Yom Kippur, a child's thoughts

Yom Kippur begins this evening and it brings back memories when I used to fast as a child. I began fasting when I was about seven and stopped the year I turned seventeen and went off to college.

As a child, fasting heightened my awareness of everything—time, smells, sights, sounds, thoughts. By the end of the day, without the usual prompts of meals and snacks to mark my routine, the day took on a quality of air where space and time became one, my feet barely on the ground where I stood. I spent those days fasting with other Jewish kids on the quiet streets and sidewalks of my suburban neighborhood. As usual, we rode bikes, played hide and seek, rode bikes again, or found things to do with stones, dirt and sticks.

Plus this: on this day of Yom Kippur, we picked our super special--sacred--apples from our neighbor's small orchard. Those gnarly trees, weighted with fruit, lowered their limbs for our easy reach. Each of us—maybe we were half a dozen kids—walked among the leafy trees in search of our own, flawless apple, unbruised, red and shiny.

Once I made my selection, I kept my apple close, in my hands, for the rest of the day until that precise minute on the clock when I returned to earth, could break the apple skin with my front teeth--and eat!

The apple represented my reward. But it also represented life, beauty, survival, temptation, and the power of nature and G-d, a power that created this aromatic and sweet tasting fruit. My apple overflowed with its roundness, its redness, its greenness, its "is-ness" and became my companion, my cheerleader urging me stay the course, to last the whole long day of fasting. Nestled in the curve of my fingers,I felt my apple's solid nature, its promise of future nourishment. "I’m not going anywhere," it said. "Treat me right, don't drop me. Polish me, honor me, and I’ll be here for you when your fasting is done." 

And it was. Every time.

It’s been years since I've fasted on this holiday, but my body remembers with fondness and gratitude the help I received from my neighbor's red apples. 

For all those fasting on Yom Kippur this year, I wish you a good one that allows you to focus on the day’s meaning of atonement and forgiveness and to find some cleansing in the process.

Iridescence

Post by Jessica Keener.

September

Post by Jessica Keener.

Independence Day Week: leaves, bees, shattered glass

July 1
As summer settles into its lush, green phase, I'm taking a closer look at the beautiful formations of leaves. This one swirls into a pinpoint of darkness, I wonder what lies beyond in there, what knowledge? What gravity or mysterious force pulls these swirls to a single, circular, unifying point?

July 1

A little further along my walk today, I passed a tree that was dropping what looked like flower nests. As I took this picture, several more perfectly formed flower nests plopped on the ground with a thud, thud. It was if the tree's twigs were rigged with springs for these flowers were, literally, before my eyes, bungee-jumping off the branches and flinging themselves to the ground. I'd never seen anything like it.

July 2
Today, I once again looked closely at leaf patterns. These tightly woven ones remind me of those strings of gimp I used to braid into necklaces and bracelets as a girl. Art from nature, of course.

July 3
Trying to get one decent picture of a bumble bee at work turned into a comedic event. I clicked and deleted many failed shots as these fellas move constantly, which made me wonder what keeps them going? Solar panels tucked into their yellow jacket cells? They are not eating and snacking all day, they are flying, lifting off, landing, moving, gathering, searching. Even this shot has a tiny blur as I only had one second at most to get a still moment. I have new respect for these amazing beings.This one, and dozens more, were harvesting this fully blooming hydrangea bush.

Looking into smaller worlds, I found this flowering, purple weed in the grasses. Perspectives around what is small, smaller and tiny become big, bigger and giant within the context that measures it. The question is: what's our ability to see into these dimensions, large or small? What do you think?  

This striped bloom, for instance, with its five definitive sluices that flow to the center--other flowers organize themselves around the number 6 or 4 or 3. Looking closer, these petal veins aren't so different than our fingerprints, a good reminder that we all connect in surprising ways.

July 4th - My short essay is published in The Huffington Post: Independence Day: Facing Fears of Violence.  Here's a link to it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jessica-keener/independence-day-facing-f_b_3546678.html  Hope you'll take a look and let me know your thoughts.

Charles River

My floppy statue of liberty crown

Field surrounding the hatch shell, where the Pops play and guests sing

July 6: At 3 a.m. last night, a body-shattering explosion startled and scared us out of sleep. My husband, son and I gathered in the dark to assess what it was? Silence followed, then we heard clinking, like rain, or hail on the porch floor. We went out to look. Somehow, the glass table top had spontaneously imploded, crashing into thousands of pebble-sized pieces on the deck. Relieved that it wasn't a prankster throwing a rock or anything sinister, we eventually went back to sleep. The next morning, we guessed the glass top probably had a small fissure. The excessive heat caused it to expand against the metal frame containing it, until the glass smashed inward. I swept up the remains and put it in a paper grocery bag. 

