Sing to the Lord a Hillsong

In my busy New York internship life, it’s difficult to find time to pencil in some fun between my workplace obligations of sexual harassment and Xeroxing Xeroxes so that colleagues can Xerox my Xeroxes of Xeroxes and promptly lose them. When I do get a break from having my knees massaged and trying not to vomit, I then find it difficult to find affordable fun. As I’m sure you know, New York is expensive. The temptation is to buy several industrial-sized bottles of wine that taste like the loose change that has collected at the bottom of my purse and lock myself in my room, but even this loses its appeal after the first several times. I say “loses its appeal” when actually I mean I can’t afford it.

My British neshama suggests going to museums. After all, the National Gallery (which is free) had become my London free toilet. (One of my hobbies is establishing toilets around cities the way some nations establish colonies.) However, in these United States most museums are actually quite expensive. I did manage to find something free called the “Museum of Biblical Art.” But after accidentally posting this picture on their giant TV screen through the wonders of social media:

…I was disappointed that the “Museum of Biblical Art” turned out to be the “One Room of Artistically Rendered Scrolls of Esther.” I had hoped for some meaty paintings. A Thomas ramming his hand into Jesus’ side the way I like to poke packages of ground beef at the supermarket. A panicked, bound Isaac asking Abraham, “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, DAD?” Instead I got a handful of mediocre Hebrew calligraphy.

So what does one do in New York for fun when one is poor?

One can go to church.

It’s free, and you’re guaranteed some kind of a show. In fact, the more you go the easier it is to spot a disaster. Usually my free-time trips to church involve a visit to a charismatic venue, but after joining the serving team at an Anglo-Catholic parish I have invented a new game called “Spot the Me,” in which I visit high churches and look for the server who cannot go two minutes without touching her nose, rolling her ankles, or accidentally doing “The Sprinkler” when her legs get caught in her cassock. So far I appear the be the only me.

However, the more I treat churches like a sporting event...

(or indeed sports like a church—see the Mets prayer circle)

…the more I notice the international phenomenon of the Weeping Australian, found in any denomination of church that refers to God as “awesome” in the Californian sense.

You’ve probably come across the Weeping Australian before if you’ve ever been to a charismatic church. He’s the teaching pastor who is so overwhelmed that you won’t let his mate Jesus Christ into your heart that he has to wipe away tears into the tiny vest he wears paired with his skinny jeans. What’s jarring about the Weeping Australian is that you’re used to seeing the Australian as either perpetually friendly or perpetually stabby/drunk, and yet here he is choking back a sob as he leads you in a round of applause for Jesus Christ, who was so kind as to grace us with His presence at this club tonight. His eyes are so overwhelmed with emotion that they are forced shut as he joins the band onstage to repeat the chorus for the 563rd time, in case God didn’t know how swell He is the first 562 times we let Him know.

My favorite Weeping Australian story occurred just last week. In a nightclub packed with young and lost New Yorkers, the WA invited us to close our eyes. Which was, of course, my cue to keep mine open. Experience told me that this was my favorite part—the Weeping Australian would stress to us the need to let Jesus back into our hearts as though JC were crying and hanging out on a porch in the rain waiting to be let inside. Usually the long closed-eyes ramble would increase in urgency, and when panic about how badly we need Jesus reached a climax the WA would invite us to put up our hands if we felt Jesus had been locked out for long enough and we wanted to let the poor man back in. With eyes closed, usually a hefty majority would put their hands up. However, on this particular Sunday at this particular service, I noticed that something like 10 people put their hands up. The Weeping Australian soon became the Panicked Australian. Over and over again he repeated the call to put your hand up if you wanted to vote for Jesus, and still no one else put their hand up. Realizing that this was as good as it was going to get, he then started “ooooing” and “aaaahing” at the sheer number of people who were recommitting themselves to Christ at this service. “Wow,” he told the temporarily blinded audience, “there are just SO many hands. This is really incredible.” Still the same 10 or so were not joined by more hands. “Wow…this is just so inspiring. So overwhelming.” Then, “Don’t open your eyes, keep them closed. This really is awesome, I wish you could see how many people want to recognize that Jesus Christ died for them." The music swells, the lights dance, and still no additional hands go up. "Just awesome, awesome. Amazing. …Okay, you can put your hands down…and open your eyes now.” It was, quite honestly, the most convincing argument I’ve ever witnessed that religion is complete crap.

