This Is What a Memory Looks Like

In the Dead Sea again.

I leave Moshav Sedot Mikha tomorrow. I`ve had a good run, made a lot of things, re-energized my creative side. Going to spend a couple of nights in Tel Aviv with friends, then I`m off to Jordan, maybe sleep out in the desert with a Bedouin... Then to Egypt. THEN.... Thailand!

Could I Kill a Coyote in (Relatively) Unarmed Combat?

Two nights in a row now I've encountered a coyote on my way from the main house to my little guest house. The first night I had my flashlight on me, walked outside, heard some rustling noises and flashed my light onto a coyote about 15ft away. He darted a few feet but then stopped and stared, his eyes bright in the light. He was afraid of me, but not as afraid as I would have liked. I made some menacing noises to no effect, then tossed a couple of stones in his direction which again made him retreat a little further but still he watched me as I connected the power to my cabin and went on my way. Last night, same thing happened, though I didn't have my flashlight with me so I was tossing the stones a little more aggressively. This got me to thinking--I feel like I'm a pretty accurate thrower (ahem), if a coyote decided to charge me and I beaned him right between the eyes (or on the temple or somesuch) with a decently sized stone do you think he would go down? I'm not a big fan of hunting, it seems like a very unbalanced fight what with modern human weaponry and all that. But me vs. a coyote in a field of stones seems pretty fair. As long as he doesn't call his buddies--if the nightly chorus is any indication, they are everywhere!

Maybe I'm just feeling inspired by the fact that I'm a short walk from where David took down Goliath...

This Is the End

Finding placement on a kibbutz/moshav/farm/whateverwantsme is taking longer than I thought it would. I am waiting on many different people for many different things. I feel like Willard at the beginning of Apocalypse Now, watching the ceiling fan turn, smoking a cigarette shirtless in bed, sweating, waiting for an assignment. Literally, I have done this. It was certainly a forced situation to cement the parallel in my mind, but there I was.

Ben and I had a great time zipping around Israel at a rapid pace. Two nights in Tel Aviv seeing friends, one night in Jerusalem running between holy sights (Ben was getting a bit overwhelmed watching a Greek Orthodox monk chant evening prayers to a shrine built in the very spot Jesus was crucified... reportedly), zipped to the Dead Sea for some great hiking, swimming floating, back through Tel Aviv to get a car to drive up North to the Sea of Galilee (sitting deep in the water on plastic chairs sipping on beers and a bottle of vodka, a gift from Daniel, who owned the beach), hiking around the Banyas, Nimrod's Fortress, some beautiful things, then back to Tel Aviv to send Ben home.

My pace has downshifted significantly. Last night was my fourth night in Tel Aviv since Ben left. I spent the first couple staying with friends, then these last couple in a hostel. I have an insane man of about 45 in my room who sometimes wakes in the night to yell down at pedestrians from the balcony. He thinks it's hilarious to tell people they're going the wrong way, repeating himself like a psychotic broken record (or a Books song): "You're going the wrong way. You're going the wrong way. You're going the wrong way. You. You. That's not the right way. You. You're going the wrong way. That's not the right way." He'll keep this up for minutes and follow it up with some maniacal laughter. Last night he exclaimed to the world below "I don't give a shit about anything! I get that from my mother. She died. She's why I'm like this!" He'll then come back inside and have a quieter conversation with himself, during which I fall back asleep. This is the second insane older gentleman I've had the pleasure of sleeping next to since leaving the US. The first was of a calmer variety, but also an incessant talker. He lives in a van in Gainesville, FL and travels the world on a trust fund his mother left him that can't be spent on regular living expenses. These guys and their moms. He kept me up late one night while I wasn't feeling good (a reaction to my typhoid vaccine, I eventually decided), going on and on about his problems: "They tell me I have a personality disorder or schizophrenia or some shit. I just think I'm lazy." How laziness could be confused for schizophrenia I'm not sure, but he seemed pretty convinced the docs had it all wrong. That night I was up all night with horrible fever delusions, mainly about our rental car not being arranged properly (you know, one of these horrible dreams that has you going over and over through some nonsense bureaucracy and every time you close your eyes it's the same problem again, unsolvable...) but also about this rotund man from Gainseville deciding he's interested in what my insides look like.

I have a bunch of pics that I'm organizing, should be posting about them soon.