Mary Jennings called me

A voice from the past. Mary is the wife of Robin Jennings, one of my seminary classmates from Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. She and Robin had been in New Haven last weekend for a wedding and found my number in the white pages--lordy, there are still 'white pages' and called me when they were back in Lexington (I think) Kentucky.

They had a rushed visit and didn't have time to call me last weekend and come the 10 miles to Cheshire.

I last saw them when I did a sabbatical where I visited classmates on our 25th anniversary of graduation--that would have been 2000.

I remember sending classmates things I'd written about them after that visit and Robin, I recall, didn't like what I'd said about him.

But Mary (not Robin) called me and we spoke for 20 minutes or so and it was rather wonderful and rather strange.

I didn't speak with Robin (perhaps he wasn't there just as Bern was in NYC with Mimi and Ellie) but Mary and I had been friendly all those years ago, so it was fine,

I was struck by how so many  years can dissolve in so few minutes. It was great to speak with her.

Voices from the Past are welcomed here.

Two more 1999 poems from Israel

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Yae Bashem

I had coffee this morning with Cherry, who is newly back from time in Israel. I asked her, as I ask everyone newly back from Israel, if she had been to Yae Bashem?

Yae Bashem is the Holocaust memorial up on a hill in Jerusalem.

One of the things there is a children's memorial to the one and a half million children who died in the Holocaust. In that hall there are a small number of candles lit behind a glass wall and a complicated series of mirrors that reflect those real candles a million and a half times. I took that for granted because Israeli's wouldn't say it about dead children if it wasn't true. The rest of the memorial, broken pillars in front, shoes of victims in one hall, walking above a map of the camps...is all life-altering.

I wrote two poems about that experience in 1999 and shared them with Cherry. I share them with you as well.

Visiting the Children's Memorial at Yae Bashem
(12/10/99)

In an ancient land of broken pillars,
snapped by wars, long smothered by
      Time's debris,
these were splintered most cleanly,
      cruelly.
And their brokenness breaks my
      heart in three.....

Break my heart, for this shimmering landscape
of eternal pain--loss of childhood's dream.
Break, my  heart--the many mirrors' reflection
reveal our Souls more twisted than they
      seem
in sunlight--outside--beyond
      candle glow.

Break a third time--only
       broken hearts redeem.

I scarcely breathe--my
    breath may blow the candles out
or else fan them into revenging
     flames
nothing could ever quell: All God's
      Justice
nor our pity can pay
      these infant's claims.

In thick and gathered darkness
    I straddle
their Universe to the limits
    of sight.

Wholly Innocent--holy suffering:
dying to prove that Evil's
grasping Might
cannot reach them, cannot
put out this Light.


Coming down from
Yae Bashem
(12/10/99)

Soul gutted as wadis gut the desert,
I ride in silence, deep within
the rocky, arid heart.

Yae Bashen--the syllables hang
in the air
like incense buring
in the Third Temple that is not.

Like the smell of flesh singed
and the odor
of rotting intentions--
the incense curls up
to the God who
seemed not to care
when her children died
in piles of flesh
and
mountains of bones.
Rachel wails again,
keening her lament
for no one to hear.
Yae Bashem--the words
fall somewhere between
a lament and heaven's resignation.

Some tears cannot be seen
nor crying heard
in the dark shadow
of the forgetting.

Coming down from Yae Bashem
I see these things:
    and old woman wrapped
     in her shawl,
     beating her rug as if
     getting it clean would
     bring Messiah. I love her.

Two old men--doubtless
veterans of some war...
comrades, dear friendsk--
lunching on a balcony
taking turns drinking
from a tall brown bottle
of beer. I love them.

A child of eight or nine,
unselfconsciously flipping
back her raven hair
(so dark it drinks in
the sun and shines it back again).
The breeze up from the valley
catches her hair
and she looks as if
she could fly. I love her.