And it’s not just Hillsong, which started in Australia and thus understandably has a heavy proportion of Australian team members. No, the Australians are everywhere in the evangelical world. As I sit through “Four Minutes of Fellowship” and sip a glass of water that a hot man in a tight t-shirt brought me on a silver tray, I reflect on the sheer number of Weeping Australians and can only assume that evangelism is a front for Australian imperialism. Secretly, the Australians are here to take over America through what they call “planting” these things they call “churches.” All I can say is, “LEAVE US BE! TAKE YOUR OUTBACK STEAKHOUSES AND BE GONE WITH YOU!”

I often like to imagine what it must be like for this never-ending stream of Weeping Australian pastors to come through US Customs and Border Control. The border control officer would subject the W.A. to a series of questions, during which the W.A. would silently and seamlessly cue a previously hidden band to start picking up their instruments behind him. Their seemingly nonsensical plucking and fiddling would ever so gradually form into an increasingly loud and coherent return to an evangelical power ballad. The pastor would get more frantic and out of breath and weepy with each answer, “16 Main Street.” “Four months!” “[*sniff*] for business!! [*choked sob*]” And still the music would grow in the background.

Finally the customs officer would say, “Anything to declare?” And the W.A. would respond by bellowing, “ONLY THE LOVE OF CHRIST CRUCIFIED!” as he bursts into tears and drops the mic that had seemed to materialize from nowhere, while the band erupts with yet another deafening refrain from Hillsong’s “I Will Rise."

Crap. I think I need to find a new free hobby besides churching.

7 Clips of My New York Life

Here I am, a month into my New York adventure.  Here is how my life is different:

1)      I spend about 2.5 hours on the subway each day, and I devote a lot of that time to wondering how New York has not yet been wiped out by some disgusting disease. How are we not all dead yet? Or at the very least, I find myself wondering how on earth everyone in New York does not constantly have diarrhea. Every time I touch the handle on the subway I think to myself, I should probably stop biting my nails. But then I zone out and my fingers find their way to my mouth and I’m probably that much closer to catching typhoid fever. Either that or my immune system gradually gets a little more immortal. Today I felt a lady on the subway breathe on my face though, and all I could think to myself was how badly and immediately I want to take a shower. But that’s a problem because…

2)      I haven’t showered in a few days. For some reason we are not getting any hot water lately, making showers completely intolerable—I have a theory that it’s because we live in church-owned property and so it’s assumed that, in solidarity with lepers, we want crusty skin. Based on the fact that my roommates do not smell rank, I can only assume that they have braved the icy water and gotten clean. I, however, am from California. Being from California doesn’t mean I can’t handle cold, it just means that I’m better than it and do not need to condescend to mingle with it. It has, however, reached a critical point and something must be done. I’m considering putting the kettle on and making a bath.

3)      The other week I was standing outside of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, trying to kill time, when a bride got out of a car and walked towards the doors. Because it had snowed so hard the night before, she had to hoist her skirt practically over her head so as not to get it dirty. And…well…thanks to her choice of underwear I accidentally got pretty stellar view of her ass. This, of course, made me feel morally obligated to attend her wedding…so I did. I watched this woman and her (now clothed) butt marry a very decent-seeming man, and she seemed very happy during the entire service. Hopefully her butt also enjoyed the Mass.

4)      Speaking of Mass, I have a cassock and a nun who waves to me whenever she sees me. If that’s not BAMF, I don’t know what is.

5)      Speaking of waving, people in my work neighborhood sometimes wave at me. I suspect it’s because I’m quite literally the only white person walking around, but part of me is hopeful that I’m going to find out soon that I’m actually the Harry Potter of East New York.

