to try to free blog (did I just coin that?). Hello, yeah - it's been a while, not much how about you? I am almost done with All Other Nights. It's remarkable. I'm getting close to the denouement. I love that word and have started using it it in writing ever since I learned how to pronounce it (it has joined ranks with Albert Camus and other people, places, and things that it took me ages to learn how to pronounce).

Sukkos is coming to the end. Those of us that follow the Shulchan Aruch will be eating in a Sukkah tonight and tomorrow unless it rains. I don't get how minhagim developed that go against the black on white halachah on this that traces back to the Gemorah.

I think I want to embrace my Hebrew Birthday, smack in the middle between Yom Kippur and Sukkot. I like it. My English Birthday on the other has always disappeared into the ether of this holiday season and I think it's time to let it go.

I looked over an old (pre computers) poetry notebook and found it interesting that I write often about being hungry. I wonder what that means. maybe that I am often hungry?

Rav S.R. Hirsch says that atzeret doesn't simply mean to stop but to stop and try to grab onto something before it slips away. Shmini Atzeret is a last chance to stop and take something with us to hold onto for the next six months.

I'm happy for the people I know that really do Sukkos right - both of them. Some people actually make the Sukkot their home for seven days and there's no competing with that kind of holiness. If you live in Israel it's like spending your life in a Sukkah. And if you go to mikvah regularly then you get that unique experience of being surrounded by holiness. I suppose that if you truly live a life in which you are constantly trying to fulfill every shamor and zachor of every dibbur of G-d then you too are surrounded by holiness all the time.

G-d, please place in my heart the ability to be like our father Jacob, a believer the son of a believer, to learn how to deal with difficult people in the world while inside remaining a pure man, a dweller of tents (translated from the Hebrew, which I wrote on Erev Yom Kippur).

It seems to be that Sukkos has a universal aspect to it as evidenced by the 70 offerings, the story of why we keep this holiday in this month, the story of how the nations of the world will one day be offered this one mitzvah, and more. On the other hand Pesach is a private Jewish holiday. The most personal day of this holiday for us as A People is Shmini Atzeret.

Dear Sukkot I'm sorry that I didn't embrace you more properly, and soon you will be gone.

I wish everyone a happy end of Sukkot. I ask your forgiveness as a human being and as a blogger. May this be The Year.