All in all, Dave had pretty good kavanna through Shemonah Esrei Bracha #7 = S'lach Lanu. It was in #8 = Go'el Yisroel that the troubles started. Specifically, the troubles of Yanky, his son, who had failed his road test for the third time. It was a better performance overall, in that the distance between his car and the other car he almost sideswiped had nearly doubled from three inches in his last outing to five in this one. Still, it had unnerved the examiner enough to not give Yanky the benefit of the doubt when he ran the two stop signs.
Yanky sure is in the dumps about this. Won't even nosh on blue raspberry Frucht Tape, which is his favorite snack. That's pretty severe. But is it legit to have this in mind in Go'el Yisroel? On the one hand, it sounds trivial to think of road tests at this point of the Shemoneh Esrei. On the other, he is really down, and it's bringing down the whole family, too. And it is in the first half of the central section of the Amidah, which is focused more on personal issues, while the latter half covers their corresponding national ones.
The debate raged on in Dave's mind, through Brachos #9-16, only coming to a pause towards the end of #17 = Retzei when he somehow recalled that yesterday was Rosh Chodesh, and was trying to remember whether this month had a two-day Rosh Chodesh or not. That's when it hit him that he had been struck by yet another episode of the mind drift.
But Dave was also in a take-charge sort of mood today. I will pause and look out the window, up towards the sky, until I can concentrate again. So he looked out the window and slowed his breathing. And he thought. His thought at that moment was, say, there's a plastic bag up there in that tree. Because, in fact, there was a tall tree visible through the window, and a plastic bag caught on one of its upper branches. Thus having calmed himself, Dave resumed davening.
If one were to be charitable, one could say that, during Modim, Dave was experiencing tremendous gratitude to H-shem for body and soul, for all the open and hidden miracles which our lives consist of. It would be closer on the mark to hold that Dave was wondering whose plastic bag it was originally and when, if ever, it would fly loose from the tree.
Later, in The Gawlapur (Gertrude and Wilhelm Loghshmeer All Purpose Room), Dave engaged in a little hisbonenus, contemplating yet another davening-while-distracted episode, while attacking a bowl of SlakeSpheres, a lightly sweetened ball-shaped corn cereal with literary quotes on the back of the box. (It was one of the newer highbrow breakfast cereals being targeted at college graduates.) There was no one to either side of him, so technically it was hisbodedus as well. But not for long – soon, Boris Teimsky joined him. Boris's cereal choice was Crunchy Trapezoids.
"Hello David," he said in his sturdy Russian accent. "How it goes?"
"Baruch H-shem, not bad. And with you?"
"With me it is going well." The trapezoid cereal, being comprised of a number of different grains fused together at the base, required three different brachas, once the components were split with surgical precision with one's fingernails. Boris proceeded to make the brachas, then asked, "How about that plastic bag in tree?"
Almost choking on his one-bracha cereal, Dave gurgled, "Wait – you were thinking about that too?"
"Yes. During Amidah, I starting lose concentration. I looking at you. I seeing you look out window. So I looking out window. I seeing, there is plastic bag in tree."
"That's funny, or sad, or interesting. What did that make you think of?"
"I think, how they will getting down plastic bag from tree?"
"I was thinking something along those lines, like how long will that bag stay in the tree."
"Those long lines are good question."
"You're right about that."
And that would have been that, if it weren't for a man who, if one could distill into human voice the vibrancy and timbre of an electric floor polisher, one would have a pretty close representation of his voice in the excited state. That man was Yitzy Coven. Unbeknownst to Dave and Boris, he stood behind them, intrigued, overhearing the conversation about the plastic bag.
"Well, nuuuuuu?" he thundered, startling Dave and Boris and sending milk and edible geometric shapes in all directions from their spoons and bowls. Each of them turned to Yitzy, scowling, and smarting from the loss of breakfast matter.
Boris composed himself first. Still, his voice shook as he said, "Next time, beware you element of surprise."
Picking a cereal ball off of his sleeve, Dave asked, "'Well, nuuuuuu' what, exactly?"
"You get a message from H-shem like that, and you don't try to figure out what it means?"
"Come on, it's just a plastic bag in a tree."
"Oh yeah? Ever read Tehillim 147, Mr. Davening Guy?"
"Of course. Every day in Pesukei d'Zimra."
"Then check out pasuk 4. H-shem has a name for each and every star. That means each one has a purpose. So you're telling me that there's a purpose for some star millions of light years away that you can't even see, but not for a bag some 50 feet away from you that catches your eye while you are davening?!"
"Okay, so maybe you have a point."
"Oh, and you're just going to ignore the message that H-shem is sending you. That beats the egg."
"Well if you're so full of explanations, let's hear one."
"I'm not the one who saw it. You did."
"This is your idea."
"All right, all right! I'm thinking." Yitzy cycled through a set of thinking motions, demonstrating the intensity of his resolve. "I've got it. Let's suppose the bag is a mitzvah and the tree a man. That's backed by Torah, Devarim 20:19. But, we're dealing with a tree, right? So think of a man who reminds you of a tree. You would say he was sluggish, slow to move. Yet even for that person who can barely move, they see this bag come along, this mitzvah, and somehow they manage to grab it. So if that person can grab mitzvahs, why not ourselves? How many mitzvahs are going by that we're just not grabbing?"
