Rubin Friedman

At the unveiling of the headstone

rubin — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:48:35 +0000

The rabbi was intoning the prayer for the dead.

The crowd around said amen at all the right spots

And like a wild herd watching the wolf

All craned their necks towards the headstone.

And when the widow arose

They all inhaled and moved around her.

They waited breathless for her to say the Kaddish

And when she bowed,

They also bowed and breathed out their fear.

Their shoulders dropped.

They shrunk to individual figures

Who were engrossed in conversation

And broke off in twos and threes

As it were at random.

But as the widow moves, the circle of space moves with her

Protected as she is by the quiet aura of death.

She moves toward me

And unaware, I break the circle

Enter it and take her hand.

The buzz of conversation stops.

I wish her well.

And she moves on

Comforted by streams of people coming in and out of her orbit

Like streaking comets across our night

Dropping words of comfort

Like stardust

Into her wounded heart.

Through drying tears, the widow smiles

And walks firmly out of the cemetery.

Outside the box

rubin — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 22:07:08 +0000

Looking for a way out of this box

I do not want to lose the box

Or the thing that thinks and feels

And searches to escape.

“Everything is infused with ego,”

Said Dr. Freud and gave Bill Clinton his cigar

Who wondered what to do with the burning tip

And closed his ears when told,

“Just smoke the damn thing!”

This is a sign of our age.

We do not know what to do with symbols

And suck on them for significance

When they are just there to feed us

Not lead us to victory

In the battle against evil.

But in the grand vista of the wide world

The puny concerns of mere mortals

Have no effect and are no more real than smoke

To the concrete and solid pleasures of power.

It sits in the centre of existence like a vacuum

That devours everything and yet

Makes it all whirl, revolving towards the

Inevitable end of complete destruction.

Oh if only we could pass through that singularity

And emerge newborn and shorn of loss,

And lambs and lions could plow the earth

Without end or purpose.

And still we would be whole,

The green earth repairing every scar we inflicted

And forgiveness would flow over us like a flood

Til we drowned in our own innocence

And drank it all like the Chinese brother

Who imbibed the sea.

Expanding like a balloon

And filled with the loss of guilt

We would float away into the nothingness that

We were always searching for.

And just before the conscious thought would leave us

Just before the box and the thing that thinks would disappear

We would know that hope and despair are the same,

Different angles of viewing

What is after all, all we have:

Our life and what happens in it.

Jogging in my neighbourhood

rubin — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:26:02 +0000

On a late afternoon, I went jogging in my neighbourhood.

Except for a few giant trees and the old stone house on the corner

I was older than everything I saw.

I was older than the asphalt that felt like the brittle bones of aging men,

Older than the sidewalk, older than the grass

Older than the houses all around.

And as I jogged, I grew older still,

Older than blonde roller blader in tight white jeans

Older than the street signs and the hydrants,

And older yet than all the lampposts or the highway.

There was a man from India

With light grey hair and protruding belly

Stuck on legs as thin as sticks.

I might not be older than him

Or the couple walking hand in hand taking tiny steps,

Their snow white heads bobbing towards each other.

But I was older than the man and woman

Showing their young daughter how to ride the bike

And I was older than the woman’s ample hips

And snug blue jeans as I jogged slowly

Up behind her at my leisure.

And I was older still by far

Than the muscle laden man

Who glared as I jogged by

And shared glances with his beautiful companion.

And I was more ancient than the young woman

Who wore a cap and dressed in shorts

And smiled as she let her dog drink water from a puddle.

As I walked back, all the cars and trucks were younger

And the young black man sitting blasting rap in his SUV.

The cat who sat right in the road

Was younger than me

Even though it looked at me for minutes

Before rubbing its soft body on my naked legs.

Much younger than me were the seagulls

Flying like skyfish above my head

And the great clouds that floated in the sky ocean

Like icebergs of mist.

But looming low in bright blue sky,

The yellow moon smiled and said,

“You are but an infant, a nanosecond of my life.”

I laughed and said, “old man, I’m here for some time yet.”

Looking up, I grinned and sprinted for my house,

A mere youth in the history of the world.

You can’t make an omelette…

rubin — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:56:25 +0000

Today, the sounds of construction awoke me.

The pounding of steel pylons into the ground

Shook the floors of my house and rattled my teeth.

And when I left to go to work

I felt all the lost and hopeless,

Surrender to the thunder and power,

The roar of the cars, the movement of steamrollers

And the frightening giant maw of the steamshovel eating the earth.

We are making progress and building our future.

