harry on tuesday february 18

first a recognition to the power of azalia's beat to stir me in the morning, and so the first thing i do in the morning is to dance. perhaps an intense beginning, but it works.

second a recognition of this amazing community of life artisans  and a moment of recognition that this weeks' torah portion is vayakhel | ויקהל | "he gathered". in the portion some incredible things happen. moses gathers israel and invites them to bring their most precious and beautiful things, and from these things the alter to God is made through the collective artisan skills of the community, directed by the artist in chief, bezalel. and the people bring more than is needed and moses literarily has to tell them to stop because they are overgenerous with their gifts. and they make beautiful things out of acacia wood and gold and twined linen and blue and purple scarlet yarns, and things that bring light, and a place to make offerings, they mix the most incredible smelling oils. so to ruthie for gathering this holy community and to you all from bringing your gifts in abundance.

third, this is maurice. he carved from wood and is of africa, but now he lives in my room with me among the branches of the fiddle-fig ficus and sits always, still, on the top of a window trashed in a heap of windows on the streets of brooklyn, whose 'potential' I saw last February and claimed as my own garbage to tug around with me in a U-Haul to Washington D.C. He has a poem to recommend, and quite a personality of his own:

Called Little America by Jason Schinder.

My friend says she is like an empty drawer 

being pulled out of the earth. 
I am the long neck of the giraffe coming down 

to see what she doesn't have. 

What holds us chained to the same cold river, 
where we are surprised by the circles 

we make in the ice? When we talk about the past

it is like pushing stones back into the earth. 
Sometimes she digs her nails into her leather bag 

to find out where my heart is. The white sleeves

of her shirt are bright with waves when I visit. 
When we lie, we live a little longer—

which is unbelievable. If you love 

someone, the water moves up from the well.

fourth, some image offerings from a date I went on with myself this weekend to the united states botanical garden: blossoms of a grapefruit tree, the radiant spiral of a desert plant, a flower at the end of a cactus limb, the simple white star of jasmine that perfumes a entire room, and the kumquat for its whimsiness. fifth, if you haven't had a chance to laugh today,  and have a good yiddish accent please read aloud to a friend Simon Rich's "Sell Out"  published in the New Yorker last winter about Jewish immigrant to Brooklyn who falls into his pickling vat  and is preserved in the brine for one hundred years, awakening in modern day Williamsburg. and finally, two animal videos: a lot of bunnies. a dancing armadillo.