Light Tour God Round -- Jerusalem Walk and Dinner

Like any Traveler journey, the Light Tour can’t really end. We’re now in the “etc.” portion–“eternally traveling consciousness.” The last couple of days after the official part of the trip ended have been a sleepy awakening, or an aware return to sleep. Hard to stay awake, mellow, disoriented, restless, not all here, and not all there either.

Luckily there are a few people left and they have ideas about doing human-being stuff, and I have work to do, otherwise I’d just be staying in the hotel hitching rides to other planes of consciousness. We take a walk to the huge marketplace where people go to buy all sorts of food, spices, soaps, teas, etc.–grounding but jarring after our three days in the sharing-cocoon–the crowds, the flies, the loud voices, the dirt. The walk culminates in a visit to a little coffee shop that makes an old Ottoman drink that’s a combination of warm milk and ground orchid roots, with piles of cinnamon, coconut, and chopped walnuts stirred in, a better match for how I’m feeling inside.

Later on we have dinner at the home of a friend that Jsu has made over here, an Arab tour bus driver who lives on the Mount of Olives in an apartment that has what is probably the best view in Jerusalem, overlooking the old city and the Temple Mount, with the Dome of the Rock radiating in the sunset. All the surrounding apartments are inhabited by an extended family–his brothers, their kids and wives, cousins, etc. Everyone looks out for everyone else. It’s a whole tribal village turned 90 degrees, vertically reoriented into an apartment block. We take photos of the view.

They make us an “etc.” meal and the food just keeps on coming. There’s not even enough room for all the plates on the table. We start with soup, then hummus and pita bread, grape leaves stuffed with lamb, eggplant stuffed with lamb, stuffed chicken, stuffed squash…. stuffed people. Great food, incredible warmth, hospitality, caring, and smiles. And then when we don’t think we can stand anymore, out comes fruit and chocolate cake and mint tea, brought in by one of the many children who are constantly scurrying in and out of the apartment.

Jsu met him when he was looking for a location to video the sun rising over Jerusalem, and they became friends. He has a big heart, and calls us “my friend” in a huge voice that envelops everything and everyone while he’s showing us his view, and his newly-renovated apartment, with the excitement of a kid showing us his new toys. You can see how the very mental and technologically-oriented Israelis attracted these warm-hearted people, and vice versa, just like the mutual attraction in California between the white people and the Latinos. It’s a perfect match, and as in any marriage the arguments test, prove, and reinforce the bond. He tells us how, left to their own devices, all the different races and religions would get along fine here, but it’s the governments and ambitious politicians that create divisions and sectarian fighting.

Jsu gives him gifts including a copy of the Mystical Traveler movie, and a van magically appears, driven by some relative. to take us home at the end of the evening.

Gotta go now. Jsu, our Sadistical Traveler, is saying something about getting up at 4:30 in the morning for some trip and I have to go get my passport. He asks, “Do you guys really want to do this?” but walks off and doesn’t wait for an answer.