Back on a bus after my week with a convertible, my flash-in-the-pan-all-is-vanity car, mine on loan from a friend like a body from God, God who presides over all things – body, convertible, deeds, punishment, and repentance.
The Day of Judgment looms. After two days of sumptuous meals, round challahs dripping a mess of honey over my holiday clothes and oozing through my fingers, after two days of wishing people a good year, the mood drops from a cheer to a whisper. Somber tones conquer conversations, as people wish you a good fast, or meaningful fast, when really, what it means is you’ll be hungry, or thirsty, more likely, as you sit and stand and sit and stand invoking mercy and compassion from the One True Judge.
But that’s next week. Today, down by the water’s edge, I pray for the opposite of the holiday. I pray for no judgment at all. I’ve tried to do what’s right this year, but there is so seldom a path that is clearly straight and narrow, and any judge worth his salt – and let’s face it, God deals his salt in pillars – would consider the evidence and have to return a verdict of guilty.
That’s the point, isn’t it? That behind our blogs and sunglasses and convertibles, we’re all, always, guilty. Every year.
That’s why I’m heading back to the beach, not for sun and fun, but to dig into self in stead of in sand, hoping even within my Judaism for some holy baptismal moment. In that immersive instant, as my shoes slip off, feet into soft sand, then approach the sea, where they submerge and are washed until they’re…something. Dirt on my feet, even when freshly emerged from water, indicates that just because you’ve washed something doesn’t mean it’s truly clean.
I brought bread with me, to represent everything that I was casting out, bad behaviors that I was rejecting just in advance of the Yom Kippur deadline. Again. How fitting, in the age of low-carb, to cast bread in the role of villain: in the spring, it represents ownerless dust that we are forbidden to own, let alone consume; but now, in the fall, it is simply sin personified.
I only had whole grain bread, and perhaps it was appropriate: it represents entirety: my sin is not the flimsy posterboard you find at IKEA – it’s hard to digest, complex, solid. I manage to break it up just fine, but even tossing it into the water doesn’t make it vanish. You’d think its heaviness would cause it to sink, but there are no cement shoes on my iniquities: those suckers float straight to the top, taunting me as they dance over the waves - cast out, yet still here.
I stare at the bread that remains in my hands, and try to parse the grains one from another. No chance, though I suppose it’s a point in my favor that I even made the effort. Not that that’s why I do it. I do it because I suddenly realize that it illustrates how complicated little things get when you don’t stop to think about them individually.
Oh, you swooping birds, gulls, scavengers of actual and metaphorical shores, so greedy for my sins…don’t you know that these morsels are the things I cast out, rejected, exorcised? The Santa Monica pier just turned 100, and has imparted none of its wisdom to you. You consume my sins, but they'll stick in your gullet, or even worse, they'll consume you right back. You'd be better off letting them saturate in seawater, disintegrate as they're pounded by waves, and become part of the sludge at the ocean's floor.
But if you must, bon appetit. Here's hoping they're less evil to your digestive system than they are to my sense of responsibility. I have cast them out. They are no longer a part of me. But they're still out there.
A waste of what were probably perfectly good sins. Take years to degenerate. As a people, we should really move to sin recycling (Sin Bins???)....
...In all seriousness - gr8 piece. Gmar Hatima Tova.
Posted by: Sara Eisen (SarKE) | September 26, 2009 at 11:47 PM