Ok. Back from Israel. The voice in my head pretty much constant for nearly two months now: write write write. And all I’ve been doing is playing internet chess, and internet scrabble, and staying up till dawn wasting my time on the goddamned bloody internet. It makes me feel like shit. My hands hurt from over-mousing. My head hurts and, worst of all, my soul, my heart is crying out: write write write! It’s always there. Everywhere I go. Feels like I have a billion words waiting to be born, I swear. And yet, these six lines are the most I’ve managed in all that time. Six weeks since I quit my job! Six weeks! Enough time to write a whole bloody book. Oh man, if I ever get myself out of this I’m going to wonder what the fuck I was doing. Youth’s wasted on the young: already my death bed shudders with the thought of what I’ve done with my time on this planet. Internet chess! Yet even the typing of the words makes me want to play. It’s distraction. It’s destruction too. But I’d be better off drunk, I reckon – at least that gets the juices flowing. But…here we are, suddenly writing. Wow. Feels sort of good. Feels sort of possible. Like the first line in an essay…it’s always the hardest. Once you open the door – once you’ve truly knocked…there’s stuff there. Typing is easy. It’s getting started that’s the hard part.
Woohoo! I’m typing. :-)
So what you’re probably wondering is, what was Israel like? ‘Cos, I mean, you’ve heard all these stories, right? About bombs and terrorists and wars and how bad the Israelis are, how cruel they are to Arabs. And how there’s some big wall that’s penning them in like animals. And how there’s some other wall where crazy mad ancient behatted Jews wail and moan and go crazy and mad praying for Israel and Jerusalem and why can’t they just let it go, it’s ancient history, man, them Moses Bible days are over, right? And…well, I don’t know what all else you’ve heard, what you’re thinking – but that’s what I’m imagining; that’s my first paragraph, just an effort to set the scene and get the juices flowing…
Israel was cool, man! Israel was mellow. Right from the off, when lovely tall nice guy Yair met me at the airport and off we zoomed straight to the Dead Sea and the promise of some hot springs right there by those magic salty floating waters of legend and – boom! – barely ninety minutes from landing, and barely seven hours from London, we’re out there in the dark tramping down some dusty hillside to the waters where little sparkling fires twinkle in the night and where campers and Israeli hippies are out there with their guitars, with their tits out, with their groovy hair and endless Hebrew folk songs that everybody knows and sings along with and lying around in hot little pools of hot hot water, getting mudded up, smoking their joints, being friendly and nice and sort of innocent and wide-eyed and lovely and, how cool and amazing this world where you can want to go to a place for years and years and so many years and then just a couple of hundred quid and less hours than the average internet chess session and then – wham! – you’re there in only a pair of shorts, lying under the stars with a campfire of your own and the sweet guitar music and Yair smiling and chatting and laying out a gone Israeli feast of avocados and hummus and bread and chocolates and halva and and and –
Ah, man, this is the life. Yet again. All that time thinking about busting out and then – I bust out and wonder what all the thinking was about. It’s easy. Nothing could be simpler.
It’s my first night in Israel and I’m out in the wilds, by the Dead Sea, the lights of Jordan twinkling barely a few hundred metres across the water, floating in a pool of hot mud. Floating! Oh yeah.
We went to Jerusalem the next day – via rubbish Qumran (which we hopped a fence to get into) and a nice dip in a cold water spring to wash the salt off – and, weird beyond weird, Jerusalem was this really quite mellow place. I dunno, I was expecting fever and fervour, crowds of men in the street gnashing their teeth and wearing sackcloth and whipping everyone up into a frenzy, all of us hit instantly with this ‘Jerusalem Syndrome’ I’ve heard about that supposedly turns all the tourists into some temporary religious psychosics. But it’s mellow, man. We eat some hummus. We take a quick walk around the big church – the [I can’t remember what it’s called], some crazy Christian labyrinth of domes and miniscule rooms where the devout kiss stones and rub their family jewels and t-shirts on holy stones that Jesus no doubt DEFINITELY shat on or sat on or wiped his bloody hands on during his holy stumbling walk up the hill to take his place on the cross. They’re kissing everything, these guys – it’s so strange and out there. But it feels good. It’s mellow in there too and I dig it – just as I dig the Western Wall (now that I’ve been there and seen it all in action, I feel a pang of disrespect by calling it the Wailing Wall) where Orthodox Jews – you know the ones, with the hats and the coats and the funky weird bits of dangling curly hair; Yair calls them “penguins” – pray and insert little bits of paper and read holy books and also generally hang out and mill around and sing songs and actually have a bit of a laugh, weirdly enough, which is cool and refreshing to see. Not really any wailing at all – and only one guy out of everyone I saw there really going for it, swaying and rocking and slapping his hand on the wall as he, I dunno, beseeches his mighty lord Yahweh to free them from the oppression of the Romans, to remember his people, oh why have you forsaken us or something. He’s going for it, man; he’s really going for it. He could have been there for hours. I dig him. I could watch him all day. What a guy! All that rocking and banging and imploring and – wow! – religion is a weird thing the things it does to people’s minds (not exempting myself here). Oh God in heaven must be laughing His arse off to look down on us plebs and ants wooing and bribing him with hair and foreskins and bits of bread and sounds! Omahummanepadmeum – as though it was ever anything other than what’s in our hearts that does it. Talk to God like he’s your mate; that’ll do it. But still, I dig it all.
