A Curse is Lifted!

I haven't posted in a couple of weeks - the drama of the well and hearing from my old friend left my brain whirling.

But I would like to take a moment to give credit where credit is due, even if the credit is due to me!  I need all the encouragement I can get.  So let it hereby be noted that I have continued to explore new intellectual and artistic avenues, to wit:



1850 engraving of Emperor Nero

A few days ago, I went to a brand-new opera about Emperor Nero composed by a Princeton University student, performed by Princeton and some other University students, staged by University students, managed by . . . you get the idea:  this was a student production - very elaborate, and on an appropriately royal scale. 

I actually assumed I would hate the music, thinking that it would be what has become the standard for contemporary opera - Heaven forbid there should be a reproducable melody!  Instead, the music was in many instances lovely, and the libretto (which was in classical Latin, but with a translation projected on the back of the stage) was poetic and charming.  I would love to have a copy of the libretto, and actually, I would love to have a cd or better yet, dvd of the production.  The singing was fine (I am no expert, but it certainly seemed well executed, although not professional level, of course). Thankfully, the opera was fully staged, meaning that there were costumes (the centurions were yummy, in the brightest possible scarlet) and even a minimal set. I had gone thinking it might have been presented concert-style, without costumes or acting; such was my devotion to experiencing something new and potentially interesting.

The fact that I enjoyed it means that the curse of the bleh musical event is lifted!!!  (The last 4 or 5 concerts I have been to, I have not enjoyed, and I was beginning to worry it was me . . . ).

I also went to a new exhibit about collagist Kurt Schwitters at the PU Art Museum.  It was a bit too much of a good thing, but I still deserve points for going . . . There was a fascinating reproduction of one of the rooms in Schwitter's apartment in Germany, where he built a crazy indoor environment of  gypsum board and white paint and whatever oddments he felt inspired to use.  It made me want to create my own indoor environment, although mine would be more like a castle . . . not as coruscatingly abstract as Schwitters'.

So I'm keeping on keeping on, improving my life one event, one friendship at a time, and beli ayin hara, things are getting better.  I am getting back to being myself, after having foolishly given myself away.

Words cannot express . . .

I have been sitting here with tears trickling down my face; tears of happiness, of regret, of longing, of gratitude, of possbility. I just took in my mail and saw a handwritten envelope in what looked like a familiar hand, somehow. Then I saw the printed return address and for a wild moment I thought - could the letter possibly, somehow, be from that dear friend from so many decades ago? I opened it and was stunned. It was from that friend, a friend I have thought of, who has influenced me over the years (and years . . . ) who, through some miracle wrought by Hashem, encountered my blog entry containing an experience he once told me about, so long ago I can hardly believe it. That story has remained with me through thick and thin, and I have repeated it to many people over the years because of its message. There are many lessons in it, of course, about Hashem and the way He works in the world, about our mission in this world, too; but also it teaches us to look behind what is obvious to see the sublime - to look behind a crazy old woman giving compliments and see the angel sent by Hashem.  And it reminds me of the importance of even the tiniest act of good we do in this world.

At any rate, my friend's story opened my eyes to look for the wonder and the meaning of what lies behind our physical world; a priceless gift.

To hear from this friend now, after decades and decades; now, when I have been longing for the Rebbe zt"l and the Bostoner kehillah, and thinking of writing or calling the Rebbe's office to see if I could arrange a visit and spend a Shabbes there . . . I can't capture the immensity of the feeling in words, but I will say that the note from my friend is more precious to me than gold; and I think of him and his wife and his family with such warmth and affection.
Thank you.

All's well . . . wellsprings of joy

The worker who nearly fell into the well, thereby discovering
it, offered to take a picture of it for me while sitting with his
legs dangling over the edge.  Can you say vertigo?

Guess what some construction workers replacing my cracked and fissured concrete floor discovered hidden beneath its surface???   A well!  A 19th century well, with an antique bottle floating in it.  Here I have been searching for houses with water on the property - stream, brook, pond - and I have been standing not two feet above the top of a well shaft with water at the bottom in my own house everyday for years!  I am so excited.  Talk about the magic that lies just beneath the surface in this world!

Kitchen Tears

Yes, Virginia, there actually are families like this, where everything is calm and orderly; where organization, scheduling, and structure form the basis of life.  Not in my family, of course, I hasten to add, although I used to fantasize about having a family something like this. When I was eight or nine, a friend of mine told me about her family, the Billings, several houses down, who went to church together every Sunday morning and then had pancakes for breakfast.  It sounded like heaven - both the regularity of the family ritual, and the pancakes.  I was unable to convince my mother of the desirability of either church (even a synagogue would have done . . . ) or pancakes.

Kitchen tears - the title makes me think of all the painful tears I have shed, chopping particularly virulent onions, but that isn't what prompted this post.  I just decided to tackle packing up almost all of the two dozen or less cookbooks that have remained out because of the memories, and in a few instances, recipes, they contain.  But I am putting it off an hour or so, because when I reached up to take a handful down, I was assailed by such nostalgia, and such a sense of longing for the past, that I felt on the edge of tears.
There was a strawberry-patterned binder with hand-written recipes, mine, and those of the woman who gave me this home-made cookbook for my wedding to Nosson.  There were the baking books I used to make fancy cakes, tortes, strudels, and pies for Friday night dessert, when we would have people over after the Shabbes dinner, or for Saturday night, for the party held in honor of the departing Sabbath Queen, called Melave Malka.

There, too, were sturdy books I had used again and again making ordinary dinners: mushrooms stroganoff, chicken stuffed under the skin, cornbread-topped pseudo-Mexican casserole.

If I could be magically transported back to that time, I would go enriched with the knowledge that  on one level, there are no ordinary dinners - that every moment of felicity shared with someone you love should be recognized as the temporary gift that it is.

I suppose to put these books away means putting away those dreams of the good times, and also of what might have been.  It means accepting the present and its obligations.  Acknowledging that makes it easier to pack up, because those long-ago times will always be with me, books or no books, accompanied, sadly, by regret. The books, despite my reverence for what some objects can do, are actually not magic . . .

For now, I will give myself a little time to mourn what is lost in the past, and then get back to the job of living in the present and looking to the future.