Mistakes, Mistakes

“I'm a new soul

I came to this strange world

Hoping I could learn a bit 'bout how to give and take

But since I came here, felt the joy and the fear

Finding myself making every possible mistake

La, la, la, la (21x)

La, la, la, la (21x)

See I'm a young soul in this very strange world

Hoping I could learn a bit 'bout what is true and fake

But why all this hate? try to communicate

Finding trust and love is not always easy to make

La, la, la, la (21x)

La, la, la, la (21x)

This is a happy end

Cause you don't understand

Everything you have done

Why's everything so wrong

This is a happy end

Come and give me your hand

I'll take you far away

I'm a new soul

I came to this strange world

Hoping I could learn a bit 'bout how to give and take

But since I came here, felt the joy and the fear

Finding myself making every possible mistake

New soul... (la, la, la, la,...)

In this very strange world...

Every possible mistake

Possible mistake

Every possible mistake

Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes...”

Yael Naim

errors...

cutting corners...

getting away with this and that...

poor judgement,

only by the mistakes

only by failing

have I ever learned.

The pain continues

stuck as I am

in relationships

where I so desperately seek understanding

and validation,

but merely meet the brick wall

of indifference, an ice wall

or worse,

blinding criticism.

Where is the light?

where is there respite?

(lying in my disc pain my relief was not vicodinrather)

Perlman’s Pugnani-Kreisler Allegro

and Handel/Halvorsen’s Passacaglia [1]

in which I was momentarily spared

from the burden from this isolation

and bathed in some ephemeral light.

It is as if the music turns off the inner kritik

mirroring the failure out there

and allowing my sacred right hemisphere

a few moments of relief.

As a child I remember listening to the Eroica and the Marche Funebre at the

Munich Olympics after the massacre of the athletes in 1961

over and over again

transported to a real world

where tragedy was centerfold.

I lay on the carpet of the living room

flying high on Beethoven.

And visiting Madame Lunzer, an Italian contessa

as she lay dying on her satin sheets

on Saturday afternoons in 1965

and hearing the Fifth Brandendurg concerto [2] for the first time.

Bach was the perfection in my imperfect world.

Now, in this darkness

I must once again,

try to see the wounded boy

who never got heard

and heal him first

but how?

tell him what?

in the face of his real knowledge and pain

etched into the flesh for so many decades

fueling, deep inside

the resentments and rage

of what was done

to him,

in the name of educare.

In this place

I just hold the pain.

I cannot regenerate into a “new soul”

like this fresh Israeli singer.

I refuse “to let go” of the past

as uncle Eric admonishes me to

for the very sake of the past

and the memory of the past

and the victim inside

to rename or refurbish.

It has taken too long just to get those images to mind

having blocked them for so long.

Effortlessly my pain merges with others

ethnic identity slips into consciousness

Why do I allow this personal pain to dissolve

in theirs? There is no comparison of course!

Cousins aunts and lost grandparents

I sense their absent counsel more and more

for I have been denied half my family

their lacuna screams in silence

their having been left in Europe

as Dad escaped for his life, and mine.

I will not “learn” from their suffering

I will not yield to any mythical archetypal or religious meaning

I cannot,

the smoke is too fresh

the burning fat still stings the eyes

and I was not even there!

Merely born 5 years after the tremendum.

Why then does my soul connect my pain to theirs?

why do I gravitate to no other texts

read theirs into all my own

and harshly refuse

any that do not take them into account

in claims to truth?

Yael Naim flirts with reincarnation

I cannot afford the luxuries of new age kabbalah.

I cannot even afford the theologies of comfort

that so many drink from.

No wonder Steve Jobs chose this song!

Macintosh is the new kabbalah

the greatest access codes to the Da Vinci di-vine internet.

In their memory I must allow nothing

it is too fresh

this wound

and somehow

infiltrates my own petty

vision of the past.

Should I separate the wounds?

the absent memory of their lived lives

my youth embedded in their non-being?

would things have been different with a counterbalancing

an aunt and uncle to protect me?

a grandparent to step

against the rage of the survivor-father

and the wounded-mother?

Mistakes, mistakes

I cannot seem to separate.

I cannot split between

the accident of my birth

and the survival of the father.

The accident of his meeting the mother.

the post war poverty

the desire to determine the outcome

the condition for economic survival

the age old diaspora response

to the moving tribe

country to country

pogrom to pogrom.

all the while sacrificing our souls

in the desire to succeed.

So I am condemned to make the mistakes

mistakes

choices

wrong turns

watching this life turn

slowly

ever closer to the end

of things,

the end

the end.

Turn off the singer

close the Mac

I am a gilgul.

[1] The last movement of George Frideric Handel's Harpsichord Suite in G minor (HWV 432) is a passacaglia which has become well known as a duo for violin and viola, arranged by the Norwegian violinist Johan Halvorsen.

[2] Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major, BWV 1050 J.S.Bach Concerto Traversiere, une Violino principale, une Violino è una Viola in ripieno, Violoncello, Violone è Cembalo .