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The Cycle of Life in Three Paragraphs
Well, the Holy Days are almost done. Tonight we combine Shemini Atzeret and Simcha Torah that I have discussed in previous pieces. Then we return to the normal cycle of events. Day follows day, week follows week, the New Moon follows the New Moon, and years follow the years. Mystically, this is the first month of the year, 5,775 years since the founding of my religion, so the sages calculate. Yeah, I suspect that a few of my more scientifically inclined friends jaws will drop here. But for many of us, we find no discrepancy between scientific accounts and Biblical accounts. However, it is more than I care to go into here.
What does all this observing of the cycles of life portend? Quite frankly, we only opine. We don’t know with any degree of certainty. The cycles certainly appear to mirror specific prophetic events that are to occur at some future time. It is a bit like unraveling the Unified Field Theory. Many claim to have deep insights into both, but few actually do. Einstein felt that if you cannot explain something to a child, you really do not have a very good grasp of the subject. I agree.
Anyway. Talk radio plays in the background this sunny and breezy Autumn morning in the land where all is still green. Kippur the budgie happily sings along to his favorite advertising jingles. Snookums is in village “gathering her food from afar”. And I sit here, bemused with the moment where my mind touches both the mundane and the heaven, and lament over taking the last sip of the mornings coffee.
Good morning!
Cycles within cycles, within cycles
It was the last rainy morning today, but a moderate breeze blew the rains east, leaving a few scattered showers in its wake. By evening, the skies will clear and the temperatures will fall to the 60’s, which is darned chilly for us. The house is filled with the aroma of lamb cooking as Snookums prepares lamb and lintel stew for our guests tonight. This is day six of Sukkot, and if you all are getting as weary of hearing about the holy days as I am, there is only one more day to go to end Sukkot.
Tonight is our turn to host. It will be a bit too chilly to dine in the Sukkah, so we will go out for a brief dedication ceremony that I’ll not force upon you here, then return to the house for desserts following the meal.
However, this doesn’t end the holy days. There is a mysterious day that we are commanded to observe, called mystically Shemini Atzeret. The Eighth Day. We are not instructed how to observe it, we are just commanded to not it. I have many ideas of why this day is hidden, most of which are extremely lengthy to go into here, so we simply gather together to note the day. That evening, we finish the holy days with a ceremony we call Simchat Torah, or Joy of the Torah. It is not a biblically ordered holy day, but since we begin the yearly readings from the Torah Scroll next Shabbat, the Torah needs to be re-rolled. It is a festive event, and the congregation takes turns dancing around the room with one of the two Torah Scrolls we have, followed by the rewinding of the scrolls to begin the New Year.
After all that, routine once again rules the day. The Shabbats come and go. The New Moons (Rosh Chodesh) come and go. The tides ebb. The tides flow. And cycles that are too vast in scale for man to perceive rule.
Good morning!
Sukkot, frazzled wimmen, and Ebola
It is almost noon before I get a chance to sit down and write a few paragraphs this morning. The drizzling rains are still drizzling, and today the landscape actually has a few puddles, meaning that the waters have finally soaked deeply into the arid soil.
My tummy is still pleasantly burning a bit from the spicy breakfast sausage Snookums made up for me. Long rain spells bring out a desire for hot chocolate and classical music, but this sucky diabetes is running off the glucose scale this week, so black coffee will have to fill the gap. Still, it is a treat since I normally have just two cups in the morning.
Tonight is the 5th day of Sukkot. Various members of my congregation host a night each of the seven days and we travel to a new house each night. Tomorrow night 
is my night, and Snookums is happily working herself into a frazzle. Don’t know what it is about wimmen and special days that they will rise early, dust, clean, cook, buy, and then collapse each night in happy fatigue as they prepare for the event. Then everybody shows up, has a good few hours, and then the cleanup starts. Nevertheless, the dust will have hardly cleared before she starts thinking about how she will things next year to make it even better.
And I? Well, for starters, if Snookums is happy, I am happy. That is the natural order of things. So I practice saying the blessings, prepare to finish the sukkah decorations, and keep the grumbling to myself. Today I will try to find a time between the rain bands to install decorative lights in the sukkah to give the effect of starlight thru the open roof. Why? Because it is pretty, and will illuminate the sukkah, and it pleases Snookums.
