It was a busy one. The boys and I went to a beautiful bar mitzvah at an amazing restored temple here in Los Angeles. That's a photo of the ceiling which seemed like a portal to the heavens. I've only been to three bar mitzvahs and am always struck by the gorgeous traditions that the Jewish faith keeps. Maybe it's because they're foreign to me, but when I sit and listen to the ancient language and the sonorous voice of the cantor, I can't help but feel emotional in a way I never do when I attend services in the faith in which I've been brought up. As I scanned the English translations of some of the prayers, I wondered why this is so -- whether the day in and day out of ritual, say, in the Catholic tradition, coupled with the very real horrible things outside of its traditions effectively destroyed that religion for me. I figured that this ambiguity probably exists for some Jews, too, and that their mysterious and rich traditions, steeped in suffering, aren't always mysterious at all. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just stubborn.
I frosted nearly one hundred cupcakes yesterday. There were chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting and some with vanilla. There were vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting and some with chocolate. There were chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting and a dab of strawberry jam. What did I miss? Oh, there were coconut cupcakes and a chocolate cake with strawberry buttercream.
I felt almost sick watching nearly five pounds of sugar, two dozen eggs and five pounds of butter disappear. Yikes. I'm not doing much to help efforts in clean living am I?
Fuck clean living. CAKE IS CAKE. And that photo up top even the photo itself is absolutely a portal. I imagine seeing the true temple portal must have drawn you upwards.
ReplyDeleteAs for your cupcakes well now I curl into my shell filled with shame about my question about how to frost. INSERT DRAMATIC SIGH.
You sure are doing your part for the joy of living. Damn but I want a cupcake right now. Or a slice of that cake.
ReplyDeleteAs to the service- I have actually sat in the church in Cozumel (Catholic) which has no walls, really, and listened to part of a mass, the singing, all in Spanish, and was moved.
And honey- you know me. The rites and rituals can be beautiful if we don't have to engage our minds in what the words which are being said actually mean.
Oh, YUM. And that ceiling does look like an opening to the heavens - how very beautiful and inspiring it must be to worship in a place like that.
ReplyDeleteLast year was our year of the bat mitzvah and I was enthralled at the ritual of it, especially because it is so different from my Catholic upbringing. And any religion that inspires its children to do for others as a central tenet has my admiration, for sure. As for the cupcakes, I prefer to dispatch with the notion of "clean living" and see you as an alchemist, turning pounds of butter and sugar into fluffy, spongy vessels of celebration and honor. I love that you not only attended the bar mitzvah but that you contributed to the celebration.
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