Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
RETHINKING MOTHER AND BABY
If we accept that the baby's will to be born is as much a part of the birthing process as the mother's willingness to have a child is, then abortion becomes more of a compact between two spirits and less of a unilateral decision on the mother's part.
Underestimating the presence of the baby's spirit in the birthing decision leads to a fundamental misplacement of the responsibility for that decision, making the mother the final arbiter.
A part of me says that the world is bigger and more complex than that.
An abortion, the curtailing of the pregnancy, can just as much be the spirit of the baby deciding that the time isn't right.
To my mind, that spirit does not choose to enter the corporeal form until the advantages of being born outweigh the disadvantages, as grave as they might be.
Life, as a series of hard knocks, may still be worth learning.
Granted, not everyone will agree with me on this or a lot of things, but my purpose is to probe the boundaries of possibilities and maybe stretch them, rather than watch one more sports event that I don't want to watch anyway.
I think that it's instructive to keep in mind, in the second book of Genesis, that.
"The LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.".
That life comes after breath.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
ROSELLA AS APPLE
I told Rosella that she is the apple of my eye, but that when we go away, I don't want her to become the apple on the tree.
When I look out any window now and I see rain and large green maples, instead of scrub and rock , I know that I am in Oregon and not the middle east, but my mind, and even my body because of the time lag, insist that it's not that easy to separate them from right now.
Many people wonder about my trip, and I do, too.
Not so many 64 year old men travel this way.
"Did you ever feel threatened?" they always want to know.
Incomprehensible.
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When I look out any window now and I see rain and large green maples, instead of scrub and rock , I know that I am in Oregon and not the middle east, but my mind, and even my body because of the time lag, insist that it's not that easy to separate them from right now.
Life unfolds concurrently, and maybe not always consecutively.
Many people wonder about my trip, and I do, too.
Not so many 64 year old men travel this way.
"Did you ever feel threatened?" they always want to know.
They never quite believe me when I say "No".
There is a lurking suspicion that I managed to come back from the Holy Land looking like an old testament prophet and speaking in tongues, when all that means is not shaving, and saying words like, " trusting people, liking Arabs and Jews, traveling alone, wife staying home, not being afraid, all religions essentially being the same".
Incomprehensible.
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Tuesday, May 25, 2010
LIVING TOGETHER
A neighbor from our street, as I was getting coffee in Starbucks, came up to me and, before I knew what else to do, gave me a hug. Now understand, our family has a checkered history with her family, distantly, tight-smiledly polite, neighbor-ish.
I can put up with it, but Deb, when I told her about the hug, responded, "evil one".
I need some Israeli expertise to help me build a wall between our houses.
Distrust clambers about in the stones of the old city like a furtive rat.
Or the old neighborhood, for that matter.
The ability to live together, for all the ill will, somehow they can do it in Jerusalem and we can do it on Moss Street.
I am downtown, not a pretty place, but accessible to anyone; thin and fat people, wheelchairs and backpacks, hoodies and pierced ears, very young and loud, old and incoherent.
I know many people who never, and will never, come here. Better to think this world does not exist.
But downtown , because no one wants it , can be home to everyone.
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I can put up with it, but Deb, when I told her about the hug, responded, "evil one".
I need some Israeli expertise to help me build a wall between our houses.
Distrust clambers about in the stones of the old city like a furtive rat.
Or the old neighborhood, for that matter.
The ability to live together, for all the ill will, somehow they can do it in Jerusalem and we can do it on Moss Street.
I am downtown, not a pretty place, but accessible to anyone; thin and fat people, wheelchairs and backpacks, hoodies and pierced ears, very young and loud, old and incoherent.
I know many people who never, and will never, come here. Better to think this world does not exist.
But downtown , because no one wants it , can be home to everyone.
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Location:W 10th Ave,Eugene,United States
HOW LARGE IS DEATH?
Death is a larger, less intense, more pregnant experience with potential than life which is more circumscribed, more blindingly devoid of choices but more difficult to see past.
As being awake is more circumscribed than the dream state.
I think everyone of us would admit that we don't know everything but that we, as people, are learning something new every second and that there is no real limit to our imagination. The only proscriptions are those that we place on ourselves.
If I say, "where is my mom right now?", is there any sense to the word now to somebody who has died?
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As being awake is more circumscribed than the dream state.
I think everyone of us would admit that we don't know everything but that we, as people, are learning something new every second and that there is no real limit to our imagination. The only proscriptions are those that we place on ourselves.
If I say, "where is my mom right now?", is there any sense to the word now to somebody who has died?
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BACK TO THE MOTEL
Getting up early to walk to the DAC and finding no one on the streets, not a single donkey, not hearing a single call to prayers, not even anyone sitting on the curb selling grape leaves.
It is raining. I never saw that in Israel.
Ruminations are the chewing on lifes's narratives.
I went back to the motel where I left the little naked boy that I found running down the middle of the street at 4:00 A. M. so many weeks ago. A young Indian woman was only too willing to tell me how stupid she thought the parents were.
"Hello! They were out partying! What were they thinking? You want a baby, take care of the baby. I can't stand to see the way some of the people in this neighborhood treat their dogs, but a human?!! ".
From somewhere, she said, a grandmother showed up, very quickly, to get the child. So she assumed that they lived nearby.
I thanked her and she thanked me.
Reading David Brooks today in The Times, he posits the life of someone who "did all the right things, not doing the things he wanted to do, but the things he felt he had to do to live, and how, now, he feels cheated by the fecklessness of his society. ".
I say who gave this invented person any right at all to be born into a world where he would be surrounded by people who would always make decisions that would always be in his best interests?!
I just came back from Israel and Jordan where getting screwed from the time you wake up in the morning until the sun goes down on a world that does, in no way, have your best interests in mind.
Just to dodge the constant drizzle of bird droppings all day long counts as success.
Who in the hell does Brooks think he is and how can he presume to invent a man who has a right to be angry, and whose response then is to join with other people who hold themselves entirely blameless and who say that they choose to want no part of the "down" of the "ups and downs" of existence.
I find Brooks , his straw man, and the whole notion of self- righteous selfishness repellent.
Richard found me at the DAC and we talked long and hard about Israel and Jordan. He had been there not so many months ago. We had no trouble agreeing that Israel resembles the old apartheid South Africa all too much. Sadly, for a country that has accomplished as much as it has, to wound itself with the dagger of hatred, It's difficult to watch. Richard is even more bitter than I am, maybe because he's Jewish and takes it that much more personally.
Jerusalem belongs to the Jews until someone takes it from them.
They can hurry the process , or not.
20,000 miles ago and three weeks, I sat right here on this couch and wondered what I might find so far away, and now I sit here and wonder what I did find.
My brother called to say that the doctors have increased my mother's dosage of morphine and that he thinks that she is soon to go, but she seems to think otherwise. She is a tough old bird and I love her for it.
She has said so many time that she doesn't even want to be alive, to the extent that she has tried to commit suicide twice, that to be this determined to live only says that, ultimately, she is afraid to die. Afraid of what she will find when she walks through that door, though if you aren't sure of the existence of god, there's no point in worrying about hell.
This is about three hours later.
Mom died.
Bob just called me and, even though we knew that it couldn't have ended any other way, still it seems lonlier all of a sudden
It's really easy to look up at the big, white, fluffy clouds and the warm sun and imagine her spirit as free and part of all this light.
I called my sister Barbara, who was there when she finally let go, not easily, but at last. She had a desire to stick around and wasn't going to leave until she was assured that the time was right. Barbara told her that she was safe and then took this little moisture applicator, used to wet her lips with, and dipped it in some Pinot grifio and wiped her lips with it and she said "ok" ten minutes later.
What a dear sweet person.
Trying to put the last few weeks in perspective, I can only believe that my trip to Jerusalem and Petra is all of a piece with my mom' s passing on from this world and my managing to be a part of it.
Life is as strange as death.
I am a coin, a circle with two sides, life and death. Flip me and I live, flip me again and I still live. Flip me enough times and, at some point, I die. But again, continue flipping and I get another opportunity to live. And on and on, until, finally, This coin that is me becomes a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is infinite.
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It is raining. I never saw that in Israel.
Ruminations are the chewing on lifes's narratives.
I went back to the motel where I left the little naked boy that I found running down the middle of the street at 4:00 A. M. so many weeks ago. A young Indian woman was only too willing to tell me how stupid she thought the parents were.
"Hello! They were out partying! What were they thinking? You want a baby, take care of the baby. I can't stand to see the way some of the people in this neighborhood treat their dogs, but a human?!! ".
From somewhere, she said, a grandmother showed up, very quickly, to get the child. So she assumed that they lived nearby.
I thanked her and she thanked me.
Reading David Brooks today in The Times, he posits the life of someone who "did all the right things, not doing the things he wanted to do, but the things he felt he had to do to live, and how, now, he feels cheated by the fecklessness of his society. ".
I say who gave this invented person any right at all to be born into a world where he would be surrounded by people who would always make decisions that would always be in his best interests?!
I just came back from Israel and Jordan where getting screwed from the time you wake up in the morning until the sun goes down on a world that does, in no way, have your best interests in mind.
Just to dodge the constant drizzle of bird droppings all day long counts as success.
Who in the hell does Brooks think he is and how can he presume to invent a man who has a right to be angry, and whose response then is to join with other people who hold themselves entirely blameless and who say that they choose to want no part of the "down" of the "ups and downs" of existence.
I find Brooks , his straw man, and the whole notion of self- righteous selfishness repellent.
Richard found me at the DAC and we talked long and hard about Israel and Jordan. He had been there not so many months ago. We had no trouble agreeing that Israel resembles the old apartheid South Africa all too much. Sadly, for a country that has accomplished as much as it has, to wound itself with the dagger of hatred, It's difficult to watch. Richard is even more bitter than I am, maybe because he's Jewish and takes it that much more personally.
Jerusalem belongs to the Jews until someone takes it from them.
They can hurry the process , or not.
20,000 miles ago and three weeks, I sat right here on this couch and wondered what I might find so far away, and now I sit here and wonder what I did find.
My brother called to say that the doctors have increased my mother's dosage of morphine and that he thinks that she is soon to go, but she seems to think otherwise. She is a tough old bird and I love her for it.
She has said so many time that she doesn't even want to be alive, to the extent that she has tried to commit suicide twice, that to be this determined to live only says that, ultimately, she is afraid to die. Afraid of what she will find when she walks through that door, though if you aren't sure of the existence of god, there's no point in worrying about hell.
This is about three hours later.
Mom died.
Bob just called me and, even though we knew that it couldn't have ended any other way, still it seems lonlier all of a sudden
It's really easy to look up at the big, white, fluffy clouds and the warm sun and imagine her spirit as free and part of all this light.
I called my sister Barbara, who was there when she finally let go, not easily, but at last. She had a desire to stick around and wasn't going to leave until she was assured that the time was right. Barbara told her that she was safe and then took this little moisture applicator, used to wet her lips with, and dipped it in some Pinot grifio and wiped her lips with it and she said "ok" ten minutes later.
What a dear sweet person.
Trying to put the last few weeks in perspective, I can only believe that my trip to Jerusalem and Petra is all of a piece with my mom' s passing on from this world and my managing to be a part of it.
Life is as strange as death.
I am a coin, a circle with two sides, life and death. Flip me and I live, flip me again and I still live. Flip me enough times and, at some point, I die. But again, continue flipping and I get another opportunity to live. And on and on, until, finally, This coin that is me becomes a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is infinite.
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Monday, May 24, 2010
EVERYDAY HAS A NARRATIVE
The restroom in the airport was really cramped, with me having a backpack on. I was trying to get out while a soldier was trying to squeeze by me, with a friend. The first soldier gave it up while I asked the soldier if his friend had to pee or,,, wasn't sure of how to put it, , and he said no, but he does have to blow his nose.
Everyday seems to have a narrative, when it starts and where it takes me.
That's what's so difficult about losing the last few day's writings. I lost the narrative and the days that went with it.
She lived in a nervous skin with nerve endigs on the outside. No longer. She at rest now.
I hope she passed on her will to live to the family line.
It hardly is a coincidence that this trip of mine to such a religiously centered place as Jerusalem, where death and the past are the warp, and life and the present are the weft of the fabric of the city ended with the death of my mother. It didn't start out that way; in fact, when I left she wasn't even sick.
As I visited her on her death bed, I told her that I loved her and appreciated that she waited for me, so that I could say goodbye.
She opened and then closed her eyes. I like to think that she heard me.
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Everyday seems to have a narrative, when it starts and where it takes me.
That's what's so difficult about losing the last few day's writings. I lost the narrative and the days that went with it.
An idea seems so ephemeral, a slight mist over a morning landscape, all too easily dissipated by the breezes of time passing.
To write,
and then to be from the i-earth untimely ripp'd. Arrgh.
My mom died yesterday at 3:30 pm, after Barbara moistened her lips with Pinot grigio instead of water. She said, in effect, "I'm done" ten minutes later.
My mom died yesterday at 3:30 pm, after Barbara moistened her lips with Pinot grigio instead of water. She said, in effect, "I'm done" ten minutes later.
On some level or other, she felt safe to let go.
She lived in a nervous skin with nerve endigs on the outside. No longer. She at rest now.
