Interpretations, Intention

Yesterday was Erev Yom Kippur and I had planned to attend Kol Nidrei services at 7pm a Reconstructionist synagogue in Denver. I went for a walk in the late afternoon and returned home to eat a bit, drink a lot, shower and change into my all-white wardrobe for this most solemn of Jewish holidays. I even removed the bright red polish from my toe nails to be more in keeping with the spirit Yom Kippur. It is a day that we rehearse our deaths by wearing white, as if wrapping ourselves in a shroud, and refraining from eating, drinking, bathing, having sex and wearing leather. And it’s a day that even many lapsed Jews show up in synagogue for at least part of the time, not wishing to miss Kol Nidrei, which has some of the most poignant and moving liturgy of the entire Jewish calendar.

By 6:20pm I had accomplished my pre-holiday preparations and was ready to leave but could not find my car keys. The key and the remote are attached to a ring that has a large metal charm on it; this ensemble jangles and makes a sound if dropped. I’ve temporarily misplaced my keys before so, rather than panicking, I started to systematically look for them in all the usual places.

First I dumped out my purse. Nope.

Then I looked on my kitchen table – often I leave the keys there. Nothing. And they had not fallen to the ground, either. Perhaps I had put them in one of my backpacks accidentally? A quick check indicated that no, I had not.

Then I looked in the bathroom – perhaps I had brought the key ring in there after returning from my yoga class earlier in the day? I searched the top of my sink, the bathtub and the wall cabinet. Nada.

Maybe, when I had uncharacteristically made my bed that afternoon, the keys had gotten trapped between the blanket and the sheets? I checked my bed for lumps and did not find any. Nor were there any keys in my laundry basket, where I had tossed a towel and yoga clothes a few hours before.

What about my desk? There are always lots of things on my desk. Normally I don’t put the car keys there, but I figured I’d look anyway. I scoured the top of my desk and opened the drawers. No keys.

Quickly, I looked in my refrigerator and kitchen cabinets. At this point no place seemed too unlikely for the keys.

By this time it was 6:40pm and I was starting to feel a bit of panic.

I remembered that I had wrapped up and taken out the trash when I went for my walk. Had I accidentally tossed my keys in the trash?

Back outside I went to the dumpster. Unfortunately my bag of garbage was no longer sitting conveniently near the top and I could not grab it while standing on the ground. Wearing my Yom Kippur whites, I hoisted my left leg onto the dumpster’s handle so I could reach down and reclaim my bag. This was the closest I’ve ever come to dumpster diving. Garbage in hand, I jumped back to the ground.

Now I was in the bathroom again, picking through my personal compost. Corn husks and cobs, cantaloupe rind and a rotten zucchini had been sitting in a plastic bag for a few days, marinating with assorted liquids and other trash, creating a pungent perfume. I thought how this activity was, oddly enough, perfect for Yom Kippur, a day when we take an inventory of our inner world, vowing to discard or heal our psychological garbage while focusing on finding the keys to a good life.

My stinky and sticky search did not yield the keys to my Subaru. I returned the garbage to the dumpster and, this time, brought a flash light. Perhaps I had dropped the keys on the ground? Left them in my car?

There were no keys. For a second, I wondered if someone had picked them up and, at a moment unbeknownst to me, would be taking my car with them.

It was now after 7pm and I realized that I would be missing Kol Nidrei.

My Jewish self was frustrated and disappointed and burst into tears. My more Buddhist self recognized I had some choices: I could use this situation as an opportunity to blame and judge myself for having lost the keys, exacerbating my suffering, or I could have compassion for myself and try to salvage something from this experience, perhaps opening to something that would not have been available had I made it to services on time.

I lit two candles in the hopes of fostering some inner stillness and creating a sacred space; perhaps I could consider this a private Kol Nidrei with the Almighty? My intention was in the right place. I wondered if my keys' disappearance was some sort of a Yom Kippur wake-up call, to slow down even more and pay closer attention to my emotions, my living space, and my state of mind than I was already. If so, I thanked God for the fact that this call was a lot gentler than the message my sister-in-law received last year. While driving in the Bay Area just before Yom Tov, smoke began coming out of her car, unbeknownst to her. Another driver motioned for her to pull over and get out. Luckily she heeded this good Samaritan; moments after she left her vehicle, it burst into flames.