Me and Yair say our prayers. I put my hand on the wall and close my eyes and think, fuck it man, I’m going for it. I pray to be able to write: for some magic bean – knowing all the time it’s me me me that’s got to be doing it – to fall from the sky and rid me of the ennui (I don’t know what that word means) that keeps me so lazy and rubbish and ridiculous and stops me from doing the one thing I truly crave to do. And I pray for Yair, that his prayer may be answered. I mean that: he’s the gonest, sweetest kid and he’s been having a few troubles of late. Oh Lord, may he find his answer and some peace! And, hey, while I’m about it, what about me, and everyone else for that matter? May we all find our answer and some peace. Why not? But peace on Earth? No, I could never pray for that; I’m not sure I really believe in it, or believe that it would be a good thing – and you can only pray for what you believe in, right? Prayer is really just the expression of what’s in your heart at any given moment. True prayer, that is. Prayer that works (lol).
So – ahem – we’ve done Jerusalem. It takes about two hours, I think, to walk the streets and dig the vibe and realise that after all you’ve heard Jerusalem is mainly just a half-decent tourist town where amazing things once happened (I’m talking purely the Old City here) and where now you can see shops and tourists and wander cobbled streets thinking, well, this is all rather mellow and actually quite normal, really. The penguins give it a little something different, I guess – and it’s nice not to be accosted every seven seconds like you are in Marrakech or Fes – cities that do seem to retain some of that ancientness that Jerusalem has so efficiently tidied up (are they really the cobbles that Jesus stumbled upon? Really?) – but two hours is enough. What more is there? Buildings and bricks and people watching and – hell, I’m not really one for cities, for that strain of tourism: only nature really appeals. But I’m glad I went. And on we go.
We went then to Yair’s mother’s in Rehovot – and she Israeli mothered me up good and proper. She fed me like she was stuffing a pig. She frowned if I wasn’t constantly chewing or swallowing or digesting or shitting. She left me a packed lunch the next morning so elaborate and plentiful I wondered if she’d intended it to last me the whole two-week trip. And then when she came back from work and woke me from a nap her first words were, I think, some sort of chide for not having eaten it all and didn’t I want it, I’ll warm you up some fish. This was my birthday; I spent it watching tennis and napping – Yair and his mother had said, you stay here today, it’s raining – tomorrow will be better (and Yair had gone off to Be’er Sheva to do his work) – and that was mellow too. But then –
Yair calls and says, hey, what are you doing? (It’s 7pm)
Nothing, man; guess I’ll be taking the train to Galilee tomorrow.
Come here, he says.
Now?
Sure. Do something spontaneous. (Smiles)
Wow. Really? Okay. How will I get there? Train? Bus? (I still haven’t had a chance to withdraw any money from the bank)
Hitch it. It’s easy.
In the dark? In the rain? (I never hitch in the dark)
Sure. Do it. But don’t tell my mother, she’ll only worry.
Okay. Cool. See you in a bit then.
I get his address. I add it to my bit of paper (did I mention that the only things I’ve brought to Israel with me are: the clothes I’m wearing (no coat); two extra pairs of socks; a sarong; a toothbrush and toothpaste (natch); my passport; my bank card; and a piece of paper with Yair’s phone number and a hastily drawn map of some trail in Galilee I’m supposed to be hiking (the Jesus Trail); I think that’s pretty much it). Yair’s mum forces an umbrella and an Israeli army coat on me and then I hit the road. I walk to the edge of town. I feel totally normal. It’s 8pm and it’s Israel.
I stick out my thumb.
And I get a ride.
Bam! Three rides and I’m there. It’s my first ever non-desperation bit of nighttime hitching and it’s been a piece of piss. It’s one straight road, sure, but immediately I’m thinking, wow, Israel is just the best place in the world for hitchhiking. They pick you up like it’s nothing unusual at all to be standing there in the road late at night with a thumb out. In fact, I see several other people hitching nighttime rides; it’s easier than taking a bus. And Israel is so incredibly small – barely two hundred miles from top to bottom – I mean, wow, you could just suddenly think, 10pm, I’m bored, I think I’ll go outside and stick out my thumb and cross the entire goddamned country RIGHT NOW if I so darn choose. Wowee: that’s some kind of freedom. These roads are full of cars – Israel has the busiest roads I’ve ever seen – and they go all day, all night. A neverending supply. Hitching heaven. They even offer me money for the bus, food. These Israelis are so nice! Brotherhood, baby – that’s what I’m talking about. Unless you’re an Arab or a Jew, I suppose, depending…
The first guy that picks me up is Orthodox. He mutters something which I take to mean he doesn’t speak English and then off we go and he carries on muttering. Praying, I imagine, and I’m down with that. I sit quiet and dig the road; I like it when they don’t talk these days – especially in non-English-speaking lands. But then he does talk, eventually, and his English is flawless: I guess he just needed to get his prayers done first. He’s nice. I dig him. He’s the one that offers me money for the bus. The second guy is a young guy in a sweet car who tells me he lived ten years in London, just came back to Israel. He much prefers Israel, says there’s a depth there that England lacks. Says the people are more mature, that maybe because everyone goes in the army has something to do with it. The religion and the family too – that life has a purpose and a meaning beyond shopping and getting drunk. He likes England but does think we’re sort of childish and lacking something. He’s nice too. He speaks intelligently and calmly and I agree with pretty much everything he says.
Fuckin’ England! Lol.
