A Goy kills a Jew

A Goy kills a Jew

 Pre-publish disclaimer: the views and feelings shared in the below post do not necessarily reflect all or any truthes of many kinds. The messages may or may not mean what they purport to be.

Also: Davy Crockett died young. Many others do as well, and we think of them with reflection and care.

(Begun Christmas morning 2019)

Not what you might expect, dear gentle reader: maybe it never should be. Prose and poetry, to cite Harold Bloom. He recently moved to the "other-world", the ether realm; I am only "influenced" by his literary anxieties or anatomies, because I perused some of his works and criticisms, deep and thoughtful insights into the poets and writers of our time. Ebulating (whoops, not a real word), perhaps formulating, cumulating (umm! also not a word!), amalgamating, or convalescing, bringing together or reconciling some of his angst and thought and "putting it on paper". Alas, creating a body of literature of a sort. The endless story or plot that he suggests through his last books. One continuous story, it is mine, it is yours, it is ours, it is his, it is hers, it is theirs. Like the poetry of thought and feeling, it is indeed endless. And according to Bloom, it is okay to get lost. So try to find the webs being weaved, not just by me, but by time and circumstance itself.

How does this Gentile wind up ending this person of the covenant?

Dedicated this Christian holy day to the luminary Sir Bloom, of the United States. He loved Shakespeare, but defined America. Our side of the the planet. Yet I think the British might knight him as close to their own.

He was Jewish, but a secular Gnostic, admittedly. And Orphic, I learned. (Thanks, Professor Bloom! Eventually Harry, when I read you enough...)

I am a goy, as some call us, and hopefully a mensch, as some might know me, and if you don't know me, trust that I would like to consider myself a mensch. That has to be good, yes?

But I admit my faults a-plenty. And I am a practicing Christian, of my sort. Christianity, like most major faiths, allows for these imperfections and peccadillos. So I continue. Relatively undaunted and free. Ilhamdu allah. (Thanks be to God).

Being who we are, who I am, I realize that it is possible that God put me precisely where He wanted, or where I wanted, or where someone else wanted. I don't know. But I can accept that it is God's will, my placement in time and place.

And maybe second grade defined me, and others, but perhaps more me, and affected others, and this can only really be about me. It is harder to speak for others, let alone oneself. Right?

Therefore, second grade was when I turned eight years-old, and therefore I was accountable: I knew my right from wrong, my rights from my priviliges, my needs from my wants, my commitments to hardships or self-indulgences, taking lower or higher roads, doing the difficult versus the easy.

By then I knew better, not not he. He was only seven. He was young for second grade, perhaps too young.

In the end, perhaps this is what the tale will show: I chose an easier path, it was largely up to me, and perhaps that helped me transition on and survive, while maybe it resulted in the death of someone else, the unfortunate bullied one. Sound dramatic? Yes, certainly hard on the pathos, and most likely out of proportion, by any realistic means, but maybe life in general is not that realistic, perhaps often times the figurative becomes more real than the logical or pragmatic, or as they say "literal".

In this way, I killed him, a brother to a brother-less brother, a poor young soul who did not have the same choices, recourses, blessings, advantages, circumstances, life outcomes...

Fate.

Little did he or his parents know that a young toddler who moved in some three blocks away on the end of an ignored dead end would be his demise. In and around 1972.  That was me, a small toddler moving in slightly to the south and west. A possible brother and then a former friend, a few short years later in second grade at Elm Heights Elementary who started, or continued the process that would end his life--in effect, kill him. I am suggesting the poison released so early and precociously would not find its victim, from me into him, till later. But the contamination may have been real. Who is to say? Come to your own conclusions.

Murder and the causality of death can be tricky things, and I am by no means authoritative in my assertions and suggestions here, but more realistically a whisperer of the possible. Not the likely.

What story is more ancient than brother killing brother? It was Cain and Abel in the Book of Genesis, the sons of our first parents. Moses recounts the tale. Cain hated Abel for jealousy, and a secret compact with the Adversary.

How oft does the zealous Christian slay the unwitting Jew? Michener writes of it consistently and poignantly in "The Source". This too--a novel-- I have read and must finish in some way, a tale of 10,000 years.

When comparing close relationships, as we do brother to brother, father to son, mother to daughter, husband to wife, all of them have their ethos and pathos. George Lucas in his epic saga "Star Wars" has allegedly stated that all the story was really about at heart was the relationship between a father and a son.

Okay, yeah, makes sense.