I started to chant the Kol Nidrei to myself, but only remembered a few lines. Recreating the service on my own, I realized, did not make much sense. Since I was home, I decided to make the best of it. Slowly and mindfully, I started to sort my belongings and organize my apartment, hoping that in the process of creating tranquility the keys would emerge. And part of me knew from past experience misplacing things that they often turn up, or appear in my sight, once I’m no longer in hot pursuit. Indeed, one of the interpretations of the akeda, Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac, is that Abraham, as he prepared to slaughter his son was in a trance state. The angels call out, “Abraham! Abraham!” to stop him, saying his name twice to get his attention for Abraham was not truly present. When he came to, and looked up, there was the ram to be sacrificed. Some scholars argue that the animal had been there all along but Abraham - so intent on following through with God's request - had been unable to see it.

I asked that God please reveal my keys to me, much as Hashem had revealed the ram to Abraham and water to Hagar as she wandered in the desert.

One of my father’s favorite sayings came to mind, “You’ll find whatever you’ve lost in the last place you look.” I managed a half-smile. As I placed some stray clothes on hangers I was reminded of another frantic search, for my father’s glasses. He had been rushed to the hospital and either he or his companion had grabbed his old eyeglasses, a pair from the 1980s with large lenses that resembled bug eyes. During one of my visits he had asked me to bring him his newest pair, a contemporary design with wireless rims, which he had left in the bedroom. I went to his house and looked for them. They were neither on his bed, on or in his chest of drawers or near the nightstand. Nor were they on the floor. Stymied, I told him I could not find them. He said not to worry but I felt like a failure, unable to fulfill such a simple request. He died unexpectedly a few days after that. As my brother and I cleaned out his house the glasses materialized; they had been in my father’s bedroom closet, where it had simply not occurred to me to look.

Where had it not occurred to me look for my keys?

I did not try to answer this question directly but continued with my tidying - gathering receipts, stacking books and picking things off the floor. With no car keys in sight, I started to wonder how I'd get to services the next day. The synagogue was just over three miles away. Walking would take more than an hour, or I could hop on my bicycle for a faster trip. In either case, it would probably not be wise for me to fast completely and risk dehydrating. And then, without getting too worried, I gently pondered how long it would take me to order a new set of car keys, how much that would cost, and how I’d arrange my life in the meantime.

At around 10:20pm I decided to go to sleep. As I very slowly made my way around the bed to my night stand so I could turn on my reading lamp, I paused by the small cast iron radiator below my window. For some reason I looked down. Between the radiator and the wall I noticed a black object wedged in that tiny gap. Bending over, I reached below the radiator and pulled out my car keys. I have no idea how they got there. But God did answer my prayer.

Intriguing, Intelligence

Over the years I've come to believe that there is an enormous intelligence operating in the universe that creates synchronicity, meaningful encounters and seemingly spontaneous connections. It's as if we're linked by a vast membrane, and if a person gently tugs or pokes that membrane then other people will sense it and respond, most likely at an unconscious level. When I was younger these events would feel quite magical to me, proof that there was more to the world than met the eye, that the hyper-rational outlook championed by my parents was insufficient to explain how life might actual work. My excitement at having sensed or experienced this invisible side to life was often met with an unimpressed, "That was just a coincidence."

Someone, or maybe a few people, must have been tugging pretty hard on the membrane yesterday because I overcome by a powerful urge to look up people I had met in Washington, D.C. while in graduate school for international relations many years ago. Over time, and as my life path took a different course, I had lost touch with them and for long stretches had not thought about my classmates at all, not even the person I dated while I was a student. In fact, I had forgotten many of their names. But with Google, Facebook and Flickr, it's not hard to find people. I typed in my ex's name and found some links, leading to images of him delivering a lecture in Europe last spring. He looked the same but seemed to have grown into his role as scholar, having dropped the playboy persona of his dissertation days. Suddenly I was back in time, remembering very specific details of my graduate school experience, including how another friend had a somewhat awkward body position when sitting on the grass in Dupont Circle. I thought most of these impressions, sights and sounds had been wiped out by the passage of time and by my willful focus on the "now". Instead, the longer I lingered in my memories of that time the more names my brain started to recall, as if all I had ever needed to do was prime the pump. After looking up a few more people I decided to go to sleep, thinking I might contact one or two of them today.