The last guy is an Arab. His English is sort of stuttering – and my Hebrew is still limited to “hello” and “thank you” and “you have beautiful eyes” (I later learn to count to ten too) – but I guess we talk about something. He shows me pictures of his kids. He makes jokes. He buys a pizza and gives me a slice and then goes maybe twenty minutes out of his way to drop me right by Yair’s door. Wowee! Made it. And, boom bingabang, I’m there, on his back porch, eating soup and avocados and his roommates are lovely and chatty and sociable too. Like everyone, I suppose. Be’er Sheva is a university town and already I’ve seen plenty cute girls all dressed lovely and funky, riding bikes and being hot and – wow, Israeli women are lovely. And not just lovely, they’re also –
The best thing about Israel? The best thing about Israel is that, wherever you go, you see all these soldiers. They’re all dressed in green and they’re going here and there on buses and on trains or just generally milling around (sometimes doing things like casually glancing at IDs as though it meant nothing in the world) and, super-best of all, is that loads of them are girls and the girls are cute. Oh man, what could be finer than a hot girl all dressed in uncomplimentary yet so, so complimentary green green ill-fitting Israeli army uniform? And strung across her back, a full-on – yes it’s machine gun! Oh Lord! Those women are hot anyway – but add a machine gun and – hell’s bells, I’s gots me heart a-pumping just thinking about it! They walk around and smile and chatter, sometimes with a coffee or juice in one hand and a mobile in the other – and always, right there, that machine gun, worn and carried as casually and coolly as squash racquet. I dig this more than anything. I mean, I don’t like guns, as a rule, but this, I dig.
Israeli women, man! They’re fit, and they’re lovely, and they’ve got this sort of…not toughness, I wouldn’t say, but a strength, a directness. It must be the army, man: oh, women everywhere, go and live in countries that require its citizens to join the army! It’ll do you good, I swear. And, man, you’ll look hot. Machine guns. Uniforms. Have I said enough? I never, of course, made it with no Israeli chick during my time there – but, oh, I fell in love with several hundred of the gone sweet lovelies. They’re just like girls everywhere: they show a bit of cleavage, they sleep around if they feel like doing it; they smoke their cigarettes and no doubt do the things women everywhere do; I don’t know why I expected it to be any different. Even the Arab girls under all those clothes – what eyes! – even those Orthodox women Jews, wandering around in wardrobes from the 1930s depression and expressions like a diet of turnips – you better believe that under it all there’s some gone, gone bodies – some fine shapely titties and nipples to die for, for what does God care when She’s doling out the titties? She spreads the good and the bad equally among all, no matter what their fate, no doubt. Oh, imagine it all! All those glorious swinging breasts barely ever seeing the light of day, lovely and shapely and good as anything you’ll find anywhere hidden away except to be slobbered on by those hungry penguin Jews, the lucky, lucky bastards! Oh, I must google “orthodox jew porn” RIGHT NOW.
Phew and whee. Calm down. Israeli women. Wow.
Israeli women, Israeli food. Good food. Great salads. Avocados with everything; they’re cheap as oranges. Grapefruit. Dates. Hummus and falafel and – well, everything you can get here really, I suppose: what a tragedy that you can no longer travel to foreign lands and find something chic and exotic and new. But, somehow, I still think of it as amazing and good. The way they eat, I suppose: that’s the difference. There, they lay it out and every meal’s a feast. Everything’s to be shared and it’s the abundance of food and goodness that was, I suppose, always intended for us. They love to feed, they love to eat. Eating’s a big part of life. And they love to give. The guest is God, don’tcha know? And sharing food is the most natural thing in the world. Did you know there are cultures where it’s considered rude to eat something in the company of others without offering it around? Those Israelis, man – when they say, make yourself at home, my fridge is your fridge, they mean it. Not this tightarse Englishness of saying it and then freaking out – I’m thinking of my own family here – ‘cos: oh oh oh, he ate too much. I swear, my own mother would remark on it and resent on it if I ever raided her fridge, even if she was in one of her rare good spells. Don’t take too much, you’re eating me out of house of home. Don’t you know how much this costs? Do you think I’m made of money? Ah, the differences, the differences. One grows up in a land of plenty, fruit literally rotting on the ground there’s so much of it, the garden of Eden, a land of community and brotherhood – we’re all Jews here (yes, I know I’m neglecting the Arab side of it; I just didn’t get to taste that so much) – and another grows up in a land of cold and struggle, of potatoes and rationing and so there’s no blame there. But, yes, how lovely to taste that Mediterranean spirit, those giving, feeding, stuffing mothers of legend and yore that insist insist insist on more more more. I love it. I saw about a billion olive trees. I ate oranges straight from the source. And they were good.
Right. Sorry. I’ve gone off on a tangent there: back to the story. Back to Yair and me in Be’er Sheva and what I was doing in Israel. And what was I doing in Israel? Well…
Israel was, for me, the chance finally to fulfil something I’ve wanted to do for many a year and that was to go walking off in the nature up around Galilee and – to cliché and corn away – “to tread in the footsteps of Jesus”. Well – hahaha – it all seems like a big joke now but, back before – back about three weeks ago – I had high hopes. It’s some twelve years now since a wild-eyed picked-me-up-hitchhiking lady told me she was gonna prophesy for me and ended up with this ‘message’ about going to Israel and doing that, ignoring the touristy places, just going where Jesus went. It had lodged in my brain. And it had grown, I suppose, during my semi-insane Messiah complex spiritual wandering days to represent something I’m not really sure what. My destiny? The final frontier? Probably at times I thought it would be something absolutely incredible and life-altering and – ah, to hell with it: yes, there were moments – long, years long moments – when I thought, oh my, I could be a Messiah, an enlightened one, a new Jesus. Oh my fucking God! I must have been out of my mind! I mean, laugh my fuckin’ ass off all over the goddamned floor! And yet, it was sort of real – in a mad and mental totally unreal sort of way. I mean, I had one or two bona fide spiritual/mystical experiences, got a gift or two, lived a life of ease and grace – and then came to the totally weird conclusion that I was – wait for it – The One! I was mental. I was delusional. It’s the most embarrassing thing I can think of: even beyond my car-crashing and destructive drunken days, for at least that was real. But this…this was all in my head. And it got stuck in there and it’s taken me years and years and years to let it die, to see the reality and the truth: I mean, I knew it years ago but also…the feeling still remained, the percentage of Messiah Complex in me only slowly dwindling away, still some residue, still some remains. Maybe three weeks ago I was down to five percent nutter. But five percent is still something. Five percent still speaks a voice of hope, of possibility – of the meeting with the guru, of God in a cloud in the wilderness, of instant and out of the blue enlightenment. Five percent is still enough to send a man to Israel and to have him make plans like I had planned…
