Eliezer Sobel

Henry Miller wrote, "I do not consider myself a writer, in the ordinary sense of the word. I am a man telling the story of his life." I do consider myself a writer, but only when I am writing. I do not sit down at the same time every day, nor produce a prescribed amount of daily work. I only sit down when I have a project in mind, something to say. It is the opposite of discipline, and I do not recommend this approach. The words of Zen Master Ryokan are my only solace: Three things I dislike: poems by a poet, paintings by an artist, cooking by a chef. - Eliezer Sobel

Does he have a congregation? No. Did he go to seminary or yeshiva and get ordained? No. Does he understand a word of Hebrew? Is he versed in Torah and Talmud, keep a kosher home, wear a yarmulke? No. What then, makes him a rabbi? Only one thing: He says so. And what Milton Gelberman says, goes.

I was on the Number 1 train, heading north towards Washington Heights. It was one of those cold, gloomy Sunday mornings in November, before the Christmas displays go up in the Lord & Taylor windows, before you need to put your name on a waiting list to shop in F.A.O. Schwartz. The Number 1 stops at 190th Street, famous for its pedestrian tunnel up to Broadway--the longest, darkest and most frightening walkway in any city anywhere; it's a nightmare getting out to the street. If you can manage, you always try to wait for other people to come along, because nobody wants to walk through it alone.

So I'm lingering near the tunnel entrance, waiting for someone else to come. This peculiar-looking guy shows up, wearing the traditional black garb of the Orthodox Chassidim, except instead of the big furry black streimel, on his head he has a New York Mets cap, and on his feet, rainbow-colored Converse sneakers. He's short--maybe 5'5", looks about sixty-seven with a thin, wispy grey beard and big bushy eyebrows, thick glasses with heavy black frames. Long, curly payis--the Orthodox sideburns. He's carrying a baseball bat and a shopping bag from Zabar's Deli on the Upper Westside. He sees me staring--who wouldn't?--and watches my eyes settle on the bat.

"It was bat-day at Shea," he says with a smile, a squeaky high-pitched voice, "Everyone under twelve got a free bat."

The fact that it was November and baseball season was long gone didn't occur to me until months later. By then, he would claim no recollection of the conversation, and say he had never been to Shea Stadium in his life, and what would an aging rabbi want with a baseball bat?

"Ready for the Tunnel of Death?" he asks. I nod, still trying to take the guy in.

"Let me ask you something, young man," he begins.

"Yes?"

Ordinarily, nobody in the tunnel made eye contact, or even acknowledged that they were walking together, or using one another for comfort and safety. Let alone get personal.

"Are you Jewish?"

"Am I Jewish?"

"You're not Jewish?"

"I am Jewish."

"Ah hah! I thought so...I can always tell. You look Jewish."

"So?" I ask.

"So? So what?" he says.

"So what I'm Jewish?"

"So what you're Jewish? So what you're Jewish? Are you blind? You don't see what I have here?" he says, holding up the bag.

"A bag from Zabar's."

"No! Completely wrong. It's what's in the bag from Zabar's--maybe you could make an educated guess. But enough with the quiz show."

He throws opens the bag, holding it right under my face.

"Bagels and cream cheese." he says. "Bagels and cream cheese," this time raising his voice, barely containing himself. "This is it! The winning number! This is not the Tunnel of Death anymore, this is a Tunnel of Chaim, of Life, and let me tell you where this tunnel leads..."

"Broadway?"

"Again wrong! Completely! But it's okay, you're excited by the whole thing that goes on here. It's understandable, you're not thinking straight, so I'll tell you: It leads right to my apartment on 190th Street and Bennett Avenue, Number 6H, to my little kitchen table where I put out the bagels and the cream cheese and I make some nice coffee--or you like tea? I have tea also. And the two of us, we have breakfast, and you tell me everything there is to know about yourself and then I tell you where your thinking is all wrong and that's it! It's a beautiful Sunday morning in New York City, and we are joined by Hashem in a bagel-to-remember...come!"

