2002-09-18 7:08 p.m.
sensitive sunsets

With the exception of certain drugs and religious ecstasy, there are very moments in life that one can describe as 'better than sex.'

Sunsets fall hard into that category (especially late ones; I took the 6:30 boat, later than usual). One hand on the rail, one hand on the remote of my MP3 player, scrolling from song to song, filling my head with gorgeous sounds. Feeling the wind sculpt itself as it shoots by my face, watching the sky erupt into watercolors, not just being adrift in the water, but charging through it, hands holding tight to the bow of the boat...I feel spent and charged, all the stresses of the day smoothed away and my burn of strained eyes soothed by natural light.

I'll never get enough of that. Never.

I thought a lot of Chassidim were just coming from work one day last week, because hordes of families from Borough Park, Midwood, Kensington, all of the orthodox neighborhoods, were lining the docks at the Brooklyn Army Terminal. They were throwing bread into the water, and like a typical nonpracticing Jew, I asked what they were doing. It's called pashrut, the father (with his two kids carefully tucked behind him) informed me, where you symbolically cast your sins into the sea at sunset. They had to do it the day after Rosh Hashanah, because they weren't near enough to a body of water the day of services to make it back in time to pray.

I'm getting touched by a lot of things these days. My sensitivity at work for me, for once.

I will write a book and it will be called Life and How to Live It...