“Don’t worry about money,” this woman had said, “God will provide” – well that I knew to be true, from several months of living entirely on trust (that magic is real), but the thing was, now I had money (in the bank; about three thousand pounds worth) and so was it right to try to live without it? And, also, a big lesson from my trip across Mexico and Guatemala in 2009 was that it’s now good and better for me to spend my cash and enjoy myself in hotels and comfort rather than to force suffering sleeping on jungle floors and going hungry and just constantly thinking about food anyway. There’s a time and a place for everything: my hair shirt days are over, it seems. It no longer feels good – it didn’t feel like suffering at the time, my mind was entirely devoted to other things (soul things) – but I’m a different man these days (I think mostly of women and food and worldly stuff like livelihood and creativity than delving further into the mystical). And, the thing is, it should always be about doing what feels good – for how else are we to know what to do? If meditation feels good, do it. If playing football feels good, do it. If sleeping around feels good, do it. And if sleeping around and meditation and playing football and starving yourself and worrying about things and chasing God feels bad, don’t do it. Follow your feelings. But get in touch with them first. And what did I feel about this? I felt that, yes, the lessons of Mexico were real, I’ll take my bank card. But also I felt that, if I’m going to do this thing, I’m going to do it properly – I’m going to go on that walk, up in the hills and wadis around Galilee, and I’m going to do it without tent, without sleeping bag, without money and without asking anyone for anything, just trust. I want to be a man out there alone with just his soul for comfort. I want to take it to the limit and then be done with it either way. I could do it the easy way, or the slightly easier way, but then I’d always be wondering, what if what if what if? What if I’d just pushed myself that little bit more? What if I hadn’t given in to fear and said with my actions, “I don’t trust God”? I mean, how can you win God when you’re saying, in essence, “I don’t trust in It, I don’t believe Her promises”? You can’t. So, yes, let’s suffer and be cold and wet and hungry and lonely and mad just this one last time; that was the plan…
The other part of the plan was to spend the weekend with Yair and then to go off on my own. Except, the way it seemed to work was that, all of a sudden, Yair was in charge of my destiny. We were going to say goodbye in Jerusalem, after a little over twenty-four hours together – but then he said, why don’t you come to my mothers? And then he got me down to Be’er Sheva, and that was all well and groovy and, the thing was, it was pretty much raining non-stop everyday anyway and everyone was saying the weather would be better the following week. So I was down with that: I was happy to go with the flow. And Be’er Sheva was cool, anyway – it reminded me of an American university town, and I always dug those most sincerely – and Yair and I were having a blast hanging out. We played chess and we played music together – went to the gonest little open mic I’ve ever been to in my life – and we talked and talked and talked. Yair seemed to want to know every story from my entire life – and I don’t need no second encouragement when it comes to yapping stories. It was cool cool cool. And, in any case, Yair had decided he was coming north with me and after a couple of days chilling in Be’er Sheva in the rain we hit the road and made a beeline for a friend of his in a small village called Harduf, maybe fifteen miles from Nazareth. It was heaven.
Harduf, baby! It was like a commune or something: it was a village and it was a Steiner teaching college and school; a place for retarded kids to ride horses and do cool things and be loved; and a farm. Organic veggies. Little houses. Wood-burning fires. People living in tepees in the beautiful sweet-smelling pine woods hills. I could’ve lived there, man. All those friendly young people smiling and hugging and the joys of community living, always a friend within a few hundred yards, always some glorious nature to go wandering off into. Enlightened souls living enlightened happy lives, caring for each other. And silence. Sweet pine fragrant smells and silence. And, naturally, food. Heaven and nature and I live in a city where you will never once hear the sound of silence, where the skies and the stars are always obscured – where with ten million of us all squeezed in together loneliness and solitude and desperation and unhappiness abound. And – why why why? Why do that? Why me do that? That’s the crux. Let others do what they want – we’re all riding our own bus, baby. But me – what do I want? For the power is in my hands. And I know it, I just seem to have lacked the courage till now. Neti neti: not this, not this. But how much longer can a man go on defining himself by the things he is not, by the things he doesn’t like? Because, for sure, it will only lead to negativity and hating. I’ve come to hate the world! I’ve come to hate the drunken madness noisy materialistic stupid shallow soul-blind confused no one knows why they’re here cars cars planes planes noise noise noise modern fucked up London world – and yet, no one makes me be here: I could just as easily live in country nature bliss if I wanted to. I want to. I want something better – and I believe it’s possible. I’ll do it.
Harduf, Harduf: dear sweet Harduf. Dear sweet Yair’s friend Nammika, who took us in and sheltered us for two nights in her one room abode with not a huff or a puff when I know full well my own damned mother with her two spare bedrooms and palatial palace life would find it such a load to bear, again. Oh, to be good! And to be surrounded by goodness. On and on and on we go...
