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That wasn't remotely like the icepick look
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handful_ofdust: Happy Hanukkah, merry late Christmas, I'm going to hell. Also, bed. The funeral is tomorrow.
He does not light candles. Not for Shabbes, not for the dead, not for some nights that are no darker than all the rest in December when the wind furls off the Mississippi with the same raw chill as the East River and he buttons up his overcoat with more than his usual neatness, the cold at the back of his collar like the grip of a hand. It is the tenement cold of chilblains and snotty noses, of thin shoulders cricked with shivering in hand-me-down sweaters and knickerbockers that are clean, but starting in on the latest round of darns as winter wears on toward a slushy, peel-strewn spring; it is the cold of hiding for hours on damp-creaking stairs with a stolen book under his shirt, a neighbor's dime novel or a doctor's reference in close-set Fraktur or one of his father's new editions of Aleichem, hardly missed since the accident; it is the cold of a gun in his hand for the first time, not at all the accommodating fit of a dip-nibbed pen or even folded, clipped bills, and with his fingers in a cramp from double-entry figures and seizing like a head shot with adrenaline, he still knows how lucky he was not to finish somewhere colder yet. A few lights on his windowsill will not hold it off, nor hurry the sun back, nor give him a lodestar in his own rootless goles, this life of talkative jazzmen and lazily amused hoteliers that might be the far side of the moon from Orchard and Rivington, though perhaps not so different from a fight-ridden Jerusalem. He is not a Zionist; he dreams of farming in Palestine exactly as much as he wishes his parents had stayed in Kempen or stopped in Hamburg, where he fails every time to imagine himself white-aproned behind a shop counter or murmuring over Mishnah in his yeshiva bokher's black, some impossibly innocent life that would no doubt have ended, like most of Europe, in a shell of smoking mud. His memory, which he thinks of like his spectacles, small, cold, clear, and steel-rimmed, has room for all the dead he needs to remember, and a man who does not work Saturdays in his profession is a man who on Sunday is shortly found dead. He could have stayed in New York City if all he wanted out of life was a quick grave.
He could have given himself one here in St. Louis, though he would have to make an effort for it now. Having made up his mind to live, he has set about it as thoroughly and efficiently as every other course he undertakes: and there perhaps is the last reason he does not observe the holidays or daven, keep any more scrupulous kosher than the avoidance of treyf or look in on a synagogue even during the Days of Awe, the Day of Atonement when God balances the books of creation like the accountant he himself is still accused of looking (although if God is a twenty-seven-year-old career criminal with anise-chip eyes, a goyishe golem of a lover and a fastidious line in cufflinks, he knows a few rabbis back at the Rumanishe shul who would be very surprised to hear it). The world is full of commandments and fences, safeguards and compromises. He cannot live by the mitzves of his parents, but neither will he pick and choose: no to sunset, yes to murder—he must hold to nothing in order to hold to anything at all and if someday he breaks across his stubborn killer's, calculator's mentshlekhkeyt, then he will break and it will be no one's doing but his own. Sometimes he feels like a wandering soul someone said Kaddish for a long time ago, detached from any law but the curb of its own desire. More often he knows better: a dybbuk desires nothing more than flesh and spirit to cleave to, and he has enough trouble with bodies living and dead, untidy, contradictory, unreliable things that they are. He is not sure he was ever a good man. He cannot be what he is best suited for and still a good Jew. He has never felt bad about it one way or the other. Someday, maybe: that will be the grave.
But he strikes a match anyway, a fingernail flame curving whitely in the cold window's glass, and holds it, thinking of his sisters, until the light burns out.
handful_ofdust: Happy Hanukkah, merry late Christmas, I'm going to hell. Also, bed. The funeral is tomorrow.He does not light candles. Not for Shabbes, not for the dead, not for some nights that are no darker than all the rest in December when the wind furls off the Mississippi with the same raw chill as the East River and he buttons up his overcoat with more than his usual neatness, the cold at the back of his collar like the grip of a hand. It is the tenement cold of chilblains and snotty noses, of thin shoulders cricked with shivering in hand-me-down sweaters and knickerbockers that are clean, but starting in on the latest round of darns as winter wears on toward a slushy, peel-strewn spring; it is the cold of hiding for hours on damp-creaking stairs with a stolen book under his shirt, a neighbor's dime novel or a doctor's reference in close-set Fraktur or one of his father's new editions of Aleichem, hardly missed since the accident; it is the cold of a gun in his hand for the first time, not at all the accommodating fit of a dip-nibbed pen or even folded, clipped bills, and with his fingers in a cramp from double-entry figures and seizing like a head shot with adrenaline, he still knows how lucky he was not to finish somewhere colder yet. A few lights on his windowsill will not hold it off, nor hurry the sun back, nor give him a lodestar in his own rootless goles, this life of talkative jazzmen and lazily amused hoteliers that might be the far side of the moon from Orchard and Rivington, though perhaps not so different from a fight-ridden Jerusalem. He is not a Zionist; he dreams of farming in Palestine exactly as much as he wishes his parents had stayed in Kempen or stopped in Hamburg, where he fails every time to imagine himself white-aproned behind a shop counter or murmuring over Mishnah in his yeshiva bokher's black, some impossibly innocent life that would no doubt have ended, like most of Europe, in a shell of smoking mud. His memory, which he thinks of like his spectacles, small, cold, clear, and steel-rimmed, has room for all the dead he needs to remember, and a man who does not work Saturdays in his profession is a man who on Sunday is shortly found dead. He could have stayed in New York City if all he wanted out of life was a quick grave.