With that he takes my arm and, humming a niggun--a Chassidic melody --he sweeps me along to his apartment on Bennett and 190th.

And that's how I first met Reb Miltie, as I came to call him.

Apartment Number 6H is tiny--one small room cluttered with old furniture and pictures and lamps, a pull-out couch that I gather is his bed, a tiny bathroom where you can lean your forehead on the sink while you sit on the toilet, and a kitchen just big enough for a small table with two folding chairs. Pictures everywhere--on the fridge, the table, the oven door--lots of children.

"You have a big family?" I venture.

"No. Never married."

"These are brothers and sisters then?" I ask.

"I was an only child."

"Cousins?"

"None that I knew--all my uncles and aunts died in the camps."

"So who are all these people in the pictures?"

He stops fussing with the coffee for a minute, stares long and hard at the photos as if trying to identify them, then shakes his head.

"Damned if I know. But they looked like such lovely people, I decided to leave them up, since I have no family of my own to speak of."

"What do you mean? Whose were they?"

"This apartment became available when the last tenant died--that's how you get apartments in Washington Heights. The landlord was going to throw everything away, I said leave it, and that's that."

"It's a little sad, I think, for you to have pictures of strangers in your home."

"Sad? Now we're talking. Now our breakfast discussion has begun--that's the first lesson Reb Nachman taught: The path to God is a path of joy. There's no room for sadness. The fact that he himself could have used a little Prozac is another story. Not a cheerful man. But you think you're going to attract the Almighty with self-pity? She doesn't hear it. Her ears perk up when She hears laughter, and dancing. She likes a good time. So, what you see as sad, my new friend, is your sadness. Go, eat, you like poppy? Onion maybe? Try the nice cinnamon-raisin. So tell me, Mr....what's your name? "

"Norbert."

"You have a last name, or is it just Norbert, like Dion, or Cher?"

"Wilner."

"Norbert Wilner.... so tell me, Norbert Wilner, what do you do for a living?"

I choke on my bagel and begin coughing severely. He hands me a glass of water and claps me on the back.

"Okay, we talk about more important things--what's a living? You're not starving. You look healthy, you have a trust fund, am I right? Doesn't matter. Let's get to the kishkehs, the important stuff...do you like God?"

I am stopped short by the question. Do I like God? What kind of question is that? Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God with all Thy Heart and All Thy Soul; who said anything about like?

"Sir?" I ask, stalling for time.

"'Sir' he calls me. Miltie. My name is Miltie. What? It's a simple question."

"I never thought about it quite like that--so ordinary and matter of-fact."

"Ah hah!" like he had struck gold, scored a point on a debating team. "Big mistake, Norbert Wilner. You've been thinking all wrong, then. I knew it! I knew it in the tunnel already. So, don't answer me then, if you never thought about it. Think about it, and next Sunday you bring the bagels--I'm an old man, why should I ride the subway to Zabar's and walk through the Tunnel of Death when you're a young man with two healthy legs and no arthritis eating the cartilage in your knees like it's a buffet? Okay? Okay...but before you go, let me read you something."

He takes down a book called Chassidic Sayings, flips it open and reads:

"Let everyone cry out for God, and lift his heart up to God as if he was hanging by a hair and a tempest was raging to the very heart of heaven, and he was at a loss for what to do and there was hardly time to cry out. It is a time when no counsel can help him, and he has no refuge save to remain in his loneliness and lift his eyes and his heart up to God and cry out to Him. And this should be done at all times for in the world a man is in great danger."

"Yikes."

"What?"

"What happened to the joy and laughter business? Now you're coming on with the heavy stuff."

"Heavy? What's heavy? Remind me to tell you the story of my life sometime. This is light stuff. Fluff."

"A tempest raging to the heart of heaven?"

"Piece of cake."

"A man is in great danger?"

"Small potatoes."

