lack of focus

leaning over my biopsych book and notes right now to type this. good sign, eh? i am v. bad at reading textbooks- especially science books- and listening to people lecture. my roommate gave me some silly putty so sometimes i play with that during class and it helps me focus, but otherwise i draw pictures and make lists and doodle.



this is my modern britain professor, dr white. he has a big flop of white hair. pretty perfect. he also has arms, though not in my sketch.




this is my political theory professor, dr whelan. he lectures with his tie tucked into his shirt and a big pocket protector in his pocket. i think it might actually just be a pencil case. he never takes his tie out.



i got a lunch bag! mom said i couldn't take tuna fish, etc to school because it would go bad after a few hours so i had to buy a bag. the store didn't sell ice packs ("seasonal item"), but they did have back-to-school lunch bags (for elementery schoolers) on clearance. only $1.72 for this beauty!


(look! i've read already ten pages in my book tonight!)

desk lamps and green tea

I am very much in the mood for watching Jerry Maguire tonight. חבל (haval- too bad) that my roommates are no longer my roommates and their DVD's are no longer in the bedroom next door. But I have hours of reading and learning and memorizing to do* so God (or fortune, call it what you may) worked it all out.


* I often forget that being in college actually entails reading and taking exams and writing essays. The woman I babysit for told me that each three-credit course is equivalent to six hours of homework a week. Six hours a week! When do I spend six hours a week on all of my classes? Aye, there's the rub. Midterms next week. Three exams, two papers...

yom kippur

phew.

that was intense.

the ten days of posting

strange, eh? i'm working on the תשובה - teshuvah- repentence/return- part of it as well.
but god gives life and thus i live.

these pictures are of an afternoon.

beloved front porch- bench and facing chair.

notebook in the slated sun.

roses on the piano.

moses on the porch with the two tablets.

me with sleeping baby.
:)

open arms

these are things i see and things i live and these things make up my life (and make me happy too :) ) .

this is a bench at carneige mellon. eva and i walk around cmu sometimes and pretend we are smart and studious and go to school there. we also like the campus (an actual campus!? you mean a college can have its own campus?!). this is a nice bench. (a nice bench, rebecca? use your words, use your language! how is this bench nice? benches can't be nice! people are nice. benches are hard or well-placed or delightful. ok, well, this bench lifts up the corners of my mouth in a smile. tov?)

this is where i live. one of the many places, i guess. and i don't live on the river. i live- family home is- a block away from the left shoreline. this is the delaware river. new jersey on the right, pennsylvania on the left. taken when mom and i were driving home across the rickety bridge. sunset is mmm.

this is a bench, like the other, except i knew it first and it is closer to pitt so i love it more. it is part of the new (new? already three years old) schenley plaza where my friends and i lunch on mondays at noon and eva and i lay in the grass. lowercase lettering is greatly admired and loved.

this is the sunset from the columbus airport. my flight was delayed for five hours so i wandered around the terminal. the end was deserted so i hung out there and read and watched the sun set. two janitors came over and spent their break talking to me. the man sang gospel music- "wade in the water" - at my request.

this is the most beautiful and most favorite building of learning. the cathedral of learning. the words, the meaning of the words! a holy place of learning. in the commons room (favorite place to study sophomore year) a quote by robert bridges reads: "here is the eternal spring; for you the very stars of heaven are new."

view from forbes ave (cmu) down to the cathedral of learning lit by the setting sun.

(fall is my favorite season.)

fast car

this waiting and not knowing and apprehension is making me argh.*


explain yourself, life!



one way or the other or no way at all this hiatus is too much.

There are three things to do when the kettle boils. First, pay no attention to it, and so waste the energy. Second, clamp the lid so hard that there is an explosion. Third, invent a steam engine or make some tea.

Clarence R. Skinner
"Fashions in Revolution," March 1918

*college students have advanced abilities at expressing themselves.

things I found in an old notebook

distracted notes I took during social theory class three years ago.



I see the things on my desk and I file them away into a drawer, out of my sight -- I get the emails and put them in the appropriate folder.
my organization is cluttered in itself.
I cannot clear my mind so instead I put away the laundry that has been piling on the purple chair.

just once--to talk to someone when the moment strikes.

when you are in jerusalem, when do you stop and sleep???

the dustiness of my room

how I avoid doing my work forever

excitement and smiles at connection between two people with the warm autumn air flowing between.

