2001:October:1
10.1.2001

Expectation and sense of pending tragedy seem to be swelling like a big, pregnant, harvest moon. Everyone around me is emotionally raw. It is as if the longer nights and full moon have given us license to pace and take stock of our disappointments. But it is a delicious kind of melancholy, far away from depression, spiked with words like eternity and fate.
Yom Kippur I took off work and although I had shrimp dumpling soup in chinatown with my mother after kol nidre service, my heart was with the holiday...sorta.

Rosh Hashana is when your name gets inscribed in the book of life. Yom Kippur is when the book (and our fates) are sealed. Leonard Cohen ripped off the words to that prayer in his song "who by fire".

According to tradition, in the ten days between The new year and the day of atonement, God inscribes the fate of folks in the upcoming year: who will die and who will live, who will be humbled and who will be exhalted, who will die of thirst, who by drowning etc. You get the picture. Every year something new strikes me about the liturgy. This year it was the words: "Do not let anyone be punished on my behalf."

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