"Nevertheless," I said, "yikes." (Yikes, a philosophical position, an existential response: the human being stands alone at the edge of an Infinite drop, staggered, awestruck and terrified, and can finally utter only one word: Yikes.) I explain my theory to Miltie, and he says,

"Well there's the 'yikes' religion and there's the 'ahhh' religion," saying "ahhh" as if something miraculous and wonderful had just materialized right before his eyes. "It's called 'seeing the magic,' which you can't possibly do until you resolve the first question: Do you like God?" Then he pulls a second book off the shelf and says, "Now you read. It's a Jewish I-Ching, whatever page you open to is today's lesson."

Here's what I open to:

When the heart hurts,
chances are you're not breathing enough.
Have you never known what it is
to be done with grieving?
There is salvation for you,
but only when you are breathing deep.

Mordecai will tell you:
Breathe in the Presence of
the Tender One now,
And your tears will feed the world.

Then we have a moment together where he is just kind of looking at me and neither of us speaks. I take a deep breath. Then I say,

"Who wrote that?"

I look at the cover: Mordecai's Book.

"Who's Mordecai?"

"Mordecai, may his memory be a blessing, was a little-known Jewish mystical poet from the 13th century, a contemporary of Rumi's. There is reason to believe the two of them knew one another...you can read more in the introduction I wrote."

Sure enough, I had looked right at it: Translated by Milton Gelberman.

"Take it with you," he says, then ushers me out as the buzzer rings and another guy comes in. Reb Miltie introduces us.

"Norbert Wilner, meet Miltie, Miltie meet Norbert Wilner."

He sees my eyes narrow in doubt and questioning, and he says, "What? Miltie's such an uncommon name? It's against the law for there to be two Miltie's in the world? It's such a miracle? Like the Red Sea parting? I say good-bye to you now, Reb Wilner. Have a good week, with only joy. Zayt gezunt!"

I walk out onto Bennett Avenue and up the few blocks to my apartment, pondering a very unusual question: Do I like God? And my answer is simple: no, no I do not.

*

When I get home I pick up the Mordecai book and read Miltie's introduction. Apparently the original manuscript was written in Aramaic, and was uncovered during one of Jerusalem's archaeological excavations in the Old City, in 1978. Like the famed scraps of parchments found in earthen jugs in Qumran which came to be the Dead Sea Scrolls, this too originally took the form of a rolled up piece of parchment stored in a vase, in what might have been a tavern of some sort at one time. Scholars had somehow established the author was a Persian Jew who lived in what today is Konya, Turkey, which was Rumi's home as well. Writings had been found by one of Rumi's early disciples describing "the Master's friend, the Jew known as Mordecai," and later references describe him as "the healer-poet." I read the first poem:

If you're running around in circles,
like a white chicken in the neighbor's yard,
maybe you, too, have lost your head.

Sit quietly for a minute,
and reflect on your situation.
Nobody who goes in circles ever
finds their way home.

Mordecai will tell you:
If you want to relax by the fire tonight,
just stop everything you're doing.

The poem works, in that I stop everything I am doing. It speaks to me in a deep way I can't articulate, even to myself. But just for a second, everything really stops. Inside.

The following Sunday I amble over to Zabar's to pick up bagels for my breakfast with Reb Miltie, who in my mind I find myself privately thinking of as "Gelberman the Prophet." An hour later, I'm knocking on Number 6H.

"Good Shabbes," he greets me.

"It's Sunday," I point out.

"Oy. You kill me. First of all, Shabbes is that moment out of time, right? So any time you step out of time, it's Shabbes for the soul, a rest for those who are caught up in fear as the clock tick tocks its way closer and closer to the tragic denouement," exaggerating the French with a terrible accent. "To be free of that story is Shabbes. And that's where I like to live.

"And secondly, do you really think that one day of rest is enough after creating a whole world? In the Talmud it explains that when it says that God rested on the seventh day, they meant he took the whole weekend off. What, you think a day then was like now? It was two for one--that's why they lived so long. Divide by two and you find out their real age--you're no dummy. Though a genius you're not. Go, eat a bagel, try a nice cinnamon-raisin."

