Global musings - dispatches from Carey
Israel | July 28, 2018
Time is slipping like the sun at dusk. My mind is a whirl. I am but in a dream. A mystical, ethereal figment.
Week two certainly proved even more enthralling than the first (if that is possible). On Monday, I holed myself away in a neat little café with chalkboard walls and perhaps the best cappuccino I have ever tasted. The essays I am developing are quite compelling (well, at least to my nerdic liking), intersecting politics and psychology. I also meandered through Muhane Yehuda market- the simmering swath of stalls bursting with people and produce. Him (long 'i') is my go-to spice man and we have cultivated an amiable rapport (I think he's endeared by my bizarre photographer poses).
Tuesday was haunting. We visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial. Having visisted the memorials and museums in D.C. and Berlin, I was eager but not expecting anything surprising. I could not have been more wrong. Perhaps it was the manicured design, the purposeful narrative, the intimate terror the Holocaust afflicted upon Israel. Stunned into silence and profound reflection, it certaintly remolded my perspective on the Jewish state. That being said, every new experience here precipitates a deluge of ideas and shifting opinions.
Wednesday could not have stood in more juxtaposition with the day before. Up and out with the morning sun, my friends and I ventured to Tel Aviv for the day. Lounging in the sun along the Mediterranean and delving into its crystal-clear water was one of those moments in which you simply cherish life. When you are reminded that the world is here for you to pour yourself into and make the most of it. Watching the sky ignite with the colours of a rose over a scintillating sea was a perfect end to a perfect day.
Thursday and it's back to intense scrutiny. I still cannot believe who we met with: the Russian Ambassador to the Palestinian Authority (apparently quite close with Putin), the EU Ambassador to Israel, the Political Officer of the U.S. Embassy Branch in Jerusalem (well was that a disappointing reflection on 'American' values), and the Political Affairs Officer at the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. Reality was painted in a grave and grim enigma. Diplomats are beyond frustrating with their clever and equivocal answers. The cast of characters is an array of contradictions, of contrasting values, of discordant principles. Peace, whatever that may be, is far from the current state of affairs.
After that damper, the mood called for some up-lifting. So, after class, seven of my friends and I travelled three hours north to Haifa, a simple port city. On Friday, we scaled the Baha'i Gardens (all 19 terraces along a hill). If heaven was on earth, I found it here. The design was consummately crafted. The architect supposedly built the vast swirls of lawn within days as he measured dimensions with his feet and a trail of gardeners sprouted flower beds in his wake. The Baha'i religion fascinates me. Premised on the unification of humans, the faith emphasizes the collective pool created out of all of our rain drops. Community, family, precise and minute change. That is how we revolutionize our world. How ironic to stumble across a philosophy so dependent upon coexistence in a country whose very identity is forged in the vilifying of the other.
After another beach day, we returned this evening. I now have less than two weeks left. Oh, how life rushes by. I endeavour to soak in each moment, to stretch and bend and extend every second of it all. But that fervently ticking clock only allows so much.
I cannot wait to share more with you all in person. I cannot wait to see each of you, whether in Toronto, Maine, or Massachusetts. I hope you are well. I love you.
Yours,
Carey
P.S. I almost forgot! Hebrew word of the week: "דּוּ-קִיּוּם" means "coexistence".