This God is my God, this God is your God...

We took that infamous right turn at Amman and headed for the King Hussein Bridge, where Israelis are kind enough not to issue the stigma involved with a big red stamp in our passports, and where the Jordanians still don't really believe Israel is in charge of the place. Which is to say, in their eyes Palestine is not Israel - they don't stamp you out either. Beautiful news for a traveler on his way to another arab state who hates this returned exile called the Jew.

Arriving in Jerusalem, we find mostly the familiar - streets lined with Falafel and homos (hummus) stands, brown faces packing streets, and crammed small alleyways in the old city. Yet even as the rational side of the mind looks for change, the senses ease along with the stagnation - a bus ride of less than 100 km should not make Jerusalem a different universe than Amman.

But of course the differences do exist, as a short walk out of East Jerusalem exemplifies. People stop on sidewalks simply because the little lighted man in front is red instead of green, and further on clothing morphs to black suits and hats, and facial hair turns from beards to locks adorning cheeks like streamers. It can hardly be said that the Orthodox Jewish Quarter welcomed us - signs stream from the walls pronouncing that our simple presence there is interfering with the education of their children in the ways of God and his Torah - and for the love of crap will we please think twice before bringing tour groups through to reduce a way of life to a tourist triviality to be photographed. Fair enough.

We reveled in the opportunity to make use of the first functioning kitchen at our disposal since June to make, well, pancakes. Pankcakes wrapped around hot dogs, pancakes doused in delicious "American Kitchen" syrup, Pancakes with strawberries. Oh, how my mouth waters even now at the thought of those pancakes - like flat little patties of heaven.

Which is fitting - heaven that is. We awake fairly early, but by no means before the cocks are doing their thing, and the old city grabs us. The shops are still nothing but steel fronts, gates pulled down to keep the strange passer by out. The old stones are quiet still, save the rumble as a fruit wallah (India lives on inside me) barrels down staircases with nothing but a tire as his cart's moderately effective brake. We wander aimlessly, and converse nonchalantly as most of our travels happen. Nothing too special.

But then it strikes us, or rather we strike it, or both. We hit a station of the cross, and my mindset morphs to the now. The present. To silence to beam it all to the soul. This cross in which I do not "believe" in the sense of the word, but which means so much to me if for nothing but history. The cross that I grew up dreading through elementary school while looking forward to fairy-tale perceived readings on Friday afternoons. The stations I lamented learning every year about this time. Jesus' city had come to my life in person now - and it meant the lands of learning about new religions had merged, at least somewhat, with one that I personally know.

So I walked silently through the streets and tried to merge myself with the essence of the place and its meaning. At one station, a nun sat silently working - cutting pasting drawing on crafts of some sort, as we submerged to a small cavernous chapel to celebrate and lament another stage of the understood progression. And for a few small moments, I found myself somewhat unquestioning - returning to my roots and what I was told.

I emerged. The shutters opened, and trinkets for tourists of oil lamps, tapestries of the same sort as Pakistanis had called their own, Nargilehs, and incense all called that this was little different than the pilgrimages in the Himalaya, in the Far East, in Jammu. Simply because I knew this story before, and more in depth, does not mean it is insucceptible to the calls of "looking is free," "cheap price," and "better for you" do not cease. The religious who come to the Via Dolorosa do not sit in a deeper piety than the rest of the planet, and they do not respect the place as I would have them. This supposed holy route of death is not immune from throngs of unknowing, non-intimate humans - many of them practitioners of their own faiths only in words. The fact that the Arabic calls to prayer were replaced with Southern Texas drawls spouting "Are we still on the road Jesus walked on, honey?" did not give the place a higher charm. I realized, for the next of countless times, that the change I briefly felt was truly within me, and not a function of holy location.

Nevertheless, the idea is strong in Jerusalem, and the wholly compassionate and dedicated do prowl the streets - just more quietly than their spiritual tour group counterparts. We entered the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and a calm came back. I stared at the site where believers say He was crucified as Greek or Eastern Orthodox chants filled the caves and hallways. I reveled in a moment of self, and a moment maybe not of Jesus himself, but of what any place like this can bring to the world.

Then, on the way out, I saw a few more of my countrymen roasting a few trinkets and medallions on the stone where He was said to have been laid after death in the hope that somehow this meager act of "faith" would save them, while a few truly devout laid their heads down upon it and in silence felt something. I exited.

I ate pancakes.