A young man,
pale as the desert rushing
through traffic --
black coat trailing like
a tail, curling locks
bouncing by his chin--
no doubt hurrying
breathlessly to study Torah.
And I love him.

These things I saw, coming down
from Yae Bashem.

Perhaps when I've seen more
life (and loved some more)
I can
believe
in
God
again.

memories

I just found my notebook from my trip to Israel again. Thought I'd share this previous post.

 

 

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

The only time I was ever in Germany

It was on the way to Israel in December of 1999. We landed in Frankfort in the wee hours of the morning. I had forgotten all about it (but at my age 'forgetting' is normal....) But I was reading from the notebook I took on that trip and found this poem.

Watching dawn come at Frankfort Airport

Staring out on a school of
     planes
(neatly arranged like huge
  patients in a ward
  attached with feeding tubes
  of walkways to the
  terminal)
dawn creeps in.

It comes as a lightening
    of the sky
      from black
      to indigo
      to navy blue
      to steely gray.

Somewhere on the flight
somewhere over the north Atlantic
somewhere at 37,000 feet
I lost six hours.
Dawn comes late in Frankfort
   in December
but my watch is still at
   10 'til 2 in the tiny
   hours of Eastern Standard Time.

Who owes me these six hours?
How do I get them back?
All around me members of
my group are sprawled
  on black, comfortable
   seats,
dreaming that in sleeping they
  can steal back the time.
But those six hours are
   simply gone, I tell you!
Poof! Disappeared! Lost....

Now a monorail passes outside the window,
   people lit up inside, heading for airplanes.

I can see planes dropping to earth
and leaping away on faraway
runways.

People are trapped inside
each of them, headed toward
Budapest, Singapore,
New York, Moscow,
New Dehlia. Losing
or finding hours as they
go.

I hope someone nice finds
 the six hours I lost
 and uses them well.

Trying to stay sane

It is a daily effort to try to stay sane in Trump World.

One day he says the violence is on 'many sides', the next day he condemns the bad guys. the next day he says their are 'good people' on all sides.

In Arizona he goes wild and lies about what he said about Charlottesville and the next day, for the speech in Reno, he stays on message and talks about how we have to heal our divisions.

I have a friend who is narcissistic. Everything is about him. He can and is charming most of the time, until you confront him about his inconsistencies. Then he backtracks and changes the story and makes himself blameless and the inconsistencies are someone-else's fault. And, because I love him, I am sure he doesn't even know what he's doing with 'the truth'. He really believes that he isn't to blame for contradicting himself and that he is 'right' all the time.

I love my friend and understand his mental illness and make allowances for it and he is loving and charming when he needs to be and it works and I can live with it. I really can.

But my friend isn't the President and the leader of the free world.

The time has come, the Walrus said, 
to talk of many things.
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,
of cabbages and Kings.
And why the sea is boiling hot,
and whether pigs have wings.

I wake up into the story of the Walrus and the Carpenter every morning.

And it is time to 'talk of many things'.

Primary of which, is Donald J. Trump psychologically fit to sit where he sits in the Oval Office.

In his speech today (which was a reasonable, thought out speech that someone else wrote and he read off a teleprompter) he said that 'sitting behind the desk at the oval office' meant 'being president of the United States. I think that was ad-lib. No one I know needs to have someone define what 'sitting behind the desk in the oval office' means.

I've hated presidents before. Not really. I've disliked the policies of (mostly Republican presidents) but I've never 'hated them' personally. Reagan, Bush one and Bush two, were in their own ways rather likable. I HATE Trump and, more importantly FEAR him.

The sea is boiling hot and pigs have wings.

Something has to happen to rid us of this mad prince....

Sure I'm social....

I went to Waterbury Hospital today to get my bi-weekly Zolaire shots. Zolaire is an allergen inhibitor that has made my life so much better. Bad news is you have to have a sh*t load of allergens in your blood to qualify. Good news is Zolaire works!!!

