Until they composted him, Lee Hayes would sing his get up and go song .... "Old age is golden, or so I’ve heard said, But sometimes I wonder, as I crawl into bed, With my ears in a drawer, my teeth in a cup, My eyes on the table until I wake up. As sleep dims my vision, I say to myself: Is there anything else I should lay on the shelf? But, though nations are warring, and Congress is vexed, We’ll still stick around to see what happens next!"
Odd, as we get older the thoughts that play with our sensibilities before and after sleep .... the hypnagogic and hypnopompic visions that are always best left on our pillows. This morning, I rose with a question someone had asked me recently .... It was not so long ago that I noticed glimmers of the stutter that accompanied me for about 28 years early on in my life. I sought this person out as they had knowledge of breathing and other parts of life, as well. She had asked me whether I ever considered how I felt about Moses, the betimes angry desert Lawgiver and intimate of his God in whose presence he walked. "After all," she wondered, "you, like Moses, stuttered and recognize an ancient angry shadow that maybe has gone dormant but must still be there."
I forgot about it, woke up this AM and wondered how I felt about Ole Moe! My dad's name was Moses and he was one of the angry soldier-boys who "came marching home, hurrah, hurrah" from WWII. He may have not had a speech impediment, but I suspect that his four kids at times may have wished otherwise.
Moses? Many are the times when I've cited his Five Books ... Interestingly, I more often cite Book I, the one that starts "In the beginning" and doesn't get as far as the Moses story. I've not been critical of him in my writings, but I've also not been praising of him. I've long thought of him as a sharp cookie, not humble like Scripture claims, except and interestingly, when he recoils from taking on a leadership post with his people and when Moses tries to beg it off: But, God, ... I am foreskinned of the lips (whatever that means .... he uses the words 'aral sphasayim' and that would be a literal translation) .... How can I "Go down moses way down into Egypt Land and tell Old Pha-a-aroah to let my people go" when I stutter. Outside of that singular situation at the iconic bush, Moses is a powerful, can-do and sometimes explosive guy.
Me, explosive? I dunno. No one has confused me with Jesus and, in fairness, no one has accused me of being WildMan Barrabas, either. I am interested in my "fuse," but I fear that I can't gage that ... others must.
Me, a "can-do" kinda guy? Well, yeah! Indeed, that's what I and maybe GuntherDog both miss about this Last Quarter gig. Gunther used to run like the wind and I (once upon a youngish guy) would think nothing of building walls or driving extremely fast cars. I "can-do" plumbing and while I would leave a 60' Maple to the young, I see no reason not to take on a 35 footer ... none have hit the house, yet! I once had to build a retaining wall .... mostly about 5' tall and maybe two-thirds around a 70 foot long ellipse. Engineers told me I couldn't built it with the design I worked out. I listened, conscripted my sons into service, and off we went. It may fail someday but 30 years afterwards, it holds up the dirt just the way a retaining wall should. I haven't been electrocuted, yet, and while I lost some friends after writing a controversial book in the 90's and could barely stand on my hips after 10 months of heavy writing, when I reread the book every few years, I still like the author, even if we disagree, here and there.
Me, a Lawgiver? I'm pretty comfortable with other folk's decisions as longer as they harm no one too much. Old Moe and his God had these two kinds of Laws ... sometimes, translated as Statutes (Chukim) and Laws (Mishpatim). The Laws were those that seemed good candidates for what some Supreme Courtiers think of as Natural Laws. Thou shall not murder .... thou shall not steal ... Thou shall not trip a blind person or curse a deaf one ...etc. ... Laws that make the community run well ... allow for individuals to live the Good Life in polities of mutual concern and interest. But, then, he had these other laws. OK to eat most parts of cows but no parts of dogs. OK to wear linen garments! OK to wear wool garments. Not OK to wear wool and linen garments. I got the "Teach your children dilligently" but what's the haute couture value of fringes on garments and what's the problem with pulling some hair or raking your skin when you hear that someone you loved died? I'm hard-pressed to find those kinds of statutes in me and the older I get, the closer to Overtime, if y'permit me, the less interested I get in things and theories that make little sense.
Howard, you're ignoring how often you quote the non-anti-gay portions of Leviticus 19 and forgetting, too, your oft-cited claim that Moses -- by only addressing the pragmatic Z'vulon and not the ethereal Yissasschar in his swan-song-blessing at the end of the Pentateuch and just before he died -- was a fan, just like you, of what the Old French Scholar and scriptural commentary just mentioned, Rashi, called "prakmatia."
OK, I get the picture. I just reread the above and I find a kernel of truth in the claim that I might identify with Old Man Moses. A kernel of truth all the more evident in my defensiveness. Damn! Sometimes people read us better than we read ourselves. No surprise, I suppose. As a young man, I identified with four old men and took them on as mentors. A Biblical scholar who walked the Earth as my grandfather. Two Mathematicians ... one, Kazimierz K., who nurtured my love of Mathematics and another, Alexander G., who guided me in a direction that had me leave it in favor of something ... aha! ... more pragmatic. Then, there was Harold F., who helped me see the connection of my speech impediment to the sharp letters I revelled in writing and that so often mussed others' dander during the first half of the Second Quarter. I think I need to hear the non-Old-Men voices, too.
And then there was Lee Hayes, and Burl Ives, and ... oh, yeah ... my two sons who are beginning to look like Old Men! I could learn from them, too. There's still time, perhaps! In the Last Quarter, we should be able to laugh at ourselves. No?
Wonder if Old Moe was cool with laughing at his squeamishness when he needed Zipporah, his wife and Mom of their first born, to wield the circumcisers knife in correcting for not her husband's foreskinned lips, but for their son's foreskinned penis.
In the Delivery Room, the first thing I noticed about our only daughter was that she was born perfect .... "no surgical corrections needed on this one." (M's OB quickly complimented me on my perspicacity.)
I need to come back to this ... OBVIOUSLY! later!
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