And on the street I saw:

Aspiring poets whose words would not flow

But stuck in their gorge

Because the sentences would not scan

And the meaning was too full to fit into parceled out letters,

Painters whose vision was blocked by the world,

Actors whose time was spent teaching to earn money,

Musicians who no longer played but whistled in offices,

And dancers who shuffled in line ups for buses.

They submit to our progress, it moves forward apace.

I met women whose beauty was battered

By beatings, or cheating husbands or simple insults

Or whose faces were drained of hope by the slow drip, drip

Of filtered life and the dregs of leftover compromises,

Children who blamed their mothers for their failures

And everywhere, mounds of stinking guilt sitting in the corner

And ignored as if it were shit no one wished to acknowledge.

For nothing can stop the progress we’re building, the destiny we’re shaping.

I found poor people with no money

And addicts who sold their bodies for a fix

And all the endless human mess that just seemed to slide down the generations

Unaffected by the invention of computers or cell phones.

But we are making progress towards our final destination

And whoever said you could make an omelette without breaking some eggs?

Just shoot me

rubin — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:21:48 +0000

Close to the end of their long search for truth

I found two old men

Who wanted no part of it.

Broken spirits whose weathered bodies

Could not bear the load,

Whose decaying teeth fell out

So their words no longer had a bite

And their powers were left suspended in a glass on the night stand.

The lost hopes and embittered betrayals of life

Just sat there between us on the table like undrunk coffee

That we all knew was cold and thick and burned the throat.

“I cannot live through another war,”

Said one.

“None of my so called friends helped me,”

Said the other.

And their eyes looked like the image of the damned in Michaelangelo,

Facing death without hope.

Yet for years one had hung on to his dead wifes’ clothes

As if saving them for the final redemption

And one sacrificed the last dregs if his strength

To maintain his spouse’s dignity and modesty in front of strangers.

What is the true meaning of their lives:

That final moment of complete despair

Or those acts of kindness and hope?

A whole life of activity devoted to survival?

Or the realization of each that he died alone

After all.

My children’s grandfathers both had to lie helpless and pass into the dark

Without anyone’s warm presence,

Before the messiah’s last arrival

And without ever knowing how the whole damned thing turns out.

So do me a favour when I get too tired to live

And, like the horse that breaks its leg in a race,

Just shoot me between the eyes.

Thematic Variations in Death Minor

rubin — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:12:16 +0000

I
Heading back from the hunt,

My canoe cuts through the clear glass surface

Of the Gatineau lake.

The setting sun strikes silver scales

And ricochets to show the flopping fish

On the metal bottom of the boat.

The lake is large, the journey long

And soon the fish lies still,

Its mouth still open, as if gasping

For the cold wet water

Just inches on the other side of the gunnels.

I slow and strike them with my paddle,

The echo coming back like a shot.

The fish lies still,

Its open eye as dark as inky depths

that reach down to granite bones

of ancient stones that go back billions

And form the bowl

That holds the lake

On which I’m floating,

Alone and still myself.

Returning to the warmth of waiting friends

The hopes of children searching for their father,

There I am upon the shore

And there we slowly turn the fish’s body on the spit

Above the sputtering fire.

And silently I thank the fish gods for their bounty

And somehow I am still removed

And like an alien from the deeps,

I watch the humans eat the flesh

That some day might be me,

My mouth kissing the air like an “o”

My dark eye open

And searching for my home.

After the rain I found the chick

Its wings spread out as if for flight

Its head tossed back.

Washed by the storm from out its nest

It fell into my garden drowned.

And so it lay with half lidded eyes absorbing light

The beak still open as if to swallow worms,

But still and soundless in the morning.

And somewhere I know,

The mother bird’s moved on.

This tiny bit of protoplasm left for others

She’ll make some other eggs.

And so the world will turn without our presence

The stars will wheel above

The universe will care for us

As it does for every fallen sparrow.

III

And after the snow melted

Debris from the winter was strewn on the lawn.

A few paper plates, a plastic cup, the page of an old newspaper

And what looked like a dead mouse arrayed for burial.

The body was stretched out, the nose pointed straight upward,

The forelimbs raised as if in prayer and the hind limbs pulled back.

The eyes were closed tightly as if concentrating on some greater goal

But the jaw was slack and the front teeth hung out over the bottom lip as if saying the letter “f”.

“Maybe it was a baby squirrel,” says my eldest son.

It’s hard to tell for sure

Though no other beast has yet used the body for a meal.

It must have frozen in a sudden blizzard

Caught unawares in the fast freeze of the cold.

“Well at least it went fast,

I think it did not suffer”, says my child.

And I thought how death is always sudden

Even when we sit in the kitchen

And expect it.

