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COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY:
as_it_is_said:  "No comments from the Peanut Gallery."
as_it_is_said:  "Oh Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"
                "Up in the balcony, where the seats are cheaper."

CAVEAT TABBYCAT!:
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{a4c-1}
{Comment (sa):  
As_it_is_said (by Steve Keyes, Antioch Counter-Culture, 1965): 
"Yup, nope; that ain't it."
Context follows, like the Romanians leaving Egypt, "a mixed
multitude" of recollections:

In 1965 I went to an anti__Vietnam_War March on Washington,
handing out SPU leaflets with which I hoped to reconstruct some of
the National Office mailing list 

#l4
(that Gail Paradise had burned after the last SPU national
convention in Chicago, while I was sitting on Cape Cod dipping my
toes into the water before retiring to the house to make a tall
dry gin_&_tonic 

#l5
(with lime, of course; barely enough gin to taste, but a name
brand of course; possibly add a leaf of two of spearmint to
garnish -- and you call that gornisht?

#l6
Speaking of passing for WASP, or trying to:
[ I used to court Patia Rosenberg, on the upper levels of the
lower East Side, whenever her parents were out; otherwise we made
repartee -- so anyhow, whenever we passed the picturesque Old
Church Burying Ground, and in hand I imagine she would remark, a
New York sophisticate to her country cousin from the shtetl, "and
Peter Stuvesant is buried there, the louse."
#l3
when I became a bit disheartened upon noticing that SDS, hitherto
busy infiltrating the civil rights movement, had taken over, en
passant, the peace movement.  
So after the last picket sign was neatly stashed for trash,
instead of reboarding the bus I had chartered from NYC, I got in a
bus up to Goucher College in northern Vermont, in quest of loose
chicks etc. -- 
and when my application form was rejected a few times, went down
to Antioch to be a senior scholar in residence on the Antioch lawn
-- though that was sometimes a bit crowdedd in a single sleeping
bag -- 

And that's where I met Steve Keyes, who used to say:
"Yup, nope; that's not it."
#l2
{a4c-2}
{Comment (sa):  So fortunate he wasn't know as 'Joe
the_Piss_Pot__Philsopher'.  'Inkadinker' has a nice rhythm and
ring to it; you can build all sorts of never-happened elevating
tales on it.  I mean, so these guys prayed a bit before they let
themselves be shipped off in cattle-cars to be shechted.  Like,
the Christians don't believe their own shtuyot, why should be take
it a third-world freebie.  I mean, I we go for this chosen people
bit with a mission to save the whole world -- how the Germans must
have contemned us for trying to make nice to them -- and that's no
favor to the Germans, they probably went home after a hard day
digging garbage pits, and then had indigestion  -- the least we
should do, if we are serious about respecting the feelings of a
people with limited sensibility who are perhaps challenged in
showing compassion to a people lacking a well-developed military-
industrial complex and the xenophobia to use it in the service of
some simplistic notion of purity, is to shoot them.}

{a4c-3}
{Comment (sa):  Best offer I've had since I lost my Kupat Holim
card.  Will the Stewardesses be bringing by refreshments, and may
one change the Option from kosher to Islamic Heaven.}

{a4c-4}
{Comment (sa):  Everyone knows:  The Tetragammaton is ineffable. 
Maybe it's only 4 letters, but those might as well be 4 million. 
Cf. Graves, The White Goddess.
And everyone knows:  By Judaism, there are 10 sfirot, and the
first 3 we can't even name, much less describe.  And everyone
knows:  by Islam, there are 99 names of the Divine; and 99 means: 
innumerable.  And everyone knows:  AUM is not "'ome on the range";
aum is many many sounds -- I forget them all -- the buzzing of
bees, and the rushing of water in a stream  (which in Islamic
Sufism is:  Wahabo.)

