Typical Evening, Monday 12/20/10

It feels as if I ought to do more, I ought to have something profound and long to say. After such a hefty hiatus without a post, after so much life has happened, after so much ground has been traversed, I find myself, in my heart, simple. I do not speak with grandeur, but my heart is charged with it.

Do this: turn life off. Stop the quickening pace, the ever onward rushing, doing. Admit that the world is a terrifying and overwhelming and choking place, that if you slow down long enough to think about the 'future' you are scared witless. Admit that you, quite frankly, suck at keeping all the loose strings of life's balloons gripped firmly in your sweaty palms. Those damn things just keep slipping up up and away, and, yeah it's fun to watch them go but you inevitably begin to think about how miserable it is once they disappear. There it goes, that was the fun. You now have one less balloon.

Stop all that. Find some quiet. Gather your teammates (you say at this point 'what? what are you talking about?'). Those who you can afford to be quiet with. Those who you laugh in front of, but moreover cry in front of. Those who could easily do without you, but choose not to anyways.

And then just sit. See what happens.

This is a post about that, and that is all. I am in the midst of this now, and I could not afford not to write about it. Because tomorrow will come (it always does) and I will be too busy to enjoy it (I always am). But for tonight, let me acknowledge the peace that comes with resting. Not sleeping, not rotting my mind in front of a movie. But rest. Letting my heart just be.

Confused yet? It's okay. You weren't here to rest your heart with me. So I understand. Buuuuuuuuut, you ought to try it anyways. As it goes:

"If you want to feel alive,

Then learn to love your ground."

This is my ground, and here I have my roots.

Lilia, In Answer To Your Question

Had small group on Tuesday night, like I do most Tuesday nights nowadays (it's going well thank you). I got to talking with a friend of mine afterwards, the man whose house it was we were meeting in, and a talking to turned into a full on conversation, so we did what any sane man would do on a Tuesday night after small group. We poured a glass of whiskey and coke and sat down to hash life out.

Not the point of the story though. See, while we were talking, my friend's seven year old daughter comes waltzing in, cute as pie. She can't sleep yet, because she hasn't kissed daddy goodnight (naturally, who could?). She kisses him, and then pulls back a little, looking at him with a grown woman's eyes.

"Are you drinking beer daddy?"

That's all she wants to know, this seven year old. And I think shoot man she caught us. They start out young, these women. Crafty.

But my friend just smiled and said "no honey, it's better than that."

Her eyes got real big. You could see the straining going on in that pretty little head, the cogs twirling at a hundred miles an hour. Finally she gets it.

"You're drinking root beer?"

Because, after all, we as an advanced form of human life know that the logical step on the scale of goodness begins with beer and then proceeds straight to the pinnacle of delicious and coveted beverages, that being root beer and only root beer. It's logic people.

What's happened to us, as we've grown up? Since when did we stop thinking root beer was the only answer to the question of "what's better than______"? Since when did we stop considering it astounding that a grown man would drink root beer late at night, not because it's bad for the teeth but because, heaven help us, you're allowed to enjoy something as good as root beer on just an ordinary Tuesday night? Since when did we commit to our memories our every pain and heartache, noting down the things that've burned us that we might not make the same mistake twice? I watch my friends daughter as she goes running around the hardwood floors, knowing that she's going to slip and bang a knee because I've seen her do it not ten minutes ago. But when she falls, it's like falling for the first time. She can't believe that a slippery floor could yield so much resistance when met with a bare knee, and astounded, as if personally affronted, the tears well up. I could've told her not too. I remember running on hardwood myself.

But that's the problem. We remember. We remember when we've fallen, and the older we get the more calculated our every move is to avoid the repetition of such a stupid mistake. Me, I remember the last time I loved a girl. She ended up falling out of love in quite a boring fashion, so now I wait for love to come hauling back around and hit me like a bus. I remember the last time I was generous with a friend. Think he ended up just forgetting to thank me, and here I sit feeling like a fool for ever giving up my effort. I remember the last time I let my family down. Couldn't seem to meet their eyes or expectations, and now I just keep it so no soul ever depends on me for anything. Because it's safer this way. Hell, if you remember the answers to the quiz, why would you study the questions? You know the outcomes, so choose to defer involvement in the game.

