Just plain old Life

It is Time

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It’s time to write a book. Or at least it’s time to put my files in order. Or maybe buy that scanner and get rid of all that paper. Or start an online course or find a good book but of course I am doing none of it. All I tend to do is run down my battery on my laptop.

Although I did make a “Mellow” playlist this morning on Spotify. Kudos (there is probably a more “woke” word than that) to Lab/Shul for their link to a Healing Playlist. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6ZLvq2LbdOxDn6MMsBFA1B

It probably isn’t for everyone, but it felt good to at least do something. (PS – it is possible the link won’t work unless you have Spotify — above my pay grade.)

I don’t know about you, but I feel somewhat powerless. I am observing the laws of social distancing and sheltering in place. Whoever came up with these phrases did a good job knitting them into our shared language pool. I am washing my hands way more than ever before and have discovered that the creases in between my fingers are part of my hands as are the backs or tops and they all need to be scrubbed in the 2X Happy Birthday ritual. I am not making fun of any of this. I am commenting to myself how we create and develop new social norms.

What is true for me is that as isolating as all of this can be, the reality that it teaches me is that we are part of the same collective. There is an organic connection between us, and the virus is teaching us to be conscious that we are connected in many more ways than we ever thought. It is teaching us to be appreciative of the people who care for us like the medical community, like the education community, like the people who stock the shelves of our grocery stores, like the manager at Publix who greeted everyone who was in line to get into the store cheerfully, handing them an already sanitized cart.

It is making us adapt in large and small ways. Like I thought we were making chicken soup today but there was no chicken. So, I am going to try and recreate my mother’s sweet and sour cabbage borscht. (I guess the book will have to wait.) It is reminding us to be kinder It is connecting us even as it separates us. Loudly and clearly it says: this is a very small world and what happens in China happens here. And wouldn’t it be great if at the end of the day it motivated our world to work collectively and cooperatively because all borders are really artificial.

Vulnerable

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She beat me to it. Not that I was asked to write for the NY Times Sunday Review, but I so resonated with Mary Pipher’s piece: “I Love the World, but I Cannot Stay”. Thinking about death and thinking about your own dying is not something we do very often. Although being in the Rabbi business I have seen a lot of end of life scenarios and shared many diverse and personal rituals of passing. They invariably remind me in some unexpected way of my own time in this realm of existence and when or how it will end.

The coronavirus has not helped. The media reports that the virus is especially lethal to our elderly and those with underlying medical conditions. No matter what my heart and spirit say – one of those is me. I read every article about how to protect yourself. I am washing my hands many more times a day. I am trying not to touch my face but even just writing these words makes my nose itch. And I want in Pipher’s words: “to die young as late as possible.” But it’s not in my control no matter how much hand sanitizer I rub into my hands.

It brings me to Purim, our holiday of the month. Esther is waiting in the wings to appear in the King’s bedroom. Mordechai is watching and observing how the virus of hatred and prejudice is spreading in the ante chambers of Haman’s mind. Ahasuerus is oblivious just wanting to keep the party going enjoying the trappings of power. And God is hinting that we better work this out amongst ourselves since HE/SHE is silent throughout the book.

And it is not quite a pandemic as we hold our breaths to see what and where the Coronavirus will do with itself and how it will infiltrate our lives as we go from supermarket to pharmacy to see if there has been a delivery of Purell. Yesterday I was in a meeting where we were planning a community gathering for a month from now and we knew out loud that the public aspect of the assembly was at risk since no one knew what the future held.

Of course, even before we had ever heard of the term Coronavirus, no one knew what the future held. Life is really about that even if we aren’t ready to admit it. Existentially every step is precarious, and every handshake exchange is more than a willingness to be open and extend good wishes of peace and harmony. Even before the virus emerged to place our finitude and fear at the center of our daily story, we transferred our own genetic material to each other with barely a touch.

The struggle for me is to find balance and act appropriately caring for myself and others. A friend of mine reminded me that in the Mussar world it is “equanimity” that we need. In Hebrew the term is “Menuchat Hanefesh” and it translates loosely as “rest for the soul” or “tranquility”. But here is the thing about the Mussar teachers: it is not a passive soul trait. It is not wait and see. It is not blind trust and leaving it all in the hands of God. It is balance. Finding your way through these corridors of confusion and living with both joy and appropriate caution. Finding a place for your anxiety and channeling it to proper safeguards. Finding the courage to be and not letting fear paralyze.

