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HILLEL AT THE GOLDEN DRAGON
I am honored that this poem was just published in the Fall/Winter Issue of the Atlanta Review, I had dinner the other night with Rav Hillel in a small Chinese place just off Mott Street. I asked him what it was like in the afterlife, after all the years. It gets a bit boring, he…
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ADAGE
You want to yell at him, tell him to stop, that it is too soon, that he is not ready, cannot be, won’t be for months to come, but you know he will not listen to you standing, gesticulating, imagining a stone in your hand, shattering the glass walls, the crackling, gaining his full attention…
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LE CINÉMA
Watching French movies you know why Hollywood seems less real than the giant letters stuck like pushpins into a hillside. Even in translation laughter remains universal but you begin to think in word pictures that have utterly no meaning le neige gris la belle chat la lumiere fantastique and you imagine dreaming in a tongue…
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HUMOR
Humor is highly subjective and what will make you laugh is just as likely to elicit a groan, or worse, from me. Things I find funny you are likely to think absurd or foolish. It has always been this way and this is how it will likely continue, so funny will remain the final proof…
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SUMMER, THEN
For three days I was a short order cook a change from my table duties when the regular guy decided that a night of drinking didn’t end when the bar closed and broke back in through the rotting back door that was always next on the list of things to be fixed. The owner, my…
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WATING GAME
We pull in to the parking lot where our mailboxes are arrayed like so many graves at Arlington, or more like the drawers in a low cost mausoleum. This is the new Postal Service, sharing the burden of the need to cut costs even at the expense of services. Standing nearby are two Sandhill Cranes…
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MEDITATION
A wise Buddhist teacher once told me that anything you do, if you do it mindfully, can be a form of meditation, and I have taken this into my practice, albeit with mixed success, but that is one reason they call it practice. Walking silently, following your breath in and out, aware of your feet,…
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The spider wandered around the corner of the ceiling and wall of the bathroom, one she called a daddy longlegs, although most spiders of my acquaintance have rather long legs using my proportions as a basis for comparison, and it was my task to deal with it. It was harmless, as are most of his…
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As a young child I recall my mother justifying all manner of disasters based on miscommunication, mostly hers, by saying, “Does Macy’s talk to Bloomingdale’s?” I didn’t care, no one did and the excuse never worked as far as I can tell, and I now know from experience, that of course they talked to each…
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The question of the day is would you rather be a turtle or a snail, not to be sung to any melody by Paul Simon. Think carefully, for one day the question will have real impact and you will get your answer with a permanence that merits the most careful consideration. Today may or may…
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an old writer and his words 