The Long-Promised Slam Video

I was elated to win the jDeal.com ambassadorship with my words of poetry, so, inspired by that, I decided to hit up a local slam poetry thing in Teaneck that I happened to spot on Twitter of all places. It turned out to be more of a poetry "reading" than a slam, but the girl before me did the serious memorized slam thing that I'm used to, and I got up and did my paper-read slams the best I could. I did two poems, and I give you one here. I used to have the first one I did memorized, and this one, in the video, as I mention, hasn't been read before. This is probably the fifth incarnation of the poem, but I think it went really well.

My next goal? Hitting up some slam poetry venues in New York City, where slam has been alive in well since 1989. Wish me luck!




Chavi Goes Slamming from Chaviva Galatz on Vimeo.

Poems and Pants

Ode to the Gray
Winter's tree stands tall and naked;
Branches barely there, it rises
like a puff of smoke
amid fall's remaining
shades of flame and rust.

I really, really miss writing. I think of little blurbs while in the bathtub trying to relax or while bouncing along on the 55 or 36. I used to carry pen and pad with me all the time. But now? Well, when you're crunched up in winter coats, people with newspapers spread out and shoulders broad and impeding ... it's hard to pull anything out of my bag to catch a few words.

On an unrelated note: One of my favorite things about Shabbat -- and this might seem really silly or shallow -- is that while the rest of the world is sporting jeans and sweatshirts for casual Fridays, I am wearing my best, anticipating the night's services where I can welcome in the sabbath and really, finally relax. Most people see their nice shoes, black slacks and nice sweaters as the constricting confines of the week's work and hustle-bustle ... but for me? Those slacks and sweaters are my gift of peace for just one day, after a week busy and tedious.

Lazarus, the colossus of Jewish identity ignorance

I'm only 13 pages into the new Reform Judaism magazine (picked up at shul tonight), and there's a small write-up on Esther Schor's new book, "Emma Lazarus." The write-up says "Schor's portrait serves to restore the centrality of Jewishness in Emma Lazarus' life and work, showing how she consistently put her literary reputation on the line to defend the Jewish people."

Thing is, when I did research about Lazarus in college, every source I read (and I'll admit that it wasn't more than 5-10) gave me the impression -- quite bluntly -- that Lazarus' Jewish identification was one mostly of convenience and pity, not of personal effort or out of any kind of deep connection to her roots. Her family was entirely assimilated and when she died, her sisters left out nearly all of her Jewish works from the collections of her works, citing it as a "phase" she was going through. Lazarus' first real outreach to the Jewish community came during the pogroms in Russia -- she was from a very affluent family and had the money to donate. But her identification as a Jew -- in my research -- was never even an issue. It was merely a fleeting aspect of her life. It played no more a role in her personal development than did the length of her pinky nail.

Then again, this is a topic that I was considering pursuing in graduate studies ... maybe I should read Schor's book and do some cross-researching :D OHHH the excitement!

A departure from all things Jewish, or is it?

I wrote last night. It was brief and fleeting and followed an incredibly bizarre half-hour of trying to fall asleep and being completely overwhelmed with emotion for no apparent reason whatsoever. There are these moments (that I've had since I was a child in elementary school) where I become completely taken with everything and nothing at all and I weep. It sounds weird, I know. But it happens. Sitting in a still room with all of the lights off, mind calming, breathing easy, and it comes out of nowhere. The feeling has come while editing at work, while sitting on a plane, while sitting in class. It just comes, and it doesn't stop until I ... do something to make it stop, be that write or speak outloud to no one in particular in beat and rhythm. So this is what came out this time around:

(DISCLAIMER: I've won praise and top spots for my performance poetry ... and been subsequently turned down for the publication of my poetry, because of the very reason it is well-recieved in performance. When reading it on the page, it loses the rhythm and beat and voice.)

i built this castle and
crowned myself queen.
queen of the things that
have yet to be seen.

i'm painting lavish
landscapes with fingertip
sweeps,
my hair making bristle
brushes, stroking and
choking the scene,
of things that fail to be seen.

i carry pieces of memories
i have yet to incur,
an advanced debit owed
to things that i cannot
begin to dream.

and yet upon my thrown
of thornes i'm sitting
and wishing and crying
out loud of
Ani
Ani
Ani ...

i built this castle, and
crowned myself queen,
queen of the things that
might have never been
seen.

Those three instances of ani are not for Ms. Difranco. Those are, rather, "I" or "I am" in Hebrew. A common phrase is "Ani Adonai" -- I am the Lord. For me, ani was followed by an empty verse. And then this poem came. Interesting, I suppose. You can tell me what the poem means to you, because I know what it means to me -- a hodgepodge of personal discovery and journey mixed with creation tales and history's tragedy. Short, but full of so much, it is.

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For those keeping score at home, I checked the Plaut Torah (w/commentary) tonight while at shul, and it would appear that Plaut's translation of Gen. 48:16 also loses the multiply "like fish" reference and instead says the descendants shall be teeming "multitudes." For those of you confused, I wrote about it here in this week's parsha discussion. I don't get how "fish" can turn into "multitudes" ... even if only to condense the wording because to do so sacrifices the significance of the Jewish people being as fish, free of the evil eye.