The magical mystery tour continued: Yair takes us further north, up the road and up the mountain to Tsfat/Zefat/Sedat (depending on which sign you read) and to an old army buddy of his who turns out to be both lovely and funny and a massive pothead and, while I struggle with that at first, I sort of get through it and make the best of it. The place he lives in is one of the dirtiest and messiest dumps I’ve ever seen, and I’m sleeping on a too-small sofa with my feet on a chair right next to a table littered with pot buds and beer bottles and scum and shit and the bathroom’s so scary I can barely bring myself to use it and, within three seconds of entering the building I think, I’ve got to get out of here, I can’t stay another minute. But what to do when it’s cold and raining and midnight and, true true, that would be rude, wouldn’t it? To just go wandering off and to leave your buddy and your buddy’s buddy thinking, what the hell? So I stay, and sleep not a jot, and in the morning, when the friend goes off to work (in a pot farm) Yair and I spend the rainy day cleaning the house, scrubbing the sink and the floor and tidying everything away and taking out maybe three bags of rubbish and it’s filthy and disgusting and a little bit like that program with those two awesome posh ladies and the filthy people’s hovels they find and, weirdly enough, I really really enjoy it. We get that place sparkling, man – we have it shiny and smelling good – doors and windows open all day – and when he comes home the buddy doesn’t recognise it, thinks he’s walked into the wrong house. Seriously. Yair and I are proud: we feel like we’ve made it habitable and sweet and put our own little energy stamp on the place; buddy’s maybe a bit uncomfortable but at the same time grateful and pleased – especially with the bathroom (yeah man, I’ve even scrubbed the toilet) – and shows his gratitude by beginning to immediately mess it up by missing the bin with his beer bottle top and loading up a bong. But I just smile: my joy was in cleaning, I have no attachment to what he does with it after. It’s his place, his nature – nothing to do with me at all. And, like I said, he’s funny and lovely – I felt him the first morning, on his way to work, pull the blanket over a bit of me that was uncovered – and even considerate beyond the norm when he realises that every time he strikes a bong I disappear outside for a while and starts on smoking only in his room. I’m touched by that; I also feel guilty. I don’t like making people change the way they do things in their own home. But I also don’t like sitting in environments that make me feel sick. So I put my body outside and am happy with that. It was sweet of him to do what he did though. People are good. Well, people are a mixture of bad and good. But people are good.
The rain continues. It’s misty and cold that whole day and we venture outside only to pick up a massive selection of groceries in order to prepare yet another feast. The next day, though, we’re back on the road – Yair’s buddy taking us nearly all the way to that legendary Sea of Galilee and we’re suddenly back in sunshine and warmth and it’s like the perfect English spring day. It’s t-shirt time. It’d be sunscreen time, too, if I had any. The walk down the hill is magic: the water glistens like a shimmering mirror below us. And after maybe three lovely chatting miles we’ve reached our destination: the Mount of Beatitudes, the place where Jesus said, “blessed are the cheesemakers” and other such wisdoms. We walk on, to the outlook, and to a padlocked metal barrier stretched across the path.
“End of the road,” I say, musing and feeling all double-meaning and such. Yup, end of the road for me too, inside, my Messiah dreams, this long and confusing and weird and wonderful and trippy and amazing stretch of my life (though have also been doing other things as well: it’s never that straightforward, never black and white).
“But the road goes on,” I feel like adding, wondering if that means anything too. I mean, who the fuck knows why I say half the things I say?
We sit and we dig. The church and the gardens that they’ve built up there – the Christians felt compelled to build something on top of every place where they thought Jesus might have stood – are closed, but we content ourselves with the view. And then: it’s next stop Capernaum, and we tromp down through gloriously rich Galilean mud that clumps to our shoes and gives us at least an extra two inches added height, and all around us banana trees and some more of the million billion olive trees (sad to discover you can’t just eat olives straight from the branch) and, wowee, it all comes home, the land where Jesus lived finally real, his sandals getting clumped and clomped with mud too, picking fruit from the trees as him and his merry band wandered around discussing and healing and learning and teaching, the lake right below us where his men fished, where he (supposedly) walked on water, where it all took place. I get sort of excited to realise all this, to be there: it kind of brings it home, makes it real. To see the physical setting…it turns those words and stories physical too, you can see it all happening and unfolding right there, in those groves, in this abundant garden paradise. Funny to think of all the monks that followed dwelling in their cold dripping caves, their stone rooms, suffering and penitent when the actual place Jesus lived in must have been a land of luxury, beautiful weather, a stunning lake, green, tree-lined hills stretching off picturesquely into the distance – what a life! Just to wander and walk, pluckin’ the guacamole straight from the tree, have a sit down, stretch out in the sun, eat and talk and hang out with your muckers living the life divine and gone Israeli chicks all around, their machine guns swinging in the breeze, all those titties under all those robes, I bet Mary Magadalene was a fine young thing. Not to mention Mary – the Mary – herself. Sweet sixteen! I bet she was. Gone gone gone. What a life!
Capernaum’s full of tourists and it’s probably here that I suddenly realise the futility of that woman telling me, walk where Jesus walked, don’t go to the tourist places. Er, hello? The two are one, my dear – the tourists are here because your dear beloved Jesus was here. And everywhere he was has been built on and – well, more to come on that later – some church or some monument and the big buses and coaches just keep on roaring in, they’re from all over the world, some whistle stop tour and such a short time in each place – just long enough to unload, enter, take a few quick snaps, buy a postcard and leave – I think they must be doing the whole dang country in one day. Which is possible. Dig it man! Peter’s house in Capernaum! And the rock where Jesus said something or other, the rock where he maybe did this or that. And that’s not the worst of it, man – not when you hit Nazareth or some place and they’re like, yeah, this is his tomb, this is his mother Mary’s house – and then contemplate all the billions of fragments of the ‘true cross’ – enough, probably, to make up another Noah’s ark – and all the bones and fingers and cloths and relics of the saints and the wise men and of every little motherfucker who was associated with anything. Jesus shit on this rock, man! And look: here’s a scrap of the toilet paper he used. Wowee, isn’t it remarkable that we know all this even two thousand years removed when for the first three hundred years or so nobody was really that bothered. Oh, it’s a joke! It all becomes stupidly clear, all this pilgrimming to places where some holy dude man may or may not have been: what was I thinking? I’ve met holy souls – Amma and Mother Meera and Shawn and Momma and John – and yet here I am chasing after locations on the globe where two whole fuckin’ millennia ago the right-on enlightened Christ once walked. Let’s go to a cave where Buddha once sat! Let’s travel thousands of miles to sit on some grass where Lao Tzu once pissed! Oh, holy stupid Rory – the living saints are right there and you go chasing after the ghosts of rocks. What a laugh! And – what a laugh even more – it’s been nagging you for years, and you’ve been telling it yourself for years, but now it’s finally clicked: the thing you seek is within you. Oh, what a cliché! Beautiful, beautiful cliché. Perhaps I should be frustrated by all this and think what a damn fool I’ve been, all the time I’ve wasted, all the stupidity I’ve lived – but on this day, in this Galilean sun, with the tourists and the water and the rocks and the realisations – it’s all extremely funny. Madness! I’ve been mad. I’ve been out there and I’ve been gone – and now it suddenly sort of feels like I’m back. Heeheehee.
