My Name is Asher Lev

"Then I looked a very long time at the painting and knew it was incomplete. It was a good painting but it was incomplete. The telephone poles were only distant reminders of the brutal reality of a crucifix. The painting did not say fully what I had wanted to say; it did not reflect fully the anguish and torment I had wanted to put into it. Within myself, a warning voice spoke soundlessly of fraud.

I had brought something incomplete into the world. Now I felt its incompleteness. "Can you understand what it means for something to be incomplete?" my mother had once asked me. I understood, I understood.

I turned away from the painting and walked to the yeshiva. I had supper and prayed the evening service. I returned to the apartment. Children played on the cobblestone street below my window. I stared at the painting and felt cold with dread. Then I went to bed and lay awake in the darkness, listening to the sounds of the street through my open window: a quarrel, a distant cough, a passing car, the cry of a child-all of it filtered through my feeling of cold dread. I slept very little. In the morning, I woke and prayed and knew what had to be done.

Yes, I could have decided not to do it. Who would have known? Would it have made a difference to anyone in the world that I had felt a sense of incompleteness about a painting? Who would have cared about my silent cry of fraud? Only Jacob Khan, and perhaps one or two others, might have sensed its incompleteness. And even they could never have known how incomplete it truly was, for by itself it was a good painting. Only I would have known.

But it would have made me a whore to leave it incomplete. It would have made it easier to leave future work incomplete. It would have made it more and more difficult to draw upon that additional aching surge of effort that is always the difference between integrity and deceit in created work. I would not be a whore to my own exsitence. Can you understand that? I would not be the whore to my own existence."

Notice how both our initials are A.L.
I shall finally walk to the lakeside and ponder the futility of my life today.

Over My Shoulder

Out of the blue, my blog readership seems to have increased. Truth be told, I'm ambivalent about it. I enjoy the attention but morn the loss of privacy. At the same time, I don't think most of the readers whom I started out with are around, due to my long periods of silence. This change of readership affects what and how I write.

That aside, I'm writing less and less for others to read and more for myself. This has become a tentative canvas for me to paint my emotions and experiences with words. Like all paintings, it is created based on the artists' personal vision and frame of reference. Therefore, an understanding of that is essential to understand her creation.

What I write is no longer primarily an archive for others to let them know what's happening in my life. That is but a by-product. Of course, the two functions overlap somewhat. However dear readers, bear in mind that more often than not, you are reading over my shoulder. That is why I do not offer explainations, unless you corner me in person and dig it out.

Anyway, I would like to acknowledge and thank all those all those who have left comments recently. Or cornered me in person to ask, "Are you OK?!!"

Yes, I am.

On today

Another dinner, another day. Today was supposed to be a fruitful day, but it flopped down like a oversized cake in the oven. 6 o' clock found me dressing to kill, pretty surface to hide the decay underneath; just like a whitewashed tomb.

Disconnected. Disenchanted. Disinterested in everything around.

I've done all that I can, yet I can't shake off the sense of falseness that envelops like a fog. It bugs me, but I'm tired of fighting. It's so much easier to surrender to apathy's numbing effect. Why care anymore? I'm tired of appologizing for the way I am; and really, really tired of explaining myself to the uncomprehending masses.

Why can't you understand me?

More searingly, why is it so important that you do?

This is the first time I can ever remember feeling ashamed of all the mistakes I have made.

Thanks

So we went for dinner together. Time available was short, but I guess it was enough. It felt good, even though I teared up at least once. Thanks for being a real friend and saying what I needed to hear, along with a little of what I want to hear to soften things up.
I'll be there for you too.

Chicken-shit, gutless guys

who can't grab the bull by the horns, make eye contact and face issues squarely. I hate them.

The dishonesty required for such a cover-up must be phenomenal. How do you live with yourself? Through compartmentalization? Denial? Pathetic self-justification?

I'm too honest to say I don't lie about the way I feel at times. In fact, I admit that I do. I'm at a loss on what to do now. So, I remain silent and walk away.

I wonder

what I did wrong.
If we never talked that Sunday night.
Or rather, if I should have said things differently then.
I think differently of it now.

Confessions

Lord, sometimes life is hard to understand.
And even when we trust You,
our hearts still ache.

Found this on a card on Wednesday in Gladsounds and I just knew that it was meant for me.
Jon said today, "Don't rely on men too much, they end up breaking your heart."
This was in reference to Germany's loss but it rings so true.