Interesting. Having been many years (to my memory) that the room has spun on me, I feel rather thankful to be able to confirm my return to my Ocean St abode. The best for me was to see other peoples’ reaction to me in full Dame Edna regalia. There was once a rabbi who asked Eliyahu Hanavi to show him who in the marketplace was destined for the Next World. Eliyahu pointed to two clowns, two jesters – two characters who excelled at bringing joy to the hearts of all those around them. I think G-d would be happy with me if I could be like those two. There is truly nothing greater than seeing joy in another person’s face. And this is not just the Five Stones wine talking or me making a poor attempt to sober up (the room has since spun into a singularity, ready to be sucked into yet another working day – cleverly disguised as Purim. More likely it’s Purim dressing up as a regular day.) One thing is for sure. I am very blessed to be surrounded by not only people who love to have fun, but intellectuals also. If only all of them were there. There are some intellectuals that could use a good smile now and then. Ah. There we are. Spinning has ceased and now my body is wondering when I will help it out with more water. Soon, body – not now… but soon.

Thank G-d for the smiles on peoples faces.

What comforts me, in my self-imposed period of revelry is that I did so with mostly complete retention of my faculties (and true to form, my vocabulary expands in accordance with the quality, type, and general splendour of the various mind-expanding substances imbibed tonight. [Actually just wine - we had a French gal on hand, I felt silly to ask for anything other than that which might have a French name on the label that I could challenge myself by saying out loud]). Case in point, I was able to share an interesting halakhic tidbit with the Hineni Shaliah whilst enjoying my… fourth or fifth glass of wine. Yeah, yeah. Laugh and ask what I’m like in one month’s time on Pessah.
Still, with all my troubles grabbing enough sleep, and with all the alcohol in my system at present, I think it wonderful that I am able to retain the majority of my faculties, including halakhic ones. The halakhic faculty is one worth developing, more than anything else in the area of one’s words, because practice there breeds a good life, one in harmony with others.
I sit here on the border of the most exquisite thankfulness and dedication of my very essence to G-d, the Infinite, and at the same time on the border of blasphemy, exhilarated at each moment by the thrill of which way I will fall, whether I let myself fall there, and how long I will stay before I climb back up to that painful seat on the fence.
Maybe it’s the alcohol talking, I hope not. It’s most likely the alcohol that’s making me sound a drop deeper than usual, but I wonder. Maybe this is the truth coming out, as they say. We think we see everything, we judge and categorise, but whatever we create in our minds are naught but carbon copies of the real. And even the real, we are told, is not real. When you add finite to infinity, Infinity is unaffected.. so also if you subtract finite. That would be a neat - if insufficient - description of G-d, mathematically, if not philosophically.
I… feel a very strange rush when I have had a few more than normal… The depressant element kicks in with a sort of buzz, and, simultaneously, a sense that everything will be alright, a form of Gestaltism perhaps. A buzz. I am tired. Speaking of tired, there is a type of personality with which I find myself completely at ease. Such people are rare, but they do exist. Guys and girls, and I am blessed with the privelage to know a select few. It is that kind of person who prima facie requires nothing to which I most prefer to give. Such giving energises, rather than saps. Which is odd. 

 While staring at the upside down קטשוף bottle on the table, I wonder why that is the vehicle for the message “go to sleep, you have work tomorrow”. Maybe I should have done this more during uni, when I was a ‘uni bum’. Maybe that would have been stupid, whereas on Purim and Simhat Torah it would have been, and is, proper. I don’t know. I just know one can be a thinking and perhaps oft too thoughtful older man in a young adult’s body, who allows a silly, fun-loving adolescent and a young, pure, innocent, happy, laughing child free housing within.

Rabbi Noah Weinberg Z”L, who just passed away, opined that Adam HaRishon was like such a child. When a child falls over, she cries, and then gets up in 5-10 mins and is just as giggling and vivacious as before, scabs and cuts notwithstanding. We should all be blessed with the ability to revert back to that at will.

Odeh La-El.