distance against the backdrop of the September sky.
I don’t know what it was about that branch that caught my full attention. Something, though, because I can remember the look of it to this day. It was the branch of an oak tree, I think. Far off, in the backyard not of the house right in front of me, but of the house behind that one. It was a single branch jutting out two or three feet beyond the tree’s green crown, near the top. The stouter part of it was bare, colored that white-brown-gray branch color there’s no good name for. (Who ever says “taupe”?) But there was a cluster of dark green leaves near the tip of it, where the main arm forked into dwindling twiglets. The sky behind the leaves was very blue with a single small, white cumulus cloud slowly drifting through it.
And I saw it, really saw it. The branch, the sky, the cloud, the whole scene. I broke through my thoughts and my dreams and myself and I was just there, completely there. I stopped walking. I stood with my schoolbooks held low against my leg. The cooly yearning autumn breeze stroked my cheeks and stirred my hair and I gazed at that branch and my mind was silent. My attention was turned completely outward. No fantasy, only the world. I saw it all.
What a disappointment it was! There was nothing to it. It was just a branch, that’s all. Real enough but cold, empty of emotional presence. It held no sweetness, no pleasure, no beauty. It was not like the high branches of my backyard oak when I lay under it, or the branches of my apple tree when I climbed on them and hid among them. I was fond of those; I loved them. This—this faraway branch—it was just a fact. A lifeless pattern. A branch against the sky, some leaves, a drifting cloud. This wasn’t what I had been looking for at all. This was nothing. A branch. A cloud. The sky. Nothing.
I came back into myself, let down, deflated. I understood at once what had gone wrong, the flaw at the heart of my whole experiment. I don’t remember now what eight-year-old words I used to describe my understanding to myself, but the gist of it was this: The world had no beauty of its own. The beauty of the world was created in the human experience, in me. The very fact of beauty, the very idea that something could be beautiful, only existed in me. The point was not to see the world. There was nothing out there to see, nothing worthwhile at any rate, just shapes, just patterns. The point was to experience the world, to know it simultaneously both without and within.
But I had lost the talent for living like that, and I could not get it back again merely by staring.
How then? How could I reclaim the world and my life in the world? How could a person free himself from the prison of his own consciousness in order to know the beauty of the world as it existed only within his consciousness?
Ah, well—that was a puzzle way beyond the abilities of an eight-year-old, even a puzzle-loving eight-year-old like me.
And so I left the branch behind. I left the world behind. I went on my way to school, that day and all the days that followed, in solitude, cut off from reality, surrendered to stories, addicted to dreams.
CHAPTER 3
B AR M ITZVAH B OY
T here were three main synagogues in our town, as I remember it. Each represented a different degree of religious observance, light, medium, or heavy: Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox. We were Conservative by my dad’s decree. We had a Seder meal at Passover. We went to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. We lit candles on the eight nights of Hanukkah. We even fasted on Yom Kippur, the annual Day of Atonement. We went to Hebrew School, too, twice during the week, I think it was, and maybe a third time on Sundays. There we were supposed to learn Hebrew and the Bible and ultimately prepare for our bar mitzvahs.
My mom helped out with all this, of course. She prepared the meals, chauffeured us to temple, and so on. But she made it clear she was only doing
I don’t know what it was about that branch that caught my full attention. Something, though, because I can remember the look of it to this day. It was the branch of an oak tree, I think. Far off, in the backyard not of the house right in front of me, but of the house behind that one. It was a single branch jutting out two or three feet beyond the tree’s green crown, near the top. The stouter part of it was bare, colored that white-brown-gray branch color there’s no good name for. (Who ever says “taupe”?) But there was a cluster of dark green leaves near the tip of it, where the main arm forked into dwindling twiglets. The sky behind the leaves was very blue with a single small, white cumulus cloud slowly drifting through it.
And I saw it, really saw it. The branch, the sky, the cloud, the whole scene. I broke through my thoughts and my dreams and myself and I was just there, completely there. I stopped walking. I stood with my schoolbooks held low against my leg. The cooly yearning autumn breeze stroked my cheeks and stirred my hair and I gazed at that branch and my mind was silent. My attention was turned completely outward. No fantasy, only the world. I saw it all.
What a disappointment it was! There was nothing to it. It was just a branch, that’s all. Real enough but cold, empty of emotional presence. It held no sweetness, no pleasure, no beauty. It was not like the high branches of my backyard oak when I lay under it, or the branches of my apple tree when I climbed on them and hid among them. I was fond of those; I loved them. This—this faraway branch—it was just a fact. A lifeless pattern. A branch against the sky, some leaves, a drifting cloud. This wasn’t what I had been looking for at all. This was nothing. A branch. A cloud. The sky. Nothing.
I came back into myself, let down, deflated. I understood at once what had gone wrong, the flaw at the heart of my whole experiment. I don’t remember now what eight-year-old words I used to describe my understanding to myself, but the gist of it was this: The world had no beauty of its own. The beauty of the world was created in the human experience, in me. The very fact of beauty, the very idea that something could be beautiful, only existed in me. The point was not to see the world. There was nothing out there to see, nothing worthwhile at any rate, just shapes, just patterns. The point was to experience the world, to know it simultaneously both without and within.
But I had lost the talent for living like that, and I could not get it back again merely by staring.
How then? How could I reclaim the world and my life in the world? How could a person free himself from the prison of his own consciousness in order to know the beauty of the world as it existed only within his consciousness?
Ah, well—that was a puzzle way beyond the abilities of an eight-year-old, even a puzzle-loving eight-year-old like me.
And so I left the branch behind. I left the world behind. I went on my way to school, that day and all the days that followed, in solitude, cut off from reality, surrendered to stories, addicted to dreams.
CHAPTER 3
B AR M ITZVAH B OY
T here were three main synagogues in our town, as I remember it. Each represented a different degree of religious observance, light, medium, or heavy: Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox. We were Conservative by my dad’s decree. We had a Seder meal at Passover. We went to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. We lit candles on the eight nights of Hanukkah. We even fasted on Yom Kippur, the annual Day of Atonement. We went to Hebrew School, too, twice during the week, I think it was, and maybe a third time on Sundays. There we were supposed to learn Hebrew and the Bible and ultimately prepare for our bar mitzvahs.
My mom helped out with all this, of course. She prepared the meals, chauffeured us to temple, and so on. But she made it clear she was only doing
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