I will have nothing to say until something is said.

My workaday life is a voice in the wilderness; when I speak outloud in blogland, it should be the same familiar silence? Feh.

A friend commented that my blog was too much of an insight into my mental life; I didn't mean for it to be the case, I began my blog as an online sketchpad/notebook and forgot to blither about myself.

Just now I started some smarmy metaphor about "me" somehow turning into a group of Russians since left my indigenous ecosystem and came to Baltimore. This "chevra" of Refuseniks are then led away from their (i.e. my), ecosystem/social network/support system/family by the "Truth [i.e., Torah]-Seeking" member of the chevra/dimension of I/We, and how this "me that became we" - wondered into some Gulag Archipelago, incapable of communication between each "island", as well as out to the world beyond the Archipelago (because - like a really great band or dance troupe, we sound our best when we are 'as one' - jeez, what a pretentious metaphor), and how this "Baltimore-Me" is not me, and how "you CAN'T know me from one Shabbos meal now-and-again or from a skyrocketing-bloodsugar-induced rant", and the fact that I have so few peers and people who can finish my sentences and translate for me, who'd send me 'care packages', who'd love me so much they'd kidnap and take me on roadtrips to get me out of a funk, people to engage in spontaneous street theatre with, and all those things Friend Friends can do with you - and how along the way I/We come across these other people (among many other others), who, generally speaking, are from the same shul - and how they're "intuitive" (which I feel they think is comparable to a level of nevius...), and appear to be all about 'nurturing'...but always leave me feeling stiffled and like "Resistance is Futile- Holy Brother" [I mean no 'dis of R. C. - only caution] and stuff, and they completely miss almost everything I actually say to them, and they say I'm "too intellectual" and "analytical", and chant tired mantras about "thinking outside of the box", and "the issue isn't the issue" and all this stuff that makes me feel I'm caught in some eddy behind the "'Baby Boomer' Boulder" in whitewater and it seems like anything of any dimension or contrast I introduce them to is "too abstract" or "too dark" (which means, of course, they miss anything funny about reruns of BTVS), and how sometimes I want to ask them -"are you people on dope?", but I'm horrified that - even though they're 'frum' - I might not be too far off the mark in some cases. And it makes me so reactionary around them.
And please, please please understand that - historically, I am not this worked up or bratty about life - but it's so damn lonely after five years of this and [woe is me] 'You People' have no idea what this is like and you'd probably get a little weird too if you were in such straits that the first way you come describe your inner-self was by describing a group of Russians in the Gulag Archipelago - and I'm sick of writing/reading this and every attempt I make to engage others turns into yet another bridge I burn when I get to it. So...who wants to listen to that?

settlement

Intensive interest on the part of my Gentile coworker - albeit balanced with equal parts utter incomprehension. In trying to explain Gush Katif, "withdrawl", "settlement" to him, I understand where the confusion and interest stem from; they are fruit from an inverted tree, drawing nutrients from Above. i am equal parts confused and interested as he. Something like "Anthros" (anthropologists), assessing a present-day societal context, while that context is trying to grasp the "anthros".

"...I'll become a neighborhood curiosity...a tragic but wise figure."

Sometimes it seems the most thorough solution to any of religious Jewish life's countless problems...Seraphic Press is one of the best blogs out there - and not simply because I so often find myself embedded in the saga of"How I married Karen". Not that grew up in '70's manhattan and married someone named Karen, but in the senseless foibles of dating remotely 'religiously' in the orthodox world; maybe at their time eating shabbos alone together, singing together, etc, was 'kosher' (but it would be thought rather 'lenient', to put it lightly, by most of the contemporary Observant "orthodox" world), and resulting dynamics (which would now likely be thought "a slippery slope" in our less-haimische generation), would be considered normal. Nothing like my actual external dating experiences. Regardless, I have found my internal experiences here and there in there, found some solace as well. Far too many examples, so just read especially 'how i married karen'.

Mabul III

An additional possible indication of the "naturalness" of the Mabul is that the generation of Bavel interpreted the Mabul as a cyclical, natural process, not a discreet event (Bereishit Rabba 38:6);

"And of one speech (achadim)" means that they spoke sharp words (chadim) saying, "Once in one thousand six hundred and fifty-six years the Firmament totters; therefore let us go and make supports for it, one in the north, one in the south, one in the west, while this spot will be its eastern support."

Also, if supports are being made to keep the heavens from tottering, why not build them on the most solid, highest elevation (making for that much less work), instead of at the lowest point - in a plain (which was the case with at least the eastern support)? where were the others to be built, and what would this possibly say about the human perception of the extent of the land? Could it be another indicator of what they perceived to be the limits of the impacted region? or maybe this is a little much to expect from "just a Midrash".

R. Navon goes on to indicate the benefits of dispersion as noted by Chazzal; what is "Punishment" - and experienced as punishment on the human side - can obviously have many other consequences than punative. Perhaps with the coalescing of creation before the time of Avraham from less 'subtle' distinctions to a more concrete reality to human and earthly history expresses this multidimensional nature to events; it was natural in the sense that the Mabul happened in the empirical world, but under Divine manipulation...more later. Bozz has stated a 'no blog' policy.