==================================================================== =scsa_b13 DEEP_6 OF COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY to =sc_b13 (as_it_is_said, (USA 1940's), "No Comments from the Peanut Gallery") THAT IS, FOOTNOTES (sa) TO SC_B13 -- FOLLOW ("teach the fallow fellow to follow the furrow" -- someone's translation of some famous Roman Poet who nobody remembers -- Virgil if memory serves ) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (b13-1a) [ -- I am told that the present Bailer Rebbe is the Rav of the Lugano (Switzerland) Synagouge, that he has published aboutr 70 sformim, and that in recent years he has become quite concerned with helping Baal Tchuva's So anyhow, in Lugano the Dan Hotel is Glatt Kosher, on the Lake two doors down from the Grande Hotel Splendide -- you can use their swimming pool if the Lake is too cold. Me I stay between the two, at the Chinese Restaurant. The rooms are in an old house seperate from the Restaurant, and they got good vegetable soup and green tea too. Nice people. The Dan Hotel is run by Mr. Moshe Gefen and his wife and family, and also a woman named Leah, who thinks she is not Jewish though she sure looks like she just got off the boat from the shtetl -- one of the better neighborhoods -- and was surely right there at Mt. Sinai. They are very good people, make everyone feel at home even us semi_reformed hippies, and serve a great Shabat morning kiddish. Open Pesach through Sukot, ] (b13-2a) [ After which he said, if it weren't were my great humility, I would turn you into a toad, and turned him into a brown_and_white mouse. Next week, immediately after havdala, the Hasidische Mafia wrote to the Learned Elders of Zion, and said, stop scribbling and forget the Czar, we're going to discover America and all move to Miami Beach in Condos. ] (scb13-3a) [ 'bastard' = 'mamzer', the child of a married woman by a man other than her husband. There are very strict halachot restricing the status of such children and their descendents, but the biblical term 'mamzer', unlike the the English term 'bastard' at least as far back as Shakespearean English (Cf. eg Shakespeare's play, King Lear), and extending to contemporary USA slang, is not necessarily derogatory. ] (B13-4A) TEXT: It is a posked which means, My bride is like a closed garden. That means nothing can reach her, it is so holy. [ No doubt. And also there is a physical_emotional meaning, as in 'My Secret Gardem^. amd as om "Come all ye fair and tender maidens / who flourish in your prime / Keep clean and neat, keep your garden sweet / Let no man steal your thyme." (English folk song.) ] (b13-5a) [ Nu, so why did they not all sell the horses and get on boats. ] (B13-5b) [ Oh really. Better you should guard a few rubles and buy a new stick. I mean, someone with psychic power can do tricks with anything, and someone without, can't do tricks with anything. ] (B13-5c) [ More precisely, a holy stick goes to compost, but a holy person does not get lost. ] (B13-5d) [ In the Middle Ages they spoke of 'Four Temperaments' -- Ballanchine made a ballet with that title -- that was Choloric, Phlegmatic, and I don't recall the other two -- Melancholic and Sanguine, maybe. So anyhow, 'always getting angry' is of course Choloric, as any idiot should know. Incidentally, and speaking as an Israeli, I mus say that it is a vile canard -- that means, a dirty duck -- that Israelis are by nature rude. Nothing could be further from the truth. Why, the very possibility could not even be imagined, except of course by an absolute idiot. ] (b13-5a1) [ Don't look like it did much good. Five years later most of 'em was blowing in the wind, I suppose. So if he was so doggone high, why didn't he sell all the horses and put 'em all on boats. So maybe that holy stick wasn't worth a box of matches. I mean, a real Prophet always reads the New York Times. In time. ] (b13-5e) [ Anger is good. Better even than greed. Anger gives me the energy to do things. PVK says: Move from rage to outrage. I mean, let us forget all this sweetness_and_light and cultivate the 7 Deadly Sins. I mean, a Wise Old Man is "cute and sweet" but 8 out of 10 sure wish they had a bit more Lust. And as for their wives, its 9 out of 10. More or less, counting Mistresses. Like Aristotle said, a vice is just a virtue taken to excess. Or I suppose you could say too, a vice in deficient quantity, as_it_is_said "My get_up_and_go just got up and went." (USA folk saying, mid_20th century. ) That's Sloth, Roth. ] (b13-6a) [ Oh yeah? Says who? Cf. Jesus' Wedding Shirt parable. Best's I recollect, Ram Dass once wrote that his guru said of LSD, it lets you go up to the highest level -- sartori or samadhi or whatever -- but you can't stay there. ] (b13-6b) [ Sarah Cornelia said: Whenever I had a lot to do -- housework or leading a long white_water kayak or whatever -- I would play ping_pong with my husband. I would lose. I always get very angry when I lose, so that would give me the energy to do my work. ] (b13-7a) [ This is the teaching: On Shabos, even souls in hell are released for Shabat. And that teaching stood me in good stead when I was in hell. I'm sittin in the hot spring across the Rio Grande bridge in Arroyo Hondo, after a night of familiar nightmares, and this Indian shows up, and sits down, and after a bit he says, she was in hell yesterday. Or maybe he says, he was in hell yesterday. PVK used to say, hell is right here, on earth. The Prophet Muhammed, Peace be unto him, says, I can't say where, 'Sometimes G_d is as close as the nose of your camel.' ] (b13-8a) TEXT; imagine how would I feel if I would be as holy as the Baal Shem, or be on the level of the Silent Rebbe. Gevalt. What a pleasure. Just pleasure. What a beautiful life. (b13-8a) [ Well, to be Enlightened is not necessrily a beautiful life in every respect. Jesus of Natzereth had a few rough hours. And PVK once remarked, maybe inadvertantly, "my crown is thorns -- but I am dancing" (Zenith, closing lecture I think, about mid-90s ] (b13-8b) [ I don't know what RSC means by 'frequency of notions', but maybe it is something like notion -- Hindu, I suppose -- of 'monkey mind' -- the opposite of what is called -- in Buddhism I think -- 'one-pointedness.' ] (b13-9a) [ OK, this point rests on a pun on idol / idle , but it is a harmless pun. That is, speaking idle words -- bavardage (Fr.) -- may in a reasonably deep sense be said to be idolatry -- "for they bow down to emptiness and the Void" (Siddur, Alenu) -- and R. Zalman has an article where he says, this is not the Void of Zen #l4 -- and also, PVK says, the Void is not empty, it is, on the contrary the realm of all_possibilities -- but they are all intermixed -- #l5 I guess maybe that's tohu_ v_bohu #l2 so I think of the crowd at a chic disco, swaying and bowing down under flashing red lights to that hellish musical noise #l1] ====================================================================== sa, Campra, CH-6718 Olivone, -- 2 Elul -- =======================================================================