However, since it is raining, we won’t serve meals in the sukkah. If the rain stops, we will do the blessings out by the sukkah, and retire to the house for the festivities. So … schlep extra tables from afar, buy some posies to make the place pretty, and try to find time to remember just why I am doing this. The reasons are many, but far too complicated to go into in this little morning blog.
Today’s news: Health worker gets Ebola, and right off the bat the ‘experts’ know why. I am nonplussed.
With that, good morning!
My family (and a practice blog)
I have friends in the animal rescue community who are real mavens at taking pictures of dogs.
But I am not sure they would have anymore luck that I do with captureing them in their cutest poses. They instinctively know how to move 1/8 of a second before the shutter clicks. I realised today that I didn’t have any photos to release in the even they went astray and thought it would be a good idea to get some pictures. The beagle is purebred, so probably just saying she was a beagle and was microchipped would be all that was necessary to put on a flyer and send to the shelters around here.
‘Becca is the beagle. I greet her with “Becca da beegal … ” as a fun way of calling her because she always associates that with friendly time. Not that she is real big on games. She is about the most serious and single minded dog I have ever owned, and once she gets something on her mind, her ears seem to shut off.
She has a strong drive to be the pack leader of the other dogs, and we have had to be very stern with her and her agression. She doesn’t realise that the other two dogs are very feral, and have been rescued after surviving in wild Texas areas.
‘Becca is the first dog I have ever paid for. I bought her a short time after a puppy Snookums really loved had to be put down because of serious neural injurys. Snook didn’t want a dog that resembled the one that passed, and beagle are small and cute as puppies, and that is the one she wanted. She is just about three now.
The white dog is Jenna. Odd name for a dog, but the neighbor boy who found her and talked Snookums into taking her since his gramma would not even let him bring her into her yard named her that. So we kept the name, and he still visits her from time to time when he gets off the school bus. We have no idea of Jennas lineage. She was a tiny white furball wehen we got her, but now she is a bit larger than most german shepards, has springy hair like a terrier, and the markings of a staffordshire terrier.
She is very eager to please, and has sort of become my dog by default. I really do need to work with her more than I do. She almost begs to learn.
The black one is Annie Annie. Or just Annie. We did the double Annie thing because we had a dog named Hannah, and it was hard for her to distinguish between Annie and Hannah. Annie followed Snookums home one day. She was starved to emiciation and I wasn’t sure she was going to survive. Apparently she kept going by eating night crawlers, and even today, she’ll bring one in from time to time that she finds in the back yard. We fed her puppy rich food and protein supplements to get her weight up. I think she has a lot of labradore retriever in her, but she isn’t double coated like a lab is.
So … there it is. Another blogger that is gaga over his dogs.
Bring on the latter rains.
Rain has arrived in this parched parcel of Texas. Long, drizzly, soaking rains that go deep into the soil. It will take three days of this kind of rain to permeate the soil and it looks like we just might get those rains.
So it seemed like a good day to quietly celebrate Shabbat at home. I am not certain yet, but the beagle has finally decided that a rainy day is not reason enough to poop or piddle on the guest room carpet. It has taken a few years to accomplish that. But then, the inclement weather is continuing, so we wait with bated breath.
Kippur, the budgie, is yeeping and squawking with happiness. I don’t know what it is about bad weather that fires her up. We have quite a relationship. Her cage is right by my workstation where we can interact from time to time. Workstation. If you can call what I do work. No hairy eyed boss monitors my ‘work’, no time clock regulates my day, no bean counter measures my output. And that all is just fine with me!
Not much happy news on the newsfeeds. Some stupid teenage girls run off to join ISIS now wish they hadn’t. Too bad. Romance is an expensive hobby. They are now burdened with domineering husbands, babies and a life of drudgery. It’s their fate … not mine. And a local politician has gone negative in her losing bid to be the next governor. Seems that she just can’t run from her past.
The Large Hadron Collider is now being cooled down for a start early next year, after a two year hiatus of rebuilding to double its energy. Cool. Each particle it fires has the same energy as a freight train at speed. Makes me wonder what would happen if one of those supercharged particles got away from them.
And the blogs are thin today as the latest wave of dissenters pulled up stakes from blogger. Some returned, some are keeping both sites going, and a couple are gone. I am not so sure what this portends long term.
