but why is the rum gone?

Good day, my lovelies.

Of late I have been rather numbed to reality; my lack of interaction with friends and lack of interest in the tasks I am forced to complete has rendered me rather apathetic to myself. But the other day I experienced a little bit of much-needed ecstasy in the shower- wait, why would you think that? go wash your brain. I mean ecstasy in the sense of clarity achieved by viewing oneself from beyond the confines of subjective embodiment, obviously.

I felt like I had been transported back to the Ben Hinnom valley and was looking up at the walls of the old city of Jerusalem, waiting for the no. 124 bus with a crowd of Palestinians. I could simultaneously almost hear Daniel Rossing's calming voice speaking about Israeli identity. The warm water falling on me became the dry desert heat of Wadi Rum. The nauseating cacophony of my pointless anxious thoughts transmuted into the steady hum of my exuberant imagination. My hunger for my typical morning bagel with cream cheese became redirected towards cucumber and tomato and goat cheese and something, anything, with olive oil.

It's always surprising when I find myself in a state of holistic remembrance; it always catches me off guard. It's like the triggers are hidden beneath layers of meaning and preoccupation and self-analysis, and the more you try to locate them, the more they evade you, until you can only hit one entirely by accident. The only consistent trigger for me is the smell of thyme, all the others are basically one-use, untraceable, disposable cell phones. Excuse me, that's my life calling and other 90s whatnots. But for actual.

Every time I wake up to the reality of my trip-self, that more contented, more alive, more compassionate, more intelligent, more fulfilled me, I have to do something to make her happy. I have to do something that will make the girl who sat in the back of a rusted old Toyota and smiled like a dementoid at the red sand and monoliths of Wadi Rum feel proud to know me, or at least not ashamed to have made my acquaintance. I have to crack open my copy of To Jerusalem and Back or cue up one of my Mount Herzl lectures or peruse a Musalaha update to realign me with the self I hope to consistently be some day. And I have to start living as though I enjoy the people who surround me, because in truth I absolutely do. I have to do something to remind me that life can be full and beautiful here, too. Something to make me refrain from apathy and apostasy. To see the glass as full to the brim.

If I'm not surrounded by Rum, I can still buy some Fuller's London Porter to tide me over.