Saturday services…

Rabbi Friedlander shakes my hand.”You know your
Berakhahs and Haftorah?” I nod and he smiles. “He’s
going to be a solid man, I can tell from the eyes,
don’t worry, he’ll make you proud,” he tells Mother.
Then to Father, “You understand after he completes
his first Aliyah you go up to recite the blessing – Barukh
She’pturanee May onsho shel zeh, which means ‘Blessed
is the One Who has freed me from the punishment due
this boy’…which means two things: with this blessing
the father is no longer responsible for his son’s sins and
the father’s failures no longer burden his son…understand?”
Father nods. “This calling up is a passage to adulthood,
your blessing his awakening, his liberation…from you!”
I shake as Rabbi Friedlander puts his arm around me.
“Be frightened. Today you begin to respect your fear.”

- from the book length poem, Living in the Past, by Philip Schultz

Sarah J. Sloat…

Training

I’m thinking of living forever.
I think that way I might finally
get my gig straight and solve the crosswords.
I’m considering outlasting everyone
although I know I’d have a hard time
explaining not having read Ulysses
past the first chapter.
I don’t care if death smells like nutmeg.
I don’t buy the plotline on eternal rest.
By staying alive someday
I might manage to hail a taxi,
and fulfill my father’s wish
of reaching town without a red light.
I couldn’t expect to avoid anger or brooding
or to make the journey with my beasts appeased.
But I might walk vast expanses
of earth and always be beginning
and I love beginning
or could learn
to love it.

- via Linebreak

© Thatcher Keats

[Sarah's chapbook "In the Voice of a Minor Saint" was published by Tilt Press in 2009. She also has a fantastical blog up at the rain in my purse. Go read - she's a wonderfully delicious, insightful, and expressive writer...a daily read for me...]

Play dates…

Is it odd…that I’m more interested in baseball than in yesterday’s elections?

 

Sub-ways…

Wonder if the artist ever heard of the Seven Year Itch scene with Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell…drat, there I go gettin’ all old again…

The long distance runner…

© Fred Conrad/NY Times

Most years Fred R. Conrad is assigned to photograph the New York City Marathon and he has covered it from various vantage points along the 26.2-mile race that winds through all five boroughs.

Mr. Conrad likes to come up with a different theme and photographic technique for each marathon. This year, on the 40th anniversary of the race, he wanted to focus on individual runners, separating them from the sea of more than 40,000 participants.

“The marathon is such a visual jumble,” said Mr. Conrad. “I wanted to isolate moments and individuals. To crystallize and distill the scene.”

Inspired by photographers such as Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Alex Majoli, Mr. Conrad used an off-camera studio strobe light from the walkway of the Queensboro Bridge (one of the five bridges on the race’s route) and at the finishing line. His elegant images capture runners and cyclists emerging from darkness or frozen in stride with long, intense shadows. “It’s a way of creating a drama,” he said. “I wanted to create the drama that you feel but you don’t usually see.”

[More photos here...]

 

Sunday dogness….

Old Pepper:
Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Snack. Nap. Sleep. Sleep. Drink. Nap. Eat. Sleep.

The Baby:
Ball! Ball! Ball! Play! Ball! Rope! Ball! Chew! Ball! Play! Play! Gnaw! Chew! Rope! Rope! Rope! Ball! Play! Now! Now! Now!

"What am I gonna do with this kid?"

Sunday sermon…

“I had this doctor once who was an atheist. Did I ever tell you about him?”

No.

“This doctor, he liked to jab me and my beliefs. He used to schedule my appointments deliberately on Saturdays so I would have to call the receptionist and explain why, because of my religion, that wouldn’t work.”

Nice guy, I said.

“Anyhow, one day, I read in the papers, that his brother had died. So I made a condolence call.”

After the way he treated you?

“In this job,” the Reb said, “you don’t retaliate.”

I laughed.

“So I go to his house and he sees me. I can tell he’s upset. I tell him I am sorry for his loss. And he says with an angry face, ‘I envy you.’ ”

” ‘Why do you envy me?’ I said.”

” ‘Because when you lose someone you love, you can curse God. You can yell.  You can blame him. You can demand to know why. But I don’t believe in God. I’m a doctor! And I couldn’t help my brother!’”

“He was near tears. ‘Who do I blame?’ he kept asking me. ‘There is no God. I can only blame myself.’ “

The Reb’s face tightened, as if in pain.

“That,” he said softly, “is a terrible self-indictment.”

Worse than an unanswered prayer?

“Oh yes. It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody’s out there.”

- from have a little faith, by Mitch Albom

Zoom zoom zoom…

If cool means anything it has to do with being in control, with making the right moves, not sweating or showing emotion regardless of the circumstance. It is never cool “to blow your cool.” It has to do with concealing rather than revealing – so shades are usually cool. Hats sometimes. Cool is not connected to one lone attribute, but, rather, it is a construction – a balance of traits: language, style, attitude, skill and mastery that must in the end seem natural and unstudied…To be really cool everything has to work in sync.

Cars as low as the Hirohata Merc are not about speed. They are not drag racers. They are about cruising through town.

They are about how cool they looked parked.

- Cars and Culture: The Hirohata Merc, by Jack DeWitt (American Poetry Review, Sept/Oct 2009

Boo! …

More vintage Halloween photos here…

Traveling…

Her hair was long and lustrous black; and her eyes were great big blue things with timidities inside. I wished I was on her bus. A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big-world.”

- Jack Kerouac,  On the Road

© Getty images

“timidities”…I so love that word…

[h/t Daily Literary Quote...]