Standing Room Only

By Dnoll

My favorite band of all times is coming to play in Israel! They are coming to an ancient Roman theater in Caesarea where 2,000 years ago, they used to do all kinds of unspeakable things… But next month, I am going to see Led Zeppelin! I had great plans to get the best tickets that I could but… ended up not getting out of bed early enough to stand in line. You know how it is, the alarm went off at 2:00 in the morning and it was soooo cold out! I figured that I could stay in bed until 5:00 and still get really good seats. Then at 5:00 in the morning, it was still really cold, so I figured that I could just get up at the normal time and still get in. I knew that I wouldn’t get the best seats but, hey… it was cold!

When I got to the ticket booth the line was wrapping all the way around the Coliseum and down the gravel road a bit… oy! Well, I waited for about 4 hours and eventually the line started to move. In the end, I got standing room only tickets on the far side of the theater up in the back. Well, at least I got in; there were a few people behind me that couldn’t get in at all! One of the guys was talking about how maybe he could get a job sweeping or cleaning the bathrooms or something, just so he could at least hear them playing.

I’m imagining what it will be like when I walk in to the Roman amphitheater. They let people in down by the stage so, I will be able to see all of my friends sitting in the front row as I walk up, up, up, all the way to the back... I am not looking forward to that. I spoke with one of my friends and he was really disappointed that I didn’t get up on time. Oy, I am disappointed in myself! I had one chance at it and I blew it... What was I thinking anyways?

So, the concert is this weekend and now I am almost dreading going. The closer it gets, the more dread I feel. Maybe I should just not go at all. I bet I could scalp my tickets out front on the night of the concert, but then I wouldn’t even get to see anything! STOP.....

For those of you that think it’s still possible to see Led Zeppelin in concert, I am just telling you now that it isn’t. This is an exercise in thinking ahead; you see, this is what it is going to be like when we move on to the next world. Just for the purposes of this little metaphor, Led Zeppelin is G-D. Because I slept in when I should have jumped at the chance to be as close to Hashem as possible, I get to sit way up in the back and I can’t even complain about it! What am I going to do, ask Robert Plant if I can come closer to the stage so I can see them play? “It’s not fair! All my friends are right here in the front and I have to be so far away. Why are there even seats so far away that you can’t even see anything?” Then I thought about the guys that were willing to clean the toilets, just to be able to hear a muffled murmur as it echoed around the tiled walls and paper strewn floors of the bathrooms.

What is the moral of the story? If you know it is the right thing to do, just do it! Don’t wait, don’t vacillate, don’t judicate, just do it! I knew it was the right thing... and when I decided to sleep in because it was cold; I listened to my most trusted advisor. You know, the one that is always whispering, “You deserve it. You have it coming to you. It will all work out in the end. Go ahead, take what you want now. Life is short; live it while you can.” Now I am in standing room only... in the back.

All I can say is, “Thank G-D I figured it out with enough time to (just maybe) make a difference!”

Shavua tov le kulam!

Popular posts from this blog

Am Israel Khai / עם ישראל חי

By
Image
  My Dad - He was the tallest man I knew of, not only physically, but mentally and spiritually. It wasn’t always very easy to talk with him, but when we did, and when I needed him, he was there for me completely, without any hesitation. He loved the garden, loved his wife, loved his children, and he loved his work. He was an urban planner that conceptualized a perfect society and implemented his and other’s ideas to build environments to sustain a perfect population of residents. And it worked, right up until the time when his job ended, 10 years before his forced retirement … due to corporate takeover. The American dream, of building from scratch a perfect world, a society that worked together for the needs of all its members, became sullied. Fear of not having enough and greed began to shake my father’s foundation of hard work and faith. My father grew up in a working class family, his birth father having left him and his mother when my father was only five years old. His stepfathe
Read more

Paper Plane

By
Image
The glee in her eyes told the story from the beginning to its end. Well, except the part where we all jumped into the air screaming… My young student stood at the back corner of the room, eyebrows pursed in concentration. She inched her way forward, begging my attention, with a paper plane she had folded; also begging… So, I agreed. She could throw it in one direction only, towards the garbage can in the opposite corner. She grinned before our lesson, and I knew she would try it. I breathed in as it flew, around one student, then another. It arced to and fro, ascending then dropping down, but (no way) just enough. Then it swooped up, stalled, and came down … exactly into the corner alcove… It landed perfectly into the trashcan that I had asked for, a hole in one. We all screamed as we jumped from our seats, TWO POINTS! And then our lesson began.
Read more

The Open Window

By
Image
It’s cold, and a love-couch. It must be the contact, the surface It’s got to be the shallow stuff, the breaking-the-surface thing That thing that sings its way into the bowels of the thing, that thing Tension that breaks and becomes self-realized. The stuff of source, which is never seen That thing Then, there’s   the other thing. The one open on the other side, of things That thing But, I keep looking at the glass between, the skim-off of cream at the seam Of that thing It lurks behind brain-matter, waiting to sing, that thing Like it never was, it disappeared without a trace Nesting Wrenches
Read more

