"I've Got Nothing To Say But It's O.K..."

I'm in the middle of several magnum opus style posts. Who knows if they will make it? I'm working on a piece about Making of a Gadol. I started it this one years ago. The topic of what is or is not lashon harah in relation to the importance of honesty about what it means to be human fascinates me. On a related note I'm teaching Peasachim next year, please G-d, and have started working on it. Rav Nachman Cohen has a beautiful mehalech about how the start of the mesechteh is about sur meirah (the destruction of chametz) and the latter part is about asei tov - the positive mitzvot of the holiday. He takes the idea that chameitz represents the yetzer harah very seriously and shows how every sugyah in the first three perakim is part of a progression relating to the process of purifying ourselves. Rather than just being a tangent, the topic of using clean language, fits right in with the larger context. I am also working on a post on food. I'm down 1.2 pounds for the week. It took work. Anything worth while takes effort. It's for health more than appearance. Just like you can't be on time, you're either early or late, so too we're (I'm) not maintaining the same weight naturally (particularly as the years add up, if we're not careful to go down, then we go up in weight. I also have a personal hashgachah story that I've been working on writing. It took place on Pesach several years ago and I'm trying to write it right. Then there's a piece from Rav Pam's wonderful sefer, Atarah LeMelech, about how what goes around comes around, which I'm working on transcribing. (As a student of mine recently put it, "I believe the earth is very round - things come back to you.) Then there's Maude.

I've also had poems collecting in my diaries. The following haiku is based on Rav Yosef Engel's pshat of "potei'ach et yadecha u'masbia lechol chai ratzon" - that G-d gives us the ratzon - will - to be satisfied with what we have:

Through G-d's open hand

We may become satisfied

That we have enough

A mentor of mine says that you have to stop on occasion and check in with yourself as to who you are:

Who am I? Who am I?

We must ask again.

And again. And again.

Till forever if then.

Always there is hope.

Life

Once

Void

Evolves

Written while in one over Pesach:

Home it's not

Only a fantasy?

Time turns to Jello

Everything is different

Life? Sort of.

I don't know exactly what I had in mind here. I wrote it as I was packing at the end of Pesach.

Saying goodbye is what it is

Only depends on perspective

Life is between goodbye and hello

Only depends on what you do then

Never too long till another day

Go on, it's O.K.