"G" dash "D"

My wine tastes like honey and wood… and it might be the pieces of cork floating in my glass, but I don’t think so.  I hold the stem and keep my pinky in.  It’s a Friday night and I should be out, but I’m too tired.  So, instead I’m typing.  My computer’s broken and Japan’s in shambles.  And this week; this god-damn week. 

Working the polls and all poll workers, and this is a rigid fact, mind you---with no exception, save for my sister and me--- all poll workers are either dirt old or physically handicapped.  Don’t ask me why. 

This past Tuesday, Chelsea and I worked the polls with Cora.  And Cora’s a senior-citizen with a cat named “Hunky.”  And Cora’s a cunt.  I feel bad for her, but she goes on tangents and loves rules.  “Last year,” she says matter-of-factly, “students worked the polls… and they’re the best.  You send them down the street for a sandwich, and they couldn’t be happier.”   

So, Cora’s picking fights with all the other precinct poll workers, yelling at them to turn their chairs around to face the voting booths, so that they abide by general poll-working law.  She’s on a rampage and by the time the polls open, all the people are sitting at their booths, facing the wall.  Golly gosh, Cora, but your heart goes out to her as she sits, mid-way through the voting day, talking about her indolent mother and she’s laughing nervously, “She’s shriveled to nothing.”  And she’s laughing, but looking straight ahead, “But, uh, no… I was always an inch taller than her, but… no…” And she’s now looking down, fidgeting with some papers, and it’s that moment when I sort of like Cora because she’s kind of vulnerable.  But, she fucks it all up, and starts arguing with a voter about his vote-by-mail registration.   

Cora likes her oatmeal with a packet of Sweet N’ Low, a splash of maple syrup (for flavor), and a pinch of salt.  “Nothing’s sweet unless you have that pinch of salt,” she says.  Cora’s a packet of salt and a pinch of sugar.

At the end of last week, and I don’t remember where we were… probably late-night happy hour on Santa Monica Boulevard, where the sushi’s not that great and there’s too much vinegar in the rice.  Was it U-Zen Sushi where she shared the parable about the monk and the sage?  And the gist of it was that the sage answered the monk with a “God does not exist” retort.  It’s the word “God” that gets lost in translation and I ask her if she’s heard of ‘Yahweh.’  "Who’s Yahweh?"  Never mind. 

And some people say that Los Angeles is a godless city.  And that’s not true at all.  That’s Las Vegas.  No!  It can’t be if you really think about it because it’s a bunch of people, on the very brink of wavering faith, kissing their di before a roll, and, I bet you, hands down, there’s more communication with God at the craps table than there is at the Vatican… and then, god-willing, they win a land-fall and hire a prostitute.

Did you ever notice that religious leaders have the most difficult time with the acceptance of God?  The big “G,” “O,” “D.”  I ask this at U-Zen, or wherever we are, and nobody agrees.  But, it’s true and my dad’s a Rabbi and, for most my life, I went around thinking he didn’t believe in God.  And I’ve asked him countless times, “But, how can you be a Rabbi and not believe in God?”  And it’s not about God, he says.  But, yeah, it kind of is.  There are times, and it’s not when he’s preaching at the pew, but sitting in his lazy boy recliner, when it comes out… when, all of a sudden, he says something, he trip-falls, and says something so darn, undeniably, reverent.  It’s being in the profession of God that you’re two sides of the dime, the most pious and the most blasphemous.  It’s very oxymoronic.  And there’s no such thing as unwavering faith.

And life is one big oxymoron.  My mother, a convert, dubbed by the congregation as “the shiksa rebbetson,” is talking to me, laptop heating up her thighs, playing Snood.  I ask her if she feels Jewish, “Yeah, I guess so.”  And she goes on, “I suppose, I wasn’t one thing or the other… it’s a sense of community.”  And she’s telling me about how she felt it immediately, after meeting my dad, because she always wanted some sort of connection to something… and this was it.  All of a sudden, she’s quiet.
She’s fidgeting with her computer and she’s clicking the mouse, but the screen’s frozen.  “This is so fucked… I don’t know why it’s like this.”