{a4c-5}
{Comment (sa):  I can't even imagine what Enlightenment is -- and
PVK said, don't you dare die unitl you have achieved --
enlightenment (or maybe:  illumination).}

{a4c-6}
{Note (sa):  In the USA they often depend upon a Rabbi to lead the
service.  In Israel, and I'm sure in orthodox congregations in the
USA, anyone leads who can, provided they're ok with the
congregation or minyan or whatever.  }

{a4c-7}
{Comment (sa):  Nu, enough of this aboriginal sin bit.  One may
pervert the exercise of a certain faculty occasionally. Big deal;
nobody's perfect.  RSC would be the first to say, when you hear a
voice saying, 'Woe unto you, sinner-man; you've blown it; better
skip the rest of Shabat and go out quick and have a good time
before we invite you to the fricasse, no RSVP needed'  -- like, if
you don't know light from dark -- which means, if you ain't got
the -- not brains, but 'common sense' -- that the good LORD gave a
rooster -- we should all some day reach that level -- ya habibi,
don't listen to inner voices.  (PVK was speaking in passing on
inner voices (Abode seminar mid-70s).  I thought:  how can one
tell the good guys from the bad guys.  He said, Well, they don't
order one about.)

#l2
{a4c-8}
{Comment (sa):  And that is why homosexuality is forbidden.  I
mean male homosexuality of course; there is no other kind,
as_it_is_said (by me):  "Sleeping with women is normal; everyone
likes to do it, from itty-bitty babies to old King David."}

{a4c_9)
{Comment (sa):  My hit is (Cf. my poem, "A Revisionist Akeda" in
=washedox.txt , on my Website, http://www.geocities.com/sa73122a),
or was, that:  After the Akedah, Avraham went to Beersheva -- as
pennance, because he could't get to Newark New Jersey -- and
Yitzhak went to some place nicer, with fields.}

{a4c-10}
{Comment (sa):  And I think this is, or is related to:
(Negro Spiritual, USA 1800's):
"Jesus walked / this lonesome valley / he had to walk it /
by himself / oh, nobody else else / could walk it for him / he had
to walk it / by himself.

"You must go / and stand your trial / you have to stand it / by
yourself / oh, nobody else / can stand it for you /  you have to
stand it / by yourself"

And all that is related to (Siddur, sharit:  "May we not be tested
/ and not be put to shame"
"V_AL T_B_YAeNI
LAo L_YDeI HetA
V_LAo L_YDeI
'aveRaH V_'aON
V_LAo L_YDeI NisaION
V_LO L_YDeI B_ZaION"


And that is related to (HIK, my paraphrased recollection):  If you
try to reach above where you're at (as_it_is_said, of Ishmael,
"the LORD will see the boy where he is at"), then you will be
tested.}

{a4c-11}
{Comment (sa): Because nature, like human beings, is of Divine
creation (whereas yeshivas with flourescent light ain't).
Some would say: it's all the Tao.
I say: You're always safe in nature.  It may kill you, but it
won't mock you.}

{a4c-12}
{Comment (sa):  Which reminds me of a song I heard at the Berkeley
High School talent shoe; sung by some Afro-American kids whom one
would not necessarily want to meet in a dark alley:
"She did a natural natural did it/ a natural natural did it / a
natural natural did it very nature-al-y."
Which takes us back to Lenny Bruce:  "G_d, your g_d, made those
tits."
And that takes us to the female-centered -- not, except
incidentally and/or opportunistically, feminist -- women's
religious perspectives.}

{a4c-13}
{Comment (as):  Slow down Rasserflash:  What's with this Heaven
forbid bit.  I mean, a blade of grass doesn't have the right to go
on strike.  To say, don't nudnik me turkey, I've had a bad day;
bring us some water will you, there's a good chap, we can't get up
and around much like you young fellows, made on later days of
Creation.
I mean, this is getting like the sin of Moses, which was striking
the rock.  If he had only spoken politely to it, then would have
gotten all the water -- I mean it was just a rock blocking the
spring; a leopard could have sneezed and dislodged it; only it's
not always so easy to find a leopared when you need one.
And if Moses had only done that, we could have "passed right
through to the Promised Land" as it says in a square dance; and we
would never have needed Jesus to be invented, and Rome would not
have come along to chastise us for our sins -- or rather, for
Herod's -- I mean, like, the 2nd Temple was destroyed because it
was slock neo-classical architecture, a wannabee Parthenon; what
can you expect from a parvenu Idumean -- especially that one .
I mean, Rome was created so Dante could have a model of hell. 
Eating lead from the water pipes and giving a bad name to
perversion, Catullus or no.
But I digress.}


