Elinor Nauen

We always go here & I almost always get a 4-vegetable plate, Wade's being a "meat & 3" restaurant, with various options. Today my vegetables were yellow squash, fried okra, mac'n'cheese & sweet potato soufflé. And I bought this shirt. 

Hey I can breathe, whaddaya know.Already more relaxed than I've been in a month & I've only been here 3 hours. The healing place. The people I love most in this world. 

When I was in 7th grade, I accidentally dropped a freshly sharpened pencil into my palm. It hurt! The teacher (? someone, & I doubt I saw a doctor) said the lead would disintegrate & disappear in a few weeks. Decades later...

Be careful to separate people from the policies of their governments.


Be careful to separate people from the actions of terrorists who live among them.


 

Be careful not to collapse history and context into narrow interpretation.


Be careful not to eschew complexity and nuance for the sake of memeification.

 

Be careful to recognize that grief for one side does not mean hate for the other.


Be careful to understand that support for one side does not mean hate for the other.


 

Be careful of gaslighting on a mass level: disinformation and denial of loss.


Be careful not to dismiss the excruciating and real pain of others. Do not make it worse.



 

Be careful not to say things online that you would not say to someone in real life.


Be careful not to add hatred on top of hatred; we are all being crushed underneath its compounding weight.



 

Be careful not to lose empathy for those with whom you disagree.


Be careful not to dehumanize others. Doing so dehumanizes you.



 

Do not lose touch with the parts of you needed most:


Your compassion. Your humanity. Your care.

~ Esther Perel

This is all so very, very hard. Trying not to be angry with people who didn't have anything to say about the depravity, the pogrom, the hate, the antisemitism. But plenty sure they know exactly what should happen next. 

Spontaneous breakfast with another freaked-out Jewish friend ~ but we mostly caught up & were reminded of how much we like each other & how good life is (& our lives). She is the most positive person I know, without being an eejit (at all). Right now I'm hoping half my friends think I'm talking about them. I am! I let go of a lot of my angst in a cloud of laughter & tears. 

I did manage to get to  my norsk class in Williamsburg (in-person class! being natural!) & a Seido farewell party in midtown. Took this picture afterwards of the building were the host lives. Then the bus home, appreciating that I live here and don't have to pay attention to where I am. You are a real resident when you're confident enough to take the bus. My dad had the native's second-nature map of his city (Berlin) & then he didn't. And then he never had a place again. A home, maybe, but not a place.

I fell asleep at my desk just now, hands waiting for inspiration for today's blog. It was the psychic exhaustion, I think, of a very tough week, which followed a long hard few months. I'm so worn out, even though for once I'm sleeping plenty. Can't wait to go South Carolina in a few days, where I'll eat at Wade's, see the Gibbs Gardens in north Georgia, drive around in the mountains of western North Carolina, & be with people who love me. Not that people don't love me here but love AND Southern cooking AND the Smokies: hey yeah.

Most of the time I don't think about the fact that lots of people, people all over the world & also in my own city, would like me to be dead because I am Jewish. Even my father didn't think about it most of the time, I think, & he escaped the Nazis by the skin of his teeth, leaving Berlin in 1939. This week I do remember & then every paranoid thought I've had oppressses me. Every time I've had to explain that Jews are in danger ("whatever list the blacks/gays/Puerto Ricans/ are on, the Jews are on"). Every time I think about having had no grandparents, aunts, cousins. Every time I hear more about the pogrom this week in Israel. Every time I get white with rage at the equivocation about "chickens coming home to roost" & other disgusting responses to the murder of babies. What about Danny Pearl, I want to say. Pakistan has no Jews. Antisemitism without Jews. Imagine. 

 

This is a poem I wrote probably close to 30 years ago.

 

No Safety

 

All that hate me whisper together against me,

against me do they plot my death.

Yes,

My old friend—

who I trusted—

who ate my bread—

has lifted up his heel against mine.

    Psalm 41

 

 

I

   I pick my friends according to whether they would hide me.