And so we grow. Up, old, into adults, and ever so boring. But not me. No, I think I've made up my mind. If we live in a world of kids vs. adults, then I know where my loyalties lie. I'd rather choose the team where running on hardwood is recommended because it's slippery and fun as heck, not cautioned against because these knees can't take it anymore. I'd rather choose the team where root beer is the apex of delight, why? Because it's a damn good beverage and should be enjoyed for that purpose alone. I'd rather choose the team that chooses to forget the pains and heartaches, not because they didn't happen, but because they aren't worth slowing down for.

So there you have it Lilia, my little pink pajama-ed friend. Yes, we're drinking root beer. But don't tell mom.

Oh Suburbia

We live lives of irony, here in downtown Suburbia. It's the land between lands, for those who can't quite commit to the chaotic relational hotbox of the city, but are terrified that a Thoreauic life in the middle of nowhere would glaringly reveal our blandness. After all, what would we update our Facebook statuses with?

Lest you think I am making mountains out of molehills, let me explain:

A woman in a burka just walked by. I am curious, is she coming to or from the clubs just a block over? A girl wearing less clothing than I sleep in came out of the restaurant across the street. It's 50 degrees out, and windy. The elevation she gets from those heels can't be helping the situation, as, I imagine, it's hard to reach a trot before an ankle is twisted. At least the up and down exercise might fight off hypothermia until Ken doll gets the car. The guy with the blowout hair is wearing a massive silver rosary. How can I see it? Because his shirt is unbuttoned far enough to see the spot just above his navel that he forgot to wax. Maybe he's just out of Mass and couldn't be bothered with changing before happy hour was over at Senor Frogs.

I could go on. Talk about the roving bands of teenagers (where in the hell are you going? none of you can buy booze and nothing else is being sold at this hour...) or the group of 13 girls and 1 guy that just walked past (...make a friggin choice already man!). But I'll stop. This blog post isn't going anywhere. Or is it already there? Mmm...deep...

And all this from a coffee shop at 10:45 on a Saturday night, as the 6'2" guy in a flannel shirt asks the barista for a pumpkin spice latte.

Friends

If I have learned anything from recent life, it is just this: inhibition among dear friends is quite simply a waste of time. (Let me explain, lest you jump to the conclusion that I am promoting rampant drunkenness and rowdiness, excused if and only precipitated among friends. Though therein is another recent life lesson…but that is not for now).

I refer mainly to that inhibition of actions, a self-consciousness, we so often fall prey to when we are in constant company with those we most love. It is the brief pause in a phone conversation that turns an awkward silence into a premature goodbye, quick, before we are both left with nothing else to talk about. It is the mindlessness that deceives us into staying on the couch rather than braving the cold walk to our friend’s apartment because, after all, it is late and what would we do anyways? It is the festering resentment that we quite simply can’t be bothered to resolve because, in all honesty, it would clearly take too much effort to broach the subject and, as they say, time will heal all.

How silly all that seems now.

Now, a phone call is not mapped out, there is no agenda, no reason for the call. The call is the reason. The end goal is to be, however fleetingly, in the presence of the one called. Thus, all inhibition is lost. A prolonged silence is not a rift in the conversation or a breakdown in communication. Indeed, it serves more than words could. In that silence there is the fierce acknowledgement that to hang up, to rush a conclusion, would mean an acknowledgement of the spatial chasm between you and I, and that is quite simply too ugly, too raw a thing to acknowledge. And so we sit, the silence hanging, defying life’s paths that have so separated us, dear friends.

Now, a cold walk seems like such a trivial pain to keep us apart. What separates us now is a few hundred dollars and a day of travel, to mention nothing of Employment and that which it entails, and even in that there is barely reason enough to tether me down, keep me from visiting you. How I regret all of those spent minutes, wasted because of the weather.