I hope she passed on her will to live to the family line.
It hardly is a coincidence that this trip of mine to such a religiously centered place as Jerusalem, where death and the past are the warp, and life and the present are the weft of the fabric of the city ended with the death of my mother. It didn't start out that way; in fact, when I left she wasn't even sick.
As I visited her on her death bed, I told her that I loved her and appreciated that she waited for me, so that I could say goodbye.
She opened and then closed her eyes. I like to think that she heard me.
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MY MOTHER DIED TODAY
My mother is, was, a most wonderful and sweet human being, but it's even more mysterious than that, but I'm out of words.
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BACK IN OREGON
Back in Oregon.
I've been away long enough to be intrigued by the water simply falling our of the sky, unbidden.
To have come from the middle east, the land of miracles, we take this one for granted.
In every God I met
In Jerusalem,
I came to believe.
And not.
I came to believe
In every God
In Jerusalem.
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I've been away long enough to be intrigued by the water simply falling our of the sky, unbidden.
To have come from the middle east, the land of miracles, we take this one for granted.
In every God I met
In Jerusalem,
I came to believe.
And not.
I came to believe
In every God
In Jerusalem.
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HUMANS LOVE TO PROCREATE
The world is experiencing a population boom. When a population expands, it is usually because conditions are conducive for growth. If humanity is growing than human life is finding itself in a propitious environment and is responding accordingly.
Humans want to be born.
Something good is happening.
For this time, the universe is encouraging humans to procreate.
Is it a sign of wishful thinking to imagine that the profiferation of births and the overall increase in population might be due to more, optimistic souls wanting to enter the physical plane? That they are being enticed by a generally ameliorating climate for spiritual improvement?
The plane of the physical offers opportunities for the working beyond karmic stasis.
Souls choose to be born, or not to be born, depending whether there are possibilities for movement towards ultimate unification with the Eternal Godhead.
Baby steps.
We all sometimes fall back, but we know, deep down, what we have to do.
And how we have to do it.
We have to get ourselves born.
Humans want to be born.
Something good is happening.
For this time, the universe is encouraging humans to procreate.
Is it a sign of wishful thinking to imagine that the profiferation of births and the overall increase in population might be due to more, optimistic souls wanting to enter the physical plane? That they are being enticed by a generally ameliorating climate for spiritual improvement?
The plane of the physical offers opportunities for the working beyond karmic stasis.
Souls choose to be born, or not to be born, depending whether there are possibilities for movement towards ultimate unification with the Eternal Godhead.
Baby steps.
We all sometimes fall back, but we know, deep down, what we have to do.
And how we have to do it.
We have to get ourselves born.
But, on terms that favor our advancement spiritually.
And then we must make the most of every opportunity to grow.
We will, of course, have all the opportunities that we need to reincarnate but the joys of progress are so palpable that once one catches hold of the process, a certain impatience asserts itself, an impatience that, irritatingly, may make progress more difficult.
My mom is no longer fighting for her life but easing into death.
A woman from Oregon said that she was not so afraid of dying , but that she would be sorry to no longer be alive.
My brother (younger by a year) has decided to to have a face lift, lose weight, and have hair transplants.
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And then we must make the most of every opportunity to grow.
We will, of course, have all the opportunities that we need to reincarnate but the joys of progress are so palpable that once one catches hold of the process, a certain impatience asserts itself, an impatience that, irritatingly, may make progress more difficult.
My mom is no longer fighting for her life but easing into death.
A woman from Oregon said that she was not so afraid of dying , but that she would be sorry to no longer be alive.
My brother (younger by a year) has decided to to have a face lift, lose weight, and have hair transplants.
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THE RELIGIONS OF SPORT
Working on this idea of a comparison between sports and religions.
-Primitive religions are like baseball teams , each team Is like a different city state with their own local religions : the Yankees, redsox, dodgers, all with their own pantheon of local gods: Derek jeter, Mariano Rivera, Nolan Ryan , and each fan wears the symbol, the jersey, of his or her personal favorite god and when city state fights another, their gods battle each other. Religions wax and wane as the fortunes of their gods do. Within each religion, every fan has a personal connection to one or another of the major gods within the world of baseball.
At some point, the religion of football comes out of the east, a different sport, more brutal, more primitive, more vigorous and proceeds to overcome the religion of baseball, sweeping all before it. Yet , while it manages to supercede baseball as a religion, on a deeper level it is still a religion based on local religions: Cowboys,Bears, Giants, Patriots, under the big umbrella Idea of Primitive Religion, with the same affinity for local gods: Peyton Manning, Bret Favre, Michael Strahan, et. al. as the religion of baseball.
Different but the same underneath.
Fans could have tie-ins with several different gods with no feeling of self conflict, and the gods didn't care.
The Jews did it differently. They organized themselves as a People. They did not have a personal relationship with god outside the context of themselves as a group. Yahweh, Sport itself, was their god and they were the chosen fanbase. They did not (or weren't supposed to) have individual idols before them. Sometimes they got seduced by the sports idols of primitivsm, ultimately they would come back to themselves as the People of Sport, the one god.
-Christians took the the primitive idea of participatory belief and the Judaic idea of the one true fan and combined it into the religion of the triathlon, where the fan is also the celebrant and each fan must establish his/her own personal relationship with the divine. It's instructive the the entire process starts with baptism. Everyone runs at their own speed. The fan and the adherent become one.
-Islam is golf. The People of the Book
The individual submits to the rule of Law. Worship takes place in the blinding light of Fairness. There is mo compromise. To cheat is to be condemned for all eternity. Bobby Jones is the Prophet and St. Andrews is Mecca.
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-Primitive religions are like baseball teams , each team Is like a different city state with their own local religions : the Yankees, redsox, dodgers, all with their own pantheon of local gods: Derek jeter, Mariano Rivera, Nolan Ryan , and each fan wears the symbol, the jersey, of his or her personal favorite god and when city state fights another, their gods battle each other. Religions wax and wane as the fortunes of their gods do. Within each religion, every fan has a personal connection to one or another of the major gods within the world of baseball.
At some point, the religion of football comes out of the east, a different sport, more brutal, more primitive, more vigorous and proceeds to overcome the religion of baseball, sweeping all before it. Yet , while it manages to supercede baseball as a religion, on a deeper level it is still a religion based on local religions: Cowboys,Bears, Giants, Patriots, under the big umbrella Idea of Primitive Religion, with the same affinity for local gods: Peyton Manning, Bret Favre, Michael Strahan, et. al. as the religion of baseball.
Different but the same underneath.
Fans could have tie-ins with several different gods with no feeling of self conflict, and the gods didn't care.
The Jews did it differently. They organized themselves as a People. They did not have a personal relationship with god outside the context of themselves as a group. Yahweh, Sport itself, was their god and they were the chosen fanbase. They did not (or weren't supposed to) have individual idols before them. Sometimes they got seduced by the sports idols of primitivsm, ultimately they would come back to themselves as the People of Sport, the one god.
-Christians took the the primitive idea of participatory belief and the Judaic idea of the one true fan and combined it into the religion of the triathlon, where the fan is also the celebrant and each fan must establish his/her own personal relationship with the divine. It's instructive the the entire process starts with baptism. Everyone runs at their own speed. The fan and the adherent become one.
-Islam is golf. The People of the Book
The individual submits to the rule of Law. Worship takes place in the blinding light of Fairness. There is mo compromise. To cheat is to be condemned for all eternity. Bobby Jones is the Prophet and St. Andrews is Mecca.
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LEAVING FRANKFURT
Now I am in the plane from FrankfurT, on the way to Washington D. C. And then on to Jacksonville. To see My mother who is very sick, but anymore than that I don't know.
We'll see.
She has recovered before.
In any event, this trip to the Middle East is over and another trip is beginning.
I am now in Airline World, which is a subset of the real world.
We'll see.
She has recovered before.
In any event, this trip to the Middle East is over and another trip is beginning.
I am now in Airline World, which is a subset of the real world.
Everyone keeps to themselves.
One seeks simply to emerge intact.
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I LET GO
Looking back I feel it was no so much that I got lucky , but that I trusted people, that I let go.
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PETRA TO TEL AVIV
Checked out of the hotel. Ouch! I think that when I booked the room I must have mistaken dinars for dollars. Way more expensive than I expected.
Waiting for the cab driver. He doesn't know what I look like and I don't know him. One more little bit of uncertainty.
That actually went remarkably well, but then Ahmad's father, the cab driver looks a little like me, to wit, short grayish-white hair and scraggly beard. Except that he doesn't have any teeth and I do, inshallah. He doesn't speak much English so it will be a quiet trip, at least in that sense.
Petra to Tel Aviv in one day, with a border crossing thrown in, plus transferring in Jerusalem. All with public transportation.
Unless he kills a few people on the way, two pedestrians , unbeknownst to them, having already escaped with their lives, we might make the Allenby (Kimg Husseini) bridge by noon. I can see why they say "inshallah " so much in this country.
I wish that this driver would stop waving his arms around and stay on our side of the road.
I can't tell if it's because of the heat that my palms are wet, or from abject fear.
In the middle of Jordanian nowhere , the engine stops for no reason.
I'm not sure I can adequately describe how desolate the landscape is. And the more often the car drifts to a stop and jerks to a start, the more desolate the landscape becomes.
Imagine Death Valley, and then imagine hitchhiking.
I suggest bad gasoline.
He offers " pompa? Like this" and holds up cylinder of some sort. Bad sign.
The engine continues to cut in and out, even at 140 kph.
Sweating profusely. Must be the heat.
We drift down from 140 to 2, and just before we come to a complete stop, the old beast kicks in again.
Back to 140.
At least , at 140 the motor has a longer time to rally before we reach 0.
Not sure if panic is yet in order, but sweaty palms sure are.
Still might just be the heat
Somewhat comforting to see that even down here, by the shore of the Dead Sea, the guy has cell service.
That people can live both I'm this country and also in Oregon amazes me.
We just coasted almost to a stop again. I dread coming to a complete stop. Which we just did.
I was wrong. There's no cell service.
I was wondering when it would be time to panic.
Now.
Escaped from a nutty cab driver.
Waiting for the cab driver. He doesn't know what I look like and I don't know him. One more little bit of uncertainty.
That actually went remarkably well, but then Ahmad's father, the cab driver looks a little like me, to wit, short grayish-white hair and scraggly beard. Except that he doesn't have any teeth and I do, inshallah. He doesn't speak much English so it will be a quiet trip, at least in that sense.
Petra to Tel Aviv in one day, with a border crossing thrown in, plus transferring in Jerusalem. All with public transportation.
Unless he kills a few people on the way, two pedestrians , unbeknownst to them, having already escaped with their lives, we might make the Allenby (Kimg Husseini) bridge by noon. I can see why they say "inshallah " so much in this country.
I wish that this driver would stop waving his arms around and stay on our side of the road.
I can't tell if it's because of the heat that my palms are wet, or from abject fear.
In the middle of Jordanian nowhere , the engine stops for no reason.
I'm not sure I can adequately describe how desolate the landscape is. And the more often the car drifts to a stop and jerks to a start, the more desolate the landscape becomes.
Imagine Death Valley, and then imagine hitchhiking.
I suggest bad gasoline.
He offers " pompa? Like this" and holds up cylinder of some sort. Bad sign.
The engine continues to cut in and out, even at 140 kph.
Sweating profusely. Must be the heat.
We drift down from 140 to 2, and just before we come to a complete stop, the old beast kicks in again.
Back to 140.
At least , at 140 the motor has a longer time to rally before we reach 0.
Not sure if panic is yet in order, but sweaty palms sure are.
Still might just be the heat
Somewhat comforting to see that even down here, by the shore of the Dead Sea, the guy has cell service.
That people can live both I'm this country and also in Oregon amazes me.
We just coasted almost to a stop again. I dread coming to a complete stop. Which we just did.
I was wrong. There's no cell service.
I was wondering when it would be time to panic.
Now.
I remember that I left my passport in Petra.
Actually, this realization did not come to me at this point. First, I had to ditch this cab.
An old, old Toyota van, like we had years ago, a taxi even lower on the scale of taxis than the one paralyzed with me in it, stops to help us. This doesn't look like it's going anywhere waiting for the cab #1. I decide to bail. I pay the first guy something and agree to pay taxi #2 the remainder.
No one, remember, speaks English at all well.
I climb into this old bus, leaving taxi #1 fuming by the side of the road. I feel like this has probably happened to him before, witness the spare pump.
We them proceed to drive up into the hills delivering bags of pitta bread and a pile of plastic chairs.
I'm feeling very patient, stoic even.
This tax #2 then drops me on the side of the road, where taxi driver #3 tells me to get in. Deciding that I don't have much choice I get in.
For 20 dinars, i.e., twenty fingers and then pointing north down the road, we arrange that he will take me to the Allenby Bridge (King Hussein Bridge, depending on who you're talking to).
So, we are putting up the road when taxi #1 passes us. I still feel better where I am.
I'm even starting to think that I may be gettin pretty good at surviving the viscissitudes of off-piste travel.
That's when I remember the passport.
I stare out the front window, sitting among four Arabs who speak very, very little english. Fortunately, for me, they know a little bit more than they were admitting to.
Shy, maybe.
Using mostly nouns, I managed to get the idea of stupidity and no passport across.