But, of course, the road must go on, and despite all this I know I’ve still got to do my Jesus walk, to head on out there into those hills – where the tourists won’t be – and put my body and my mind on the line. It’s now appearing futile and ridiculous – but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna come all this way and not be futile and ridiculous one last time. And so – bring it on. We exit Capernaum and pick up a ride with a German woman – she takes us to the church built on the rock where Jesus said, “Peter, man, do you love me, do you love me, do you love me?” and it is genuinely lovely feeling and nice (my palms tingle, man! That’s worth travelling three thousand miles for! lol) – and next thing we know we’re in Tiberias and it’s getting dark and Yair’s got to get back on the road ‘cos he’s got work in the morning. The goodbye approaches. My alone time beckons. The German woman asks me where I’m staying, what I’m going to do next.
“I don’t know,” I say, “just walk, I guess.”
I’m suddenly filled with a wave of fear. I feel it in my body and the feelings translate themselves into words: take me with you, give me a sign, tell me not to do it. I have no money, I have no tent, I have no sleeping bag, I have no food. I’m going to walk out into the hills with just the clothes on my back, and I’ll be hungry and crazy and when night comes I’ll freeze, and get so mad at myself, beat my head and wonder, why why why am I so goddamned weird and mental? What am I doing out here when I’ve got three grand in the bank and could be living that life of avocado luxury?
But Yair says nothing, and the German woman says nothing – no offer of a share of her hotel room, her bed, her body (not that I really wanted it) – and I breathe it in. Fear. Ha! It was a wave and I know it was a wave and it’s perfectly natural to feel it. But, also, there’s no reason for me to listen to it – I’ve experienced enough magic and miracles to know I’ll be okay – and, worst comes to worst, I’ll spend a few cold and shivery nights, and wake up miserable, and be a little hungry. So what! I’ve been a week without food before; I’m sure I can do two days. And I’ve spent the night outside in colder places than this, with less layers than I have now (Yair’s nice nice pothead buddy has given me some Israeli army long johns, which are awesome, plus a snood) and maybe I’ve felt like shit but, thing is, once the morning’s come it’s all forgotten anyway, who cares? And maybe it’ll rain, and maybe it won’t – but even if I do get wet, who cares about that too? A bit of wet never hurt anyone (I type, knowing full well that it probably did – and not just thinking the tsunami). In any case, the fear arises, the wave washes over me, physically, and then I look at it, and relax into it, and breathe deep, and in the end I say, it’s just fear, let’s do it. Feel the fear and do it anyway. A bit hare-brained at times, that advice – but, also, often very true.
All of the above, by the way, takes about four seconds.
Yair goes. The German woman goes. It’s nighttime in Tiberias and there’s nothing in Tiberias for me. I’ll be needing a place to sleep. I have: two oranges and some halva from Yair; my clothes; a new piece of paper with a better map that Yair printed out for me; a bottle of water. The plan is to walk something like 30 miles to Nazareth along the aptly-named ‘Jesus Trail’. I’m on the Jesus Trail man: yessiree, on the trail of Jesus. On the hunt, baby: tracking him down. Even if it’s stupid, it’s got to be done. And you never know; you just never know…
I eat the halva. I eat an orange. They’re heavy and they’ve got to be eaten sooner or later. Plus, the mad halva sugar takes the edge off my thoughts. I walk the highway north out of Tiberias and start to yawn. Then I see a row of concrete pipes. Wow. Bedding. A shelter from the rain. I couldn’t imagine anything more perfect: for sure, God Himself put those pipes there for me to sleep in (he jokes).
I climb on in. It’s weirdly comfortable. And then I lie there all night, sleeping maybe twenty minutes, giggling occasionally, moving from front to back to side every five minutes or so, and expecting any moment that my mind will start getting all funked out and miserable and cursing. But it doesn’t. It stays strangely calm. And when I get up at sunrise and stagger back out onto the road, teeth chattering and organs and bones jumping and shaking in my skin, I feel good. The sun soon comes and warms me up and there’s not an ounce of tiredness in me, nor misery neither. That’s sort of weird. And the same thing happens the next night, when I perfectly end up at twilight in some woods next to a covered over shelter and with plenty of wood to burn: I lie there all night by the fire, feeding it – the wood I have is too small to simply let it simmer away – and again I think I sleep about twenty minutes. And, again, my mind stays happy and calm and I’m loving it, lying out there in the open, no tent, no sleeping bag, just me in my great green Israeli army coat (oh, those gone Israeli army chicks) and once more, when morning comes, it’s up and at ‘em and into the sun, no tiredness, no nothing – as though I’ve had the best night’s sleep of my life. I’m digging that.
