I am alive? Do you know why?

"The Lord has delt with us according to our ways and our deeds, Just as He purposed." Zechariah 1.6 [JPS Tanakh 1985]


Some past history is needed. Remember, I said I had crashed and burned my life in the 1980's?

In 1987 I commited suicide. It's been just over eighteen years since I came back to the living world.

I walked a long way back from "there and then" to get to "here and now". I've been asking myself all the way "Why?"

Let me explain about what I mean when I say I commited suicide. The few I've told the tale to say to me "...So what you mean to say is, that you *attempted* to commit suicide, right?".

No. I did it.

I took 2.075 grams [83 x 25 mg] of the "anti-depressant" Tofranil. That's a 27 2/3 day supply as the pill pusher flies. The lethal dose is about 15-20 mg per kg. of patient weight.

At the time I weighed around 150 pounds. It might have been a little more it might have been a lot less. Before I went away I weighed about 135 or 140 pounds [which made me look like Azrael's brother, but he's another story...]

Do the math.

55 pills should have killed me. Even allowing "more is not enough", I took enough to kill a man that weighed 228 pounds [at 20 mg / Kg] -- at the 15 kg level it could kill a man weighing over 300 pounds!

I took a lethal dose, okay?

So I died... but the world or something wasn't done with me.

Oh. yeah I forgot to mention that my crash landing ended in prison. At the time of my death, I was in a medium security nut ward filled with evil people run by the California Department of Corrections.

Except:

A murderer and an armed robber started my heart and watched over me for three days until I finally returned to self-awareness.

No really. That is the way it happened.

Did I deserve to die? In my own eyes I did. Something had other ideas I guess, so I lived.

I was released in 1989.

So I asked what was natural: "Why did I live?" There had to be a reason. I knew I had died and been re-animated. Why? I've asked that question over and over again. I've been given a "gift of life" I cannot explain. Maybe I'm looking for an explanation that does not seem to exist. We [humankind] tend to like nice, neat explanations as to why life is this way.

Still there are so many fragments of "oddness" in my life and talents before and after that day of darkness.

I write music and lyrics.

I have sculpted wood.

So? So lots of people do.

These are arts that I have never "formally" studied.

As you have discovered [maybe to your dismay!] I write fairly well. Again, I've nevered studied [I never got past "bonehead" English in college]. I've managed to do so well at many things yet I am relatively "uneducated". Someone once called me a "Renaissance Man". I've also been called a "Songwriter's Songwriter" by a pro songwriter. He told me then "You write the songs we wish we could write."

I mostly feel more like an idiot savant. Is that what happens when you read, think, and feel too much?

Recently I shared a recording of "Sleep, Little Flowers" with Rabbi and with someone I have deep respect for. She is someone whom I am honored and humbled to call a friend. [Though a very distant one]. I love her music, her joy, her nurturing of others, and the strength of her faith.

I was surprized when she told me:

"Wow, it sounds so great. Yasher Koach (that means well done!)"

Later Cynthia told me that our friend asked. "How does he do it?"

"Do what?" Cynthia asked in reply.

"Write beautiful stuff like that?" She replied.

I've asked myself *that* question before as well. It's like hearing a melody or a phrase and wanting to hear the rest of it. So I write it and play it. Some times it works out. Some times it does not... the words don't ring true or I get lost in an echo of the notes or words and I cannot finish.

It is like when I used to carve wood.

Once Cynthia and I went up to a beach south of Ventura, CA. I picked up a piece of drift wood and was looking at it. Cynthia asked me, "What's that?" seeing the piece of driftwood in my hands.

I held up the saltwater eroded piece of flotsom and said, "It's a dancer." She could not see what I seemed to see within the wood.

Several months later, I carved it and entitled it "Terpsechore" [The Muse of Dance]. Cynthia said with amazement, "I couldn't see the dancer but you could!"

I've looked a lot of places trying to find the "real" answer as to how I got here. As I said, we [or should I say *I*?] like to have explanations. I'd like to know the whole story of the story I sense is here within me.

To quote the beginning of a song entitled "Tuneless Tune" I wrote a number of years ago [which came from a dream I had one Sunday afternoon in 1993 or so]:

Verse 1:
After show time in never land
I had no place to be
so I stumbled down that Yellow Brick Road
to see what I could see

Now Babylon and Uruk
Were filled with a blowin' dust
An' from Pittsburgh to Paris
Was a sea of rust

So I stumbled blindly onward
To that place between west and east
And Fell into the darkness
They call the Belly of the Beast

Chorus:
At a bar set in Dreamtime
I pull’d myself up a chair
To fill myself with memories
Of which I was unaware

Verse 2:
Well, there sat Cap'n Ahab
A call’d the Wand'rin' Jew
And on his lap sat the tyrant
Known as Little Boy Blue

Their Love was a strange one
As strange as it was new
The glimmer in the old man's eyes
Said all the rumors were true

At the bar sits the Dutchman
Lost now between his beers
All that sailing from where to when
Has finally stripped his gears

