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Being a Jew
Re-inventing myself – those first few university parties
(New town. New life.)
If “religion” cropped up,
I’d let
it drop
that I was Jewish
(Just for fun – no harm done)
Till a month or so later,
another late-night party – slumped in a chair: a skinny, stubbly
face
suddenly
hovering
over me
– jabbering hysterically: “ZOG!...Hollywood!...Zionist Conspiracy!”Very unnerving thing to happen.
(Especially when at university)II
More recently, on a Prague City Bus: Airport to
downtown:
contentedly,
reading
my Guardian:
(a few seats behind, a Thai man – chatting with someone he’d just met)
when half-way
to our destination – three young men boarded – and
(only moments later) began mimicking
the Thai man’s speech:And no one on the bus reacted.
No one – at all.
I turned (a bit scared, sure)
to stare at them,
at each of them, individually – so they’d realize why:
And it worked well enough– they shut up –
although it didn’t make me any friends: getting off
the bus,
moving for the subway
the three of them
crowding
behind me,
(cowards)
muttering:
“Žid! Žid!”...Jew...Jew...III
The third episode I’d like to relate,
if taken chronologically,
would actually be
my first
experience:
local Employment Centre had sent me – eighteen – just out of high school, to clean the house of an elderly couple – very old Ukrainian
immigrants:
I worked hard – the floors, the walls,
the difficult windows and ceilings –
First, upstairs all morning,
then, in the afternoon, downstairs – where the old couple, feigned watching TV
but in fact, of course,
were observing my work:
It was a bit into July, and very hot
– I was dirty – sweating away like mad, moving my hand
over my T-shirt, wiping my brow (and yes, scratching) when: Rigid!: the old
man sat up: and:
(nostrils flaring)
Bellowed: “Are you a Jew!...
Scratching like that!...”His wife
(who had fixed me a nice, if modest lunch)
was silent.
I too was silent.Then,
to my shame,
I said,
“No...I’m not.”Laundromat Myths
There are no and can be no
Halifax laundromats,
here in Hinesville, Georgia
No mousy, half-pretty students
biting their first lip of the fear
that is a little loneliness
and no overseeing owners
lilting Greek
lifting us
to at least
some
OlympusSwinging dryer doors slam
NOHere, all is automatic
disgust is automatic
anger is automatic –
Resignation –
automaticand among
these ripped t-shirted mothers,
there is one father,
his kids tug for no response –
he broken bored stares
into the spinning of the years
spinning wet, spinning, spinning dryTrichotillomania
There was this guy in Ancient Greece who was
tortured by his shadow – the shadow kept taunting him…
“Hey, Buddy, hey…yeah, you: You’re a loser, you know that?”So what this guy did to protect himself,
to prove that he was superior to the shadow,
was to come up with a philosophy to negate the shadow – to make the shadow less than real:
He alleged that even though we could see it, the shadow wasn’t real.This didn’t help much
– he lost a lot of hair – pulling it out in clumps…
…and a colleague named Plato called him a fool in public – in addition to his shadow, who kept it up: “Hey, hey Buddy…Who’s a dickwad? You’re a dickwad, that’s who, a big, fat dickwad…Hey, hey, pal, guess what? You suck…”