Segue – really.
Posted by Talmudist in Scatterbrained Posts on October 28th, 2009
Okay, it’s been a heck o
f a long time since I’ve really blogged.
I’ve moved hundreds of miles, and really haven’t moved at all. I think that my progression (read: evolution, devolution, or whatever the next phase of my life might be retroactively dubbed) demands my blogging to take place underground – incognito, y’know? So here I go.
Just Moved To NY…
Posted by Talmudist in Uncategorized on September 17th, 2009
…and my internet is still (very) sketchy, but I hope to get this blog back on the road as soon as that’s fixed. Thanks everyone!
Nether Zone
Posted by Talmudist in Scatterbrained Posts on May 24th, 2009
It’s honestly not that easy for me to post while I’m in the nether zone, something I’ll hopefully be out of by month’s end.
It Was Not Swine-Flu…
Posted by Talmudist in Scatterbrained Posts on May 6th, 2009
…but it was still kind of awful. Thank G-d for Zpac, which helped me to get back in the swing of things. Speaking of swines (or the lack thereof), some time ago I went with someone to a (swine-less) kosher farm in upstate New York for a Shabbos – a really cool experience. Turns out that the ‘farmer’ is a massive talmid chachom who blew my mind with all sorts of interesting words of Torah [1] interspersed throughout the Shabbos meals and some one-on-one chats. I’m very much looking forward to hearing more from him in the future [2].
On the seasonal nature of the Jewish Calender
Posted by Talmudist in Scatterbrained Posts on April 29th, 2009
When seasons change I often give some thought to the nature of the cyclical Jewish year’s makeup. Something on this subject struck me when I was taking a walk the other day in pitch-perfect eighty-degree weather. All of our happy holidays occur during times of year when the climate is not much better than borderline-miserable, and all the depressing or solemn ones fall out when nature is really buzzing. I guess that there might be a yin/yang thing that goes along with that. Yiddishkeit holds onto us tightly during the seasons that we might be predisposed to being overly-ebullient, and perhaps do things that are not in our ‘best interests’, while instilling a sense of intrinsic joy within us during the calender’s dark and brisk period, when we are more susceptible to despondency.
The Kollel Guy (part 6)
Posted by Talmudist in Story Section, Uncategorized on April 26th, 2009
Writer’s note: For those who have been reading this blog from its inception, some of the next parts of this serial might bear an uncanny resembelance to a previously removed story. No, your eyes are not deceiving you.
Yonah walked back to his house, sure of himself for the first time in…in as long as he could really remember. He wanted this for so long, but now felt confident in himself – he was sure that he was making the ‘right’ choice. He dialed up a rebbi from one of the yeshivas that he had spent a large chunk of his seminal yeshiva days at.
In a Previous Life (Part 2)
Posted by Talmudist in Story Section, Uncategorized on April 23rd, 2009
So that first semester ended with me receiving a 4.0 average, and still being able to attend just about every seder in yeshiva. But I was burning the candle at both ends, and it would hit me hard the next semester, when I would be taking much more serious courses; Inorganic Chem I, and Precalculus.
Posting Hiatus
Posted by Talmudist in Scatterbrained Posts on April 21st, 2009
Yes, I know, I have not posted nor commented on the blogs of others in a while. I think that this is due to a perfect storm of reasons, which I will call the ‘Funk.’
Elaboration of said Funk:
A. Pesach got in the way, y’know?
B. I got really sick on the last day of Pesach – at a hotel, no less. I’m still recouping.
C. I think I have reached something of a crossroads w/r/t what this blog is all about. I have finished a couple stories that I am allowed to keep up -of the unfinished ones, one is in indefinitive limbo, and the other (The Kollel Guy) is, well, it’s at the end of Season One so to say (Season Two will soon arrive, with a couple twists on its horizon). But my first nonfiction serial posting (In a Previous Life) really does display to me that the blog is heading in more of a direction that I’m going to be more comfortable with on the whole (assuming that I can keep blogging).
Last Days of Pesach 2009
Posted by Talmudist in Scatterbrained Posts on April 17th, 2009
So I spent the last days of Pesach at a hotel, and couldn’t get passed the striking resemblance between many of the vacationers and the humans from the film Wall-E. Seriously. I got to join the eat, sleep, rinse & repeat Borg, but not for long enough to look any less emaciated than I always look.
In a Previous Life (Part One)
Posted by Talmudist in Story Section on April 16th, 2009
Yes, this is part of a serial. No, this is not (quite) fiction. Because of that, I cannot make any commitment to ‘chronological linearity’ throughout this series (or a pledge to weekly updates), as I am not telling over a story with a beginning/middle/end here; rather, I’m relating memories as they coalesce on my ‘front-burner’.
In a previous life (I was around twenty-one or so) I attended a yeshiva that did not allow college. When I informed my rosh yeshiva of the fact that I felt compelled to go university notwithstanding the ‘no-college’ rule, he acquiesced; saying that I could do it – as long as nobody would find out about it.
“I don’t even want to know that you’re going to school – as far as I’m concerned, it’ll be like you’re not,” he told me.
Alas; the Navi says that trying to be “posei-ach al shnei sih-eefim” is, in the end, untenable. For me, the situation ended up being no different.
Recent Comments