week 3.

April 12

I’m too old to be young. And yet I’m stuck right at the beginning.

Nothing ever changes. I never seem to learn.

Sometimes I try to trick myself into thinking that not learning is the true learning. But it isn’t.

One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Or dead.

I just finished reading Romain Gary’s The Life Before Us, about one Madame Rosa, a holocaust survivor who’s living as a retired prostitute in Paris. The story is told from the eyes of a young Momo, an illegitimate child of a murdered whore who Rosa adopts. Momo records her last few weeks alive. Believe it or not, it is a love story.

“I stayed with her quite a while, letting the time pass, the kind of time that passes slowly and isn't French. Monsieur Hamil had often told me that Time comes slowly from the desert with its camel caravans and isn't in any hurry because it's carrying eternity on its back. But Time is always nicer to talk about than to see on the face of an old woman who's sinking a little more every day, and if you want my honest opinion Time is just a thief.”

Gary, himself a Jewish refugee from Lithuania, wrote the book under a pseudonym. Just before he shot himself in the face.

—

I’ve been given four months to find a new job. I know I should be looking, but I feel immobilized. Instead, I read sad French books and watch documentaries on Netflix. This week, I listened to a four-part podcast on the history of the KKK. And then watched the 3-hour-long Birth of a Nation. I called my 91-year-old grandmother who grew up in Atlanta, the Klan headquarters. Her neighbor was a Grand Wizard. She said she often hung out at their house and they were very kind to her. I asked if they knew she was Jewish. She said that they must have.

Her father’s family had immigrated to the US from Russia after a band of cossacks shot his baby sister. Why do cossacks always hang out in bands? Are they musicians?

I guess some things never change. Is not-learning a special kind of learning?

I’ll have to reread some of those old Tibetan books I found in Dharamshala.

—

I felt naked in my own home, without any decorations. So when I returned from New York last week I brought with me some of the photos and drawings and posters that had been hanging in my Lower East Side studio. Beside my bed is a black & white photograph of the Dalai Lama with his eyes closed. It was captured by Clive Arrowsmith. The Dalai Lama has a slight smile on his face. Does he know something? His usual bright red robes are dark grey.

I put him there to remind me to stop knowing so much. And to smile more.

On the dresser opposite my bed are two photographs of my great grandfather playing violin. He rests his head on the end of the instrument. I wonder what music he liked to play. I wonder if it made him happy. I think it did. I bet he liked to escape into the music.

His wife, Bubby Chana, was a real Jewish Mother. I never met her, but whenever her name comes up, a look of awe appears on the face of the speaker. A real Matriarch. I bet Great Grandpa Harry was scared of her.

Violin must be the saddest music in the world.

Maybe one day I’ll go back to Grandpa Harry’s birthplace in Belarus. If I do, I’ll only listen to violin while I’m there.

When the family arrived in the US, Grandpa Harry’s parents forbid anyone from speaking Russian at home. And just like that, in one generation, they went from Russian to American. Now, my grandmother can only say ‘goodbye’ in Russian. Do svidaniya. It literally means ‘until meeting’.

One day the Dalai Lama will be dead and he will only exist in my mind. I wonder what he is doing right now. I wonder if he has his eyes closed. I wonder if he is smiling. I wonder if he is mad and I just haven’t checked the news.

As I wonder, I begin to wander.

My grandpa has his eyes closed too, as he plays the violin.

On my fridge, I’ve pinned up my favorite photo of Sigmund Freud. According to him, “In the unconscious, nothing can be brought to an end, nothing is past or forgotten.”

I used a magnet that my parents brought back from Panama to keep his head against the refrigerator door.

When I catch Freud’s eyes, he reminds me that there’s nothing crazy about going insane.

You know, sometimes I think back to all the lives I’ve lived, and I seem to tumble out of myself into a kind of kaleidoscope of being. And then I float above myself, above my life. And I could be anything and anyone. Or rather, I find that I am no one.

I am no one.

I have no family. I have no home. I have no body.

I have a mind, but it is filled only with shadows.

The Dalai Lama smiles with his eyes closed. Grandpa lost in the music.

The violin uniting prière and crier. Prayer and howl.

We close our eyes when reciting shema, preparing for our death. Imma closes her eyes after lighting the shabbos candles.

Time is not a thief. It is a liar. There is nothing to see. Might as well stop looking.

I remember when I was a little boy, there was a hallway at the shul that was lined with mirrors on both walls. We would stand in the middle and stare into infinity. All we saw was ourselves.

As we moved, infinity moved with us. No matter how fast we shook our bodies, we couldn’t shake eternity.

They say that god exists outside of time. That’s true. But god created time, ‘in the beginning’.

Once upon a time.

I guess god also gets bored.

Do you ever catch yourself destroying everything you’ve built, simply because you can’t go back in time?

In my bathroom I placed a drawing of the Tree of Life that I’d bought in Varanasi. It’s a childish drawing. As all drawings ought to be.

On the floor beside my bed I’ve leaned an old drawing of Krishna against the wall. He has a peacock feather in his hair and he’s playing his flute for Radha, the goddess of love. He’s literally blue in the face.

I have four months to find a new job.

Come on, the clock is ticking.