Journal of a Naked Poet VIII

They say that if you remember the Sixties, you weren't there. I'm having some trouble putting events in their proper order, so I guess I was there.

In 1966 I started work for a stock brokerage firm on Montgomery Street (the "Wall Street of the West") in San Francisco. Once I had proved myself on the job (so well, in fact, that they made me a supervisor), I started growing a beard. This had more to do with Judaism than the Hippie thing, but I guess they were both factors. One day the Assistant Manager of the back office I worked in came over to my desk and asked me about the beard. I said, "it's part of my religion." He said, "I thought you were in a seminary, and all that." I had not anticipated that he would know about that (you had to be bondable in that job, so they investigated you very thoroughly). Thinking at lightning speed, I said,"Oh, you mean the yeshiva. Yeah, I tried that, but decided that it wasn't right for me." He went away and left me alone. But as time went on, two things happened: my beard got longer, and the Vietnam War heated up. The Manager (not his assistant) called me into his office and told me that some of the clients were complaining that, while their son was fighting in Vietnam, the brokerage firm was hiring hippies. I suggested that they move my work space to a spot where the clients coming to the window couldn't see me. That's what they did.

Why wasn't I fighting in Vietnam? I was neither 2-D (Divinity Student) nor 2-S (Student) after December 1964. Technically, I was available to be drafted, and had already been called in for two physicals, which I flunked because (wait for it) I was underweight. In '64 I would have been willing to go, in '66 not so sure, and by the time they called me for the last time, in 1970, they had also invaded Cambodia, and I had burned my draft card, so I don't think so.

I had protested various situations since the SNCC (Students' Non-violent Coordinating Committee)  time in 1964. In '66 I marched in an anti-Vietnam War demonstration, carrying a tambourine. It must have been a major demonstration, because my friend Mike and his then wife, Maureen, drove up from San Diego for it, with a young woman named Kirsten. She was an artist, and kind of dreamy and way out there. For some reason, I caught her imagination. Fortunately, they all had to go back to SD. Kirsten and I exchanged addresses. We even wrote to each other, using our artwork as a kind of code, because her father was extremely protective and suspicious. He also had some bucks, as the owner of an electronics firm.

The next year, on a visit to San Diego in July, I sat with Julie on the floor of her parents' home in Lemon Grove, as she taught me how to throw the I Ching. It was quite amazing, and when I got the hexagram Kou - Coming to Meet, I knew with certainty what was going to happen. It did.


Text © 2020 by Donald C.Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler.

The Body Is the Garment / Le corps est le vêtement / El cuerpo es la prenda / O corpo é a roupa

The body is the garment,
why put clothes on clothes?
Until the body is gone,
we are not really naked.

Le corps est le vêtement,
pourquoi mettre des vêtements sur les vêtements?
Jusqu'à ce que le corps soit parti,
nous ne sommes pas vraiment nus.

El cuerpo es la prenda,
¿Por qué poner ropa en la ropa?
Hasta que el cuerpo se haya ido
No estamos realmente desnudos.

O corpo é a roupa,
por que colocar roupas sobre roupas?
Até que o corpo se vá,
nós não estamos realmente nus.

Text and image © 2020 by Donald C. Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler.

The Heron

The heron told me of the storm.
Herons, you see, are never wrong.
This one was a stunning white,
and he was right,
he was right.

Le héron m'a parlé de la tempête.
Les hérons, vous voyez, ne se trompent jamais.
Celui-ci était d'un blanc magnifique,
et il avait raison,
il avait raison.

La garza me habló de la tormenta.
Las garzas, como ves, nunca se equivocan.
Ésta era de un blanco impresionante,
y tenía razón,
tenía razón.

A garça me falou da tempestade.
Garças, você vê, nunca estão erradas.
Esta era de um branco deslumbrante,
e ela estava certa,
ela estava certa..



Text © 2020 by Donald Jacobson Traxler.

Commentary on the Teachings of Rabbi Yeshua IX - Mt. 5:9-12

אַשְׁרֵי רוֹדְפֵי שָׁלוֹם שְׁבְנֵי אֱלֹקִים יִקְרְאוּ׃ 9

אַשְׁרֵי הַנִרְדָפִים לְצֶדֶק שְׁלָהֶם מַלְכוּת שָמָיִם׃ 10

אַשְׁרֵיכֶם כַּאֲשֶׁר יִרְדְפוּ וְיִגְדְפוּ אֶתְכֶם וְיִאְמְרוּ אֲלֵיכֶם כָּל רָע בְּעֵדִי וְטִכְזְבוּ׃ 11

שִׂישׂוּ וְשִׂמְחוּ שְׁשְׂכַרְכֶם רַב מְאֹד בַּשָׁמָיִם שְׁכֵן רָדְפוּ הַנְבִִיאִים׃ 12

Above we have Mt. 5:9-12 According to Shem-Tob's Hebrew Matthew. These verses should be considered as a unit, because they are all connected by a single catchword, but THIS IS TRUE ONLY IN HEBREW, NOT IN GREEK OR LATIN.

Here is the translation of these verses:

9 Happy are those who pursue peace, for they shall be called sons of God.

10 Happy are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 Happy are you when they persecute and revile you and say against you all kinds of evil for my sake, but speak falsely.

12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is very great in heaven, for thus they persecuted the prophets.

To clarify, the catchword connection "persecute" occurs in verses 10, 11, and 12, and that could work as well in any language. But the connection between verse 9 and the other three verses depends upon the double meaning in Hebrew of the verb "רדף," which means both "to persecute" and "to pursue." But in most other languages one talks about "peacemakers" or "peace-doers," terms that are not idiomatic in Biblical Hebrew, where "peace pursuers" or "those who pursue peace" is the idiomatic usage. Thus, in languages other than Hebrew, the catchword connection between verse 9 and the other three verses is lost. This is extremely strong evidence for the Semitic substratum in Matthew.

