Friday's Ponder - "How do you pick up the threads of an old life?"

Tolkien, through Frodo asked, "How do you pick up the threads of an old life?"  My question is, "Should you?"  Should you pick up the threads of an old life or should you discard the tatters and begin fresh and new and weave not with an eye to what was but to what can be. 

Perfect End to My Perfect Day

View from My Writing Desk

I left Demetri's and headed to Southside to do the trifecta (drop of books at library, cross street to check mail at post office, cross again to pick up a few things at Golden Temple.  Then, with nowhere in particular to be, I decided to go to the Books-a-Million at Brookwood Mall.  I love to go there and camp out at a table by the window, sip coffee or tea, read several magazines and maybe buy a few.  Content has gotten so shallow and even repetitive, I can't spend 5 or 6 dollars unless there is serious content that I can use in my life or writing.

I got to Brookwood too early, so I sat at the tables in the food court closest to the the floor to ceiling windows that give a panoramic view of the small street below.  I like what they've done at Brookwood.  Its like a toy town main street, clean and verdant.  I hope the planned Target doesn't destroy the ambient feel of it all.

I sat there watching a large contingent of elderly folks walking in 2's and 3's getting in their morning laps.  I  pulled a bottle of water from my bag and called my sister, Barbara, in Atlanta to catch up on her weekend - I love cell phones.

At 10, I make my way into Joe Muggs and stake out my favorite table with my bag, bought an iced tea and a raisin bagel, read 5 or 6 magazines, read the last back page essay in Victoria (excellent as usual). One of my essays once graced that back page as did Joyce Carol Oates - not bad company.

Before I knew it, it was noon.  I took the new Writer's Digest and Sage Woman to the front register, but no one was there.  I waited and looked around then decided to save my $12 and leave.  It was noon and a cold Peroni at Brio's was calling my name - good food, excellent service and a view - oh yes.

I left the magazines at the register and crossed the street.  I sat at the bar in my usual place with a view of the fountain, the walk and the street just outside.  I love windows with a view of lives on parade - people passing by wrapped in their own worlds - worlds I can only imagine.

A cold Peroni, bread and olive oil and a steaming bowl of Minestrone later, I order a second beer, pull 4 chapters of my manuscript out of my bag and begin to read and edit with a red pen.

Around 3, I packed it in.  I didn't want to end a perfect day by getting caught in rush hour traffic - it was a Monday after all.

I stopped at Wilson's market to pick up some dos Equis and stopped a moment in front of the straw-strewn empty lot that once boasted a modest 4-plex that was my home.  I continued on to my new home - another #4, albeit a much larger #4 in another Southside 4-plex.

As I reach the top step, I see propped against my door what could only be my 2012 Writer's Market.  It's only 3:30.  I start some soup for dinner and put it to simmer, open a beer and head to the balcony with my Writer's Market, a pad and lots of post it flags.

At 7 I'll eat my soup with fresh buttered cornbread, then retire to the couch accompanied by Jazmine (cat) and the latest episode of Terra Nova.  This was a perfect day.

Perfect Beginning to a Perfect Day

A perfect day, yesterday.  My morning pages had fallen by the wayside along with everything else in the 6 months at Mom's since the fire.  I wrote a few blogs about the fire, but I've so much more in me that could not be committed to public view.

I finally decided that the only way to get reacquainted with the pages was to leave the apartment and camp out like I used to do at the old Mill in the 5-points - back when they opened at 6 for breakfast.

This Monday, I chose Demetri's in Homewood.  I got there a little before 7 for breakfast, and didn't leave my little table by the window until somewhere after 9.

Wonderful waitress, Judy.  Good food that would have been perfect had there been 'real' butter for my grits and toast.  The over-egg was perfectly turned w/o a crispy edge in sight, the bacon was delightfully aromatic and crisp enough to crumble into the grits and egg yolk, and the piece d' resistance - a bottomless cup of steaming hot coffee.  But, no real butter, sigh.  There's no such thing as 'better than butter'.  Give me the real thing, or no thing.

But I was there to write and write I did, accompanied by a bottomless cup of coffee and the swirl of amiable conversation around me.  People who all seemed to know each other and talked from table across to table.  The two women in the booth by the front windows who loved my hat and told me so, the elegantly dressed 95 year-old couple who held hands coming and going...

I'll probably go back to Demetri's , but I'll bring a dab of my own butter.  It's not always the food that draws me, but a level of comfort.  Judy was not concerned with turning tables, but giving good service - how refreshing.

Tomorrow - Perfect Day Part 2

The Nine Inheritors

Clare Datnow’s novel, The Nine Inheritors, reads very much like a biography of ten generations as told by a keen-eyed on-the-scene observer. I enjoyed her omniscient point-of-view because I could journey with the characters as they each moved through their part of history.

Readers enter the story in 1790 Lithuania in the small village or shtetl of Valinsk. It is a place long-steeped in a caste system, where the clergy and the learned are considered superior to the tradespeople. Schmuel Rosen is a tradesman. For all his wealth, he is not high on the pecking order of the shtetl and it rankles, for he is a prideful, driven man.

Wanting desperately to rise above his station, Rosen arrives at the idea of commissioning a new Torah to loan, not give, the village synagogue or shul. For Rosen, the new Torah is not a pious act; it is a means of raising his station and that of his family. Datnow waxes very Michener-esque in her descriptions of all things Jewish, particularly the ritual involved in making a true Sefer Torah scroll—fascinating. In death, Rosen achieves his goal. He is buried in “the most prestigious part of the cemetery, on the higher ground of rabbis and scholars.” Thus begins the journey of the Rosen Torah as it passes from one generation to the next, surviving immigration across stormy seas, theft, fire, and more.

Datnow subtly but persistently uses questions in the telling of each generation’s story. The questions are asked and answered variously by each character as they inherit or come in contact with the Torah: If one does a good thing expecting personal gain, does this diminish the good thing, or is the good inherent in the good thing one did? What is the price of inheritance? When is inheritance a boon, when a burden? What is the value of holy writ in faith?

Here, the Rosen Torah is the good thing, that one holy of holies revered by the Jews and believed to be the original words spoken by God to Moses. Here we have ordinary people encountering the Torah. It is bartered, coveted, rejected, revered, and reviled as each person brings his or her own personal history to bear on the encounter.

The snake handler cannot read the Torah, but imagines it has magical powers. The KKK threatens its existence. One man’s interpretation of the Torah’s words causes him to disown his only son. The disowned son rejects any holy writ that causes his father to disown him.

Datnow asks questions to which there are no pat answers, as there are no pat answers in life. The readers may judge, or perhaps ask questions of their own. How could anyone do that? How could anyone think that? What place does faith have in life?

I enjoyed visiting the lives in The Nine Inheritors, while learning more than I ever knew about the evolution of Jewish life and thought.

 Previously published in the First Draft Magazine of Alabama Writers Forum