{Glossary (sa):  Yiddishkite:   Seen over the Lower East Side on
minor holidays.}
{a4c-14}
{Comment (sa):  Whoa Charlie.  Enough of invoking Divine
Intervention to hold onto my socket-wrench set.
HIK says:  Rise in love, don't fall in love.  PVK adds:  End co-
dependancy. "I love that girlie so (?) [a song from the good old
days, "when men were men and women were girls"] / She doesn't love
me / But I'll never never never never let her go / Sincerely / " -
- ah, possessive infaturation  -- no man ccould love more fervently
even his Harley Hog with her polished chrome bumpers.} 

#l2
{a4c-15}
{Comment (sa):  The Rabbi finally come to the point, and drives
right by it.  
Religious fervour is a sublime way to evade the responsibilities
of religiosity -- it's tikkunim, not mystic flipouts, that are the
point of religion  [this is the transcendental/transcendent
distinction, or Chaim Rosenbloom's distinction, which I quote on
my Webpage, between Big Mesiah and Little Mesiah ].
#l3
[I've often said:  Little Joe was was talking in the courtyard to
George Robinson about something, corn maybe.  A vistor asked, 'Is
that Little Joe.'  I was standing by, and I said, 'Well, it's not
Big Joe.'  Little Joe starting asking 'Who Big Joe?  Who Big
Joe?'.  George Robinson realized what was going on, and said, 'Oh
-- some Texan', so then Little Joe went baack to talking with him.]
#l2

Following my previous remark:  There are two ways to evade
reality:  sublimation and perversion.  Chivalric love, and
infatuation, are sublimations of love; possessieness is a
perversion.  
Today it's 10 Av, and a few of the adolescent boys are in the Bet
Knesset, whooping and hollering
#l3
for which we Amdurs are to blame; it's said the Amdur hasidim used
to do much worse, even banging their heads against the wall,
Heaven forbid; they should never lack for LSD if that's what
they'll do if they can't get it -
#l4
I reckon I'm really a descendent of R. Hayim Heikel of Amdur -- my
aunt was named Ida, and my great-grandfather was Chaim Amdursky 
R. Zalman's first hit when I introduced myself to him, this was up
at Lama in 1970, where R. Zalman was guest lecturer, and the Lama
dudes chased me back down to New Buffalo, though I insisted
hearing him for a few minutes -- I mean, even battered about by
life, I know my rights, and maybe even sense my place -- 
#l2
so I can't get near the place.  Falling in love is great fun; why
spoil it by getting married.  (And Ricky Sherover said: Every so
often, Jean-Paul Satre would say to Simone de Beauvoir, 'We really
should get married', and Simone de Beauvoir, a steadfast secular
libertarian, would say 'Now Jean-Paul'. [Meaning 'Now now dear,
let's not lose faith and fall back into the bourgeoisie; people
are depending upon us to set a good example' -- I mean, that was
CP humanism at its best, even if Sartre was rather a nerd.  }

{a4c-q}                                       
{Comment (sa):
Tish B'Av is a really pushy chick; once a year, starting weks in
advance, she pushes ahead with all her oy vey's, and you can't
even think straight, maybe for months.  I mean, that's a holiday
that should only be observed on a glacier.

[Which reminds me, there I was in a glacier, somewhere above
Andrematt I think, and there's this Israeli chick dressed up in a
polar bear suit, wordlessly soliciting visitors to pose for a
picture.  So I ask her, what is an Israeli maydele doing etc.
etc., and she says, 'It's a job.']  

I mean, when Meshiach finally gets here -- whatever that means,
and whatever 'Mesiach' means -- the first thing he/she will do
(and that great 1950's joke: 'Well, first of all, SHE's black.' --
I mean, talk about quickie consciousness-raising.)