Now, any quarrel or resentment seems as trivial as the tabloids. I can no longer afford the luxury of such triviality. To think that anything other than distance will separate us is seemingly absurd, petty nonsense. Inhibition, that feeling that makes one self-conscious to the nth degree, freezing the burning lump in one’s stomach to act in a manner true to who they are at their core, is a precious waste of even more precious time. If there exists that which would keep me from you, let it be nothing more than the inevitability that comes with living as adults in different parts of the world. And let even that be laughable.

This is what I say then: save your inhibition for those you care nothing about. All the time in the world can be wasted on them. But among those few, those of the inner circle, those who know you for you, those who deserve nothing less then the truth of your dependence on them, give inhibition no root. There is far too little time for that.

My Midwest Manifesto

The thing I've realized about blogging is that you stop once life becomes normal. You figure, oh hell, what's the point in writing if what I'm doing day in and day out is just as dull as what Tom is doing in the cubicle next to me?

Good news: I'm not in a cubicle and I don't have a coworker named Tom so my blogging can continue.

I've got 1.5 weeks of adult life under my belt. 8 full days of teaching behind me. 60 plus hours of lesson prepping logged. 15 hours of life wasted in traffic on the way. And 1 pulled hamstring from gym class dodgeball. And so I will write about the weather.

Disclaimer: if you are not from the Midwest, you may not understand any of the following.

Today is/was one of those days that Beauty has filled so full you almost choke on it. In typical Midwest fashion, summer left without so much as a fare-thee-well, and autumn has arrived. Rather, it seems as if autumn was already here, just waiting for the other seasons to desist in all of their busy distractions, waiting for us to just stop long enough to live. It is as if to say, hold. Stop talking, stop working, stop sweating through life at such a breathtaking rate. Simply be. Let the first cool breeze of autumn fill your lungs and remind you that it is enough to just breathe. That there is enough cause for bewilderment and joy in that act alone. The haze of summer has passed, lifting away with it the lazy weeds that have so long wrapped round our legs, holding us in its sticky sweet embrace. The fall winds have slapped us awake, biting through the slowness in our minds, reminding us that winter will be upon us before we know it. But it is not in a rude way, or a despondent way. It is not a foreshadowing of the dark to come, but simply a reminder of the dusk we are in. It is as if watching a fireworks show, when the petty cracklers and single blast rockets that have distracted us for so long give way to the grand finale. We immediately sit up, realizing in embarrassment how tame the show has been up until this point, how tawdry were those forays of sound compared to the chest squeezing concussions of now. And we know that in a mere matter of minutes it will all be over, that the sky will go black again, that all that will remain is the smoke and sulfur of the show. We will fold our blanket, store our lawn chairs in the trunk, driving home to the sweeping and dusting, the entertaining, the relatives, the dog scratching at the back door, the cooking and eating, the clutter that is life. But not for one second does that take away from the glory of the finale. Not one second do we consider simply getting on with what must be gotten on with and leaving early. Not once would we wish that the finale had never started, that the ordinary show had just lasted longer, or that it would be over already so we could hear once again, make small talk with neighbors once again. We become lost in the finale, our hearts beating in time with the blasts, imagining that this will be forever. The power of the present wipes clean the slate of the past, and pushes away any hopes for the future. It is enough to just be now.

Such is autumn in the Midwest. Live here for a lifetime, and you will understand. You will know days like today, days when you want to do absolutely nothing, shirking all responsibility and cutting all ties, not because you are lazy, but because the day is already full enough just being alive.

"Tears, idle tears,

I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair,

Rise in the heart and gather in the eyes,

In looking on the happy autumn fields,

And thinking of the days that are no more."

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

What Is, Home.

As I have been home for almost two weeks now and have neglected to write anything, I will briefly be brief: I am home. I am alive. I am well.