Nothing much happened for a while. Between two fine fellows in the middle seat, I lean up between the other guys in the front seat, dodging all the fringe and medals ang icons hanging from the ceiling.
We drove on while I could only think of how we were moving in precisely the opposite direction from my passport. I could, at this early moment in the crisis, only imagine that I would need to return to Petra , many hours now behind us.
I could, feeling awfully alone, imagine only that I had to get myself out of this by myself. I couldn't see how it might be possible to get back to Petra and then return north again to reach the Allenby Bridge before it closed for the night.
In the meantime , the little bus putted along. I had said about all I could say to the guys around me, though they did seem to be talking among themselves. About me, maybe, but who knows.
At some point they pulled off to the side of the road. They got out and I did too. A big guy comes over and asks me in English what is the problem. I try to explain that I need a fast car to take me back to Petra and return. He says he can do it.
An old, old Toyota van, like we had years ago, a taxi even lower on the scale of taxis than the one paralyzed with me in it, stops to help us. This doesn't look like it's going anywhere waiting for the cab #1. I decide to bail. I pay the first guy something and agree to pay taxi #2 the remainder.
No one, remember, speaks English at all well.
I climb into this old bus, leaving taxi #1 fuming by the side of the road. I feel like this has probably happened to him before, witness the spare pump.
We them proceed to drive up into the hills delivering bags of pitta bread and a pile of plastic chairs.
I'm feeling very patient, stoic even.
This tax #2 then drops me on the side of the road, where taxi driver #3 tells me to get in. Deciding that I don't have much choice I get in.
For 20 dinars, i.e., twenty fingers and then pointing north down the road, we arrange that he will take me to the Allenby Bridge (King Hussein Bridge, depending on who you're talking to).
So, we are putting up the road when taxi #1 passes us. I still feel better where I am.
I'm even starting to think that I may be gettin pretty good at surviving the viscissitudes of off-piste travel.
That's when I remember the passport.
I stare out the front window, sitting among four Arabs who speak very, very little english. Fortunately, for me, they know a little bit more than they were admitting to.
Shy, maybe.
Using mostly nouns, I managed to get the idea of stupidity and no passport across.
Nothing much happened for a while. Between two fine fellows in the middle seat, I lean up between the other guys in the front seat, dodging all the fringe and medals ang icons hanging from the ceiling.
We drove on while I could only think of how we were moving in precisely the opposite direction from my passport. I could, at this early moment in the crisis, only imagine that I would need to return to Petra , many hours now behind us.
I could, feeling awfully alone, imagine only that I had to get myself out of this by myself. I couldn't see how it might be possible to get back to Petra and then return north again to reach the Allenby Bridge before it closed for the night.
In the meantime , the little bus putted along. I had said about all I could say to the guys around me, though they did seem to be talking among themselves. About me, maybe, but who knows.
At some point they pulled off to the side of the road. They got out and I did too. A big guy comes over and asks me in English what is the problem. I try to explain that I need a fast car to take me back to Petra and return. He says he can do it.
He has a brother who lives in New Jersey. Small world.
This will cost a lot. I know this and he knows this.
But have they found the passport? I feel like I want to know this before committing to this plan.
I ask to use his phone. We eventually get through and, yes, the passport's there and I explain my plan and the time problem and my new best friend in the world says they will send it up immediately by courier and meet me at Allenby Bridge in plenty of time and I am elated and I tell the man. He's not elated.
Vast sums just vanished from his plans. I say that I will pay him to take me to the bridge, but he's not happy.
I offer him more than the now short trip is worth, but I am not feeling sorry.
I realize that this has worked out so much better than I might ever have hoped, and I appreciate what he has done for me and I tell him so, many times.
He's not impressed but I get into his nephew' s car and head out for the bridge.
Omar, his nephew, leaves me at the entrance to the Jordanian border control and I give him a tip because I realize that uncle is going to take everything for himself. Nephew's a good guy and we shake hands warmly.
I wait in the Jordanian exit lounge a long time
Finally. The courier arrives with my passport. I board the bus to cross the bridge into Israel.
I meet these three german guys who just completed the Germany to Jordan car rally. 6000 K. The idea is to drive a car that is at least 20 years old, spend very little on food, bring something from every country you pass through, like a bottle of water, stay somewhere for less ythan 15 euros a night , and, at the end, donate the car to charity. Took'em 20 days.
I now have to get a mini- bus to jerusalem, cross the city somehow, get another bus to Tel Aviv, then a cab to my hotel, that is still only a distant dream but no longer a nightmare.
It's hard to describe what happens next, because it seems so improbable. I am asking if there is a taxi direct to Tel Aviv from the Allenby Bridge when this very pretty woman with the cutest daughter, an Arab woman in full head scarf, very stylish, walks up to me and says," come with me, we are going to Tel Aviv also. We can share a cab in Jerusalem."
I say yes without knowing what else to say. Her English is great, no mistaking her forceful offer.
My stereotyped image of arab women is that they don't talk to men outside their family.
Well, that opinion changed in about five seconds, though I am still not sure how this will work. We're not talking about a pick-up here, but rather a woman in charge.
Nothing is said as I and she and her daughter board the bus. As we prepare to leave and the driver asks where I am going, she, sitting in up front, turns around looks at me and says that we are together.
I must have looked puzzled because she smiles and says "trust me".
I has been a long day and my puzzler is sore.
"Well, okay, why not?", I think.
We reach Jerusalem. I grab her bag. She changes money. We get a taxi. She gives directions. I pay for us. She finds the bus. I grab her bag. We board the bus. She pays for us.
And off we go.
To extend the surreality, the Arab taxi driver speaks Italian to me all the way across Jerusalem.
Maybe the righter word is "magical".
So, we are sitting together on the trip to Tel Aviv and she tells me that we were in run-down east Jerusalem. I tell her that I know where we were because my first hotel was near there, the Alcazar. She not only knows it but her grandparents live nearby.
This kind of thing doesn't usually happen to me. Deb finds all kinds of connections with people, but me, not so much.
We talk about how difficult it is for her as a young woman, even with a baby, to travel without a man.
I feel useful.
Her husband comes from the occupied territories and can't come into Israel. They now live in Qatar. But she has to come back every 6 mos. to maintain some kind of residency relationship with Israel. She is a civil engineer, as is her husband.
For as much as bureaucracy and politics seem to impinge on her daily, she loves her life and laughs very easily. It's hard to understand why Israel doesn't want this family to be citizens.
She says not to worry about my mom, that Allah will care for her.
When we reach Tel Aviv main bus station, we run to catch her bus, with me dragging her substantial bag. We get them there at the last moment. They hop on and we wave, like real friends.
I head off to a cab to the hotel, out near the airport.
That's how i find myself sitting in the hotel eating Chinese takeout.
One of the most miraculous days in the history of travel!
This will cost a lot. I know this and he knows this.
But have they found the passport? I feel like I want to know this before committing to this plan.
I ask to use his phone. We eventually get through and, yes, the passport's there and I explain my plan and the time problem and my new best friend in the world says they will send it up immediately by courier and meet me at Allenby Bridge in plenty of time and I am elated and I tell the man. He's not elated.
Vast sums just vanished from his plans. I say that I will pay him to take me to the bridge, but he's not happy.
I offer him more than the now short trip is worth, but I am not feeling sorry.
I realize that this has worked out so much better than I might ever have hoped, and I appreciate what he has done for me and I tell him so, many times.
He's not impressed but I get into his nephew' s car and head out for the bridge.
Omar, his nephew, leaves me at the entrance to the Jordanian border control and I give him a tip because I realize that uncle is going to take everything for himself. Nephew's a good guy and we shake hands warmly.
I wait in the Jordanian exit lounge a long time
Finally. The courier arrives with my passport. I board the bus to cross the bridge into Israel.
I meet these three german guys who just completed the Germany to Jordan car rally. 6000 K. The idea is to drive a car that is at least 20 years old, spend very little on food, bring something from every country you pass through, like a bottle of water, stay somewhere for less ythan 15 euros a night , and, at the end, donate the car to charity. Took'em 20 days.
I now have to get a mini- bus to jerusalem, cross the city somehow, get another bus to Tel Aviv, then a cab to my hotel, that is still only a distant dream but no longer a nightmare.
It's hard to describe what happens next, because it seems so improbable. I am asking if there is a taxi direct to Tel Aviv from the Allenby Bridge when this very pretty woman with the cutest daughter, an Arab woman in full head scarf, very stylish, walks up to me and says," come with me, we are going to Tel Aviv also. We can share a cab in Jerusalem."
I say yes without knowing what else to say. Her English is great, no mistaking her forceful offer.
My stereotyped image of arab women is that they don't talk to men outside their family.
Well, that opinion changed in about five seconds, though I am still not sure how this will work. We're not talking about a pick-up here, but rather a woman in charge.
Nothing is said as I and she and her daughter board the bus. As we prepare to leave and the driver asks where I am going, she, sitting in up front, turns around looks at me and says that we are together.
I must have looked puzzled because she smiles and says "trust me".
I has been a long day and my puzzler is sore.
"Well, okay, why not?", I think.
We reach Jerusalem. I grab her bag. She changes money. We get a taxi. She gives directions. I pay for us. She finds the bus. I grab her bag. We board the bus. She pays for us.
And off we go.
To extend the surreality, the Arab taxi driver speaks Italian to me all the way across Jerusalem.
Maybe the righter word is "magical".
So, we are sitting together on the trip to Tel Aviv and she tells me that we were in run-down east Jerusalem. I tell her that I know where we were because my first hotel was near there, the Alcazar. She not only knows it but her grandparents live nearby.
This kind of thing doesn't usually happen to me. Deb finds all kinds of connections with people, but me, not so much.
We talk about how difficult it is for her as a young woman, even with a baby, to travel without a man.
I feel useful.
Her husband comes from the occupied territories and can't come into Israel. They now live in Qatar. But she has to come back every 6 mos. to maintain some kind of residency relationship with Israel. She is a civil engineer, as is her husband.
For as much as bureaucracy and politics seem to impinge on her daily, she loves her life and laughs very easily. It's hard to understand why Israel doesn't want this family to be citizens.
She says not to worry about my mom, that Allah will care for her.
When we reach Tel Aviv main bus station, we run to catch her bus, with me dragging her substantial bag. We get them there at the last moment. They hop on and we wave, like real friends.
I head off to a cab to the hotel, out near the airport.
That's how i find myself sitting in the hotel eating Chinese takeout.
One of the most miraculous days in the history of travel!
Escaped from a nutty cab driver.
Found by a group of wonderful Jordanian hangers-about.
Rescued by Arab woman and her beautiful child.
Discussed Rome with an Arab cab driver speaking Italian.
It goes on and on.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Rescued by Arab woman and her beautiful child.
Discussed Rome with an Arab cab driver speaking Italian.
It goes on and on.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
PETRA
Made it to Petra. Brain worn out. Three hours of trying to talk to and understand the cab driver from amman has been fatiguing.
Waiting to check-in.
Can't get the Internet to work on my phone. Have come to take it for granted.
I figured out how to stay In touch using the phone system. It costs money but I will be prudent.
Decided to take a preliminary walk down into Petra this evening and then go through it more extensively tomorrow. Heading up and out, many people ride out in all carts pulled by bedraggled horses. The owners switch them going down and switch them heading back to the beginning.
This is somewhat like hiking into the Grand Canyon, easy to go down, difficult to climb after a hot day in the desert sun.
Petra, in all it's spectacular, barren brutality, compares so oddly with Jerusalem. On the one hand , the divisive elements have long since disappeared. No one is going to die to claim this piece of ground, but it feels so much like the Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City. The overarching, claustrophobic path downwards into the earth. And the hordes of people, the vendors of "antique", "museum quality !" doodahs. But missing are the smells.
It would be hard to look forward to anything after this; glad I saved it til last.
I'm glad that it is this impressive because I am getting tired of traveling.
I am eating outside, in the roof garden restaurant of the hotel. One thing that I have avoided doing is being very adventurous in finding little, out of the way, Arabic spots.
I like eating outside, if I'm eating alone, because the sky and the breezes are like eating with old friends, and, as the sky darkens, the stars.
Well, the music just changed from soft Arabian to soft easy-listening.
"I can't help falling in love with you" and then on to "My way". Shameless.
Just in time, back to soft Arabic.
I scheduled with Mahmod, the cab driver who drove me down here, to call him and tell him if I needed him to come and take me back to Amman. I asked one of the waiters if he would help me call. He wanted to what it was all about. When I explained, he said his father would do it. Same price.
Cutthroat world, this.
My brother calls me in the middle of the night and tells me that my mother is very sick and that he needs a power of attorney. I sent him an email saying that I will go along with their decisions.
I'm glad that I am in the going-home process.
More tomorrow.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Waiting to check-in.
Can't get the Internet to work on my phone. Have come to take it for granted.
I figured out how to stay In touch using the phone system. It costs money but I will be prudent.
Decided to take a preliminary walk down into Petra this evening and then go through it more extensively tomorrow. Heading up and out, many people ride out in all carts pulled by bedraggled horses. The owners switch them going down and switch them heading back to the beginning.
This is somewhat like hiking into the Grand Canyon, easy to go down, difficult to climb after a hot day in the desert sun.