     Once you're betrayed it's too late to choose better.

 
Jews like to argue

who was worst:

The French? in 1940, five million

wrote poison-pen letters

denouncing individual Jews.

 
No, the Austrians—Hitler, Eichmann, Waldheim. All Austrians.

 
No, no, the Romanians

who outraged even the Germans

when they failed to bury the bodies of those they murdered.

 
The war lost, some Nazis jumped into stripes and yellow star—

the Russians shot them all the same.

Some Jews survived death camps and went home

and the Poles shot them

their neighbors, the Poles

their neighbors shot them.

Why bother to shoot the dead?

 

II

 
After Theresienstadt is it obscene to sing?

Unseemly to be alive

when such effort was made to stomp their bones?

 
"They"?

Say "we"

we Jews     still here.

My dear little father ran

rather than give over his bad (gold-filled) teeth.

 
The Jews are historians—remember,

in every generation some rose

against us but we were saved. Who

saved us? Who saves me?

What happens to one

happens to all. If my aunt is killed, where are her bones?

      Hopeful and over-obedient,

      they and we, the scared and the slow,

      neglected political and military science and so were

      twice-naked.

The voice of history

divides the flame of fire.

We don't conquer we merely persevere.

How long will—    will the world look on?

Gnashing upon me with my teeth.

My babies, my children

it's so hard to raise

the dead.

 

 

III

 
I am a Jew.

I announce this

so I won't hear what I do hear when people don't guess

so I can't be a coward, so I can't deny anything.

No way out.

When I stay silent, my bones

wax old through my roaring

all the day long.

 
     . . . But my mother is English

doesn't that make me

half WASP shouldn't I be more

tactful? No one

wants to hear it why don't I

shut up? No one wants to hear it

and why should they

I wasn't there

they weren't there they

didn't do it.

 
The voice of history divides my flame from the fire.

The necromancers arouse themselves with the bones of the dead.

They warm the bones with their bodies

they insert the bones into their nostrils

they incite the bones to answer their questions

I shout at the bones until I am hoarse.

 
"It would have done no good to protest

they would only have turned on

us

  this way at least we got

a case of good wine out of it

a country house

when the old owners

suddenly

decided to leave the country."

The Jews have only their history.

We must remember—but why should we live

for the dead?

The irony of history divides the flames of fire.

I am cursed with memory. My life is spent with grief

and my years with sighing.

My bones are consumed.

No safety.

That's all I'm trying to say.

Next time take me first,

I already know as much as I need to.

 

IV

 

Why should I have

resentments? Didn't

my friend's husband say

he couldn't believe

I am a Jew

and didn't he mean

he likes me and he doesn't like

Jews

and aren't I flattered

to be told I'm not like

them

aren't I flattered to be

my own person not

the product of a people half as old as time?

 
One must forgive one's enemies

but not before they have been hanged.

          —Freud, quoting Heine

 

V

 

My friends think it strange

I carry three passports.

My money's in jewels, my bags are packed.

I pick the friends I pray

will hide me.

Once you're betrayed

it's too late. I am cursed

 
with memory

the flames divide me from my past.

 

 

 

 

 

[I am indebted to Susan Neiman & her book Slow Fire: Jewish Notes from Berlin for material in this work.]

My hometown in the rosy glow of history. 

 

A friend just reminded me how mellow I was a few days ago & asked how I'm doing. 

 

Not mellow, that's for sure.

 

Barbaric Hamas & worse, in a way, their worldwide supporters. 

 

Yeah, let's look at Phillips Ave when this was unthinkable. But then again, it was only a decade after a different unthinkable. 

First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.

~ Octavia E. Butler

 

Exhausted today, this quote is to remind me to stick it out.

I had planned to say something nostalgic today, with a great picture I found of Sioux Falls in the '50s, but I can't. I can't ignore this terrible war, & probably "the single worst day in Israel's history," according to Daniel Gordis. His column, Israel from the Inside, begins: 

 

Take a guess as to how many Israeli civilians were killed in the Yom Kippur War?