{a4c-16}
{Comment (sa):  I suppose tesha b'av comes closest to what PVK
says St. John of the Cross calls 'the dark night of the soul'
I mean, as Yogi Berra would say, it's easy to believe when you
believe, but it's harder to "keep the faith" when you no longer
are getting that sort of natural high -- a dash of serotonin, no
doubt -- Jesus seems to have experienced it, to his surprise,
maybe for the first in his adulthood, in his last minutes on the
Cross (the last 7 words).  Suddenly he was no longer cruising
along with the angels, they could whip him and "he never said a
mumbling word", for a few terrible reasons he really was as low as
you can get, "the son of man", just Schmendrik in an extremely
uncomfortable position, and wondering, how could he have been so
dumb as to get himself into all that, and when that zaftig chick
from Migdal on the Kineret had offered him a royal road into her
bed (that's D.H. Lawrence, The Man Who Died."
Well, if this be avoda zora, make the most of it, as_it_is_said,
(by ASA), "one man's meat is another man's poisson".
I mean really, 'avoda zora' is just a matter of perspective. 
Like, what could be more avoda zora than the golden calf, but the
rabbis keep saying, only if the sun shines on in and back into
your eyes, if you can see right through it on up to Sinai, it
ain't hardly avoda zora, just take a pinch of gold dust in your
Evian this afternoon -- without ice, for pennance -- and keep on
truckin', Schmuck.  (Where's Robert Crumb now that we really need
him.)
But I don't suppose you came here to hear me.  A bit like finding
out you bought a talking typewriter at the Harry Porter shop.  A
great novelty no doubt, but not quite what one was shopping for.}

{a4c-17}
{Glossary (sa):  Yom Kipper is a day on which is traditional to
eat a sardine.
Like, I heard that there's some baal tchuva kid, minhag sephardi
no doubt, they get all the cool shtuyot, says if you eat fish on
Shabat, you're saved from gehinnon.  So like, here's this kid on
Saturday noon, 

when he should be grooving in Divine Creation and like RSC says,
making a feastale of even a biteful of stale bread with a dash of
salt and maybe one old olive -- goes perfectly well with a dash of
cool spring water -- the Indians I passed by made their primary
blessing over water; I can't see why one can't make kiddish over
it -- I mean gvalt, compared to that used anti-freeze they used to
sell as poor man's wine -- Hebron wine they called it, eze hillul
-- I mean everyone knows, we want to evacuuate from the
territorities just to leave those Kachniks sitting on a turd.  I
mean gvalt, talk of 'causeless hatred', read HaAretz.
But I digress.
Oh, yup:  

So here's this kid, running up and down the streets of Meor
Modi'in -- well, the street, to be precise -- looking for a
sardine before he'll eat his lunch; talk of spoiled.
Stupid superstition, right.  Wrong.  Everyone knows, fish has
something in it that counteracts depression, and everyone knows --
Reb Nachman more or less said it, or at least lived it -- gehinnon
is depression.


So anyhow, there I am, sitting in the hot springs by the Rio
Grande below Arroyo Hondo, soaking out the morning after a bit of
a hard day, and this Indian -- I mean, with some peoples, like the
Ethiopian Jews, you take telepathy for granted -- says, 'He went
through hell yesterday.'
Shucks, I didn't know hell was that dreary; I suppose I was rather
hoping for something out of an S&M comic book, with those
Wagnerian Marvel Comics bold graphics.
You see this is David haMelech's psalsm -- they call him David
haMelekh because he was the king of song -- 'What good would it
do, says I to me, if I would go and eat a flea'.
I mean, everyone someonetimes just wants to give up, sell out, and
zap -- Gotterdammerung.  Instant shlock damnation; THE END.  Only
it ain't like that, you have to keep on living  your damnation,
and it's pretty trivial.  It's said in his biography, 'Surely
you're jesting, Mr. Feinemann' -- Feinemann was lying in hospital,
dying, atteneded by all his loving concubines or whatever.  He
woke up, opened one eye, and said:  'I'd hate to have to go
through this twice; it's terribly boring.'
Oy, McCoy.  Almost dawn.}

