SouthernStatesOfMind: While Standing on Two Feet

While Standing on Two Feet
June 15, 2010

I found myself brushing my teeth late last night and reciting the Mourners Kaddish, the prayer said in Judaism when you observe the anniversary of a death, or if someone close to you has recently passed. My cousin died last week, a loss that is felt deeply by my family and by her community. I could see the top of my forehead in the mirror as I moved the toothbrush back and forth to the rhythm of my body, swaying to the rhythm of the prayer. As I prayed, I brushed. As I brushed, I prayed.

I was caught off-guard when the Mourner’s Kaddish found its way into my head. It seemed wrong to be wrapped in a towel, standing in my bathroom, reciting the Kaddish with toothpaste in my mouth. I think the place bothered me the most: the bathroom. Was it sacrilegious to repeat ancient text in such an “unholy place?” Probably. But then I started thinking, again, about Place.

It has been difficult to keep this blog up-to-date in part, I think, because of Place. As I round the three-week mark in Jackson, it’s just beginning to hit me that I’m here to stay. I’m not sure if it sunk in after the checks from my new bank account came, or when I was driving to the airport to get Lauren after her weekend at home, but whenever it happened, it felt…well…weird. I am standing, with my two feet planted firmly and my knees slightly wobbling, in a new lowercase place, but I am also in a new capitalized Place—a new Time, a new Chapter. At the same time, I am desperately trying to remember my old Place/place, to hold on to it, to call it when I am lonely, to make sure it does not disappear. And what does “Home” mean now? Where is it? At school, here, at “Home”—the place I grew up, the place I still think I live? Do I really still live there? I guess Home is everywhere, really—it’s wherever we are, and we can’t really lose it. But Place. And place. I don’t want to lose those. I don’t want to leave them behind.

To make matters more conceptually confusing, while I am straddling these two Places and places, I can’t help but think about what happens next. After these two years end, where do I go? What do I do? Who do I meet? Of course, as my body begins to ache from the constant past-and-present tug-of-war, I recognize that these questions aren’t important right now. But I can’t seem to push them out of the way.

Over the course of the last few weeks I have started a murder mystery novel, begun to slog my way through the words of William Faulkner, taken long drives with new friends, participated in a potluck, attended parties, gone to gatherings, and celebrated birthdays. I have cycled, done pilates, purchased new running shoes, visited the Mississippi Farmers Market, and enjoyed a Mississippi Braves minor league baseball game. I have almost lost my cell phone in a public sewer only to have it saved by three of Jackson’s finest firefighters a mere 5 minutes after I called the Fire Department (“this is the first call we’ve received about a cell phone, ma’am”). I have worn a wig at a bar and danced with minimal inhibition. I have hugged and been hugged. I have missed a voice I thought I didn’t miss anymore, I have called that voice, and that voice hasn’t called back. I have visited beautiful old spaces—a Victorian home that now serves as a Southern-Style buffet, a museum of the African-American experience housed in the first black public school in Jackson—spaces inhabited by peaceful ghosts that waft through history exploring unexplored crevasses, digging up the past, presenting secrets and telling stories. I have sat at my cubicle and listened to music, I have sat in meetings, I have understood what it means to go to work. I have realized that I want to write.

In short, I have started to become familiar with my Place, and with my place. It’s frightening, really, how real it is. But here it is. And here I am.

While getting ready for bed last night, after I brushed my teeth, I was reminded of a teaching I once learned often referred to as “While Standing on One Foot.” A man asks Rabbi Shamai to teach him Judaism while standing on one foot. Shamai brushes the man off. The man then seeks the advice of Rabbi Hillel, and asks him the same question. Hillel stands on one foot and pronounces: “don’t do unto others what you would not like done to you. That is all the Torah; all the rest is commentary. Now go and learn it.”

I think I will take Hillel’s advice to heart; it isn’t that hard to remember how to be. And the rest—our Places, our places, ourselves—is commentary. We just have to go and learn it.

Tomorrow Lauren and I (and perhaps a few of our colleagues) are going to the International Ballet Competition, held in Jackson every four years. On the phone, Ray asked me if it was actually international, and that’s certainly a fair question. Yes, people come from all over the world to dance in Mississippi. As I watch them brush their feet in the air, perhaps I will pray. And as I pray, they will brush.

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