Petra, in all it's spectacular, barren brutality, compares so oddly with Jerusalem. On the one hand , the divisive elements have long since disappeared. No one is going to die to claim this piece of ground, but it feels so much like the Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City. The overarching, claustrophobic path downwards into the earth. And the hordes of people, the vendors of "antique", "museum quality !" doodahs. But missing are the smells.
It would be hard to look forward to anything after this; glad I saved it til last.
I'm glad that it is this impressive because I am getting tired of traveling.
I am eating outside, in the roof garden restaurant of the hotel. One thing that I have avoided doing is being very adventurous in finding little, out of the way, Arabic spots.
I like eating outside, if I'm eating alone, because the sky and the breezes are like eating with old friends, and, as the sky darkens, the stars.
Well, the music just changed from soft Arabian to soft easy-listening.
"I can't help falling in love with you" and then on to "My way". Shameless.
Just in time, back to soft Arabic.
I scheduled with Mahmod, the cab driver who drove me down here, to call him and tell him if I needed him to come and take me back to Amman. I asked one of the waiters if he would help me call. He wanted to what it was all about. When I explained, he said his father would do it. Same price.
Cutthroat world, this.
My brother calls me in the middle of the night and tells me that my mother is very sick and that he needs a power of attorney. I sent him an email saying that I will go along with their decisions.
I'm glad that I am in the going-home process.
More tomorrow.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
JERUSALEM TO AMMAN
Sitting on al-Nijmeh taxi depot, waiting for the mini-bus to the Allenby Bridge where we cross into Jordan. Arabs, not Jews , seem to run the taxi services here, at least, taxis for the people. This is one of those taxis that leaves when it is full. So we sit. The hotel offered the idea of a private car to the bridge, for $80 bit this mini-bus only costs $10. O figured that the difference will come in handy later.
I'm surrounded by older Arab women and Arab music. Tres tipique.
The tourist lifestyle makes it quite easy to insulate yourself from the Arab world of Jerusalem. Everyone assumes that you would rather avoid all the "unpleasantness."
For all the Jewish self-satisfaction about the "return" of Jerusalem to them, I don't think we've seen the last of regeime change.
Well, we're full and we're off.
Uhoh. Everyones taking great pains to buckle seatbelts.
One of the women just offered me a Hall's coughdrop.
Just went through into Jordan.
Costs $50 to leave Israel.
I don't think that this is the way most people get to Petra.
There's a lot to be said for having the paperwork in order.
This land is desolate.
Not having a tourguide to handle all the protocol certainly requires staying alert to many more nuanced interactions, like the fact that the bus driver just took away my passport. Deb's a lot better at making sense of mildly inscrutable situations.
I sat next to an English couple who were talking to some Americans. We all went through the gates together. Then they split up. They hugged each other, probably at the instigation of the Americans, because the English woman exclaimed, " I don't think I have ever hugged so many people in my life!"
I went on to look for transportation into Amman and was discovered by both a cab driver and a bus driver. The cab driver won the bidding war; the bus driver looked disgruntled. 7 dinars/ 10 dollars, not bad. As I got in the cab I told him his tire needed air. He said that if I hire him to drive to Petra , he will put air in tire. He said," I know Americans like to be safe". I told him it was good for him too. Anyway, on the way into town, he put air into the tire. I haven't decided if I want him to drive me all the way to Petra. He said if we don't make it, I don't pay him. Hmmm.
The cab is decrepit. Somewhat beat up. On the highway, we pass the English couple in a nice new car with a driver.
They are probably not going to Petra in a cab like this one.
Checking into the Marriott, it's funny to see, where everywhere else you see pictures of King Hussein and his son, here the pictures are of J. W. Marriott and his son, the ones that are in every Marriott that I've ever been in.
I told the concierge that I wanted to walk down to the Roman amphitheater , to which he replied "not possible" to which I thanked him and walked there. Truely, you have to be careful what decisions you want other people to make for you. Someone's always willing, especially if there's money to be made.
On the other hand, you can't always say "no". The more the traveller, the more the cleverer.
Anyway, as I decided to return to the hotel, I opted for a taxi.
Khaled (as it turns out his name is) comes out of nowhere; they can just tell.
He says to pay him amythig I like, nothing even. Uhuh, we settle on 3 dinars before leaving the amphitheater. He's a good guy. He asks what I do and I tell him my job is to be a tourist so I can hire a guy like him. His job is to be a cab driver and my job is to pay him, that my wife sends me money so I can pass it along to him.
He days that I am funny guy and that he likes me. We are both laughing. He showse a picture of his wife and daughter on his mobile and I show the picture of Deb," very beautiful " and I have this picture of Rosella, in the red dress, and he says "you are indeed a lucky man".
He says that he gives all his money to his wife.
I tell him that my wife sends me money so that I can give it to him so that he can, in turn, give it to his wife. We decided it would be simpler to give her address to Deb.
We laughed some more.
We started to talk about how much a cab costs. 41000 Jordanian dinars. He said that if I gave him theoney, he would paye back in 8 years. I suggested tha he could also, the next te I return to Amman , he could give me free taxi rides. I told him that I don't have that much money right now, but I will ask my wife to work harder.
We laughed again.
By this time we had reached the hotel and he said, as I got out, "I think we could be good friends".
This guy at the hotel tells me I need to try Jordanian wine "baitutti", which is made here, unlike the Jordanian wine in restaurants, where they buy grapes from France or S. A. and then make the wine here. The real stuff, "baitutti", you have to go to the store and order and they bring it the next day. Somehow, they make it in their homes. Maybe in Petra.
I hope this all comes across, Deb, as a testament to my love for you.
I've decided to go with the taxi guy, instead of renting a car myself, partly because I would like to give the bucks directly to a local guy instead of a big car company. I'll try to keep him on the right side of the highway.
Deb, reading an article on how couples stay committed and the important thing is to do "challenging and important things together". That's what I feel about this trip and this journal. It feels like I taking this trip with you.
My love for you is the most important part of my life. Period. Double period.
Can you believe that this hotel has no wireless Internet ? I told them that it was ridiculous. They said everyone is complaining.
Geez another wedding. I hope this video comes through. No Internet.
Just to mix it up, the groom is dancing with the men and the bride dances with the women. And then they are both together.
I asked one of the guys in the hotel if this is a big( it looks big) wedding or a small one. "Small". Whew.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
I'm surrounded by older Arab women and Arab music. Tres tipique.
The tourist lifestyle makes it quite easy to insulate yourself from the Arab world of Jerusalem. Everyone assumes that you would rather avoid all the "unpleasantness."
For all the Jewish self-satisfaction about the "return" of Jerusalem to them, I don't think we've seen the last of regeime change.
Well, we're full and we're off.
Uhoh. Everyones taking great pains to buckle seatbelts.
One of the women just offered me a Hall's coughdrop.
Just went through into Jordan.
Costs $50 to leave Israel.
I don't think that this is the way most people get to Petra.
There's a lot to be said for having the paperwork in order.
This land is desolate.
Not having a tourguide to handle all the protocol certainly requires staying alert to many more nuanced interactions, like the fact that the bus driver just took away my passport. Deb's a lot better at making sense of mildly inscrutable situations.
I sat next to an English couple who were talking to some Americans. We all went through the gates together. Then they split up. They hugged each other, probably at the instigation of the Americans, because the English woman exclaimed, " I don't think I have ever hugged so many people in my life!"
I went on to look for transportation into Amman and was discovered by both a cab driver and a bus driver. The cab driver won the bidding war; the bus driver looked disgruntled. 7 dinars/ 10 dollars, not bad. As I got in the cab I told him his tire needed air. He said that if I hire him to drive to Petra , he will put air in tire. He said," I know Americans like to be safe". I told him it was good for him too. Anyway, on the way into town, he put air into the tire. I haven't decided if I want him to drive me all the way to Petra. He said if we don't make it, I don't pay him. Hmmm.
The cab is decrepit. Somewhat beat up. On the highway, we pass the English couple in a nice new car with a driver.
They are probably not going to Petra in a cab like this one.
Checking into the Marriott, it's funny to see, where everywhere else you see pictures of King Hussein and his son, here the pictures are of J. W. Marriott and his son, the ones that are in every Marriott that I've ever been in.
I told the concierge that I wanted to walk down to the Roman amphitheater , to which he replied "not possible" to which I thanked him and walked there. Truely, you have to be careful what decisions you want other people to make for you. Someone's always willing, especially if there's money to be made.
On the other hand, you can't always say "no". The more the traveller, the more the cleverer.
Anyway, as I decided to return to the hotel, I opted for a taxi.
Khaled (as it turns out his name is) comes out of nowhere; they can just tell.
He says to pay him amythig I like, nothing even. Uhuh, we settle on 3 dinars before leaving the amphitheater. He's a good guy. He asks what I do and I tell him my job is to be a tourist so I can hire a guy like him. His job is to be a cab driver and my job is to pay him, that my wife sends me money so I can pass it along to him.
He days that I am funny guy and that he likes me. We are both laughing. He showse a picture of his wife and daughter on his mobile and I show the picture of Deb," very beautiful " and I have this picture of Rosella, in the red dress, and he says "you are indeed a lucky man".
He says that he gives all his money to his wife.
I tell him that my wife sends me money so that I can give it to him so that he can, in turn, give it to his wife. We decided it would be simpler to give her address to Deb.
We laughed some more.
We started to talk about how much a cab costs. 41000 Jordanian dinars. He said that if I gave him theoney, he would paye back in 8 years. I suggested tha he could also, the next te I return to Amman , he could give me free taxi rides. I told him that I don't have that much money right now, but I will ask my wife to work harder.
We laughed again.
By this time we had reached the hotel and he said, as I got out, "I think we could be good friends".
This guy at the hotel tells me I need to try Jordanian wine "baitutti", which is made here, unlike the Jordanian wine in restaurants, where they buy grapes from France or S. A. and then make the wine here. The real stuff, "baitutti", you have to go to the store and order and they bring it the next day. Somehow, they make it in their homes. Maybe in Petra.
I hope this all comes across, Deb, as a testament to my love for you.
I've decided to go with the taxi guy, instead of renting a car myself, partly because I would like to give the bucks directly to a local guy instead of a big car company. I'll try to keep him on the right side of the highway.
Deb, reading an article on how couples stay committed and the important thing is to do "challenging and important things together". That's what I feel about this trip and this journal. It feels like I taking this trip with you.
My love for you is the most important part of my life. Period. Double period.
Can you believe that this hotel has no wireless Internet ? I told them that it was ridiculous. They said everyone is complaining.
Geez another wedding. I hope this video comes through. No Internet.
Just to mix it up, the groom is dancing with the men and the bride dances with the women. And then they are both together.
I asked one of the guys in the hotel if this is a big( it looks big) wedding or a small one. "Small". Whew.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
JERUSALEM DAY
I can't believ that I just accidently erased this entire day! It is now 2:00 P. M.
I just left the old city hotel and transferred here, to the American Colony Hotel.
What a change! The way I like it: leaving my little flea-infested monks cell and coming to where, as I check in the fellow says, " I'm sorry, mr. Chapman but the room is not quite ready. Would you like a glass of champage while you wait?"
While I was walking here, I passed through a demonstration outside the american consulate, an israeli demostration against Obama. He's not real popular among the israelis.
I walked further on and passing me in the opposite direction was an older Arab woman teaching a younger one to drive: eyes straight ahead, hands clutching the wheel, all so familiar. The only problem for them is that I don't think that they appreciated the fact of the demostration back the way they were headed.
On the way here, on Nablus road, a woman, distraught and weeping, supported by two burley men, came straggling out of the alternative burial place of Jesus. No one seemed overly concerned. I think they call it Jerusalem Syndrome.
You're never far from a drama here.
Eating at the same resturant every night, and here again tonight, I tell the waitress that I really like Jerusalem (she's from here and agrees with me) and I tell her that I'm from Oregon , on the USA. I realize that when I say I like it here, it means a lot to her, but when someone tells me that they like Oregon, I don't have her reaction. I realize that I don't need someone else's friendship as much as jeruslemites need friends.
It is a beautiful, fragile place.
Today is Jerusalem Day, the anniversary of the acquiring , or should I say "return", of the city to israeli possession.
Kids everywhere with israeli flags.
Not something you would see at home.
So this is am azing night to be in Jerusalem , there are Jews everywhere celebrating astonishingly, yet a young Arab woman passede and we exchanged big smiles. What a wonderful experience.
With all the turmoil, I am still tearing up mightily.
I wouldn't have missed this for the world.
Of course, coming back from the restaurant, I pass through the bus terminal where all the shuttle buses are heading back to the palestinian towns of Bethlehem , and jericho and they are not celebrating, but I carry that arab woman's smile with me as a small smile of hope.
Back at the hotel, I'm amazed to see that no one seems to know about all the excitement not so far from here. Especially since, trust me, these people don't see things the Palestinian way.
Bubble People.
One item that I love in the International Herald Tribune is the "in our pages" years ago. Today is the 50th anniversary of the winning of the West Virginia primary by John Kennedy. I remember that. In fact, he came back to Wheeling later to thank West Virginia for the victory, upon which occasion I managed to smack him in the face while I ran alongside his car as he left our football stadium. Couldn't get that close to the president now. Probably shouldn't have been able to then, as it turned out.