He could have given himself one here in St. Louis, though he would have to make an effort for it now. Having made up his mind to live, he has set about it as thoroughly and efficiently as every other course he undertakes: and there perhaps is the last reason he does not observe the holidays or daven, keep any more scrupulous kosher than the avoidance of treyf or look in on a synagogue even during the Days of Awe, the Day of Atonement when God balances the books of creation like the accountant he himself is still accused of looking (although if God is a twenty-seven-year-old career criminal with anise-chip eyes, a goyishe golem of a lover and a fastidious line in cufflinks, he knows a few rabbis back at the Rumanishe shul who would be very surprised to hear it). The world is full of commandments and fences, safeguards and compromises. He cannot live by the mitzves of his parents, but neither will he pick and choose: no to sunset, yes to murder—he must hold to nothing in order to hold to anything at all and if someday he breaks across his stubborn killer's, calculator's mentshlekhkeyt, then he will break and it will be no one's doing but his own. Sometimes he feels like a wandering soul someone said Kaddish for a long time ago, detached from any law but the curb of its own desire. More often he knows better: a dybbuk desires nothing more than flesh and spirit to cleave to, and he has enough trouble with bodies living and dead, untidy, contradictory, unreliable things that they are. He is not sure he was ever a good man. He cannot be what he is best suited for and still a good Jew. He has never felt bad about it one way or the other. Someday, maybe: that will be the grave.
But he strikes a match anyway, a fingernail flame curving whitely in the cold window's glass, and holds it, thinking of his sisters, until the light burns out.
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Someone should totally be reading it in The Heart's Filthy Lesson.
all of this is gorgeous, just gorgeous, and exactly what I was thinking of.
Hah! I am even gladder to oblige.
(I still think the number of fandoms I could pinch-hit for is very limited.)
Amazing!
Thank you!
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Thank you.
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Thank you. It is my first foray into Lackadaisy, the character of Mordecai Heller, but maybe some of it will find a home elsewhere.
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Well, I guess it means she's good with cats . . .
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He cannot live by the mitzves of his parents, but neither will he pick and choose: no to sunset, yes to murder—he must hold to nothing in order to hold to anything at all
Love
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Thank you.
*hugs*
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That is a compliment. Thank you.
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Thank you!
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*hugs*
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Well, there's not as much Yiddish in it as there could be.
Thanks.
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Perhaps, but it's a fine line. There's enough to do the job, and the story uses it well.
Thanks.
You're welcome.
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What do you mean by that?
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The kind of kashrut where you wouldn't eat pork or shellfish or mix milk and meat, but otherwise it doesn't matter if the meat comes from a kosher butcher or the milk has a hechsher.
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Thank you!
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Thanks!
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It's one of the two webcomics I fell in love with in November; it updates with the speed of geologic time, but so far I think it's worth it. It's one of the most meticulously historical comics I know. At one point, the artist apologizes for including a particular style of radio that wouldn't quite have been on the market yet; she tags a scene with paper napkins with the cautionary footnote that they might also be anachronisms. This works to the degree that her choice to depict all the characters as cats doesn't dent the setting at all. I still feel as though I walked into the strip from the wrong direction—I discovered a sketch of some of its characters in human form and wanted to know more about the young man with the glasses, among other reasons because he looked strikingly like someone I knew. (This is more Mordecai's usual style.) If you want the entire cast not as cats, they're here. But they're good as cats.
Thank you!
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Place a pebble on your zeyda's headstone for me.
Hugs.
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Thank you.
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Lovely. I've looked at the comic - I will read more. Frustrating you can only find the graphic novel in Italian, though.
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Thank you!
I've looked at the comic - I will read more. Frustrating you can only find the graphic novel in Italian, though.
The first volume can be purchased directly from the publisher.
(I have not yet gotten it myself, but when I have money, I really want to.)
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Thank you! We'll see what happens if I ever branch out to short-story length . . .
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I especially loved the bit about trying to imagine himself as doing something else with his life. He's worked himself so deep into who he thinks he should be that he can't even imagine himself as going legit. I also loved the last line about his sisters. I like to think that he cares for his family more than he'd like anyone to know, because that shit's neither cool nor tough.
I've rambled on enough, so I'll just say good work!
(ps- 'a goyishe golem of a lover' aaaah oh my god 8D)
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Thank you so much!
I'm very glad the piece resonates with people.