It is amazing how something so small that you cannot see with your naked eye can be such a large test for our society. The days and weeks ahead will tell us if we fail or succeed. And success is not just about a vaccine or cure. Success is government working in the interest of the people. Success is all of us caring compassionately for each other. Success is love is love is love.

IMHO 2

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We came home from LA last night and turned on CNN to see if the world had changed while we were flying across the country. Cuomo was hosting a town hall conversation with Bernie Sanders from Charleston, South Carolina. We tuned in somewhere in the middle so I didn’t hear all the questions but there were enough that were good and telling and I like the way Bernie answered many of them fairly directly and unapologetically. I think that distinguishes him from lots of the other candidates. That doesn’t mean I like all of his answers or think he is “smart” to insist on using the word “socialist” in his description of himself as a democratic socialist. But you “gotta” admire his grit.

But there was one response to a question from a Jewish student that bothered me as much as some of his other answers. He was asked about his Jewish identity and what it means for him to be Jewish. I do not doubt the authenticity of his answer which was Holocaust based. He remembered growing up in a neighborhood where people had tattoos on their arms. He recounts that his father’s family was wiped out by Hitler and when “my brother and I, and our wives, went to Poland to the town he was born in. He fled terrible poverty and antisemitism. The people in town, very nice people, took us to a place where the Nazis had the Jewish people dig a grave and shot them all; 300 people in there….”

It isn’t that he was profoundly affected by the Holocaust. There is barely a Jew who consciously or unconsciously isn’t. For me, it is that Jewish identity can’t be linked to Auschwitz and death alone. I wanted to hear about values and principles that are informed by Judaism and the Jewish experience. I wanted to hear about a vision and a dream that was primed by a Jewish engine that would look forward and not backwards. I guess it’s the Rabbi thing in me.

That doesn’t mean I don’t admire him. It also doesn’t mean that I have decided to vote for him either (but I will have to make up my mind fairly soon as my mail in Florida ballot is sitting on my desk). His recent tweet about AIPAC is terribly disturbing. He writes that “The Israeli people have the right to live in peace and security. So do the Palestinian people. I remain concerned about the platform AIPAC provides for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights. For that reason, I will not attend their conference.”

Sad. Disturbing. Painful. Palestinians deserve to live in peace and security. True! Israelis deserve to live in peace and security. True! But not attending an AIPAC Conference as a leader of the Democratic party sends a terrible message. According to AIPAC leadership he has never attended an AIPAC Conference. One wonders how committed he is to a viable Israel. One wonders (and this is terrible) what he learned standing at the grave of 300 Jews in his father’s Polish town. Go to the conference Bernie.

We Need To Do More

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About 200 hundred of us gathered in front of the West Palm Beach Library to protest the refusal of the senate to call witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald J Trump. Organized by Moveon.org it was one of several hundred across the country and quickly widened to reject his acquittal. With chants of “Vote them out” and cars honking approval people held up elaborate signs and placards expressing their anger and dismay at the state of our union.

It’s been a long time since I was at a political rally. My first was at Brandeis protesting nuclear proliferation on the streets of Boston. That was a long time ago and I think it was on the second day of Sukkot and as we marched through some of the Jewish sections of town, we were yelled at for desecrating a holiday. But that’s ancient history. Nobody yelled at us last night and the pro-Trump truck they thought might be circling the block to intimidate us never showed. So, it was a genteel and civilized rally with lots of police presence who hung out with us and made sure we kept the sidewalk clear. It definitely was good to have them there.

But I felt funny being there. Not that I disagreed with any of the sentiments expressed. I yelled “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donald Trump’s got to go” with the best of them. But I’m not a placard kind of guy. I sort of walked around the crowd observing that it seemed to me to skew older, female and white. I looked for people I know and was surprised to find some from my building. But I played it too cool. With no criticism of the organizers or participants intended I felt it and I were missing a kind of passion. If we are going to make our voices heard in November in an effective way, we are going to need to hook into an emotional component that will animate our actions. Resignation will not motivate us. We need both a candidate that can inspire us and a simple emotional laden message that will unify us.

This is what my participation taught me. We have work to do to take back the values of an honest, inclusive, just America we believe in. I’m glad I was at the rally and if it did nothing else it showed me that I need to do more. And I guess the message of this blog is: We all do. It is time to take back our country.