 {a4c-18}
{Comment (sa):  For a question like that you can flunk out of baal
tchuva yeshiva, as_it_is_said, 'They told us we had to learn, but
they didn't say we had to learn anything'.}

{a4c-19}
{Comment (sa):  This is so dumb Eli Weisel could say it.  Even my
uninvited cats know better, though they pretend not too, demanding
a free lunch as if it were a federal entitlement.  Like, historic
process is also a part of Creation, and free will and
responsibility too, as_it_is_said, 'This is no movie, Dude.' (Teen
Age Mutant Sex Turtles, or whatever)

{a4c-20}
{Comment (sa):  It never quite occured to me that it was a mitzva
to go to the Kotel on Tesha b'Av.  I had assumed that was just a
sardonic gesture by the occupiers -- not merely did they bar us
from the Kotel, they let us there only on the one day when,
instead of rejoicing in in being able to gaze upon , or anyhow
glimpse, the Kingdom of Heaven, we are obligated to mourn, to be
feel sad.  [So anyhow, there I am at Zenith on Tesha b'Av, trying
to get into the proper spirit of things, and Q says to me - she
was cook for some years, her father is Jewish and she was Queen of
the Fairies in San Francisco, at least a bit , a dash of it -- she
says, 'You're looking sad', and I say, 'I'm supposed to be sad.' 
Hatzkele says:  One should never be sad.}

{Note  (sa):  RSC had a deep sense of the inherent religosity of
ostensibly non-religious Israelis.  And they saw that, and
reciproated his respect and affection.}

{a4c-21}
{Comment (sa):  Notice that this is a typical RSC move.  Start
with a gevalt, negate it, and with that contrast you can highlight
a Greater Gevalt.
I mean how can he say, 'it's not that burning'.  What is more
important, at least in the UJA crowd, than that one's kids shouuld
stay Jewish.  So RSC says, sure, this is of ultimate familial
importance maybe, but transcending that is the survival as a
people of the people of Israel.}

{a4c_22}
{Comment (sa):  Let's not get too hokey about it.  One can
romanticize people out of existence, which don't make them role
models.  Christian shlock. }

{a4c-23}
{Comment (sa):  With such brachas one can live without.
Everyone knows:  You don't give a bracha unless someone asks you
for it. And even then, maybe it's done "in fear and trembling"
(Kierkegaard's line, confronting marriage).  In the SO, they don't
even offer healing prayers, as a rule, unless the person requests
it.  PVK was once asked by someone to bless the members of the
class.  He said, I would not dare to do so except in the
consciousness of HIK.  
I bless Eliahu to marry a fat Russian. }|

{a4c-24}
{Comment (sa):  And Puran said, A Sufi loves to be shattered.  I
said back, A hobbit HATES it.}

{Glossary (sa):  Yiddalach.  One who, for sentimental reasons,
eats kreplach.}

{a4c-25}
{Comment (sa):  Oy:  }

{a4c-26}
{Comment (sa):  I have yet to see much good in that day, except
that it does seem a prerequisite for the 10th of Av.  And with
RSC, sitting on the merpesset (porch) of the Bet Knesset, one had
the sense of a nostalgia for what was lost, and what could be --
all of which had virtually nothing to do with that Herodian
architectural shlock-pile.  And not much to do with schechting
goats, either.  I mean, anyone from McDonalds's can do korbanot;
to burn up a nice quiche, with made with cream and asparagus --
that would be a sacrifice.
Ah, piety:  to write this I give up gazing at the dawn?
Or worse, that someone might read it I write it?
I think it was Kit Smart wrote a Shaharit psalm to his cat
Geofrry.
And Sam Jonson said, I'd as leave drink with Kit Smart as any many
in Christendom.
I have a Home Entertainment Center made of birds.
Was it R. Zalman who said:  in the Temple, the Psalms were
antiphonal.}

