Mishka

Mishka, if I recall his name right, was my grandmother Flora’s cousin,  the first man, I ever saw walk with a cane. He was courtly, light-complexioned, and I believe he was a Hebrew teacher. There was the air of the scholar about him. And he wore a hat. It is all so strange that there are individuals in our lives that enter and leave, with very few details after that. He now strikes me as someone I could have had deep conversations with. I don’t know if he was ever married and had children. He just came into my life, popped in, from time to time. He was a visitor.

One evening he took me as a very young boy, perhaps 4 or 5, to the boardwalk in Brighton Beach; it could have been 1944 or 1945. I have no real idea. Chronology is for rememberers. In any case, as I heard the roar of the surf in the darkness that lay beyond the beach, I asked Mishka why there are stars in the heavens. I just did. I asked him. I don’t recall his response, perhaps a mild hesitation. What I do remember almost 59 years later was the animated quality he expressed when he told grandma Flora of his talk with me, that, to wit, I was a very special boy — and I was kin. As I look back what I feel I should have asked, or, perhaps, in effect I did ask, “Mishka, why are the heavens on fire?”

In this anecdote is my passion, as emblematic as Jordan’s compassion for the Elephant Man. I question. I question everything. Most of my life I was conditioned, as is our way as creatures. I am all about questions, passionate questions. It is my kettle of fish. It is my fate, a destiny given to me. I am not cursed. I am blessed. It is what I am, what I do best:

what is fire?

I do not know

Why is there fire?

That is a better question

I cannot answer

You need not

Better to ask another question

What if I seek an answer?

Why bend the question to your mind?

I don’t understand

A question is an inviolate thrust into the unknown

But. . .

Let it be. . .Let it be

I question everything, and everything doesn’t say go away; it could care less. I ask because it pleases me to do so. I ask not requiring an answer. Keep asking a question about a passion or concern and eventually it evanesces before your mind. So concerned are we with prima facies, with results, with answers, that the real beauty of a question, like a butterfly unfurling its wings to the sun’s warmth, never gets its chance to bask.