A Ball Drops

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A Ball Drops

The end of year’s New York Times magazine section is my favorite. Since 1996, it has been dedicated to “The Lives They Lived”, people of some fame whose lives impacted the world they colored and enhanced. They choose an interesting mix of people. Some famous; some people who struggle through life with ups and downs, successes and failures, repeated attempts to resolve something unfinished in their lives. Always striving these are people of accomplishments but not necessarily the kind that leads to the fame or fortune we expect of front-page New York Times obituaries.

Among the people I am drawn to is Sylvain Bromberger. In 1940, a 15 year old Belgian Jew, he and his family were granted visas to travel to Portugal by the then unknown Portuguese consul general named Aristides de Sousa Mendes. Mendes defied the Portuguese’s government’s directive and saved tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Hitler. Severely reprimanded by his government Mendes died in poverty and disgrace in 1954. Over the course of his life as a professor at MIT and a philosopher of science, Bromberger wanted to know “why”. Why was his family saved? Why is the earth’s circumference 24,901 miles? Why questions he teaches us uncover the hidden and reveal the unknown, link what is seemingly unconnected. Bromberger dedicated one of his books to Mendes.

The people remembered don’t live perfect lives. Who does? But somehow their accomplishments are tied to their challenges; their successes are bound up with their defeats. One thing they all teach me: there are so many ways to make a difference. These people take the raw material we call living, shaping and fabricating it into a story only they can tell. Well that’s not 100% true. Sometimes the raw material of life formats them. And the plot is not always pretty.

When I was a young rabbinic student I remember taking inspiration from a traditional source and writing: “Everyone is born unique into this world; every soul is sacred.” I still believe that. We all have a purpose whether divinely ordained or a combination of genetic material modified by our environment, or both.

Anne V. Coates was a film editor. She won an Oscar for “Lawrence of Arabia”, discerning through her art that Peter O Toole’s blue eyes are an oasis in the desert and the Arabian sun is as much a star as Omar Sharif. She worked through more than than 30 miles of footage. Her genius was finding the right cut and freezing it into eternity.

There is a reason we are alive. Tonight a ball drops in Times Square at midnight. It will finish its descent with the numbers 2019. Sylvain Bromberger would ask us to find time this year with why questions that would help us discover the hidden arc of our lives. Anne Coates invites us to run the footage of however many years we have lived and find the clip worthy of an Oscar. Not melancholy but celebration. Not disappointment but enchantment. Not sadness but joy. Each of us is on a journey towards infinity. The lives we live are the most precious gift the universe bestows.

Turning the Clocks Back

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Fall BackLast night we turned the clocks back an hour. And people celebrate with an extra hour of sleep. I am not that lucky. I am up early every morning no matter what time I went to bed or what time the clock says. So I did what I love to do on Sunday mornings – put on some music and read the Sunday Times. The music I choose often depends on my mood but it has to be readable. Today I chose my Vietnam era music playlist.

It probably has something to do with the image of an African American Pastor from Emanuel Church in Charleston, SC and the Tree of Life Synagogue’s Rabbi standing face to face, arm in arm, in the three-column picture on the front page of the paper. But the music did not resonate. I picked two other playlists and then resigned myself to the one I call “folk music I like”. It has a lot of Simon and Garfunkel. You know: “Hello darkness … Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio … Like a bridge over troubled waters …”

I haven’t finished the paper yet but I have seen at least three articles on anti-Semitism and two full-page ads. The ADL leads with “Never Again. Never is now,” while an article not very far from it asks: “Is It Safe to Be Jewish in New York?” So I hate to say this and I hate to think this but I ask, what is turning back in America? It isn’t just the clocks. It is the sense of complacency and comfort that it can’t happen here. I used to say: America is different. America is an experiment in understanding. America is one of the only countries where there has never been a pogrom.

Technically that is probably still true. (A pogrom is usually associated with an organized or government sponsored massacre.) But a massacre this was and I believe that some responsibility lies with how much vicious hate rhetoric spews out of the head of our government. The clock is teaching. We are falling back into racial and religious divides. We are falling back into anti-immigrant rifts. We are falling back into the rule of violence and we better wake up. It can happen here. It did happen here. The question is what do we do about it.

By not being complacent.

By being aware.

By examining ourselves and our unspoken prejudices.

By forging alliances.