I feel as if I ought to have a post full of post-travel angst, bemoaning the fact that it is impossible to answer the question "how was it," as if the person asking really cared (5% of all cases care, the rest are compelled by your absence to ask it). I have created a 30 second soundbite of the last month of my life, filled with deep sighs and "oh, it was incredible. A real life changer." If you want to hear it, let me know. Otherwise...? Well, you'll never know. Unless, of course, you want to know, and have at least an hour in which to go about knowing. So, enough said. I am home, my heart has grown and been battered about, but I am whole and more Me than ever.

The being home though has been delightful this last week and a half, as all of my best friends were in town for Kevin and Sarah Graham's wedding. The first of us guys to go the way of the dodo. It was, more or less, three straight days of revelry, my house being turned into a dormitory for the out-of-towners. I couldn't have been more happy. Literally, I'm not just saying that.

You see, I've realized something. There are two kinds of jealousy: there is the envy-green, sapping kind that will leave you withered in an attempt to live someone else's life, because yours is quite simply too dull or painful. You are with your friends, coveting the things they have, the experiences they get to participate in, the places where they live, the people they have who love them, and you begin to dislike them because it seems life has dealt them a better hand. I don't recommend going about life in this manner. But, I think there is a second kind of jealousy, a whole one. One where you go to your friend's wedding and see the love he has with his new wife, and you are jealous not because it is something you can't have but because it is something beautiful enough to desire more than anything. You welcome home a friend who has been away for a year and you hear all of the crazy adventures he has had, you watch as all of your other friends crowd about to hug him and to celebrate him, and you are not jealous because you are no longer the center of attention or because you seem less interesting standing next to him, but because you love him so much and are so happy for the experiences that he has had that you want nothing more than to tell him so. Is this even jealousy still? I'm not sure. It seems like it, but in the end, it leaves one full, struggling to suppress outright laughter. It is reaching a place where you think, "oh, it's as good as that is it? Well, I'd rather someone be experiencing that than no one." And you are happy in that thought alone, that someone you love has found something worth celebrating.

In the end, this is a summary of my trip, and of my weeks at home. I am in love with so many things, and jealous of so many more. I only thank God that it is the kind of jealousy that gives and gives and gives. As I said, I am whole, and more Me than ever.

Photos: West Bank field trip

For Milad, Forever Ago

It is Tuesday, July 5th. Three days after Saturday the 3rd. And yet it feels like an eternity since I spent the day with Milad and his wife Manar, wandering about the West Bank. It is a lifetime removed and a world apart. But here is my best attempt to recollect a day in the life of a Palestinian:

I met Milad on either the first or second day post arrival in Jerusalem, as he was a waiter at the hotel where we were staying. Everyone who works in the old city seems to be Palestinian. And within days, they all feel like life-long friends. Over the course of three weeks, well, Milad was family. At nights he would sit with us on the roof of the hotel, having a smoke and telling us about his home, his family, his faith. There was no pretentiousness, only a desire to share life. And so it was that I, along with a few others, were invited to spend a Saturday with Milad in his home, the West Bank.

Milad met us in Bethany, after a 30 minute bus ride from Jerusalem. It is a town coated in barbed wire and concrete walls, seemingly always under either construction or destruction. Our first stop was at the day school Milad, his brothers, and father had started for peace and reconciliation between Palestine and Israel. The place, in itself, is a miracle. In a place of such oppression and rampant hatred, this man and his family have fought to teach children peace. To teach them the very opposite of what they, by nature, are born into. Twelve to fourteen hour work days at a hotel in a city not his own, a city where his wife is not allowed except twice a year on Christmas and Easter simply because she was born in Bethlehem, a city that takes Milad sometimes 3 or more hours to get home from because of the Israeli checkpoints, a city in a country where he is not welcome, and all for the sake of Saturday. For the sake of coming to his school and teaching children whose lives are constricted to the few acres of concrete called home that there is peace to be had. Forgiveness to be given. In the face of a concrete wall 9 meters high that forms their prison, these children sang and danced for us, practicing their english phrases, and giggling with the simple pleasure of a high five from some blonde-haired and blue-eyed foreigner, come to hear their stories.

