Really looking forward to heading back to where I left my hat in Jerusalem this year. I left my hat in Israel years back, assuming I’d be back the next day. I was young, teaching english, and the world was my oyster, as they say. This year, i get to go back and find my pearl, my marbles, and my hat, which i left in an arts community there! They’ve kept it for me, all these years!

I taught english in Jerusalem many years back. That place never left me, the city, the land, the whole thing. As they say, the scent of Jerusalem never leaves your skin! It hasn’t mine. My parents go each year for the past 30, but I’ve not gotten back in a while. Miss her today!

Today, when i was getting challah bread from our baker to dip in my shakshuka, i ended up talking to a girl from Galilee, specifically Tiberias—this often happens when I’m out. I meet international friends, and we end up in poetic conversation about life! In this case, about that land. How diverse, and how it’s not like how it’s pictured in media. How it has it’s own unique identity past all the world’s projections, and how we both love it for what it actually is!

She grew up in Tiberias, but went to school in Jerusalem; so knows the north and south in her heart. Her family runs a small vineyard in the north. This is common in the north as the agriculture is rich there.

I love how people from there talk so passionately about the land, regardless of their religious or ethnic orientation. Something touched there, when people are so passionate about where they are from. We talked about breakfast, and how Shakshuka is the huevos rancheros of Israel! It really is! Oh how dear to me that breakfast is! Dr Shakshuka was my go-to when in Jerusalem! So much love in that cumin papricka egg based dish! Plus…

I have so many buried marbles in that land! I used to carry around and give away marbles when i lived there, rather than lose them; i thought it wise at that stage of my life to give them away, rather than “lose my marbles”. So, I always carried around a satchel of marbles with me, which I wound give to special people and places. But I also literally buried many marbles in the fields outside Jerusalem, near David’s supposed tomb. Look forward to seeing if they are still there!

Still love that place, regardless of all the projections on her throughout history. What a story that city contains! What places and people really are, is often so different from what is projected on them. She is more than a symbol, she is the symbol itself! But also very grounded, so to speak. So looking forward to hanging out again, and just conversing!

And each city there and region is such a unique culture of being-it’s a microcosm of the world, as she said. Miss that sense of going one hour and being inside an entirely unique cultural expression.

I was teaching english to arabs and jews, and others, so got to enter the family lives of each. Oh, how I miss that place. Glad we are heading back this Spring! It’s something which gets in your heart’s blood-that place, and way of being. Very down to earth and spiritual simultaneously. Missed it again today, after talking in Hebrew to my friend today about the best breakfast in Jerusalem!
Made me miss the moonlit white rooftop evenings, and just the contact way of knowing there. You have to eat and have a coffee with, before you enter into the whole family!

I’ve loved that place since I was a kid, it was in my mother’s heart when i was in the womb. But it’s also good to have that practical contact with her as often as possible to remember. Looking forward to that this year! And maybe I’ll find my hat, retrieve and gather my marbles again!