{"id":5332,"date":"2023-01-05T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beyondthelastestate.com\/archive\/?p=5332"},"modified":"2023-01-04T11:23:03","modified_gmt":"2023-01-04T16:23:03","slug":"jews-for-pinocchio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beyondthelastestate.com\/archive\/jews-for-pinocchio\/","title":{"rendered":"Jews for Pinocchio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Her name was Leah. She was quiet and clearly unpopular. There was a rumor she shit her pants. I definitely didn\u2019t question the validity of this rumor. Leah looked exactly like the kind of 9 year old who would shit her pants. She was the first and last Jew for Jesus<\/a> I ever met. I knew this because she advertised. She wore a purple t-shirt with a big white Jewish star on the front and the words \u201cJews for Jesus\u201d encircling the star like a toothless pentagram. I feared showing her even an ounce of friendliness, in case she was recruiting. As far as I could tell, there was no serious consequence to my open disdain for Leah. What kind of bisexual choice is Jews for Jesus anyway? What kind of cake was she trying to have and eat too?<\/p>\n

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April Windsor drank milk with dinner. When I went over to her house, the beverage options were off. Milk with dinner, and for breakfast, orange juice that came out of the freezer. Friday sleepovers were preferable at April\u2019s house. Saturday sleepovers meant I went along to church on Sunday. Church made me anxious. I had such limited exposure to Christianity in general, Lutheranism in particular. There were more worshippers at April\u2019s church on a random Sunday than I\u2019d ever seen at Rosh Hashanah. But still, my myopic LA Jewish bubble convinced me that Christians were the minority.<\/p>\n

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April went down to the stage (pulpit?) to get her wafer with the other believers. The preacher set it up perfectly. This guy was a real sultan of segueway. He said, \u201cAnyone who wants to come forward for consecration is welcome.\u201d Consecration made me think of the orange juice from concentrate in April\u2019s freezer. Some words are all process and therefore unknowable. I can\u2019t relate to consecration, collision, consternation. Those are what my dad would have called $10 dollar words.<\/p>\n

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All religious services make me extremely hungry. The marked absence of food is what does it. I get nervous in any space where food isn\u2019t present. In my office-worker days, I was that bitch with a full fucking snack drawer. Anyway, I was dying to know what that wafer tasted like because April said it tasted like nothing and that is just impossible. I asked her, is it good though? She couldn\u2019t answer me. I was 3 or 4 trips to her church deep, when I just rolled up with April, knelt and got one myself. No one stopped me but I felt like they should or they would at any moment. I wondered if the wafer would burn my tongue. A wafer tastes like a cheap ice cream cone, by the way.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s the end of the year. From the middle of December until the new year, it\u2019s impossible to do anything but bide my time. I\u2019m not a hero. I\u2019m not about to start some ambitious project on December 18th. My days are purposely empty. I can afford this lifestyle because I was a good saver during my office-worker days. I can live off the fat rendered from years in that ergonomic chair. What did I do all day for 10 years? I typed synergistic. I typed coopetition. I typed innovation ten times into every presentation. Now I write what I want. My time is mine to squander until I have to pick up the kids. It\u2019s 1pm. I pop a blue gummi and put on Guillermo del Toro\u2019s Pinocchio<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Getting high and watching animation is one of life\u2019s reliable joys. Outside it is -7 C, the kind of cold that erases your chin from your face. I am on the couch with a thick duvet covered in brown and pink roses. I embrace the present fully. I open myself up for immersion and escape.<\/p>\n