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I just left the old city hotel and transferred here, to the American Colony Hotel.
What a change! The way I like it: leaving my little flea-infested monks cell and coming to where, as I check in the fellow says, " I'm sorry, mr. Chapman but the room is not quite ready. Would you like a glass of champage while you wait?"
While I was walking here, I passed through a demonstration outside the american consulate, an israeli demostration against Obama. He's not real popular among the israelis.
I walked further on and passing me in the opposite direction was an older Arab woman teaching a younger one to drive: eyes straight ahead, hands clutching the wheel, all so familiar. The only problem for them is that I don't think that they appreciated the fact of the demostration back the way they were headed.
On the way here, on Nablus road, a woman, distraught and weeping, supported by two burley men, came straggling out of the alternative burial place of Jesus. No one seemed overly concerned. I think they call it Jerusalem Syndrome.
You're never far from a drama here.
Eating at the same resturant every night, and here again tonight, I tell the waitress that I really like Jerusalem (she's from here and agrees with me) and I tell her that I'm from Oregon , on the USA. I realize that when I say I like it here, it means a lot to her, but when someone tells me that they like Oregon, I don't have her reaction. I realize that I don't need someone else's friendship as much as jeruslemites need friends.
It is a beautiful, fragile place.
Today is Jerusalem Day, the anniversary of the acquiring , or should I say "return", of the city to israeli possession.
Kids everywhere with israeli flags.
Not something you would see at home.
So this is am azing night to be in Jerusalem , there are Jews everywhere celebrating astonishingly, yet a young Arab woman passede and we exchanged big smiles. What a wonderful experience.
With all the turmoil, I am still tearing up mightily.
I wouldn't have missed this for the world.
Of course, coming back from the restaurant, I pass through the bus terminal where all the shuttle buses are heading back to the palestinian towns of Bethlehem , and jericho and they are not celebrating, but I carry that arab woman's smile with me as a small smile of hope.
Back at the hotel, I'm amazed to see that no one seems to know about all the excitement not so far from here. Especially since, trust me, these people don't see things the Palestinian way.
Bubble People.
One item that I love in the International Herald Tribune is the "in our pages" years ago. Today is the 50th anniversary of the winning of the West Virginia primary by John Kennedy. I remember that. In fact, he came back to Wheeling later to thank West Virginia for the victory, upon which occasion I managed to smack him in the face while I ran alongside his car as he left our football stadium. Couldn't get that close to the president now. Probably shouldn't have been able to then, as it turned out.
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Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
MASADA
Up early to go to Masada, all the shops are closed and all a schoolchildren fill up the streets.
Just getting started with this tour, I cam see why I don't do it this way more often: so much confusion, standing around, everyone looking at everyone else, puzzled, the ineveitable missing person.
Just reading in the local paper that Jerusalem is the poorest city in Israel. It does seem scruffy, but I thought it was because of the crush of tourists. All the tourists don't translate into dollars, or shekels as the case may be. 1/3 of the Jews and 2/3 of the arabs live under the poverty level.
I feel ever so much like a sheep, following a shepherd. It's easy to just zone out, maybe that's why sheep are so placid.
I was planning on walking down from the fortress, in effect breaking put of the group, when the guide began to make the case that to walk would be to inconvenience everyone else. Besides which, people have died doing this. Eventually , sheeplike, I muttered a little baaaaaaa, and hung with the flock. I did want to get an answer to how they got water to the fortress, and since it was the last item on his list, it worked out.
We're down at the Dead Sea now where people are going to cover themselves on mud and float in the water, where you can't sink. I'm going to skip it.
Seeing all the bathers walking around in their euro-suits, you realize that they probably shouldn't.
On the way back? A woman sitting in front asked me where I was from. I said oregon and she said California Close enough when you're 11 time zones away. She and her friend had stayed in tel aviv and were seeing Israel by bus. I shake my head. She lives in San Diego and wants to be on Survivor, or The Amazing Race, or The Mole. She's tried out for all of them.
I'm in uncharted territory.
They ate at Mcdonalds the
night before.I did the best I could I recommended a restaurant near Jaffa, a beautiful Crusader city near where they are staying, but they had never heard of it.
They were fun to talk to, but .....,
I can see why other travellers just shake their heads at Americans.
Back to the Old City, I look around at all the Haredim, the Ultra-orthodox, and for all their pissiness, because they are real pains in the butt for everyone, still you have to admire a culture ( like Buddhism) that respects and encourages a part of their culture to seek what they believe to be the highest good.
Still,As a way to pass time, it is way more fun talking to the women from San Diego.
I can't believe how much I've learned, here in Jerusalem , not being part of a group. Exploring , looking, poking, probing, stumbling , asking, stopping , thinking, I've learned so much.
Especially how to type on this damn keyboard!
I'm not really sure that I'm on the same page as the Jewish Zealots committing suicide at Masada. The two women and three children who hid themselve and saved themselves appeal to a part of me.
The women from San Diego had never heard of Petra. I had to start from scratch.
On how many different levels do we all see the world?
The first woman said that she understands that she is a very forceful personality, that that's why thety didn't pick her for Survivor; the other one said that her friend couldn't even remember her last name. Chuckles.
Speaking of chuckles, as I am typing this, Steve Gremmel calls fr home asking if I want to go golfing. Blast from the other world. Cellphones are so weird. No one knows where you are.
What universe am I calling? My friend, Don Gott, do you realize what different planets we live on ?
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Just getting started with this tour, I cam see why I don't do it this way more often: so much confusion, standing around, everyone looking at everyone else, puzzled, the ineveitable missing person.
Just reading in the local paper that Jerusalem is the poorest city in Israel. It does seem scruffy, but I thought it was because of the crush of tourists. All the tourists don't translate into dollars, or shekels as the case may be. 1/3 of the Jews and 2/3 of the arabs live under the poverty level.
I feel ever so much like a sheep, following a shepherd. It's easy to just zone out, maybe that's why sheep are so placid.
I was planning on walking down from the fortress, in effect breaking put of the group, when the guide began to make the case that to walk would be to inconvenience everyone else. Besides which, people have died doing this. Eventually , sheeplike, I muttered a little baaaaaaa, and hung with the flock. I did want to get an answer to how they got water to the fortress, and since it was the last item on his list, it worked out.
We're down at the Dead Sea now where people are going to cover themselves on mud and float in the water, where you can't sink. I'm going to skip it.
Seeing all the bathers walking around in their euro-suits, you realize that they probably shouldn't.
On the way back? A woman sitting in front asked me where I was from. I said oregon and she said California Close enough when you're 11 time zones away. She and her friend had stayed in tel aviv and were seeing Israel by bus. I shake my head. She lives in San Diego and wants to be on Survivor, or The Amazing Race, or The Mole. She's tried out for all of them.
I'm in uncharted territory.
They ate at Mcdonalds the
night before.I did the best I could I recommended a restaurant near Jaffa, a beautiful Crusader city near where they are staying, but they had never heard of it.
They were fun to talk to, but .....,
I can see why other travellers just shake their heads at Americans.
Back to the Old City, I look around at all the Haredim, the Ultra-orthodox, and for all their pissiness, because they are real pains in the butt for everyone, still you have to admire a culture ( like Buddhism) that respects and encourages a part of their culture to seek what they believe to be the highest good.
Still,As a way to pass time, it is way more fun talking to the women from San Diego.
I can't believe how much I've learned, here in Jerusalem , not being part of a group. Exploring , looking, poking, probing, stumbling , asking, stopping , thinking, I've learned so much.
Especially how to type on this damn keyboard!
I'm not really sure that I'm on the same page as the Jewish Zealots committing suicide at Masada. The two women and three children who hid themselve and saved themselves appeal to a part of me.
The women from San Diego had never heard of Petra. I had to start from scratch.
On how many different levels do we all see the world?
The first woman said that she understands that she is a very forceful personality, that that's why thety didn't pick her for Survivor; the other one said that her friend couldn't even remember her last name. Chuckles.
Speaking of chuckles, as I am typing this, Steve Gremmel calls fr home asking if I want to go golfing. Blast from the other world. Cellphones are so weird. No one knows where you are.
What universe am I calling? My friend, Don Gott, do you realize what different planets we live on ?
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Sunday, May 9, 2010
ARABS AND ISRAELIS ARE COUSINS
I was asked the directions to St. Georges Cathedral by the spitting image of Dorothy Sayer's Miss Marples.
It's difficult to appear crisp in this heat, only the Jewish men and the Arab women pull it off. There is a slightly bewildered look to everyone else.
An Arab man I had a long talk with this morning said that the Israelis and the Arabs are cousins, descendents of Moses but of two different wives.
Later, getting a chance to engage a Jewish scholar in the Ohel Yitzhak synagogue, among other things, I asked him why he was studying and discussing a book that is so many thousands of years old, and which so many people have picked apart in so many different ways and in which the words themselves haven't changed in all that time. Hadn't it all been figured out by now?
It's difficult to appear crisp in this heat, only the Jewish men and the Arab women pull it off. There is a slightly bewildered look to everyone else.
An Arab man I had a long talk with this morning said that the Israelis and the Arabs are cousins, descendents of Moses but of two different wives.
Later, getting a chance to engage a Jewish scholar in the Ohel Yitzhak synagogue, among other things, I asked him why he was studying and discussing a book that is so many thousands of years old, and which so many people have picked apart in so many different ways and in which the words themselves haven't changed in all that time. Hadn't it all been figured out by now?
He gives me the impression that they are just getting started.
"Hey, we're Jews," you says, " You know what they say, two Jews , three opinions. "
He confirmed that Arabs and Jews really are, according to the story, first cousins.
All the more puzzling.
"Hey, we're Jews," you says, " You know what they say, two Jews , three opinions. "
He confirmed that Arabs and Jews really are, according to the story, first cousins.
All the more puzzling.
He does doubt, somewhat, my Walt Disney analogy, but more because he considers Uncle Walt an anti-semite.
Points easily get lost here.
To enter the area of the mosque is astoundingly difficult. No one makes it easy, the harsh sun least of all.
On the vast (for Jerusalem ) plateau of the Al Aqsa Mosque, the identification of all these religions with light and heat, with the starkness of loss and redemption, and the terror of insignificance is hard to miss.
I like how the women and children use the Dome of Chains as a picnic area.
Christianity is smoke;
Islam is light;
Judaism is conversation.
This plaza is so big ,and so flat, and so hot.
Back in the Armenian Hospice, I get my roomkey and an expostulation on how the Christians have many problems with the Muslims and the Muslims with the Jews and the Jews with the Christians and the Muslims with the Christians, etc., but of them all, the Druze are the worst. They are extra, extra bad.
To enter the area of the mosque is astoundingly difficult. No one makes it easy, the harsh sun least of all.
On the vast (for Jerusalem ) plateau of the Al Aqsa Mosque, the identification of all these religions with light and heat, with the starkness of loss and redemption, and the terror of insignificance is hard to miss.
I like how the women and children use the Dome of Chains as a picnic area.
Christianity is smoke;
Islam is light;
Judaism is conversation.
This plaza is so big ,and so flat, and so hot.
Back in the Armenian Hospice, I get my roomkey and an expostulation on how the Christians have many problems with the Muslims and the Muslims with the Jews and the Jews with the Christians and the Muslims with the Christians, etc., but of them all, the Druze are the worst. They are extra, extra bad.
Even worse than the Syriacs.
In fact, at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, there are so many factions represented there: Catholic, Orthodox, Copt, Armenian, and others that in order to open the church every day, they've turned the job over to a Muslim because no one trusts anyone else.
Sheesh!
I just noticed that it is 91° here in Jerusalem and 45 at home.
Time to do some laundry.
I've come back to Holy Sepulchre Church to get a picture of the candle that I lit for Mitch. It makes the third time today that I have been in the Presence of God according to some major faith. They are all less than a mile from each other! Come on, people, it can't be this hard to make it work out.
I must be gaining that otherworldly look in my eye; people are starting to ask me for directions.
I've always noticed that overseas there are so many more shops catering to men's fashions.
What I can't figure out, having a glass of wine outside the Old City ( inside, it's forbidden ) why anyone wants the Old City. Why not make it an international city, like the Vatican ?
Gee, it almost sounds simple.
The game here is like chess; how many moves ahead can you imagine?
I love Arabs for their simplicity.
I love Jews for their complexity.
Christians, it's all one.
According to Joseph Campbell, the hero of Christianity is Jesus , but the hero of Judaism is the Jewish people.
Big difference.
You achieve redemption as a race, rather than as an individual.
Someone asked the rabbinical student why Jews have been so reviled and he replied that it was because they have been so successful and other people resent that, but that seems so simplistic. Jews have not always been successful. What are the roots of anti- semitism? What are the roots of racism, for that matter?
Maybe the next trip is to India , this monotheism stuff is wearing me out.
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In fact, at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, there are so many factions represented there: Catholic, Orthodox, Copt, Armenian, and others that in order to open the church every day, they've turned the job over to a Muslim because no one trusts anyone else.
Sheesh!
I just noticed that it is 91° here in Jerusalem and 45 at home.
Time to do some laundry.