This morning, like most mornings, I logged into Google Analytics to quickly check the previous day's traffic on my website. The Analytics tools also allow me to see how people arrive at my site, either directly, by a referring website or by a key word search. And it turned out that yesterday someone had arrived at my website after entering my name AND the name of my graduate school in a search engine. While I don't know who had looked me up, I was glad to see that I was not the only person out there to feel and respond to the tug on the membrane.

Insanity, Instincts

Insanity, it is said, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. However, with a meditation or awareness practice, one has the opportunity to observe oneself in the process of repeating history and then choosing not to in the end. Last night I was deep into deja vu all over again while sitting across a restaurant table from a 30-something year old man I had met online. In a moment of loneliness, intensified by a periodic fleeting desire to reconnect with my earlier self who had lived in Budapest, I had e-mailed this person whose screen name was in Hungarian to simply ask him if, indeed, he was. Igen. And he was also new to this area and seemed eager to meet new people, including me, even though I'm considerably older than the age range he had specified in his profile. He had posted photographs of himself in which he was outdoors and had what appeared to be a relaxed smile on his face. After a few e-mail exchanges we agreed to meet for dinner last night. Since he was driving some ways to meet me, I chose the restaurant, a funky Thai place that had received good reviews.

"So, you've been here before," he stated, as we took our seats.

"No, I haven't" I said.

"So, for a first date you've suggested an unknown place?" he asked, a bit taken aback, as if I had broken some generally accepted protocol and/or asked him to take a chance.

I, too, was taken aback. A first date? True, we were meeting for the first time, but I did not consider it a date with a capital "D". We had not even spoken on the phone beforehand, except for a few minutes immediately prior when he called to let me know he was running late. While I had been interested in meeting him I was not focused on coming up with an impressive evening or setting. I had asked him what food he enjoyed and made plans accordingly, choosing a place that would be conducive to conversation.

"Well," I said, "I asked some people for Thai restaurant suggestions and they recommended this one. The fact is I haven't eaten out all that much since moving here and I like trying new places."
Immediately, we dropped into a conversation about my impressions of Hungary and Hungarians - he had asked me in an e-mail and I thought it best to respond in person.

"Well," I said, not wanting to offend, "There seemed to be a cloud of gloom hanging over the country. People were pessimistic. But you don't seem to be like that at all."

"Actually, I am," he responded. At least he was being honest.

His remark released a range of uncomfortable sensations that I had felt while living there two decades ago, as if these had been sealed in a pouch all these years, waiting to be opened so they could be fully processed or digested. Now the pouch was leaking feelings of incompleteness, sadness, of longing for wholeness, resulting from being disconnected - by geography and genocide - from ancestral roots, and wanting to transform the experience of my Hungarian heritage into a happy one, despite the seeming impossibility of this task. No wonder I had packed this emotional goulash into an inner Ziploc, storing it somewhere deep in my guts, hoping that over time it would just pass through my system without my having to feel its painful contents.

The waitress came over to take our orders but we had not even opened the menus. We sent her away, and within minutes she returned.

"We're still not ready," I said to her. "Do we get a third try or are you going to kick us out?"

My companion laughed. I was relieved.

For what felt like a long time the waitress ignored us, and I got to hear a bit about his family history and journey to America. Like many Jewish men of his generation, he wasn't told of his religion until he was Bar Mitzvah age, a time when the word "Jew" was a common insult. An engineer, he had studied at the same university where I had spent my junior year abroad. We had eaten in the same cafeteria, whose offerings included soup with chicken feet, a dish that delighted the locals but freaked out the Americans.

As he spoke, I could not help but notice that he sounded almost exactly like another Hungarian Jewish engineer I had met, and dated, many years before. This genre of human being, in my experience, operates almost entirely from the left-brains, is analytical and logical to an extreme, lacks an aesthetic sensibility, has a scarcity mentality and can be very single-minded bordering on self-righteous. At one point during our meandering conversation my companion switched topics in order to pick up a loose thread. I can't recall what the abandoned subject had been, but I got the distinct impression that it was important to him to not leave anything hanging, that everything needed to be put in its place.

Some people might find this constellation of character traits attractive or positive in some circumstances, but I heard a little voice in my head comment, "You moved to Colorado to change your life...so why are you having dinner with a slightly more polite and refined version of an ex-boyfriend from hell?"

