The toe of the shoe pivots in the dust
And the man in the black coat turns
Subtract Substack
I was brooding about a grand post about Substack, how this ship is destined to the same fate as Blogger, WordPress, Myspace, Tumblr, etc. Nobody believes in love anymore. I can explain, but why bother, Subtract Substack, it will die anyway.
Lost Humanity
Arestovich said it takes 100 of post trauma years to filter through. My mother, who grew up with Stalin, still consumed with fear. I attempted life gestures of defiance, but how can you be honest with yourself? I desperately lacked wisdom, and no other person was willing or able to share.
I sometimes wonder where and when do people lose humanity. Maybe a 100-year rule to explain. I was in a kosher falafel shop this week. Hungry for human connection more than the greatly overpriced and stale falafel balls. A man from CCCP there said that he hasn’t seen me in a long time. I am still alive! BH, he said, and grimly walked away. That’s how humans act and feel?
My mother lives in an assisted living house. There are about 30 people on her floor and many more in the complex. Not one person ever knocks on her door to ask how she is doing, except some who are paid for it. How traumatized you need to be to lose humanity?
Meir Rhodes is a moron, like most of American BTs, but he got one thing right, he left Crown Heights when the older Russians died out.
Robert Bly
Can anyone celebrate finality better than Robert Bly. This poem entered my life in the 90s, when I was nursing a lost love inside the Jungian library on 39th street. It should have stayed there. But I return to it once every 15 years.
“Those great sweeps of snow that stop suddenly six feet from the house ... Thoughts that go so far. The boy gets out of high school and reads no more books; the son stops calling home. The mother puts down her rolling pin and makes no more bread. And the wife looks at her husband one night at a party, and loves him no more. The energy leaves the wine, and the minister falls leaving the church. It will not come closer the one inside moves back, and the hands touch nothing, and are safe. The father grieves for his son, and will not leave the room where the coffin stands. He turns away from his wife, and she sleeps alone. And the sea lifts and falls all night, the moon goes on through the unattached heavens alone. The toe of the shoe pivots in the dust ... And the man in the black coat turns, and goes back down the hill. No one knows why he came, or why he turned away, and did not climb the hill.”
Chaim Grade
BTW, a novel by the great Chaim Grade has been translated. It comes out this week. Oy, Chaimke, I fear to open it.
תודה על המילים