Free Yom Kippur as Manifest in an Approaching Dorsal Fin by Adam Byrn Tritt

from
    breaking?
    When I asked, with Michael looking up at
    the new line, the repairman just shook his
    head. He said the building had shifted nearly
    two inches and that had put enough strain
    on the line to pull it off. How it shifted, he’d no idea. He’d seen this after floods or, more
    rarely, large storms. Our area is not known
    for tremors and, if there had been one, cer-
    tainly there’d been more lines pulled off than
    just ours.
    He left. Michael shook his head. Tall, heavy-
    set, usually smiling, he stared concerned up
    at the roof. I told him I thought I might know
    what happened and asked if he would come
    inside and look at a window.
    I lead him to it and he immediately saw the
    flaked glazing and the powder on the sill.
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    The Harmony of Broken Glass
    “We had a chant workshop last night. We
    wondered what the buzzing was.”
    He breathed in heavily and out again, aim-
    ing at the window sill and blowing the powder
    into the air. He was more than familiar with
    chanting, with sound and with vibration. He
    also had been invited to participate. But, still I had not expected him to actually be happy.
    But happy he was. His eyes squinted and
    his smile grew wide and he laughed.
    “Fantastic. I wonder what other damage
    you guys did. Other than moving the build-
    ing. Can you break it? Can you break the
    window?”
    “I have no idea. Why would I?”
    “Do it. Break the window next time. I’ll
    replace it. It’ll be worth it if you can do it. I want to see.”
    And so the next workshop was set but this
    time we called everyone we knew who would
    be the slightest bit interested. When they hes-
    itated, I’d tell them the goal.
    No, no charge. Just show up. Show up and
    sing.
    Never underestimate the power of prom-
    ised destruction. People came just for the
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    opportunity to sing a window broken. People
    brought people. Small folk and thin folk with
    voices high and piercing. Big folk and squat
    folk with voices booming and deep.
    More than forty people were there, in that
    room. We were not crowded and had space
    between us as we stood in one large oval. Four
    chairs were set in the middle. We were going
    to do this right.
    Dusk came. Held in the air, a red thread
    could not be told from a blue one and so it was
    deemed night and we sang our invocation. It
    was livelier than usual but the invocation qui-
    eted the spirits and settled the energy.
    Then, on to the chant. Many had been to
    the last workshop and knew the chant but we
    taught it from scratch. Why not? It doesn’t
    take long and I wanted everyone to get as
    much out of this workshop as possible. If we
    didn’t break a window, we should still all leave with something we learned and a story to tell.
    Ana
    El na’
    R’fa na lah.
    108
    The Harmony of Broken Glass
    Ana
    El na’
    R’fa na lah.
    Ana
    El na’
    R’fa na lah.
    Ana
    El na’
    R’fa na lah.
    Down low. Ascending. Up high. Descend-
    ing. Down low. Ascending. Up high.
    Descending. Voices mixed, changed, cre-
    ated other voices. Forty felt like fifty, like
    eighty, sounded like a hundred. The space
    felt vast, the room felt small, people walked
    to the center, vibrated visibly, found har-
    monies. The pictures on the walls clattered.
    The hum was evident. Obvious. It was loud
    and came in waves, different this time.
    Higher, oscillating, changing. Was it one of
    the windows? Was it one of the two large
    panes of glass separating the rooms? Was
    it something else? No matter, we continued
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    and continued and the sound gloried in its
    being sung.
    Time past unnoticed, the ineffable cue was
    felt and we slowed, quieted, stopped. We sang
    our last chant, each looking into the eyes of
    the person across in a double serpentine bent
    at the walls. Again, it was quiet.
    So quiet. We just stood there. No one want-
    ing to talk. I asked no one to tell what they
    saw, felt, heard. I asked no one to share their
    experience. The silence told the story.
    No