True Ancestor

Leaping from thought to thought on Leap Day

• It's kind of funny to me that from time to time I get interviewed by people ... as if I knew something! Flattering, amusing and a little scary. The latest is this article on judging people positively in The Jewish Angle, an entertaining and educational Jewish eZine.
• I love the question: If God is all-powerful, could God create a rock so heavy that God couldn't lift it?
• Tzimtzum -- the Divine act of contraction to make room for Free Will -- is the Big Bang thrown briefly into reverse.
• Rabbi Menachem of Chernobyl said the Hebrew letter aleph, being closest to the Divine Emanation, contains such brilliance that it couldn't be approached by the lower levels of existence. So with each letter of the aleph bet, God contracted a little more, until the final letter, tav, which stands for both tiheyeh -- 'you shall live' -- and 'timut' -- 'you shall die.' This last is the level at which we operate -- the lowest, sandwiched between life and death, in the narrow space provided in the realm that has the faintest of Divine emanations. I'm just saying that's a pretty cool idea.
• I didn't know what it meant to lose "spring in your step" until I was about 45. All of a sudden, when I was running, it just hurt. My knees felt like worn-out shock absorbers.
• This morning as I was getting into my car to go to work, I heard a cardinal singing. Nature's great anti-depressant is the first birdsong that pierces the thinning shell of winter.
• The cardinal sang the day after the first Spring Training ballgames were played. Perhaps it knew...?
• Somehow, the Midwest produces days when there are no clouds out and the Sun still doesn't shine. It's not pollution -- it's some kind of collective, meteorological gloom: the reflection of all this frozen slush back up into the atmosphere.
• Scotch seems to be in now. Why is Scotch so in?
• I wonder: if I'm fortunate enough to grow old, but unfortunate enough to become infirm, which kid -- if any -- will look after me?
• I am addicted to the "BrickBreaker" game on my BlackBerry. It's just Pong with better graphics.
• My son told my brother that I'm more like a big brother than a dad. Is that a good thing ...?

Shabbat Shalom.

--T.A.

(DISCLAIMER: many if not all thoughts contained herein are not original in form or content. Author denies any intent or attempt to plagiarize, mimic, lift, nip, tuck or otherwise alter or expropriate the works of other authors without attribution. Offer good while supplies last.)

Order Up: One Axis of Evil, Over Hard

Was the "Axis of Evil" an axis before W called it one?

We've known about the power of naming things, people and places since the Bible and before. The power resides not just in the way a name represents a particular reality, but the way it heightens that reality, and even creates a new, more distilled one. In Genesis, God creates reality by speaking. Adam orders his reality by naming the creatures that are paraded before him. The names of many significant Biblical sites are given as testimony to their historic significance.

Americans are very divorced from the significance of names: our geographical and proper names derive from other languages -- Latin, Spanish, French, Native American languages, Anglo-Saxon dialects or the Queen's English, to name a few -- and so we tend to forget that the name really means something, really tries to capture an essence of that place. For example, the name "Chicago" certainly came from an Indian tribe, though we don't even know which one. Some think that "Chekagou" meant either stinky, wild onion, or skunk. The Chicago Public Library prefers a more noble meaning. Depending on which translation you go with, you get a completely different take on how the place, upon receiving a name, was perceived.

So names are open to interpretation. They can be multi-faceted, ambiguous; the origin of the name is often as inscrutable as the person, place or thing to which it's given.

W, however, saw in Iran, Iraq and North Korea a kind of anti-American conspiracy, and he sought to eliminate all ambiguity and interpretation on the matter. He used the word "Axis" to conjure up America's enemy in perhaps our last just war, and he used "Evil" because he lives in a Star Wars mindset.

I don't have time to look it up, I'm just asking: did the "Axis of Evil" really exist before he named it? Or did he, God-like, give it reality by speaking the name?

In any case, as soon as he dubbed those countries an "Axis of Evil," not only did they begin to coalesce into something very much like an Axis of Evil, but everyone wanted in.

My prescription: W should begin a rigorous meditation practice. Prayer doesn't seem to be working.

--T.A.

Editing Season

It's editing season.

Friends and family are, of a sudden, deluging me with editing requests (Qualifications: College English major; erstwhile freelance writer; former copy editor, Encyclopaedia Britannica; 3rd Place, Encyclopaedia Britannica's employee spelling bee, 1990).

The One True Wife has written some very fine short stories that she wants me to critique before she starts sending them around. A very good rabbi friend has asked for my comments on a High Holiday sermon.

Me True Ann-Sister is also in high editing gear.