Perhaps I needed to revisit some old psychological territory from a new perspective, to hear nearly the exact same thought processes, mindset and beliefs from this more junior man as I had heard from my ex who, at the time, had been my senior, and to have a completely different experience. As I nibbled my drunken noodles I realized that I'm no longer the person who was afraid to trust herself and who preferred to rely on what others had to say, particularly people with strong views and clearly articulated opinions. In what had been a disastrous and painful relationship with my ex, I had abandoned many parts of myself in order to conform to his views of the world and to fit his image of who he needed his girlfriend to be.

Slowly I have learned to not do that again. All this seemed quite clear while sitting in the restaurant and when saying good night to my dinner companion after we had finished our meal. It was raining by the time we left the restaurant and, after a brief and somewhat awkward discussion about continuing our evening in a more happening part of Denver, he chivalrously suggested that we save that for another time and better weather. I was free to enjoy my own company for the rest of the night.

When I got home, however, my self-doubt and conditioning kicked in with a vengeance, berating me for not having picked a restaurant in a more lively location that offered the possibility of a post-dinner stroll, as if I had blown my very last chance to find a fulfilling relationship because I had not orchestrated a perfectly seamless, multi-stop evening. For a few moments I actually fell for these nasty voices in my head, voices that have been telling me most of my life that I need to be romantically involved with someone to be an acceptable person and that I need to twist myself into knots to either enter into or maintain such relationships. The fundamental message of these voices, a malevolent mantra as it were, is that I am not enough, that by myself I am inadequate. I think I am finally catching onto these insidious bastards and their very dirty tricks.

Intrinsic, Imbued

A few conversations I've had recently about moving and stuff have got me thinking, yet again, about what to keep and what to toss. A woman moving into the apartment below mine with her two children tells me that she has so much furniture and books that she needs two trucks. I told her that I am trying to pare down as much as I can, including giving away books that I haven't opened in years and will probably never read again. They are just taking up space. Her eyes widened.

"But," she protested, "My books are a record of my life. I see them on the shelf and I'm reminded of all the things I've done."

I used to have that philosophy about things, especially books, that they provide reference points for my life's trajectory, that I needed them around in order to remember who I was and therefore who I am. They are souvenirs of moments in time, the past made visible. Books are also friends and companions, something to turn to when needing wisdom, solace or entertainment. And it used to be that I'd feel more comfortable visiting a home lined or littered with books rather than being in a space devoid of such decorations - yes, a well-stocked bookshelf can be aesthetically pleasing.

And yet, as another friend pointed out, every object gives off a certain energy, a vibration with which we or someone else has imbued it. Most of the time this energy is not intrinsic to the object but has to do with the circumstances through which it entered our lives. How did it arrive? Was the book (or thing) a loving and thoughtful gift from a kind person or did it come with some strings attached, an implied criticism or aggressive suggestion for how to improve? As I look at my stuff, books included, I am trying to recall how they came into my possession. If I am no longer friends with the person who gave it to me, do I hang onto it? Do I want to be reminded of people that either drifted away from me or I from them? Lately the answer is no, even if at the time I received the item the friendship was a happy one. Do I want to hang onto a piece of clothing that I purchased in a gloomy moment and/or only because it was a bargain? Again, the answer is no. At some point, the accumulation of reminders of what was can stifle what is or what is becoming.

The issue gets more complicated when I'm dealing with other people's things, such as items from my father's house or that were acquired while my parents were still married. Some of these objects are beautiful to behold yet their vibration is not completely positive, a sadness clings to them. Do I keep them long enough to see if I can attach a happier story to them? Can I see them simply as objects and enjoy them on a purely aesthetic and functional level, forgetting their provenance? Or do I let them go and lighten my load, choosing to honor the past without schlepping its physical manifestations along with me?

I will ponder these questions some more as I take another stab at sorting my books and my stuff.

In Memoriam, My Father

It's been a long time since my last post. And the longer I go without writing, the harder it is to get back into it.

But tonight begins the observance of my father's yahrtzeit, the anniversary of his date of death according to the Jewish calendar, the 11th of Iyar. And Tuesday, May 13, was the fifth anniversary of his death according to our calendar. He passed away on a Tuesday, so this year marked a rare coincidence of date and day of week. And last Friday, at my synagogue, the rabbi read his name out loud as one of the many people for whom yahrtzeit would be observed in what was the week ahead. To help mark the occasion, I sponsored the kiddush after services and, to elicit his presence, also brought some extra food that my father loved and shared with us: chocolate babka and two large pastries filled with cocoa and poppyseeds, respectively. I would have purchased another poppyseed pastry - which wasn't nearly as moist and flavorful as the ones my father would bake himself - but I got the very last one. Maybe that was how it was supposed to be. Those purchases, plus the special memorial candle that I lit tonight, came to $19.67 exactly. That is the year I was born.

