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A Dybbuk Made Me Do It . . .

6/26/2016

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I spent two hours Saturday at Kaneko in a writing workshop led by Sarah McKinstry-Brown and Jen Lambert. We explored ways to take control of our personal narratives and (if we chose) to rewrite our stories and totally change the outcomes. Create happier endings, perhaps . . . or make sense of sadness. 

​
University of Virginia psychologist Timothy D. Wilson calls this process story editing and insists that even small changes we make to our own stories and memories can help relieve mental anguish and make the difference between living a healthy,
productive life — or not. 


But what if our negative stories carry no mental anguish? 
What if negative stories enrich the earth where we bloom 
and bring forth ponies that hide in the poop.

The pony I birthed today runs wild and free 
as an untamed Outer Banks mustang.
She arrived by surprise from the dunes and tall grass. 
A sign, that to keep my pencil moving across the paper 
​
is to hear an unexpected, alien voice.







  
  


 












The Voice of Innocence

     In the dark, warm water, my arms and legs like seaweed waving, I turn somersaults, listen to her curse and cry, “Shit. Shit, Morty. Don't die on me now, you goddam asshole, Morty. Don't leave me to raise this kid all by myself, Morty, come on wake up you selfish fucking bastard.” Then she pushes me down to the surface and catches me, both of us screaming bloody murder.


The Voice of Experience
     So. Let’s get this straight. Most people, when you told them that while you turned somersaults in the womb you actually heard your mother crying, your father dying, most people when you told them this story patted you on the head or rolled their eyes, right? And the only ones who believed you were a zazen-sitting butcher and a run-away kid tripping on LSD, right? 
         
Awwww, try not to feel so dissed, doll. You gotta admit the story’s hard to believe.


The Mythic Voice of How-I-Wish-It-Was
       In a far away place stands a village by the sea. In this village babies are born whole and come to no harm, children build castles and swim without fear, parents never holler, and the ancients still see and hear and dance and balance their check books just as in former days. 
​       
In this village lives a woman who gathers shells from the sea. She puts the shells to her ear and hears the lullabies, the dirges, the magic incantations, the regrets and confessions, the yarns and embroideries, the down-right lies, the necessary half-truths told by those who have lived in the village since the sun first rose. Each evening, with stars strung in her hair, the woman shares these stories with the villagers, like nourishing soup, so they may gain strength from the once-upon-a-time times. And when the ancients decide they’ve had enough soup, thank you very much, they plop their false teeth into crystal goblets, crawl beneath the sheets, yawn nighty-night and turn into stories that the woman tells until morning.

                                                                                      Ozzie Nogg  2016







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Samuel 1919: His biography, authored but unauthorized

6/25/2016

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Stuff to think about on Father’s Day

In case you hadn’t heard, a few years ago China passed The Elderly Rights Law requiring children of parents over sixty to visit their folks frequently and make sure their emotional needs are met. Noncompliant children potentially face fines or jail time. 

Whoa, Nellie. This goes waaaay beyond Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother.

This Chinese fifth commandment says, in essence, Thou art obligated to go home often to visit thy father and mother, keep in touch with thine elderly parents, and occasionally send them greetings. A court in the eastern city of Wuxi ordered a young couple to visit the wife’s 77-year-old mother — who had sued her daughter and son-in-law for neglect — at least once every two months and on holidays.

Tell it to cleaning lady Wang Yi, 57, who lives alone in Shanghai and sees her two sons (who work many miles away) only at the annual Lantern Festival. “The new law is better than nothing,” Wang Yi said, “but it is too little. I think twice a year would be good. We Chinese people raise children to take care of us when we are old.” Wang Yi apparently hasn’t noticed that the times they are a-changing. Make that past tense.

Zhang Ye, a 36-year-old university lecturer said, “I often go visit my parents and call them, but if a young person doesn’t want to, I doubt the law will work. Family bonds should be based on spontaneous emotions. It's ridiculous to make it into a law. It’s like requiring couples who have gotten married to have a harmonious sex life.” Good point.

