Atonement

“Hope you had a great Yom Kippur! ;)”

I reread the words, remind myself with a free-falling sense of humor that there are probably not many Jews on gay bear social networks while internally kicking myself for deleting my JDate profile.

“It’s not really that kind of….”

I stop myself and question if it is worth the time. Is it ever worth the time to explain a holiday where the appropriate felicity is “I hope you have an easy fast?” Realistically, how many non-Jews get lessons on tactfully acknowledging High Holy Days? Also, what was with the ;)? Is that supposed to be sexy? Did someone just wish me a sexy Yom Kippur? 

I delete the message. If I elaborated further, I would open myself up to the obvious: No. It had NOT been an easy fast. In fact, I could not remember a worse fast. Explaining the details of it would be an immediate end to any lines of communication with a practical stranger. “No,” I would answer if the barriers and constructs of society permitted elaborating in detail about the fast. “In fact, I spent a good portion of the day looking at pictures of carrot cakes online and I’m wearing white after Labor Day.”

I can smell the absolute divinity of vegetable fajitas cooking from a restaurant next door. It is tempting and the time left could be measured in minutes now. 7 minutes, in fact. For a moment, I debate it. It was close enough, right? Not to mention, I hadn’t done anything this year especially terrible. How much atoning could I REALLY need to do? I hadn’t treated anyone with cruelty. I’d made charitable donations. I’d avoided ritual satanism for yet another year.

“I’ve been good enough,” I think. 

Good enough, I determine, to warrant a burrito bowl with 4 minutes to spare before the fast technically ended. 

What did I need with atonement? How do I right a wrong with a figure who, if it were truly there, had failed to atone in too many ways to count? 

“Who is watching?” I internally grumble in frustration (the message remains unanswered). My secularism was, for some reason, not compelling enough to warrant breaking the rules. 

Anti-intellectualism. Completely pointless sacrifice designed to make people feel needlessly inadequate.

Yet I do not move. 

I know why I stand still. The idols are gone. The temple of my mind has been stripped of anything of value. All that was holy and might fetch a price had been sold to blog posts, drunken rants, and poems scratched idly on bits of paper, but still I stood in an empty room that I knew would never hold anything again. 

My less-than-average misery, my private, common melodrama of a day without food had not numbed me completely. It is, truly, a beautiful evening. 

The moon sat perfectly round (edible as peppermint cream) against a deep-blue evening sky speckled, I realize for the first time, with needle-sharp flecks of silver starlight. The air was mercifully cool, animated in brisk gusts that chilled yet kept my mind off of stupid, delicious guacamole and margaritas (bottled and less alcoholic than mouthwash, but I was in no position to grouse). 

I concentrate again on poetry to distract myself from indulgence. 

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.”

I knew before it entered my mind that it would be the poem to get me through the next few moments as I tried to simultaneously appreciate the comfort of nature in a moment of self-imposed frustration. 

Mary Oliver. 

Never in any crisis of my life have I been without Mary Oliver. 

This very poem had been read the Saturday before at a funeral where I burned in the sun by the East River and tried to fathom a world without someone I loved very deeply, tried to imagine with both hope and fear a day where I managed not to think of a beloved friend who disappeared, who ceased to exist in a split second. 

“You do not have to be good.”

But who could be good in days like this?

You do not have to walk on your hands and knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

Forty years, but who is counting?

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

But there are worse things than atonement. 

You do not have to be good.

But perhaps we do.

There are words, I remember, a ceremony before one breaks the fast, confident that s/he is even with a silent parent who is miraculously absolved from such formalities. The tone should, I have read, be one of light-heartedness and celebration.

I didn’t feel especially festive. 

“I’ve been good enough,” I say again, hoping that it would be true.

Perhaps, though, not so good at all. 

Meanwhile the world goes on. 

“Who are we kidding? You didn’t atone for shit.”

I see the chest of ice flakes with whole peppers in them (fat, green as earth). I think of biting them, chewing them whole, stem and all. I think of the burn, gradual to extreme, the flaming irritation of pepper seeds that could burn away anything left inside of me that is not purged and starting over.

I look one last time at the unanswered message and type quickly. 

Thanks. It was a humdinger. We closed the place. 

Send. 

 I open the door to a symphony of smells on a hot, holy grill welcoming me back from atonement.