excerpts from the book

My Caminos

My Caminos don’t edge toward closure, don’t complete a pattern. By accident or design, they assemble in unmatched whorls, almost regular then unraveling, unspooling, tearing out at and between the seams. The fabric lifts to show hidden repairs.

My Caminos fold y and x, tear their own weft, demonstrate the space-time continuum.

My Caminos are straightforward only on the map. On the ground, in the air, they suddenly slither off, silken as snakes.

My Caminos aren’t coded, riddled with hidden rites, but squirming life in the crevices, ribbons of history, manifest alchemical mysteria made plain.

My Caminos soar and are also heavy as the planet’s core.

My Caminos activate and sublimate, vanish into vapor.

My Caminos appear to be linear, but that line is an abstraction. As the Camino is a line that is an abstraction, a place but not only a place and not the only place, not the only or even most interesting version of itself. I change, the Camino changes, the story changes. I might elaborate the march of symbols and themes, but this is fiction. It’s true and also ornamental, a story to join elements with meaning through the interpretation of coincidence, juxtaposition, the vinculaciones of semantics and syntax. What comes next? Whatever our attention next alights on.

Dayenu

I pick up pebbles for my pocket reliquary. As I walk, I hum an ancient Passover song. Dayenu itemizes the gifts God has given to the Jews, expressed in progressive couplets. The first line of each verse describes an action in the form: If he had done something, and the second line continues: And had not done some other thing, followed by the chorus, usually with clapping, of Dayenu: It would have been enough. The conditional act not done, God’s road not taken, becomes the first line of the next stanza: If he had done that thing, but not the next thing, it would have sufficed. The first line of the first verse is the sine qua non: If he had brought us out of Egypt, it would have been enough. The rest is the catalogue of an embarrassment of riches, ranging from Egypt to Israel and the Temple of Jerusalem. Between the start and finish of this journey, God engages in the redistribution of wealth, drowns oppressors, smashes idols, the death of the first-born; the song recapitulates the flight from slavery to freedom. It describes how God provided the Jews with manna and rules and the Torah. These latter, more benign accomplishments, are like a bocadillo and a Camino guidebook: They might have been enough for me. It’s hard to say. I’m not fond of smiting and the imposition of cattle disease, rains of frogs, if there are reasonable alternatives.

Like many Jewish songs, Dayenu breaks up and repeats parts of words, Dai, dai, yenu, dai , dai, yenu, dai, dai, yenu, dayenu, dayenu! Dayenu! This deconstructs language to a rhythmic chant. To my ear, this style of singing symbolizes the making, unmaking, remaking of the world, embodies God’s speaking of the Word in human voice.

Haiku may use mutated cut words, kireji, words to create emphasis and focus, evolved beyond their everyday meanings. Om and hum are also non-linguistic, introjections of air, enactment of the breath. The Jewish musical tradition includes niggun, songs without words or words sung as chants. Some are raucous, the Old Lady in Candide sings Di de di, de di de di! Some are meditative, Jewish om. They are spiritually important in Hasidic practice. I don’t know the words to most of Jewish liturgy, Sabbath songs, holiday songs, but I’ve taken myself to the synagogue often enough to know that the central prayer of the service is proceeded by a verse from Psalm 51, Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise, so I’ll open my mouth already, dayenu. I’ll hum and mumble, chant and sing, a Camino song of enjoyment and surprise. It won’t be tuneful; it won’t be good, it will replay itself through many forests and villages. But it will be heartfelt and joyous, continuous and repetitive, a mantra, an exaltation, my glad and shitty little song, scat to scatting, dayenu.

We may not know God, and I certainly don’t, but we know the shriek and howl, whoop and exclamation, air roaring through us, star and sea, naming the animals and ourselves.

Desert Island Bible: Genesis

In the beginning, everything got made.
Out of what? By what or whom?
Something something wavelength.
There wasn’t even dust.
It was good, or was it?

Lilith is extirpated from this telling,
Eve plucked, too, deific costochondritis.
Did Adam have an unpaired rib?
—This is a question that yanks me out,
dangles me above the telling,
pokes holes in the story of way, way before.

In the beginning and after that,
the imposition of names on beasts.
Did Adam name the serpent?
Did the serpent want a name?
Did the serpent already know itself?

Was Eve appetitive,
or did she cry out, “Woe!” “Feu!” or “Oy!”?

A blazing sword.
We cover our nakedness with leaves.
Fratricide.
Who else was there to carry on with?
What did we find outside the garden,
and then what happened to the snake?