floor. But the desert is distance. Nothing touches me.
Yet many nights I return to my hotel with the desert on my shoes. There is a burnt, mineral scent in my clothing. The scent is difficult to wash out in the bathroom basin, as is the stain of the desert, an umber stain.
Standing, scrubbing my T-shirt, is the closest I get to the desert. The water turns yellow.
â¢Â   â¢Â   â¢
I tell myself I am not looking for God. I am looking for an elision that is, nevertheless, a contour. The last great emptiness in Jerusalem is the first. What remains to be venerated is the Western Wall, the ancient restraining wall of the destroyed Second Temple.
After the Six-Day War, the Israeli government bulldozed an Arab neighborhood to create Western Wall Plaza, an emptiness to facilitate devotion within emptinessâa desert that is also a well.
I stand at the edge of the plaza with Magen Broshi, a distinguished archaeologist. Magen is a man made entirely of Jerusalem. You canât tell him anything. Last night at dinner in the hotelgarden, I tried out a few assertions I thought dazzling, only to be met with Magenâs peremptory
Of course
.
Piety, ache, jubilation, many, many classes of ardor pass us by. Magen says he is not a believer. I tell Magen about my recent cancer. If I asked him, would he pray for me here, even though he does not believe?
Of course.
Western Wall Plaza levels sorrow, ecstasy, cancer, belief. Here emptiness rises to proclaim its unlikeness to God, who allows for no comparison. Emptiness does not resemble. It is all that remains.
âNo writing! You cannot write here.â A woman standing nearby has noticed I carry a notebook. I have a pen in my hand. The woman means on the Sabbath, I think. Or can one never write here? It is the Sabbath.
âHe is not writing anything,â Magen mutters irritably, waving the woman away.
three
The True Cross
A little water and the desert breaks into flower, bowers of cool shade spring up in the midst of dust and glare, radiant stretches of soft colour gleam in that grey expanse. Your heart leaps as you pass through the gateway in the mud wall; so sharp is the contrast, that you may stand with one foot in an arid wilderness and the other in a shadowy, flowery paradise.
âGertrude Bell,
Persian Pictures
A sixty-nine-year-old body is still beautiful. It refuses any covering. A nurse is standing by the bed when we walk in. The nurse attempts to drape the genitals of the man on the bed with the edge of the sheet. But the hand of the man on the bed plucks the sheet away.
Iâm afraid modesty is out the window, the nurse says.
There are two large windows.
There are three chairs for visitors, comfortable chairs; there is a foldout sofa for a spouseâthat would be Peter, Lutherâs partner of thirty years, more than thirty years. Peter called two days ago. He said it was time.
So Jimmy and I drove to Las Vegas on Holy Thursday. Luther has been Jimmyâs friend for more than forty years. They met when they were both shoe-leather messengers at a law firm in San Francisco; that was before FedEx, before fax, before e-mail. In those days the windows of the nineteenth floor of the Standard Oil Building could be opened to the hum of traffic below; âProudMary,â KFRC-AM Top Forty toiled through the speaker of a transistor radio on the windowsill behind the dispatcherâs desk.
Peter hasnât slept properly for weeks. He tells me he shoves the couch against the bed at night so he can hold on to Lutherâs hand.
One time, when Luther had to go home to South Carolina on family business, Jimmy went with him. They walked through the woods behind the house where Luther had grown up. Luther pointed to a branch distended over a brown creek.
The old people used to tell us Jesusâs cross was made of yonder tree. Every Easter, the tree puts out white blossoms by way of apology.
The body on the bed slowly turns.
Yet many nights I return to my hotel with the desert on my shoes. There is a burnt, mineral scent in my clothing. The scent is difficult to wash out in the bathroom basin, as is the stain of the desert, an umber stain.
Standing, scrubbing my T-shirt, is the closest I get to the desert. The water turns yellow.
â¢Â   â¢Â   â¢
I tell myself I am not looking for God. I am looking for an elision that is, nevertheless, a contour. The last great emptiness in Jerusalem is the first. What remains to be venerated is the Western Wall, the ancient restraining wall of the destroyed Second Temple.
After the Six-Day War, the Israeli government bulldozed an Arab neighborhood to create Western Wall Plaza, an emptiness to facilitate devotion within emptinessâa desert that is also a well.
I stand at the edge of the plaza with Magen Broshi, a distinguished archaeologist. Magen is a man made entirely of Jerusalem. You canât tell him anything. Last night at dinner in the hotelgarden, I tried out a few assertions I thought dazzling, only to be met with Magenâs peremptory
Of course
.
Piety, ache, jubilation, many, many classes of ardor pass us by. Magen says he is not a believer. I tell Magen about my recent cancer. If I asked him, would he pray for me here, even though he does not believe?
Of course.
Western Wall Plaza levels sorrow, ecstasy, cancer, belief. Here emptiness rises to proclaim its unlikeness to God, who allows for no comparison. Emptiness does not resemble. It is all that remains.
âNo writing! You cannot write here.â A woman standing nearby has noticed I carry a notebook. I have a pen in my hand. The woman means on the Sabbath, I think. Or can one never write here? It is the Sabbath.
âHe is not writing anything,â Magen mutters irritably, waving the woman away.
three
The True Cross
A little water and the desert breaks into flower, bowers of cool shade spring up in the midst of dust and glare, radiant stretches of soft colour gleam in that grey expanse. Your heart leaps as you pass through the gateway in the mud wall; so sharp is the contrast, that you may stand with one foot in an arid wilderness and the other in a shadowy, flowery paradise.
âGertrude Bell,
Persian Pictures
A sixty-nine-year-old body is still beautiful. It refuses any covering. A nurse is standing by the bed when we walk in. The nurse attempts to drape the genitals of the man on the bed with the edge of the sheet. But the hand of the man on the bed plucks the sheet away.
Iâm afraid modesty is out the window, the nurse says.
There are two large windows.
There are three chairs for visitors, comfortable chairs; there is a foldout sofa for a spouseâthat would be Peter, Lutherâs partner of thirty years, more than thirty years. Peter called two days ago. He said it was time.
So Jimmy and I drove to Las Vegas on Holy Thursday. Luther has been Jimmyâs friend for more than forty years. They met when they were both shoe-leather messengers at a law firm in San Francisco; that was before FedEx, before fax, before e-mail. In those days the windows of the nineteenth floor of the Standard Oil Building could be opened to the hum of traffic below; âProudMary,â KFRC-AM Top Forty toiled through the speaker of a transistor radio on the windowsill behind the dispatcherâs desk.
Peter hasnât slept properly for weeks. He tells me he shoves the couch against the bed at night so he can hold on to Lutherâs hand.
One time, when Luther had to go home to South Carolina on family business, Jimmy went with him. They walked through the woods behind the house where Luther had grown up. Luther pointed to a branch distended over a brown creek.
The old people used to tell us Jesusâs cross was made of yonder tree. Every Easter, the tree puts out white blossoms by way of apology.
The body on the bed slowly turns.
Similar Books