I used to go straight to Outpatient Medical Therapies to sign in. The hospital now has a central sign-in for all services. It doesn't take long and they're really nice but it adds a step to an already unpleasant morning. (I actually went yesterday for my shot but forgot my Epi-pen, which I've never needed but they won't give me the shots if I don't have it! (I've been doing this for 2 or3 years and I still turn around every couple of months to come back for my Epi-pin {which way do you spell it?}. That's one negative thing about me--how I'm often lost in the material world and forget things I should never forget. No, it's not the onset of dementia, I've been like that since I was a teenager!!!

Anyway, checking in, the nice woman asked me, "what are the last four numbers of you social?"

I stared at her they way I would have if she's said something like, "do you have any kryptonite with you, Mr. Bradley?"

Well, of course I'm social but I don't give it a number....

I'm not sure, but I think I've always been asked about 'social security number', so "social" made no sense to me. The woman must have thought I was throwing an anurism or something but she finally said all three words and after I ran through it in my mind "362-87...1234", I said, "1 2 3 4" and all was well.

Maybe a tad of dementia in there, but really...'social' for 'social security number'?  We seem as a species averse to syllables.

so much for 'muscle memory'

For all of my life since I've worn belts--over 65 years, by the way--I've always worn belts that buckle until three months ago.

I bought a new belt that had a hook on the front of the metal plate that just slips into the hole on the belt. No buckling necessary.

Then this week, I put on a belt you have to buckle and every single time I've gone to take off my belt since then, I've tried to simply lift out the pin rather than unbuckle it.

I've always though 'muscle memory' was one of the unquestionable things about human beings. Yet in only a few months of a belt that slips into the hole and doesn't need buckling, 65 years plus of buckling has been 'muscle forgotten' somehow....

"'Splain that, Lucy!"

If 'muscle memory' that lets us do things (like type like I'm now typing) without thinking can be thrown off by a few months of a belt that doesn't buckle, then why are our opinions and feelings and prejudices so hard to alter?

We seem to have 'locked in' opinions that even facts and reality can't budge.

I wish we could all put on an 'opinion belt' with no buckle and then realize how easy it is to acknowledge we've been mistaken and take another tact.

Against all my comprehension, KKK folks and neo-Natzis and white nationalists can't see the error of their ways.

Or can our President.

Get a belt that doesn't buckle, knuckleheads.....

one other thing....

I've talked to two people I care about today who said, in some way, "isn't taking down the Civil War monuments denying our history?"

I would suggest it's not 'denying our history' but refusing to 'celebrate' and 'glorify' a part of our history that was wrong and destructive and is painful to many people in our country. And I would remind us all that those statues did not go up within 10 years of the Civil War's end, but in the 1920's and 1930's as a Jim Crow way of confronting Black Folk.

I, personally, can look at a statue of Robert E. Lee and not feel disgusted. But neither do I feel empowered and proud. I'm a white guy who never lived in the deep south and has lived in New England for 37 years.

Here's my deal. I have qualms about abortion--but I'm not a woman so I support a woman's right to choose. I'll never be pregnant, so I'll listen to women about unwanted pregnancies.

I'm not gay or bi- or trans-. so I will listen to that community on issues that confront them and support them.

I'm not a recent immigrant--though once my family was--so, I'll listen to what recent immigrants--legal and not legal--want and need, and support them.

And I'm not Black. So, though I know "names CAN REALLY HURT YOU", if African Americans want the statues down and the names changed for college buildings and parks, I'm fine with that. It's about them, not me. I'll support them.

I'm very much aware of 'white-straight-male' privilege. I have been 'gifted' by it all my life, even when I didn't realized it. So, knowing I've basked in 'privilege' all my life, I will support what people who have been oppressed because I haven't, wanted from their lives.

Simple as that.

That's where I stand. Ich kann nicht anders, as Martin Luther said.

Nowhere else to stand....