Yes­ter­day, Lenore Weiss wrote about her deci­sion to move from Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia to Mon­roe, Louisiana. She will be blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing.

As I write this post in August, I’m aware that the High Holy days are approach­ing. I recall the teach­ings of the rab­bis at Kehilla Com­mu­ni­ty Syn­a­gogue in Pied­mont, Cal­i­for­nia where I’ve been a mem­ber. I’m won­der­ing about that ​“still small voice” that resides some­where inside me. Where is it, maybe hid­ing in my throat, bal­anced on my vocal chords and wait­ing to speak, embed­ded in an artery at some junc­ture between my heart and my foot, or in both places?

I know. Not like­ly.

The thing I loved about liv­ing in the in Bay Area all these years with its con­fab­u­la­tion of mar­velous music (Yoshi’s in Oak­land for superb jazz), techies galore (try Tech Lim­i­nal for expert help in get­ting your Word­Press on), food (won­der­ful restau­rants every­where and note to read­er, I miss baguettes slathered in creamy but­ter), muse­ums (Jew­ish Muse­um, Oak­land Art Mur­mur for a muse­um of the streets), incred­i­ble vis­tas (dri­ve along High­way 1 to Boli­nas), and a list that could fill up the remain­der of this blog post, is also the thing that wore me out. With the con­stant avail­abil­i­ty of phys­i­cal and intel­lec­tu­al rich­es and feel­ing like I could nev­er miss an event, I found it dif­fi­cult to know my own pri­or­i­ties. I guess I had a clas­sic case of burn out.

The Bay Area with its swirling diver­si­ty of all things made pos­si­ble, also made it dif­fi­cult to hear my still small voice, espe­cial­ly at a time when my muse was advis­ing me to dig into new ter­ri­to­ry. With a greater matu­ri­ty that age and expe­ri­ence brings, I felt ready to begin that explo­ration, much like the way Rab­bi Isaac Luria and his fol­low­ers advised that a per­son only study Kab­bal­ah after devel­op­ing some seri­ous life chops.

Can I hear my voice more clear­ly in Mon­roe, Louisiana where my own true love resides, where I enjoy dai­ly bike rides around Bay­ou Bartholomew and watch­ing the neigh­bor­hood kids stride across the bay­ou ditch, hunters in search of small prey?

I’m told that to skin a squir­rel, you must nail its head to a tree, slit it up and down its mid­dle and pull off its fur.

There’s some­thing reas­sur­ing about the speci­fici­ty of those direc­tions.