One of my favorite authors featured the brother rivalry in his masterpiece, "East of Eden". In that case the mother appeared to be the devil of sorts, and dozens of narrative characters, including the Chinese wise men, Eastern magi, if you will, of San Francisco, who dedicate themselves to unravel the mystery of the creation of Adam and Even and their sons, the free will to choose and to kill or let live.

May we choose life! But alas, death is sometimes the end.

Maybe this is why I write this now, as an exculpatory meandering of how I inadvertently chose death for my brother, a little underdog who maybe needed a stronger champion than I was that year, in 1978, or I would be later, in the 1980s. I was not the good one to a fellow brother. But by choosing the easier way, somewhat non-chivalrously, I forced the hands of fate and he wound up...

Gone form the earth many years ago, if you count 2003 a while.

I was not his good brother, I was not the mensch, I was not the good Christian or good soul friend that I know I should be. How hard these things can be. Or, how hard these things can be! Or, how hard these things can be? Letter D) all of the above.

In hardness or difficulty, I was the one who chose the easier path in second grade, because I could. Circumstances fell that way.

Our teacher, I believe an inspired Mrs. Wade, developed three plays that we classmates could perform in our little room at the end of the first story brick building.

(Continued midway through January 2020)

Things in the 1970s lived on until today, of course. Things continued to move along on micro and macro scales, well into the 21st century. Like the revolution in Iran, we all remember so well. Or like Mao of China, Brezhnev of the Soviet Union, Carter and Begin and Sadat...

Thus, in this small classroom of a few meager little students, Mrs. Wade had selected her characters for these nice plays. My story and role assigned was a relatively fun and easy part. Not much to memorize. I went home enthusiastically and we prepared the artistic props to carry it to effect. My dad or mom helped me with a poster where I made pictures of jewels and gold and fine riches, a treasure that I would discover for doing the good deed of removing a rock.

My buddy, yes Jewish, and a neighbor from not far up the road of my neighborhood, was assigned a much more substantial part with a lot of lines. I think it was Davy Crockett, a rather heavy character if you think about it. And, it had a lot of lines.

In not too many days I believe my poor little neighbor (he seemed to be more diminuitive than the rest of us), was having a hard time doing the part. It was too much. He tried to get out of it. His fate.

Mrs. Wade came to me and asked, "Eddie, could you switch roles with Jeremy (ok, I shared his real name, which I debated doing, he died 17 years ago).

I said no. He stuck with the part. And he pushed his way through. He took the harder part; I had the easier.

This may have led to his demise. One can never be sure.

Jeremy struggled with a lot of things (don't we all?), but in his unfortunate case he struggled more outwardly than most of us.

We mocked him for years. That was not good, not right. Things may have piled up on him worse than many of us. His family had issues, I cannot know how deep or dark.

I have written about that, in a semi-public letter/tribute/apology/confession/eulogy in 2012, from thousands of miles from our homeland... Not sure if that part mattered.

Philip Roth, are you pushing me to write this? Who else has done it? Chaim Potok? Bernard Malamud? James Michener?

It's probably you, Harold Bloom! You and your secular, gnostic, orphic, enthusiastic Jewishness!

You Yalie, not the first Jewish giant that I know from New England, land of a thousand accents and postures...

Complexities abound.

No, I didn't really kill Jeremy, no one did and everyone did.

We cannot blame God, will we? It may lead to believing in Him more or less.

Or as some believe, nothing more.

Jeremy H. still lives on in the memories of some, like me, and better in others. He has had his impact, and still will. Less than Davy Crockett, the historical figure he played.

Me, the second grader who happened upon the unusual treasure, who tread upon fortuitous fate, a serindipitous destiny, lives on. The one who took the easier part, sticking it to the pale little red-head.

Look down upon me from the heavens, all grown up one, with the impressive obituary from the newspaper that I read with... Interest, sadness, soberness, appreciation. Wonder, in a sense of wondering how things matter and play out. All these years later you have left us behind.

Alas, Yoric, I knew thee not well, and something may stink in the state of Denmark, but my life and time marches on. And you are elsewhere, my classmate.

Steinbeck, Vonnegut, Paul Theroux, and other fellow Gentile savants may empathize. They give me reasons to wonder and continue in the thoughts of plausibility.

Salinger and Russo, you family men of disparate paths... Writing your insightful and inciting tales of woes and loves. Of higher powers?

Choose ye this day, Joshua! to worship the God of All Creation, not the petty devils and witches across the way, across the river where perhaps the Hapiru, the Hebrew, hailed from down under in Egypt of old.

Devilry and Godliness, all since second grade.

Who is the goy and who is the Jew? It's deeper than the ancestry of your mother, and mine.

The answers of life and death and identity lie much further beneath, I believe.