Spiritual Death

I start calculating the number of nights until I die, and the number of dreams I have left. What should I waste them on? I must penetrate into something deep, so that I'll at least be one of those writers who got something out of their illness, and didn't remain spiritually virginal

When revelation is suicide  (Source)

I dreamed I fell ill. And it's clear to me that I'll either rise from this a new man, or not rise at all. And the doctors come to my bedside, from all departments, because it's a complex case that could die, and therefore very interesting, because only from the outside does it look like a uniform black circle without shades, but under a microscope it's truly frightening what's inside. And the thing that scares me most is that the doctors themselves are afraid. And there's a body doctor (who's really like a veterinarian), and above him a mind doctor, and above him a spirit doctor, and above him a soul doctor, and a living soul doctor and above them all the unit manager. And I start calculating the number of nights until I die, and the number of dreams I have left. What should I waste them on? I must penetrate into something deep, so that I'll at least be one of those writers who got something out of their illness, and didn't remain spiritually virginal. Because dying - I haven't cared about that for years. Only when I had people who loved me - did I fear death. For their sake. Especially the parents, after all, a child's death is harder for them than for him. And when they died - they released me from life.

After all, my children don't love me (I have no illusions) and for my wife it will only do her good to be a widow instead of a divorcee. It's more respectable in society. I even think I saw a smile on her face. The only one who loves is the daughter with disabilities, but she really doesn't know if I'm alive or dead, and maybe doesn't even know if she's alive or dead. And it's impossible to explain to her either. One day I'll simply disappear for her, like a cat whose owner vanishes. Slowly she'll notice I'm not there, until she gradually forgets I ever existed. In short - the only reason to live is the dreams, and also not to disappoint the unit manager. I really feel bad for them, how much they're trying to keep me somehow tied to matter, so I won't float away to the skies one night like a balloon through a dream.

Therefore, there must be another reason, and I mustn't waste time, because soon the pains will come. And I know I have no tolerance for pain at all. And I'll start crying that I don't want to live - as happens to me even when I have the flu, and my wife laughs at me, and leaves me to die in bed. Because at least now I have a reason not to get out of bed. After all, it's not her fault. As she says: Your whole life is inside the computer, and she doesn't know how right she is. And she keeps asking what I'm hiding from her. Once she even cried: If only you were watching porn, like a man. With an evil inclination. Instead of all these words you write, and who knows what he's writing. Who knows what he's even writing about you. So that's her side, it must be said. And the children whose father is considered an idiot, who doesn't know how to sit and study. No one is to blame, you must let go. All this the mind doctor tells me. And he continues: And if your veterinarian, Mr. Cat, decides that the body is leaving the soul, then at least let it be a beautiful divorce. Don't be one of those couples who separate in a world war. And I say to him: Sir, it's okay. I didn't intend to fight at all. Not over this fat, round, sick, rotting and blackening body, disgusting. I leave the battles to the beautiful-haired and titled ones. I'm a very spiritually spoiled cat, and unable to live the diseased bodily life that the illness demands. God will defeat me easily. They tell me to fight fight fight, but I just want to dream dream dream. And the doctor claps his hands: After they failed to heal the body, I also fail to heal the mind. I'm sending you to the spirit doctor.

And then comes the spirit doctor, and it only gets harder. Because there are spiritual problems in the world, in the writing itself. And he says: Your big mistake, which is made up of thousands of small mistakes (one at the end of each paragraph), like an elephant made of mice - is that you didn't write a novel. And didn't conduct a romance. And I say: I was capable of committing to a novel? In a novel you need to seduce the other side, of the female reader, to manage a relationship with her, to throw dishes and take out the trash, all the things I don't know how to do. And he says: You're a one-night stand! No wonder you only have casual readers, who move on. And this is part of the disease of this era, which you too have caught. And I say: No, I actually didn't move on, but continued to write countless letters to my unrequited love. That's exactly what you don't understand in the dream. It's not a real relationship, there's no contact. It's a long-distance relationship. This is exactly the relationship of this era - through the computer. You're not cruel enough to me: The problem isn't that I didn't love, but simply that I wasn't loved. The problem is the one-sidedness, not the commitment. And the doctor says: I didn't understand what happens in the book. The plot! And I say: From the beginning they cut out all the structure of the book for me, and about half the content, even in the books that came out - it just went through a blender, I myself didn't understand what was happening there. Maybe if a book of hundreds of pages had really come out - it would have elicited a different attitude, a different experience. We'll never know now. Especially if the books were read according to their structural instructions (throughout the cycle of the year, throughout the life cycle, throughout a whole white night...). I myself love dense and convoluted texts, as in our people's tradition, and hate inflated and strong novels like gentiles. So write them? And the doctor says: Who knows what would have come out if you had written a novel once - maybe a masterpiece! And I say: I'll tell you why I didn't write a novel. Because you can't write a novel for yourself. Only for a reader. And I didn't have a reader. I wrote for myself. This is of course a huge problem. But it's also reality. It's hard to fake, and a novel is always always fake, an illusion of reality, and in a dream the illusion is reality. Fantasy is the truth. And the doctor says: I can't save someone who doesn't want to be cured, for that you need a different kind of treatment. I'm giving you an urgent referral to the soul doctor.

