ding dong the witch is dead —

Ding dong the witch is dead — and Malkah cried some, but mostly was in shock.  Malkah was sure she'd live forever, in her witchy way, casting evil spells to disable opponents and take your breath clean away.  Her magic was formidable.

If you told her about a new girlfriend, finally one you'd thought she'd finally approve, she glared and gave her curse:


You'll only hurt her.

And from her mouth to God's ear, that would become the truth.

If she asked you, well, when she's dead do you promise to live in the house and keep it exactly as is, everything in its place? And you're evasive, and talk about how beautiful the dome of the Great Room would be with the ancient Egyptian goddess Nuit painted across the ceiling along with deep blue sky and gold and silver stars — she'd respond with her signature,

I'll curse you from the grave.

Scary shit.  Because when she said it, it sounded really real. Not something you could laugh at.  Not something she'd smile about afterwards.  More like you better duck right now because the sky is falling. Or it will be soon.

She liked to assert preemptive control from the afterlife a lot in those days.

But then, something strange happened as she lay dying for a few years.

She got nicer. Supportive.  Still scary. But scary helpful, instead of scary scary.  She insisted on helping.  On being there for you. On healing you. On telling you how to heal, like you had no idea how to take care of yourself.

Imperious never went away.

Demanding. Penetrating. Glaring.  Regally holding court from her hospital bed.  Looking all the queen of heaven and earth.  She glowed as she reigned. She captured and she captivated. And she still cursed, of course.  You don't give up power like that so easily, right?

But she softened.  Or rather, she let her soft side show.  Well, maybe not to everyone, but at least to Malkah, who was shocked beyond words.  She gave Malkah compliments.

Who knew you could be so competent? she'd say.

I can't believe you're still here taking care of me!  She'd say. Expecting her daughter to up and go poof any second now.

In truth, she had cause not to expect Malkah's care for her at all.  How many of the hired help had up and fled in tears after her rebuke and wildfire rage?  And these were trained professionals, or well, some of them were, with experience of the abuses the elderly can mete out on others.

Ah, that wicked wicked tongue! She was so proud of it.  She boasted of it. Repeated to Malkah over and over some nasty thing she'd said to some good friend or other. And Malkah always wondered why those folks they stuck around.

She loved cursing them. In writing, especially.  How many people have kept copies of her loquacious and lengthy curses?  She was a poet after all. She had a well-oiled facility with words.

Abra-ca-dabra.  I create as I speak. Just like God, the poet uses words to bring evil and good into the world. Which is why it's good idea to keep your mouth shut no matter what just in case you can't tell the difference.

I was silent.  For months on end, I could not write nor speak a word.  I was stunned at her departure.  Yes, I put my shovel full of dirt upon her grave, as did we all, still expecting her to rise once more. To direct me. Forbid me. Coerce me. Condemn me. Demand of me. And to critique my posture, when she just couldn't think of anything else to say.

And then suddenly she was nice. Just like that.

It wasn't her seductive nice that she saved for handsome men.  No, it was the nice that comes from just plain letting go of forcing the world into her mold, her blueprint and requisite dimensions.

Well, okay, I overspoke.  Suddenly she was nice to Malkah at least.

I wonder if this is what Confession is for in religious traditions not my own.  Does letting go bring purity or relief? Especially at the end of life?  I have no idea.  But she let go. She cut the umbilicus that tethered Malkah to her rages.

I'm left here with an emptiness, a dearth of evil.  It seems to be entirely gone inside my being.  No curses from the grave (not even mild admonitions) press down upon my shoulders.  The world feels emptier now.  And emptiness became a theme upon her exit from her gilded stage.

I emptied out her house and gave away or sold her things.  I took the orphaned plants into my garden and watched them up and bloom.  I got a lot of help dismantling her universe. The emptiness feels almost Buddhist in its peaceful glory.

Malkah sold her house to a family of Egyptians.

I'm hoping they'll paint the ancient goddess Nuit upon the dome of that extraordinary Great Room. With deep blue skies and gold and silver stars twinkling from above the vaulted hall.  Bringing peace on earth, of course, and good will to absolutely all.

reasons to desist

Making decisions sucks.

That's my conclusion on a lifetime's worth of decision-making so far. I was taught growing up to make my own decisions. And so I made them. And then I was told exactly why they were the wrong decisions, and what the right one would have been. And then — I was made to stick to my decision. And I discovered that, to tell the truth, I was okay with the decisions I had to stick to.

But all that decision-making home schooling made me really hate deciding anything at all.

And so, I stopped.

Making decisions entails some kind of internal process of analysis. Either that, or some (still internal) gut reaction, or heartstring pulling — or something. I don't really have a clue. I find that my guts ache — and I still end up having to follow through on something I didn't exactly decide to do. So that doesn't help too much. Internal cues mean you actually have to recognize what you feel. Or what you think. And I can't ever decide anything that way.

My default setting is external cues.

I want all the external circumstances to conspire together. I want everything to fall into place, neatly and cleanly — so that there's really no choice at all. There it is, loud and clear, tangible and unavoidable. Signs even a moron could read. God I love external cues.

