Oh, Death's teeth, as someone more destructive than I used to say.

Such a place my head is in. I can't sleep. There are too many dead. Too many of them I can hear in my nightmares, anyway.

I'm a different person, I'm miles away from where I was then. But when you lose the road you're on, you go back to the one you used to know.

And the woman I love is long asleep; it's permissible, then, to think all the thoughts she might hear if she was waking. And none of it is anything she needs right now.

But wasn't that how I got here in the first place?

If what you see in my journal upsets you, stay out of my journal.

Click off and fuck off.

It's not hard. It's not.

You have no right to leave me burning, broken and second-guessing everything I'd come to believe I can be.

I have lived a longer life than you can dream. There are choices in my head that would make you wither up and die.

Please do.

I have taken my stones and spittle for being gay. But I also walk in very liberated places, where people value the life of the mind over one's personal life; I cannot imagine it being a life-threatening choice.

I am 'too old to care, too young to count' when it comes to such things, unless you count my annual donations to PFLAG and the ACLU. I came to my psychosexual autonomy in an extremely safe environment, and since then, I have always had the comfort and support of many like-minded, and sometimes like-inclined, friends.

...I hang out with theatre people.

From the comfort now of my well-lit house, with my beloved and committed girlfriend only as far away as the DSL line, with photos of our partnership adorning my corkboard at work and exclaimed over by my regular customers, I would like to say this.

Dear Matthew,
I am sorry.
I would like to tell you that you were the expiatory sacrifice for a cause, that no one now is kicked, cursed, beaten or shamed for the sake of who they love.
Next year, I hope I can tell you that.



Boruch dayan ha'emes.

Migraine.

friede  is on her way. Or will be, before I'm home from work again. I've come to care rather a lot for her, and she helped me by her faith and clearheadedness through a testing time. She goes on my short list of truly godly people, people who live what they profess. And thinking about her embarking made me think about the nature of my life.

I am transient; temporary; I've never lived more than eighteen months in the same house, post-childhood.  Everything I own fits easily in a room, from cooking pots to woollen blankets to books. I need very little, honestly, and this has been honed or whittled or whatever by the times when we had very little. I adore laziness and comfort and luxury, yes; I am a sleepy little gourmand who likes to lounge; but I have had my whole life in a blue naugahyde suitcase and a Jansport before. It's gotten to where I've stopped fearing it, as long as I have $20 in my pocket and a coat to wear.

It's gotten to where I thrive on it, a bit. How much of myself can I shed, this time,  between running from the dark and running for the next train? How far can I go before I ask why I'm going? I know it must be destructive in some way to end up in Russia or Alabama or Chicago at every turning in the road. But I know what I need, and I know sometimes running away means going in the exact right direction. It's become built into who I am.

I run. I do it very well.

I never mean to, but oftentimes I never realise I've done it until I'm in the train, shuddering, wondering where the hell my ticket's going to take me, and feeling this enornous relief that tomorrow I'll wake up somewhere else.

I don't know. I don't know.

 

Learned Boy: And miraculously those five loaves and two fishes were sufficient for everyone to be well fed, and there were five baskets of food leftover besides.
Sapsorrow: Wow.
Learned Boy: Er, and there's some moral, but I'd have to look it up.
Sapsorrow: 's good symbolism. *ganks it*
Sapsorrow: I think the moral is. Feed people.
Learned Boy : Well, the moral is, when one person is willing to give everything, it will be sufficient.
Learned Boy : I think.

The Soldier Who Entered Heaven Alive

 

Once upon a time which is all times and no times and the very best of times, a poor soldier came walking home from the Tsar's army, from twenty years at the wars. He had nothing in the world but three dried biscuits, and the clothes on his shoulders.

He walked along his road until he came to a man playing at a pack of cards. "That's a good game of cards," the soldier said. "You're clever, and you should have something for it. All I have, though, 's this biscuit..." And he gave the card-player one of his three biscuits, though it hurt him to part with it.

"Thank you!" said the card-player. "Better luck come to you, on your road!" And the soldier walked on, though he didn't know the way, really.

He walked and he walked and he came upon a man sewing a shirt. "That's a fine shirt," said the soldier. "I wish I could buy it from you. All I have, though, 's this biscuit..." And he gave the tailor one of his two biscuits, though it hurt him to part with it.

The soldier walked and walked and walked until he came upon a man with nothing in his hands, and not much of anything on his back, but oh, that man had a whistle! He whistled until the soldier forgot all his troubles, and danced in the middle of the road.

"That's a lovely whistle," said the soldier. "You've made me forget my cares, and I thank you. All I have, though, 's this biscuit... I... I'll share it with you." And he broke half of his last biscuit, and he gave it to the man who whistled.

The man stopped whistling, and he smiled at the soldier. "You're a good man," said the man who'd whistled. "You deserve better fortune. Here, take this sack."

The soldier took the sack, though he didn't know what he was  going to do with it. He walked on, and presently this empty, useless, patched-up sack began to get heavy. He took it down from his back and inside there was a pack of cards, a fine new shirt, and a note written on a dry biscuit.

