January 9, 2006
My other cousin is applying at Concordia !!!
In her email she said; "guelph is white bread and i think i am more like that rye
bread that has a swirl of dark rye."
Which I am totally stealing, because if ever a week was like a a nice piece of rye bread with a swirl it was this.
I walked home from my now monthly appointment with the counsellor like a wet wiggling nerve ending and had to counsel myself firmly not to do an Axl Rose impression at the corner of Green and Maisonneuve.
Oddly enough reading about Irving Laytons funeral cheered me up. I thought to myself "Leonard Cohen's in town, maybe I should take a day off and go hang around outside the Zen centre trying to get a look at him." Instead I went to Laurens where Jerry told me he's already tried it last year - and it never worked.
While reading about Arial Sharons coma I found out there is this place called the Schlesinger Institute Which is a Halacha-based medical ethics institute.
An example of how the Midrash can be used to interpret present day medical emergencies is this: Brain death is classified as being when the processes of the limbic system (Which is a region located near the spinal column) cease to function. Since according to Jewish law someone who is decapitated is said to be *unquestionably * dead. Then someone who is brain dead can be said to be legally dead, even if other processes can be kept running by machine.
This of course is disputed by other Rabbis who argue that the heart is at the seat of Jewish life. So if the heart can be kept beating then life remains in the body.
Luckily if you are waffling over whether to bury your beheaded lover or to to hang on until their heart stops beating there is the IRP - International Response Project.
I am going to send an email and find out how the Schlesinger Institute views Jewish Melancholy (or the swirl of dark rye) Is it Genetic? Or is it Environmental.
I know a lot of aethiests who have Jewish blood and they certainly suffer from the JM, so I am certain it is genetic. That means,that when I walk home from my therapy and want to sing sad songs - it is not (as she says) that I enjoy my sadness, it's that I don't really have any other blueprint. My nerves are tuned for sadness.
I would love to give you some sort of indication that when I talk about sadness I am just making light of something, but it's not true. I am sad today. Several things are making me feel sad. It's not the kind of sadness that has no end or offers no hope, it's the kind that is rooted in past dissapointments and present day hopes and fears. It's the worst kind of sadness because at the very very root lies something that could make me happy if I could find out how to stop letting it make me so sad.
Continued from main page..
Posted by Miriam at January 9, 2006 5:07 PM
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being a girl
You write so beautifully. You are right, sad is just the other vision of happy. But what I want to say is that your recent musings about the heart and mind and soul call into mind a book I read over the holidays called _Soul Made Flesh: The discovery of the brain and how it changed the world_; it's by Carl Zimmer.
The book argues that until the 17th century everyone was convinced that the soul resided in the heart, whereas now we assume that it resides in the brain. I am not convinced that there isn't still some validity to the idea that the soul is closer to the visceral body. We talk about heartache, heartbreak, and heartfelt sadness, after all, and aren't all of these experienced in and through the soul? xoxabp
you know what...
I think I need to go get myself an in-house rabbi for the flink.
It would really add to the metaphysical neighbourhood.
I used to really like idea that the root of all jewish spirituality lay in the word, and that these words were to be seen as glowing and made of fire.
No matter that this is all a metaphor, there is a sensual explanation for the power of mind there. which is generally speaking a difficult bridge to make.
It is fine to understand that my hearts feelings are actually a collection of jingling neurons, but it is much more sympathetic to myself to actually know that I feel things in my body and think things in my head, and that for better or worse the division between those two areas (at least for me) is profound and often feels irrevocable.
I think art and writing (sometimes but less so because writing is always too intellectual in a way that drawing and painting doesn't have to be) is the one bridge that connects the two areas.
I have this sneaking suspicion that the past two years have been pretty extreme on the feeling side for some reason, and the collective experiences (of myself my friends my family) are going to result in some fabulous art - I just keep trying to hustle it, which could be a mistake.
Also the fact that I have this creative bridge way of dealing with the mind/body problem that isn't regular or comprehensive is frustrating - i would rather be closed scholarly and stable.
But you knew that i bet. Maybe I need to make a security blanket with your picture on it - and in exchange I can give you a hairshirt with my name embroidered on it?