And, that, my friends, is how my week wrapped up.-- Shattered glass, which I always take to mean some kind of tension-building karma has been released. During this week in the world at large, we've had a tragic plane and train crash, and eruptions in Egypt. The list goes on, doesn't it. But, life goes on, too.

In My Father's Garden

This is a golden chain tree; at least that is what my father called it when he found one growing in the woods behind our house where I grew up. I remember the day he showed it to me. I followed him across the long backyard lawn to the ledge where the woods began. Maybe I was eight or nine. The woods sloped fast down a hill to a gravelly, private road below. Tall pines and oaks and maples grew in these woods, the shaded ground covered in dense fabric: layers of brown pine needles.

It’s a golden chain tree, Dad told me, pointing.

This thin tree looked reedy and delicate in the shade, a few yellow petals dangling from it. He’d found a jewel.  

I’m going to transplant it, he said. He walked around it. 

As usual he had a plan. My father liked to map things out in his head—new highways and byways that included paths and flower beds, stone-dotted trails and walkways through his garden. He’d already picked out a place for it in the front yard.  I thought it was grand. A new tree!  Sure. Why not! The excitement was in the discovery of this sapling in the woods, and then the possibility of what it would become. 

So began one of his favorite activities: shoveling dirt. He became someone else when he dug holes. I stood back and observed, offering an occasional nod and approving comment. Looks good, I might say. Maybe I held a shovel—kind of like a nurse assisting a surgeon—passing him the appropriate tool when he asked for it. 

Here, hold this will you?

He handed me the shovel, then reached for the trowel in his back pocket, using it to perform close-up, more refined scraping and scooping.

During this process, I listened to his grunting, watched sweat beads spin into the air. Everywhere dirt—on his pants and face, knees, hands, cheeks.  Messes in the garden didn't disturb him at all.  (Messes inside the house, I'm afraid, drew out a different, beastly and frightening response.) But in the garden, he maneuvered, pushed, tugged, carved a moat around the root until all essential parts of the root and trunk released, and he pulled the sapling out like a babe from a womb.

Then he swathed the roots in burlap (towel or sheet, I can't recall) and carried the tree over his shoulder. He offered explanations for each step.  I trailed him, crossing the lawn again, passing through the side yard until we rounded the house and crossed the front yard to a far corner under my bedroom window.  There, he stopped, pointed to the new, anointed place next to the house. He turned the tree upright and placed it carefully into a freshly prepared cradle of dirt. 

Next came Dad’s foot stamping dance. Round and round the tree, Dad filled the new hole with sod. He went down on his knees and with his square-shaped hands he kneaded in the loose dirt around the roots again.  He pushed and pressed, tucking and folding in more dirt between spaces, making things snug for the tree.

Thinking about this now as an adult, I see how Dad understood that this displaced tree needed to feel secure, anchored, and most of all—loved.

The tree took. It grew tall and lived a long, good life.  Many decades later, I returned to our old house and saw that it was no longer there in the owner's yard, but my memory holds to the vision of it. I watched it bloom every spring, below my bedroom window--those long, brush-like shimmers of gold, proud and graceful. Each year, they returned to show me that my father was more than a scary, raging, distraught self. I needed to know this—those sunny, gentle flowers and garden, they offered proof. 

(Published in Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jessica-keener/in-my-fathers-garden_b_3361890.html)

Merry Month of May, Short Story Celebration

I'm not sure who first proclaimed May as short story month ( see footnote**), but I am delighted that the literary world has adopted this celebration of a great, enduring form.  I grew up on fairy tales. Now I see how those intense, searing potions of fiction--stories burgeoning with strange beasts and humans bravely crossing into netherworlds and facing forces beyond our understanding--introduced me to a lifetime of love for short stories. Within these capsules of perception are universes, like looking into a microscope and discovering that there are essences and organisms swimming about. Harder to define is the short story's ability to expand and transform the reader in such thin slices of time and space. As a writer whose natural inclination is to compress, I take immense pleasure in this kind of reading experience.

Spring has a similar effect on me. It's short and intense here in New England. Colors bloom and fall in a matter of days.  I feel an urgency of growth, a voracious demand to pay attention to n-o-w. The present feels both eternal and gone simultaneously. Don't ask me how that can be, but it is.

Here are some flowers and garden scenes that startled me with their beauty and evocative magic.

Magnolia

The tiny blooms got this season moving. First the crocuses and then the ground covers added their notes to the Magnolia trees, apple and cherry blossoms, lilacs, and now the luscious peonies. It's been an extraordinary spring.