Should I accept this from a sixty-seven year old man with a toy propeller on his head and little bunny slippers on his feet? Yes, I should.

"You're not a genius shopper, because you brought such a tiny little package of cream cheese, like we're two babies who have to eat, two little pishikers with no appetite. But we're in luck, because I still have some from last week, but do me a favor...splurge! Buy the big package next time, the extra thirty-nine cents won't drain your trust fund. Can you imagine anything sadder than a bagel on a Sunday morning and no cream cheese? They could strip me of my ordination for that...So nu? Let's start the lesson...you did your homework?" he asks.

I nod, wiping cream cheese away from my mouth and beard.

"See," he says, "it goes to waste in your beard, on top of everything else."

Okay, the guy was a cream cheese nut; I allowed him this fetish.

"So what do you have to say to my question?"

"No."

"No what?"

"My answer to your question is no, I don't like God."

What happens next is the single moment of my relationship with Reb Miltie that will remain etched in my memory forever, the moment that binds me to him, that wins my heart: he spontaneously starts weeping. For real. Earnest sobs. Genuine tears. From his pocket he withdraws a Flintstones hankie and blows his nose on Wilma, wipes his eyes with Barney Rubble. I stare, speechless, feeling vaguely responsible and guilty.

"I...didn't think you'd take it personally," I finally stammer.

"How could I not? She's my God! You put a knife in my heart. But I also cry for you."

"Me?" I didn't get it.

"You must live in a very frightening world."

"Yes," I say, simply. I thought everyone did.

"So tell me," he says through the tail end of his whimpering, "what's not to like?"

"What's not to like?" I repeat, in disbelief. He must be joking, or blind! "What's not to like?" I say again, indignant. "I don't like little four-year old boys getting run over by pick-up trucks in the Wal-Mart parking lot"-- something I had just read about--"and I don't like heavy metal rock and roll bands with swastika tattoos singing 'Going Back To Birkenau.' I hate that all my parents' friends are getting chemo, quadruple bypasses, new hips and Alzheimer's. I really don't like that tidal wave in Papua, New Guinea washing away all those people--if that's an 'act of God' then I wish He were all talk and no action, like me."

"You sound angry," Reb Miltie, the Rogerian.

"And what about osteoarthritis, global warming, drug-resistant bacteria, Ebola, e coli, e pluribus unum..."

He reaches into the bag, fishes around, pulls out a cinnamon-raisin bagel and places it in front of me.

"Okay, this is not just a bagel. It's everything you don't like, yes?"

I nod.

"Now, I want you to watch the bagel very carefully, and while you observe the bagel--don't let your attention wander, or you might miss something very important--I want you to increase your dislike. Build it up inside, the anger, the outrage, let your blood boil with your righteous indignation, about all those things you don't like. Imagine yourself, if possible, not liking them even more."

He watches my face, my brow. I watch the bagel.

"Good," he says, "now even more. Maybe turn your dislike up a notch into all-out hatred, contempt, and watch the bagel. Good. Just a little more. Some real furious rage..."

I find that I am actually able to do it, to generate the emotions. I am about to explode and start breaking things. My face is red and bursting.

"Okay, now relax, and tell me."

I take a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh of tension-release.

"What did you notice happening to the bagel?"

Was this a trick question? It's a bagel. A bagel is a bagel. I didn't notice anything. I struggle for a moment to come up with something more insightful, but fail.

"Nothing," I say, irritably. "I didn't notice anything."

"Right!" Miltie exclaims. "The bagel didn't budge. It was totally indifferent to your feelings and your opinions and your preferences. You could scream at it 'til you're blue in the face, the bagel sits there, you should excuse the expression, like a man with his tuchus glued to the toilet seat."

"So?"

"So for now that's all I want to say. I want you to think about it for a week...because God is the bagel; a big, cinnamon-raisin bagel."

"But..."