With all that, and actually more that is too complex to discuss here, my morning starts.
Good morning!
~r
A little experiment
It has been a “dust-up” day.
My tiff with SU has really caused more of a brou-ha-ha than I intended. Not that I really mind it when the dust flies. A good rebellion clears the air.
But really, I was just trying to resume my ‘coffee’ posts. It is back to the old way of doing things. I just hate making three posts for the same piece. blogster isn’t all that link friendly with facebook, so fluff will also go on WordPress, and more serious stuff on blogger. blogger and WordPress work seamlessly with facebook, and they don’t care who I link to or why.
I should have known that SU wasn’t the place for me. When you get into a forum type of environment, they are usually managed by content Nazi’s who seem to find each other. Smaller blogsites like blogster seem a bit like that too, so perhaps the absentee landlord here has been a blessing in disguise, though I really do wish for a more powerful site where I could both socialize and blog.
Anyways (Yes, thinking of you MzJ!). It is early afternoon. Snooks is preparing the house for my day of hosting the congregational Sukkot on Monday. Stalwart woman she is, she always tries to make me look good. However, the forecast is saying a 70% chance of rain, so we also need to prepare to move it indoors if the situation requires it.
So’s (better than anyhoo?). It is late afternoon, and I remember my vows. “Thou shalt write. Every day thou shalt write of it”
Good afternoon!
~r
A sukkah, a bazaar, and a souk
Well, the sukkah is up and ready for decoration. Some of you have been following me as I decided to build one this year. I started out with really quite big plans for one, large enough to seat ten or twelve people, and to but a bed into it so sleep in.
As it turned out, I built a much smaller, more traditional one. Things always have a way of working out in spite of ourselves. Some men from our small congregation decided to step up to the plate to build a more decorative sukkah for our tiny synagogue, then make the rounds to build others.
So it was up at daylight, and over to the shul, as we call it, and put up the river cane as a decoration, then they went over to a members house to build theirs … and I hardly had time to settle down before they all pulled up in my driveway.
I wanted to show the construction in stages, but didn’t have time to stop and make the pics since the crew was making short work of the process.
The corners are of bamboo, the walls are made of reed fencing, and reed fencing is on the floor as a carpet. The roof is of river cane that was cut from a rattlesnake infested canebrake along the Little River, and the men went out and gathered enough for everyone. The rule for the roof covering is that is should be of material that can be pulled from the ground, as opposed to being cut from a branch or limb. Cutting cane is permitted, because theoretically, you *could* pull it from the ground. If you were the Hulk.
Sukkah, by the way, is a Semitic word for a rude hut, and it survives in Arab lands in bazaars, where the individual booths are called souks. It can be a merchants booth, it can be a tent, it can be a collection of branches. Sukkot in Israel is a fall observance in which the Bible commands Jews to dwell in tents (sukkahs) during the five day period. A sukkah in this sense protects one from the sun, not the rain. One must be able to see some of the stars through the roof. Some orthodox Jews do actually live in them, and even sleep in them when it is raining, but for most, it is a symbolic thing, and they simply eat the evening meal in them.
So … now the roof is laid, the walls are up a rough floor of reeds is laid, and I am ready for Sukkot.
A few pics:
A Walmart Mystic
I never wanted to be a mystic, and had I known what a mystic really was, I would have desired it even less. Nevertheless, there is something about hermetic Gnosticism that ever tugs at me, drawing down the arcane paths of esoteric knowledge. I have studied at the feet of evil men, holy men and even a few rogues. Oddly, the rogues were the more reliable teachers.
Visible magic is nearly always deceptive. It is the finger that appears to point toward God, but then the finger stealthily becomes the object of veneration, an idol, if you will. A mystic sees beyond the smoke, through the mirrors, and beholds the framework of the illusion. Though a mystic discerns the false, he commonly does not discern truth either.
This one-side discernment makes most mystics extremely unreliable guides. The mystics themselves become deceived with their myopic view, mistaking it for spiritual depth. Though they expose the lie, they misrepresent the truth, even when they have your best interest at heart.
Kabbalist (as opposed to the Madonna type hermetic Quabalism) sometimes reveal breathtaking clues into the vast mind of the Creator, yet fail to heal one person with their shadow, nor improve their relationship with that same Creator. They perceive the intricacies of the Grand Architect much the same way I perceive the x-rays of a microchip. The harmony of the circuit paths are awe inspiring in their sophistication, but I do not know what any of them do, nor do I know how to harness their intricacy.