After, we were joined by Milad's wife Manar, who volunteers daily at the school. She took us to her family home, amidst the crowded streets of Bethlehem in a fifth story flat. Despite the fact that the water in their town had been shut off for 12 days (a common and unannounced occurrence in the West Bank), Manar's mother had cooked us a full Arab lunch. Pita bread, cucumbers stuffed with rice, meat wrapped in grape leaves, almond rice, chicken, vegetables, fresh fruit, the food kept coming out from the kitchen and I kept eating. It is quite improbable that one can get a full understanding of the meal, but simply take my word: it was astounding. By far the best meal I had eaten in my three week tour of Israel.

A visit to Milad and Manar's home, some Arabic coffee, a few minutes looking at their wedding photos, and we were on our way again, this time to find a place to sit and talk. And since we were in the Middle East, we found a hookah bar (I should say tent, to be exact) and settled into the couches. The conversation we had was varied, and almost impossible to relate. It ranged from life stories, to silly questions of what we wanted to be when we were little. Milad had wanted to be a hero.

The last part of our day is hardest to relate, because it is the most filled with emotion. We said goodbye to Manar, and Milad drove with us to the check point between Palestine and Israel, the only thing standing between us and our bus home. Walking in the shadow of the graffiti covered wall, we experienced what Milad experiences every day of his life. Except, we didn't. Because when the six of us Americans walked through the beeping metal detector and held up our passports to the two Israeli guards in the glass booth behind it, they did not so much as look up. It was as if we didn't exist, as if the fairness of our skin and the emblem on our passports were enough to merit a wave of the hand and not a second thought. But when Milad went through, it was different. Immediately. After three times through the metal detector, each one resulting in a loud beeping and a subsequent removal of the offensive article, belt then shoes, Milad was called over to the booth. After a few sentences of Hebrew, not understood, the young women asked Milad in English if he had ever done this before. He said yes, almost every day. Then shouldn't he, the guard jabbed, know how to do it properly by now? Milad said he didn't quite understand. After two more trips through, his documents were demanded, produced, and examined. Finding all in order, the guard finally waved disdainfully and we were through.

As he put his belt and shoes on, Milad simply shook his head. They are stupid, he said, but I forgive them. Nothing more, no rationale. Just that simple sentence. It is a sentence that Milad must repeat every day, because his is a daily humiliation and a daily forgiveness.

Goodbye was not an easy word to say. As Milad stood with tears in his eyes, thanking us for sharing in his life, I couldn't help but realize the irony of it all. This man, thanking me, after he had spent a day feeding me, showing me his home, and sharing his heart and life. For three weeks I had been in Israel, and in one day I had been shown more than could be understood. It may be that I will not see Milad again in this life. But it does not matter, for he has forever changed my life, and is more than family.

I am not sure if he knows it, but Milad already is a hero.

The Inevitable Israeli/Palestinian Discussion: My Take

(Photos: An abandoned playground in Samaria)

The world will break into your home and leave your ideals shattered and lying at the doorstep. For in the end, when you actually stop and think about it, we are people. Does that seem too simple? It is. The World is a people. It is a geographical shuffling and dealing out of humanity, humanity that creates countries and cities and towns and neighborhoods and homes. But in the end, the individual unit is a person, the building blocks of the universe as we know it. And it is easy to say this, because I am an individual and you, reading this, are an individual, and through that we acknowledge our humanness. But we seem to think as everyone else, every not-us, as being collective. We label them liberal or conservative, religious or atheist, Palestinian or Israeli, hippy-granola-humanitarian-tree-hugger or red-blooded-shotgun-wielding-big-game-hunter. But in that we lump together people just as unsettled and un-label-able as ourselves. We reserve individuality for our personal self and feel perfectly comfortable packaging and selling the rest of the world Costco style in large boxes with excess saran wrap.

A friend of mine just came back from a conversation with an Orthodox Jew. They met at a shop in the Old City of Jerusalem and talked for 2 hours, everything from religion to politics to surfing to pregnant wives. And here’s the thing: what my friend realized is that the man he just had coffee with is a person. Read that last sentence again. Profound? Probably not, but just chew on it. Sure, he knew before his mind registered it that the man across from him was a human on a general, anthropological level, as if realizing that the world is made up of people is an epiphany. But what I don’t know if he realized is that he is a person, an individual, an entity that cannot be lumped together with anything else and sold as a set because it is incomprehensible and incompatible with anything outside of itself.