The Difference between Inspiration and Impulsivity

By
Image
Inspiration is an impulsive phenomenon. Or … the light of the impulse of the flame of inspiration creates itself into the opposite, the muck underneath, the foundation of wealth that resides under each dump. I beg to differ, however, since the place I think of when down is up, the happy-place. That place bursts into fireworks and phlegm, it soars into the unknown. I like it, and when it goes. It comes from nowhere, but lands now. It builds itself into stars and hiccups, slipping. Shine lands on foundation, as it calls and disappears timely. The plain of pattern stains tattoos onto film. Flatulence’ don’t exist, the grey-zone we believe. It rams into the animal in front and welds all pell-mell into the mohel. It never actually sings. In the spire of will, we want wafflery with it, neat squares to glisten and mine – digging deep in order to shine, the ton of milling and shavings pour down until still. The difference is nil, ton and void, since the arch flows up again then down. It is
Read more

Family Couch

By
Image
HEY, MOISHE! - click here  -  I wasn’t displeased about sitting in-between my parents – and I had the TV-clicker, so pressed it and began to watch. It was a convoluted revenge story developing, and I knew it. My mind fluttered between whether I was in control, or if my hand was being forced. We all watched for a few segments of time, and then I got bored and nervous. I fast-forwarded super-fast to the end. Then the bullets started flying. The screen we watched became systematically shredded, with fibers and smoke fluttering like worms in the wind, but still smoking from ashes flipping from behind. I suppose I was just angry. It was irrational, considering the love that I’d had. They looked at me in the dream like I was criminally-insane. Mouths hung wide and low with eyes pinned to my lapel, lower than my sight could even see. I mumbled nothing and moved back to the carnage, and stewed—then I woke up. It was good to remember, as I do now, building bridges and zip-lines straight down. A
Read more

Three Thumbs

By
Image
There’s a rule and two others that I found while navigating the Ramon Crater. Back in Boulder there was a devil’s thumb, but this was different. In the crater I rediscovered three of them, rules of thumb, rules to live by, and rules that were meant. The devil is fantasy, I always suspected, but the cultural paradigms sent down in time would never relent! So, in the crater, I stuck my head in the desert, into the sands of time, and I learned as much as I could, till mostly I was spent. And spent I was, coming up from the barren lands down below, on the globe we live upon. I kept learning long after sundown, the rules to live by … and, until now, not making a sound. Rule one I learned from my father, as we hiked in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the highlands of California. We arrived at a campsite daily, with packs upon our backs, to find that others had left things behind. My family was small, only four with my mother and brother, but we learned that leaving a place better than when we c
Read more

Seed

By
Image
There’s a knowing left under the world that reminds me of me. I think it sometimes, this knowing, but it leaves soon thereafter, spitting nonsense into my memory of it being. The life it left always tilts my reservoir of love but never touches my lips up, never begs to begin. I sing, I dance, slamming it out unseen, but always tasting the wishing in which it began ~ image:  Etrog in Space, 10-2016  
Read more

From Pickles to Bubble Gum

By
Image
  I fell for it again today, the inevitable trap set for unwary teachers at the high school where I’m ever so slowly becoming an educator, and along the way developing some great relationships with the next generation of young Israeli leaders. This year had been a tough one, having met with my students for only a short period of time before we left for the holidays, and subsequently unable to return. By the end of Sukkot, we had all wrapped up a wonderful holiday season with family and friends, eaten and drunken far too much, and were ready for one more day of rest before the start of the real teaching season began, Sunday morning, October 8. Then, school was cancelled. It was far too dangerous, you see, to send kids out into our world. It was far too horrible to even comprehend what had happened. Each of us went into reaction mode, protecting our families, our neighborhoods, ourselves and each other, listening for the latest news, preparing for the worst, both mentally and physically.
Read more

Man, Woman, and the Arab Spring-board

By Dnoll
Image
The Middle East is getting hot. No, really, the air around here must be full of electric Kool-Aid or something. I mean, from the local hardware store, to the parliamentary building, and all the way downstream to my little family, we have been struggling to get along with each other for days now. For the last two weeks, the energy has gone up and down with rapidly decelerating acceleration, creating all kinds of interpersonal mayhem and sociological eddy current-crevasses. Even the dogs ran away and, for the first time since they have been our four-legged family additions, they had to spend the night in doggy-jail at the pound (at 300 Shekels apiece!). They just took off for a day on the town; I guess until the evil dog catcher snatched them from their revelry. Maybe it has something to do with the changing weather here in the Middle East, with sticky, sweaty, sloth-slug inclinations taking shape in our sub-consciousnesses. Or it could be the changing political climate that always invol
Read more

The End of Being a New English Teacher

By
Image
As a new English teacher I am required by the Ministry of Education to take a new teacher workshop for my ongoing training. It is bureaucratic business at best; at worst a sausage factory spilling out unknowns and just more mess. Oy, a student in 10 th just now texted me that her Moed Bet was scheduled for another Gush, to which, having stopped writing this, I replied: My schedule shows Gush B - lessons 1 and 2. But, no matter, whenever you have English, you will be taking the Moed Bet —English Lit., tests… wow. I just finished grading the rest, from both Gush’s pupils a pile of damn tests. That’s the hardest part of my job, I can attest, grading and writing, commenting and scoring … that is definitely the worst and the best. Actually, there ‘is’ that Zen that creeps in from the edge of the classroom, slinking in and only then becoming relevant—when students notice life moving in front of them, when they exert themselves into a realm of the living. Yes, there are other realms too, w
Read more