By breaking down walls.

By breaking the silence.

By talking about it.

By calling out hatred and prejudice whenever we see it or hear it.

By calling our elected officials to task.

By exercising our sacred civic duties and getting involved.

By not taking anything for granted – neither our faith, our freedom or our future.

 

Garage Talk

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I don’t know if I can do justice to this conversation. It happened yesterday in my garage. Our remote control openers and the secondary opener affixed to the wall near the laundry room door were not working. I called Lift Master and pushed the purple button to reset the codes but nothing happened. I was told I needed a new logic board and I heard “time to call for service.”

Andy came. He asked me the embarrassing question first: Had I changed the batteries? But it soon became clear that we did indeed need a new board in one of the units and I hung out with him as he was working, always thinking, maybe I can learn how to do this myself. It can’t be a Jewish gene that I am so inept when it comes to fixing things.

So we talked – about how long have we lived here, who built the house, bluegrass music which he played, and the people who control the world. That’s where my antennas went up. We got there through a musician friend of his who is addicted to the news. He listens and gets agitated, listens some more and gets aggravated until he is almost apoplectic and beside himself. “It is no good” Andy said, “and a waste of time. Does he think that we are in control of the world; does he think that the politicians or even the President has real power? It is those above; it is that small cabal (my word not his) of people who run everything. We are just puppets in a Punch and Judy show.”

By this time I just wanted the garage door fixed. But I probed. “Who are these people?” I don’t know what I would have done if I heard the words Elders of Zion or some such synonym. I did get – “well maybe the Free Masons” with a quick disclaimer of “well we really don’t know. They want it that way. And anyway, how long do you think we have on this earth? “ As a species or individual?”, I asked. “Ninety years, if you are lucky, a drop in time. Live it well and live it now. It doesn’t do any good to worry about what you can’t fix.”

I could’ve, should’ve countered his premise. But the garage doors were going up and down and every button was doings its appointed task. I think we all have an appointed task. I think we all have roles to play and a world to change for the better. I think it is “ok” to be aggravated by the news as long as you do something about it. I think we can’t just sit back and let the unknown powers that are or are not run the world. I think we have an obligation to move the needle even ever so slightly but move it nonetheless. I think living it well and living it now is caring about tomorrow.

Maybe Andy is happier; maybe I should have tried to change his perspective and maybe it is just ok that my garage doors open.

 

It’s Not a Microwave

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So this was day one; thirty-nine more to go. Forty is a transitional number in the Bible. It rains forty days and nights in the Noah story; Jonah walks through the city of Nineveh for forty days warning the people to repent. The Israelites wander in the desert for forty years until they can cross over and enter the land of promise. Even Jesus gets in the act being tempted for forty days and nights before returning to the Galilee to preach. It seems in Biblical times one enters this time of forty and comes out the other side different, changed, ready, healed. I’m counting on it.

This was day one of my forty radiation treatments. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer back in the fall and today I laid myself down and let the machine begin the healing process. It didn’t hurt; I felt nothing; even the sounds coming out of the machine were much less intimidating than an MRI. It’s not the only protocol associated with my treatments but this was a moment of so many thoughts and so many associations.

It is hard hearing this cancer word even though people I love and respect have told me that I will be fine. I will not die from this. I just have to follow the rules, keep strong and stay positive. Everything in this process has been stepped, like those of Russia. Wide swaths of time waving in the wind silently speaking that this cannot be ignored (not the cancer nor the emotions). When my PSA numbers first began to climb the Doctors said it was time to check my blood every six months and then it was time to have an MRI and then it was time to have a biopsy and then – I don’t have to go through all the details….

But today was real. I found myself looking for meaning in everything, looking for signs. It is the evening of my mother’s birthday; the color of the red light against the backdrop of the water and the sky where I make the left is redder than usual. The arms of the machine against the blue of the plastic panes are embracing. It is good – twice good – to begin on a Tuesday since on that third day of creation, God said it was good, twice. It will be fine.

I guess what it all adds up to is my finitude is catching up. I’m going to let it for a while, maybe 39 more times, but then: Watch out – I am crossing out the lines on the bucket list.

