I'm not being paid enough for this
A truly terrible week. I’ve been sleeping past twelve for days and days, waking up at five thirty in the morning. I am a person who likes lots of sleep. And I'd screwed up a math test, to boot, and am now seeing double – triple – (did trees jump about like that?) And there is a compulsory school event tomorrow. On the other hand, the cover page of the next issue of the school magazine looks FABULOUS.
No more about that.
Today was a field trip to a synagogue. We came there early and, because the guide was late, sat inside for about twenty minutes looking at each other and everything else. The rabbi popped by and said hello -- he was gentle and gentlemanly in a very olde-worlde kind of way -- and popped past into a room hidden by hangings, and then popped off with a huge velvety cylinder which, as we would see later, was a portion of their scriptures. THe atmosphere was heavy, redolent with the complete absence of anyone other than ourselves, and would have been oppressively quiet if it hadn’t been for the heavy drilling from the construction site next door. As it were, our voices echoed.
The place itself was over a century old, certainly old by Singaporean standards. The meticulousness of the work was amazing: rich embroidery, wooden carving, gold-stamped books, scrolls of amazing intricacy, soft suspended lamps, beaten silver. I dare posit that most of them were hand-crafted. (Not the pews and the lamps, obviously, although you never know.) It was easy to tell that the people who had made the things had put their heart whole into the work.
It was also easy to tell that the place was old. A length of banister creaked when I rested my arm on it.
The scrolls were in a small room at the head of the synagogue, hidden by three hangings of three colours. The middle would be twitched aside or drawn back when the inner sanctum was opened. It was rather like being shown into a clutch of Faberge eggs. But better. The guide opened one and showed us the parchment, coiled into two enormous blocks at each end with a strip held flat in the middle. Calligraphy ran in perfect lines across the strip.
Gosh.
Despite gushing over the ornaments and things, Wwhat I’m actually most impressed at was actually their emphasis on community. Our guide spent over an hour telling us about Judaism, their traditions, their festivals, their history. There was a very strong and idealistic intensity in their attention to life, duty, faith and resilience. It is something I can sincerely admire – but at a distance, because I am, after all, what I am.
I left the place feeling rather more peaceful, but tired in that thin sort of way. And I could feel a really royal headache, ominously brewing. The atmosphere in the hall, with its richness and its strictness, had been just imperceptibly pressurising. And I am, after all, a stranger.
So you can tell that I was not completely cogent when some idiot at the traffic light got my attention with some difficulty and told me that his friend wanted my phone number.
‘What for?’ I said. It was lucky that XT was there too. She saw the whole thing; go ask her.
‘Because he likes you,’ said the guy, rather a bit sheepishly. He had a silly little haircut and a chin stud. ‘Um. Really likes you.’
And he pointed to his friend, who smiled sheepishly at me too. He had enormous teeth and was leaning on another friend, ostensibly for moral support. I felt no threat – not really. They had outrageous haircuts and piercings and that was most of it. They were soggy and hopeful, and they really had to be desperate to be popping up at traffic junctions bothering random people in school uniforms.
Regretfully I dismissed the desire to tell them to sod off, but I think I managed to convey the general idea of ‘no’.
Then the traffic light on the right changed, and they wandered crestfallenly over. Some schoolmates who were on the other side of that traffic light walked across to us and asked me about the three bedfellows. Apparantly they had been harrassing my schoolmates too. XT managed to cover me. I was still feeling vaguely traumatized.
All this after I have had this morning, of my own half-hypnotised academic violition, signed a document in ink that should have been blood. My IS proposal will be travelling to Cambridge next week.
I am not optimistic.
No more about that.
Today was a field trip to a synagogue. We came there early and, because the guide was late, sat inside for about twenty minutes looking at each other and everything else. The rabbi popped by and said hello -- he was gentle and gentlemanly in a very olde-worlde kind of way -- and popped past into a room hidden by hangings, and then popped off with a huge velvety cylinder which, as we would see later, was a portion of their scriptures. THe atmosphere was heavy, redolent with the complete absence of anyone other than ourselves, and would have been oppressively quiet if it hadn’t been for the heavy drilling from the construction site next door. As it were, our voices echoed.
The place itself was over a century old, certainly old by Singaporean standards. The meticulousness of the work was amazing: rich embroidery, wooden carving, gold-stamped books, scrolls of amazing intricacy, soft suspended lamps, beaten silver. I dare posit that most of them were hand-crafted. (Not the pews and the lamps, obviously, although you never know.) It was easy to tell that the people who had made the things had put their heart whole into the work.
It was also easy to tell that the place was old. A length of banister creaked when I rested my arm on it.
The scrolls were in a small room at the head of the synagogue, hidden by three hangings of three colours. The middle would be twitched aside or drawn back when the inner sanctum was opened. It was rather like being shown into a clutch of Faberge eggs. But better. The guide opened one and showed us the parchment, coiled into two enormous blocks at each end with a strip held flat in the middle. Calligraphy ran in perfect lines across the strip.
Gosh.
Despite gushing over the ornaments and things, Wwhat I’m actually most impressed at was actually their emphasis on community. Our guide spent over an hour telling us about Judaism, their traditions, their festivals, their history. There was a very strong and idealistic intensity in their attention to life, duty, faith and resilience. It is something I can sincerely admire – but at a distance, because I am, after all, what I am.
I left the place feeling rather more peaceful, but tired in that thin sort of way. And I could feel a really royal headache, ominously brewing. The atmosphere in the hall, with its richness and its strictness, had been just imperceptibly pressurising. And I am, after all, a stranger.
So you can tell that I was not completely cogent when some idiot at the traffic light got my attention with some difficulty and told me that his friend wanted my phone number.
‘What for?’ I said. It was lucky that XT was there too. She saw the whole thing; go ask her.
‘Because he likes you,’ said the guy, rather a bit sheepishly. He had a silly little haircut and a chin stud. ‘Um. Really likes you.’
And he pointed to his friend, who smiled sheepishly at me too. He had enormous teeth and was leaning on another friend, ostensibly for moral support. I felt no threat – not really. They had outrageous haircuts and piercings and that was most of it. They were soggy and hopeful, and they really had to be desperate to be popping up at traffic junctions bothering random people in school uniforms.
Regretfully I dismissed the desire to tell them to sod off, but I think I managed to convey the general idea of ‘no’.
Then the traffic light on the right changed, and they wandered crestfallenly over. Some schoolmates who were on the other side of that traffic light walked across to us and asked me about the three bedfellows. Apparantly they had been harrassing my schoolmates too. XT managed to cover me. I was still feeling vaguely traumatized.
All this after I have had this morning, of my own half-hypnotised academic violition, signed a document in ink that should have been blood. My IS proposal will be travelling to Cambridge next week.
I am not optimistic.
posted by the zen thing at 7:20 pm
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