"Sha!" he cuts me off, dismissing any further discussion. Now read me today's message from Mordecai--you know if you let just one page of that book really sink in fully, you'd never need anything else. You wouldn't hear another word out of me. Read!"

I flip it open to this:

There is nobody in this world,
and nobody in the next world,
who will say no to the Tender One.
Would a hungry newborn infant refuse her
mother's breast?
Or a minnow shy away from the pond
to flop around in a field?

When the soul is nursing on the Real Thing,
there is no window display
in heaven or on earth
that can even lure you into the store.
For who goes buying and selling
when the One Great Pearl is
already dangling on a
silver chain around your neck?

Mordecai will tell you:
Your true heart is an empty hole that
only the sound of the Tender One's whisper
can fill.

It happens again. The poem stops me dead in my tracks. And Miltie knows it.

"Now let me tell you a little story," he says, "and then we say good-bye until next Sunday, when you bring the big box of cream cheese, for adults. So, there was once a very holy Rebbe--Reb Schloimela of Vitebsk in Poland, who had a huge following of Chassidim. They adored Reb Schloimela because no matter what went on in their lives, no matter how heavy their hearts with worry or grief, whenever they saw their holy Rebbe, they began to smile again, and laugh, and sing and dance. He was a man so filled with love for God and for the world and for every person he met, that his joy radiated out from his face like a shining sun.

"So, to make a long story short, one day it was time for Reb Schloimela to leave this world, and as he lay on his deathbed, his closest disciples crowded into the room, to be near their beloved Master, to experience his precious presence for the last time, and most of all, to hear his last words of teaching. For it is a well-known thing that when such a soul leaves this world, his final words contain a great and holy wisdom and hidden message.

"So nu, the time finally came, and Reb Schloimela called his disciples near. They listened so intently, no one should miss a word, a syllable, an intonation or an accent, a facial gesture--anything that might prove to contain hidden meanings later on, the very secrets of life and death. 'Now listen carefully, my friends,' the Rebbe said softly, the quiet voice of an old, dying man. The room was so silent and so still, you never heard such a silence. The Chassidim listened:

"'Di di, de de de, de di...'

"The Rebbe began to hum a niggun, a sacred melody.

"'Di di, de de de, de di.'

"It was one they never heard before--enchanting and lyrical, from the other world.

"'Di di, de de de, de di.

"He motioned with his hand for them to join him.

"'Di di, de de de, de di.

"Slowly, quietly, everyone began to sing, and then gradually increased their volume, ever so gently and slowly, until finally they were putting all their hearts and souls into this beautiful, mysterious melody from their dying Rebbe, and they sang full-voiced now, and a certain joy and ecstasy rose from within and lit up their faces, brought smiles and tears, eyes rolled upwards...'Di di, de de de, de di' they sang, as their beloved teacher gently passed over to the other world. 'Di di, de de de, de di.'"

Reb Miltie was losing himself in his own story, his own song. In amazement I watch his face transform, brighten, I watch tears stream forth from his half-closed eyes. In spite of myself, I tentatively begin to sing along, and soon both of us are in Poland, centuries ago, with our holy Rebbe on his deathbed, singing in a sort of trance. I feel myself laugh inside at this strange sight, and I let go a little, and start to sing louder, and at the same time, yes, I feel a distinct shift in my mood, I can't help myself, my anger is gone, I'm feeling a certain, not quite joy, but lightness. Miltie stands up and still singing, takes me by the arm and leads me to the door. As I move past the table I grab the bagel and put it on my finger like a big ring...and before I know it, I find myself out on the street, smiling, humming, twirling a bagel, all for no apparent reason.

*

From the bio in the back of Mordecai's Book, I learn that Milton Gelberman lost everything to Hitler: mother, father, three grandparents, seven aunts and uncles, fourteen cousins. He arrived in New York City in 1945 a broken man, dumb with grief and horror. He remained broken, and completely useless, until traveling back to Germany twenty years later to visit the graves of those few of his beloved family that had graves. Most of them didn't. Most were vanished smoke.