שנה טובה

the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe

(on being back in pittsburgh, at school, after a year in israel.)

I feel like Lucy from The Chronicles of Narnia. She steps into a wardrobe while playing Hide and Seek with her siblings and enters another world, where she has great adventures and meets wonderfully exciting creatures, to find her way back out of the wardrobe, back to the professor's house, to find that no time has passed, her England is still the same, her siblings are still the same, and only she has changed and experienced Narnia. And no matter how she tries to tell her brothers and sister about what she discovered, she cannot make it real for them. It existed for her, and the longer she is away from that wardrobe filled with fur coats leading to Narnia the greater the risk is for her, too, of forgetting or of disbelieving all that happened to her in that other world.


Change some of the pronouns and this story is me.

multiple choice

I woke up this morning

a) when the alarm clock went off
b) to the sound of someone blowing a shofar
c) naturally

Nice RAK, Pittsburgh

When I moved in on Sunday it was wicked rainy and tempers were high (as can be expected in a move-in in the pouring rain with a lot of things to transfer). My dad and I recruited one of the Chabad rabbi's sons to help us move things, which was helpful, until we attempted to move this huge overstuffed couch that is somehow in my possession. It wouldn't fit through the door of my apartment building, and my dad, rain-drenched and otherwise bursting, wanted me to give up and just donate the thing to Goodwill. I really liked the couch, but how does one say such to a father when can't push the thing into her apartment?

In the middle of making a decision as to what to do with the couch and midway through the door, a car stopped on the street and a man got out, strolling over to us and saying that it looked like we needed help. Clearly. He then took charge, have us move this way and that and take the feet off the couch and push it such a way up the stairs, and leading it all the way into the living room of my apartment.

My dad offered to pay him, but the man refused, bringing God and acts of goodwill up, and my dad said that God also created money so that we could thank people, and gave the man ten bucks.

Now I have a beautiful overstuffed couch in my living. It's uber comfortable, if you are interested in stopping by to try it out.

Nice Random Act of Kindness, Pittsburgh.


(If it weren't so hot here I would love you even more...)

hardwood floors and arched doorways

The new apartment in Pittsburgh is amazing. Huge, beautiful, bright, clean, with hardwood floors and an arched doorway. And a sunroom!!! mmm.

This is a view of the sunroom! from the living room. The curtain I found in Israel at the thrift store on French Hill. It is huge wonderful orange British design. Thinking of flanking it with some sheer curtains.

This is the view of the living room from the sunroom!. The door leads to my bedroom (huge) and the doorway (arched!) to the washroom, kitchen, and roommate's bedroom. Still working on the layout a bit but the couch (free...) is uber comfortable. And I am borrowing someone's unprotected wireless. :)

inspiring movie moment

in Jerry Maguire, Jerry at the sports agents convention in Miami, frustrated and fed up with the direction the business is in, sits down (well, generally) and scrawls out his Mission Statement.

it begins:

It's 1 AM and this might be the bad pizza I had earlier talking, but I believe I have something to say. Or rather, I have something to say that I believe in. My father once said, "Get the bad news over with first. You be the one to say the tough stuff." Well, here goes. There is a cruel wind blowing through our business. We all feel it, and if we don't, perhaps we've forgotten how to feel. But here is the truth. We are less ourselves than we were when we started this organization.

continues:

We are losing our battle with all that is personal and real about our business. Every day I can look at a list of phone calls only partially returned. Driving home, I think of what was not accomplished, instead of what was accomplished. The gnawing feeling continues. That families are sitting waiting for a call from us, waiting to hear the word on a contract, or a General Manager's thoughts on an upcoming season. We are pushing numbers around, doing our best, but is there any real satisfaction in success without pride? Is there any real satisfaction in a success that exists only when we push the messiness of real human contact from our lives and minds? When we learn not to care enough about the very guy we promised the world to, just to get him to sign. Or to let it bother us that a hockey player's son is worried about his dad getting that fifth concussion.

There is a good bet that I will erase all of this from my laptop, and you will never read it. But if you are reading it, and you're reading it right now, it is only because I was unable to stop. I was unable to forget the quiet questions in the hallways, when some of you, usually the younger agents, or interns, asked me on the side: "How do you keep all these lives, all these clients, separated in your mind?"

...

Somehow all this has been bubbling up inside me. A man is the sum total of his experiences. And it is now that I am interested in shaping the experiences to come. What is the future of what we do? Give me a goal, and I will achieve it. That has been my secret design for most of my life. Perhaps you are the same. We're all goal-oriented, so I hereby present a goal.