Rhododendron

Lilac tree

Someone's flower bed

Peony Supreme

Azalea bush

Birch with azaleas

**Dan Wickett of Dzanc is the genius behind this idea.  Here's a link to his essay that explains how short story month got started. http://fictionwritersreview.com/blog/the-origins-of-short-story-month-a-guest-post-by-dan-wickett

Marathon Bombing in Boston: My Home

T.S. Eliot's words come back again 

from...

The Wasteland

I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Three miles from my house--it happened. All of it. Two bombs in Copley Square. The Marathon Finish line. I walk there once a week, easy.  The carjacking in Allston? A couple of blocks from the pet store and Staples where I get my supplies. The shootout in Watertown? I've walked there too--a mere 3 miles on a summer day.  Even the street where the two bombers' lived and spent their teenage years--I can stroll across the bridge and enjoy views of the Charles River on my way to their residence, no sweat, if I choose. All of it is skin-tingling close; all of it is impossible to touch--in my understanding of it. 

Why? 

The big question we all want answered.

The big answer we want is: simple. Evil.

But it's not simple. And everyone has a different idea of evil.

The post-midnight shootout, at 1:30 a.m? I heard police cars racing west from our neighborhood to join forces already there.Twitter, live streaming police scanners. Lights on at 3, 4, 5 a.m. until daylight took over. It was a crazy, anxious feeling breaking up any possibility for sleep. We had three computers going. We watched. We listened--hypervigilant--in real time--running between the bedroom and living room. What'd they say? Whaaat? Are you kidding me? For real? 

Real, but I didn't feel scared. I felt unified. I felt our collective spirits, our bodies and minds--millions of us--knitting together in the highest regions of hope and faith--together in the middle of the night and all the next day until the moment of the covered, stranded boat. I felt and prayed for a quiet resolution to this madness.

From my Facebook post, April 19: Visualizing: a cup of white light for this evening and a quiet ending. Rain is in the air. 

Psychosis. I can't find any other way to see it.  These brothers lost their connection to goodness, to their ability to work things out. They went somewhere murderous and tragic and criminal. 

From my FB post: One week ago...is this possible: Feels like a year. Saw this bed of flowers near the hospital yesterday. The vibrancy of color, the stalks stretching their necks upward--I'm trying to follow their lead. This mix of beauty and tragedy so close to home is hard to comprehend. I can't yet grasp it in a satisfactory way. Maybe I never will? Then, the word "compassion" keeps coming up.

Psychotic. Insane. 
And then, compassion and sanity. 

From my Facebook post, April 21: This Sunday morning I attended Boston's Trinity Church service at Temple Israel. As a Jew who married an Episcopalian, I was moved to tears by this partnership between faiths. The service took place 2 blocks from the hospital where the bombing victims are receiving treatment and care.  I love this poster on one of the hospital buildings.

Seeking the root of it. Why it started. How it grew. How it took root. How it...bloomed.

Power is a strange word, isn't it? 

From my April 18, Facebook post: Power. It's right here in these petals. No bomb carrying creep can touch the beauty and life energy manifesting in these flowers. The city is bursting with heavenly blooms right now. Everywhere.

The younger brother has since been moved from the hospital (1.5 miles from my house) to a prison 40 miles west of here. He's in a small cell with a steel door. No longer walking distance from where I live, he's going to fade into time's tunnel. Whatever darkness he lives inside, I simply can't grasp it. I hope he follows his uncle's pleas to tell the truth, tell us the whole truth, get down on your knees and ask forgiveness to the families you killed and maimed. 

From my Facebook post, April 18:  Boston, Texas. What kind of week is this? For centuries and beyond we have endured our mistakes, our egregious actions and still we move forward. A few of us learn something and remember and certain things get worked out. World news is overwhelming, so begin with your immediate circle: home, family, yourself.  I believe small, daily actions of kindness, honesty, negotiation, ability to take responsibility, wash dishes, make your bed, plant trees lead to bigger, collective improvements. 

Forgiveness. It can't return blown-off limbs. It can't return lost lives. It can't return an 8-year-old from Dorchester; a 23-year-old student from China; a 29-year-old young woman from Boston;  a 26-year-old police officer protecting students at MIT. 

Still. I will be watching and waiting and hoping this younger brother asks for forgiveness. Why does this matter to me?  I don't know. I don't know. 

Or maybe I do know.

Forgiveness, I believe, is linked to insight. Asking forgiveness is an act of understanding, an admission of wrongdoing, and for this surviving brother, a willingness to take responsibility for the death and pain of innocent people.

Awareness of that magnitude? I like to imagine that I'm not asking or hoping for too much.