Zero. Not a single one.

Bludgeoned by the Syrians and the Egyptians, Israel still managed to fulfill the single most basic obligation of any government—to keep its citizens safe.

In the Yom Kippur War, Israel made massive mistakes with intel that it had and waited far too long to call up reserves. But it did have intel. And the top brass did fight over what to do about the intel.

They just got it wrong.

This week, there was no intel to fight about.

Yesterday, in a single day, Israel lost about as many civilians as it did soldiers in the entire Six Day War. And we're far from done counting.

Yesterday may well have been the worst day in Israel's history.

It's just not clear that there isn't worse to come.

 

[Elinor again] Terrorists are breaking into homes, killing & kidnapping women & children. And the comments I've been reading on articles in the Washington Post almost without exception coldly say, well, that's what they deserve. Facebook a year ago was full of "I stand with Ukraine." I haven't seen a single non-Jew say they stand with Israel today. 

 

Update: I just checked again & yes, one FB friend who isn't Jewish had posted support. It means so much to me & I'll say so as soon as I can breathe.

And if you want to order this shirt for every librarian & reader you know, it's from Raygun, the greatest store in the universe. 

Unsurprising that yesterday's bucolic vegetation was uptown on 79th Street, while today's mysterious but not friendly message was on First Ave near me. Who is being threatened or warned or informed? Punctuation would help, says the editor, pedantically. 

I've never seen pumpkins this big. I wonder who hauled them here. I wonder if they're being guarded. I wonder if I could pick one up. I wonder if they're edible. I wonder why I still long for candy corn. 

Harry is so photogenic, followed always by golden light. This is also the first time he lay companionably on the bed with Lefty (see him?) & me. 

 

I walked around the East Village yesterday happily doing errands. Relishing that I live here. The weather pleases me so I'm happy every day. 

Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
~ William Blake ("The Marriage of Heaven and Hell")

Nothing like fresh candy corn, ditto harvest mix. Oops, we accidentally ate all the pumpkins here, didn't we. Why do we love it so, when it makes our teeth hurt ~ it makes our BABY teeth hurt! ~ & makes me pass out from sugar shock. I will try not to buy more this season, but it's only October 1 & it'll be around for at least a month. Is that why my grandma & adults of her generation had no teeth, from eating so much candy corn? 

 

The first 3 ingredients are corn syrup, sugar & confectioners glaze. I say that with admiration.

This morning's emergency alert from the National Weather Service:

 

A FLASH FLOOD WARNING is in effect for this area until 2:30 PM EDT. This is a dangerous and life-threatening situation. Do not attempt to travel unless you are fleeing an area subject to flooding or under an evacuation order.

 

Fleeing. 

 

I stayed home till 11, when the rain calmed down long enough that I could make it to my office 3 blocks away. The trains weren't running so I canceled karate. Cars up to their headlights on the BQE. Worried texts from friends 500 miles away. 

 

An inch of rain equals about a foot of snow. Just imagine if it were 30° colder! 

This is me not long after I left college for the last time, in 1980. And now I'm thinking of going back.

 

I'm not sure why, maybe because I discovered I have more credits than I thought. I've always said I didn't go to college, but it turns out I did & have almost enough credits for a BA. I spoke with a counselor from City University today about the process of reentering & it seems doable. I'd been at City College, which is part of CUNY (the City University of NY). It wasn't my first school. 

 

As I said, I'm not sure why. I've gotten along fine without a degree so it's definitely not for job opportunities & I've never had the something-left-undone nag I know many people feel. Maybe I need a challenge? Maybe I'm curious ~ has everything changed in education since I was a student? A little bit of me likes the idea of being a very old graduate: not record-breakingly ancient but up there.

 

I think I want them to hand me a degree for a life well lived. 

 

Sigh. 

 

We shall see. 

Happy to be able to be outdoors without drowning. A break in the apocalyptic weather of the last several months. Lifetimes. 

