Going, going, gone...

So.  Can’t quite believe we’re actually going off on holiday.  In an hour. A proper family holiday. A package holiday, for pity’s sake, in a proper hotel.  Well…it looks okay from the pictures on the web but those are probably twenty years old. Or photo-shopped.

Anyhow. Whatever. Who cares?  I have just packed the following:

·         Swimsuits (James informs me that I swim like Asbo and so he is going to teach me to swim ‘properly’. ‘Like an otter, Mum.’  An otter?  Fair enough.  Without the fish breath, I hope.
·         Gym kit. Yes, there’s a gym at the hotel.  If it gets too hot outside I can just turn my usual routine around and go sit on an exercise bike to cool down. Sensible, huh?
·         Kindle (loaded and dangerous) plus three paper books.  The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoot (have saved this for positively aeons - it had better deliver); The Neurotourist (seemed suitable); The Dervish House (cos one needs a bit of frolic, right?).
·         iPod. With meditations from the divine Barbara Ford-Hammond.  I am still waiting to discover my past lives and my future lives because every time I listen to them, I fall asleep.  Maybe I just don’t have any?  No past, no future – just right now eh?  Music?  The usual suspects - though it really riles me that some people don’t put stuff out there for download. *grr*
·         Tarot pack and pendulum.  Viv convinced me this combo would work well and I think she’s right. The runes are too chilly and the I Ching is too heavy. I can also use the pendulum to dowse food for dodgy bacteria and to freak traders out while haggling. 
·         Sunbelievable "self-tan".  Self-tan?  Fake tan, FAKE tan. May be fake but is good.
·         Notebooks. Moleskines. Two
·         DermaquestSkin Therapy – advanced B5 serum. Have been road-testing this and it’s good stuff.  Light and non-sticky for hot places too…(as in hot countries, not hot bits of body…doh!). 
·         My IRISH BUSH beach bag from Israel (thanks, Baram!).  Totally recycled. Makes me laugh.
·         A slinky black maxi-dress.  NO idea why I bought this as I will most likely never wear it. But I like the idea of it.
·         Cut-off jean shorts.  Many black tops.  Assorted underwear.  Reebok fitflops.
·         Sunglasses.  Ray-bans bought in Miami airport twenty years ago.
·         AromatherapyAssociates diffuser and Relax oil. I know it’s weird but hotel rooms often smell funny.  And yeah, smart-asses, I've got an adaptor..
·         Hats.  Trusty white cowboy job plus my Dead Sea peaked cap.
·         Much sunscreen.

Sorted.  Have I forgotten anything?  Probably.  Notice anything missing from that list?  Yeah, I'm not taking my laptop. James says I'm 'addicted' and I fear he may be right.  So, with a deep gulp, I am leaving it behind.  I shall miss you all...and will look forward to hearing your tales (of mad Ulysses?) when I return.. Happy hunting, brigands... :)

Oh, Asbo and the SP?  They're sorted too.. our dogsitters have landed and we have already been forgotten... :)

Buried secrets, floating water

St George monastery

I want to go back to the desert. A day simply wasn't enough. I yearn to visit the Greek Orthodox monasteries in the Judean Desert.  Some square and solid like forts (Theodosius, Mar Saba); others clutching cliffs.  Just look at Deir Quarantal; look at St George. 

There are real fortresses in the desert too.  Seven.  Always seven.  Scattered yet connected.  Herodium. Hyrcania. Machaerus (where John the Baptist was beheaded). Dok (on the Mount of Temptation). Alexandrion. Kypros. And, most famous of all, Masada.  Yes, yes, I know they’re scattered between three lands…ah, how I hate politics.

I want to go to Qumran, to see the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. What else lies hidden?  I wonder, I wonder.  I wondered this in Egypt too as I walked over sand and rock…what magic lies hidden under our feet; what lost knowledge; what secrets?  It takes so little time for things to become hidden.  Here on Exmoor if you leave something out for a season it will become covered in moss; it will quietly fade into the landscape.  Maybe that’s why I like deserts – it’s harder to hide, harder to become hidden.  In the desert you have to hide, actively.  You have to find caves. 

How many other secrets are there, caved in, forgotten, in and around Qumran?  All over the world?