6)      At work I have literally nothing to do. And everyone is aware of this. I beg people to give me work, to let me help them with whatever task I can help with, but there simply isn’t anything for me to do. I’ve resorted to the tactic of drinking obscene amounts of water and then peeing every five minutes, just because needing to go to the bathroom lends a sense of importance (or at least urgency) to my day. It gives me an excuse to stride down the hallways purposefully. Otherwise, desperate for no one to resent me, whenever anyone walks by my desk I put my (empty) email inbox up on my screen and frown at it as if in deep thought. “Hmm,” says the look on my face, “I wonder how I can make these numbers crunch.” (Is that even a thing?) I narrow my eyes and scratch my shower-desperate head, as if to say, “Gosh, if I don’t resolve this problem we’re going to have all sorts of other problems.  Man, my work keeps me busy. There are just so many problems that keep me busy with diverse tasks and jobs, not to mention projects.” And then as soon as they walk past my office it’s back to daydreaming, thinking about how I wish Quakers still dressed like the Quaker Oats man, or reading papal encyclicals.

7)      I’m discovering that New Yorkers just do not give one solitary shit about farting. I cannot even tell you how many times I’ve been on a crowded subway and heard a loud bombshell, followed by the look in the bombers’s eyes that conveys a shrug and a “Yeah. What of it?” It's just a bit surprising, to say the least. Even for someone who hates New York, I always assumed that what I'd remember after my hopefully brief stay here would be the bright lights of Times Square or something glamorous. I'm not ashamed to admit that the first time I came to New York as a little girl, I remember singing this song (in Frank Sinatra accents) with my brother in the backseat of the car as we drove over some bridge, with the skyline coming into view:

 Part of me assumed that that'd be my takeaway from my life here. But I know me. I know that what I'll tell my grandkids about my time in the big city is the shameless church farter, or the SBD-dealer in a fine suit on the 3 train, or the people on the 1 train whose asses were attempting a three-part harmony.

Actually, what am I talking about, “New Yorkers do not give one solitary shit about farting”? New Yorkers don’t seem to give a solitary shit about anything.

Lucy Who's Cardboard TARDIS

I work in a faraway land called Brooklyn, in a building that I have to assume is made out of cardboard. I say this because the walls are so thin that I can hear everything. Like long discussions on the merits/shortcomings of various coworkers. I also swear I can hear the occasional euphemistic "struggle" from the bathroom on the far side of the building.

While waiting to be fingerprinted I have a desk job…minus the desk. With no fixed office home, I spend the day surfing between whichever computer happens to be free for a moment. During the two hours or so in which I was at “Lucy” ‘s desk, a coworker walked in, saw me sitting at Lucy’s desk, and said, “Lucy?”

Before I continue, let me stress that Lucy and this woman are long-term employees, and know each other. But she said “Lucy?” the way you’d say it if you bumped into Lucy after she had gotten a peculiar haircut, as in, “Is that really you, Lucy? What the actual eff have you done with your hair?” (Except the second part of that is kept to yourself.) Only this time, Lucy not only got a weird haircut, but also morphed from a confident black woman into a neurotic white jackass.

The “Lucy” was one of genuine confusion. The rational response to seeing me at Lucy’s desk would be to say, “Oh, is Lucy not in today?” Not, as happened here, to stare at me as though I could be a new form of Lucy. A regeneration if you will, like the Doctor. Yes, I am the 9^th Lucy. The 10^th Lucy will be portrayed by David Tennant when the 9^th Lucy is forced to regenerate after sacrificing herself to save the receptionist from a tragic filing cabinet accident, in which the safety mechanism malfunctioned and two drawers were able to be opened at the same time, causing a tear in the very fabric of space.

Such was the conviction of her “Lucy?” that I began to wonder if maybe I really was Lucy, and I nearly said, “Yes.” Instead we had a long silence in which we stared at each other from across the room, me in a throne-like chair with wheels behind someone else’s fine wood desk and her in the doorway holding a stack of files, to the music of the ticking clock and the buzzing fluorescent lights. And I really mean staring. Intense, unbreaking eye-contact, both of us fully aware of it and not sure how to proceed.

I’m not sure how things ended. Perhaps the other lady committed hara-kiri when I finally broke eye-contact. And so I was left alone again, updating children’s medical charts and entering in the dates on which they received their polio vaccinations.