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By the time<\/i><\/p>\n

Master Geppetto made Pinocchio,<\/i><\/p>\n

he had already lost a son.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now this was quite a few years<\/i><\/p>\n

before my time,<\/i><\/p>\n

but I learnt the story.<\/i><\/p>\n

And then it became my story.<\/i><\/p>\n

Geppetto lost Carlo during the Great War.<\/i><\/p>\n

They’d been together only ten years.<\/i><\/p>\n

But it was as if Carlo had taken<\/i><\/p>\n

the old man’s life with him.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first lines of the script\u2013spoken by Ewan Mcgregor as Sebastian J. Cricket\u2013are a poem about grief. They are also a writer\u2019s introduction, a masterful grounding in time and place, and a promise that nothing about this film will be light and easy.<\/p>\n

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The appeal of source material, of ancient stories, is that they include everything. All the major human themes with none of the irony or metaphor that stymies so many modern productions. Pinocchio<\/i> is an ancient story. When a story gets old enough, it\u2019s basically a religious text. What\u2019s the difference between Adam and Eve and Beowulf<\/i>? Between Abraham and Faust<\/i>? Between a story where a guy makes loaves of bread into fish and a story where a boy is made out of wood and grows his nose whenever he lies? Can I believe in Pinocchio<\/i>? Do I? Is this the only chance for someone like me? Someone without a religious community, to have an ecstatic experience?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m drawn to mainstream films that present a version of religion that\u2019s carefully God avoidant. In these productions, death is a place where arbitration occurs, where a hierarchical network is hinted at, and lessons must be learned to move on. Heaven and Hell are only hinted at, sometimes not mentioned at all. There might even be a celestial figure or two, but these films are purposely distancing themselves from recognizable religion.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first example that really spoke to me was Albert Brooks\u2019 Defending Your Life<\/i><\/a>. After getting hit by a bus, Brooks finds himself in a well oiled purgatory where he\u2019s assigned a caseworker and must have his life\u2019s choices examined by cosmic judges. This stopover of the afterlife is depicted as an Orlando resort, with trams escorting the newly dead to the hall of past lives (where you can see who you\u2019ve been), restaurants (where guests can gorge themselves with no consequence), and a schlocky comedy club (where a lounge singer does a mediocre rendition of \u201cThat\u2019s Life\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was 11 when I first saw Albert Brooks in an ill-fitting toga, fall in love with Meryl Streep during their stopover to eternity. It\u2019s clear that Brooks has a few more rounds to go on earth. He lived a weak-willed, unconfident life and learned very little about the meaning of existence. But during his weekend, he grows a big pair chasing after Streep, his soulmate. In the end, the star crossed lovers are on different trams, headed to different destinations but Brooks does not go gently into that good night. He leaps from his tram to Streep\u2019s and because of this insane act of last minute bravery, the cosmic judge rewards him and lets him join Streep in the VIP area of the afterlife.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Albert Brooks shopped at the same Gelson\u2019s as my family. I saw him in the produce section shortly after I saw Defending Your Life<\/i>. I asked my mom for a pen and paper and she fished it out of her purse. Then I asked Albert Brooks for his autograph and he said, \u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lying comes naturally to me just as not believing in God comes naturally to me. It\u2019s possible the two concepts are related. When I was just a little whippersnapper, the guitar playing rabbi took a beat between Hebrew hits to tell his young flock about HASHEM. HASHEM is all around you. HASHEM is the trees. HASHEM is the wind. HASHEM is your own breath.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Who is this for, I wondered? Who\u2019s actually buying this junk? What kind of nursery rhyme bullshit is this? Here we are, tough Jews, bearers of our ancestors’ stories. As Woody Allen put it, \u201cMy grammy never gave gifts. She was too busy getting raped by Cossacks<\/a>.\u201d So who does this long haired hippie rabbi with his fucking<\/i> denim vest think he is? God is bullshit. God does not exist. God is a fantasy for people who are too weak to cope with the brevity of life, which doles out one joyful moment for every 400 hundred shitty ones, if you\u2019re lucky.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lying is just picking up on your own wish fulfillment or tuning into the wishes of others. I can make someone feel great with a soft lie. Most of us can.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Significant lies I\u2019ve told:<\/b><\/p>\n