Over time, I have harnessed great power, only to have that power quickly dissipate like smoke, and the knowledge of how I made things happen just disappeared. Few, if any, mystics today can maintain that level of authority.
I do know the secret, of course. My problem is the level of arrogance that resides in me. To me, true heroes never bow to any one or any thing. Instead of being a child who carefully watches his father and imitates him, I want to be the father and I want the universe to imitate me. I can’t seem to get beyond that notion for very long.
So on this day of atonement, Yom Kippur in the native tongue, I afflict my soul.
Good morning!
The beginnings of a sukkah
This is what a sukkah looks like when UPS delivers the basic construction elements.
10 – Bamboo poles, 3″ x 8′
4 – rolls of reed fencing, 8′ x 16′
And after the packages are opened, and laid out for inspection. It all looks good!!
The sukkah will be attached to this carport, and extend out into the driveway five feet. It is a large sukkah of around 10′ by 18′ … but one night during the festivities, I will host my congregation and expect around ten to twelve guests.
It will be substantially complete with the walls and roof supports up, then a day or two before the holy day, some of the men and women of the congregation will come by and put reeds on the roof. Another tradition is that one must be able to see the stars through the roof. Another tradition is that the roofing material needs to be ‘pulled’ from the ground, so using tree branches is out. Of course, I am not going to require that the river cane up be pulled up, but rather cut it close to the ground. We make our concessions ..
I will install a long table or two for the guest night, but the rest of the time I will have a much smaller table in it for meals. Meals will be prepared in the house and carried out to the sukkah
I will put my studio day bed in one corner and sleep there. It will also serve as a more comfortable seat than the folding chairs. A remnant of carpeting will cover the floor, and a grounded plug will provide power to a floor lamp for illumination. I may put white LED Christmas lights up in the river canes to provide additional illumination.
So begins the process of building up for the High Holy Days. Tonight is Rosh Hashannah, the New Year on the lunar calendar. I prefer to call the day Yom Truah, or day of the trumpets, because on this day throughout the world, the shofar, or rams horn, is blown in all the synagogues. Why? Because we are instructed to.
I will be posting progress reports when I begin constructing it …
A solution to aircraft overcrowding.
There has been a lot reports of travelers rage over the seat crowding by the airline bean counters. Now someone comes up with a seat lock to stop the hapless passenger ahead of them from reclining their seats.
I think that the airlines are missing something here. The old way of flying people does not lend its way to their problem of getting more passengers into the aluminum tube. I worked late through the night at a new plan for maximizing passengers on flights.
Kennels!
Yes! Just like the doggie kennels, the airlines should design people kennels. Each kennel could be the size of an average person, and everyone could take as much luggage aboard as they could get into the kennel with them and lock the door. Extra-large kennels could be sold for those needing or wanting the extra room. Of course, the airlines would need to charge more for the extra-large kennels so that they can keep the profits up. The kennels could be stacked six or seven high, and the luggage compartments on the aircraft could be removed. In addition, there wouldn’t be an aisle on the plane, nor any wasted room overhead since.
A small compartment in the kennel could hold an assortment of disposable bags that are designed to fit the average posterior for bathroom calls, and that would eliminate the wasted space restrooms take up.
The kennels would be loaded by baggage people, eliminating cabin crews entirely. The happy passenger could go to a special loading room that serves all the airlines, go through a thorough cavity search, x-rays and some charming harassment from the TSA, and then be loaded on a conveyer belt to an automatic waiting and sorting area until their flight is ready.
Of course, people would occasionally be sent to wrong destinations, but since they are already inspected and encaged, they could be quickly forwarded by the baggage handlers onward to their proper destination.
Passenger conflicts would be outdated because everyone is secure in their own space. Moreover, there are no stewards aboard to argue with. A complementary bag of peanuts would also be included in the small compartment. Of course, beverages and such would be a problem. Perhaps a self-service beverage cooler with credit card slot would take the place of serving carts.
I haven’t looked at every possible problem of course, but from a logistical standpoint, this is something that the profit savvy airlines should consider.
Rusty's Armory 