TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 155

Sun Feb 18 09:36:48 PST 2007

February 18, 200000000007

Dear to Those Who Listen,

	This morning we go to Costco.  Oh paean 
to consumerism.  Every time I go there, what I 
think is, "Don't be here during an earthquake." 
I don't know how they get away with it,  all 
those crates piled on top of each other way high 
up to the ceiling, all us little creatures 
pushing our carts up and down the aisles.  And 
where else can you get a tub of mayonnaise so 
huge that it works for making the vat of salmon 
salad I use for Meyshe's lunches?  Where else can 
you get boxes of raisin bran so big that they 
break the floor of the car?  When my mother first 
invited me to come to Costco as her guest, we 
walked in and I looked around me at the abundance 
and we did a little dance together.  It was a 
swing your partner, then swing your partner the 
other way.  We repeated this for a while, 
celebrating the bounty.  It was our ritual 
offering dance to the consumer gods.  The goods 
gods.  Now, I dread going there.  The crowds, the 
carts, the shifting of stock items to new places 
in the warehouse.  But we go.  Because we need 
vats of things rather than little boxes of 
things.  Wish me luck.

ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ
                                   øøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøø

There was a hush in the great hall

	The University of California Orchestra 
was doing Mahler's fourth symphony.  This is the 
symphony that has the vocal part in the last 
movement.  The lovely soprano stands facing the 
audience and sings her part as the orchestra 
thrums and noodles its important notes.  I 
remember sitting there, ignorant of Mahler, 
except for the fact that he was Jewish.  Yes, we 
Jews play this game: who is and who isn't?  Much 
as gays play the same game: who is and who isn't? 
There are an awful lot of famous people who were 
Jewish.  The fields are littered with them.  We 
look through the credits after a movie and read 
off the names:  Spector - Jewish;  Weinstein - 
Jewish; Roth - could be, maybe not; Levy - oh 
yeah.  There has to be more research to spot 
who's gay.  So Mahler was Jewish and I had very 
little knowledge of him and his works.

	We rehearsed long and hard.  Michael 
Senturia, the conductor, a brilliant man with 
charismatic core was trying to educate us about 
the piece.  We weren't interpreting a passage 
along with the solo voice in the way we needed 
to.  He put down his baton.  We rested our 
instruments.

	"You have to understand this part of the 
piece.  The soloist is singing about the wonders 
of Heaven," and here he read the German.  "If I 
translate it, it will help.  She is singing, 
'40,000 virgins . . . '"

	I turned to my stand partner and 
commented, "Wow!   I didn't know there were that 
many of us left!"

	Just at that moment a silence had fallen 
on the orchestra.  Into that silence I poured my 
comment, and everyone heard what I had to say.  A 
titter went through the room.  I'd made a 
spectacle of myself, given away my little secret 
to everyone.  And my being a virgin was worth a 
few laughs.  I flushed red, and felt satisfied 
that I had been identified as an innocent.  It 
was very important to me that people know I was a 
virgin, also that I despised my father.  The 
juxtaposition was not lost on me.

	"I didn't know there were that many of us 
left".  I had defended my honour.

ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ
                                   øøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøø

Eclipse of the Moon

	At two in the morning, my father woke my 
sister and me up to come out into the front yard 
and stare at the moon through his telescope. 
There was a total eclipse of the moon in the 
middle of the night, and we'd been told before we 
went to sleep that we'd be awakened  so that we 
could see it.  Groggy but energized, I let my 
father put my jacket on me.  I must have been 
very young.  Maybe five years old.  My father was 
an amateur astronomer and followed the events in 
the sky with great interest.  He'd taught me how 
to find the big dipper and the little dipper, how 
their stars pointed at each other in the night 
sky.  I can still find Orion's belt and the dog 
star, Sirius, thereto attached.

	In the wee hours of the morning, we stood 
in line to take our turns looking at the moon. 
It was eerie, even without the telescope.  The 
moon had a glow about it, and the sky seemed even 
more filled with stars than I'd ever seen it. 
Dana got her turn first, and she asked a number 
of astute, well informed questions.  This was 
tough for my father who couldn't give a simple 
answer to anything, or, in fact answer any 
question adequately, getting lost in his own 
reverie and stream of consciousness.  We were 
always left wondering what the answer was.  And 
the more he explained it, the farther from the 
answer he got.  I was freezing out in the cold 
night air, and shifting my weight from one foot 
to the other.  I wanted my turn.  But my sister 
wouldn't give it to me.  I was afraid that the 
total eclipse of the moon would pass by without 
my ever seeing it through the telescope. 
Eventually, and after I begged sufficiently, she 
was done and graciously stepped down from the box 
to give me my turn.

	I stood on the box and set my eye to the 
telescope.  It was trained directly onto the 
moon, so what I saw was sudden and mesmerizing. 
The moon was a huge orange ball, with shadows at 
its edges, giving it all three dimensions.  So it 
wasn't like a silver dollar shining flatly up in 
the sky.  It was round, real, had weight and 
size, dimensions and colour.  A huge orange 
sphere rolling through the heavens, round, 
luscious, zaftig and mysterious.

	When we got back into bed, we still had 
those images in our heads.  I couldn't sleep.  I 
kept seeing the orange ball casting its shadows, 
curling at the edges.  It hung before me in the 
bedroom suspended just below the ceiling.  When I 
finally fell asleep, I dreampt of leaping on the 
surface of the moon.  I'd lift off from the 
ground and fly slowly to another site, miles 
away.  Then I tried to get back to where I'd 
started, but I couldn't.  I just kept jumping 
further and further away until I'd gotten to the 
dark side of the moon.  The shadow side and the 
orange side were divided by an abrupt boundary. 
Here it was light.  An inch away from here, it 
was dark.  I thought if I could remain on the 
bright side that someone would find me and bounce 
me back to my first launching point.  I waited in 
the orange light.  But no one came to instruct 
me.  My birthday was coming up, and I wouldn't be 
able to have a party or a cake if I didn't get 
discovered by someone.  No one came.  I tried to 
lift off from the ground in the bizarre 
atmosphere with little gravity.  But all the 
magic had drained out of it.  The eclipse was 
over and I was to be stuck on the moon forever.

ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ
                                   øøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøøø
-- 

Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net