In a misguided attempt to stay sane, when I enter this information I pretend that I am personally responsible for the eradication of polio in the western world. In my head legions of men with swords follow behind me into battle to a stirring trumpet score by John Williams while I charge forward, waving a crusader cross banner and yelling, “NO ONE IS GONNA DIE FROM POLIOOOOOOOOO!” …as I silently stare at the screen and move nothing but two fingers on my right hand to punch in the numbers for hours on end, like a gamer minus the Mountain Dew.

I suppose that’s the depressing thing about saving the world. It seems like no matter how badly you want to save the world, the world always wants you to do data entry. You yell at the world, “Let me love you!” and the world responds, “Um, ok, that’s nice.” Awkward pause. “Fold this towel, I guess?”

The Obligation of Art

Today I went to the vanilla soft-serve temple of pretentiousness that is the Guggenheim. And look, I’m not about to say that the art in there is objectively shit, only that there are far too many people in there who, on a profound level understood by God alone, desperately do not want to be there.

The first clue was the group of girls who had huddled around a bunch of lines on paper. They stood there, staring at a print, and nodding to each other as if to say, “Indeed, this painting of random brown lines in no way resembles the other twenty paintings of brown lines in this room. Or indeed any of the other paintings of brown lines in the next two rooms.” In awe of their art appreciation I stared at them for a little longer, only to find that when each one thought the others couldn’t see her, she’d surreptitiously look at the other two with a pained and uncomfortable look that clearly said, “Am I the only one who doesn’t get it?”

Somehow this group of three girls ended up in an art museum that not a single one of them wanted to be in or understood—and this is common for art museums. This is how most people end up in art museums: “Hey, we should check out the Guggenheim!” suggests one friend, remembering as soon as the words come out that she actually hates art. She had seen a poster for it somewhere, felt pressured into becoming more “cultured,” and now…shit…now she’s fervently praying that one of the friends will say, “No thanks, I find the mold growing in my shower far more interesting to look at.” But no, God has no mercy. So the other friends smile and say, “Hey! What a great idea,” while grimacing on the inside and remembering the endless three hours spent in the Met the last time one of their friends forgot that the entire human race secretly hates art.

And this is how you end up at the Louvre, jockeying for a position among a crowd of hundreds of people who similarly secretly could not give a shit about the Mona Lisa. This is how art museums make their money. Because no one has the balls to admit that they find art museums spectacularly boring. And this is how we end up with crowded museums filled with people cocking their heads to the side, the last resort of the desperate. “Maybe if I turn my—nope, still looks like shit.”

The best were the people on dates. I saw a cheerful lady dragging around a man, shuffling with a brave but stricken look on his face that reminded me of my subway reading, “The Imitation of Christ,” in which we are encouraged to bear suffering and not seek to escape the situation. But best of all was the couple who were clearly only remaining in the Guggenheim to justify the price they paid for their tickets. “Uh, should we look at this one now?” said the man, half-heartedly pointing at yet another framed piece of paper with some lines on it. “Um. Yeah. I guess,” said the lady, as they wearily dragged their feet through the confused/bored/in denial crowd and tossed a forlorn glance over their shoulders towards the exit.

Usually at art museums I just pretend to read the little blurbs next to the pieces, but today I was feeling adventurous. I found that when I read them I could easily imagine a man with a fake English accent, in ceremonial tweed, squat-talking and waving his hands around while squinting his eyes to convey to you the exact levels of his pretentiousness, lest you underestimate them. This art “engenders emotion,” or “fosters an expression of necessity through color,” and everything is “explored.” Every piece of art “defines” or “redefines” some abstract noun that you hadn’t ever learned in 17 years of private education, and everything is a study, such as “a study of lines,” making me imagine an artist wearing safety goggles and sweating over test tubes for hours on end only to exclaim, “EUREKA! I HAVE MADE LINE!”

Staring at what was, to me, a sheet of gold on a black background, but what was actually a “journey,” I read the following sentence: “The luminosity of gold and the seeping shadows of obsidian evoke parallel visions of eternity.” And I just stood there and thought to myself,

Does it though?