Starbursts and Super Bowls

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IMG_6782I am sitting outside on this partly cloudy beautiful South Florida Sunday morning. It is February and the tree with green leaves and purple undersides is just beginning to initiate its annual firework display of flowers. I looked up its name on the Internet so that I can look intelligent to you. It is officially Clerodendrum Quadriloculare, described as dark and sultry.  For those of us who can’t quite pronounce or remember the Latin name, it is also called Shooting Star or Starburst. You can prune it so it is tree like with one trunk or let it grow like a bush and watch it spread. I let it do both. That is until my HOA decides it is intruding on their right of way cutting it back from their side of the fence. But that’s a different story.

It is also Super Bowl Sunday. I thought the skit on SNL last night was hysterical, pitting patriots (small “p”) of Boston against the Mid-Atlantic colonials of Philadelphia. It is Philly cheese steaks against New England clam chowder – tough choices for heart-healthy diet. Not that I am religious about it – I look for any excuse, any holiday, any occasion to eat a Hebrew National Pigs in Blankets.

Tonight will be no exception. I guess I am just not a purist. I guess I just don’t believe in strict and fierce absolutes. I guess I am willing to admit that I am not always right and I am not always consistent. And that’s ok. And if I don’t follow football rigorously the rest of the year but want to pretend to be a loyal Patriot’s fan today, I am entitled. Emerson said, “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

And so I will sit in front of the TV tonight and route for my “home” team. I am participating in a national phenomenon hyped by the NFL and NBC. By the time some of you read this, we will know who the stars of the evening are: the commercials, the QBs, Timberlake or just us – all of us brought together, all of us setting aside our differences and tribalism, just enjoying this modern gladiator spectacle in living color.

But I don’t want to end without coming back to my starburst tree. It is a marker for me. It indicates a fundamental truth of nature. We are destined for growth. We are born to flower. Exploding stars of red and white petals set against a blue endless sky are in our genes. It gives me hope that someone in Washington will see this too. This nation is too good for games. This nation has too much potential to be held hostage to politics. I want to be proud of those who govern and lead me. And if it all is a game: Then play it with honest referees and stick to the rules. Make me proud you are in my backyard.

A Piece of Honesty

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downward dog abstractI dabbled in Yoga this summer, making it my project, hoping I would be comfortable enough to continue some kind of Yoga practice when I returned to what I call normalcy and the South Florida heat and humidity. Today I made it happen.

I went to a Yoga class alone; I didn’t have a mat (I left mine in NC but you could rent one – interesting dichotomy between a small town where they were free for the borrowing and suburban sprawl Palm Beach County. I’m not judging just observing.)   I was the only man and probably one of the few over 60 in the group. I was also the tallest, the heaviest and the worst dressed – do they have Lulu Lemon for men?

We began on our backs learning how to inhale and exhale and find our breath as the instructor talked about vulnerability. My monkey mind said, “don’t talk to me about being vulnerable; here I am exposing to the world what a fraud I am. You think you know “downward dog”, you don’t know ________.” It was hard and it was good and I am surprised how heavily I perspired. I was grateful when the 75 minutes were up and we returned to our backs in what I remember being called “corpse pose” but had a different name this morning.

Besides some muscles speaking to me about what I have just done to them, I took away an appreciation of how hard you can work in slow motion. This was called a slow flow class and that’s what we did (I did more of the slow and less of the flow, but there is always next time.) Everything doesn’t have to be fast or pumped up. You can strengthen yourself both physically and spiritually gradually and incrementally.

But I really took away a willingness to reflect introspectively on my disposition to be vulnerable and I mean by that my sense of comfort in being open about my weaknesses, my doubts, my faults and failings. It is that time of year in the Jewish calendar. The Hebrew month of Elul leading up to the New Year is our prep time for new beginnings, clean slates, forgiveness and forgiving others and ourselves.

So here’s a piece of honesty. I’m not good at not being good at what I do. I need a lot of acceptance. I need validation from outside sources. I need to be praised and affirmed probably a little too much. I know this because at the end of the class, when the instructor and I were alone, I asked her: How’d I do? I asked it in the guise of what classes do you think would be beneficial to me, but I knew I needed her approval and being told: you’re good enough.

I wonder who or what did this to me? I wonder if this feeling of not being worthy is just built in to the human psyche. I know what my Elul work is this time around. It is finding the good; affirming the competent; believing in myself and loving the pieces that are still to be polished and refined knowing they are all good and isn’t it great I am not done?

