{"id":1590,"date":"2020-12-09T07:05:27","date_gmt":"2020-12-09T07:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=135855"},"modified":"2020-12-09T07:05:27","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T07:05:27","slug":"that-gospel-spiel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/09\/that-gospel-spiel\/","title":{"rendered":"That Gospel Spiel"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><\/div>\n<p><strong>That Gospel Spiel<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>for A.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I picture you, years from any now, playing<br \/>table tennis with your partner<br \/>at some schmaltzy kibbutz by the wind-pressed sea,<br \/>paddle-swiping at the butterfly ball,<br \/>olives plumping on background branches \u2014<br \/>distractions in the breeze \u2014 while old men kvetch<br \/>over coffee tables like Hasidic Prufrocks,<br \/>their peachy days behind them, and grand<br \/>children gallop in the surf and throw<br \/>apples at the pulsing sun<br \/>You miss and miss the ball and<br \/>your partner laughs, white picket teeth, at your energy<br \/>and light, against a sky you think gratuitously<br \/>blue and bright \u2014 some stained glass scented memory<br \/>with a kind of abstract hope painted into it,<br \/>and you standing there arms akimbo,<br \/>a masterpiece just waiting to dance,<br \/>Mona Lisa at the prom,<br \/>\u201cGame,\u201d he says, like some pick-up line<br \/>at the punch bowl.<\/p>\n<p>All around you, around you all,<br \/>there\u2019s growing talk (there always is),<br \/>up and down the orchards, or hunched over<br \/>together in ripe organic gardens, talk<br \/>of the West Bank, Auschwitz, baseballs being juiced,<br \/>gefilte fish and Jews today, with Pablo<br \/>Casals\u2019s mellow cello groaning from the kitchen,<br \/>and talk talk talk of Groucho<br \/>and Facebook feeds, Einstein, Trump and<br \/>the on and off quantum future of multiverses,<br \/>all thrown together in a sonic stew<br \/>and smelling to the ear<br \/>like something between cacophony and Beethoven\u2019s Ninth.<br \/>Then you in your New Age hippywear smiling<br \/>like the Sun, as a revelation, rising slowly from the sea<br \/>to open up the horizon, a liquid orchid.<br \/>Your partner puts his paddle down<br \/>and gives you his best male gaze, tamed<br \/>by the times and education, the gaze<br \/>your thesis interrogated, embraced now in this light.<br \/>And you\u2019ll stand there now, in the moment,<br \/>like Amelia Earhart washed up on the shore<br \/>drenched with the gospel of human experience,<br \/>brown hair tendrils in the wind held up in a frame of love,<br \/>until the moment breaks like a wave upon the shore<br \/>with an effervescent hiss and is gone.<br \/>You put your paddle down,<br \/>Mona Lisa by the punch bowl,<br \/>And go inside, hands together.<br \/>Fast forward, through all the talk of language<br \/>and time, in a nutshell of memories squirreled away,<br \/>the schmaltzy kibbutz an oracle<br \/>you return to, a disposable sand-kicked mandala<br \/>of color, and rub back the sea<br \/>to its blank white canvas of endless<br \/>possibilities.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/2020\/12\/09\/that-gospel-spiel\/\">Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That Gospel Spiel for A. I picture you, years from any now, playingtable tennis with your partnerat some schmaltzy kibbutz by the wind-pressed sea,paddle-swiping at the butterfly ball,olives\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1590"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1591,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590\/revisions\/1591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}