I observed Shabbos for the first time this weekend, and it has been sad to arrive at its end. I feel less alive now, less alive after 8:53; I feel a certain dreaminess left me, I was writing as if nothing was going on in the world, I know writing isn’t allowed on Shabbos, but I did it anyway in my weird dreaminess, not writing anything practical. I was writing fiction, maybe it wasn’t truly inscription, and I believe I shall delete it.

It felt absorbing, too absorbing to write, and I ended up not going for the long walk I had planned to go on. Then, a few hours after Shabbos had ended, I heard a loud crash and several second of glass shattering; it sounded like someone had dropped something in the hallway. The ceiling light fixture of my bathroom had fallen, crashing into the bahtub, and some wet sand started to fall out of the hole in the ceiling. I talked to Adam about it, and then to Jerry, and then to David, the married man from CB. We have been talking more in the wake of Adam’s question about marriage and Adam’s demand for a break, and it’s been interesting to hear more about the trajectory of David’s married life, a pleasant surprise given the fact that I had lost interest in him.

He, the sole homeowner I know, advised me to turn the electricity off in the bathroom, if I had access to a circuit breaker. I did, so I turned it off. Then I wondered with him if it was pulverized or wet vermiculite with asbestos in it, before concluding that it was probably actually just sand, maybe used to set the bathtub in the unit above.

There was also a 3.0 earthquake at 10:18 in New Jersey. I realized that I had felt it, thinking for a second that it was the subway making the ground shake, though the subway never does here, as it goes slowly above ground. I wondered if the earthquake had exacerbated the leak that had messed with the ceiling light, or triggered its demise.

So that made for a dramatic end to Shabbos, and I felt particularly anxious because I was tired but restless, having failed to go for a walk, and having spent all that time writing fiction, which I’m pretty sure I don’t really enjoy writing and derive very little edification from. On the other hand, its onset had been very pleasant, and I had enjoyed the rush of chores before it began, and I had enjoyed lighting the candles, and the strange carefulness involved in making sure not to ignite any electrical circuits.

The candles I bought were 4-hour burn candles, which are maybe three inches tall, and they came in a pack of 72, meaning I have 36 more weeks with them unless I choose to use other candles. The 4-hour burn time really lasts the right amount of time for the summer, though I imagine that in the winter, 6-hour candles would be appropriate.

Anyway, I have a lot to learn, and I have a lot of reading to get through.

I am reading Sons and Lovers. I am reading Translating the Jewish Freud: Psychoanalysis in Hebrew and Yiddish. I am reading old posts I’ve written.

I don’t know which Shabbat rules I will follow and which I will not follow as this progresses, but I imagine that not writing is something I can partially follow, if I choose not to write things like to-do lists, but I still believe I should write so long as it doesn’t feel “creative.” I understand that writing must be creative on some level, but I don’t believe the kind of writing I’ve set out to do is creative. For all my skepticism of Reform Judaism, I’m probably engaged in a similar intellectual process as a Reform rabbi, so maybe I should learn more about how they come up with their modifications.

A lot of the week has involved some kind of repair of my relationship with Adam, he claims he is not foreclosing anything in the future, he just needs time to “be his own person” for now. And I tell him that I respect his decision and desire and I signal my investment in him by showing him photos of my candles and my challah.

It has also involved a lot of growth in my relationship with Jerry.

Jerry, my adorable son. Jerry, my favorite shegetz.

I don’t know why, but I have a very philosophical relationship with Jerry, I am always wondering why in relation to him. That’s the name of his substack: Jerry, why? Jerry, why are you my son? Jerry, what are you thinking? What sorts of interesting thoughts are lying low in your head, and when, or how will they come out? What sorts of strokes of comic genius will come out of your mouth next, and when, and how did you manage to come up with them? I really like Jerry, a lot, in spite of or maybe because of our differences. And I guess it remains true that he’s among the few people I know who write and read very consistently in a way I can observe and make contact with.

What does it mean to be someone’s mother, someone’s perverse and immature mother? What does it mean to be a mother with an erotic interest in her son, or a despotic sense of owning him, even if she allows him the greatest freedom and independence? What does it mean to be a mother who respects her child’s independence too much, to the point of expecting him to be able to endure anything, without her guidance or support?

I’d like to know more about this fantasy of mine, and what it allows me to forget.

I went to take some of my stuff from Adam’s apartment on Sunday, and since then I’ve been feeling this animalistic degree of frustration. He was so affectionate, and I got so wet, my underwear was soaked through with my wetness, through the double layer of cotton, and I compelled him to finger me. Then I felt so sad afterwards, so sad that I called him in the evening and he was angry with me for imposing my feelings on him.