There, in the small cemetery, on a cold and damp day, he met a man named David Wise who would change his life forever. Milton saw him from a distance at first, and had to squint a few times, to make sure he was seeing correctly, for there was a man, many headstones down and to the right, dancing! And singing! Miltie approached quietly, not wanting to disturb the man, and not wanting to be seen. But David Wise saw him, smiled and waved, and shouted, "Come over here, don't be shy. Come meet my family."

Milton approached, hesitant.

"This is my father and mother; you're standing on my Uncle Friedrich. Behind you is Aunt Sophie."

Milton just stared, not comprehending. What kind of man is this, dancing on his murdered parents' graves?

"Listen to me very carefully, young man: if we are sad and broken, then Hitler won. If we can dance and sing with joy and laughter, then we are alive, and Hitler lost. And who would be more appreciative of our joy and aliveness than our dear families? So it is for them I dance, and for the Jewish people, and for my own soul."

That night, after dark, Milton returned to the graves. And he sat in silent prayer, conversation really, for five hours, conversing with his parents, his grandparents, his aunts and uncles and cousins, most of whom weren't even buried there. He told them all about America, about the Diamond District on 47th Street in New York City where he was trying to make a few dollars to survive. About the subways and the big buildings, the shops and the synagogues, and all the Jews from Europe and Poland, the Chassidim in their black clothes. And he wept as he told his story, and laughed. And when he was talked out, and had said everything on his mind, he stood up, and slowly at first, then with increasing energy and animation, Milton Gelberman danced on the graves of his ancestors. And sang. In celebration. For hours, until dawn. By morning, he had become Reb Miltie, and from that day on he committed himself to a life of joy, a life of song and dance and laughter, his ultimate expression of utter loss and horror.

*

I do some research on this Mordecai character, and come up empty-handed. No mention of him in any of the Rumi literature or the historical documents of Persia circa 1200. Nothing in Britannica. Dead-end Internet searches. It is almost as if Reb Miltie made him up. Then it hits me: he did. Make him up. Mordecai is a fictitious character, a mouthpiece for Miltie himself. Miltie is Mordecai, Mordecai is Miltie. In hindsight, it is suddenly obvious. It doesn't take anything away from the simplicity and power of the poems--it actually makes them even more of a living transmission, and I realize they are subtly working on me, chipping away at something. Something old, hard and stuck. Something cellular. I flip open the book:

Stop the pilgrimage and unpack for good.
The Holy Land is where you already live.
Only there will the Tender One
remove Her sarong
and swim in the clear blue water
of the soul who has stopped looking.

Mordecai has some news:
The God that lives somewhere else
is an imposter.

Talk about imposters. I go over and bang on the real imposter's door.

"Reb Miltie," I greet him, "There is no Mordecai."

"Then who am I?" he replies.

"You're Mordecai."

"Then there is a Mordecai."

"He's a fictitious character created by you."

"Mordecai is my Hebrew name. I am Mordecai. Reb Miltie is a fictitious character created by me."

"Huh?"

"And Norbert Wilner is a fictitious character created by you."

That is a real conversation stopper, so I just sort of shrug and file the information away, making a mental note to myself: Find out who real self is and get back to me.

"So," he asks, "do you enjoy Mordecai's poems in either case?"

"Yes," I said, "I like them a lot."

"Like isn't good enough. Like is good enough for God--you should like God. These poems have to pierce you to the core and change you. If you had a choice between breathing and reading one line out of that book, choose the book."

"You're so modest about your writings."

"It has nothing to do with boasting or modesty--I'm simply pointing out the correct response to all mystical ecstatic utterances. It's nothing personal. It has nothing to do with me. Here, I'll show you; pick a poem."

I flip it open and read aloud:

Sunlight and shadows
disappear at night.
Mordecai loves that Dark Place
that goes on forever,
littered with glittering stars.
There, a soul can lay down her head
and drift backward into a
cool, delicious well.
What seemed important in daylight
is gone forever.

