Pfaff hat pfiff*

The Nereids, 2010, דבורח

I’ve gotten down to the wire, to the bone. I’m frizzed and frazzled to the core.

My entire fragile ego structure has become a corinthian column of crazy cake perched, teetering, atop a toothpick of expectation.

Swelled sails of desire are pushing and pulling me through wave after wave. Double-minded. Doubly-doused. Full of doubt.

By a string, I can cling to a single memory to take the force out of my inherited wind: Passover of 2001 in Pfaffenhofen, Germany. Another time I’ll delve deeper into the preciousness of staging a Passover seder in a hotel ballroom that had held SS meetings during the second world war…

But the reason this memory rings in my ears tonight is simply because on that night I consciously chose to put the needs of others before my own for the entire evening; a decision to basically serve and in no way seek to be served. Chosen selflessness, accepted happily. What followed was one of the best nights of my life, and the memories of the night are so sweet, and so pure.

Alight on me again, carefree consciousness. Shake my dusty head from well-fed slumber to true giving. Kumi, ori! Arise, shine! “I no longer want to be loved; I want to love.” (poor Claire in Brother Sun, Sister Moon)

How else to disentangle from the cold, calamari grip of tentacled self-interest? How else but to give one’s self away?

*the town slogan of that little ol' village, Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm, Germany, where I lived with my family for a year. I guess you could paraphase it to mean something like "this place is classy" or "Pfaffenhofen has got pizzazz, jazz cats," etc...