2013

An Alphabet

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Air, element we take inside and send back altered,
Be lucid: show us the swift’s passage in twilight, the earliest stars;
Calm the undervoice that yammers what is the point? Dishevel our hair, carry away our hats and umbrellas. Even as you build clouds taller than mountains,
Favor us with the lightning’s power, the fog’s invisibility cloak. Grant us this breath and another, grant us tomorrow. Hold us closely, lest we fly apart as we would in space;
Incline your full weight so that we feel you hold us
Just as you hold the dew before nightfall, the cloud before rain;
Kiss us as we wish a lover to kiss us, without forethought or purpose.

2013

Morning Blessings

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For Rabbi Burt Jacobson

Blessed is the dog’s tongue
Shamanic prayer flag
Binder of vapor
Harbinger of light’s arrival. Blessed is the brain stem
That battled entropy
All night on my behalf. Blessed are my nether, pleasure parts
That double as effluent outlets. Blessed are you, Ya, granter of civility,
In whose name the trash trucks
Are held in abeyance until the sunlight
Girds the plum trees. Blessed are the medicines,
Polyglot organic molecules,
That soothe or jumpstart
My various organs, that find
My son at sea and return him
Safely to port.

2013

Get Money Out of Politics

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Why should we be surprised if tens of millions of potential voters do not show up at polls? They’ve already seen that it is not they but the rich who will shape the ideas of candidates in both major political parties. It’s not that donors get absolute power to shape the votes and policies of each elected official, but that together as a group those donors shape a universe of discourse about what is plausible in politics and what is “realistic”; within that framework, politicians make choices that may at times offend one section of their donor base in order to please another section.

2013

Trauma as a Potential Source of Solidarity

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Every city has its neglected corners, filled with people who need much more than a spontaneous moment of generosity and the handing out of some spare quarters. Like Cohen, I believe that we must witness the experience of the Other and “assimilate Other into same”—to actually identify aspects of ourselves in those we might normally ignore or disdain.

2013

Community Reparations to Transform Community Desolation

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Why do so many well-meaning people struggle so much with how to support poor community members and their houseless neighbors? How do the conceptions of collective responsibility from the Talmud that Aryeh Cohen sites become distorted or lost? What seems to be missing from many of these narratives is a direct look at systems like capitalism, colonialism, and their requisite bedmate: what I call the “cult of independence.”