Life As Performance Art 91

I just looked up the word ishkabibble. I came across it once when I was a kid, I think it was in a comic strip, and I didn't have a clue what it meant. But somehow, this word has always haunted me, lurking in the recesses of my memory, as though just waiting for me to take it out, dust it off and display it like a fireplace mantel ornament. Well, thanks to Uncle Google and Urban Dictionary, this morning I took the plunge. I have looked up the word, and sure enough, ishkabibble is a real and legitimate word. Yiddish-Jewish, it means basically, no problem, I don't care, don't worry about it. Now I can sleep tonight, this mystery finally solved. Yiddish is a great language that has furnished us with a lot of cool words that have gone into everyday use. Words like schlep, shill, putz, schmuck, shlemiel, nebbish, and I could go on. It seems like a shame that it is now little spoken and considered a dying language. I love the words, and their tone is like salty matzoh in the mouth. It is a language with the tone that takes no prisoners, that pretends nothing. But English is the language that knows where all the bodies are buried, and in my mother tongue, subtlety and double-meaning have been honed to a science. What does this have to do with what I'm writing about on this blog? Well, nothing, really. But there is something about the theatricality of Yiddish that helps lend to the moving theatre sports that my life has often turned into. I don't use Yiddish words very often, though schlep and shil still often bleed into my vocabulary. And of course, too much Yiddish can be like too much white pepper in the hollandaise sauce, if you know what I mean. We want things to have a little bit of spice, but not such that it overwhelms the palate and makes eating a painful experience. Or speaking, for that matter. Words do matter, but so also does silence. Sometimes it is better to stay quiet, to listen, to learn and absorb. It can be a bit awkward at times if I'm talking to a quiet person, since I also tend to be on the quiet side. But then I become the loquacious one, asking the leading questions, and using everything in my toolkit, to get the other to open up and spill whatever they are hiding. But quiet people aren't always quiet because they are concealing. They are simply quiet people. I am often, but not always a quiet person. When I am quiet, it's usually because I want to hear what's being said, I want to learn, absorb. But really, what I turn into is more a facilitator. With people who like to talk a lot, I take the listener's seat, just as when the other is one of few words, I will talk more. I was once called, in one of my workplaces, the Great Balancer. This was a tribute to my talent for balancing simultaneously several difficult and demanding worksites and duties without breaking a sweat. But I also like balance everywhere, and in all things. The only problem with this is, when I am with someone who is talkative, I can give them too much airtime, and with quiet people, not enough. So then, it sometimes behooves me to direct, edit and even interrupt frequently those who do not know when to shut up, so I can get a word in edgewise, just as I often finding myself asking the silent ones over and over again to tell me what they think of something, what they really think, and to see if I can get them talking till they don't know when to shut up. For some reason I almost always seem to feel that it's my duty to coach others. Maybe because so many people need coaching. Ishkabibble!