At synagogue last Friday the rabbi, with his eye on the clock, rushed through the mourner's kaddish, the normally meditative prayer we also recite during the yahrtzeit. The fast pace threw me off and left me feeling disoriented, disappointed and somewhat violated, as I hadn't had enough time to properly articulate each word. The moment in the kosher grocery store when the clerk said, "Your total is $19.67" had had more spiritual resonance.

On Tuesday, the American anniversary, I was fully immersed in creating mosaics and preparing for an upcoming art show when my cell phone rang. I saw it was from an old friend, who normally doesn't call.

"Is something the matter?" I asked her, wondering if she had phoned to share difficult news.

"No," she said, "I just remembered that today is the anniversary of your father's death."

"You're right," I said. I was surprised and appreciative that she remembered and surprised and relieved that I wasn't dwelling on it. I was glad to discover that I had been so engaged in what I was doing and in thinking about the future that I was not so focused on his passing, as I had been in previous years.

My father used to quote the passage from Deuteronomy 30: 15-19, "And you shall choose life." My brothers and I had it inscribed on his headstone.

And I honor him tonight, on his yahrtzeit, by again choosing to write.

Insanity, temporary

Perhaps I am getting old. Last Monday I received a substantial refund check from the IRS. We're talking five fat figures. If you're wondering how it is that I managed to overestimate my tax liability to such an astonishing degree, send me a note and I'll tell you.

But this story begins with this check and my last minute preparations to travel to New York for Thanksgiving. My goal had been to deposit this and other checks before getting on the commuter rail on Wednesday morning to travel to South Station, where I'd board the Lucky Star bus to Manhattan's Chinatown. For just $15 one way, non-stop except for a short break at the Century Buffet in Connecticut, I'll sacrifice legroom. But I didn't make it to the bank on Tuesday or on Wednesday morning, and so I traveled to New York with many checks, totalling many many dollars, on my person. The IRS check I had tucked into my wallet. The other checks, from jewelry customers, I had zipped into an inside pocket of my purse.

I was vaguely aware of the stupidity of doing this - what if they were to get lost? But, I told myself, I don't lose things. I'm a careful person, a savvy traveler, someone who is alert to what is happening around her. I am an ex-New Yorker, after all!

During my trip I used my credit card for many transactions - purchasing a metro card, a small gift, dinner at a sushi bar, some socks at a mouth watering boutique in SoHo, and a pair of luscious lime green velveteen pants at Filene's basement. And I also used most of my stash of cash, next to which I had tucked my still unendorsed IRS check, for other things: visits to a few cafes, food at the Chinese buffet where our bus stopped in Connecticut, a rare deal on a sweater and, finally, a cab ride home from South Station. I had planned to take the commuter rail but had missed the 6pm train and didn't want to wait for more than 2 hours for another. Dehydrated, fatigued, body aching and eager to get home, I decided to splurge.

As we drove down the Mass Turnpike my eyes glanced at the signage inside the cab. Be sure to write down the taxi's number to help us find lost items, one of them said, or something to that effect.

The driver pulled up to my house and I used most of the rest of my cash to pay the fare, which cost nearly as much as my roundtrip bus ticket to New York. It was dark, I was tired, and I quickly counted out a few bills.

A few hours later, after I had had a chance to relax and drink some tea, I unpacked my bags. My anxiety rose when I couldn't find a necklace I had worn earlier that day but had tossed into my purse when I was trying on some clothing. Panicked, I dumped the contents of my purse and my shoulder bag, into which I had squeezed pajamas, socks, underwear, toiletries, two sweaters, an extra pair of pants, a silk sleeping sack, an organza bag with jewelry, books, a camera and snacks of crystallized ginger and dried cranberries. Still no necklace.

And that is when I discovered my customers' checks, still safely zipped into the interior pocket of the purse. I had forgotten all about them. I then opened my wallet to retrieve the IRS check and discovered that it was gone. Where there had once been a thick wad of cash now remained just a ten dollar note, a five dollar bill and a single.

I was too stunned to cry.

