Last Night in Bethany

Tomorrow I say goodbye to the lovely folks I've met here on the Mt of Olives, pack up my things yet again and move from the outskirts of Jerusalem to the... inskirts?  I'll stay in a hotel just outside the Old City for a few days while I finalize apartment stuff.  And by "finalize" I mean "start".  Haven't... had a lot of luck on this front so far.  Hoping that a home-base nearer to the action will inspire me.  Also hoping that paying for an expensive hotel every night will inspire me.  Ahem.

So I'm trying to absorb my last moments in this corner of Jerusalem.  Near sunset I climbed to the top of a hill, faced east and let the soft winds of freedom blow through ma hair -- wait, strike that.  This wind was coming from the east, so... maybe not so much with the freedom? (Too soon?)

Seriously, though, it was thrilling to think that this same wind had kicked up the sands of the Great Syrian desert,  blown through the cracks of the Jordanian mountains, hovered above the deepest seabed on the earth and come a' whistlin' over the dust of Judah just to slap me in the face.  It felt wonderful.

Speaking of the Dead Sea, at some point during that whole "hair blowing in the wind" moment, I squinted into the friscalating dusklight and saw a pale blue glimmer at the feet of the Jordanian mountains-- I saw the sliver of the Dead Sea.  It was utterly enchanting, and my new plan is to rent a car (after, you know, I sort out the "having a place to sleep" business) and spend a day driving around the (Israeli coast of) the Dead Sea, exploring.

But at present I don't have the time, the ways or the means to adventure.  The wearisome toil of finding a bank, getting creds at the University, setting up my office, finding a house, figuring out transport, applying for health care -- these will be the necessary but unadventurous tasks claiming my immediate future.

Besides, I'm still just three days in to a whole year of this.  Must pace myself.  And in the meantime, must think up as many puns about the Dead Sea as humanly possible.  You know, for entertainment.


p.s. Gram & Gramps: I fatally wounded a mosquito that'd been biting me as I lay reading in bed this afternoon. I squashed it with Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Ray, right where it says "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize". Unlike aforementioned mosquito,  I remain positively un-squashed.