There’s a splinter sunk in the spongy bottom of my foot – in front of the Medial Plantar area, close to the Pointer Toe. Trusted others have been asked to help remove it but excuses spray like mist; my plea refused. Whatever this splinter is – glass shiver, wood sliver, ceramic chip – it hurts(…)
I’ve been neglecting my four most recent creations: A three year old, a two-and-a-half-year old, a two-year-old and a one-and-a-half year old. (Though all very recent, they represent fifteen years of intensive on-and-off work.) They come to mind … but then I enshrine my time on other things. Time passes. I swallow hard and slap the side of(…)
… She separated the gall bladder from the goose liver, salted water in a bowl, soaked the liver in it, removed it with a fork and set it on a wrought iron skillet, sprinkling paprika, sugar and ginger, adding goose fat and began to sauté. Sit down, Ira. You don’t look well. Ma, Pa(…)
*****Page 1 ***** Why leave Berlin for Paris? An unemployed man with no friends, Eli G., with a wife, Vera, and one child to feed, Karl, got fifty-one mark a month (1931) in relief. Vera budgeted: Per month = 51 mark rent, electricity, heat, outings = 32.50 mark feed family = 18.50 mark Per day (…)
Last night I woke because the usual velvety silence (punctuated by the sound of an occasional tiny caïque in which a solitary fisherman softly put-putts through the moonlight or a disoriented rooster crowing) was interrupted. I could swear I was hearing the sound of weeping. I sat up. It wasn’t coming from outside on either terrace, above or below, I climbed down(…)
Remember Tom Lehrer? He had Hanukkah in Santa Monica.* Here’s another version, Rent-a-Yenta: Beverly Simmons and Cheryl Eitinais And finally, a Latka refresher: Gangstas Make Latkes for Hanukkah – Bobala Please That’s it. I promise. **Art: “Road to Meron” by Reuven Rubin *Thanks to Phyllis Spiva for refreshing my memory
Met my visiting friend Sandra Zemor for lunch. Sandra’s an often-exhibited Paris-based Israeli artist. It’s a drizzly day. I’m tired because I was up reading almost the whole night but hadn’t wanted to cancel. Thinking that perhaps Sandra would enjoy some New York-style deli food in a place where the ghosts of New York Jewish immigrants still wander and nosh, I text(…)
In the midst of these brutal days (slaughters in Paris, slaughters in Beirut, slaughters in Nigeria, slaughters in Tel Aviv), that have bled blame, reprisals, pleas for tolerance, fear, aggression, turmoil, bewilderment, enough impending doom to unsettle even the toughest among us, a young professor actually read and thought about my new novella. Gratefully received, especially at a(…)
She asked, Why no foreskin? He replied, A foreskin is redundant. She asked, Do they tie the baby up in a receiving blanket? Are his legs tied down? Are his arms tied over the head? Is the individuality ignored? Are his limbs strained like Dürer men? He replied, Don’t ask me. They drove along the(…)
“In 1930s Berlin, Eli G. is an abstracted young Jewish painter addled by Marxist idealism and tangled memories of his mother and the shtetl. Longing to move to Paris, Eli feverishly paints maps and watches the baby while his wife Vera gives up her ambition of becoming a doctor and works as an accountant. This is where Not(…)