Sometimes I wonder if these art-blurb writers are actually part of a humiliating conspiracy. Some of the more enthusiastic people in the gallery provided further evidence. See, there was this man in a black turtleneck, a tweed jacket, khakis tucked into his boots, goatee, and glasses.

He would walk up to a painting and then, as if overwhelmed by the painting’s majesty, would whip his glasses off in astonishment, and then continue to stare at the painting in amazement. As someone who is extremely nearsighted, I don’t understand the logic behind this, but that’s okay. No, what made this remarkable is that after doing this he would let out a “YES” that was almost Marian in the depth it conveyed, and then would put his glasses back on, proceed to the next painting…and then do the same “LOOK AT HOW MOVED I AM!” glasses removal for each painting. I liked to imagine him to be the sort of person who at home would be eating a bowl of cereal in front of the TV, channel surfing, and dropping the bowl in amazement with what each new channel had to offer.

 In spite of  his constant cycle of being deeply moved, he somehow managed to compose himself. For a while I saw him standing near the exit, with one hand holding his tweed jacket over his shoulder and the other hand on his hip, standing like a jackass superhero in khakis. “Fear not, I bring you gratuitous corrective eyewear!”

I’ll be honest with you: I have been floored by one piece of art in my life. So maybe I’m just an emotionless bitch, but I’ve decided that you do not get to let every single piece of art exert glasses-removing levels of emotional power over you. Surrendering that way to every painting makes you the emotional equivalent of the French, and that’s not okay.

Being the contrary person that I am, part of me wants to stand in front of the elevator, contemplate it with crossed arms, and when it opens scream “YES!” and throw myself to the ground. “YES,” I’ll continue while writhing on the ground, completely moved and overwhelmed by the art of opening elevator doors, “CLEARLY THE ARTIST EXPLORES THE NOTION OF THE NECESSITY OF DISLOCATION—THROUGH COLOR!” And everyone in the gallery, here by obligation, would look at me and think, “Well, shit, I really don’t get art.”

...and that's why people in New York don't smile.

As of last Wednesday, I’m living in the one place on Earth I’d never thought I’d be living: 750’s BC Mesopotamia.

Oh wait. No. Just New York City.

I’ve never been one of those people who is in love with New York. While some young people (namely  the geriatric teenagers on “Glee”) have romantic visions of New York, of not getting mugged before their certain stardom on Broadway, I can’t think of one disaster film/alien film/whatever film featuring the complete and total destruction of New York City that did not cause me to cheer. On what we could consider a good day for my relationship with New York City, I simply don’t think about New York City.

But there’s a particular program I wanted to do that just happens to be in New York, so…here I am. Writing this from my room in Manhattan. During the interview process the program people asked me some questions about my thoughts on New York and my motivation for applying to a program in New York in particular, wanting to ensure I hadn’t applied to this program simply for an easy/safe way to move to NEW YOOOOOOORK. I didn’t know how to properly convey to them how deeply this was not going to be a problem.

But now that I’m here I have two options: 1) I can make damn well sure that everyone in New York knows I hate them simply for being New Yorkers, or 2) I can try to counter some of the things I dislike about New York to make the city better for me and (hopefully) slightly, and in perhaps a completely unnoticeable way, better for others.

Armed with the naivety of the very characters of “Glee” who piss me off (for many reasons, but mostly for their complete lack of student-teacher boundaries), I decided I was going to smile at people for no reason. With the expertise of 12 hours in New York, I decided the best way to fix New York was to march to the bus with a hideous smile plastered on my face. “HELLO,” my face said, “I’VE HAD A STROKE!”

And so, looking slightly happy and slightly constipated, I got onto a bus. As it trundled down the road to the train station, I stared at the window and thought to myself, “There are people everywhere. Everywhere. So many people. Oh my God there are too many people. Why are there so many people? New York is the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone ever.” But I continued to smile.

The bus stopped not too far from one of New York’s seemingly ubiquitous Payless Shoes stores (New Yorkers must have more feet than real people?), and a man folding a table was right outside the window. Judging from the intense look in his eyes, this was no ordinary table. This was the table the prophecy had foretold. This was the table that has been promised to—OH MY GOD NOW HE’S LOOKING AT ME.