At the Western Wall, I found my silence once more, and tried to contain my urges to photograph the newest unknown, non-understood phenomena in my life. I leaned my head in amongst the prayers and requests stuffed between the remains of the second temple's old stones, and I felt a little too. But not too much, as some understanding (though not too much) seems to be a requisite of belief and feeling. Instead, I marveled a while at what I did not know, and at how far I have come. I could end my trip right now, I believe, with more memories of more places than many people are lucky enough to receive in a lifetime. I have truly lived on this trip, and have truly grown. But to endure more change is a sometimes tedious task - something like striking a chord of the omnicient tune only to continue plucking strings randomly. Then, though, that's why these pilgrims have set their sights on this homeland - they see their chord, and see little need for a change in tune.

In our glorious Faisal Hostel, we mingled amonst the murals of "how the revolution will happen" and with the Western Activists flown in as all but mercenaries in the Palestinian Cause. They are travelers who have found their cause, and though it might be outside of their realm, and outside of what they know, it has provided the opportunity to dedicate themselves to something without giving up their radical lifestyle. On Al-Jazeera television the next morning, we watched one of them hold back his smile while being pushed back by the army in a protest.

Then we went onward - to the Dome of the Rock, where I realized in the courtyard that spoon and can of beans would not make their appearance. I realized that my knowledge of this site, and of the first and second temples' destructions, and of the third temples still vague involvement in foretelling Armageddon stemmed almost exclusively from Tom Robbins. Somehow, though, I found solace not disappointment in that fact as the supposedly pious ahead of us had come with their church, but did not know why they had been brought to this temple mount. As I walked the open area surrounding the rock where Abraham was willing to sacrifice his child (supposedly), and where Muhammad ascended to heaven (supposedly), and where Jesus will make his second coming (supposedly), I found awe again in the trivialization of it all. This symbol of immortal existence captured hundreds of time on Olympus digital cameras - the irony does not stop with the pun.

After yet another random rendezvous with home as Brian Buller emerged in Jerusalem, we hopped a bus to Tel Aviv for the cosmopolitan secular counterpoint to the melting pot of piety in Jerusalem. A couple that I met in Burma kindly took us in, and we have reveled in comfort for a few days now. Though the falafel and hummus are nowhere near as novel to us as to their usual visitors, their zeal in welcoming us to their world is overwhelming and wonderful, and a welcome change from the norm of dirty hotel rooms. Oh, and wine is delicious.

Today, we saw our very first bomb-disarming robot, but you might be as surprised as we that such events do not dominate in this uber-modern skyscraper city on the Mediterranean. Life here continues - and the melting pot of Yemenites, Americans, Europeans, and, yes, Arabs is welcome.

Flambuoyancy

There are unexpected, yet wholly anticipated, twists in traveling. There are moments when the world is turned on its head and past understandings are lost to revelations of less steadfast certainty. Mostly, instances of paradigm revolution emerge from an interaction with a similar being whose life destroys a perception of truth in your own. They come at those times when a Buddhist alters a fundamentally Christian worldview, or when a Muslim blasts arguments against the hejrab (veil) into oblivion. They come when a Hindi swims in a river with floating corpses because it is holy. The moments typically stem from human interactions.

But this time, the natural world where mountains are stationary, where the ground is stable, where deserts are deserts and forests are forests has come into direct question. The world where water is water and acts as such has been blown into oblivion at new ideas of what could be. Sure, in physics class the theories are all presented in wholly esoteric who cares I need to go hang out with my friends in the GWHS parking lot sort of way; but they're never supposed to come to fruition. They don't exist.

Except they do - you dip into the liquidy familiarity of the dead sea only to find an unfamiliar sting in your eyes and burn in your throat as limbs and torsos are thrust to the surface. In the gelatinous goo created from an overabundance of soluble elements, it is all one can do to keep legs down where legs should be. Horizontal existence is unavoidable. Floating in the Dead Sea destroys ideas of what water is.

The diaspora of the giddy joy of the unknown contrasting to the acidic burn - to the pain of an overzealous pursuit of this newness - is perhaps fitting as a metaphor. Good versus evil - in this land where one must return to his microeconomics jargon of scarcity in choosing between visiting the site of Jesus of Nazareth's baptism, or the site where Moses first laid eyes on the holy land. Or perhaps skipping both to go down the road to Mohammed's home town, or to stop by the last remnant of the second temple. With history ignoring modern political borders, this land united is the land of monotheism. This is where Eastern ideas met western desires for singular simplicity of the insecure. So as we happen upon unforseen sights of Jesus's miracles, we are caught in wonder at what this world could be - and at this land pure ideas, but real war. This land where Bethany exists alongside modernising Islamic teenage women.