The bible is full of external cues:

— angels come and just tell you what's what. I mean, what could be better than that?

— a serpent says, look, this is how it works. Right, well that one didn't work out so well, did it?

— a ram comes and says, 'sacrifice me instead of your son,' right in the nick of time. This one's the synchronicity option.

— burning bush. You know the drill. I mean, gee. Handing down the law that way? No more decisions to make. Ten commandments. Just do this. Nothing more to think about, is there?

— a dove brings an olive branch. This is my personal favorite. One bird, one branch. In the bible, it actually doesn't represent the end of war. No. It meant quite literally that the floods had receded — and there was land again. We could start over and rebuild our homes post-tsunami...

— or just plain, the voice of god. And the 'Go where I send thee...' kind of speech, and you pick up and go. You move! All your stuff. Your flocks, your tents, cats, dogs — everyone and everything. Just like that. Voice of God.

External cues are a lot more fun than yellow legal pads with a line down the middle of the page with yes on the left, and no on the right — and then you sit there and figure it all out. Which can be fun, I guess, but what if you forgot to list a key variable or two? And it's just a lot more work.

So. Personally, I wait for signs.

I wait for the universe to conspire. To speak up. To use its words. At the micro-level this entails things like the parking-space goddess opening up that space when you get there. no parking space — means you're not meant to be there. The only condition under which I ignored this method was in picking up my kids from school. If I had waited for a parking space every time I needed to get my kids — I would have lost each of them on the first day of kindergarten. There are, after all, exceptions to the 'signs' rule.

This is me, waiting for a sign.

Macro-level: Big decisions are worth waiting for big signs. Or at least clear ones. Why would I even think I have the seikhel to figure these out on my own? And therapists? Yes, very Jewish, I know. But it's never been in a therapist's financial interest to have their patients learn how to make decisions (large or small) on their own.

But waiting for signs sucks too, and you end up sitting on shpilkes the whole time. But what can you do? Nothing.

The longest I've waited for a sign is five years.

But when it comes — it is so clear you can touch it, feel it, taste it. There it is — from outside yourself. So it's gotta be true, right. This is, after all, why we like angels so much.

So. I'm waiting for a sign. I don't want it to hit me over the head. Like that 18-wheeler that got me (luckily) when I had the Volvo. That's a bit too macro for my taste. Big signs like that mean you weren't paying attention to the more subtle little signs the universe was flashing at you.

Favorite signs: For me, they come while working in the garden. I don't understand why. Except that gardens are particularly attuned to issues of timing.

Now is the time to prune, the big pine says.

You haven't been watering, you moron, they all scream at once. If you don't nurture, nothing grows.

The garden is pretty blunt about things. But boy, when it's time to prune — you'd better start pruning. And not just the trees.

And some times, of course it's time to plant. And months later you realize you didn't do it. And so, guess what? The only thing that comes up are the 'volunteers.' And sometimes volunteers surprise you and they're pretty spectacular. And sometimes they drop in and wreck everything.

When my garden says prune, I prune. Plant? I plant. It works. But I'm not always in gardening-mode. So I have one more method under my belt.

I call it my 'reasons to desist' mode of divination. It's pretty annoying, but it works well. It has to do with doors. I wait for them to open.

Waiting for the door to open can take a very very very very long time. Recognizing that it's ajar is an artform. Sometimes many conditions (what I like to call variables) have to line up together before that door will budge.

Never kick the door. The door is there to slow you down. Or downright stop you in your tracks. Never ring the doorbell or try to negotiate. I have a friend who does that. It's a real pain. She wants to turn a door into a window of opportunity. She wants to bargain. Negotiate minutia with the door — which makes the door just pissed, and want to slam, even if her foot's on the threshold.

Be very nice to the door. Wait. And be patient. If the door does not open, you don't have to walk through. And there's your reason to desist. If it does open, and you hesitate even a little — it slams shut pretty quick right in your face, pretty insulted that you weren't paying closer attention.

But when that door opens just as you get there. What could be more right than walking on through?

this is going to end badly, she said

Malkah woke up, and she was healed of her despair. Her body felt light, like it could just float up into the ether — except for the fact that she already resided there to begin with. Her spirit was lighter too for a change. It was an indescribable feeling. She had even slept. Slept like a newborn babe in arms. Slept like she was cradled in the arms of God.

She was in love.

God himself had descended upon her and healed her. I mean, everybody knows this, right? What else could have happened?

The Almighty One saw her. Really saw her. He took it upon himself to enter her with Infinite Light and penetration of spirit. The Angel Gabriel himself attended, blowing his trumpet. I'm actually not sure about this last part, but that's what they say. What do I know from angels?

The point is, that Malkah was healed.

She decided to leave her place of occultation and descend into the realms of the living once more. She had been in exile so long in her despair over the actions of the humans below. The Earth had been rended by the warfare and bigotry, by ignorance and hatred one against the other. The Lord had brought down upon the Earth his own catastrophic wake-up call to humanity, to no avail. They had glanced up, joined hands briefly, and then had returned for their weapons lest someone else amass them while they were busy helping out a tsunami or two.

