The Voyages of the Starship Enterprise

In the beginning there was darknessand then there was lightThere are generations. They begin in darkness.They get light. A kind of darkness returns.We are Diaspora and post-garment districtwhich makes us both post-exilic and post-textilic.Our late elders wrote Russian as well as Yiddishso we are also post-Cyrillic.

By the Babylon turnpike we sad down and wept.By the waters of the Gowanus Canal. Everyonean exile, sits at the edge of the East River, oraches for some lost temple, on a turnpike wall.An unusually ancient people, within a centuryof an attempt at our eradication beyond scale.It makes you unhappy. Ask any Ute or an InuitThis is a very strange land between ProximaCentauri and the fat old sun, absurd even.How can we sing in the strange land these yearsturned out to be?

These are the generations of heaven and earth.These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.The thesis is that there was a beginning.The thesis is there was an ending and the endingwas exile. The thesis is that something sweetcame before the horror. Something Edenicbefore the bloody ash.How does it feel to be post-exilic, post-textilic,and post-Cyrillic?

It's not idyllic.They were from someplace dangerous.We are from someplace dangerous too.Then you did something you shouldn't have done,ate something you shouldn't have eaten.You are always eating, aren't you?

Voltaire's Enlightenment was nicebut Spinoza led the Jews into lighta good two centuries prior.Which set us on fire.Which set us on fire.

As Eve said to Adam,"If this is the beginningwhy am I already so tired?"

It was going when we got here. Yet westare in it, standing there like Captain Picard.Hearts on our sleeves like Commander Troi.Leonard Nimoy and Bill Shatner are both Jewish;the "live long and prosper" hand rabbinical,a secret sign Nimoy spotted in shul when hisfather told him to close his eyes. Like Lot'sWife he looked, and like her got stuck for life.

There they are on the bridge, Kirk and Spock,sailing into the universewhere no one has ever gone before,exile upon exile,until nothing feels like home as muchas further exile, further out.By the waters of the Babylon Turnpike,in Brooklyn by the Gowanus,in a strange land. Song.Everything changes, all are exile,wailing on a turnpike wall. Song.In a strange land.Animals and every creeping thing.Song. Replenish the earth.In a strange land.By the water of Babylonsat down and song.

"These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise."

"In a strange land."