The Loneliest Monk

It's funny how music can jog your memory.  I was just talking with a friend of mine whom I haven't seen in a while.  She told me she was on a bus Saturday night, and her iPod played a song I had recommended her, after which she couldn't stop thinking of me.  It was very flattering, but it got me thinking about how certain songs bring me back to specific periods of my life, especially if a certain girl figured prominently into what was going on with me at that time.

I first noticed it in sixth grade, when I had a big crush on a girl, and Magnificent Bastards' "Mockingbird Girl" made me think of her every time it came on the radio (I was listening to WAAF a lot at the time).  I've since gone back and listened to that song, and it kind of sucks.  In college, when I started to get involved in my first serious relationship, which coincided with my introduction to My Bloody Valentine, I listened to Isn't Anything and Loveless as much as possible so I would have a frame of reference for the memories.

This is just my interpretation, but it seems to me that Chassidus explains why music is so universally moving.  Chassidus teaches that when one reads a book, for example, a bond develops between the reader and the author, perhaps as small as a favorable opinion.  A favorable opinion may progress to curiosity, mild interest, fanship, and so on.  Regarding music, however, the Alter Rebbe famously said, "If words are the pen of the heart, then song is the pen of the soul."  While words may be understood according to one's own ability, music connects on a level higher than understanding, cutting through directly to the soul.  Perhaps this is why my Grandma always calls nigunim Jewish Soul Music.

On the 3 train last night, some girl was practicing her pole dancing moves for her friends across the aisle from me.  I was in too much shock to move, so I took out my chumash and started learning last week's parsha just so I wouldn't have to see some obnoxious girl shaking her fat behind and kicking her feet up in the air.   They got off at the same stop as me.  When the train stopped, her friend said "I have to pee like a race horse."  Very classy, ladies.

The King of Fighters Wing

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Did you watch the baseball game or the debate last night?

Neither.  I listened to the debate on the radio and rooted heartily for the Dodgers.

Rosh Hashanah was great this year.  I davened with Yossi, Gershon, and Menachem Eliyahu at 770.  It was very crowded, but for the first time in my life, the davening was literally enlivening.  I finished Sefer Tehillim over the course of both days, also for the first time, and the farbrengen at the end of the yomtov was surprisingly emotional.  It felt almost as if the Rebbe was in the room.

Yom Kippur got off to a good start; I stayed up late, until 2am, saying Tehillim, and finished during shacharis.  By musaf, though, I began to feel very weak and had to come leave shul.  When I came back to my room, I found  some Israeli buchor sleeping in my bed.  I had left the door unlocked because I thought my roommate had asked to me leave it open for a friend who was staying with us.  I woke up the Israeli guy and said I needed to lie down in my bed.  He got up, mumbling something about someone telling him he could go upstairs and find a bed and that no one would mind.  I told him he could sleep on the sofa chair in our room.  I figured he must be feeling ill if he wasn't in davening, and he said he had a cold.  I changed my pillow case after the yomtov but I still ended up catching a cold, which B"H only lasted a few days.

Sukkos is coming up tomorrow night.  It's hard to believe I moved into the Yeshiva almost a year ago.  This would be a good time to make a chesbon, what with it being the new year, and my birthday coming up, and all.

At shul this morning, there was a guy standing next to me ranting in Hebrew.  He got there around the same time I did, and was yelling at bochurim the whole time he was in talis and tefillin.  At one point, I had to put my siddur down on the table to gather up my tzitzis, and he slammed my siddur shut and started pushing my arm when I tried to open it back up.  I yelled "excuse me" at him in Hebrew a couple times, but just walked away when I realized I was going to get nowhere with him.  At one point, I think the gabbai came over to calm him down because he was getting too rough with the Israeli bochurim.  People were shushing the guy the whole time he was there, but he kept ignoring them.

Turns out that lady who gave me a hard time outside of Kol Tuv has a reputation for being difficult.  I know a few people who've had trouble with her.  She once told my friend's wife that she wasn't helping to bring the geulah because she didn't give her enough money.  I forget if that was the first or the second time she yelled at my friend's wife, but the second time she gave this lady money, she yelled at her again.  So she told the lady to get a job!  When my friend was telling me this story he ended it with, "That's my girl!"  I wasn't sure what to make of that until I actually had to deal with that woman making me feel like a criminal.

Shacharis felt like it took forever today.  It was only an hour or so, which is not bad considering we heard krias hatorah today, but lately I've become impatient with my davening.  Davening has become like a race for me.  I can't get it out fast enough.  I have friends who really take their time and daven with kavana, but mine is more of a "knock it off" kind, like Rabbi Wircberg once described it.  I just wanna get it out of the way.  It's just a phase I'm going through, I think, because I'm still getting a geshmak out of learning chassidus.  I'm not worried, more like frustrated, but not enough to force myself to slow down.  We'll see what happens.

What is the scariest experience you've had with Mother Nature?
Submitted by jacolily.

I'm going to channel Rabbi Yosef Wircberg and tell you that Mother Nature is really Father Elokim!