He explicitly reminded me that he hadn’t initiated the sexual part of our encounter.

So I’ve been violating you, I said, I’ve been violating you for six months.

Adam is not a child or an animal, so one could say he’s partly to blame for not stating his needs sooner, but he shouldn’t have to defend himself against me if I love him. If I love him I know him. If I love him I will want to know what he’s thinking. And if he says something I will take it at face value or wonder where it’s coming from.

Maybe I wondered too much about where it was coming from, and didn’t hear the immediate need. I didn’t hear what was most urgent: that I stop doing what I was doing immediately. So that feeling that I’ve violated a child or an animal persists.

He claims that I am a very likable person and that he can tell, when he sees me with others, that others respect me a great deal, and that I am better than most people in some fundamental way. I think it’s very odd to be both unforgivable, as I feel about myself, and like some prized object, according to someone else. In my self-centered, inward, self-nursing thoughts, I think of myself as being like an extremely famous serial sex criminal, or a popular and well-known academic who preys on his young students. The things people get away with when they’re told they’re exceptional!

It’s interesting to me that so much of Adam’s communication with me involves sharing images of cute animals, like rabbits, or of dogs, especially dogs in strollers.

I believe he is saying and not saying, you are one of these things that I find so adorable. Maybe he is actually saying, isn’t that thing nice, let’s appreciate its cuteness together.

One of my teachers this semester has a poodle, an elegant, somewhat petite fawn-colored poodle named Althea who stays in the office with her all day. She’s a very elegant dog, hard not to find attractive, respectable, adorable, and well-behaved, but her behavior tells a realer and truer story about who she is and what she lives for.

The fawn-colored poodle often looks bored during class, and either sleeps, paws at her bed, or comes to us students in search of stimulation. Other students in the class tend to beckon at her and touch her with big smiles on their faces, but I never do. Last time she climbed onto the sofa and approached me with her snout close to my face. It was as if she was about to kiss me, but I knew that she merely wanted to smell or lick something new. I knew her gesture had nothing to do with affection or desire, and that being so close to me was simply something that would stimulate her senses. She sniffed me and she sniffed my shoes and she sniffed my backpack. I wondered if she was particularly interested in my magnolia perfume, or if it was my native odor that she “heard” most clearly. Instead of giving her scratches or stroking her fur, I wrapped my fingers around her foreleg and gripped it, feeling the lean musculature beneath the skin. I knew that it didn’t mean much to her, in terms of her pleasure or stimulation, but I figured that if she wanted her selfish pleasure of smelling me, I’d do what I wanted and feel her legs.

After getting what I wanted, I softened a bit, and fondled her soft ears with those curls that feel like mongolian sheepskin, and put my hand out to allow her to lick it, and this was interesting, since her tongue was very soft, not like a cat’s, more like something I would eat. But I didn’t give her the gratification of a hard scratch or a deep petting because I wasn’t into that kind of stuff, that game of giving affection to a dog who touches you out of boredom. I guess I was a bit worried that my classmates would notice how dispassionate I was, so I did give her a little scratch before she moved on.

This got me thinking, I must not love dogs at all. No more than I could love a human stranger who came up to me and harrassed me for sex. And at the same time I love animals who have no interest in me, like tarantulas; I like watching them hunt and groom themselves. I like watching fishes in aquariums do their thing, and I like frogs. That’s not really love is it, that’s admiration, but I still adore these animals and when my tarantula died I cried intensely in analysis and thought about writing something in mourning. I didn’t, however, because I wanted to respect that she wasn’t a human and that if another tarantula died she wouldn’t give a fuck about it at all. A tarantula is a solitary creature, it doesn’t hold funerals for its kin. So don’t funeralize a tarantula.

Teacher was the name of my tarantula, and I loved her enough to call her that. Althea is a dog whose “wrist” I’ve held, that’s the only condition under which I feel like calling her by her name. I really feel like animals can’t be named until something happens with them. I wasn’t called Bibi until Adam started calling me Bibi, it still feels real and true; it is more truly my name than the one I am otherwise called, though since Jerry started calling me Didi, I’ve started to hear it differently, maybe as my own name.

(These are the boundaries within which one may carry objects on Shabbos in Boro Park. I was intensely aware of the fact that I was carrying stuff outside on Saturday morning, and right outside of the eruv, as I walked to 8th Ave and 40th St to sit with Jerry at a café. I like this map very much in any case, and would like to trace this border by foot, and see if I can see the eruv wire intact, and maybe photograph it.)