The Golem

exempt from the crushing
strictures, from the ills,
cruelties, and inevitable failures

A friend recommended that I read Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and it is amazing. Toward the end of the story, Joe Kavalier, a Czech emigre, is considering his life's work as a comic book artist and compares it to the Jewish tradition of creating a golem -- a living creature that has no soul and acts for the protection of its people. I found the following an inspiration:

"The shaping of a golem, to him, was a gesture of hope, offered against hope, in a time of desperation. It was the expression of a yearning that a few magic words and an artful hand might produce something -- one poor, dumb, powerful thing -- exempt from the crushing strictures, from the ills, cruelties, and inevitable failures of the greater Creation."

And I wondered at my own golems, the words I've ordered on the page, the creations (some ill-conceived) of which I've been a part.