Joshua Cohen - A Heaven of Others

But Moviepeople and my halfbrother are not important as such. What is important is that I, a son of my Aba’s old age and the Queen’s hopeful youth, did not enter into the Valley of Nails to save myself from the inexact succor of this heaven, my hell. What David did and maybe still does is David’s, and it’s my parent’s life to have thought that a weakness, a flaw. In that standing at the lip of the Valley of Nails I had a revelation. A revelation not swallowing of the earth but my own. Whatever David did or did not do — and I never knew him before the now in which I know all — was done, or undone, to others too, no matter intention. Not the sex but the dodging, the flee. Which if not unforgivable has passed unforgiven. I must never forget. That I have only myself to answer for. Now.

That I am alone here with no parents.

With nothing to dodge, nowhere to flee.

And a stranger only insofar as I am thought strange.

His turning back from the lip of the Valley was not weakness or failure. Neither was it limitation however. As that might is not of me or ours. Rather what he did was give choice to choice, put question to question. What I did I did, and is done. Remember that the dead cannot sacrifice. Never again . And that it is not for the living to judge any of the sacrifices that others are bound to make to keep living, we all are — which is what Aba always said about Cain and Abel in answer to my question as to why I didn’t have natural brothers? as I’d always wanted one or more of them, any thousands of millions worldwide the Queen always said she’d been asking ever since I knew it was moot.

Listen, when one choice is a Jacob and when one — the other — choice is an Esau, I sought the brotherhood merited in, and gracing, surrender.

Listen we can say limitation too, when we say about the borders of Heaven, the lines of demarcation, even of, yes, inevitable, attrition. To say Heaven is borderless, without borders as if they were unnecessary, superfluminously superfluous, is to say the thing that is not. Or at least A thing that is not. Rather Heaven only appears, is only sensed first dully and then, once accustomed, dimly perceived and then said to be — known and — understood, as borderless. In life. Indeed Heaven must be understood as borderless if it is to have any borders at all, with its reflection holding as well: that because Heaven does undoubtedly, indubitably, have borders, it must be first sensed only dully, then, once accustomed to speculation of such kind, dimly perceived then said to be understood — by those alive, on earth still, with no opportunity to truly know All — it must be understood or at least said To be understood by the living as limitless, illimitable, encompassing All, absolute, totally without end. (After all it’s only because the possible not to say probable human span is not eternity that humans such as I once was ever valued our lives.)

But let us drop our other weapons and ask: then where, exactly, are these borders? the endlands of Heaven? what do these boundaries consist of? when were they mapped out, demarcated, drawn in the sand? and who guards them who guards the guards and all of what’s required to pass? questions the — an — answer to which might be this: that Heaven is wherever both bodily and of-the-mind the people of any given Heaven might dwell. And how is the population decided? How is a particular demographic arrived at? Outside this encampment, In the beyond, there Heaven does not exist. Through time, through dimensions and their lands, a Heaven’s size, its volume, a Heaven’s space, its mass and its density, its purchase and purview is that of its inhabitants, its incarnates or more faithfully to all its incarnators if you will say It along with me. Wheresoever they might roam and wander, so roams and wanders Heaven. How and what they think and know (what they think they know) , so is the sum thought and knowledge of Heaven. Why they, so why Heaven. Who they, Heaven. As, Heaven.

Indeed the walls of Heaven, which are walls , quite physically, actually, appreciably, walls, move with the people, up and rearrange themselves, reposition, set incursions, Interfada hazarded against and within the Infidelis as We the people as the Americans say set themselves toward realization, toward truest experience of Heaven, and so wall in and wall out that that is made false, rendered untrue, anew each edging of the golden plate — or dish — serving up no sustenance at all. Insubstantial. In fact under this quite contested, controversial, interpretation, the vast golden plate is not necessarily a dish of gold or a plate (which would explain say some newly arrived proponents of this interpretation why it serves up strictly nothing, or nothingness), rather it is an always moving, always wandering, always movable, always wanderable, hole in the wall that is the sky, a necessary hole allowing no escape into the light and warmth that both says and means death from this Heaven this hole in the wall of vaulted sky guards more securely than any quote truer unquote wall in its stead, any repair, any vaulting sky in its place, could ever hope to.

Because Allah says through me Who can sense walls in such darkness? That such a hole is necessary, a prerequisite, to our knowledge of the wall and as importantly of what it walls in and out. Up and down. I think of David sleeping, a wall suspended horizontally just a breath, newborn, above his sleeping form. And nearer, so near that when he awakes, when he opens his eyes, their lids become stuck in a crack, become wedged, in a crack badly mortared, mortally, between two immense, possibly loosening, stones. The wall halves his Hollywood room. No one lives above. It would be disrespectful to place feet upon his wall — a floor without anything atop, not even a rug, a shelf without a book, merely a rung left ladderless — one night, I know, the earth will quake and he’ll breathe this wall in. Deepening sleep. Try to say a throat of breathed stone.

On Rosh Hashanah, which

means the head

of the year in that language the

new year in Heaven, which

does not know from new

years we still try to observe it’s

funny, our habits don’t

die like we do

On Rosh Hashanah,

which means the head of

the year in that language in

Heaven you can ask for

God for one thing

On Rosh Hashanah,

which means the Head

of the Year in that language

in Heaven you can ask

God for one favor,

one lack,

won’t insult Him by asking for that assuredly One thing only that might be missing,

that you might be missing,

even in a heaven that’s yours—

People ask for

Everything on that Day of Days,

Ask for bad knees again, bad teeth, ask for

Car problems, erectile dysfunction, ask for

Everything except what they

need.

Aboy grows. It’s inevitable as is any Aba’s pride, by which I mean heartache — the two of them panned, weighed in honest enough scales slung across the gray dead of his eyes. A boy grows because he must. To know the earth from further. Height marked short above the threshold, at seven, eight years a full two hinges tall. A screw stripped to posture. Turn the knob. A boy matures. Even in heaven. Even in the wrong heaven, which, in the endless end, is more a question of Who. Behold the Who becoming another Who who by the time he’s become yet another Who is by then wholly unknowable. Me. Open the door. An eternal boy matures eternally. What do you want to be when you grow up? the Queen always asked though she had all the answers, as if breasts to suck to satisfaction, hers as much as mine. A nipple doctor? A slip ‘n’ fall lawyer? Wait. Maybe a government minister? An Israeli perhaps? A Semite? I know — a Jew?