DRAGONFLIES, THE AMIDAH, AND A HOBGOBLIN TEA PARTY AT THE SWINGING BRIDGE

August 25, 2009

As soon as we arrived here, my hobgoblins and I sat up in our tower to throw pins on a map – we will meet up here, and here, and here.  They are the dreamkeepers – they always oblige the fulfillment of my dreams, in the sense of eventually arriving at their designated destination, whilst remaining absolutely true to their whimsical nature by traveling along the most maddeningly and delightfully perverse of paths.

Ah, those little hobgoblins, dreams.

When I go to sleep, they go to work, and vice versa. That way somebody is always in charge, and there’s less arguing, less throwing of priceless dishware, fewer epithets we have to take a time-out to look up in our hobgoblin-to-boring-human dictionary.  It’s been many decades, and we have scars and embarrassing photographs, but we know we’re going the same place, and know we’re going to surprise each other by what happens along the way.

And so while I have six projects going at once here, I have a lot of helpers working round the clock. I think that’s why suddenly, the dilly-dallies and delays of incubation are a phenomenon in which I’m learning to find delight and entertainment. Letting the idea ripen in its own time, realizing that the moment I commit to the project is what’s key, because everything will follow that commitment, in an entertaining and ridiculous, charmingly inefficient, absolutely rococo manner.

My dream hobgoblins and I are:

(1) revising that madcap novel Kerosene, and soon to be photographing illustrations in Whitey and Sweet Marie’s hometown of Lynchburg, VA
(2) designing the Lithuania Boomerang project with Veronika (Hello Emigrant Goodbye)
(3) conducting preliminary research for the Sibyl, Shaman, Soldier, Saint collaboration with Mieke Eerkens about the proto-feminist women of the Vosges region. Soon to be field research!
(4) pondering a modest exploration about peace, war, nazis, Borges, pigeons and dovecotes
(5) embarking upon an equally unassuming exploration about human emotions displaced onto landscape, and how we manage to project our emotions onto places
(6) tiptoing around The Aleph Beit, which – simply put – is a project about the stories told by each of the 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet.

Case in point about hobgoblin-invoked dilly-dallying of dreams becoming reality: every day that I have settled myself in to really get to work on the Aleph Beit, it invariably and immediately presents me with a question that I cannot answer. The kind of question that other more knowledgeable people can answer. Which means that I need to wait for help from other people before I can continue any further whatsoever.

I find this fascinating because it doesn’t happen with any other project. I tend to be very self-sufficient and solitary about most of my in-process work, but this one is taking…could it be? Ten Jews? This project is not going to get going until I have a minyan?

In Judaism, a minyan is the group of ten Jews required in order to conduct many prayer services, and other essential practices of the faith. The project demands a minyan? Really?!?? Okay. Fine. I am not to go it alone. There is a certain beauty there. The hobgoblins must be Jewish.

There are many things that one absolutely must not do without having assembled a minyan – for example, go cat food shopping. Eric’s typical cat food run takes place on the way home from work – at sundown in our neighborhood. Frequently someone bursts into the Petco in urgent need of a spare Jew to complete the minyan needed for evening prayers. This irritates the cats, because their dinner is delayed. Oy.

Thus, clearly, one should never undertake the purchase of cat food unless accompanied by ten spare Jews.

(I’m busy for the next few months, but can make recommendations: Fancy Feast with Tender Greens, and Elat Market on Pico and Robertson. But watch your feet. Those mamas will run their carts right over your new pedicure if you get between them and the pastry counter).

So far, Matt helped me select the best Hebrew font for photographing. Marie, Alon, Rabbi Dan, and again Matt have undertaken the selection and delivery of the proper prayer books and various translations. Owen and Eric have put other necessary goods in the mail.  I want to know who the other four are that I will need before I can begin! Is it you?

There is a particularly beautiful and ancient set of prayers – largely about gratitude – which are to be said daily.  They’re called the Amidah. In studying about the amidah and the Hebrew alphabet, I came upon two well-told stories. I will combine them.

Once upon a time, in a prairie far far away, there is a poor and completely illiterate woman who has never studied Torah, and is completely uneducated about the prayers of her faith.  She has many incomprehensibly difficult tragedies and burdens to bear, but she is a kind and sturdy (if dreamy, but incredibly handsome) woman. Let’s say she is Russian.

The village rabbi (let’s say she’s Lithuanian) is deeply learned – a wise and erudite woman called to spread knowledge to others. She likes the Russian, but is troubled (and truth be told, perhaps a tiny bit snotty) about her lack of learning and daily practice. She hands the Russian a siddur, and tells her to recite the Amidah from the prayer book every day at morning, afternoon, and evening. She says that she must recite the prayers out loud.

Lo and behold, several days later, at the end of a long day of planting potatoes in the frozen fields, the Russian has scraped a few kopeks together to buy a little bit of catfood at the shtetl Petco. The Rabbi runs in, frantic, seeking someone to complete the minyan.

The Rabbi can barely conceal her disappointment when she sees that the Russian is both completely inaudible, and not saying the prayers at all! She didn’t listen! The Rabbi has failed! The Russian has failed! It is a disaster!

Oy!

The Russian takes pity on the poor Rabbi and says to her, do not worry, my friend. I am saying the aleph and then the bet and then the other twenty afterwards, right in a row. I do not know the prayers, but God does, and she will put them all in the proper order.

Things have taken a maddening and perverse path, thinks the Rabbi, still reeling from her fear and frustration. Well, fine, but I could not even hear you! I told you to recite them out loud!

The Russian smiles (and right then, about four hundred thousand miraculous baby potatoes are born right there underground). She says, Oh, my friend, do not worry about that either. I said them loud enough to be heard, if the rest of you were not making so much noise.

It may have been the most restful night sleep the Rabbi ever received. All the cats went to bed full, and dreamed about their children’s children’s children’s children living in the Hermitage and peeing all over the masterpieces that Matisse and Chagall would one day create and later end up hanging on the walls. They would have tasty Petersburg rats with every meal, and none of this lousy shtetl canned nonsense. What with the Russian always being late from the store.

And what about the miraculous potatoes? The potatoes fed everybody. And that’s about the best thing a potato can possibly do.

Today I went for a long prairie jaunt, and spent a few hours sitting on the swinging bridge over the creek. There were hundreds of dragonflies whizzing along above the creeping things and the blooming things and the twining and wrapping and wilting and seeding things.  My hobgoblin dreamkeepers set out their bone china tea service and even invited me this time.  We had milkweed tea, and elderberry sweet nothings, and a few rock biscuits, and they told a few unrepeatably filthy jokes before we all quieted down enough to listen to the sound of the dragonfly wings.

Turns out that I like the quiet of the prairie, I’m okay with my projects meandering like lunatics, and it’s really, really  nice to need other people to help out with things.

We’ve been telling all sorts of shenanigans stories around the dining table every night, and it’s a fundamental joy to see all the other luminous faces gathered round the candlelight when the potatoes are ready to be eaten. A happy group of people who are all so openly appreciative of what we’re being given, and full of a kind of silly giddiness about creating, generating, expressing, and living.

Time to come down from my tower, look out my moon window, go to sleep, and let the hobgoblins get their teaparty started.