"Wake up!" the Lord had said. "See this disaster? May it teach you to be cooperative, one brother with the other." The Almighty had been reading Kropotkin again.

And the Shekhinah just left the world. Again. She couldn't take it.

Humans had tried to coax her back with ritual. Especially the Sabbath. Do the ritual correctly, and she would descend (however briefly) into the hearts of men, and they'd feel the awesome force of the beauty of Creation.

And then, they'd start bickering over the remote. Over a perceived maldistribution of goods. Over territory. "This land is my land —" they would shout, like it was a good and righteous thing to do. And she'd be sick of it again, and depart. She could hardly wait for Havdalah to get herself out of here.

But now. Now was different. She was (quite literally) floating on clouds. Peaceful, if not happy. What did she know from happiness? It wasn't her department. But she felt the buoyancy of possibility, and it felt good.

"This is going to end badly," she said.

Of this she was quite sure. 'Love' always ended badly. Always ended in loss, for there was death. The death of one led to the anguish of the other. The illness of one did the same. The hurtful feelings. Abandonment. Betrayal. Moving on. The higher the resonance, the harder the fall when it was gone. These were the invisible little parasites that inhabited the soft, delicious pelt of love. It was a force of nature. Part of the Law of Gravity itself. Grave, indeed.

But there it was. That dreaded love.

She tested it out. Tentatively seeking out the tendrils of her being. Nope. She still felt euphoric. She felt so good, she could barely contain herself. Endorphins of the Almighty.

A great pessimism descended upon her, but it couldn't quite penetrate the armor of her joy.

And then, out of nowhere, a vision.

The tzaddik came to her and spoke. His presence made her shake and cry, She was overwhelmed. Not even the Almighty Himself had this effect on her, so powerful was his sight.

"You must love," he said. "You must love whom you will."

"You must trust," he said. "You must trust — not that it will be alright — no. Not that, no. But that it will be worth the cost, no matter what you pay. You do not bargain with this one. Love is worth the price. Rather that, than go without."

And in that moment, the Shekhinah knew love, and named it thus. Tears flooded down her face, and rain poured down upon the land below.

She turned, and walked upon her way.

She was not, after all, ready to descend to the planet below.

walks like an angel...

She must be another goddamned angel. I just figured that out. Doing all those angel things they do. She comes in exactly the right form that makes me snap to attention. The words flow out of her — she's an enchantress. She puts me on the path and hold me to it.

"How's this," she says, whip in hand. "Are you paying attention yet?" but this latter part she speaks with her eyes. She doesn't always need the words. She has some other pretty nifty forms of communication.

I don't do angels.

Everybody knows that.

But goddamn. They seem to do me pretty well.

So. So what if we treated everyone —everyone— as if. As if, I say — as if they were these angels in our lives? I mean the real mccoy angels, not those winged things in old masters' paintings. Those angels are just, well, boring. Boring, I say! And trite. Don't forget trite.

No. The real angels, they club you over the head and make you pay attention. They grab you, they shake you, they make love to you until you cry out for mercy — And then: They turn your world upside down.

It's in their contract. They can do opera if you need opera. But they don't have to.

And what do you do when you meet an angel? You. The recipient of such an off world cosmic gift?

You snap to attention. You — You suddenly know what you have to do, and have the courage to do it.

You wake up — even if you don't see the light.

So.
This angel walks into a bar—

Okay, no. It wasn't a bar. (That was a joke, lame, I know, but I just couldn't help it. Pathetic, really).

So. This angel walks in — and the first thing that happens is — you don't notice anything at all.

It's not like they want to draw a lot of attention to themselves. Actually, scratch that, actually they can be pretty damned flashy. Performers. Number 3 on the Enneagram: they can manifest anything and show you. Number 8 on the Enneagram: They can push you around pretty good. Whatever you need — they'll do that.

And so what are they there for? They're there to give you a shove. A pàtch in the tuchus, a wake-up call, a warning bell. Get your ass in gear, they say. And so, you wake up, and you see them. And they let you see them.

And then—
And then—
And then— they smile.

And you fall.
And you rise.

Do not confuse the messenger with the message. It is the nature of angels to be ephemeral. They have a short attention span and a long list of other people and creatures to do. They are not loyal (not to you, anyway). It's nothing personal. They just can't help themselves. It's the angelic imperative. And they figure that if they just keep dazzling you you won't get pissed about it, or better still you won't notice, till they're gone. And when you do finally pull yourself together, they are indeed gone. Remember: nothing personal.

If you had been listening more carefully you would have heard the fine print in the contract. But you weren't listening. You were standing there with your mouth hanging open, enthralled. Which is what they expect you to do. Like vampires, they have glamour. They enchant. But let's stay on topic here.

So. This angel. This angel walks through my door.

And what do I do?

Anthropologist, remember?

I take notes.

Goddamned angel can't hurt me, right? No, no. That's the wrong attitude. Let's do the analysis. Classify it under "spirit hypothesis" — one of the more ridiculous categories in the anthropology of consciousness. But that's what anthropologists do with it. Call it an 'emic' category. Whew. That's so much safer!

The angel laughs.

And then she lunges —