And the soul doctor crawls to my bed at night and says: You're Jewish, right? And I say: Even that's not clear to me anymore. I don't know if I'm Jewish. But I'm in exile. That's perhaps the trendy, up-to-date identity. Someone who's not in place, and therefore tells himself he's not in time, and belongs to the distant past and the distant future. I was a symbol that doesn't exist on the keyboard. And the doctor says: But there's a Jewish soul. And therefore it can't be that you didn't try to do something big. And I say: True, I tried. Succeeding is something else entirely. Meaning something that even I can't know. Maybe even the last to know. And that's the cruelty. In my lifetime I won't know. Although sometimes - it seemed to me that I had written a masterpiece, in "The Book of Life". Although it will probably be considered my worst book, in the future. But for me it was the great book about the Holocaust. The reckoning on it in the upper worlds. A reformulation of Judaism after Auschwitz. And he says: You've completely lost control over the course of events. And I say: There's nothing to be done, as a dreamer, I always lost control. I never had control. It exposes me much more. With many writers, it's like hearing them. For me it's really entering into the brain, it's more intimate than sex, and therefore I also had to protect myself, to hide. And therefore I also so despised the body, realism. I didn't do physical activity. I became a sickly lazy fat cat. But my head always remained flying. I was a cat with a shtreimel [Translator's note: fur hat worn by some Hasidic Jews]. And the doctor says: Are you already eulogizing yourself? Leave something for the rabbis. And I say: The rabbis won't understand anything. The secular didn't understand anything. It didn't help me that I wrote for these, and it didn't help when I wrote for those. Because in the end, I remained one who writes for a cat with a shtreimel. And the doctor is already marking: referral form to the living soul doctor.

And the spiritual veterinarian comes to me: So what drives you from within? Is it that you're a cat? Is it that you're ultra-Orthodox? Is it that you're a circle? Is it that you're Jewish? Is it that you're black? Actually, each of these levels together are NRN ChY [Translator's note: acronym for Nefesh (soul), Ruach (spirit), Neshama (higher soul), Chaya (living essence)]. And I say: For me it's already NRN MT [Translator's note: wordplay replacing ChY (living) with MT (dead)]. Because instead of Chaya I have Meta [dead], and instead of Yechida [unity] I have Torah. I didn't go to the army. I wanted to be part of the Torah. But the Torah vomited me out. Because I was too low, too clownish, too clever, too evasive, too esoteric, too dark, because I didn't write clearly enough what I wanted, because I was captive in my own discourse, which I deluded myself would be the continuation of the messianic-kabbalistic-futuristic discourse, and because I was afraid to write things without garments, because I recoiled from religious kitsch, which is the most difficult problem of holiness - kitsch. Kitsch is the reason for secularization, and therefore from secularization one can actually emerge - and purify God. The hope of Israel, in which the Lord immerses. And the veterinarian says: My son, you don't believe in spirit. The spirit can still reveal you. And I say: It's possible that the work of deciphering my life's work is possible, but who will take it upon themselves, and whoever takes it - will discover what they don't want to discover. The religiosity. The fussiness. The religiousness. The mysticism. The visions. The prophecies. The dreams. And worst of all - the seriousness. That I didn't laugh. Only you laughed. And that future researcher will be amazed to discover what was hidden there like a mummified corpse - the dead seriousness. Yes, sorry for the disappointment.