Of course, there’s always one kid who puts the others to shame. In this case it’s the 26-year-old man who pushed his disabled parent for ninety-three days in a wheelchair to a popular tropical tourist destination in Yunnan Province. The son’s devotion was called ‘by far the best example of filial piety’ in years. Or the longest recorded guilt trip in history.

Today’s blog post offers another spin on the care and feeding of your old mommy and daddy (or Grandma or Grandpa) should you be lucky enough to have them.  

   *          *          *           *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *         *           *

Samuel 1919: His biography, authored but unauthorized

  
​When the old widow died, her heirs held an estate sale at which Our Heroine unexpectedly found herself, as if guided by cosmic breadcrumbs. The heirs had already appropriated the sterling, the pearls, the Persian rugs, the Persian lambs and left behind, on the manicured lawn, among the topiary tress, what they considered the widow’s worthless rubbish in cardboard boxes.

It was in one of these boxes that Our Heroine found the picture of a naked baby where, on the back, someone had long-ago scribbled Samuel 1919.

"Oh, dear me," said Our Heroine to herself (the Self who often created rich narratives from over-heard snatches of conversation, crumpled grocery lists, one-line obits and marriage license notices). "Oh, dear me," she said. "Today, if One-Hour Photo found this in your order they’d right away call the Vice Squad or Child Protective Services and you’d be hauled up on pornography charges."

And so Our Heroine (warming to the backstory) wondered if baby Samuel was still alive, and if he was alive he wouldn’t be a baby, of course, but very old like Zeyde. And maybe Samuel’s wife had already died from a brain aneurysm, so he’d moved from their brick bungalow with the iron bird bath shaped like a lily pad and now he lived at Happy Acres Rest Home in room 301 that he shared with Max who never stopped singing Yes We Have No Bananas.

Thus Our Heroine (lured by the siren song of Midrash) decided the nurses forgot to give Samuel his medicine on time and neglected to trim his beard and (her investment in Samuel continuing to compound) she considered whether he had children (maybe a daughter and three sons or four sons and no daughter, whatever) and if Samuel did have kids then by now he’d for sure have grandchildren, even great-grandchildren, all spoiled rotten.

Slipping the photograph into her cardigan pocket (along with her righteous indignation) Our Heroine headed home, determined to find out if Samuel recognized his sons and daughters and grandchildren and great-grandchildren when they came to visit him (if they came to visit him) and if they came to visit him did one of them at least wipe the egg yolk off his shirt-front  p  l  e  a  s  e . 



                                                                                                    Ozzie Nogg 2016












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Not every bride is beautiful . . . or has a PhD.

6/11/2016

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It’s Sunday, time for my weekly ritual:
reading the NY Times Wedding Section which features bios of really brainy brides and grooms who graduated (he) cum laude, (she) summa cum laude from Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Yale, Rhode Island School of Design, Jewish Theological Seminary, Carnegie Mellon, University of Oxford , Juilliard, Northwestern, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Stanford, Notre Dame, Brown, Dartmouth, UC Berkeley, Boston U., Tulane, Johns Hopkins, Penn, Cardozo School of Law/Yeshiva University, etc.,
with degrees in molecular-cell biology,
Celtic literature, macroeconomic analysis, 
the history of esoteric and mystical currents in modern and contemporary Europe, peace and conflict resolution, underwater archaeology,
Egyptology and ancient western Asian studies, astronautical engineering, etc., 
and who will, starting next month,
become Post-Doctoral Fellows in the Philosophy of Medical Ethics, 
begin work as an analyst in the court orders and levies department of JPMorgan Chase, join the corps of the Norwegian National Ballet in Oslo, 
take over her family's tree farms and logging business in Boise, Idaho, etc., etc., 
couples whose parents/step-fathers/step-mothers are retired generals,
of counsel in law firms, managing directors of investment banks,
Super Suds Laundromat franchise owners, 
board members of charitable trusts, financial consultants in Saudi Arabia,
professors of psychiatry, descendants of lucky Titanic passengers,
envoys to Pacific Rim nations, etc., etc., 
who met (the brides and grooms, that is) on Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge, JDate, 
on the dance floor of a bar in Amagansett,
as kindergarteners at the Lycée Francais de New York, 
during their residency in maxillofacial surgery
at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston,