Chorus:
In a bar set in Dreamtime
I pull’d myself up a chair
To fill myself with memories
Of which I was unaware

Verse 3:
Mata Hari and Little Egypt
Are kissing in the darkened room
Their loving fills the emptiness
With a passion we all consume

When in comes the Jester
Followed by his friend the Thief
While the Thief steals from all of us
The Jester gives comic relief

Now Siduri is the barmaid
Who once loved a famous king
But he died five thousand years ago
And didn't leave her a thing

Chorus:
'Cept a bar set in Dreamtime
I pull’d myself up a chair
To fill myself with memories
Of which I was unaware

Verse 4:
Well Nero fiddles for the band
And Gabriel blows the horn
While Jellyroll slaps the ivory
And sings of love forlorn

All the while I sat there
In the Belly of the Beast, My friend
I laughed and cried for all of us,
All our hubris and our sin

When I finally stumbled outta there
It must a been ‘bout the Crack of Doom
I took with me only these memories
And the words to this tuneless tune.

Chorus:
From a bar set in Dreamtime
I pull’d myself up a chair
To fill myself with memories
Of which I was unaware

©Copyright 1995-2006 dvusMedia All Rights reserved

What mixed up beings we humans are! Clods of dirt mixed with ethereal sparks. We want to know the fullness of life but we are too afraid to stop and feel the life we have, for fear we cannot meet the next mortgage payment or keep up with the neighbors or oppress those we don't like.

We get trapped in ways of doing and thinking and believing that are wrong for ourselves and for those around us. That's a trap of which I am well aware.

I recently completed reading "Does the Soul Survive?" By Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz. He answers an unequivocal "yes" to the survival of the soul but a its not sufficiently proven to the idea of gilgul.

Yet... The more I think and feel and read, the more it seems like I have returned. To where I belong. To what is right and natural for me.

There has been some controversy in whether there is such at thing as "resurrection" of the dead or what it means in a Jewish context. Reform Judiasm has "de-emphasized" that teaching and prayers concerning it.

Maybe there is such at thing as "resurrection" but it's not what we thought it is.

We have assumed from the writings of the prophets that "dem bones" will be "re-vivafied" and be called to stand before the Throne of Glory.

Maybe that isn't the way it is at all.

Maybe we don't really understand what it means to be resurrected. Maybe the mystery clothed in the words of the Torah that appear to be a literal "resurrection" is not real the meaning of the words.

In Ezekiel 37.12, it says: "I am going to open your graves and lift you out of your graves, O My people, and bring you to the land of Israel." and in verse 14: "I will put my breath into you and you shall live again"

If I maybe so bold as to suggest the bones [the human skeleton] is a metaphor of the "framework and foundation" upon which our human selves are built. Without our "bones" we would not be free to move.

What is the worst kind of bondage? The kind that traps us into immobility. The grave is worse than Egypt because you cannot escape.

Even Joseph escaped Egypt. "When God has taken notice of you, you shall carry up my bones from here" [Gen 50.25].

Egypt / the grave is a symbol of our bondage to "evil task masters" such as evil urges, the cut-throat race for social status and financial security, bad choices, misunderstandings, or bad habits. It can also be the kind of human bondage where we cannot even imagine freedom, hope, charity, love, kindness, joy or caring.

In the modern world G-d seems so distant. There is no escape from the grave, no Moses to set us free. Yet G-d, Baruch HaShem, says not only will He open the graves and lift us out but that he will take us, His people, to the promised land. He will breathe life into us again.

So to bring this full circle...I wonder to myself: Have I been resurrected? Have I not gone down into the grave and yet have returned?

Were I better off in life I'd be a scholar, were I worse off I might have been a politician... and were I not an uneducated fool I might have aspired to be a rabbi.

Still I count my blessings and share them with any and all that might have need.

Rabbi told me later:

I think Renaissance Man fits you well. You call yourself "uneducated." Perhaps not formally schooled to the extend you would like to be, but certainly not uneducated. And schooling can always take place, no matter what your age.

To understand the Jewish concept of resurrection, one must be aware that when the prophets were written, bodily post-mortem resurrection was not being conceived. That idea came into being during the early Pharisaic period (which began around 200 BCE). One could say, therefore, that biblical Judaism does not speak of bodily resurrection which was a Rabbinic concept. It is certainly conceivable that "m'chayay may-teem" (revival of the dead) can refer to a spiritual resurrection. In fact, that would be a very appropriate Reform Jewish understanding.

I listened to your two songs. "Sleep, Little Flowers" is lovely and soothing. The Shema is beautiful. I understand why Robin liked it - it's really good! But before you share it with too many people, give me an opportunity to hone your Hebrew vowels a little.

Good job!

Yet I still have not answered that question: Why me? Why am I back here? Maybe to write this, maybe to tell a few tales. Maybe to remind you of something you have forgotten or are just taking for granted?

I've got more to tell you but it will have to wait until next time.

HaGedi