My father in his casket

Lay wrapped in a prayer shawl

His arms hugging his body as if to keep warm.

The arteries on his cheek had burst

The last remnant of a beating heart

That pumped the blood where it was not wanted.

His eyes closed tight, his chin was slack, the upper jaw pushed forward

To make a tiny “o” through which no doubt the soul escaped.

And just the week before he had lain helpless

As the aide just flipped him like a fish on a spit

and cleaned his bum.

Once proud father,

His wasted thighs were flaccid flesh on bone

Too weak to move, too weak to speak except to groan.

And just the year before

He was so protective of my mother’s dying days,

He would not let others wash or carry her

But did all the necessaries himself

With aging muscles on crumbling bones,

Which now hastened his own demise.

And as he lay and looked at me

I knew I would lie and look at others,

Perhaps my children, perhaps my wife

Staring down at me, the alien

Passing into another realm

While they stood anchored in their life.

The dark curtain would come down,

And they would look at the dead flesh

Like any expired beast

And wonder where the spark had gone

And how dark and deep the blank eyed stare

Might be before the lids were closed

And what the slack jawed “o” of my open mouth might show.

Death does not have me yet but sits

At my table and laughs with me

As we keep playing solitaire and winning.

Ikh zitz yetzt do un vart

rubin — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:42:42 +0000

Ikh zitz yezt do un vart

Un vos vet kumen?

A likht fun oybn

Vos vet als erkleren

Un mikh farblinden?

A mensch mit blitzindige oygen

Un a hand vos men zeyt fun bayde zayten

Nor ayns iz vaykh vi putter

Un ayns iz hart vi shtayner.

Un az er makht arop azoy di hant

Tzetrent er unzer velt

Un shnayt durkh flaysh un bayner.

Un als vet lign vi in sholom,

A shepsel mit a layb

Oyf a mizbeakh farbrent.

Der oyf vem Ikh vart iz do.

Ikh hob im nisht derkent.

My daily bread 07/06/08

rubin — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 01:44:48 +0000

I didn’t realize it but I started to think about my father yesterday. It was the day after the anniversary of his death. I had lit the memorial candle in our house but the day seemed to pass without any twinge or reflection.

There was just this thickening fog or mist descending on me, which I put down to the heat and humidity, an oppressive squeezing of my thoughts ’til they were unable to leave the ordinary and the mundane. Get up. Wash. Brush your teeth. Eat breakfast. Go to work. And so on.

Yesterday, the fog lifted. I had a chance to see the ornamental gardens at the Experimental Farm. They were extraordinary. The odours and sights of brilliantly coloured flowers and trees with fantastic shapes just filled my brain to bursting. I was totally relaxed.

As the day progressed, the heavy weight descended on my head and pushed me towards the ground. I stumbled although I had not drunk anything. I felt somehow miles away from my feet which were moving on their own, rather stiffly. The pressure was stretching me out instead of compressing me. I thought I would break in two.

I was kept busy with other things but as the afternoon drew to a close, I realized the effort at keeping my body together and functioning was exhausting. I could barely speak as my mouth and mind slowed to a crawl and it seemed to me all I could produce was long drawn out sounds and slurred speech.

This morning, I started to come to terms with the source of my discomfort. I went to the synagogue and said Kaddish over my father and this time I fel completely separate from the other people there. What pulled my head from my feet yesterday, drew me out of my body and away from the other members of my congregation. They all spoke to me and I answered but it felt like I was speaking from another dimension. At several points in the service, I had to put my head down, it was almost bursting like a balloon filled with helium.

My father was a worthy man but a man with his own faults and suffering. The one thing I can say about him is that he did not fit in. He was a fish out of water in his social circle and likewise in my everyday world. He did not fit. He was a rebel who could not work in a unionized shop because they emphasized speed and production numbers whereas he loved to caress the cloth and perfect the cutting and sewing and pressing. He was not satisfied until everything fit perfectly. No matter how socially adept he could be, he was still alone and when he was in a crowd of people from his home town his head always stuck out from the crowd. “The tall Nuchim” is what they called him. I always had the sense of his being himself and singular no matter who surrounded him.

Perhaps that is the sensation he has passed on to me. No matter the group I am with, I somehow do not fit in. Often, I will seek a way to think of myself as not quite fitting, even if I have much in common with others. I recreate the sensation of aloneness as if I crave it. And yet it is that sense of aloneness, of loneliness, which causes me the pain I feel.

Ultimately, perhaps, I cannot help making myself outcast because that is who I am. Here is the kicker. Of all the people in the world who hugged me when I was young, he hugged me the best and it is in his arms that I felt myself at home and wanted.