I Bought a Hat

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IMG_5822We were in New York last week and got tickets for Dear Evan Hansen. We were there for the matinee performance the day they won the Tony for best musical. It was an incredible experience, touching, disturbing, funny, challenging, thoughtful, entertaining. The amount of talent on the stage was intimidating. Forget the voices and the staging how did they remember all those lyrics? I can barely remember the name of the person I just met.

I bought a hat. I’m a sucker like that. I usually do the t-shirt thing but I had left my favorite hat in Iceland a few days before and if you know the topography of my head, you know I need a hat in summer. I saw it during the intermission and buying the hat was part of my internal conversation during the second half of the show.

It’s about how a high school boy who can’t find his place and lives his life trapped inside unable to open a window to the world, singing: “I’m tap tap tap tapping on the glass …. Can anybody see … is anybody waving back at me?” It’s about suicide and how the death of a classmate weaves its way into Evan’s story and turns him into a social media sensation ultimately bringing redemption, flawed, problematic, disturbing but healing never the less. It’s about love, lies and life lived imperfectly.

The audience is young for Broadway. You can see and hear it in their laughter, tears and cheers. Did I say I loved it? Did I say the lying and the moral ambiguities of the plot nagged at me? Most of the New York critics fall in love with Evan. A few zero in on the darker side. One reviewer in Slate calls our hero: “A self-serving fabulist who exploits the suicide of a high-school classmate by peddling a fake connection to the dead boy. The con man revels in the resulting internet fame, which wins him popularity and even the sexual attention of the boy’s grieving sister. What a creep…”

But that’s no creep who wins my heart and wins the Tony. That’s you and me. Reb Nachman said: Falling down is the beginning of rising up. Ok so we don’t do it with as much talent; we don’t have some one to stage our entrances and exits or hauntingly raw music to accompany the lyrics we call conversation. Everyone I know (maybe my circle is too limited) falls and slips as they climb through the waking hours of each day. Our hero is flawed. Our hero lies. Our hero grasps for broken straws to pull himself out the hole he is living in. There is a piece of our hero in all of us.

So I bought the hat and even downloaded the music. Reb Nachman let me. Every ascent begins with a descent.

Keys

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The conditions seem to be right for me to try and write again. I am sitting in a quiet spot of the airport and someone just offered me a mint julep to celebrate the upcoming Kentucky Derby. Even though it is missing the bunch of mint leaves, it is a definite boost to my creative juices. And I have the time – 2 hours till my flight even boards and that’s assuming it is on time. But enough of this – although you should also know that they are offering free hot dogs to celebrate the coming of summer.

But that’s not the point – none of it. Yesterday was garbage day at my house. In the process of clearing the “stuff” off the kitchen counter that was to be discarded, I threw away a collection of keys. And of course I realized it after Waste Management had already collected curbside and the truck was long gone. The good news, we are not locked out of anything we know of. These were not keys to the car or keys to the house, they were a pile of keys tangled together, unsure of whose they were or what they opened. Maybe a key to a neighbor; maybe a key to a residence before this one; maybe a key to a locker in a gym we no longer belong to. Even a key to the Temple’s sound system cabinet – all of which gone and replaced, I’m sure.

All day long it bugged me. What is open and what is locked and what is a key anyway? It is more than that metal silver, bronze, multi-toothed instrument which when inserted right side up into a receptacle causes gears to tumble and worlds to open and expand. (I never realized how potentially sexy that is.). It’s like this bourbon that is lubricating my mind. I was kind of “down” when I realized these keys were gone. The stupidity of it all; the gnawing feeling of not knowing what it meant that these doors were closed now; had I limited access to whatever tomorrow might bring. Had I closed openings and opportunities? I want to know I can peek behind the opening and see what prize is behind Door #3 or whatever is the opposite. Or not.

No one knows the future. And the key you hold or the key you threw away won’t open that lock. You can only open tomorrow by living today, by going to sleep tired and waking up to a new dawn, a new opportunity. It is a blessing every moment offers though not a promise of eternal sunshine. It is the very sacred and challenging reality of choosing and choices. What will I do with this new dimension? How will I make it work for me? Not why; not woe; not paralysis of will, but forward, slowly forward, towards wherever Life may take me. Today is the key to tomorrow.

My quiet is gone. There’s this guy sitting opposite me, incessantly making love to his cell phone in Spanish (maybe Italian). I am such a mono-linguist American. I can’t hear anything but him. My inner voice is locked. Where are the keys?