amnesia

"You became what you became by remembering it, because it was very literally in your body before birth." Martin Prechtel. A mayan belief that beautifully mirrors the Talmudic teaching of the philtrum, the angel and amnesia. It states that in utero, the baby knew all Torah, all truth. But at the time of birth an angel comes and removes the memory by stroking the child above the top lip, leaving the cleft between the nose and mouth. " 'Hush' it whispers to the stirring child, 'Now you must forget.'"* These teachings bear the hope that heaven and all its laws and motions are in our physical body, and the work of life is to remember and recognize it. They evoke the Tibetan sage Milarepa's statement that the body is a tutelary deity, containing secrets and powers and protective efficacy that happens in secret, in the secret world of the kidney, the spleen, the heart, the liver, the lungs, the silent council of the city of the body, as if each one were a passage of forgotten Torah.

*Terryl Givens, When souls had wings: pre-mortal existence in Western Thought.

Feel the Rush

Rush stands where Bargainland used to; I was so pleased to find a great picture of that place at the Bridge and Tunnel Club. I remember it with affection although I'm not sure why now, and a friend even named her band after it so I guess it had its charm.

I'm usually too overwhelmed by the Rush sign to shop there but I got over there this week when my son's teacher requested dollar store rolls of masking tape. I got two rolls for $1.49. On the way in I noticed that the sign used a particularly full version of Cooper, a font that is always full and cheerful and pleasant enough to appear pretty much everywhere you look. Seldom does it look as full though. I've said in the past that it reminds me of healthy chubby babies with fullness of cheek and limb. Here the letters aren't swollen with baby sweetness but rather with the angularity of the good old stars and stripes, shop 'til you drop America.

It's good to have a place where you can get stuff so cheap but not so good once you discover how it is possible to make stuff so cheaply. That's why I rarely shop there, I'd really rather not buy anything new if I have to. But tape isn't one of those things you can get used. I'm trying to have a better attitude about it though. Because I discovered that the cashier there is a woman I know, a woman whose son went to Pre-K with my daughter, a woman who is extremely kind and friendly. A woman who once gave me a set of Indian clothes for free simply because I had complimented her kurta. And she needs to make a living, right, I imagine, and feed her family. Why do things have to be so complicated?