I've come back to Holy Sepulchre Church to get a picture of the candle that I lit for Mitch. It makes the third time today that I have been in the Presence of God according to some major faith. They are all less than a mile from each other! Come on, people, it can't be this hard to make it work out.
I must be gaining that otherworldly look in my eye; people are starting to ask me for directions.
I've always noticed that overseas there are so many more shops catering to men's fashions.
What I can't figure out, having a glass of wine outside the Old City ( inside, it's forbidden ) why anyone wants the Old City. Why not make it an international city, like the Vatican ?
Gee, it almost sounds simple.
The game here is like chess; how many moves ahead can you imagine?
I love Arabs for their simplicity.
I love Jews for their complexity.
Christians, it's all one.
According to Joseph Campbell, the hero of Christianity is Jesus , but the hero of Judaism is the Jewish people.
Big difference.
You achieve redemption as a race, rather than as an individual.
Someone asked the rabbinical student why Jews have been so reviled and he replied that it was because they have been so successful and other people resent that, but that seems so simplistic. Jews have not always been successful. What are the roots of anti- semitism? What are the roots of racism, for that matter?
Maybe the next trip is to India , this monotheism stuff is wearing me out.
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Saturday, May 8, 2010
NIGHT IN THE OLD CITY
First night inside the old city. Sure is noisy. Surprising number of cars. The street just aren't that wide.
Came outside to the David Citadel Hotel to sign up for a tour to Massada and the Dead Sea. The concierge asked where I was staying. When I said, inside the old city, I thought he asked me if I had a sofa. I was offended. We eventually figured out that he meant cellphone.
This is going to be a really hot day to head for the Mount of Olives, Gesthemene.
I walked all the way around the walls of the city and when I got to the bottom of the Mount of of Olives, a cabby asked me if I wanted a ride to the top. I took him up on it. He wanted to know if I was a believer. I said no. He said he wasn't either. He wanted me to hire him to take me all over Israel. I settled on 15 shekels to the top. When I got there, Jerusalem lay off in the distance like a faded oriental carpet spread out on the dirt. The bad air (which I thought was smog but turned out to be storm of desert dust) rendered it all the much more indistinct.
I get an old Arab to let me have a picture with him and his donkey.
Came outside to the David Citadel Hotel to sign up for a tour to Massada and the Dead Sea. The concierge asked where I was staying. When I said, inside the old city, I thought he asked me if I had a sofa. I was offended. We eventually figured out that he meant cellphone.
This is going to be a really hot day to head for the Mount of Olives, Gesthemene.
I walked all the way around the walls of the city and when I got to the bottom of the Mount of of Olives, a cabby asked me if I wanted a ride to the top. I took him up on it. He wanted to know if I was a believer. I said no. He said he wasn't either. He wanted me to hire him to take me all over Israel. I settled on 15 shekels to the top. When I got there, Jerusalem lay off in the distance like a faded oriental carpet spread out on the dirt. The bad air (which I thought was smog but turned out to be storm of desert dust) rendered it all the much more indistinct.
I get an old Arab to let me have a picture with him and his donkey.
"Kiss, kiss" he tells the donkey as he takes my hand and sticks it in the donkey's face. It has big soft lips and as it smiles, it's teeth are huge.
I hope my sunburned fingers didn't look like little carrots.
Having a coffee, a cappuccino in the little Arab village of El Tur. Good coffee but this guy is about to crank up this big water pipe next to me. I ask him what's in the pipe, as he sits there with a cigarette in his one hand and holding the mouthpiece up to me with the other. I manage not to take it, with a lot of nodding and bobbing, and smiling.
Having a coffee, a cappuccino in the little Arab village of El Tur. Good coffee but this guy is about to crank up this big water pipe next to me. I ask him what's in the pipe, as he sits there with a cigarette in his one hand and holding the mouthpiece up to me with the other. I manage not to take it, with a lot of nodding and bobbing, and smiling.
We part friends.
Unlike Deb, I didn't read the guidebook until I had already climbed the mountain and , only then, do I discover that all the churches close at noon (it's now 2:90) and you can't go in wearing shorts anyway. Someday I'll learn.
Walking through the old city, besides the sheer number of people, is the almost crushing waves of smells: saffron , coriander , mint, cooking meat, tobacco smoke from giant hookahs, green spices, red spices, purple pickled cauliflower, and above it all- "mister, mister, come into my shop!"
There are lot of articles in the Israeli press about the ultra-orthodox and how they are so far outside mainstream thinking. In fact, the paper says, if you include the Arab population, 1/2 of all the first graders in Israel are not receiving an education that is in any way supportive of the state of Israel.
There are many articles here about not wanting to be the new South Africa, but there are a lot of similarities between the Haredim and the Boers. SA made a choice and Israel will have to also.
Reading the Israeli papers, I have to say that everyone here appreciates the immense problems and the articles that I have read are unanimous in a desire to solve them. In circumstances this extreme, I can only applaud them. Throughout history, Jews , pound for pound, have done more to advance the human experience than any other group. The awkward question, now is, can the Israeli experiment further the Jewish future?
An Israeli cab driver called the Arabs "garbage", a group of people who, for good or bad, represent 20 per cent of the population of Israel. In America , if we said that about such a large part of our people , it would be condemned.
Walking through the old city, besides the sheer number of people, is the almost crushing waves of smells: saffron , coriander , mint, cooking meat, tobacco smoke from giant hookahs, green spices, red spices, purple pickled cauliflower, and above it all- "mister, mister, come into my shop!"
There are lot of articles in the Israeli press about the ultra-orthodox and how they are so far outside mainstream thinking. In fact, the paper says, if you include the Arab population, 1/2 of all the first graders in Israel are not receiving an education that is in any way supportive of the state of Israel.
There are many articles here about not wanting to be the new South Africa, but there are a lot of similarities between the Haredim and the Boers. SA made a choice and Israel will have to also.
Reading the Israeli papers, I have to say that everyone here appreciates the immense problems and the articles that I have read are unanimous in a desire to solve them. In circumstances this extreme, I can only applaud them. Throughout history, Jews , pound for pound, have done more to advance the human experience than any other group. The awkward question, now is, can the Israeli experiment further the Jewish future?
An Israeli cab driver called the Arabs "garbage", a group of people who, for good or bad, represent 20 per cent of the population of Israel. In America , if we said that about such a large part of our people , it would be condemned.
It has to be condemned here.
I love the vibrancy of this place. Right outside the restaurant there is a large group dancing. How can you not love it. They can't all do the dance, but everyone is trying.
Campaign slogan: do you want a future, or do you want to be passed by?
I do have to admit that while watching all the people dance, if this were america, I wouldn't be worried about being blown up. Walking here is not on solid ground, but on a tightrope.
Why do people hate other people? I really don't get it!
We're here for a short amount of time, (tears in my eyes).
People are still dancing. Go People!
One comes to Jerusalem to feel. So far so good.
Deb, you are the one, you're the one in my heart, you're my darling, my life's greatest thrill!
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I love the vibrancy of this place. Right outside the restaurant there is a large group dancing. How can you not love it. They can't all do the dance, but everyone is trying.
Campaign slogan: do you want a future, or do you want to be passed by?
I do have to admit that while watching all the people dance, if this were america, I wouldn't be worried about being blown up. Walking here is not on solid ground, but on a tightrope.
Why do people hate other people? I really don't get it!
We're here for a short amount of time, (tears in my eyes).
People are still dancing. Go People!
One comes to Jerusalem to feel. So far so good.
Deb, you are the one, you're the one in my heart, you're my darling, my life's greatest thrill!
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Friday, May 7, 2010
TEL AVIV TO JERUSALEM
Okaaay. I am now in Jerusalem.
Hotel iffy.
Cab driver says I should try to do better.
Deb, you would not want to be here.
My little, funky hotel in east Jerusalem has an edearing characteristic in that of all the hotel people I've run into, they speak the best English.
Everywhere is stone; everywhere is hard.
Shimon asked me " why can't they just leave us alone?" That seems so naive. I couldn't decide if he thought that Arabs were evil, or just stupid. And right after this discussion, I walk into the alcazar hotel and meet the Arab proprietor and he is perfectly reasonable amd accomodating. The mind boggles.
Sitting outside the old city walls, having a salad, considering a return to my hotel by going back into the ancientness, but afraid I will again get lost.
How many peoples have Jews feared?
Contrast that with the number of peoples that America has had to fear.
Just had a nice walk with this guy who wanted to be my tourguide (it's ok Deb, I didn't pay him a cent nor buy him a drink- remember , no alcohol in the old city!) . He's Armenian but an american citizen, from Edina , Minnesota no less. Good guy, we parted best of friends.
It's shabat, Friday. Haredim day.
I decided, based on my inability to identify any of the dishes set out for breakfast at the hotel, to treat myself to breakfast at the America. Colony hotel. Probably costs as much to eat here as a night's stay at Alcazaar.
Remembering that Shimon said that the basis of the Jews claim to Jerusalem is that the city was built by King David and that it is part of their covenant with God. Except that, it was after that point that God, because the Jews had reverted to worshipping the gods of antiquity, that God exiled the Jews and destroyed the walls of Jerusalem. Is it too simplistic to consider this a revocation of their title to the place, Jerusalem?
Did they abandon Jerusalem when the abandoned God?
A tourbus just Passed, "eternity travel".
In the garden of the tomb, one of two possible places where they buried Jesus, people are praying right and left. The other place is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre inside the walls of the old city. I suppose you have to go to both in order to be sure you got to the right one
In spite of all praying, people do tend to look a bit more familiar than at other sites.
No matter which place deemed holy by whichever faith, there is a palpable feeling of Presence among all the faiths, though the christians seem to be in more the vacation mode.
That is, until I got run over by a group of brazilians carrying a cross and chanting. I followed them into the Coptic Patriarchate Church.
When I sat down in the shade to jot this down, I found myself completely alone, a rarity in the old city, but before I wrote one sentence, I was surrounded by a group of Germans.
As an example of navel-gazing, there is a woman painting a picture of the Coptic Church and the tourists all taking pictures of her, of her, not of the church. I am too close to be able to take a picture of them taking a picture of the picture of the church in front of them.
No one's really looking at the church.
Art superseding Reality.
I am in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
I touched the entrance stone and put in a prayer for Mitch.
This place couldn't be any more different in feel from the garden tomb,
which was so peaceful. Given all the incense, mysterious light and crowds, I would say that people are voting for this spot as Jesus' tomb.
I'm listening in to this guide who is saying that this church was constructed in 360 C. E., by the mother of Constantine who came to Jerusalem with an unlimited American Express card. Sumptuous.
Reminds me of St. Marks in Venice.
I lit a candle for Mitch. His candle is the first one in line.
I walked over to the Plaza of the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, the holiest site in Judaism. Instead of candles, to pray you write your prayer on a slip of paper and stick it in the cracks of the stones of the remains of the original temple that David built 3000 years ago. Under the pitiless sun, (and that's not all that's pitiless in this part of the world!) in the open air and white rock, this Sanctus Sanctorum couldn't be more unlike the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with it's sense of smokey, underground mystery.
And in the background, looming over the wailing wall, is the golden dome of the Al Aqsa Mosque.
Three faiths, all convinced that they are right.
There is a strange jealosy on the part of all these versions of God, all different
Gods of the Bible.
You cannot belong to anyone else.
There is no room here for the small, self-confident vision of buddhism.
No place for saying to God, "I don't need You. I know what I'm doing. "
Hooray. A small victory. I found Jaffa Gate all by myself.
A modest rule of thumb: in Israel, not to eat near a potted plant in an outdoor restaurant, not with cats around.
Jerusalem, swamped with garbage, may be the navel of the world, but there is way too much bellybutton lint.
As an example of how far off the beaten track the Alcazar hotel is, whenever I ask directions from an Arab , I get this look as in "what!" and then they can't be more helpful. I seem to be in the industrial district. Going to move into the Armenian hospice tomorrow, to be inside the old city walls. Gotta try it all.
Now that I am inside the city walls the call to prayers from the mosque, which started a few minutes ago, seems so much farther away than it was last night, seemingly all night. But then the big guy across the street kicked in and it all seemed so much more familiar. It is really loud. I wonder what it would sound like if it were just the unampified human voice. I am going to ask the innkeeper if every prayer is different.
Is there such a place as a poor, clean country? When I leave the Alcazar and walk down through the neighborhood between here and the old city, I pass lines of old cars parked higgildy piggildy on the sidewalk so that everyone is forced to walk in the street, with cars and buses honking and swerving around us. The little stores that line the street , with their open fronts crammed with cases of plastic water bottles and soda, a signs advertising all kinds of ice cream, and the bored guy on a cell phone sitting on the steps and cardboard boxes and dirty smelling water in puddles everywhere, all this might be anywhere, Martinique, Kuala Lumpur, outside Cancun, Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, Naples, all places where the people in one of those places have never seen anything of of the lives of people in any of the others and assume that they have all independently created their lives.
Ascending Al Wad street I am thinking that the only more confusing city I have ever tried to know is Venice. Just at that moment a blind man, alone, passes me. Descending. He can only count on other people and sounds to help him. There's not much else.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
I am in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
I touched the entrance stone and put in a prayer for Mitch.