The first day the sun is shining and I’m off hiking up into the hills, big massive views of the lake and the little towns below and once more it’s king of the world time. Silence. Nature. Warmth. Ancient caves. Beauty. The trail is cool and fun and I get all happy peering into those caves and saying, yoohoo, Jesus, are you in there? Sort of having a laugh and at the same time thinking Lahiri Mahasaya and Babaji and the miracles and wonders of that. I mean, why not? Stranger things have happened, right? Some of those caves date from the Maccabean revolt (whatever that is) way back in (he googles date) 160ish BC (wow: older than I thought) and they’re pretty awesome. Still lots of ancient Maccabean toilet paper and water bottles lying around too. No Jesus though. Ho hum. There is one cool cave, though – big and high and strangely warm and cosy – would have been an awesome place to sleep – where I feel compelled to sit and, not so much meditate, as spill out my heart. I talked, and I said what I was feeling, and what I have been feeling for some time – about the state of my life, about what I want from it – and what it came down to was this: I don’t really want God – or, at least, more God than I’ve already got – what I want is a wife, and to write, and to live a good life. Pure and simple. Plain and easy. Right there, clear as the nose on a Jewman’s face. It was calm. It was nice. It was a little bit like a mellow Mount Shasta, not so much death or glory as a simple acknowledgement of the reality of my life. Messiah dreams were shown for what they were: delusion. Not me. A part of the past. The truth of me was that: a woman and to express myself. To get it on and to stop procrastinating. And here I am, finally writing. And not that I’m great or amazing or have anything profound or extraordinary to say – not that I have the metaphors or am able to conquer the desire to use words like ‘nice’ and ‘lovely’ and ‘cool’ – but just that I want to do it, and will maybe one day get good. But to take the step, because I’ve tried a great many other things and I always come back to this – to wanting to type, to wanting to tell my story. Loving words and the expression of words. To do only this: to live, and to write about what I live – to communicate every little damned
thing that I’ve ever felt and experienced and thought. That’s all.
So I left the cave and maybe that was meaningful and maybe it wasn’t. I didn’t feel anything in particular, it was just me chatting with myself and having a little look inside. And then back to the walk: back down the hill and then off up some wadi and, suddenly, that feeling of really being away from everything, quiet and no people, hot and thirsty and no water to be found, and lovin’ it lovin’ it lovin’ it. Nature, man: I need more nature. I feel good out there. I have wonderful ideas. I think clear and then I come back here – to London – and it’s all out the window and madness once more (but, fret not, I will out from here soon). Walking walking walking…walking is good. Quiet is good. Nature is good. Ah, what a beautiful day.
Now you’re wondering what I ate, right? Well, let me tell you: you don’t need to worry about that. For, wonderfully enough, growing right there all over the place by the road and by the path were these green leaves, and they were delicious. They were a little bit like rocket, I think; I’d seen some Arabs picking them and I thought, excellent, I’ll have a bit of that. I wasn’t sure whether they were supposed to be cooked or not – they had little spiky hairs on them – so I nibbled the first one tentatively thinking what’s the worst that can happen? Shits? Death? Whatever: it was delicious. Spicy and hot and yum yum yum (other leaves just taste like leaves: I think that’s how you can tell whether they’re good for you or not). So I picked me a little salad and for the next two days that’s pretty much all I ate. Which was, to be honest, plenty enough.
Next I went to the shrine of the tomb of Moses’s father-in-law, Jethro. That was all right: mainly for the further realisation that, what the fuck am I doing at some random pointless tomb that means nothing when there are living saints and holy ones and, in any case, there’s me too, right here all along. Ah, the madness of the spiritual folly! Beautiful beautiful madness.
The tomb, though, had excellent cold water and I also had a date. I don’t know what Jethro did but apparently he’s like the main man in the Druze religion (I don’t know what that is either) and perhaps important to Muslims too. I’m guessing he also taught Moses a thing or two. In any case, he’s dead now and he’s buried somewhere under a big building in Galilee.
I don’t know if there’s really much more to say about all this: let’s see if I can crack open a nut and fit it all in there. I walked. I walked through some beautiful country – Horns of Hattin: very nice – and then I spent the night by my fire digging everything and loving it. The next day was shit, though: the trail was cack, meandering here and there for no apparent reason, hugging highways and never in silence – always, of course, olive groves – and when we eventually got somewhere Jesusy – Cana, where he turned water into wine – well, it was just this big crappy Arab town with no semblance of anything, really: it was like Muslim towns everywhere, full of half-built houses and construction and garbage strewn here and there (I’m thinking Morocco and certain parts of Yorkshire here). It was raining by then and the streets and paths were running little shivers of shit – I watched a turd float down one that smelled of washing powder: the trail had become a joke. It was as though someone had diverted a Lake District hike through the centre of Wakefield. This is hiking? Wowee. Buses and noise and turds and cars. The rain is pissing down. I’m soaked and everything I have is soaked and still I keep on walking, you ain’t gonna stop me that easy. It’s Nazareth or bust, baby – nothing gives till I get there, even though it’s shit and I’m hungry and there are no more green leaves. Though I do eat the greatest fuckin’ orange of my life, and even now I weep that I didn’t pick a thousand of the goddamned things. What an orange! (I literally just shook my head thinking about it.) What a goddamned wonderful orange!
On and on through the rain, maybe eight miles up and down hills, past garbage, through some other town that’s not Nazareth and then finally I am there: Nazareth! Oh wow, the name does something to me: it’s Nazareth, man: world famous Nazareth. Nazareth of Jesus of Nazareth. Wowee.
