THE LEAVINGS AT THE HOTEL LENINGRAD

93. THE LEAVINGS AT THE HOTEL LENINGRAD:

I once knew a man whose sister’s name was Riva and all I really knew about that was that she was named after a river in Russia – which always perplexed me since I’d never heard it done like that before and after consulting geography I started to see the name in many other places cropping up and I began enjoying the exotic locale and feeling it brought with it and although I never met the girl or woman I of course conjured up all sorts of fantastical notions about her and her supposed Russian-ness (which for all I knew was untrue) or some absolute and crazed Jewish nobility of spirit and mind – also a notion which went unproven and without any foundation other than my fantastical nature – and the result over a long time was that it all faded away and nothing or no one of this was ever heard of again until I began just now thinking of Maimonides and Kabbalah once more and the rest of what goes with it all and then at a Jewish cemetery just the other day (one of those I’d just mentioned – the leftover crowded almost eerily other-worldly sad places) I saw a large tombstone with the word ‘FATHER’ emblazoned across the top and two hands engraved upon in in some form of mystical finger-separation format which over modern time has become familiar from science-fiction but which evidently in this use over 75 years ago meant something completely other - perhaps some Masonic symbolism or post-Christian or pre-Christian or Jewish Alliance precursor to something still unknown and I only wished I knew at that moment as for right now I still do not know and continue to search out its history but perhaps Riva would know or someone out there (some denizen dark of one or another long-abandoned memory hole of a busted-up synagogue wordless and bereft now of meaning WHY OH WHY do such things happen ? and how is all the world we owe nothing to always somehow calling in debts nonetheless?) - I know not I know not - BUT who is to file all which needs to be filed who is to be the collector of the wide escarpment of notion and tongue and information we require to continue and who WHEN WE FIND THAT PERSON will acknowledge the presence of what he or she is and by what means will we recognize what needs recognition ? for these are the questions which need answering and answering they need without any clinical attraction of the broken mind CLEAR THOUGHT and random harvest – somewhere between the two is all of what we need.