In the Absent Sublime

“And indeed there will be time

To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—

[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—

[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

"That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all. “

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

T. S. Eliot, 1888 – 1965

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither,

William Wordsworth 1770-1850

Nah, im Aortenbogen

im Hellblut:

das Hellwort.

Mutter Rachel

weint nicht mehr. Rübergetragen

alles Geweinte.

Still, in den Kranzarterien, unumschnürt

Ziw, jenes Licht.

Paul Celan GesammelteWerke 2: 202 1986

“Spirituality and sexuality are not your qualities, not things which ye possess and contain. But they possess and contain you; or they are  powerful  deamons,  manifestations  of  the  gods,  and  are,  therefore, things which reach beyond you, existing in themselves. No man hath a spirituality unto himself, or sexuality unto himself. But he standeth under the law of spirituality and of sexuality.”

C.G.Jung: “Septem Sermones ad Mortuos”

The certainty of others…

Their impoverished beliefs…

Insufferable and overbearing,

The Halachic minutiae of observances

The infractions and focused obsessions of…

The need for…

Absolute control of behaviorisms,

The intolerable self-­righteous enthusiasm,

The utter Holier-­than­‐thou­‐ness.

The absent voice of Whom?

Paul Celan’s hymns to no­‐body?

In the silence of no­‐response,

In the stillness of the cosmic no­‐thingness,

I lie motionless.

Bereft of my Friend and receiver of thoughts

He who once might have listened to my soliloquies

My prior fullness of being

Intimations of immortality

Wordsworth’s sense of the sublime

In nature and music

Now laying fragmented in the satanic mills of the soul.

Left with only the nostalgia, regret, guilt

Of what might‐have­‐been­‐feelings

Bereft of certainty­‐

of that sense of the sublime.

After Maa’riv Kabbalat Shabbat the tansel

In the customary solemn circle,

Unexpectedly the Rabbi grabs my hand and squeezes it

When singing

“sanctify me with Thy Mitzvot… Purify our hearts”

קדשנו לבינו וטהר מצותכב

An electric shock of regret fires through my body from his hand,

as a sense of insufficiency and fraudulence

Fills my soul.

My heart cries in jealousy for his simple faith.

Then again at the Shabbat table

The candles lend a golden glow

To the beautiful silver laden white clothed altar.

As the silent guests await my benediction קידוש

This moment in time feels so holy­‐

It catches my breath‐as I hesitate to utter

Words meant to fulfill their Halachic obligation

By one who can no longer represent as a שליח

(For heresy disqualifies.)

I live in that space of desire

For authentic words

That reflect truth

Knowing full well

I can no longer

Open my lips to produce the words,

Oh for a doxology I could die for!

Or just believe in!

A salvific higher authority!

Not a mere projected wish for a return

To a father figure I might have respected.

A fulfillment of the little Julian’s urgent plea for

Help from the cruel matriarch.

(left unanswered)

Herr Freud put paid to that idea!

Reducing my once cherished beliefs to rot.

Facing now my shame

And the faith‐less­‐ness

Of the landscape­‐that is my terrain

The absence of certainty

That is the barren wasteland of my visual field

It offends me to see it in others

As if I have become intolerant to the very

Presence of faith in others

As if their Emunah, בטחוו and הלכה mirrors

  And exacerbates

My own lack, digging the knife even further in.

In an adolescent rage of dis‐ownment,

I am repulsed. It is too fresh

This wound

For salting by others.

Paralyzed by my inability to take a stand to act,

To say no! despite authority’s ongoing hold

Simultaneously by my resentment

and my old friendly character defects

The wounding of others

The cruelty within me…

Now with no religious impulse to confront me

The ודוי the חרטה the process of T’shuvah 

No Higher Authority peering down from heaven

No allegiance to Rebbe or halachic edicts

The Four Ells עמות דלד have dissolved 

Leaving an open minefield of explosive rage

Ordinance left to cause amputations of the heart

In vitriolic self denigration

No medicaments in my medical tool kit left to heal

These wounds of the soul

Caught between reverence for the tradition

And a deep heresy and suspicion

I am nailed to the cross of powerlessness.

Now, only the daily­‐mirrored self‐image

The Dorian Grayed picture of decay

The inventory of pain inflicted on those near and dear

Keep me from sleep.

Dreams of crumbled building basements

Old authority figures from the past

Pointing accusatory index fingers

At the naughty boy once more

Outside the classroom for some misdemeanor

Yet emerging from this rubble

The simultaneous realization

Slowly, slowly

An “intimation”

That this rational mind does not do justice

To the complexity of the psyche

Cannot reduce it to mere conscious understanding

Of self or text.

That hidden beneath the surface calm

lies layers and grottos

Of unearthed truth

That I am still open to the very core

Of what bubbles up

Humbly accepting this as revelation

Must suffice for now.

The mystery of existence lies within this darkness

Is born here in the recesses

And I do accept its very deep and “holy” birthings.

That I live on the edge of this precipice

Of life and knowledge

And the looming end of things

Accepting my ignorance

My pain

My flaws

And remain humbled by the incalcitrance

of the truth

Of history, text and the self.

This is my lasting belief.