She Is Woman

She is Woman

October 2015

Woman saying Tashlich, Uman 2015

Kiev Fish Market, Window Picture, “Eve and the Serpent”

She is woman She is Schechinah, She is my beloved, She makes me cry, Her tender kiss is etched in my memory Her eyes bewitched me in their innocence She is perfection, The mother’s eyes drowning my thoughts Anything resembling those eyes triggers floods of tears If I could just kiss her eyes before I die It would be worth it She loves unconditionally Despite everything I have done.

So much suffering So much death So many in pain I can’t take the brutality of it, This beautiful life Surrounded by such cruelty, This awesome natural world The forests and streams The gentle breezes and misty drizzle Fructifying the ground The green ferns fecund A silent lake with pools of rings from fish Each initiated by a bubble A craving for breath From the hidden below

I yearn…

In the tears is truth Through these tears the broken heart sees The truth The kernel within reality The tragedy that is this life.

As the years accelerate Filtering out the dross The inessential As the decades indict the chronicles of wasted desires What is left?

The detritus?

The residue?

I am facing the brutal truth The failures from the beginning Jude the obscure Outside the walls of…Oxford Rejected as a grade B product The indictments appear as a document from ancient times A pre-­‐determined black inked text etched in parchment And this life has followed me according to this uncontrolled Scripted text, As if I could not change anything not predetermined prescribed in ink As if I had to follow the trajectory coded in these genes.

Everything seems to be seen through these dark lens As if there is no escape Save the image of her She could rescue me once more Drowning in her eyes I might once more come to life And decide and own my future.

It all seems to come together Triggered by her This Lost Princess She knows me She knows my wound She is my wound.

In this space Is authenticity The inner truth The architecture of The wire diagram of The road map that has been My soul’s desire.

She was there!

In the circle surrounding The Rebbe, Swaying to his niggun He/She dances within this magol lezaddikim Tallis covering his eyes he dances White socked graceful ankles Dancing slowly Marking out Her name on the oak floor

His authenticity melts my heart His naiveté infuriates me His youth angers me His unconditional love for others inspires me Maybe he feels Her like I do?

He holds his new Sefer, (a Rebbishe one, small) embraced with deveykus Then looks for me and hands it to me!

I hold it and him -­‐they are one-­‐ for this eternal moment And we dance, Eyes closed.

For a few seconds To be joined by the others.

This validation Her Presence in the silent hidden spaces, Flying in the face of my personal moral and spiritual failure Even here in The outward social trappings of a kehilla A standing in the community, my shtender…

The years of learning finally responding to others questions Quickly, like the Talmud predicted “im sh’gura be-­‐piv” people come to ask, the answers emerge with fluidity, they inquire and feel me out for advice young men follow me on our Sabbath “walkabout” an adventure in the crisis of faith a French menu of different approaches and texts studied.

She is present in this intercourse.

How paradoxical For all the years The grey hair The assumption of wisdom Yet the inner Kritik remains alive and well Ever discounting Ever judging my failure My compromises My ongoing betrayals.

So this is the life My life Facing the future Facing the slow dying Cells and organs Memory loss Bathroom visits during the night The absent new insights The repetitive texts The familiar explanations and rationalizations The old excuses

Yet a wisdom grows From where I know not An intuition A deeper knowledge No books But a certainty Of what is Of the nature of things Of the divine.

Of Her.