{a4c-27}
{Comment (sa):  And Bosh Benedict (Dr. Ruth  Boshwitz Benedict,
z'lb) said:  It is the doctors's duty to cure, and the patient's
duty to be cured.  I mean like, all those prayers for the ill: 
pray for a bisele sechel, a bit of common sense, for all those
idiots who pollute their bodies and pollute the environment that
pollutes our bodies; and pray for some brains for the medical
establishment, that they should stop using 100 gold-plated sledge-
hammers to defend us from mosquitos.
But I digress.}

{a4c-28}
{Comment (sa):  Can't do it by wishing.{

{a4c-29}
{Comment (sa):  So anyhow, there I was flipping out in
Alburquerque, which is about all you can do in Albuquerque in the
heat of a summer day, and there's Sonia LaBove trying to bring me
back to earth, but I'm not at all sure that it's safe to land, and
Sonia has just come back from India where she was studying Iyengar
Yoga personally with Mr. Iyengar, so I ask her, Sonia, are you
still Jewish, and she says, Nu, do I look Hindu?
Sonia was like one of those classic Russian dolls -- thick long
red hair, braided.  I mean, whatever portion of thick red hair was
given unto the Jewish people, she had it all.}

{a4c-29a}
{Comment (sa):  Who says we didn't.  Who knows what happened. 
Bringing Meshiach is not precisely like putting up a Trump Tower. 
As RSC often said:  What do we know. What do we erally know.}

{a4c-30}
{Comment (sa):  Is it good to become one.  I mean, I already am
one; what I need is significant others.  There's lots of others,
too many for most purposes, but not many significant others. 
"Everybody's talking at me / I don't hear a word they're saying /
only the echos of my mind" (Oy, Descartes, that pious fart.) 
"Lovers are many , beloved, few. "}

{a4c-31}
{Comment (sa):  At the Modi'in Kabalat Shabat, they sing in
unison.  Don't even vary a grupetto from week to week to month to
month.   Aryeh Naftali says, Shlomo Carlebach it ain't.
Some of the nusach is like trance style, they tell me; and for our
sins this year on davka Tesha b'Av there was a pile-driver
breaking up rock for a superfluous security road that trashes the
Moshav perimeter.  Instead of eucalyptus trees, there are those
first-circle-of-hell orange lights.}

{a4c-32}
{Comment (sa):  As a matter of fact, the only huge crowds I've
seen on Kotel Plaza are Shavuot night, and (this year, but not so
much earlier years) Yom Yerushelayim.  I was at the March on
Washington, when Martin Luther King spoke.  If I recall, that was
around 200,000.  Kotel Plaza holds maybe a few thousand, packed,
and dangerously so, especially now with all the new security
barriers.  I'd not regard it as responsible to go there in such
crowds, as_it_is_said (by me) 'Don't become a statistic.'}

{a4c-33}
{Comment (sa):  Maybe the greatest, but surely not the best,
as_it_is_said, "a still small voice".}

{a4c-34}
{Comment (sa):  And Adrian Gomez once said something about, try to
get it together or else this tipi won't get off the ground.  She
once said to me, when I was flipping out, It is great chutzpah to
think that you're so bad that the good LORD has no use for you.
I once found religion, went in to apply for food stamps as usual,
told them the truth, and didn't get any.  I came back, and Adrian
said, Steve, an old pro like you?}

{a4c-35}
{Comment (sa):  And PVK once said, best's I recollect, to a couple
about to be married:  Don't let the day end without clearing up
whatever has come between you.
Everybody knows, if you're having a bit on the side, good manners
is to not tell your spouse; but that can make them crazy, because
one senses it subconsciously but cannot accept it consciously.
PVK would say, before doing the spiritual analogue of an official
marriage -- take your spouse as your chiefest trust.
Alev said:  Everyone wants to be seen.
My great-aunt Hannah once came to a family gathering, and said to
the dowager accompanying her:  this is Upper West Side New York
German-Jewish:  'Now tell me:  Who is there here to whom I am not
speaking.'
HIK says in Collected Sayings:  `My friends lull me to sleep, but
my enemies [or better, antagonists  , like, anti-agon, the
dialectic pilpul that keeps the protagonist of the agon sailing on
in choppy seas] keep me on my toes.'}