The caves at Qumran

Qumran, possibly once a fort (I like forts, can you tell?), probably a place of Essenes, potentially the City of Salt.  The Essenes are interesting – some think their thought lies behind the Kabbalah, but it’s not certain. What is?  They believed in the immortality of the soul and they figured they would receive their souls back after death (so, hmm, where were those souls when they were alive?).  They purified themselves with water…

We went down to the water, to the sea.  The Dead Sea.  The Sea of Salt.  Actually a lake bordering Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west.  It’s 423 metres (1,388 feet) below sea levels, the lowest place on the Earth’s surface.  8.6 percent saltier than the ocean.  Okay enough facts. 

Salt.  Salt purifies.  It’s been used down through the ages to preserve food and to purify water, to cleanse wounds, to keep away evil spirits.  Virtually every ancient tradition purifies bodies and souls with salt.  

It was a surreal experience.  The spa at Ein Gedi (simple, basic, really rather refreshing) was closing for the day so we had the beach to ourselves.  You have to wear shoes – the salt crustations are so sharp. You have to walk carefully, slowly, with consideration. The water feels thick, it slides over your skin as if considering it.  You lie back – carefully again – if you get the water in your eyes it stings like seven shades of hell; if you swallow it, you feel sick to the core.  And it holds you.  You lie, supported, in water, between the sky above and the earth below.  Suspended.  Purified.  Yeah, I want to go back.  :)

 

An afterword.

The Dead Sea is in trouble.  It’s been shrinking, quite rapidly, in recent decades. One metre every year. The spa we visited was originally built on the shoreline - now it's a tractor ride away.  Sinkholes are appearing along the western shore.  Israel and Jordan are working together to find a solution but it’s not simple. You can’t just import sea water from elsewhere as it would upset the delicate balance of the water. They hope to release water from the River Jordan and slowly lift the levels.

It’s an incredible place - the world's largest spa, you could say - and it’s up for inclusion in the new Seven Wonders of the World (ah, that magical seven again!).  I’m going to vote for it (the competition is tough but this place is just so, well, strange)…you could too…click here.

Deserts, dreams and angels

Oh, what is it with me and deserts?  I don’t know, I just don’t know but they pull me, they pull me, inexorably.  They soothe my heart and they scour my soul.  I had been promised desert on this trip and so it was to be.  But I wondered, I wondered.  We were a large group.  Deserts are solitary places.  I needed time.  I needed to be.  I needed to meditate and get back in touch.  Was it possible?

We drove to the Dead Sea, past Jerusalem (I still can’t quite get my head round glancing out the window and seeing a road sign to The Mount of Olives) and, strangely, we weren’t talking on the bus.  There was an easy silence so I put on my iPod and let it go on shuffle and – hmm – it landed on my shamanic drumming track and I figured, well why not, it’s as good a place as any to journey for guidance… and it was a strange journey for sure.

When I opened my eyes the dust had began.  Past Bedouin settlements, dust-coloured shacks blended into dust. Past dust-coloured camels, gazing with total disinterest from dust.  The Judean Desert.  Midbar Yehuda.  

And then the rock began…striated sculptures, Lego of the gods.  And then, oh, and then, a haze, a shimmer of blue. Sky? Sea. The Dead Sea.  The lowest point on the Earth.  Jordan on the other side.  I love these water boundaries – it reminded me of a very different one on Lake Ohrid in Macedonia – with the Albanian border snaking through the waves.

But this was Ein Gedi.   And we met Giora and Barak who loaded us into LandRovers and we bounced our way up and into the desert…

Scrambling down the banks of a wadi; walking along the arid bed of a sleeping river until we came to a sheer cliff face, a natural auditorium with clear acoustics…sat on rocks and then – magic.  This guy who’d appeared pretty well out of nowhere, hitching a lift on our bus, took out a guitar and started to strum and sing.  Beautifully. 

He sang this…

And then he sang Faith...

And then A Horse with No Name (of course)...

And Barak carved open a water melon and it was the sweetest flesh I had ever tasted.  And, truly, I could have sat there and dreamed for ever…

The guy’s name?  Raphael.  Hmm…

PS

He didn't play this one but it's a damn good desert song, no?