"This is what means 'grab bag'?" wondered Boris.
"Hey, Boris, that's not fair! You just spoiled the effect, linking my moshel with a party game!"
"Wait, I fix. In grab bag, people contributing gifts to fellow man, and is anonymous, which reminiscing high level giving tzedakah. Or, also showing dependence on siyatta d'Shmaya, how right gift comes to person in seeming random fashion."
"Thanks, Boris. I feel better about my moshel now."
"But what's it have to do with davening?" asked Dave.
"Now I feel worse about my moshel!" wailed Yitzy. "Can't you give a guy a break? After all, I went first and did not have much time to work on it."
With Boris having come to the rescue once, Dave felt it was his turn. "Hold on – I see a davening connection. When we recognize our needs and beg H-shem for siyatta d'Shmaya, that is davening."
"Well, I have to say that you guys are tough, but reasonable." Yitzy rubbed his hands together. "Now it's your turn."
"Okay. Boris, let's hear your explanation," said Dave.
"My explanation? I not going first, because of you saw it first, you must remember."
"Why don't you want to go first?"
"I am not think of meaning yet."
"So, think! There's no sense rushing this."
"I thinking you will have more time to think of own meaning, it will win my explanation you force me to hurry."
"It's not a competition, where we're picking the best meaning. These are complementary efforts."
"So, you effort first."
"Look, this exercise never would have happened if you hadn't brought it up a few minutes ago, with Yitzy listening in."
"How I know that Yitzy to listening?"
"But... Let's look at it another way. Whoever goes next has more alternatives. The person who goes last could be put in a very delicate position, if the explanation he was going to say gets taken."
"Now this is something to be thinking of."
A silence fell on the three as Boris considered what to do. When the strain became too much, Dave asked, "Well, are you game?"
"I am game? What does this mean? Like, I am deer?"
"No, I meant whether you were willing to try to come up with ideas about what the bag in the tree might mean."
Thinks it over. "Yes, I am deer." Boris stroked the thin beard that covered his chin. "Okay, here is where I think. Bag is plastic, so is symbol for petrochemical-overusing society, and is also shopping bag, so also is symbol for too tall consumerism. But it is nearly weightless, so small wind carries it up into air and into tree. Is showing how physical world is tiny little substance of true."
"That is very good, Boris. And wind is ruach, which represents the spiritual. Even a little ruchnius can blow away the gashmius... Still, I wonder what the tree represents here."
With a soft snort, Boris muttered something under his breath in Russian. Then he turned to Dave and said, "This is what you calling 'complement'?"
"Wait, wait! 'Tree' is 'eitz' in Hebrew, closely related to 'eitzah', advice. H-shem uses the tree to advise us that there is much to be learned from the plastic bag tangled in it!"
"Whew, you have saved my lunch, even at breakfast."
"NP."
"Now is no longer your delay."
"Here goes, then." Dave cleared his throat. "I was thinking of something a little different. Like you, I thought about the bag's near-weightlessness. But I see it symbolic of the obstacles we face in our life: cheit, inertia, sinas chinam. They seem to be big deals, like what the bag can hold, But really, they are nearly nothing, like the bag itself. Yet somehow, we get all tangled up in them. We are like the tree that the bag has caught on. If we could only remove that bag from our lives, we would see the beauty. But we get focused on the bag, and it is such a small thing, but takes some work to get rid of it, and the work to do is not clear. Something like that."
"I like, I like. But what is the connection with davening?"
"I knew you were going to pick me apart!"
"Wait – davening is way to disentangle bag!"
"Ah! Thanks! You've pulled me through."
Baruch had joined them by this time. "You guys are up to something, I know."
"Hey, Baruch," welcomed Dave.
Boris explained, "We just theorizing."
"About what?" Baruch's eyes lit up. "Can you tell a friend?"
"Sure. It is bag in tree."
After one unsuccessful pass at trying to understand, Baruch gave up. "What is he saying?" he asked Dave.
"There is a plastic bag in a tree," said Dave.
"We have seen it," added Boris.
"Oh. Well, what kinds of theories could you possibly be theorizing? This might not be very advanced, but to me, it means someone was a litterbug."
"Yes, that's how it appears, but really, there is a deeper message here."
"Um, you sure you guys haven't been overdoing it with the pre-sweetened cereals this morning? Or maybe there was a bris no one thought to tell me about, where they served lots and lots of schnapps."
"Baruch, we're serious and sober. Boris saw it as an analogy to a society that focuses on the material rather than the spiritual, Yitzy suggested a certain inertia when it comes to performing mitzvahs, and I think H-shem is encouraging us to disentangle ourselves from aveiros."
"Well, that sounds like some bag. Where is it?"
"In the tree."
"Which tree?"
"The one you see outside the front left window."
Baruch looked through said window. Turned back to them, then looked again. "I see the tree, but I don't see the bag."
"It's right over th--"
The bag was gone.
Yitzy blinked and squinted, eyes darting back and forth.
Dave slapped his forehead and sighed.
Boris asked, "Now who is to explaining first?"