And the rub of it all is that once we realize this, once we acknowledge the peopleness of the world, it becomes quite the untidy mess. No longer can we, my friend and I, be true American Patriots by blindly backing the nation of Israel and its war against Palestine, because we have been here, we have driven through the check points to Bethlehem and the West Bank, we have eaten meals with Milar and Josef and their families and we have come to know them and love them. But we cannot flip the bird to the conservative man and give in to the temporarily trendy pull of siding with those downtrodden and oppressed by “Western Enlightenment Modernity,” because we have conversed with the Orthodox Jews over coffee, we have seen the desire of an old Samaritan man begging for peace in his homeland, we have been to the Holocaust Museum to be forever haunted by a world inexplicable.

Thus is the humanity of it all. If we had not sat with people from both sides, if we had not shared life and its grief with the individuals who have lived out the tragedy of it, then we could carry on with our tidy packaging and labeling of idealized products. But that cannot be. I cannot choose one side or the other, because to do so would be to deny the realness, the reality, the personhood of someone I know, and know to be an individual. This is not to say there is no right and no wrong. Amongst the entire rainbow grey of the world, there are things in black and white. But it is to say this: know that the world is made of people. Know those people. Don’t box them up, do not pretend to know their heart because of a name defining their ethnicity. Simply sit, and be with them. Acknowledge the beauty of their personhood, and grieve with them because of it. Only when we realize that our ideals, our world issues, handle the fate of people can we come to the drawing board and begin to create a map with any accuracy. Choose right over wrong, justice over injustice, good over evil. But be slow. And do it with a heavy heart.

Why Didn't the Israelites Just Wander North?

There is no forgiveness in the land of Israel. Take that how you may, down a sociological or philosophical rabbit hole. In any event you would end at the same mad hatter’s party. But I simply mean the land, the physical dust and rock that boils at one hundred degrees under a cloudless sky. I’ve heard people speak of the mystery of the wilderness, of its subtle beauties. But if so it is a beauty that kills and forgets.

The last three days of my life have been spent roaming this wilderness, the southern part of Israel called the Negev, traveling from Jerusalem to Ashkalon, to Arad, to Qumran, and finally home (yes, after a trip like that my hotel in Jerusalem has all the comforts of home). And I bet you couldn’t guess what the word “negev” means? “Dry.” Really, you don’t say so?

It is a stunning place really (note: stunning, not beautiful. I’m still to sunburned to admit it so). From massive caverns made entirely out of chalk, to the Mediterranean Sea with its dozens of unforgiving jellyfish. It truly leaves you speechless, the mere antiquity of it all. I went for a run along the beach (high stepping around said jellyfish), and the entire coastline is silhouetted with stone structures dating back to the Iron Age. Yes, the little spot of time before anyone knew anything about anywhere. When they just had figured out that they could use metal instead of rock to kill each other and do other neat things. That was Ashkalon.

There was a day of hiking, Wednesday. We climbed Israel’s version of the Grand Canyon, complete with a lovely encounter with the local flora and fauna (meaning, I jumped up on a rock and scared the hell out of a sleeping snake, who returned the favor). And then there was a day at the spa, Thursday. That was the Dead Sea. I won’t say it was a pleasant experience, but it was an Experience. When you step into a saline solution of 25% salt, you soon discover cuts and sores in places you never imagined. Every torn cuticle is a tiny bonfire being lit under the skin.. So I rubbed the mud on my body, I let it dry, I floated for a few minutes (which is strange sensation, weightlessness), and then I got the heck out and ran up the 200 degree walkway on blistering feet to wash the burning sensation out of my body. Apparently its good for your complexion.

Hours-- of bus-riding, hiking, swimming, burning, thirsting, repeating-- later, I am home in the City of David. And today? Today I am finding a pool and drinking girly drinks all day. This country owes me that much I think.

