Jeremiah 49

Tonight I can not focus: You face appears in my mind, surrounded by shards, the broken cities of the nations that will be destroyed - Ammon and Edom and other names I have been taught to care about. He said to show him the writing, but how can he know me? How can I let him kiss me when my thighs - what about my thighs? They no longer long for your touch, but they are still my thighs, and my body is still my body.

I do not like this sense of ownership, any more than I like the destruction of a nation I can not understand. Words like "revenge" ring hollow, and I can not define terms like "love" or "intimacy". I am told that revenge is the best happiness, or maybe the other way around.

It doesn't really matter. I am here, full of coffee, on a bed, trying to figure out what I want, afraid to know, because then I must claim it - just as I was afraid to let the words of this chapter seep through me, words about swords and orphans, prophecies about nations that exist now only in our imagination, the most powerful place of all.

I once watched a scientist talk about how humans were the only species whose imagination alone could lead them to orgasm, and I wanted to ask how she knew. Had she spoken to the dolphins and the lizzards? Do scientists even know how to measure when other species have orgasms? Perhaps these seem like silly questions, but so was her lecture, I guess.

It was a TED talk - very hit or miss, that website - and I think now I'm supposed to make some sort of joke about cum and cock and white stuff hitting someone's eyebrow, but I really don't want to.

My male friends tell me that sex with a condom is just not the same. Well tough luck. As with so many other things in life, its the woman who carries the burden - and most religious women don't even believe in abortion, so there we are, stuck between the choice of violating our beliefs, marrying men we don't love, or becoming social outcasts.

I have no idea what this has to do with Jeremiah, unless its that this too, is about conquering and violatins, and doesn't the Talmud compare land to a woman's body?

Tractates of thighs waiting to be learned by heart.

Waiting, waiting, waiting -we've already forgotten what we are waiting for. Time to bring in the Becket, only I despise postmodernism, with a - not a real passion, but an ironic passion, because feelings are so passe - almost as passe as prophets.

Please pass the salt. Let me sprinkle it between your eyes. Her face is so cute when she cries.

Jeremiah 48

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The Perils of Gossip

As she spoke, she could feel each word forming a wrinkle on her soul. She clutched at her sunglasses, as if the sun would pierce her skin, that little soft spot near her heart that tingled when she sounded out his name. Her laughter seemed false; the chocolate lost its magic, and she shrank into fear like a shadow. "I wish I could hold you", she said, but the breasts were far, the thighs on another shore. The sand was soft; grains seethed in an out of the water, like the blood that was pumped through four chambers, whose purposes she could not fathom, anymore than she could understand the distance between them: An ocean no mariner dared sail, and on the other side, a continent that would remain alone, unconquered and untamed. A field of weeds surrounded by purple flowers. Grains that seethe like your thighs. I bite my lips, and try not to whisper your name when I close my eyes.

Jeremiah 47 (5 minute imaginative exercise)

I have 5 minutes to describe a conquering army:

5 minutes until the chariots get here, and my wife's bread is burning in the oven. Just as well - I wouldn't have them eating something tasty - bad enough that they'll come between her thighs. I offered to kill her with my sword, but she didn't seem to keen on the idea. Johnny and Al have already been sent away from the castle.

Fucking dustclouds. The beating of hoofs is like the stomping of my thighs, and I wish that I could lay with her for a thousand nights. Funny thing to regret, I suppose, but why not? And why dwell on philosophy, with four minutes left, and counting?

2 now. Damn, that took a while to type. Fingers - stange things, aren't they? I never thought about it really: Is this the part where I'm supposed to say that every breath is a miracle? I open my mouth and wait for a prayer.

"No" is the only word that comes out. There's one minute left, and I want a drink of water. One minute to describe the swords, spear-tips that thrust -

Jeremiah 46

I based this on an exercise in my class at Beit Avichai: We write down verses from Song of  Songs that appeal to us and write poems out of them. Here I took verses from Jeremiah, chapter 46, and made a poem based out of my own loose translations of the verses (with a line added at the end that was not directly based off of a loose translation of a verse).

Prepare your shield and make war;
cover me in blood like kisses.

Why have I seen the back coat of your armor?
Don't run away; I can't tell you not to fear.

You rise up like the Nile to greet me;
my eyes are blinded by your waves.

Why have I beheld the glory,
waters too bright for my eyes?

I can still feel your ripples against my thighs.

Below are the verses I used (3, 5, 6,7, 8, 25, 27, 28):

ערכו מגן וצנה uגשו מלחמה
מדוע  ראיתי המה חתים נסגים אחור
אל ינוס הקהל
הנני פוקד
אל תירא עבדי יעקב
מדוע ראיתי
מי זה כיאר יעלה