Mordecai reflects:
When Buddha said,
"All is impermanent,"
he wasn't kidding.

"Now, tell me what you learned from that."

"Well," I begin.

"WRONG!" he interrupts. "YOUR ANSWER IS ALREADY NO GOOD! IT STINKS! G'SCHMECKO! Because if you had truly allowed the meaning of that poem to enter into you, you wouldn't even have an answer, you'd be dancing by now, or saving the world."

"So..."

"So you have work to do."

I left. I had work to do. And by the next morning Milton Gelberman was dead. Heart attack. I wouldn't hear about it for four days, when I went back for a visit and the super in his building let me know. I was stunned, naturally. Not sad, exactly. I felt ripped off. Like he did it on purpose, just to teach me another one of his lessons.

"Okay, I got it," I said to the heavens, "All is impermanent. It's not a very original teaching, you know? 'Life is short?'--tell me something I don't know. 'Don't take anything or anyone for granted?' Big deal--you didn't have to die to teach that one. Who doesn't know that one? I could have learned a hell of a lot more with you living." And then I imagined I heard Miltie's voice in my head:

"I have some news for you that may come as a big shock. Guess what? My death was not about you. You are unbelievably self-centered. I would roll over in my grave but I don't want to get schmutz on my tallis. Does the word 'narcissism' ring any bells?"

"Okay, you made your point," I reply. And that was that. Milton Gelberman was gone as suddenly as he had arrived. He swept into and out of my life in the blink of an eye, and I never really knew what hit me, until much later. But surely I was never the same again. For sure, my life was indelibly and permanently subdivided into B.M. and A.D.: Before Miltie, and After the Death of Miltie. How would I describe the change? I wouldn't. But I would direct you to Mordecai's Book, so that such a change might happen to you. Where everything stops for a second. Where it's always already Shabbes. Where Miltie is dancing.

As it happens, I was the first to ask about his apartment. I schmeared the super a hundred bucks, and I'm moving in next week. I'm going to take the pictures down. I have living relatives, thank God. And once I'm settled, I am going to save the world.

End of Story:

Additional poems from Mordecai's Book:

In your soul there are
Sabbath candles burning,
and everyone you ever loved is home.
The front and back door is wide open,
and all the windows.

Mordecai reminds you:
Turn yourself inside-out
and upside-down,
and shake everything from your pockets
until you have nothing left.

Then, stand on the edge
of the craggy point
and laugh in the wind.

*

Freedom of the spirit is not for the
Rabbis and Scribes.
They are too busy
discussing the matter and
writing everyone's good ideas down.

No, to learn how to be with the
Tender one now,
spend more time in back alleys with
stray cats and prostitutes;
sometimes God spends the night there.

Mordecai will tell you:
If you're looking for the answer,
you're much too late;
the Wild One you love is
asking all the questions.

*

Tonight the full moon fell in love with
darkness and began writing
anonymous love letters:

"I fall off the edge of my self and
find You everywhere.
My round, white body floats in Your
Great Sea of Black.
No human lovers know
about this position!"

Mordecai suggests:
When you marry the Tender One,
send out invitations to
the whole world.

*

Think of a shiny jewel
in the bottom of a clear pond.
Think of the sun causing a glare,
and the jewel to sparkle.

Now face the sun;
now jump in the water.
If the glare of the your heart is too much,
let others shade their eyes.

Mordecai reminds you:
The Wild One wears a crown of jewels.
And that's some hat!"

*

There is a time for you to walk slowly
and hum along with the
black bird's song.

Or to sit in the back seat of
the Wild One's limosine,
pouring mixed drinks.

Mordecai says:
"Bottoms up!"

*

In the beginning,
and at the end,
the lover of the Wild One says
"Thank you."

Nobody knows the combination
to the safe,
but the friend of the Laughing One
knows it is unlocked.

Mordecai has to smile:
All weary travelers feel a soothing caress
in the Tender One's back room.