Today, I remembered my father and drifted away from the world.

My daily bread 31/05/08

rubin — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 02:42:28 +0000

I saw Shalom Ottawa today and on the show, when I made it I felt not more relaxed but more energized than with previous ones. It came across particularly with Benita who was very animated. I had more fun doing the interview with her too. Anyway, the main thing for me was to advertise the Yiddish production and if I succeeded then it will have been a job well done. Our tens of viewers will write in!

It was such a strange variable day for me. In some ways this day had more hours in it than it should have. I slept during large swaths of it, but I dreamed so that in my dreams, months and years flowed by. I was born, grew up, moved to Ottawa, found work. I saw it all as if in slow motion. And then I would wake up, look at the clock and 15 minutes would have elapsed. I would drift off again and then dream it again but in a different sequence and I moved to Ottawa before I was born.

I went out and exercised but I only ran about a mile. It was very humid and stifling and the dogs would bark crazily whenever I went by. So I switched to walking and made it another couple of miles – I did three miles altogether until the heat and humidity closed in on me, the dark thunder clouds lowered their faces to the earth and a few drops fell on my face.

I came in, showered and lay down on the couch to continue cooling off. I fell asleep again and had the same lengthy dream. I seemed to slip in and out of sleep for hours. I kept on thinking of the line, “your face is engraved on the inside of my eyelids.” Great line, just have to find the occasion to use it.

My boss apparently came in to my office on Friday and asked where I was. My colleague, in order to cover for me, claimed I was at a meeting to discuss issues relating to language teaching. So I am going to write a note detailing the discussion I had with a former colleague of mine with over 30 years of teaching experience who had also worked on curriculum for the Toronto School Board.

It was a very interesting discussion and much was accomplished. We discussed the question of how to evaluate spoken language and the risks inherent in putting the emphasis on cultural or personal traits, which could bias judgment, especially if criteria such as “classroom participation” are used.

When I returned to my computer this evening, I discovered that my e-mail is not working properly. One message was hung up in the ether and I have received no other messages since.

I will return to my web mail to see if any other mail has come in which has not made it through to my hard drive.

Soon I will return to sleeping and you can Iimagine if you will my slumbering lumbering body, asleep and dreaming and sated with a life lived many times over.

My daily bread 28/05/08

rubin — Thu, 29 May 2008 03:48:46 +0000

Hi there.

I’ve just come home after another day full of activity, some of which was actually enjoyable. I went to a staff meeting today and learned more about what kind of people work in our organization. On the bright side, they are almost all people who are strongly motivated to help others. On the negative side, well, I could go on so I won’t. Our e-mail is screwed because we are half-way between two providers. One takes care of our “in” mail and one takes care of our “out” mail. The “out” mail provider has decided that they will no longer serve us unless we switch completely to them and has started to treat all of our “out” mail like spam so when I send a message from my jfs account, it stays in the out box and never moves. I get tons of “in” mail which is useless because I cannot respond. Our administrative assistant is aware of this and promises to fix the problem “any time now”, or in Yiddish terms, “when the Messiah comes”.

My annoyance and impatience might have translated into my jci messages but I hope most people did not notice. I am probably too subtle.

I had another rehearsal of my scene with my “brother” in the play and we’re getting quite spontaneous. Then I went to a work out where I ran 5 miles and played some basketball. Apparently my lost weight is a partial illusion due to an error in the scales the other days. I have almost the same amount of meat, it’s just more tightly packed.

From there I went to teach for Rabbi Garten and gave a lecture on …..wait for it…..the Holocaust! More light fare before the end of the evening. Well at least the session finished with quotes from jokes the Jews told in the Ghetto. Where is it you cannot have fun?

Because I got there early I also got to sit in on a class on Jewish ethics during which I dozed off a bit although I am sure the topic is fascinating. The class was taught by a friend of mine who has suffered some kind of neurological disaster and from a normal person, he has transformed into a guy who has to get around with a special chair and walker with wheels and has only partial control over one half of his face. You’d think the doctors could figure out what he had but no! No signs of a stroke, no tumour, no signs of known diseases. What the hell is it? The guy is 55 and really had zilch symptoms before January when it started, rapidly deteriorating to the middle of March although now there seems to be a very slow recovery setting in. The only thing his doctors have said, “they’re not sure but it MAY be viral.” Is that good or bad? Who knows?

Might as well say it is the work of an evil spirit.

But now it I am home and on my computer and moving inexorably forward in the space-time continuum to the conjunction of physical presence with you. Sounds like fun eh?

Until the intersection of our pathways through the universe – live long and prosper.