Donald Traxler's Poetry

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

Photo: Three-quarters of a Century

Monday, February 22, 2021

Memories / anvdadisdidi

The brain is just the indexing system;

the memories themselves are in the soul.

unvtsida gesvase uwasa awadvdi-iyadvnehidasdi;

anvdadisdidi unvsa gesvase adanvdo hawina.

ᎤᏅᏥᏓ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎤᏩᏌ ᎠᏩᏛᏗ-ᎢᏯᏛᏁᎯᏓᏍᏗ;

ᎠᏅᏓᏗᏍᏗᏗ ᎤᏅᏌ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎠᏓᏅᏙ ᎭᏫᎾ.

Sunday, February 21, 2021

107,000 Visits and 76 Degrees Fahrenheit

Today is February 21st, the First Sunday of Lent, and I'm giving up winter for the rest of the year. If only it were that simple, but here in Florida, we're more fortunate than most, by far.

We have now passed the milestone of 107,000 visits to his blog. It has been seventeen days since we passed the last milestone (106K), so things have slowed down a little bit.

The other day I published Part VII of Notes on the Zohar. The series continues to hold my interest, and I hope it will hold yours. Studying the Zohar is stimulating my interest in Kabbalah, and in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Chasidism. I'm feeling the urge to once again acquire a copy of Shneur Zalman's Likkutei Amarim (Collected Sayings, known as the Tanya), which I tried to read in the 1960s, but was not ready to understand. All of this forms a related complex that will certainly produce some writing.

As to my poetry, I find myself inserting short poems or parts of poems into images, thus making the relationship between poems and illustrations closer than ever.

I am thinking of doing some poetry readings on Youtube. Please let me know if there are any particular poems that you would like to see included.

As always, I thank you all for your continued interest and enthusiasm.

Friday, February 19, 2021

Notes on the Zohar VII

Having finished the Prologue, we are now in Chapter One (Bereshith) of Vol. I of the Zohar. We immediately notice that the format is different. Here, there is no narrative structure, no interaction between the various Rabbis, but only expositions, starting with the first verses of the first parashah. Here we are dealing directly with mythological cosmology. The verses in this section are some of the most foundational in Jewish mysticism, and the zoharic expositions are crucial for later Chasidism and its philosophy.

Again we see, on page 64 of the Soncino edition (15a-15b of Mantua), an anachronistic mention of Masoretic-style pointing, not possible at the time of Simeon Bar Yohai, but quite current at the time of Mosés de León.

On p. 82 of Soncino (p. 19b of Mantua), we encounter something of great importance: the first mention of a "q'lifah" קליפה plural "q'lifot," which is a "shell," "covering," or "membrane." This is a foundational concept in Lurianic Kabbalah, the basis of modern Chasidism, where everything in the world is composed of divine sparks which are covered by these "q'lifot" or shells. It is the job of the Chasid to liberate the "sparks" from the "shells" through personal righteousness and devotion.

When we come to "And God said, Let us make Man," there is a long stretch (Soncino p. 90/Mantua p. 22a to Soncino p. 110/Mantua 29a) that was evidently not an integral part of the Zohar.

Many have wondered about the source of the Zohar. Some have said that it could not have been written by one person. My theory is that it was indeed written by a single man, Mosés de León, but it did not all necessarily originate with him. In other words, I think that the Jungian concept of "active imagination," what we like to call "channeling" these days, applies here. Every mystic, and every poet, knows that there is such a thing. There is always the possibility of self-deception, but things that are absolutely amazing, and absolutely true, can also be given to us in this way.

Thursday, February 18, 2021

Photo: L'égout / The Drain

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

L'égout / The Drain

They come to Paris

from all over the world

to spit in the drain

where the greats have spat,

and see their reflection

in the sullen water.

They spit with insouciance,

and try to scrye

a different destiny.