I Heart Berlin

Berlin isn't romantic like Paris or charming like an English sea-side town.  It's grungy and underground, but clean-shaven too, and, because of everything I've learned in history books, a bit taboo.  I fall in love with the city one evening, drinking mugs of German pilsner in Prater Biergarten, Berlin's oldest outdoor pub.  Rows of picnic tables are lined symmetrically, one after the other, and strings of light bulbs criss-cross above your head.  I'm sitting with two substitute teachers from Maryland.  Later that night, we play ping pong in an empty white room, then we get our hands stamped and go dancing.  But at this moment,  with two strangers from Maryland, slap-happy and on-the-verge of sloppy inebriation, I sort of stumble on my words when I pronounce, barely, "I love this city."  I mean it too, every single syllable.  It's the artwork that's tagged on the side of concrete buildings and it's the relevancy, how recent everything is.  In 1989, the wall crumbled down and the east ran west, bottles of champagne spilled in celebration, and, as history goes, David Hasselhoff was somehow responsible.  Berlin is zany in that way.

Right after leaving Berlin, all I want to do is return.  It's my favorite city, hands down, and the people are ultra cool and I drink lots of Berliner.  I travel to the east-side gallery of the deconstructed wall and I get lost in a fenced-in-lot with Carribean music and imported sand.  The streets are studded with curry wurst stands and vintage shops; I like the people and I love this weird city.

Berlin has been divided and broken-down and bombed, but, miraculously, it's transformed itself into this phoenix, rising from its ashes (and in Berlin, there's a whole lot of ashes), an emblem for re-construction and reinvention.  And, although the city is spanking new with lots of cement and mohawks and worn-in combat boots, you can't really escape its past.  On a free walking tour, the very short guide leads the group into a parking lot.  "This," he projects for the whole group to hear, "was the location of Hitler's bunker."  Cars are parked and the ground is un-paved.  And that's basically it.  There's the past, which is very much present, even if it's a parking lot.

And I'm Jewish and my dad's a Rabbi.  Growing up Jewish, you eat bagels and lox, and kugel, and kishke.  When you meet a fellow Jew, there's this mutual understanding, this nod.  We, you both think, share the same ancestry, the same history, and together we were persecuted, and together we were saved.  It's this knowledge that we, somehow, share something and maybe it's Yiddishkeit or maybe it's the holy land, or it might just be that we both eat matzah ball soup, but it's something.  It's the common 'we.' And there's the Holocaust, where families were dismembered and humans were slaughtered.  Survivors come into your first grade classroom and speak to you and they say, "I survived, but there's this number," and they show you their inked wrist, numbered like a bar-code.  And this amazing city of Berlin was the epicenter, the blinking control room, for Nazi Germany.

When I'm there, I don't think about it much.  There's too much happening in the present.  I'm above ground, where Hitler's bunker is land-marked, standing next to a sea-foam green hatchback.  "Alright," it doesn't process, and then I'm off, walking to the next historical site, following the absurdly short tour guide.  After being home for several months, looking back, the city's very strange and very far.  It's similar to when you're so close to someone and then, all of a sudden, you're not.  A falling out perhaps.  Something happens and that person becomes the furthest and strangest human being to you and you think, "Who are they?"  That's the way I feel about Berlin right now.  I'm conflicted and confused.  I still love the city, but it's different now.

My last day in Berlin, I take the train to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp.  There's a huge concrete tower before you enter the premises and there's a memorial garden with butterflies.  Weeds disguised as yellow flowers grow rampant.  There's a gift shop with souvenirs and, for a pound, you can purchase a map of the grounds.  When I first get there, sludging through the mud, tourists pose for pictures, smiling in front of the tower.  This place, which symbolizes death and human cruelty, has a gift shop and smiling tourists with flashing cameras.  After you enter the iron gates, it's quiet and isolated and spread out, so that most of the time, you're completely by yourself.

When I first arrive in Berlin, I don't know what to expect.  It's overcast and a dark fog creeps low. You can't see much, except for the tall pin-needle of a building, several kilometers away.  The city's history precedes itself and is eerily present- it's in the skyline and in the fog- and you think: 1940's Berlin, this must have been hell.