How can we do something surprising, and memorable with our lives? How can we turn this job, in small but important ways, into a better representation of ourselves? Most of us would easily say that we are our jobs. That's obvious from the late hours we all keep. So then, it is bigger than work, isn't it? It is about us.

How do we wish to define our lives? So that when we are sixty, or seventy, or eighty and we're sinking down onto that cool floor of O'Hare airport, with playoff tickets in our pockets, perhaps we too can know that we led A Happy Life? Is it important to be a Person and not just a slave to the commerce of Professional Sport? Do we want to be Remembered?

...

I have never been a writer, but I can see how this great lost art will never truly die. Putting words to paper is a sacred thing. It's more than a phone conversation, it is a document. It is something you are putting on paper. The relationship between a phone call and a letter is the difference between a magazine and a phone book. One you leave on a plane, the other you save.

ends:

Let us start a revolution. Let us start a revolution that is not just about basketball shoes, or official licensed merchandise. I am prepared to die for something. I am prepared to live for our cause. The cause is caring about each other. The secret to this job is personal relationships.

other inspiring movie moments?
mayhaps something from in the face of evil?

just on emails

(a)
how frustrating it is to have someone respond to an email I just sent them within twenty-four hours of the time I sent it, thereby demanding an equally fast response-to-response on my part that needs to be witty, engaging, and clever!
it takes time, people! I can't just bang this stuff out left and right.

ex:

me: X keeps on responding to my emails within a day

Kate: omg

me: so frustrating

(b)
only for the important ones do people wait forever to respond to (HAVAL! AVOID!)

ex:
me: no response yet from X. i sent the email almost two days ago already!!!
Kate: lameeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

define: google

Google, with apparent clairvoyance, has removed the Golan Heights from Israel and denoted it as Syrian territory in their maps.

listening to

yosef karduner, shir l'maalot. (a song of ascents.)

I lift my eyes to the mountains,
from whence will come my help?

there is a blind dog on my lap.

if

sometimes I forget that there has to be a world outside of the books I read.

Jews and Chinese Food, and Other Stories

Jews and Chinese Food
Today (tomorrow, actually, but we are American so we celebrate holidays a day before their actual date) is my bubby's 82nd birthday. We went out to eat, but, being who we are, had to drive 45 minutes to Cherry Hill, New Jersey* to eat at MAXIM'S glatt-kosher middle eastern restaurant, glorified and renowned by their weekly ads in The Jewish Exponent, Philadelphia's Jewish weekly. My mom was thrown by the Chinese-sounding man who answered the phone, but hey, this is America, anyone can answer a phone in a glatt-kosher middle eastern restaurant. My mom and I got to the restaurant first and were seated. We opened our menus and were shocked (shocked!) to find that MAXIM'S glatt-kosher middle eastern restaurant was no longer MAXIM'S, having been bought out three weeks prior and recreated in the form of LIN'S glatt-kosher chinese food restaurant, now bringing the total number of kosher restaurants in the Philadelphia area to ~11, of those, ~4 Chinese places. Seems a little exorbitant. Dear readers, what is the attraction between Jews and Chinese food? Is it Newton's unstated fourth Law of Motion?

Other Stories
1. 'Twas just me and me mum for Shabbat. Was sad and quiet. No singing.

2. Finished Gaiman's American Gods. Really enjoyed it. He is mamesh smart. Reminiscent of Joyce and Joseph Campbell. Now working on Reading Lolita in Tehran but looking forward to going to the library.

3. a snippet of tonight's gmail-chat conversation with kate:

me: did you like the part about rachel? [in the last post]

Kate: LOL yes

me: it would be so perfect

Kate: omg that would be great

me: it's perfect! they're american- baseball is the american national pastime; and have both made aliyah!

Kate: he's canadian

me: OH.

4. Currently learning how to drive. Beware, people.



* not to be confused with French Hill (Jerusalem) or Squirrel Hill (Pittsburgh) or Thornhill (Toronto).

shabbat and baseball

I was worried that in coming back to America, Shabbat was going to be far less wonderful and shabbistic then in Israel, much like my general view of how life in America would be compared to life in Israel. I've learned that comparisons in this matter are worthless, not needed, and without contribution to my general well-being. (Which are basically three different ways of saying the same thing.) I've lost my focus of this thought* so shall move on.