while working on Barak Obama’s 2008 election campaign,
while clerking for Supreme Court judges,
while waiting in a slow-moving check-out line at Costco,
in the lost luggage area at LAX,
through mutual friends at a Phish concert in New Jersey
and, though their previous marriage(s) ended in divorce,
today's nuptials, which the brides and grooms know for certain will last forever,
were solemnized at vineyards, botanical gardens, Italian villas,
summer cottages on the Cape,

barns on family farms, on a chartered yacht as it circled the Statue of Liberty,
on the grounds of Palm Meadows (a private club in Bangalore, India), etc., etc.,
by relatives or friends who became Universal Life Ministers for the occasion
and who included Jewish, Catholic, Hindu, Navajo, Buddhist
and Zoroastrian elements in the ceremony

where one bride wore a strapless gown with caviar beading
from the final collection designed by Oscar de la Renta.

Mazel tov, young lovers.


 















Not Every Bride is Beautiful . . . or has a PhD.
​ 
The widow Shprintze Reyna Abramovich (nee Makosky) shown in her wedding gown, was married today in Ponevzh to Mendel Asher Wulff, seated at her left (right, in the photo). The bride’s son from her first marriage, Yussel ben Leib Abramovich, is seated at her right (left, in the photo).

Behind and to the right of the bride (behind and on the left, in the photo) are her parents, Fishke (sitting) and Yetta (standing) Makosky. The groom’s parents, Rifke (standing) and Lemel Wulff (sitting) are to his right in the photo.

The man standing directly behind the bride and groom and the man standing to the left of Lemel Wolff (far right in the photograph) are Harold (Fingers) and Stanley (Roadkill) Mack, the bride’s brothers, formerly known as Hershel and Shloimeh Makosky, currently residents of Chicago, U.S. of A.

“She’s a meeskite, but she’s our shvester,” they told the Ponevzh Post society editor. “We’re here to make sure the groom don’t get no fancy ideas about backing out from the shidach. He gets cold feet, we get our heaters.”


                                                                                                         Ozzie Nogg  2016

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Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes: with a nod to Irwin Shaw

6/4/2016

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At eighth grade graduation, she stands with the girls in their summer dresses, the only one wearing black shoes. Always a bit offbeat. Or poor, perhaps. 

As is he. See? There, behind her in the second row? The only boy without a tie. Two of a kind, they. For a while it worked. Then it didn’t. So she walked out 

of the picture and down Fifth Avenue in her black shoes. She walked by the girl with the dark hair, cut dancer-style like a helmet. Walked past battalions of women, the million wonderful women in furs and crazy hats, the best clothes, the handsomest women, the neat girls with eyeglasses, the Jewish girls, the Italian girls, the Irish, Polack, Chinese, German, Negro, Spanish, Russian girls all on parade. They marched behind her, followed her into the bar on Eighth Street, ordered pretzels and Cointreau, pointed at her feet, Oooo, black suede shoes in summertime, Ooooo, farm hick, until the little Japanese waiter kicked every damn woman in the city of New York to the curb and then everything was all right. 


Better than all right, actually. Everything was wonderful.


Last night she slept wound around him like a rope. Now, that’s an exquisite line, Irwin.

​This morning, she got up from the table and walked lightly, almost smiling, because
they had slept late and had a good breakfast and it was Sunday. 


​He watched her walk, thinking, What a pretty girl, what nice legs, wondering, How she’d come by those red stilettos, fercrisake?


                                                                Ozzie Nogg © 2016
























 


















 




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