Messyheadedness

Mornings in Jerusalem are as humid as the belly of a thundercloud. The wading-through-the-inside-of-a-peach type humidity of summer has been temporarily usurped; nights have become cold and windy; cars are slapped with dew as we sleep, presenting us with grimy grey boxes to try to manoever into without getting slimed, come morning. Days may be hot enough for t-shirts and dehydrated tongues, but change is definitely in the air.

The cusp of the seasons is the external sign of change. When the weather mirrors the mood - like when it rains at a funeral - it’s known as ‘pathetic fallacy’ for some odd reason. I have the feeling that in the cogs of the Great Machine, a spanner lies in sinister wait. Couples, friends and friends of friends, are splitting up in all directions and there’s a general air of deep-seated conjugal confusion. Tension is rife in the most stable of relationships. We talk of this as we sit at weddings, oddly (not in front of the bride and groom, obviously.) What-we-really-want-in-life and how-much-that-includes-the-other are mirrors in the faces of long-term squeezes. Something beyond our control or understanding must be responsible, surely, we muse collectively. Surely?


Last week’s Parashat Ha Shavua, Ki-Tetzeh, talked of divorce and stoning the evil ones until the rotten core is removed from Our People; be they rebellious children or adulterous women. The judgment seems harsh; but in all life cycles, death and destruction are necessary pre-requisites for creation and re-creation; for purity and rebirth. The creation of the world, ex-nihilo or from some ethereal substance (depending on which camp your tent’s in) is brewing in the dark, dank, silent nothingness.

A new year is coming, and a new beginning.

The Tao Te Ching, in its eternal wisdom, states:

There is a time for being ahead,
a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion,
a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger.

This is a time for a messy head.

Perhaps I should quote the Tao when asked if I can promise to feel x or y for the rest of my life. How can anyone promise anything when there are times for even promising and times for saying nothing? Like a substance abuser, I want to get through the next few days, the next week. Beyond that is only a fuzz of white noise.

Clarity lives in a land far, far away.

My prayers this week are for peace in the turbulence of my exhausted mind - which seems ludicrously unattainable right now and I blame reasons outside my jurisdiction for that because it suits me to not blame myself - and to stop smoking. Seeing as I only started smoking a month ago, smoke two a day and don’t even enjoy them half the time, that’s the one that seems more likely to be granted.

Hmm. I’ll just nip out the back door and have a cigarette to think about that.