Self-suffer-icient

Flawed and Fcking

Zak Kaplan
Human Parts
Published in
6 min readDec 13, 2024

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Photo by Yuris Alhumaydy

After she left, while I sat there, in the shower, hitting replay in reverse, waiting for it to all pass over me — waiting for it all to pass — I couldn’t help but wonder, why had I ever been seeking someone else’s comfort?

Years on, having once escaped it, I find a glimpse, a view, of what I’d been lacking: Complete and absolute self-sufficiency!

At twenty-two I wanted to wander the earth and write. I traveled to unfamiliar places. Lived in timber-framed straw homes, in rice-fielded valleys along hills and rivers that flourished with the simplicity of awakening each day to the land’s chore.

Carrying water in two buckets on the end of a long branch, rested across my shoulders, was to me, what felt like a good life. Somewhere back in the creation of my DNA I was a water-carrier, in a Shtetle, listening to everyone else’s problems, then, like a water-carrier, moving on.

Somewhere, I am a farmer, far from the complexities of modern disappointments, but, with disappointments of my own.

Years later I’m annoyed at myself for thinking it’s okay to rely on someone else. What will they know of my happiness? How will they understand what childhood means to me — what comfort, what a woman, what soul, what father, what meaning — means to me?

At twenty-four I traveled by a steel 1960’s Minsk motorbike up the hilly sides of northern Vietnam. Alone, the world around engulfed me. The sun, the rain, the sliding muddy hills, and the farmland slipping by, made more sense to me than a girl, than a friend, than a life of slow professional accomplishments.

To compare is useless. I’m sure. Each with their own distinct values. But I can’t help but wonder, how will I direct myself to a balanced outcome?

On the subway into work, my eyes glance from the book I’m reading to the passengers around me. I’d forgotten this version of isolation. I notice the specifics. A few too many listening to their music too loudly, as if they wish not to be impacted by the world around them, as if they wish not to have to interact with the world around them being different than they are. I register my own judgmental flaws. Each with our own glance, protectively judging what we cannot understand. And I belong with them in a packed subway, unable to comprehend, heading onto an island, our individual corporate badland, in a world with so much still needing to change.

Alone, I am not better off either. Solitude never did come naturally. What I excelled at were expression. Judgement always optional.

Far in the distance an idea exists. It’s a thought, about being free. I’m happy – without. I’m alone. I’m my own maker. I create. I steady myself then imagine, building meaning into my world. A girl I have fallen in love with over and over. She is smart. I built her out of parts I read in books, parts I knew as a child, parts I came across as an adult. Who enters but I alone, but I and the child I once was. Little of myself is known, but the woman she is charming. Charmingly enough to erase that which of me is not yet known.

Even in the distant imaginary form she does not comfort, for she is not real. She is not flawed with emotion, nor flawed with understanding of her own. She does not complicate a message as simple as, “I want to be happy with you.”

I took her out to sushi, drove her off campus, overly romantic aware of the patch, our gap, but ignorant to her sense of maturity, (apathy). I liked our gap, suede and flower corduroyed, and noticed where we were and weren’t. Years later she’d surpass me, then suddenly we’d all together stop counting.

When I was fifteen I went to London for Yeshivah. I awoke most mornings early enough to dip my body in the hot steaming Mikva baths for purification. I don’t recall if it was purification I was after or a cleansing from misunderstanding. I was at that pivotal maturation stage where everything the world had to offer was useless and confusing. I spent the day trying to understand the studies of generations of Rabbis whose whole goal in life was to understand. “Understanding,” as I had understood, was the channel with which God had given us a path to reach His world of pleasures. Once dead, I was taught, and if worthy enough, I would see truth. “Seeing” is a word that depicts physical comprehension. “Seeing truth,” is as to be satisfied by its meaning. “Worthy enough,” is to be brought close enough so that you may understand. The example always given was to be sitting at His table. The closer you got to the host, the more understanding you owned, the more of Him was with you. As if better seating arrangements were the purpose of it all!

I recall once, as a very young child, hearing a story about a good man and an evil man. It was over at the Shul where our small recently-re-acquainted-with-Judaism community was then sharing services with the Berdichev Rebbe. I remember very vividly associating with the evil man. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be either one, it was just an understanding I had. To me the person who made more sense was the one who in the story was evil. My mind accepted something about myself in learning about him. His big flaw may have been that he worked on Sabbath, or that he stole, or ate on a day of fasting? I don’t remember his exact sin, but one Friday night sometime before or after hearing that story I threw a stone at the Hassidic kids mocking us from across the street and hit an older kid flush in the head. Everyone else ran to get him help, even brought him inside to wash up, all while he swore to my six year-old self that he was going to sue me. That’s what we all said when we thought the world had wronged us. But I didn’t feel wronged––the glass bottles they first threw at us on Sabbath only reminded me of which man I had subconsciously already chosen to be.

At first I took notice of her effortless charm, then I held a key, her delicate need blanketed in apathy (maturity). It caught me, in every conversation, her sharp wit, aloof-ease, often clumsy. Our gap was what I thought I’d been offering in companionship, but how much more of the world she experienced quietly already. It wasn’t coy, or charming, but subtle, helpless, emotionally challenged, and I found myself needing to be needed pretty badly.

The question I am left with now is this: Is it better off to be holy and mostly useless on earth than to be flawed and sometimes evil? Is it better off to combine where flawed than to be alone where unnoticed? Is it enough to throw rocks at things than to exist without ever failing or choosing?

I am so measurably flawed, so intent on reaching every unobtainable high, where comfort always lasts and the down is never too deep.

From inside the floorboards a moaning rises. First, every few minutes at intervals, a kind of pleasurable moan. It’s a soft helpless moan, every so often, of a woman being pleased. Slowly it grows into a pattern. The constant delicate exhalation. She isn’t overly claiming, nor passively giving way either. At first it sounds as if she might be pleasing herself, but later it is clear, she is joined with someone in pleasure. Suddenly, at slower and more inconsistent intervals a heavier heaving can be heard. A more baritone exhale cracks the standard breathing with its own. Together. Then apart. Suddenly quicker. Then tapered off. And it all seems something so simple. Like the creaking of old floorboards in the dead of night. An exhalation from two different lungs combined like so many others throughout the sleepless city. With their breath a whole world escapes; the world of something deeply pleasing and revealing; a language that leads directly to their inner most truth in feeling. From this voice you can witness everything expressed. Like rain in summer, sun kissed. The softer, more sweeter voice rises, as if to say something in agreement. “Yes!” And then, “God, oh my, God.” Like naturally every-so-often we-are-bound-to-fuck-up human beings.

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Zak Kaplan
Zak Kaplan

Written by Zak Kaplan

Traveler, writer, occasional bread-maker. Experiences of heart-mind. Perspectives on life, love, and loss. A Human condition.

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