Birthday of the Trees

Last night was another Torah meeting, but I was not prepared. Instead, I was sidetracked by the celebration of Tu B'Shvat, "the birthday of the trees." This is a minor Jewish holiday not mentioned in the Bible, the precursor to our Arbor Day. It is a holiday founded by the Kabbalists in the 16th century in the face of terrible trials the Jewish people faced. The celebration, a ritual dinner featuring vegetarian and dairy foods, mirrors that of Passover, a major holiday that comes later in the spring. As for Passover, one uses a special book of prayers in a particular order (that is what the word "seder" means, and this is the word we use for the ritual dinner), based on the ancient 4 elements of earth, water, air, and fire. These are meant to correspond to an ancient psychology and to particular kinds of fruits. So the earth corresponds to the almond, which represents the physical world, people (or aspects of their behavior) that are hard on the outside but soft inside; water corresponds to the date, which is soft outside, hard inside; air represents rationality, and this, ironically in my view given the sexual connotations of the fruit, corresponds to the fig; finally, fire represents the spiritual, and the most spiritual plant of all, for the mystics, was the tree.
In honor of the celebration, I prepared a special vegetarian dish that I had never made before--a mushroom strudel. It was absolutely beautiful, but I was way too rushed to take a picture of it.
I got the recipe from online, so I will find a picture to show you what the finished product looked like. Mine was exactly like the one in the picture!
Meanwhile, here is a beautiful piece from the seder to put you into the mood to celebrate the birthday of the trees:
"I said to the almond tree,
'Sister, speak to me of God.'
And the almond tree blossomed."
Nikos Kazanzakus

Tasks no one wants

As I write this, Jeremy is in the bathroom trying to get cat turd off his shoe. The cat pooped all over the house, apparently, while I was out at the hairdresser. One of them went in the bathtub; the other by the door. There are two litter boxes, large ones, but perhaps there was not quite enough litter in them to make the cats happy. My son was playing basketball in the house (long story) and stepped in the poop by the door, tracking it around a bit. He thoughtfully called me up and told me not to step in it as I came in.
The rug and tub weren't that difficult; the shoe was hard. I left that job for him. I wish someone would invent a tool specifically for that purpose.

Worries

I am never short of worries, and in this I suppose I am like most everyone else. Right now, I am worried about my yoga teacher, Denise. She goes in for surgery tomorrow to have the breast implant in one of her breasts taken out and replaced. Generally, when implants go wrong, they simply deflate. Hers seemed to get bigger. That didn't make sense, so the surgeon wants to go in and take it out and examine the situation. But today she told me that the surgeon had found a large tumor underneath it. He told her there was no return of the cancer she had before, and she hopes that he has taken a biopsy of this tumor and found it benign. In any case, what was a rather humorous and bizarre situation has now turned rather sinister and dark. Denise is one of the best, most creative and exuberant teachers I know. I hope for her full recovery.
However, I am not going to be able to be very useful to her or to anyone else because I am so overloaded right now. I am not sure why, but the burden of caring for my parents seems much harder to bear for me right now. I am chafing under it, and want to escape sometimes. I think I need a rest.

Object poem

Here's that poem I wrote for the class:
Cuticle Scissors
"The artist, like the God of the creation,
remains within or behind or beyond
or above his handiwork, invisible, refined
out of existence, indifferent, paring his
fingernails." James Joyce

Dainty and sharp
as a moth's curled proboscis
delivng the blossoms' blunt
bells, a bee-eater's versatile beak
the curved blade snaps.

Ten pale arcs like the
midday moon--the tips
of my overgrown nails
fly upward like sparks.

Buffalo Gal

There is a buffalo pot roast working in the crock pot. It is my first, and actually the first time in a long time I'll be eating a big hunk of meat in a long long time. I stopped eating beef long ago because of an accumulation of cholesterol in my eyeballs of all places, so I am interested in seeing whether this is digestable for me. Apparently, bison contains much less cholesterol than any other meat, including chicken. So I am trying it out. I made spaghetti sauce out of ground bison, and it was good, despite the flu bug my son had that meant I had to revisit the dinner many times after I served it. I might not want to make it for a while.

Last night was the latest workshop. Though only the active portion of the class, the ones who have been talking and turning in stuff, for the most part, showed up after my email asking the others to turn in work, it was a lovely class. The students presented an object they chose, either in the flesh or in photograph, and told why they picked it. Then I had them write poems in which the object became both itself and more than itself--a symbol, in other words, but without simple connection to one particular thing alone but rather multivalence. We had read before this poems like Frost's "Design," Wilbur's "The Writer," and Gerald Stern's "I remember Galileo." In these poems, metaphors morph, taking on the freight of meaning as they go. In fact, Stern's subject in his poem is this very process. I think it was a good and enlightening class, and we all left feeling we understood each other and liked each other, or at least that's how I felt.

We will go to the UCI arboratum on a fieldtrip perhaps next weekend. I hope to ask a botanist friend to come along, even if I have to pay her to do it.

A Long Trip

Lately, my mom thinks she needs to prepare for a long trip. I had her out this afternoon, after I returned from taking my dad to the doctor. I wanted her to check out the Draper and Damon's outlet next door to the Kosher Bite Deli, a few miles from where she lives. She has gained some weight, and it was an opportunity to buy pants in a larger size on sale, but the store is not open every day, so today seemed opportune.
We found a number of pairs of pants, some for each of us, and a shirt each also. But when I told mom it was time to go home, she said she didn't think she would be going home today. Wouldn't she need to stay over on the way, for such a long journey? And did I really contemplate driving there all by myself? She was very concerned about my safety. I wonder what home meant to her. Perhaps it was South Africa, or maybe Philadelphia. It's difficult to say.

Family Visit

My uncle just left after his 5 day visit to my house. I live in a tiny cramped apartment. There is enough clutter just generated by the 3 of us for any 10 people, particularly by me! But with my uncle here, sleeping on the futon in the living room, it was really stuffed. There was nowhere to sit down and relax except on the beds.
He isn't a difficult guest, cleaning up after himself and very quietly going about his business. That helped. He also spent a lot of time with my parents, helping dad water the garden and sitting by him as he rested. I think it was therapeutic for him as well as for my father because he has been so devastated by the death of his young wife, who was quite a bit younger than he is, from an undiagnosed mental illness that dragged on and on for years. Since her mother died under similar circumstances, it is probably to do with genetic problems brought on by the inbreeding of two families of Iraqui Jews from which his wife descended for generation after generation. They are brilliant but fragile individuals.
So I know that spending time here in the hustle and bustle of my household was a nice change for my uncle. He is trying to persuade Jeremy to visit him in Maryland, and I think that would be a nice idea. Jeremy has never had a trip on his own before, and it would be a good opportunity to see Wash. D.C. .
After a difficult weekend, during which we almost took my dad to the ER again because of blood in his urine(lots of it), he has bounced back again for a while. It seems that every time he over exerts himself, he plummets back down again. It's tough because once he feels better, he naturally wants to do something and get out of the house.