Today is the day we celebrate!  All the births, circumcisions, birthdays, marriages from the past week are rolled into one–all fall on Shabbat!  A cheer goes up.

Shabbat:  we have lift-off.  Mankind rises on a platform, cranked upward, past the Tower of Babel, higher and higher—to where?  Heaven?  Into hidden rolled-up dimensions?  To the unused parts of our minds?  Through the attributes of God? That one.  Wow.  I’m in.  But that’s a big lift. 

I’m giving body and soul to a massive project.  It will take months.  If it works out, it will change my life, my family’s lives.  But every little thing would have to go right.  Friday was…Friday was…I think it might have been a disaster.  Or a breakthrough.  I’m ecstatic.  Or destroyed…

I can’t remember!  Turns out, I was born this morning, just before they opened the Ark.  I went, ‘Waah!’, then found myself cheering for people I don’t know.  Somehow, I came out with these songs on my lips. 

I look around.  Our voices have attracted, or created, angels—disembodied bundles of joy.  They gleam over the women’s section, over the men’s.  And the Chazan is singing within the plasma of an angel.

They’re pushing us upward, toward God’s compassion, and even, maybe, if we can go beyond ourselves, to his wisdom.

In the silence between readings, the whispered conversations.  I see every word written in the air.  The words that heal are written in light.  The undermining words are scrawled in black; they form thick masses, attract flies.  We’re better than this!

Help us!

Now we close our eyes and pray for the sick.  I see my brother’s heart, nearly identical to mine.  I’m surrounding it with light. 

Suddenly, the face of a stranger invades my meditation!  I’ve never seen him before.  Buddy, you’re ugly.  To be honest, you skeeve me.  I try to dwell with the features.  I fail, I fall back.  You rub me exactly the wrong way.  No!  Please!  My wheels are spinning.  The angels are waiting.  The scales are balanced.

I’m through.  I’m there with that face, that odd energy; I’m smiling.  Now I’ve reached the heart.  With my cupped hands, I surround it with light.  Yes, the right ventricle, the left.  Aorta, be clear, be cleansed.  I was at my limit.  Someone pushed me upward.  A teacher, a leader? 

“The rest of us helped you.”

Oh.  That sounds right.  Thank you.

Now we come to the Haftorah.  The portion is paired with a prophet.  A storm blows into the voice of the Chazan.  God’s throne, 4 faces, creatures of sapphire, amber—what are you talking about?!

You’ve quenched my logical mind.  Last week’s mind.  Prophet, that vision didn’t descend; you rose to that vision.  You’re pulling us with you.  The wild beauty is battering me.  The air is thin up here, on the border of Knowledge.  I seem to be hallucinating.  The people around me are a globe of light, the same globe I pressed to my brother’s heart…

There’s so far to go, but let’s pause for wine and challah.  As I say thank you, I say thank you for everything.

Let’s have a good meal, then belt out some songs, in tune, out of tune, like karaoke.  I think I may be drunk.  But also content.  And in awe.  I smile at someone at the next table.  It’s the repulsive stranger!  How did he get in here?  His features are subtly different.  Wow.  He also was lifted, he also was revealed. 

This day is sustenance for the week.  Shabbat will brace each day.  Without Shabbat, come Wednesday or so, the world would crumble.

I’d like to tell my story, but I don’t know a single language.  And I have no one to tell it to anyway.

I roll these photographs into a tube, place them in a bottle, and try my luck.  At least, objectively, they’ll outlive me.

Here in the heart of the city, I leave the bottle against a wall.

Looking back, I still don’t know—what was the way in?

I had endless time, but I couldn’t figure out where to go.  I never ran into that person who would help me, or wandered into a place that seemed familiar yet heightened, like all my thoughts were already there, dressed beautifully, in tuxes and gowns, and shining at me from the ceiling, from even the corners of the ceiling!

And I could never get it right.  How you wave to each other.  And give each other a thumbs up.  The palms pressed together and the slight bow to say thank you.  The fist raised in rage.  My hands wouldn’t obey. 

I’m human—shouldn’t some of this be instinctive?!

To your credit, many of you looked at me, and tried to understand, interpret.  And then, with a smile of regret (which I could never mirror), you moved on.  I count you as friends and lovers; those are my best memories, and of course my most painful.

So in these photographs, I wear the costume of Pierrot.  Sort of.  I wear the clothes of a convict, but the stripes go a different way. 

I wear bandages, but even these are in the wrong place.

The one thing I can do—I can curl up in the fetal position.  Thank God.   This you’ll understand.  This will bond us.  No?  There are too many of us like this…

The background in each image is ash.  The ashes of Pompeii.  Here you can see me, just as I was–all my major emotions, from my time on earth. 

And as best I can, I show you my ending.  I obliterate myself with an X.  A glowing molten X, that I hope you’ll feel as passion, the passion that always survived despair.  The urge to communicate.

I had to go inward.  And this is what I came up with.