Shabbat at home. Me and my parents.
On Friday my mom goes food shopping and gets the challah and then comes home and cooks it. We live about fifteen minutes driving from the nearest shul, so we stay at home. in the hour before shabbos starts I run around and put in the timers for the lights and tape the lights in the bathroom and make sure I have food and set the table. Before my mom and I light candles, I get changed and then we ask my dad to turn off the tv so we can light. My mom lights her big candlesticks and then I light my little candle dishes and we bless and hug. Then we sit down to dinner right away because we have no blech to keep the food warm. My dad ordered some NCSY bentchers from the ArtScroll catalog, and we open and sing Shalom Alechim. I sing the first part of Eshet Chayil (a woman of valor) aloud, and my dad reads it in English, pausing to analyze each verse and comment on how well it applies to my mother. It's really cute. Then my parents stand and bless me-- my mom's Hebrew is better than my dad's, so it sounds like a round when they do it-- and then they each kiss me and go back to their seats. I stand up and do Kiddush, the blessing over the wine, drink some, and pass the glass to my father. Then my dad and I get up to wash and he makes the blessing over the challah. Sometimes during the meal he'll tell stories about his grandfather, who fought with General Pershing against Pancho Villa and also was helped build the Lincoln Tunnel. When we finish eating, we bentch, saying the grace after meals. We do it all out loud. Then we try to sing some songs, but I am absolutely horribly tone deaf, my mom only remembers some songs from when she went to Camp Ramah when she was 13, and my dad didn't grow up Jewish so he has no memory to recall. We start thumbing through the pages of the NCSY bentcher, looking for songs we know or that my parents will be able to learn from me despite my lack of tune. I turn to "kol ha'olam," (all the world is a very narrow bridge), but my dad thinks that we should be able to know all of the songs and starts making up his own tune to the first one listed, "av harachamim." after a minute he gives up and consents to learn "evdu." When I try to teach my parents another song, my mom interrupts to tell me that I really should get voice lessons. (thanks ma.) My dad says, every week, that we need to make a CD with all of these shabbos songs so that we have a bigger repertoire for the next week. Finally giving up on singing, we retreat to different parts of the house and do our different things.

hm. I realized that I just about described the average Friday night happenings in a religious Jewish home, and therefore that this post may seem somewhat silly. But this is my house, you see! My house and my parents and my life and we are doing it together. We've done bits and pieces before, but never all this, and it is mamesh wonderful to be doing it all together with my parents.


(in other worlds)
My bubby called me a few weeks ago to tell me about an article she read in the local Trenton paper about Israel's new baseball league. It's a great thing, this Israel Baseball League. Interesting staff. The commissioner is the former American ambassador to Israel and Egypt, Daniel Kurtzer. Professor Andrew Zimbalist, the "pre-eminent sports economist in the United States" is on the Executive Board Committee, and Bud Selig, Commissioner of Major League Baseball, is on the Advisory Board. Besides boasting such a well-known staff, the League claims to be the "League-of-Choice for the premier international baseball player." Though the League focuses its recruitment efforts on Jewish ball players (players of "Jewish extraction"), men do not have to be Jewish to join up.

I enjoy attending baseball games and sitting in the stands and cheering on my team and always hoping that I would be chosen for the in-between-innings entertainment or that my seat number won a free car wash. However, these American games are lacking when it comes to inter-inning entertainment. My friend Rachel recently went to an IBL game at Kibbutz Gezer, near Laturn, and highly enjoyed that the 7th inning stretch was replaced by a 5th inning mincha break. I think I'll email Rachel's boyfriend and suggest that he take her to the IBL game with the "Wedding Day" theme, "when the baseball field plays host to any couple that wants to get married and the league provides the rabbi, the chupah, the wine, the glass, even a piece of wedding cake to all fans in attendance, ending with a gala fireworks display – all free of charge to the lucky couples." I mean, poor students, free wedding...




* Listening to the Matt Nathanson free-at-noon concert on wxpn. He's pretty funny. I was going to go- have ticket and all- except life happened and Dad got sick and the dominoes fell. Matt Nathanson's new song, "Car Crash," sounds a bit like Snow Patrol's "Headlights on Dark Roads."
I like listening to people talk. When my computer worked and I used itunes, I downloaded the great speeches in history podcast and would listen to them while I wrote essays on the Rambam's view of prophecy and India-Israel foreign relations.