And Middle Daughter and Friends are feverishly at work on their "personal statements," the 500-word essays called for on college applications, which are the preoccupation of high school seniors across the land. Basically, the parameters of these exercises in exasperation are: "Tell us how unique you are, but still make yourself sound down-to-earth. Prove to us that you're extraordinary, yet humble, and that you'd be a great fit here -- a leader, and yet one of the crowd. You have 500 words. Go."

Some of Middle Daughter's friends -- former knock-kneed pre-adolescents, now women -- appear, or call, or e-mail, and ask me to read their personal statements. There are two recurrent themes to these essays: overcoming suffering, and overcoming family. These themes are inextricably intertwined.

For the past two weeks, Middle Daughter has been stationed in the family room, laptop deployed; watching TV, working on the essay, doing homework, talking on the phone and IMing her friends, all at once. I wonder when she has time to introspect.

Middle Daughter showed her essay to all three parents. In it, she described the aftermath of the divorce of the One True Wife and the Birth Father, as he shall be called, and described having dinner with Birth Father once a week.

The One True Wife said, no, you didn't see him that often. It was more like once every three weeks.

Then Middle Daughter showed the personal statement to Birth Father. He said, "What is this, once every three weeks! I saw you every week, at least!"

Then Middle Daughter showed the personal statement to me. I, too, managed to make the personal statement about me: Why, I asked, faking tears, did I not merit even a mention?

"I only had 500 words," was the answer.

I worked with her on the essay. We managed to squeeze me in.

Then I got down to actually helping her. The theme of her essay: she is a helper, a mediator, a healer by nature. It began with the first move, away from Birth Father, and grew with the second move, to a house and a new neighborhood, and the third move, at age seven, another 950 miles away from Birth Father. It describes her efforts to soothe older sister's pain and anger, to mediate family quarrels, to realize her dream of having a happy family. And it concludes with her feeling that that dream has been realized.

You can learn a lot about someone in 500 words.

--T.A.

It's licit to say sipid

My good friend Steve -- marketing guru, outstanding guitarist, and champion backwards speaker -- gets a newsletter (I'll link to it when he tells me who sends it) that focuses on unusual words. The newsletter comes out weekly, and each week has a theme.

Last week, it was the positive versions of words whose negative versions are much more commonly used. For example: Did you know the following are all words?

Scrutable

Vincible

Evitable

Gainly

Couth

Licit

Sipid

Pervious

Gruntled

Requite

Trepid

Please remain gruntled, despite my sounding sipid as I indulge the evitable temptation to use these licit words. Be kind, as I am pervious to insult.

With requited love --

--T.A.

One morning a week

One morning a week, I play hooky.

I go to the local Borders, promptly at 9, and I write.

I'm working on another writing project. I'm writing about how the lack of silence and open space in the life of contemporary Western Jews is a major part of what's alienating them from their Judaism. Of course, it's also what's alienating all of us from each other, and from ourselves. But I'm trying to restrict my focus a little.

So I come to Borders for silence and space, such as it is. This Borders has a two-story atrium that looks out on a big suburban intersection. Malls on two of the other corners, a Shell station on the third. It's raining today, and still unseasonably warm. The trucks and cars passing by just leave a faint hum, a gentle snore up against the window panes. The windows to the west are virtually dry. The ones facing north are dotted and streaked: a cold front is coming in with the rain.

I have a big cafe au lait. I have a long e-mail from me True Ann-Sister, with judicious comments about what I've written on this project so far. I'm all ready to go.

Sometimes, though, I stare off into space. Or I write to you. Or I listen to the music they play, either too softly or too thunderously, in this cafe area. I get up and browse the shelves. I check e-mail. I check your blogs. Soon, my slice of stolen time has been eaten away.

The procrastination is delicious: like foreplay. It's still early, and the morning still holds its promise of productivity. Then, the weekend beckons: the Sabbath, a day-long caesura; then the get-togethers, Gabe's indoor soccer and basketball games, the errands and car trips that dominate, and the closing of life back over the still little field that is the miracle of our being.

This -- right now, this moment -- is the most important of the week for me. This is the moment when I try to make sense of my thoughts and use of whatever gifts I might have, in a way that matters -- to me, anyway.

So I just thought I'd stop and say hello.

--T.A.

The Difference between Whining and the Blues

Faithful reader Starri (porn-star name: Pushkin El Habana??!!), in a comment to the post below, provided a link to a definitive checklist of whether you're qualified to sing the Blues.

Those qualities described at the site above that disqualify you from singing the Blues automatically qualify you to be accepted into my new 12-step group, WAAH (the Whiners' Anonymous Auxiliary Help-network).

--T.A.

Vocab update

A howler from 5th Circle of Cubic Hell.

And here are some excellent synonyms for "cubicle."

Scads of updates for every possible occasion and condition, like Hallmark for slackers.

--T.A.