I sat on the floor in my hallway, my stomach both heavy and hollow, trying to imagine how it had vanished. Did it flutter to the floor when I pulled out two dollar bills to pay for my final NYC subway ride? Did it sneak into the tip I left for the waitress at Le Pain Quotidien? Did I hand it to the Boston cab driver as I stumbled out of his poorly lit taxi, eager to be home?

My mind latched onto the taxi man as the most likely scenario.

Would he turn it in? What if he tried to look up my phone number but couldn't because I don't have a landline? Would he mail it to me, or let it sit around gathering dust until I called to collect it? Or would he call the local papers to get the word out, and everyone in the greater Boston area would know what an idiot I was for walking around with this check? I looked on the receipt that the taxi driver had given me for any sort of identifying information, such as a license number or name of his taxi company. There was none. Why hadn't I written it down when I was in the cab? Why hadn't I just gone to the bank when I was supposed to? And why on earth hadn't I simply checked the box for direct deposit on my tax return, avoiding this fiasco altogether?

Recognizing that such self-beating wouldn't return the check any faster, I tried to clear my head and went to the IRS website. They do assist taxpayers with lost refunds, meaning checks that never arrive. There was no section or FAQ for people who receive the check and then lose it. They could call this section "Losers".

Still dumbstruck and deflated, I went into my kitchen to make some more tea. And there, on one of the counters, was the necklace that I thought I had lost. I must have taken it out of my purse when I got home, even though I had no recollection of performing that action. The sight of the necklace was heartening. Maybe I wasn't losing my mind completely. Maybe I was able to keep track of things to some degree.

I resumed the search for the check. Was it possible that, like the necklace, it was right in front of me but I had overlooked it? Again, I picked through the clump of receipts and papers that were nesting in my wallet, straightening them and sorting them. There were receipts for postage, for gasoline and for my NY cafe visits and clothing deals. But there was no check. Heading over to my desk, I noticed another stack of receipts. Was it possible that I had actually left the check at home, even though I could have sworn it was on my person?

As I flipped through this new wad of papers, the check - folded in half - fell onto my desk. I must have emptied my wallet of some of its contents before my trip, but without realizing that the check was in that pile. I felt a kind of sobering relief. I had found the check but had temporarily lost my mind.

Intestines

Well, as they say, be careful what you wish for. As I requested in my first post, two people sent me suggestions for topics based on the letter "I", and of the half dozen or so ideas that have been offered so far, Intestines is where I am beginning. I am still taking suggestions for topics, but please be kind. Whimsical is preferable to political. For example, don't proffer "Islamist intransigence" (alas, someone has beat you to it).

For those of us who need a quick reminder about this extremely valuable but, under normal circumstances, invisible part of the body, click here for the Wikipedia entry, whence I've "borrowed" this image.

Did you know that in an adult male the small intestine is about 20 feet long? That is a decent distance for digested food to travel on part of its journey out of the body and into the porcelain goddess, or into a hole in the ground, and I can imagine how easily it could stuck along the way, trapped in tight curves, if it isn't being pushed along by a current of water or other fluid (I presume beer might work, too). Having written that I think I have just convinced myself to get another drink....of lemon seltzer; excuse me for a minute!

Aah. Much better.

Someone I know recently had a colonscopy, and not just a run of the mill colonscopy. This person had also agreed to participate in a study of a new pre-colonoscopy diet which, if it is found to create more accurate test results, might become part of the protocol for everyone. This was a multi-day procedure to help clean out the intestines, et al, involving a strict regimen of prescribed and specially prepared foods and finally, on the very last day, consuming a gallon of a foul tasting beverage before the exam. This person dutifully followed the plan and the doctor pronounced her sparklingly clean intestines to be incredibly healthy looking; perhaps if there had been a Miss America contest for intestines she would have won, and could have toured the country extolling the benefits of eating green leafy vegetables, perhaps helping to slow the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in this country.

The rest of the time, of course, our intestines are full of well, you know what they are full of. And if they are too full of it, then we become constipated or suffer from irritable bowel syndrome, or just become kvetchy and grouchy.

Of course, if intestines are filled with a mixture of meat, vegetables and spices and then cooked, they are called kishkes, or stuffed derma. It is possible that I once tried this traditional East European Jewish dish although if I did, I have repressed the memory. I do recall eating and enjoying beef tongue when I was a young child, before my brain was developed enough to make the connection between the meat on the stove and the part of my anatomy with the exact same name. Ignorance, apparently, really was bliss.