Such catchword connections, by the way, are usually considered to be characteristic of oral transmission. In this case, as in several others, the Gospel of Matthew, especially in its Hebrew form, takes us back to a very early stage in the Sayings tradition.

Matthew 5 verses 11 and 12 are rather loosely paralleled in Luke 6:22-23 where, however, the word "persecute" does not even appear. Clearly, the catchword, no longer needed as a mnemonic in the written tradition, was not recognized. This is further evidence for Matthaean priority among the Synoptic Gospels.

Text © 2020 by Donald Jacobson Traxler.

The White Lotus (+fr, es, pt, hin)

To the swimming fish,
the white lotus points upward,
but to the entering bee,
it is inverted.
Both are correct.

Aux poissons qui nagent,
le lotus blanc pointe vers le haut,
mais à l'abeille qui entre,
il est inversé.
Les deux sont corrects.

Para los peces nadadores,
el loto blanco apunta hacia arriba,
pero para la abeja entrante,
está invertido.
Ambos son correctos.

Para os peixes nadadores,
o lótus branco aponta para cima,
mas para a abelha que entra,
está invertido.
Ambos estão corretos.

तैराकी मछली के लिए,
सफेद कमल ऊपर की ओर इशारा करता है,
लेकिन प्रवेश करने वाले मधुमक्खी के लिए,
यह उलटा है।
दोनों सही हैं।

Text © 2020 by Donald Jacobson Traxler.

Palm DeVille / Palmier DeVille / Palmera DeVille / Palmeira DeVille

Cadillac DeVille in the driveway,
Plastic palm in the yard,
He's spraying green paint on the top of the palm.
Florida.

Cadillac DeVille dans l'allée,
Palmier en plastique dans la cour,
Il peint en vert le dessus du palmier.
Floride.

Cadillac DeVille en el camino de entrada,
Palmera de plástico en el patio,
Está pintando con spray verde la parte superior de la palmera.
Florida.

Cadillac DeVille na garagem,
Palmeira de plástico no quintal,
Ele está pintando com spray verde no topo da palmeira.
Florida.

Text © 2020 by Donald Jacobson Traxler.

Journal of a Naked Poet - VII

Well, to make a long story shorter, I dropped out of Cal in December, 1964. I immediately felt much freer, and the pressure was gone. My friend Mike, whom I had known since our "ham" radio days in high school, was tired of living in squalor in SF, and convinced me to go back to San Diego. We got jobs down there, and shared an apartment right across the street from the old, downtown campus of San Diego City College, where I had spent two years. It was there that I first met a young, bearded Lubavitcher Hasid (or Chassid, if you prefer) named John Blank (not the John Blank of Portland, OR, whom I still know). Anyway, he introduced me to the music of Shlomo Carlebach, whom I would eventually meet. That was one of those seminal experiences that I mentioned earlier. I had never met, and still have not met, a person as charismatic as Rabbi Carlebach. That was also the year when I first met Julie Savary, and we would be friends for the rest of her life (she was, unfortunately, killed in an automobile accident in Mexico in 2002). Julie's birthday was January 29. My earlier girlfriend, Cheryl, had her birthday on March 29. The birthday of my wife, Sandy, to whom I have been married for forty years, was born on July 29. Strange. Three of the most important women in my life, all with birthdays on the 29th.

While I'm on the subject of women, I must also mention Ilse "Elsa" Operschall, whom I also met in that year, after I returned to SF. We did not have an intimate relationship, but we definitely had a spiritual one.

Elsa (who later preferred to be called by her middle name, Johanna) was from Vienna, and was, like me, multilingual. Those languages, in her case German, English, and French, had landed her a job at the New York World's Fair a few years earlier. She came back in 1965 to teach German at Berlitz in San Francisco, where I was a receptionist and English teacher, We had had a few conversations, and I knew that she was half-Jewish and interested in learning about that side of her heritage (an interest that I shared, although I didn't yet know that I, too, had some of that heritage). One of my duties was to prepare the classrooms for the teachers, and one day I left a big "Shalom!" in Hebrew handwriting on her blackboard. I didn't even know if she would be able to read it. After the class, she came out to my desk in the front office, and said "Did I find a Shalom on my blackboard?" I admitted that I had left it there, and we became fast friends.

When I first arrived in SF (1963), you could ride the Muni buses and trollies for 15 cents. You could also buy a hot dog on Market Street for 18 cents, or a hamburger for 25 cents. Cheryl had introduced me to one of those hole-in-the-wall burger places, run by an older, Jewish guy named Art, whom I became friendly with, often stopping there. One day I heard Art use a Hebrew phrase, which I understood, with his assistant. As a little test, I asked him how to say "moon" in Hebrew. He said "that would be 'levanah,'" which was the correct answer. Anyway, "Elsa" and I started taking Hebrew lessons together from Art. We did a great many other things together. I remember, in particular, having lunch with her at Zim's. We ordered hamburgers, but they gave us cheeseburgers, which she sent back to the kitchen, saying "it's against our religion." I took her with me to a Shlomo Carlebach concert at the Berkeley Community Theater, where we both received " The Rebbe's Kiss," and afterward sang and danced through the streets of Berkeley, following Rabbi Carlebach on the way to the shul. I recently learned that Elsa, by then calling herself "Johanna," had become a doctor. She passed away a few years ago, from cancer. I feel her presence sometimes, as I feel that of Julie. They are out there, somewhere.

Text © 2020 by Donald Jacobson Traxler.