 

And by the way, talking about the weather is not just idle chatter, according to The Economist: 

Lnguists call that crucial "hello" talk "phatic". Bronislaw Malinowski, who coined the term in the 1920s, explained that in phatic talk "ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words." If you know literally nothing about someone you can still safely presume they prefer sun to rain, and begin to establish a connection on that basis. If your bus or train is suddenly stuck, an even better opportunity arises. You can be sure your fellow passengers are not happy about it, and a shared grousing session makes them—and you—feel less alone with your inconvenience.

 

Have a nice day!

Today is the fourth straight day of rain. Yesterday's made our time together in the synagogue cozy. Before the Day of Atonement, I always wonder how I will possibly survive a day of little but praying but I'm also excited for the opportunity to consider my life deeply. The last few years, I've felt bored & antsy but this year I was completely present, at least most of the time. I listened closely to all the sermons & prayers & tried hard to consider how my life has been & how I might want or be able to change. It did feel like a rare chance to shut out the world & be alone with myself &, of course, with others doing the same thing. It would be a miracle if any of that actually worked but maybe the hope is enough?

One does not "find oneself" by pursuing one's self, but on the contrary by pursuing something else and learning through some discipline or routine who one is and wants to be.
~ May Sarton (1912-95)

 

You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know. 

~ William Wilberforce (1759-1833), British politician, philanthropist, & abolitionist

 

Two quotes for Yom Kippur

Harry! So photogenic even as he terrorizes the other cats. 

 

It's also Kol Nidre as well, the start of the Day of Atonement, the last of the Days of Awe, when we have the privilege of examining our behaviors & actions, and try to set things right with our loved ones and in general improve ourselves. I postponed my coffee detox too late so I'm not sure how the fasting will go but I'm ready. 

Sitting in Tompkins Square Park on a fall afternoon, all the time in the world, laughing with a friend, seeing beautiful young people full in their bodies dancing. It doesn't get any better than this. 

Johnny lost his keys on Tuesday. We looked everywhere, sure that he hadn't gone out since he had let himself in the night before. We went through the garbage (the cat, Lefty, likes to push things off the tub into the bin) & a million less & less likely places. Then I moved a cup & there they were, in (almost) plain sight, on the tub. 

 

The next day I buttoned my keys into a shirt pocket, then took the shirt off as soon as I got outside because it was far too warm, went for a walk & when I got home: no keys. 

 

As soon as I get into bed, Lefty usually jumps in between us, filling up on the energy that hums between Johnny & me. 

 

We are getting so in tune that it seems obvious that we would lose our keys a day apart. 

It's a gorgeous day! Everything is gorgeous! The weather is glorious! My ugly backyard is glorious!

It rained all day & now it's fall. 

 

If autumn comes, can snow be far behind?

When I think about what sort of person I would most like to have on a retainer, I think it would be a boss. A boss who could tell me what to do, because that makes everything easy when you're working.

~ Andy Warhol

 

So true, exactly as having an assignment makes it easier to at least start writing a poem. 

I make to-do lists all the time ~ the closest I come to having a boss. 

Tonight begins the days of awe, starting with Rosh Hashanah, new year's 5784. This is a serious not a raucous holiday & I'll be do a lot of reflection & self- examination over the next days. Back to our regular programming on Monday. 

Member #16,394 here, with a PSA from The Cloud Appreciation Society:

Friday September 15th is Cloud Appreciation Day. It is an internationally recognised day when people around the world are encouraged to spend a few moments appreciating the beauty of the sky. On the day, anyone anywhere can contribute their sky for free to our Memory Cloud Atlas and they can explore the Atlas as more photos are added throughout the day.The Cloud Appreciation Society's Memory Cloud Atlas will be launched at one minute after midnight on Friday September 15th, local time. All skies contributed to the Atlas will remain online after Cloud Appreciation Day, preserving the views of cloudspotters for others to explore and serving as a snapshot on a single day of our collective appreciation for the most dynamic, evocative and accessible part of nature: the sky.