Moreover, we break through the mundane misunderstandings of the world that we harbored. Western Syria is a lush green mountain range, as is the Jordan Valley in the nation of that name. Lebanon is far from a barren desert strip, boasting several ski resorts with up to 17 lifts each. And Israel is far from a simple speck of sand on an insignificant strip of land (though I do hold fast that the artificially inflated esteem for the stip of not-so-sandy holiness has unnecessarily drastic consequences), itself boasting a ski resort, mountains, and the lush green landscapes of the Golan Heights (but don't tell Syria that it belongs to Israel.) The world is not as we had imagined. It never is.

Syria is, however, slightly dull for the traveler. At least, that is, for the culture shocking traveler fresh out of uber-hospitality land of Pakistan unwilling to spend his days having the monotonous "where you from?" conversation with participants wholly unable to comprehend the path he took to get there. "Why didn't you learn Arabic before you came?" Bug off.

A few empty roman ruins that I'm confident nobody went to in Roman times just to say "this ampitheater sure is pretty" left us only mildly inspired, and a few days in Damascus chatting with an Iraqi who fought the US in 1991 and now works alongside US soldiers, among others, had me confident that I was free to leave the political puzzle piece for more southern destinations.

A view over the Sea of Galilee, a glance into Palestine, a look northward to those Golan Heights provided our introduction to Jordan. This, another nation of Arabs that has found some way to justify a distinction from the northern, western, eastern Arabs in their vicinity, provides ever more destruction of illusion. This is still not a land of constant battle, or vicious instability. This is a land where people live and die and move and float. This is a land where history is, at least somewhat, shaped by an idea of water as being something eeriely buoyant. And still it is not altogether unfamiliar to us. There is a speck of recognition.

Then again, the Texan here to train Iraqi soldiers to go get "blown up" in their newly chaotic land perceives Amman as much more irrationally chaotic than we. Perhaps our entire perspective of planetary comprehension is squewed from what we would have had a few months ago, before the Subcontinent blasted "reality" into nothing more than a trivially insignificant idea. To me, Jordan feels too easy still, too close to rational home. Yet to him it is eons from comfort, and centuries back from the "present" of 2006 as North Americans would recognize it.

Either way, I'm off to see what Arabia has to offer me, and I to it. To find a little more truth, or a little less. And to see if a little more than "ahlan wa sahlan" can make it into my mental phrasebook. Or, maybe today will take me out of Arabia entirely, and into the "occupied" lands. Travel will tell.

Are you Syria?

Syria is not Pakistan. This is something we had to learn first hand, when we arrived in Aleppo and saw women sans burkas actually being seen in public - and conversing with men. Nevertheless, the country has its own set of uber-conservative standards, mostly related to the absurd pleathora of portraits, painting, mosaics, and woven carpets of the image of the "President" (who manages to win every election with 99 percent of the vote.) In essence, the man's image is equal to the flag, and any statement criticizing him will land one in prison, undoubtedly. Hopefully I'm out of that danger just for being a clueless white boy.

In the meantime, though, the strict information control brings something of a relief (and something of an annoyance) as virtually all conversation of politics is barred from the everyday. As the guidebook states, under Al-Assad a few years back, the secret service members were about as numerous as the posters of the man dotting the streets, restaurants, houses... People have learned to politely change the subject when politics emerges as a possibile topic. But, of course, Israel, America, UK, and democracy (yes, democracy) bashing are not only condoned, but outright encouraged in street banners, bus stop posters, and state-run newspaper articles.

So, my idea of how the country is run will have to continue to be based on the all too Saddam Hussein-esque statues dotting the country, and the fist pumps at the mention that we're Americans (along with "F*&k BUSH!") as we wander to within a few kilometers of the border with Iraq (to whom, by and large, most Syrians are adamant in pointing out they are not similar in the slightest. The truth is probably less severe.)

In the meantime, we found a mean falafel stand this morning that made our lives just that much better, combined with fresh fruit juice to turn the constant desert scape of the past few days into something much more bearable. Despite the fact that the Aussie we met today who loves the place listed among its attributes that "if you want to do nothing, there's that. And if you want to do something, that's easy to find too. If you like ruins, you can do that. If you want to sit and smoke Shisha, you can do that. And if you want to get wasted, you can do that." Uh-huh. Problem is, all that stuff falls in the category of "doing nothing."

Nevertheless, the people are hospitable to a would-be astounding extent if we were not fresh out of the Pashto areas of Pakistan. The prospect of excitement in learning more is flickering once again as I come to re-assess my life on less reactionary circumstances as time passes since Tim's death.

I feel almost normal again, and I love this place. That is, everywhere.

Shocking Revelations (link)

Scroll down or click on Shocking Revelations in the sidebar -----> please, to read my post from March 10, 2006.

Thank you to all who pay attention to my "adventures."