After a long debate, he agreed to donate a couple of precious hours of his holy Wednesday for boots shopping. On the way to the music Cite – the chosen activity for the day -- we found a large promising shoe store for kids.
With a bit of help from Adam, fine-tuning my accent at the store, we were able to ask for warm winter boots with a questionable European size. An older saleswoman, with a voice adapted to cigarettes and coughing returned with different sizes of the boots we liked. Adam, who was aware that every moment at the store was one less moment of freedom, impressed me with his efficient attitude trying on the boots. Yet, both boots were too small.
The lady looked at me and said in a voice that felt like it was coming from another place, the way I imagine time would sound like: "Madam, it is all too small for your son here.” I looked at the number of the rejected innocent boot and said don’t you have a 36? And with the same patient and clear tone, she said “Madam, he needs a man’s size.” A sense of rebelliousness mixed with refusal to understand overwhelmed me so I continued, this time with a pleading tone “don’t you have a 36?” "No Madam,” she pointed to the store across the street – “There,” she paused to be even clearer “at the man’s store”. I looked at Adam’s feet with pain and pleasure, with horror and pride, with sadness and wonder. How did he grow so fast? I never thought it would be like this, to be pushed out of a certain social rubric by the shoe saleswoman. The closest feelings that I had had was on the last day of Adam’s nursery school, but there I had time to think about it and a group to share it with.
How all this is related to Leonard Cohen? Because this is what I really wanted to write about -- his performance here in Paris, a show we were lucky enough to attend last night. When I was 15 my brother took me to see Leonard Cohen in Benyane Hauma in Jerusalem. Cohen was the singer from the black, white and sepia album playing Suzanne , Like a Bird on a Wire, So Long Marianne and more songs which I adored. On the other side of the large square album were all the words to the songs which I barely understood. Suzanne was the first song I learned to play on the guitar. All the chords were written in neat red pen while all the words, translated to Hebrew, were written in pencil. I played this song endlessly, in candlelight, after a dancing party, to a circle of friends drinking cinnamon tea, around bonfires, in closed rooms where the past belonged to the parents and the future to us. I wondered about Suzanne who took her lover to the river and fed him tea and oranges.
At 15, when everything was painfully possible and I felt I knew everything there is to know, I saw the man who knew Suzanne and was probably the man who drank her tea and ate her oranges.
Sometimes, more often than not, I only know after the fact, the things that change my life. But with the Leonard Cohen performance a couple of years after the ‘73 War, I knew my life was changing as it happened, as he picked on the strings singing his songs. And I was right.
Before joining my army service I went all the way to Hidera Greece to knock on his door at the small house he had on the island. He was not there. For three days I looked in the café to see if he is coming. I got to talk to the waitress who knew him and that was the extent of my contact, plus a poem I wrote and left on his door.
For 35 years I followed his career; his dry spells, his spiritual journeys, his books, new records, his divorces and love affairs. I even met a childhood friend of his who gave me an album signed by him especially for me.
35 years later, here in Paris I watched him through tears for three and a half hours.
It was our 10th anniversary, Pete surprised me with tickets for the show that had been sold out for the last two months. The venue was small and contained a group of strangers who seemed to share nothing except an enormous love for Cohen.
Leonard Cohen, Gray and Old with a voice that aged like wine -- deep and full, told us about life, about time, about separation and attachment, about winning and losing, about playing and mourning. His feeble knees bent as he kneeled in front of us with the same, if not purer, gratitude that we felt towards him. He bowed to his musicians again and again, acknowledging their contributions with sincere awe of their talent. All the musicians on the stage were wearing dark suits and fedoras. The show was all structure and planned to the finest detail. It was formality at it utmost, yet it allowed a spontaneity and intimacy I have never experienced in any show. This combination of the formal and the unique, the ceremonial and the idiosyncratic -- I have only experienced while practicing Za Zen – the Japanese strict form of sitting.
Adam’s long bare feet, which not too long ago, fit in my mouth -- did grow. His giggles turned into articulate thoughtful sentences, and his feet now are long and elegant. I can’t stop asking myself did I miss anything during this magical process of growing, did I stay aware of the time passing, was I present? and am I now?
As Leonard Cohen sang last night:
“ The birds they sang
at the break of day
‘start again’ I heard them say
don’t dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light comes in.”
In my Zen practice in Green Gulch I remember most clearly Norman Fisher saying: it's only when you know you have stopped being mindful of your breath -- only then is when you are able to come back to it.