Perhaps encouraged by the near-permanent forced smile on my face, the man retained eye contact. I say eye contact because in English we don’t have a word for an ocular Star Wars tractor beam. No, I must resist. Or at the very least, I must stop smiling as that appears to be the tractor beam’s energy source. The man kept staring. Staring to the point where people around me noticed and commented. The man kept staring, and I couldn’t decide between poetically putting my hand up to the glass as if to simultaneously and fruitlessly reach out to him and make a comment about the impossibility of ever being together, or simply disintegrating on the spot.

I looked away, hoping that would end the staring. Curiosity got the better of me, so I turned my head slightly to see out of the corner of my eye. Let’s see if he’s still—ohp, he’s still there. Staring at me. Oh God. What do I do. He’s still staring WHY IS THE BUS STILL STOPPED?? Jesus…has time stopped? Is that what’s happened? Is this what I get for smiling at people in New York?

The worst part of the staring is that I couldn’t tell if the guy was angry about my smile, encouraged by my smile, shocked by my smile, or was just staring at me because something was hanging out of my nose. All I know is that I smiled at a stranger in New York and in return received a stare that combined the essences of the songs “Some Enchanted Evening” and “I’ma cut you.”

 (It’s actually a thing.)

…and that’s why people in New York don’t smile.

.

Buddhist Monastery Random Thoughts

4 December 2012, 1:00 p.m.

I’m sat for several hours, alone in the Buddhist monastery, with no idea where to go from here. I’ve been sitting alone in a freezing room staring at a statue of a rejoicing fat Buddha who, with his arms victoriously pumping in the air, seems completely unashamed of his glorious manboobs. They are epic, to the point of being obscene. I’ve been staring at them for so long that I’m starting to question my own sexuality. I hear monks chanting a drone in the room next door, but all I can think of his how tempted I am to buy this statue a supportive bra.

4 December 2012, 2:30 p.m.

I finally worked up the courage to announce my arrival to the Buddhists. Actually it wasn’t so much courage as the very real fear that I would have to amputate my toes if I stayed in the cold any longer. Shyly shuffling past men wandering around in orange bed sheets, I strode up to the office door, startled myself by unintentionally knocking a little too loudly, and waited.

I ended up being greeted by a German nun who was missing several teeth and whom I would never see again. Judging from what a total space cadet she was, I can only assume that immediately after showing me to my room she reached Nirvana and ceased to be. Or maybe she went on vacation. Whatever. Upon hearing that my name was Samantha, she became overjoyed and rejoiced in the same way that I rejoice when offered cake. She marveled at the uniqueness of my name. “Samantha. Oh it is such a rare name! Samantha.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that three girls out of about 50-60 in my high school class had the same name.

She continued to fuss: “Samantha. Is this a name you chose for yourself?” Sorry, what? Confused by the question I simply stood there stupidly and, not knowing what to do with themselves, my hands found their way to my back pockets. Because, apparently, looking like I’m grabbing my own ass was the best solution my hands could come up with under pressure. Eventually I’d learn that a lot of people at this place had adopted ‘Buddhist’ names, like Edward is now Amitaba or something, in the same way that certain types of Jews that I met in Israel would not stop trying to get me to adopt awful Hebrew names to replace Samantha, names that made me sound like your grumpy grandma who doesn’t really speak English and smells of soup. I think they thought it’d make me a better Jew, and to their credit maybe if I had chosen to start calling myself Ruchama Tova or whatever I wouldn’t be typing this story up in an Anglican convent.

The Buddhist nun continued: “Is it Indian in origin? Samantha? Samantha.” She repeated my name to herself a few times, marveling at the sound it made.

I did think of my poor mom and wish she were here. She loves the name Samantha (obviously), but I’ve unfortunately never appreciated it in the same way. As this strange, toothless German lady flapped around and got herself all worked up about what a fantastic, rare and mystical name I have, I knew that if my mom were here she’d say to the nun, “I know, right?!”