This place couldn't be any more different in feel from the garden tomb,
which was so peaceful. Given all the incense, mysterious light and crowds, I would say that people are voting for this spot as Jesus' tomb.
I'm listening in to this guide who is saying that this church was constructed in 360 C. E., by the mother of Constantine who came to Jerusalem with an unlimited American Express card. Sumptuous.
Reminds me of St. Marks in Venice.
I lit a candle for Mitch. His candle is the first one in line.
I walked over to the Plaza of the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, the holiest site in Judaism. Instead of candles, to pray you write your prayer on a slip of paper and stick it in the cracks of the stones of the remains of the original temple that David built 3000 years ago. Under the pitiless sun, (and that's not all that's pitiless in this part of the world!) in the open air and white rock, this Sanctus Sanctorum couldn't be more unlike the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with it's sense of smokey, underground mystery.
And in the background, looming over the wailing wall, is the golden dome of the Al Aqsa Mosque.
Three faiths, all convinced that they are right.
There is a strange jealosy on the part of all these versions of God, all different
Gods of the Bible.
You cannot belong to anyone else.
There is no room here for the small, self-confident vision of buddhism.
No place for saying to God, "I don't need You. I know what I'm doing. "
Hooray. A small victory. I found Jaffa Gate all by myself.
A modest rule of thumb: in Israel, not to eat near a potted plant in an outdoor restaurant, not with cats around.
Jerusalem, swamped with garbage, may be the navel of the world, but there is way too much bellybutton lint.
As an example of how far off the beaten track the Alcazar hotel is, whenever I ask directions from an Arab , I get this look as in "what!" and then they can't be more helpful. I seem to be in the industrial district. Going to move into the Armenian hospice tomorrow, to be inside the old city walls. Gotta try it all.
Now that I am inside the city walls the call to prayers from the mosque, which started a few minutes ago, seems so much farther away than it was last night, seemingly all night. But then the big guy across the street kicked in and it all seemed so much more familiar. It is really loud. I wonder what it would sound like if it were just the unampified human voice. I am going to ask the innkeeper if every prayer is different.
Is there such a place as a poor, clean country? When I leave the Alcazar and walk down through the neighborhood between here and the old city, I pass lines of old cars parked higgildy piggildy on the sidewalk so that everyone is forced to walk in the street, with cars and buses honking and swerving around us. The little stores that line the street , with their open fronts crammed with cases of plastic water bottles and soda, a signs advertising all kinds of ice cream, and the bored guy on a cell phone sitting on the steps and cardboard boxes and dirty smelling water in puddles everywhere, all this might be anywhere, Martinique, Kuala Lumpur, outside Cancun, Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, Naples, all places where the people in one of those places have never seen anything of of the lives of people in any of the others and assume that they have all independently created their lives.
Ascending Al Wad street I am thinking that the only more confusing city I have ever tried to know is Venice. Just at that moment a blind man, alone, passes me. Descending. He can only count on other people and sounds to help him. There's not much else.
So, with no airconditioning and a very loud demonstration going on down in front of my hotel, I feel like I'm in a scene of Year Of Living Dangerously.
Inside the walls, there seem to be hordes of people coming from somewhere and no matter which way I walk, I am swimming upstream.
Arabs, I think, praying.
Actually, Ossis, clerk at the Armenian hospice, says that they are Christians, on the Via Dolorosa, and according to them, the route that Jesus took on his path to his crucifixion.
They look Arab to me.
I changed hotels and am now inside the walls of the old city.
I am completely lost.
But it is said that to be lost is to be close to god.
I'm not sure I have ever seen a place quite like Jerusalem, not even Venice.
For one thing, the noise is deafening.
This place is teeming with life. For a little solitude, I just have to go into any church. Funny.
What is it that makes this place different from, say, piazza San Marco on similar day? There is the same crush of people,but there is not the same grittiness and intensity of purpose. No one is going to let go here.
Everyone's fingernails here are hard, dirty, and unpullable.
Stopped for a beer. 0.0 percent. Surprise. No alcohol inside the old city.
Walking down, or up, it's kind of hard to tell, I helped a Bedouin write a "going out of business" sign. When I asked where he was going, he said "Basle". We shared a glass of orange juice, but I had to leave, feeling claustrophobic. It's going to take some patience and perseverance to crack this city open.
In my lengthy discussion with the Israeli, Shimon Levy, about the Jews and the Arabs ("garbage") I asked whether he considered Obama a friend of the Jews or not. He thinks not. He says that he has a lot of American friends and I asked him if they agreed with me or him. They all seemed to work for Goldman Sachs and were, surprise, on his side. I told him that most of the people at my country club were on his side too. He seemed to think that, since I hung out with such right-thinking people, how could I hang onto the opinions that I do? I told him that I had a lot of opinions, my wife thinks too many. He liked that. He feels that Obama is weak.
Arabs, I think, praying.
Actually, Ossis, clerk at the Armenian hospice, says that they are Christians, on the Via Dolorosa, and according to them, the route that Jesus took on his path to his crucifixion.
They look Arab to me.
I changed hotels and am now inside the walls of the old city.
I am completely lost.
But it is said that to be lost is to be close to god.
I'm not sure I have ever seen a place quite like Jerusalem, not even Venice.
For one thing, the noise is deafening.
This place is teeming with life. For a little solitude, I just have to go into any church. Funny.
What is it that makes this place different from, say, piazza San Marco on similar day? There is the same crush of people,but there is not the same grittiness and intensity of purpose. No one is going to let go here.
Everyone's fingernails here are hard, dirty, and unpullable.
Stopped for a beer. 0.0 percent. Surprise. No alcohol inside the old city.
Walking down, or up, it's kind of hard to tell, I helped a Bedouin write a "going out of business" sign. When I asked where he was going, he said "Basle". We shared a glass of orange juice, but I had to leave, feeling claustrophobic. It's going to take some patience and perseverance to crack this city open.
In my lengthy discussion with the Israeli, Shimon Levy, about the Jews and the Arabs ("garbage") I asked whether he considered Obama a friend of the Jews or not. He thinks not. He says that he has a lot of American friends and I asked him if they agreed with me or him. They all seemed to work for Goldman Sachs and were, surprise, on his side. I told him that most of the people at my country club were on his side too. He seemed to think that, since I hung out with such right-thinking people, how could I hang onto the opinions that I do? I told him that I had a lot of opinions, my wife thinks too many. He liked that. He feels that Obama is weak.
I tried to make the point that it is difficult to assure someone who doubts that you would die for them, that you would, indeed, die for them, short of actually doing the dying.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Thursday, May 6, 2010
SPRING EVENING IN JERUSALEM
Having lunch in front of my hotel, facing the placid sea.
Photo
Waiter says, "enjoy"
How can I not?
"I realize the view is a bit 'arsh but we are working on it"
Here, instead of looking west and imagining China or Japan, I look over the horizon and see Rhodes, Malta and Venice, and crusader ships arriving more than a thousand years ago for some ungodly godly reason.
It borders on the inconceivable that Israelis aren't trying harder to solve the mess that they are in; the country is so impressive, as an example of the resiliency of the human spirit. But for a people this dedicated to survival not to figure out an answer to this conundrum is ridiculous. While I sit here in a streetside cafe and read the Jerusalem post, with story after story of rockets smuggled and nuclear weapons debated and settlements built, though ordered dimantled, it's hard to believe that it's not some sort of trumpet call. Gideon, where are you? There are certainly walls that need bringing down.
Arak and grapefruit. Good stuff.
A distinct feeling of being in Brooklyn , with palm trees.
The Palestinians are like the people in Orlando who sold their land to Disney and then resented how well Walt did with it. If only the Israelis had already paid for it.
Now, what will be the price?
A beautiful spring evening
In tel aviv,
Why abandon the strawberries ?
Photo
Cats. Cats everywhere. In fact, one of them just pooped in the potted plant near me in the restaurant. Downwind. Fortunately
A big, hulking guy walks by on the promenade, with an armfull of roses, maybe for his girlfriend. And the next persons to pass by, a couple, looked very disappointed in each other. We all live side by side, but so far away from each other.
Debbie , I am indulging my penchant for interrogating waiters.
I guess that it comes down to: who wants this land more?
Are Palestinians more of this land than they are Arab ? Who is most of this land?
Walking away from the beach, it's hard to leave this sybaritic outpost for the ascetic interior.
Who are the Israelis who deny the Israeli-Arabs the vote, refuse to give any tax money that the state collects from the Palestinians back to their community and will not allow some of the most common goods, like cilantro into the occupied areas on the excuse that it might compromise national security and then are perplexed when some people condemn them as oppressors. I haven't met those Israelis.
To paraphrase an old rabbi, l'haim 's a beach.
Had the best cappuccino since Italy.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
ON TO JERUSALEM
Lv. 5/4.
I am going to go to Jerusalem and then on to Jordan.
I am suddenly aware that I am leaving a very comfortable world and heading into a world of distrust, religion, politics and people different from me.
Wondering about the ash. What might the volcano do?
Getting ready to start my trip. I want to try doing this by putting it in a journal format.
Contemplating a long trip to a far place for a short time
Religion is god circumscribed.
Is circumscrision a word?
The lovely, wonderful clouds of Oregon And the rising sun.
Photo
Arrived in SFO
In an out of beautiful SF.
Watching the movie "Victoria and Albert" , I think only of my love for my wife Deb. There' s not so much difference between them and us. I don't know if I've seen a movie that evokes such identity and tears of identification. Except for all the jewelry, of course.
I can't get the weight of the little baby out of the crook of my arm.
Santa mike came into the lobby of the motel to ask me whether it was a boy or a girl. I said, flustered, how was I to know. Oh, then I just held him up, like a puppy, and we looked. He did have really long hair.
I did imagine that he might pee on me, me heading to the airport. Unforgettable.
I'm on the plane to Tel Aviv, sitting next to Ehud, an Israeli from near the old city and, while explaining why I am going to Israel, I tell him that my one daughter is marrying a Jew, he asks if that is alright with me.
Flight reminiscent of a trip across the English channel in a hovercraft with the choppy sea and the rattled teeth.
Returning to the child running down the street, it so reminds me of the famous picture from Vietnam , of the naked little girl running too, escaping the horror from napalm.
An hour outside tel aviv, definity groggy.
I arrive in the afternoon and start walking. I collapse in an outdoor restaurant adjacent to the beach and the Mediterranean Sea , eating labane eggplant.
Photo of sunset
Listening to the muezzin, the Muslim call to prayers, texting Deb, staring at the Mediterranean
Labane is an Arabic style cheese, not unlike a cheese version of hummus, served in a circle with the tomatoes and eggplant and spices an olive oil in the center. While, on the sound system in the backkgroumd, "I give him all my love, that's all I do", just these words, go on an on and on, techno style.
Civilized little restaurant, as the sun goes down and the wind rises, they hand out blankets.
Columbia crest, an Oregon wine, is on the menu.
Is that important to israelis, the feeling that they need to be able to distinguish good from bad? Right from evil? Do they feel that they have that ability?
I am suddenly aware that I am leaving a very comfortable world and heading into a world of distrust, religion, politics and people different from me.
Wondering about the ash. What might the volcano do?
Getting ready to start my trip. I want to try doing this by putting it in a journal format.
Contemplating a long trip to a far place for a short time
I expect this trip to be, to a significant extent, about religion.
Jerusalem, from the beginning, has been the beginning. Why not begin here?
I consider religion suspect, for those who choose to have the challenge of Eternity figured out for them. God is bigger than religion.
Religion is god circumscribed.
Is circumscrision a word?
On the way to the airport in the taxi, I and the taxi driver find a baby running down the middle of the street. I yell at him to stop. He didn't see him, it being 4:30 in the morning and completely dark. There are no other cars on the road. I jump out of the taxi and pick up the child and, while the driver (mike the santa man, he gave me his card) calls 911, I bang on the door of a motel nearby. A Pakistani couple appears and helps out. They are as freaked as I am.
Mike runs into the motel lobby, where I am holding the child (wondering if I am going to be peed upon) and asks me if it's a boy or a girl? How am I supposed to know, I wonder for a moment, then I just hold him (as it turns out) up and look.
The police arrive minutes later.
As we leave, I tell the officer to wrap the little guy up. He was shivering and crying and very tiny and as we drove away the cabbie yells out, " Getta a blanket!".
None of this seems real to me as we head to to airport.
I share all this with the woman at the newsstand who tells me that she has seen enough CSI to know that both the parents are dead and the door had been left unlocked and the child found his way out that way. There really is no other explanation. I am no position to counter her suggestion. I promise myself to find out what happened when i return.
I share all this with the woman at the newsstand who tells me that she has seen enough CSI to know that both the parents are dead and the door had been left unlocked and the child found his way out that way. There really is no other explanation. I am no position to counter her suggestion. I promise myself to find out what happened when i return.
Unnerving way to begin.
The lovely, wonderful clouds of Oregon And the rising sun.
Photo
Arrived in SFO
In an out of beautiful SF.
Watching the movie "Victoria and Albert" , I think only of my love for my wife Deb. There' s not so much difference between them and us. I don't know if I've seen a movie that evokes such identity and tears of identification. Except for all the jewelry, of course.
I can't get the weight of the little baby out of the crook of my arm.