Shalom/Salam

Almost one week later...I finally have some free time to write a quick post. Flew into Tel Aviv, Israel, last Monday morning. We hit the ground running as fast as we could, and just increased the pace from there :)

Where to begin? Good news: so when I was imagining this trip I figured it would be me, my parents, and a group of older/middle-aged retired peeps with enough money to tour around Israel for three weeks. Figured on a lot of alone time and a lot of (boring) adult convo... Turns out, the class we're in is taught by a prof from Azusa Pacific, and thus 80ish% of the students are undergrads. And I'd say it's a 3 to 1 girl to guy ratio. So let me just break it down for you: I'm hanging out in Israel with a bunch of college kids only slightly younger than me, all from Cali, and mostly girls. It's been rough.

Bonus: there are numerous kids as fanatical about the World Cup as I. Double bonus: I'm in a country where every other back alley has a big screen projector playing every game aired. There is nothing quite like sitting with a pint of Maccabees and a hookah, eating a shwarma, and watching the World Cup with a bunch of Arabs.

But seriously, I'm very thankful. I've made some incredible friends already. It makes the days easier, because they are looooooong as hades. The typical day is something like this: 7am breakfast. 8am to 12pm we're in class (snore). 1pm through 6pm we walk/hike around ALL of Israel. And I mean all. We made walking around the Old City of Jerusalem look like a Sunday stroll. We'll walk (insert "jog") to a place, stop, listen to Bob the Prof explain its significance, and then keep walking for around five more hours. 7pm dinner. 9:30pm World Cup. 12am bedtime. Six hours until I do it all again... Needless to say, I end each day shattered. But it is unbelievable all the same. I've seen too much to remember, from Calvary, to Herod's Palace, to Bethlehem, to Jericho, etc. I usually get to the end of a day and can't remember my name let alone what we saw.

It isn't what you think though, touring around Biblical sites. It's been pretty hard, actually. I mean in a spiritual/emotional way. Because you come to a place like Jerusalem expecting to just have your mind blown by standing where Christ stood, by walking up the hill he walked to die for the redemption of everything ever created. But the reality is, there is no hill. Calvary is just another site, another building thrown up as a holy place and filled with trinkets and people kissing everything. You go to Bethlehem, and instead of a quaint country town where the Messiah was born in a manger, it's a Palestinian outpost, a concrete jungle surrounded by razor wire and armed guards, where impoverished children beg for a living. And I'm supposed to learn about the good Samaritan, looking out over the wilderness on the road to Jericho, but I can't quite hear the lesson over the jabber of the little Bedouin boy who wants my apple, wants to sell me a bracelet, wants my pen to play with. Who, then, is your neighbor...

This is what I've come to: I have no sense of place. For me, a place is a who, not a where. It is the people in a place that make it such. And so I find it hard to see the place of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, when it is Josef the Syrian bellhop who wishes me good morning every time I leave the hotel, or Jonathon the Palestinian bartender who I visit a few nights a week to watch soccer. I have no deep or profound thoughts as to why, it just is; I cannot reach the place of meditation when I can't get passed a place of dirt and smoke and refuse.

But maybe it isn't that different a place then, after all. This is the Jerusalem of Christ.

Memory Lane

Have been amiss in my updates...was on the road and in London for the past few days, ergo no internet. Thus, the past few days (plus a little vid-vid of our drive to London. Nothing like a road trip and tunes):

It's never quite a settled feeling, visiting places that hold a place in your mind and heart. It just leaves you feeling...scattered. Spent the day in Oxford on Friday, as Mum and Dad and I drove down to London out of the Lake District. We walked the city, yours truly being the tour guide. From Christ Church Meadows, to the Bodleian Library, to a nice cream tea 'round 2ish, and up to St. Anne's where I studied last summer. Every little street was like meeting an old friend, but one who doesn't remember you as well. You try to explain it to the people you're with, try to introduce the thing remembered and the ones you're with, but it always ends awkwardly. After all, how can you explain that right there, right at that very spot, you fell in love with a place? You walk around, pointing to the bench you sat on to read in the mornings; the tiny corner room in an old Victorian house with windows that created the perfect cross-breeze for an afternoon nap; the unassuming cafe that became a sanctuary for the mind; the path you walked out of busy Oxford, to suddenly burst upon the Port Meadows with its acres and acres of rolling English countryside. How can you explain memory? How can you make someone remember with you, feel with you? For that is what memory seems to be, an emotion.