5 December 2012, 6:30 a.m.

I am, there’s no delicate way of putting this, mincing through the snow in Crocs that are probably only big enough to comfortably house my toes. I’m off to the temple, where a novice monk who seems absolutely terrified of me for no apparent reason will give me a cloth to rub fingerprints off all the temple’s brass doorknobs. Or, as I succeed in doing, smear the fingerprints around until they become even more obvious dirt. Some days I use to a broom to move dead hair and flies to other, more exotic locations in the temple, but never to the dustpan. Other days I plump up cushions sitting on the floor, and as I bend over or crouch down to adjust the cushions my pants consistently fall down just as another monk walks in behind me.

My pants have sagged so many times at the worst possible moment that I don’t know if the monk could pick my face out of a crowd, but he and my ass are now pretty intimately acquainted. Like old army buddies now, best man at each other’s wedding and everything.

But, having never been afflicted with the appalling sight of my rear end, the novice monk has no excuse for the look of sheer terror and surprise that warps his face every time he sees me. Despite the fact that my thighs make a roar of jean friction as I walk, announcing my impending arrival, this novice monk always reacts like I’ve startled him, like I’ve jumped out from behind a corner and yelled, “BOO!” Mindfulness, my ass…

7 December 2012, 10:30 a.m.

I’m in the kitchen chopping onions, the stench of which will remain on my fingers for a week, when Billy Connolly begins to give me instructions on what to do with my pile of grotesquely unevenly cut vegetables sitting in a wok, stewing in their own shame.

“Fry it…” and here, mid-sentence, he is spirited away for a few uncomfortable seconds to what I can only assume was Brigadoon, but the look on his eyes suggests that wherever he is he’s there long enough to fall in love, get married, have a painful divorce, and develop a drinking problem before mentally returning to the kitchen. And then the adverb finally arrives, after getting caught in traffic on the 405: “…gently.”

He smiles softly to himself as he silently shuffles away, and I’m left feeling like I can’t go on. No, before I can gently fry these vegetables I have to ask, “WHERE THE EFF DID YOU GO?!”

7 December 2012, 11:30 a.m.

I just want to be silent. Polite society questions like ”Where do you live?” or “What do you do for a living?” are too challenging at the moment. I just want to eat my porridge and stare at a wall. Like, forever.

But so many people here won’t stop scooting along the carpet to enter into my personal space to tell me all about how they came here to get away from it all, to have some quiet. They go on to describe in detail their great love of silence, and how there’s too much chatter in the world, and “Oh I just need some peace to think.”

I’m shy (not to mention a rancid bitch), so they soon lose interest in me. They then scoot their meditation cushion over to another person, and they proceed to tell each other how they came here to get away from the noise of society, completely oblivious to the fact that they ARE the noise of society. I keep thinking to myself that if I had a gospel of my own to preach, it’d be a gospel of “Everyone shut the fuck up for like FIVE minutes. I mean, Jesus, is five minutes too much to ask?”

At this particular moment an older English gentleman is approaching me. He’s the epitome of lost soul, constantly moving from religion to religion. He had previously casually dropped into the conversation that he was a Muslim for four years, not too long ago. You know, having the sort of spiritual crises you have at the age of 20-something with the expectation (desperate hope?) that by the time you’re this guy’s age you’ll stop having them.

Anyway, he plops down on the floor next to me and for a minute I’m relieved to find him silently poking at and contemplating the various types of fish on his plate. He then points at a fried fish ball on his plate, asking me, “Is this like gefilte fish?”

I’m thrown by the question. “…Sorry?”

He points again. “Is this like gefilte fish?” Suddenly I remember that about an hour ago the topic of my Israeli kibbutz experience (and the implication that I’m Jewish) had come up. I guess this is his way of reaching out to me as a Jew?

Trying my best to smile politely, I simply say, “Ah, no…that’s just fish…”

Another pause, a chance for him to point at a differently prepared bit of fish on his plate. “So, is THIS like gefilte fish?”

“Well, no…that’s also just fish.”

He now points at a third variety of fish, because for some reason today we had three varieties of fish, and he asks me, “Right, and is THIS like gefilte fish?”