{a4c-36}
{Comment (sa):  Moishe Rabbenu is a chabadnik from Flatbush.}

{a4c-37}
{Comment (sa):  "cute and sweet" but not quite right.  Bill
Helbing got stoned on Mishrakon, and all he could was 'Wow ....
Wow ... '  And anyhow, remember the Benedictines or whatever.}

{a4c-38}
{Comment (sa):  As a matter of fact, or idiosyncracy anyhow, I
have never -- well, not since my first year or so of active
adolescence -- seen the charm in kissing anyone, much less
anything. Nor why French kissing was considered arousing.}

{a4c-39}
{Comment (sa):  Couldn't you possibly take up pipe-smoking
instead?}

{a4c-40}
{Comment (sa):  I do not ordinarily approve of edditting R.
Shlomo's remarks, but occasionally it might be useful, nowadays.}

{a4c-41}
{Comment (sa):  Where I come from, a simple hello will do; and
where I go to, a glance can be more than enough.  Where I hang
out, a simple wave will usually do.
The French kiss on both cheeks, and where does it get them -- the
United Nations.
Arriving at an orgy, it is common courtesy first to boff the
hostess, or so I'm told.}

{a4c-42}
{Comment (sa):  Come to think of it, why do we bother to
transcribe and input every word RSC spoke.  With PVK it makes
sense; often every word is significant.  With RSC it's like
photographing Shakespeare in the Park:  most of what you see in
the picture is just the stageing.}

{a4c-43}
{Comment (sa):  The usual translation is 'shall', not 'should': 
this is a commandment, whatever a commandment is in a non-
anthropomorphic conceptual system.  Some sort of (Kantian)
categorial imperative, I reckon.  Categorial imperative of
religiosity/spirituality, I reckon.  Like, Kant got as far as
ethics, but didn't get into religion/spirituality.  Like, where's
Kierkeegaard now that we really need him.  Like, this imperatiave
is that which, if you ain't groovin' on it, you ain't doin' the
do.
And also that tends to confirm the Sufi presupposition -- and
like, a presupposition is maybe a categorial whatever -- that the
link from religion to spirituality is via the heart.
And why do I speak of 'religion/spirituality', besides to keep my
agnostic friends from Germany mellow.  Because, like Jesus said,
religion without spirituality is "vain repetitions" -- well, Jesus
was a young guy without a chick, and everyone knows, they get a
bit overboard sometimes, and rock the boat, like oy, there's Paul
swimming for shore, doin' the dog paddle  while the cock crows
like thrice.  I mean, maybe it's for the best that that poor dude
got shafted -- by the Romans, cousins, we just stone folks, and
everyone at Modi'in knows what that means -- like, take the dude
out to Calgary and bring along the Mishrakan, no need to get gross
about it -- can always find a yeshiva where he can hang out until
old Herod Antipooper finds a new sister to bugger, and the High
Priest buys a Caddy --- let us strive to be cool, dudes -- no need
to give the goyim something new to write a Book about --
I'm trying to say something profoundly fatuous, like:  religion
without spirituality is blah, whereas spirituality without
religion is blah-blah -- pareve cardboard, and a free champangne
brunch at Caesar's palace with no road back , respectively, 
I mean, everyone knows what Judaism has for the goyim is not
Quabalah, it's halacha (R. Zalman said that) -- 
But I digress, 'Ness.} 

{a4c-42a}
{Comment (sa):  Jesus once tried that, on the north shore of the
Kineret.  Didn't work out so good in the long run; though it was
nice picnic.}

{a4c-44}
{Comment (sa):  Evil Knivil.  Deviled eggs. 'evil' is not the
appropriate tranaslation for yetzer hara.  Men should not be
certified as rabbi's unless they can bring a note from their wife.
I mean, someone should say something common sense about this bag
of worms that they call the 'yetzer hara'.  "The yeast in the
bread" is precisely what it ain't. That's the way to facism.}

