Different Slants

Comment by bruce matteson

November 25, 2012 @ 10:51 am

this is a well written piece, but i still hope you are wrong, and that in their own way they do know. I know I know…..happy thanks giving Robert, love, b.

Comment by New Man from New Ark

November 25, 2012 @ 10:58 am

As usual, you have recreated real people/places/conversations so realistically.
Kudos, Bob.

Comment by Bob

November 25, 2012 @ 11:46 am

Zoot, I regret that the palette of colors available to me to choose from in order to recreate emotionally destructive personalities, is astonishingly vivid.

I have a lifetime of examples of how not to be. But the cost of the acquisition of the experiences is too much.

Thanks for writing to me.

Bob

Comment by Holly

November 25, 2012 @ 11:56 am

Once again you capture the feeling, the moment.
I understand at whatever level I can the sense of alienation-even when looking like I belong I often feel it too. Yet somehow, I wonder–whether you can choose to let the times gone by be gone and find yourself in the place where it is family now. Those that love you and accept you for who you are-a wife who loves, children that care and grandbabies that don’t care about the past and only have their whole lives to learn to love you.

Comment by Don Larson

November 25, 2012 @ 12:27 pm

Bob,

I know these kinds of gatherings in my life too at certain holiday gatherings.

Stay true to yourself. In other groups you are welcomed. 🙂

Don

Comment by Bob

November 25, 2012 @ 12:36 pm

This response is for Don, Bruce and Holly,

As far as your comments, I’m a relatively comfortable outsider at Joy’s family events, which is vastly better than my prior family gatherings, as I hope I make clear to my readers. The poem is not necessarily about her family. That was just the springboard I used to get me to write it.

And honestly, to be a self-aware Jew in America is to be eternally an outsider. I have no other way of being. That may not make sense to all or some of you, but it is a fact. Being a minority over leaving that identity behind is choosing to be the leaf, not the tree.

Holly,both you and I both used to variations on the word ‘alien’. Does that help makes sense of how I feel about things a bit more?

Comment by brad dechter

November 26, 2012 @ 5:52 am

Bob,
I identify and empathize. We can sit in the corner of some event someday and discuss it. It’s not only family gatherings though- those are just the ones where you feel it more because you expect a difference.
Happy Holidays!
Brad

Comment by J Steve Adler

November 26, 2012 @ 8:34 am

Again you take the good and uncomfortable making word picture(s). These moments are all quite intense and often difficult to deal with at a distance. Enjoy those moments as some may improve with age.

Comment by Bob

November 26, 2012 @ 9:17 am

I think it is important to know when things are good and not to eternally rue your life. This past week, for the first time in our lives, my wife and I saw all four of our children: 16 to 34, and all four of our grandchildren: 1 to 4. Everyone is healthy and good looking, too.

Something to be thankful for.

Comment by David Griesemer

December 20, 2017 @ 8:44 am

The structure – early lines repeated at the end – reminds you of ancient Hebrew poetry. “Nested.” The first and last lines related. The second and second-to-last lines related. And so on, all the way to the middle.
Like the Talmud and Mishnah, the reader comments and Bob’s responses are as telling as the original piece.
Visually, I’ve always loved his trademark waterfall style.