‘Good fortune on your road! You have only to say to a thing, 'GET IN MY SACK!' and there it will be.'

So the soldier walked on, a fine figure in his fine new shirt, and he never lost a game of cards with that pretty deck; he won himself enough money at the cards to buy himself a great deal more than dried biscuits. He found his way to a village, and he found himself a wife. If ever he wanted game for his table, he opened the sack and called out to his quarry, GET IN MY SACK!

And things went on this way for many years.

At last, one day, the soldier was lying in bed beside his wife, and at the foot of the bed he saw a shadowed figure, all hooded and cloaked.

He sat up slowly and he asked, "Madam, are you Death?"

The figure nodded; and it was Lady Death.

The soldier rose, in his nightshirt, and he kissed his sleeping wife, and he bowed low to Lady Death. But as he bowed, he whipped the sack from behind his back, and he opened it and he shouted MY LADY DEATH, GET IN MY SACK!

And Lady Death obeyed him. She had to.

And the soldier tied the mouth of the sack, and hid the sack under his bed in his strongbox, where he kept his pack of cards and all his gold. And things went on this way for many years. Nobody died. Men and women grew old, and when the children's children of the soldier's children grew old, the soldier grew weary. He untied the sack, and bowed to Lady Death, and said 'Now take me.' But Lady Death was afraid of the soldier, and she ran away.

 Years wore on, and she never came back to take the soldier. He sighed, and he started walking. He walked seven pairs of boots into the ground. He walked downward and downward, and he came to the gates of Hell, and he knocked.

HELLO IN THERE! he said. WILL YOU TAKE ME?

And the Devil looked out of his front gate and frowned down at the soldier. "You're not a wicked man!" he said. "I can't take you!"

The  soldier looked the Devil up and down and said, "Where do you suggest I go? I'm not leaving until you tell me."

The Devil said, "You'd best go to Heaven.

The soldier nodded, and said, "Well, then, I will do that. But why don't you give me those hundred souls down there? You've got no use for them. They can come with me."

So the soldier struck an agreement with the devil, who really didn't like guests hanging round his front gate, and he took to the road again, upward and upward, and the hundred souls, they followed him.

After a long time, they came to the gates of Heaven.

 HELLO IN THERE! the soldier said. I'M WEARY! WILL YOU TAKE ME?

The Angel at the gates of Heaven looked down at the soldier, and he said 'Well, it seems you were a good man, but Lady Death did not touch you or lead you here. I'm sorry, we can't let you in."

"But I brought all these souls with me, from Hell!"

The Angel nodded, and said "They may pass, and enter Heaven."

The soldier hung about the gates for a moment, and watched the hundred souls file into Heaven. As the last soul was about to pass the gate, the soldier whistled, a ruby whistle, a tune to make anyone forget their cares. He had learnt it years ago. And that last soul turned.

The soldier said, "I helped you up out of Hell. Help me now."

He gave that soul his sack, and as the soul passed on into Heaven and the gate was inching shut, the soul cried out in a voice like a joyful whistle, SOLDIER, GET IN MY SACK! And so the soldier finally got into Heaven.

 

I associate with the best minds of my generation.

(Finish your Howl moment...)

I firmly believe this. I believe if you put the ten or so of us in a dire and mad situation, we'd sit on crates with our heads in our hands for half an hour, and then we'd collaborate and find a way to somehow do something.

So tonight I was thinking, one way and another, about the Churban and what it meant for the generation that was our age. I imagined everything closing down, the intellectual locks snapping in the doorframes of the universities, all metallic and cold. If you -- if you took us out of our environment, away from the learning we all need like air, what would happen to our minds? If we all stood with our backs pressed one against the other, would the panic be greater, or less?

And what would we do? What could we do?
So often -- and I keep getting this image of young people crowded up in shop thresholds, out of the rain a bit, but still with no place to go, and the streets sleety and muddy and filled with fear -- so often there was no choice, and all you had left to you was this bold mad willingness to say See how I die, then; see how I die.

And I don't know if I'd be brave enough. I can't stop thinking I'm just not -- I'm not brave.
I couldn't pick up the sword and defend myself. I know it. Unless someone pulled me to safety, I'd pass under the sword, and to slaughter.

I'm going to New York.

I will not, this Day of Atonements, beat my breast and bring my imagined sins to the Righteous Judge. Because they're not mine.

But I'm going to New York.

There are some people to whom I need to speak.
I don't forgive them.
I don't forgive him.
I don't want them to think they have a right to be written under the good, and the decent, and the kind, and the true, in the Book of All Life.

I want to see what they say.
I want to see what they argue.

I am not a beautiful woman. I was not a pretty little girl. That doesn't matter in the least; what happened didn't make me ugly. It's not my fault, it wasn't me.

I think I might even be sane.

Before G-d, I don't think I believed any of that, until tonight. Someone entirely more stubborn than me crammed it into my head and packed it down and stomped on it a few times.
He will insist on crunching his lollies, though...

Mood: predatory

Poll #354307 The Days of Awe Debate
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10

To fast or not to fast?

I wonder if I'll get answers from complete strangers. That'll be cool.

Mood: cheerful