{a4c-44a}
{Comment (sa): "First of all, She's black."}

{a4c-45}
{Comment (sa):  No, I'd not take that for granted.  And enough of
this sentimentalization and romanticization.  For starters, these
were victims, not martyrs.  For another thing, everyone knows,
those who die before their time -- suicides, those who are
murdered -- are most of them stuck where they died; they find it
very hard and slow to move on.
So sad to say, there is maybe a place for prayers for the dead at
the death-camps.  Though I'm not sure that a Buddhist chant is
quite the right tikun.  For that matter, I don't know if there's
anything much the living can do to help.  
Remember, I often note, Little Joe once said:  "Dead don't need
our prayers."
And PVK once said of NIK, z'lb (St. George Cross, Croix de Guerre,
post.; "Madelaine" dans le Resistance"; Cf. eg "A Man named
Intrepid"):  She's consoling those who died violently.}  
{a4c-45a}
{Comment (sa):  No, I don't think that's right.
Oh, and about this eternal damnation bit.  
(And PVK once said (Zenith, ca. 1998):  "Damnation is not
eternal.")
Lots of folks say:  Time is subjective.  I once played a walkman
as I walked back from Beersheva to the base I was washing pots at. 
"An interminable kilometer".  Sometimes on the bus ride back I
start nodding off, but my mind keeps running.  100 thoughts a
meter.  Very extended time; bus ride takes months.  In the next
world, lacking the body for ballast, we're at the mercy of the
mind, I guess; and mind-time takes a zillion times longer than
body-time, so it seems like eternity.  I mean, some folks could
just about go through eternal damnation while we do a two-martini
lunch.  Only that's going into sci-fi and heresy, not that there's
much of a border between 'em nowadays.
So for starters, don't count on seeing your near & dear when you
get to heaven; not in realtime anyhow.  (Tho I don't imagine
realtime has much to do with heaven, except maybe as one of the
lesser options.  )
PVK once said:  You can contact anyone, any time.  (He was
speaking of folks who are in this world contacting anyone, dead or
alive.)
Well, I'm not sure of anything in this note.  It's getting into
the flippy-dippy doo-doo that I don't like to slip on.}

{a4c2-3}
{Comment (sa):  So I'm riding on the back of Ed Money's BMW, we've
come back from Denver via Mississippi where a few friendly bikers
meet us, take us to their home, and one of them hospitably shoots
off a gun half a foot from my ear, because how could anyone from
Oberlin College not find this the most refined cultural activity
on earth -- I suppose in that incident we were saved by Mooney's
naivite -- so anyhow, after going up the Blue Ridge Highway we
wind up at the entrance to the Mass. Turnpike, because Ed lives in
Needham and/or Dedham, and so he asks guy at the Toll Booth, Any
discount for Motorcycles, and the guy says, Yup, every other one;
you just missed it.
So anyhow, there I am on the rusty drawbridge to Luciano's Gourmet
Al Fresco Napolitolitean Restaurant aka Shoshana's Half-baked
Pizza Parlour, and one of the Wittkids, Shmalie maybe, comes up
and I just about bite his head off, and he says, with that
innocence that only the Wittkids can access, 'What did I do', and
I explain, since this is obviously now a discussion for the sake
of Heaven, not merely a chance to beat up on someone smaller than
me, I explain:  Sometimes you don't do nothing; it just happens.
The End; End of Lecture.  Quiz on Friday, Robinson.}

{a4c2-4}
{Comment (sa):  Mazaltov.  Be back in time for the brit.}

{a4c2-1}
{Comment (sa): Sorry Charlie, some airline tickets can't be
transferred nor resold.  Nor subdivided; so I fly from T.A. to
just upwind of the Azores and drop out, having told my wife to
hitch a ride on a seagull, knock on the window, and tell the
Stewardess we're flying Business Class with the Sushi Supplement.}

{a4c2-2}
{Comment (sa).  Enough already. When Jesus said, Store up treasure
in heaven, he did not mean not you get Brownie points for
memorizing Alef through Dalet of the Babylonia Telephone Book.
I mean, if Jesus wasn't a rabbi, who was.}