And thus, we misrepresent the place, the thing remembered. For we cannot truly remember it for someone else. It isn't theirs to remember, to feel.

...And as you can see, I am sidetracked. I love Oxford. It was a glorious day, despite the gnawing wish to turn back time and simply live it again. I guess that simply attests to its charm. From Oxford, we drove to London and checked into our hotel. Two full days of walking, and a few brilliant pub moments (e.g. eating fish and chips on the Thames, having a pint of Carling with a pie, watching the U.S. vs. England World Cup game in a British bar...etc.), and we'd seen it all. I must say, if ever anyone would like a tour of England, I've got it pretty pat...

There and Back Again

Nothing is quite so green as the Lake District. It drizzled off and on yesterday, on our hike along the fells from Ambleside to Grasmere, northern England. Peaks on the left-hand side, steep mountain leading down to the lakes on the right. We stopped in a little cafe for lunch, soaked and shivering, needing a warm up. Upon commenting on the constant drizzle, the lady serving us goat cheese and chicken sandwiches (with a side of red onion marmalade...breathtaking) said how much they needed a good rain. I wanted to ask her what it had been doing for the last few days we've been here... Apparently unless it creates flash flooding, they just call this "humidity." I don't think she's been to Arizona.

The journey home was delightfully easy, in comparison with the hike to Grasmere. Rolling country roads through a farmer's field, picturesque sheep creating quite the ruckus when a farmer drove through in his Land Rover. I felt like I was in Babe. We took the liberty to stop at Wordsworth's home (both Dove Cottage and Rydal Mount), but didn't want to spend the pounds to get a tour. If you've seen The Holiday there isn't a need to. Same thing really. Just with a dead person's things still lying around...poetically...

Everything is green, everything is stone, and everything is wet. And absolutely fantastic. It'd probably be harder to live here and not write poetry than to do so.

And so... "I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils; beside the lake beneath the tress, fluttering and dancing in the breeze." Here's to Bill Wordsworth.

The Flight Over

British Airways is quite a cruel little institution when you think about it. Flew from Chicago to London yesterday, here's a tale I like to tell:

5:45 p.m. I board the plane, right as rain. 6:30 p.m. I am served a delightful array of sweet-and-sour chicken, a biscuit, and carrots, with a pudding on the side for desert. My water is in a cute foil-covered cup. I wanted lasagna, but my friend the steward was all out. C'est la vie. In recompense, I receive an extra mini-wine, a tasty malbec from Argentina. Fantastic. 7:00 p.m. I do some light reading (Emerson's essay, History). "The true poem is the poets mind." By 9:00 p.m. I have finished both bottles of wine, watched half of Blindside, and am feeling quite rosy, inside and out. Isn't travel smashing? 10:30 p.m. I have reclined (despite the 6' 9" behind me) and dozed off (despite the screaming infant).....

.......11:00 p.m. the lights come on. What's happening. The shades snap up. Up? please put them back down. The child is screaming. Everything is fuzzy. The pilot is saying something about good mornings, we have begun our descent, and it is 6:00 a.m. local time. The steward would like to know if I would like tea or coffee with my breakfast. I would like to know the relevance of that discussion at this time, and does he value his life. Someone hands me a card. It wants to know my passport number. I can't read the fine print because my eyes are still moist from the inflight movie. Landing gear is down...plane stops taxiing...people moving everywhere...its so hot. Stale air.... BAM!

Welcome to Heathrow. You now have a full day to enjoy the bounties of England and one hour of, dare I say, "sleep" to enjoy it on. Cheers.