As we move into Pentecost

I've always loved the follow of Christmas to Epiphany, and Lent to Easter. The follow of Easter to Pentecost has been more abstract, and perhaps (thankfully) because there are no reductions of tinsel and 'We Three Kings of Orient' caricatures and Marti Gras/Carnival or chocolate bunnies and the ever-enigmatic egg-rolls. Pentecost may be popularized by Tim Tebow's endzone antics (all due respect) or other such ways of making the Holy Spirit 'real'. Well, the Holy Spirit is real, and if vaguest of the Trinity, let's enter a new season of advent and lent and ascension to journey to our stronger bond to God, in this Pentecostal season.

That is not to introduce a more mundane point, but I must admit that I post today for more human machinations. I've revised 'Babi Leto, Bar Yar (Part III.) to allow Yakov, a wandering Jew born out of the most horrific event of the Holocaust, to be a semblance of what the Holy Spirit might extend. Believe me, this has not been an arbitrary or casual revision. I've been to Kiev four times; depending on the circumstances, I've been to Babi Yar and Pechersk monastery three times, and, to borrow from my mediocre Endicott M.Ed, the qualitative analysis here far exceeds the quantitative: these quiet places have, in relative minutes, spoken to me loudly.

Unexpectedly, I'm immersed in Part 4 of this projected six-part installment of the longest story of Stara Evropa. No other story is a 'bildungsroman', not even the storylines of Sam, Morty, Wade and others in A Bruised Reed. For whatever reason, Yakov has become my singular bildungsroman hero. I hope Parts 4-6 won't disappoint, but, as you will see with my revision of Part 3, Yakov is very much a work in progress. I'm going to attempt, humbly, to have Yakov enact the essence of Tevye in the Soviet 1960s, well before Norman Jewison made an indelible impact on me and countless other western viewers in the early 1970's. What a story! And to think a clown like Yakov might have picked it up! For a brief acquaintence of Sholem Aleikem's novel, see http://www.ccebook.org/preview/0934710317/Sholem-Aleykhems-Tevye-The-Dairyman-Complete--Illustrated

Besides the sometimes challenging ideas to type into the symposia, I'm struggling with the limits of the formatting, which does not easily allow me to indent/italicize/variegate the narration as I try to do in my Word documents. I'm reminded that I only wrote out A Bruised Reed by hand, with the eternal grace of Mom and Jon to decipher what those scribblings meant, and while those Dostoevskian days are done, I'm forever in awe of the intricacies of art--process to product.

Please read Babi Leto, Babi Yar. It may end up being the only thing I'll claim to my grave--or, to be less dramatic, the only bildungsroman I think I'll ever attempt.