At this point I realize what is going on here. Congratulations, I want to say to him, you know a word in what you probably call “Jewish,” and you want me to know that you know it. As this man goes on to make further inane comments about gefilte fish, I start reflecting on this, what I HATE about being Jewish. Folks find out you’re Jewish and they start trying to show off that they know something or someone Jewish—this whole thing is something my non-“minority” friends will never fully understand. Nobody ever says, “Ooooh, you’re a WASP? I think my cousin’s neighbor is a WASP…actually, come to think of it, pretty much everyone I know is a WASP.”

But no, folks find out you’re Jewish and they want to tell you that they like challah bread, or (more frequently) they get all desperate to tell you about their neighbor’s Jewish brother-in-law. The subtext there is a hysterical “SEE?? I WOULDN’T HAVE GIVEN YOU UP TO THE NAZIS IF YOU HID IN MY ATTIC!” Or, perhaps more realistically, “I WOULD GIVE YOU UP TO THE NAZIS, BUT ONLY OUT OF FEAR AND NOT OUT OF RACE HATE SO THAT’S OKAY I GUESS.” You know, the sort of statement urgently blurted out a little too loudly, like a verbal kneejerk reaction.

I don’t know what these people want from me when they tell me their coworker’s last name is Goldstein—“that’s a Jew name, right?”. Do they want me to say I know their Jewish second cousin by marriage? Do they want a medal? What am I supposed to do with this information?

Usually I utter an empty, high-pitched “Oh.” Because really that’s all I can manage. But I think the next time someone tells me that their second grade teacher’s husband was Jewish I’ll have to start a slow clap that gradually builds into a one-woman standing ovation, as I wipe away tears from my moved Jewish eyes, saying, “Bravo, maestro. Bravo.”

Thoughts on Joshua before his first visit to a Buddhist monastery

On Tuesday I will go to spend five nights at a Buddhist monastery, where I’m told I will meditate, be mindful, and have one meal a day. Part of it is me simply buying some non-expensive time before going to stay at a (part of me wants to say “proper”) Anglican convent the week afterward, but part of me would actually like to learn something from the experience, despite not being a Buddhist. I think, particularly in preparation for the silence of a stay in a convent, I would like to become a blank slate. That is, I really earnestly hope to learn how to think of nothing, a way to drown out the voice that shrieks “YOU ARE GOING TO DIE ALONE!” or “YOU WILL NEVER FIND MEANINGFUL EMPLOYMENT BECAUSE YOU ARE SHIT” in every moment of silence.

However, the largest and most overwhelming part of me cannot stop thinking about minimal eating and the effect this will have on Joshua, my stomach. Even at the best of times, he is a difficult mistress who cries out for McDonald’s, red velvet cake, and every British biscuit ever made. But in this case I’m not even that worried about the thought of not having a constant supply of food piping into my mouth. No, I’m worried about something much more serious.

Regardless of what I eat, whether healthy or greasy, too much or just right, my stomach makes the most appalling noises whenever the volume in the room falls below a certain level. It had a particular knack for making a noise like a fat knight in oil-thirsty armor slaying a large, fire-breathing beast in the moments of silence before Evening Prayer during my PGCE year, and I would think to myself, “SILENCE, STOMACH BEAST!” to no avail.

What if my stomach makes a noise and the people meditating around me are only able to be mindful of the fact that my stomach is making weird noises like a cat being savaged by a cheese grater? Will I prevent them from reaching Enlightenment?

I’m also worried that during moments of silent meditation l will think about the college Zen Buddhism lecture that I had to leave because I couldn’t stop laughing, the one where I ended up collapsed in a stairwell weeping with laughter. A friend I was attending with had farted with incomparably beautiful timing, the memory of which STILL causes me to burst out laughing regardless of present location—lecture, classroom, public transportation, funeral, etc.

Between worrying about getting the giggles and worrying about the various roaring noises my stomach feels compelled to make, I’m a bit, well, worried about staying at a Buddhist monastery for the better part of a week. But there’s actually a lot to look forward to. I'm excited to learn more about Buddhism, something I studied briefly and don’t fully understand or even appreciate. But most of all, I’m quite looking forward to five days of FUCK OFF, WORLD. IMMA SIT HERE AND HAVE A THINK.