Mo' Moses

"When I woke up this morning, you were on my mind ...." Who sang that? I don't remember.

M told me that Shirley Temple Black, the curly-girly that boys and girls alike fell in love with ... Heidi, the naturally born physical therapist who cures her friend, Klara's hysterical  inability to walk, had died at 85. But that wasn't on my mind when I rose.

I guess the "you" of the above song refers back to Old Man Moses and the suggestion made by a friend that I, maybe ... just, maybe, identified with my Dad, a raging Moses of the 20th C, as well as the Moses who lived maybe 3400 years ago..

My second thought was a "aha!." With all my protests against such identifications, I could hardly deny that when I wanted to pen a painted document commemorating my youngest child's confirmation into her people, I  began it not with some modern poetry, not with Shakespeare or Omar Khayyam and not even with the ambivalent Swan Song blessings that Moses offered up, at the end, but with his poem that followed.

"Ear up, Heavens and let the Earth hear the spoken words of my mouth." He continues his introduction describing what is to come in his soliloquy  ... "My teaching will drop like heavy rain ... my words will flow as dew ... as the light rains upon the Desheh and and the later rains upon the blades of grass."

Moses, at least at the end, wanted to wax poetic; so do I .. Maybe we both shoulda sung:  "On the good ship, Lollipop, it's a sweet trip to the candy shop."

Alas ... Moses turn to the perfection of his God who spoke with him face to face but couldn't stand back from his horror at the "twisted and perverse generation" that was his life's-job to lead., "A stupid people? And not wise!" He advises them to seek counsel from parents and the aged ....  that would be him, I suppose ... and now it would be us. He clearly worries that without him, nothing good will be allowed to stand.

If you read Moses' "slam," (Deuteronomy 32) you may feel the arrhythmic rhythm of a person falling between two stools ... the one representing the restful lap of his loving God, the same one who is about to end his journey just shy of his goal ... the wish to enter his Promised Land. Crane wrote something like the following about life's journey and our hopes:

I saw a man
Pursuing the horizon.
Round and round, they sped.
I accosted him,
"You can never," I said.
"You lie," he said and ran on.

Moses' other stool? I suppose that was resident in his love for his people and served as good ballast for his opposing sense of disappointment in them.

I don't know whether I identify with Moses, as my friend wondered. I think I do know that the juggling of glee and sadness -- which I have mentioned so often in these ditties -- must be joined by attempts at another balancing act ... the ability to love, that is, to envy those missing parts of ourselves that we see in the beloved and to accept the reality of an unavoidable disappointment in anything or anyone, thus idealized.

I dunno, but worth thinking-on, some more.

Rest in Peace, Shirley!