And – bam! – it’s also there that I really really realise it really is the end of the road and that the whole Jesus-chasing, God-bothering, running hither thither and everythither thing has been one massive joke and even the whole, oh I met this woman and she said she was a prophet of God and she told me to go to Israel and I’ve never been able to forget it thing was just some wonderful madly hilarious bullshit nonsense that I’ve weirdly bought into by dint of being some completely weird mad weirdo. I mean: hahahahaha, what a freak! I’ve followed the path right to the end and suddenly, out of nowhere, I remember that right back then with the Israel woman in ’99 I asked Shawn’s angel for some insight into the whole thing – ‘cos, really, it shook me – and the gist of the answer was something about, what you don’t realise is that God is everywhere and the key is to finding it within yourself, not in some far flung ‘holy land’ (yeah, right) and – weird beyond weird – I’d totally forgotten about this until the moment I was coming down the hill into Nazareth for the goal of my journey and everything was hilarious. Hilarious! Oh oh oh, what a jimjam joker I am. Wonderful. And hilarious. And wonderful wonderful too.
I said, that’s it, man, no more chasing nothing. No more signs. No more going on holy goofball hunts. No more tombs, no more shrines. No more nuthin’, baby! Just live a good life. Do what you want. Try everything and see how it suits. You’re in charge: there ain’t no road to follow except the road you’re laying as you go. It’s your world, baby, if you must follow someone, follow yourself. Get it? Got it? Good.
I said, yeah man, let’s do it – let’s fuckin’ do it! Let’s break out – let’s be naughty if we want and be free and enjoy enjoy enjoy. Have a laugh. Stop trying to be nice, to be holy, to be something that you’re not. Purely and simply, just be yourself. It’s all I am.
I said, woohoo! And, hell yeah! And then I said, but first let’s continue this mad sodden walk into mad ridiculous Nazareth and make the big church – biggest church in the Middle East, don’tcha know? – and then we can truly say we took it to the end. And then we’ll finally say booyaa to everything and first thing I’m gonna do is march on up to that bank machine – I still hadn’t used any money up to this point; Yair had insisted on taking care of everything, in exchange for stories, I presume – and get out some lovely, lovely cash and buy me a big fuckoff falafel and yum it up and love something this material world of ours has to offer. Maybe I’ll have two. And some sweets, and some treats. And then I’ll take a bus to Jerusalem, and go laugh at the Mount of Olives and marvel again at the tourists and the pointlessness of it all and finally tick off everything from my stupid idiot Jesus list and be done.
I said, yes yes yes, and when I found the big church I took off my shoes and rang out my waterlogged socks, and giggled at my poor sore feet, now gone several stages beyond prune into what appeared to be the realms of cheese. My feet had gone cheese! I’m waking around on two blocks of Stilton! Oh, giggle giggle giggle. Everything’s wet and it’s cold and there I am in Israel in mad stupid Nazareth – the most horrible town on Earth – and what a joke it all all is.
Into the big church: rubbish big church. They don’t even have any Bibles! They don’t even have anywhere to sit! It’s just a tourist trap, I swear – some bullshit story about, look down there, the steps to Mary’s house – and there’s nothing holy here, only tourists taking pictures of God only knows what – will they ever look at these things? – and some weird priest offering confessions – but when I go up to him and say I want to confess something – I want to be humble, to give my ego a kicking, to sit there and say, man, I’ve been mad, I used to think I could be Jesus, and I’m so judgmental and arrogant and lazy and shite – guess what? He won’t hear me! He says, are you Catholic? And I say, no and he says, well then I can’t hear you. I say, what, are you kidding? I want to confess. But he says he can’t hear me ‘cos I’m not Catholic, can’t offer me forgiveness (or absolution; same thing, probably). Haha, I say, well don’t worry about that, I don’t need your forgiveness, God forgives anyway right? Like, the moment I open my mouth, God’s already forgiven, so don’t you worry about it, you just listen. He looks at me like he actually believes God won’t forgive ‘cos I’m not a Catholic. Freak! And for me, well, it’s just a joke – but, oh, the woe and torment these crazy people put on others! Imagine that: imagine withholding forgiveness for some bullshit made-up nothingness and getting other people to believe it. Mad mad God they believe in! And no wonder the world’s going to atheism, eh, the whacked-out stuff they’ve been teaching all these thousands of years. I think I’ll talk to him anyway – humbling, I’m sure – but as soon as I open my mouth and see the look on his face, turning away from me, nothing there of openness or God or love, I think, nah, and say, actually, I don’t think you’re the right person for this and off I go. Falafel time! Everything done! No more God. No more wandering. No more mad mad me – except the mad me that’s me. Yes!
There were three parts to this trip, I guess: there was the first bit, with Yair, and then the second, with me and my holy walk, and then the third bit, which was the bit that I hadn’t thought about because it was the bit I didn’t know existed. All the way there I’d had no idea what I was going to do once I’d made Nazareth: but once I was there, the answer was clear. Go back to Jerusalem, complete what you need to do there – the Mount, the Garden of Gethsemane (more tourist bullshit), some gift for a friend – and then…go see Yair and tell him this final last story. And hang out, play some chess, watch a movie, be with friends. I liked him and his roommates: it was a nice time hanging out with them. I’d rather be with good people in a town where nothing happens than alone in Jerusalem or Rome or New York. Or pretty much anywhere, to be honest. Good people: that’s what it’s all about. Why go to a place just to see a place? When you got a friend – or when you make a friend – that’s what makes a place special. Everywhere else is just a place. And so Be’er Sheva it was, for my last three days, and though I did story-worthy things in Jerusalem that second time, and en route to the airport that last mad day (got caught in the centre of Tel Aviv with no bus or train, taken unexpectedly unawares by the onset of the Sabbath, a mad frantic dash to the airport with crazily waving thumb right there in the middle of town and just minutes to spare) I guess I don’t really think them story-worthy after all. Or maybe I’m just typed out. Ten thousand words: wowee! I guess there’s nothing really of writing in there – it’s just my brain, puking – but what the fuck, this is me. And now it’s time to eat. Goodnight! :-)
