Gut Vuch

Shabbos has been out for about an hour. In that time I spoke to my Hin-Jew friend, my director friend, and my dad (HSLABW - and my friends too).

Read more of Dani Shapiro over Shabbos. Her stuff resonates for me. She writes of debating with a childhood friend whether or not they feel connected to themselves in their youth. Her friend says he feels no connection to the kid he was. She disagrees, seeing her various selves through time "like a fragile chain of paper dolls."

"I looked at my friend across the table. I could still see the seventh grader I had once known, alive inside him... Was there - surely there must be - a through line connecting the disparate parts of ourselves?... I could see that it would be desirable, maybe even preferable, to disavow pieces of the past... But I knew better...I had felt my past unfurl inside me as if it had a mind of its own... A jumble, perhaps, but nothing is ever missing. Just hidden from view." - Devotion, Dani Shapiro, pg. 134

Recently at my high school reunion (which I saw more as sacred than social and thus went, despite aveilus) I had the same dialogue with a former classmate. We were flipping through the yearbook and he commented - upon seeing his picture - that he has no connection to that person. Then we found my picture and I said that that me lives inside of this me big time.

Recently I had a great, real heart to heart with a colleague and friend. He had asked me some time ago about if I always post as much as I seemed to at the time when he visited and told me he liked what he saw. I took the question as critical, judging the amount I write. He followed up, as it came up organically, and told me that my follow up post surprised him. He was impressed by what and how much I write. He wondered where my radar came from, because it was off - it wasn't reading him. Sometimes cliche's are true - actually they always have some truth to them, that's how they develop. Take, "It's not you, it's me please."

I told my friend about the book about very sensitive people, the phenomenon. I hope to lend it to him. Having found it for him, I gave it another look for me. Maybe for you. Take this test to see if you're highly sensitive.

Tonight at Shaloshudis Rabbi Shalom Carmy spoke to note the tenth Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Yosef Wanefsky. On line, I found an audio version of the hesped given by Rav Aharon Lichtenstein. Here, you can read a beautiful poem about Rabbi Wanefsky, by Rabbi David Ebner.

I could go on and on, but I'll stop for now, just in case anyone is itching to read what I write hot off the pressing of the orange publish button.