Santa mike came into the lobby of the motel to ask me whether it was a boy or a girl. I said, flustered, how was I to know. Oh, then I just held him up, like a puppy, and we looked. He did have really long hair.
I did imagine that he might pee on me, me heading to the airport. Unforgettable.
I'm on the plane to Tel Aviv, sitting next to Ehud, an Israeli from near the old city and, while explaining why I am going to Israel, I tell him that my one daughter is marrying a Jew, he asks if that is alright with me.
I have to shake my head at that comment. Whatever makes the Middle East the complicated place that I have always suspected is already becoming apparent.
I say that that is only the half of it, that another daughter has married a Muslim. That slowed the conservation down a bit, but over dinner we agreed that a glass of wine solves many problems.
Flight reminiscent of a trip across the English channel in a hovercraft with the choppy sea and the rattled teeth.
Returning to the child running down the street, it so reminds me of the famous picture from Vietnam , of the naked little girl running too, escaping the horror from napalm.
An hour outside tel aviv, definity groggy.
I arrive in the afternoon and start walking. I collapse in an outdoor restaurant adjacent to the beach and the Mediterranean Sea , eating labane eggplant.
Photo of sunset
Listening to the muezzin, the Muslim call to prayers, texting Deb, staring at the Mediterranean
Labane is an Arabic style cheese, not unlike a cheese version of hummus, served in a circle with the tomatoes and eggplant and spices an olive oil in the center. While, on the sound system in the backkgroumd, "I give him all my love, that's all I do", just these words, go on an on and on, techno style.
Civilized little restaurant, as the sun goes down and the wind rises, they hand out blankets.
Columbia crest, an Oregon wine, is on the menu.
Is that important to israelis, the feeling that they need to be able to distinguish good from bad? Right from evil? Do they feel that they have that ability?
Infallibly, like the Pope?
Is it possible to have the ability to tell a good poem from a bad poem and not be able to tell good from evil itself?
Amazing for the middle east, young people hanging on each other, lying on top of one another in the sand, kissing.
Do Israelis feel that they are exceptional? Because they are Israelis , or Jewish or immigrants or outcasts or democatic or what?
What about the exceptionalism of America? Immigration. ? Wide open spaces ? Room to dream? Do we still believe in all that?
In the Carmel market in Tel Aviv, to see how hard people have to work to make a living in what is probably the most successful city in the most successful country in the middle east makes me realize how independently we, as Americans, can live as family, whereas here, hanging together is a survival exigency.
Bit of luck with the visa to Jordan. If I hadn't got there today, they wouldn't have been open again until Sunday. Whew. And there are no more hotel rooms to be had in Tel Aviv.
I actually find the "hassle" of trying to get a visa as interesting as going to a museum or seeing old buildings. I enjoy seeing how countries work. Tours deprive a traveller of that.
5/6
Having lunch in front of my hotel
Photo
Waiter say "enjoy"
How can I not?
"I realize the view is a bit 'arsh but we are working on it"
Here, instead of lookig west and imagining chIna or japan, I look over the horizon and see rhodes,malta and Venice, and crusader shIPs arrivingore than a thousand years ago for some ungodly godly reason.
It borders on the inconceivable that Israelis aren't trying harder to solve the mess that they are in; the country is so pivotally wonderful, as an example of the resiliency of the human spirit. But for a people this dedicated to survival not to figure out an answer to this conundrum Is ridiculous. While I sit here in a streetside cafe and read the Jerusalem post, with story after story of rockets smuggled and nuclear weapons debated and settlements built, though ordered dimantled, it's hard to believe that it's not some sort of trumpet call. Gideon, where are you? There are certainly walls that need bringing down.
Arak and grapefruit Good stuff
A distinct feeling of being in brooklyn , with palm trees.
The Palestinians are like the people in Orlando who sold their land to disney and then resented how well walt did with it. If only the Israelis had paid for it.
What will be the price?
A beautiful spring evening
In tel aviv,
Why abandon the strawberries ?
Photo
Cats. Cats everywhere. In fact, one of them just pooped in the potted plant near me in restaurant. Downwind. Fortunately
A big, hulking guy walks by on the promenade, with an armfull of roses, maybe for his girlfriend and the next persons to pass by,a couple, looked very disappointed in each other. We all live side by side, but so far away from each other.
Debbie , I am indulging my penchant for interrogating waiters.
I guess that it comes down to: who wants this land more?
Are Palestinians more of this land than they are Arab ? Who is most of this land?
Walking awAy from the beach, it's hard to leave this sybaritic outpost for the ascetic interior.
Who are the Israelis who deny the Israeli-Arabs the vote, refuse to give any tax money that the state collects from the Palestinians back to their community and will not allow some of the most common goods, like cilantro into the occupied areas on the excuse that it might compromise national security and then are perplexed when some people condemn them as oppressors. I haven't met those Israelis.
To paraphrase an old rabbi, l'haim 's a beach.
Had the best cappuccino since Italy.
Okaaay. I am now in Jerusalem.
Hotel iffy.
Cab driver says I should try to do better.
Deb, you would not want to be here.
Inside the walls, there seem to be hordes of people coming from somewhere and no matter which way I walk, swimming upstream.
Arabs,I think, praying.
Actually, Ossis , clerk at the Armenian hospice, says that they are christians, on the via dolorosa.
They look Arab to me.
I changed hotels and now inside the walls of the old city.
I Am completely lost.
But it is said that to lost is to be close to god.
I'm nozt sure I have ever seen a place quite like jerusalem.
For one thing, the noise is deafening.
This place is teeming with life. For a little solitude , I just have to go into a church. Funny.
What is it that makes this place different from, say, piazza San mArco on similar dAy? There is the same crush of people, there is not the same grittiness Nd intensity of purpose. Nonone is going to let go here.
Everyone's fingernails here are hard, dirty, and unpullable.
Stopped for a beer. 0.0 percent. Surprise. No alcohol inside the old city.
Walking down, or up it's kind of hard to tell, I helped a Bedouin write a "going out of business" sign. When I asked where he was going, he said "Basle". We shared a glass of orange juice, but I had to leave, feeling claustrophobic. It's going to take some to crack this city open.
I got into a long discussion with an Israeli named shimon levy about the Jews and the Arabs ("garbage") and whether Obama is a friend of the Jews or not. He thinks not. He says that he has a lot of American friends and I asked him if they agreed with me or him. They all seemed to work for Goldman Sachs and were, surprise, on his side. I told him that most of the people at the country club were on his side too. I told him that I had a lot of opinions, my wife thinks too many. He liked that. He feels that Obama is weak. I tried to make the point that it difficult to assure someone who doubts that you would die for them, without dying for them.
My little, funky hotel in east Jerusalem has an edearing characteristic in that of all the hotel people I've run into, they speak the best English.
Everywhere is stone; everywhere is hard.
Shimon asked me " why can't they just leave us alone?" That seems so naive. I couldn't decide if he thought that Arabs were evil, or just stupid. And right after this discussion, I walk into the alcazar hotel and meet the Arab proprietor and he is perfectly reasonable amd accomodating. The mind boggles.
Sitting outside the old city walls, having a salad, considering a return to my hotel by going back into the ancientness, but afraid I will again get lost.
How many peoples have Jews feared?
How many have Americans?
Just had a nice walk with this guy who wanted to be my tourguide (it's ok Deb, I didn't pay him a cent nor buy him a drink- remember , no al ohol in the old city!) . He's Armenian but an american citizen, from Edina , Minnesota no less. Good guy, we parted best of friends.
It's shabat, Friday. Haredim day.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Is it possible to have the ability to tell a good poem from a bad poem and not be able to tell good from evil itself?
Amazing for the middle east, young people hanging on each other, lying on top of one another in the sand, kissing.
Do Israelis feel that they are exceptional? Because they are Israelis , or Jewish or immigrants or outcasts or democatic or what?
What about the exceptionalism of America? Immigration. ? Wide open spaces ? Room to dream? Do we still believe in all that?
In the Carmel market in Tel Aviv, to see how hard people have to work to make a living in what is probably the most successful city in the most successful country in the middle east makes me realize how independently we, as Americans, can live as family, whereas here, hanging together is a survival exigency.
Bit of luck with the visa to Jordan. If I hadn't got there today, they wouldn't have been open again until Sunday. Whew. And there are no more hotel rooms to be had in Tel Aviv.
I actually find the "hassle" of trying to get a visa as interesting as going to a museum or seeing old buildings. I enjoy seeing how countries work. Tours deprive a traveller of that.
5/6
Having lunch in front of my hotel
Photo
Waiter say "enjoy"
How can I not?
"I realize the view is a bit 'arsh but we are working on it"
Here, instead of lookig west and imagining chIna or japan, I look over the horizon and see rhodes,malta and Venice, and crusader shIPs arrivingore than a thousand years ago for some ungodly godly reason.
It borders on the inconceivable that Israelis aren't trying harder to solve the mess that they are in; the country is so pivotally wonderful, as an example of the resiliency of the human spirit. But for a people this dedicated to survival not to figure out an answer to this conundrum Is ridiculous. While I sit here in a streetside cafe and read the Jerusalem post, with story after story of rockets smuggled and nuclear weapons debated and settlements built, though ordered dimantled, it's hard to believe that it's not some sort of trumpet call. Gideon, where are you? There are certainly walls that need bringing down.
Arak and grapefruit Good stuff
A distinct feeling of being in brooklyn , with palm trees.
The Palestinians are like the people in Orlando who sold their land to disney and then resented how well walt did with it. If only the Israelis had paid for it.
What will be the price?
A beautiful spring evening
In tel aviv,
Why abandon the strawberries ?
Photo
Cats. Cats everywhere. In fact, one of them just pooped in the potted plant near me in restaurant. Downwind. Fortunately
A big, hulking guy walks by on the promenade, with an armfull of roses, maybe for his girlfriend and the next persons to pass by,a couple, looked very disappointed in each other. We all live side by side, but so far away from each other.
Debbie , I am indulging my penchant for interrogating waiters.
I guess that it comes down to: who wants this land more?
Are Palestinians more of this land than they are Arab ? Who is most of this land?
Walking awAy from the beach, it's hard to leave this sybaritic outpost for the ascetic interior.
Who are the Israelis who deny the Israeli-Arabs the vote, refuse to give any tax money that the state collects from the Palestinians back to their community and will not allow some of the most common goods, like cilantro into the occupied areas on the excuse that it might compromise national security and then are perplexed when some people condemn them as oppressors. I haven't met those Israelis.
To paraphrase an old rabbi, l'haim 's a beach.
Had the best cappuccino since Italy.
Okaaay. I am now in Jerusalem.
Hotel iffy.
Cab driver says I should try to do better.
Deb, you would not want to be here.
Inside the walls, there seem to be hordes of people coming from somewhere and no matter which way I walk, swimming upstream.
Arabs,I think, praying.
Actually, Ossis , clerk at the Armenian hospice, says that they are christians, on the via dolorosa.
They look Arab to me.
I changed hotels and now inside the walls of the old city.
I Am completely lost.
But it is said that to lost is to be close to god.
I'm nozt sure I have ever seen a place quite like jerusalem.
For one thing, the noise is deafening.
This place is teeming with life. For a little solitude , I just have to go into a church. Funny.
What is it that makes this place different from, say, piazza San mArco on similar dAy? There is the same crush of people, there is not the same grittiness Nd intensity of purpose. Nonone is going to let go here.
Everyone's fingernails here are hard, dirty, and unpullable.
Stopped for a beer. 0.0 percent. Surprise. No alcohol inside the old city.
Walking down, or up it's kind of hard to tell, I helped a Bedouin write a "going out of business" sign. When I asked where he was going, he said "Basle". We shared a glass of orange juice, but I had to leave, feeling claustrophobic. It's going to take some to crack this city open.
I got into a long discussion with an Israeli named shimon levy about the Jews and the Arabs ("garbage") and whether Obama is a friend of the Jews or not. He thinks not. He says that he has a lot of American friends and I asked him if they agreed with me or him. They all seemed to work for Goldman Sachs and were, surprise, on his side. I told him that most of the people at the country club were on his side too. I told him that I had a lot of opinions, my wife thinks too many. He liked that. He feels that Obama is weak. I tried to make the point that it difficult to assure someone who doubts that you would die for them, without dying for them.
My little, funky hotel in east Jerusalem has an edearing characteristic in that of all the hotel people I've run into, they speak the best English.
Everywhere is stone; everywhere is hard.
Shimon asked me " why can't they just leave us alone?" That seems so naive. I couldn't decide if he thought that Arabs were evil, or just stupid. And right after this discussion, I walk into the alcazar hotel and meet the Arab proprietor and he is perfectly reasonable amd accomodating. The mind boggles.
Sitting outside the old city walls, having a salad, considering a return to my hotel by going back into the ancientness, but afraid I will again get lost.
How many peoples have Jews feared?
How many have Americans?
Just had a nice walk with this guy who wanted to be my tourguide (it's ok Deb, I didn't pay him a cent nor buy him a drink- remember , no al ohol in the old city!) . He's Armenian but an american citizen, from Edina , Minnesota no less. Good guy, we parted best of friends.
It's shabat, Friday. Haredim day.
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Location:Tel aviv
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
ROSELLA
I have a great daughter named Rosella, here she is...
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- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Saturday, May 1, 2010
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