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The Valley of Ednah
- University of Iowa Press
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The Valley ofEdnah1 When Rabbi Meir came to Rabbi Ishmael and gave his profession as a scribe (ofthe Torah) the latter required ofhim the utmost care, "for ifyou leave out a single letter or write a single letter too much, you will be found as one who destroys the whole world." ERUV.I3 A ... My one great friend of childhood and adolescence was Isaac Singer, with whom I got into long discussions about the nature of the afterlife, and read from his small library of spiritual and psychic books. I communicated to him all my dreams, with which he was much ffttH'e-in sympathy H'.aft m; parents, ana was later te }t;l'netiEe }tim at fifteen if'. a -f er, stleeessftll eltt'er 1. The following is a portion of the first "chapter" of Nola's memoir, which I have broken off at, what seems to me, a natural stopping place. The chapter heading is my own invention, and I, like my mother before me, have done some editing ofNola's original-not for style or content, but for the sake ofbrevity, Nola sometimes records page after numbing page of her dreams, and while a couple of them are crucial, I believe, to an understanding of who she was, I didn't think the reader would have the patience to wade through them all, nor through the sometimes lofty and tangential descriptions peppering Nola's memoir. So, knowing full well that I am perhaps tainting Nola's text, I shrug my shoulders finally and say, You'll have to trust me on this one, My edits are indicated with ellipses. I have also included, after much deliberation, my mother's edits and Nola's edits. I had originally thought I'd expunge the text ofall edits and present the reader with a "clean" copy, but discovering such a copy is nearly impossible, and this story is as much about editing as it is uncovering the original . The crossed-out passages are, to me, often as interesting as the passages that have been kept-why they've been crossed out is the question, and by whom, my mother or Nola? I believe that the earlier substitutions are my mother's, although not exclusively. Later on, when my mother gave up, finding the task too difficult, too tiring and painful, Nola took over, and now finally, I'm trying to tell her story again, although perhaps not in a fashion she or my mother anticipated. Nola iment aimea at aisee'/erir.(j his ps),ehle petel'ttial. He seemed to know much more about the psychiC than I did, and took me once to an obscure shop in Manhattan where we tried unsuccessfully to get e.s.p. cards. After a while, though, he too could not comprehend l:ll'taerstalta why I was more concerned with the afterlife than with the present one, and kept telling me that an excessive interest in the spiritual was "unhealthy," and why didn't I get interested in other things, until tne t de ef us final!:;' paNea eem palty, sinee ne ....as ur.a19le te unaeI stal'ta me. I continued to experience my selitar), visions, until they moved me to discover their source and cause, al'ta I eeula tnink ef l'tetI-.il't(j else.At the age of twelve I left the Bronx with my parents to live in Manhattan, and attend the New Lincoln school. It was a private, progressive institution and we were indoctrinated into Eastern culture at a fer, eaIl) a(je, sinee it has the seneel pelie, te pre'dae its pttpils flitI-. a tIainilt(j in aiseiplines tI-.at here (jeneIall, i(jnerea in the ff.ltjeIit, ef pu19lie seneels. When I was twelve, theIefeIe, I began reading the teachings of the compassionate Buddha, the works of Lao-Tze, and Pearl Buck; the latter inspired me to write a poem which attempted to divinize the earth ... like Blake I began to compare the cosmic forces which had invaded my life and dreams to the music of human breath exhaled upon a flower .... It was at this point that I had the most critical experience of my childhood l:ife.;-and the precursor of a vast chain of mystical visions which were at last to lead me to my guru. It was the night of December 26th, the day after Christmas. The year was 1960, and I was still thirteen. I began to...