Peace, Walk, Now: Chapter 7, The Other Side
December 2013 — Jerusalem, Israel
A few months after I moved to Anchorage, a friend invited me to travel to Israel with her.
Read about my move here:
I was ready to escape Alaska by then.
The daily dose of sunlight had become dangerously low for me. Down to around four hours of sun. That’s it. It showed up somewhere close to 11 A.M. then disappeared before the local kids got home from school.
Go outside and take a look while you can, kiddos. Don’t skip lunch or recess or you may not see the sun all month!
I worked in an office building, seated in a bleak cubicle in a room with no windows. If I didn’t go outside in the freezing weather during my lunch break, I wouldn’t see the sun at all.
Sunless days turned into sunless days after sunless days.
This was the exact opposite of why I moved to Alaska. I came for the midnight sun. Now I was stuck in weeks of winter darkness.
Weeks upon weeks…
My former nature walks were on hold until winter was over, which I discovered (after it was way too late to turn back), wouldn’t be until May—Memorial Day. That’s the day they say it’s clear to start planting flowers again, because chances of snow have dropped to under 5%, or something like that. (Yes, it still snows in Alaska in early to mid-May. And sometimes, even in June.)
But, never mind the snow…
Have I mentioned that I like to walk?
If someone were to ask me what my favorite hobby was back then, I more than likely would have said walking. I walked for fun. I walked for exercise. I walked a marathon for fun and for exercise.
I love to w-a-l-k.
The big catch with Alaska—and I’m not talking about fishing—is that there’s snow on the ground for at least seven months a year. Tons and tons of it. Not like the fake snow they blast out in the L.A. mountains over the weekend when the temperature drops to 55 degrees. Alaska has piles of piles of snow. The snow removers have nowhere to remove the snow to, so they pile it into mini mountains in parking lots, cul de sacs, on the side of the road, in people’s lawns; everywhere.
Then it turns to ice.
This makes it really difficult to walk. Below freezing temperatures, followed by random bursts of rain, followed by below freezing temperatures also makes it really difficult to walk. Twenty hours of darkness in below freezing temperatures with tons and tons of snow + ice makes it especially really difficult to walk.
I guess never mind what I said about never mind the snow. I did mind the snow. A lot.
In December 2013, my first winter in Alaska, I was ready to go to the other side of the world just to get away from Alaska.
Maybe this is why it happened the way it did. I don’t know that I would have agreed to go to Israel otherwise. There were countless other places to visit that were significantly closer. The Caribbean, for instance. Hawaii. San Diego. Even Seattle has more sun, and definitely less snow in winter. Anywhere south of Anchorage has more sun, for that matter. I just needed to hop on a plane. I didn’t have to go all the way to Israel.
But for some deep, winter night of the soul sort of reason, I felt like I needed to go to Israel.
My friend and I traveled separately. We agreed to meet up at the hotel she reserved for us in Tel Aviv. I had to take three flights to get there:
Anchorage to Seattle.
Seattle to LAX.
LAX to NYC.
NYC to Tel Aviv.
Wait, is that four? Did I stop in Seattle on the way there? I don’t remember all the details of this trip. But I definitely had to stop in Seattle on the way back. Most flights to and from Anchorage do end up stopping in Seattle. And most flights leave late at night, like mine did.
It was Christmas Eve. Or was it the day before Christmas Eve? Like I said, I don’t remember all the details of this trip…
The part of the journey that I do remember clearly is the leg between NYC and Tel Aviv.
One might say that I “freaked out a little” on one of the flight attendants. (Or perhaps, on a few of them?)
After the plane got off the ground at JFK International Airport, there was an announcement asking passengers to draw down their window covers as a courtesy to others on the plane who cared to sleep.
Wait, what did she say? I thought to myself after hearing the announcement. Did the Tel Aviv bound stewardess from New York just drop some flighting words?
I had been traveling in darkness for fifteen straight hours and had been in gradual, perpetual darkness since late October. Now it was broad daylight outside. Was she saying that they were intentionally asking people to block out the sun as a courtesy?
For me, this was no courtesy. This was incarceration.
I was legit starting to panic; my mind frantically reviewing the facts:
The airbus had plenty of access to sunlight.
The reason I had gotten on the airbus was so that I, too, could access this sunlight.
I was seated in the middle of a massive airbus and couldn’t do anything about the window covers that were five to seven seats away from me in either direction…
I needed to speak up for myself.
Politely, I got out of my seat and started to walk around.
Down the aisle, I noticed an unoccupied exit row next to the restrooms. It felt like my luck was starting to change. There were no passenger seats in this section, but it did have a little window that I could peek through to look at the sun.
I sat down on floor just under the little window and pulled the cover up half-way. Instant photochemical relief poured over me as the sun beamed its magic straight into my pupils.
At last. Uninhibited relief.
“Excuse me, Miss?” urged a diligent flight attendant, heavily tapping me on the shoulder. “We need all the window covers lowered so that our passengers can rest. Will you please return to your seat?”
I took a deep breath…
Yes, the Tel Aviv bound stewardess from New York unmistakably did just drop some flighting words on me.
My face turned into a muddy lake of mascara smudged over a cheeky sunrise blossom.
Was she worried that passengers might potentially complain about sunshine? Or, was she there to avenge passengers who had already complained about sunshine?
“I understand that other people are trying to rest,” I said, my voice trembling, on the verge of a meltdown, speaking slowly at first, then faster as the rant emerged from me.
“But what you don’t understand is that I live in Anchorage, Alaska and it’s the middle of deep, dark winter there, and I haven’t seen regular sunlight for days, possibly a week or two now. I came on this trip mainly so that I could see the sun again. The other passengers on this flight probably get to see the sun all the time, so they take it for granted. But I can’t, I just can’t let you tell me that their needs are more important than mine. I am a paying passenger too and I need the sunshine on my face right now. It’s just not fair.” I rambled.
And wept.
And continued to weep.
And continued to weep.
And wept continuously for the next half hour, or so.
No one bothered me the rest of the flight.
Jerusalem
I pulled out the daggers, Gnawed through the chains, With insomniac anxiety, Wandered down forgotten alleys of pain. Tiptoeing around restless ghosts Of shame and self-blame, My exposed feet took me as far to the other side As they could abide. Thoughtless, meaningless walls of sayings and self-slayings I had constructed for myself over decades of directionless Pitter patter and mental chatter, Imagining imagineless things. A wonderless mental-wanderer, Exploring every oasis of self-pity, Moving along to find another each time the tears dried up. Was there an end to the long hallway of holograms, Where my locked-up pigeon of guilt Might be set free? Where would it even go? What did freedom even mean to me? Silly girl, ghosts don’t just go away, A dead relative’s voice echoed in the back of my mind. Memories pile up on top of piles, Stacking themselves up for miles, Until there is no more room. Then they start to spread, Slowly and artfully, Leaking out of the head, Right down the spine, Latching onto whichever muscle obliges. Bypassing warning signals of thought, The endless loop of pain circles and circles, Suffocating the heart. Grim reapers of a lunatic game, Pain capsules like to explode for fun, Bringing misery to everyone who knows you. As they say, misery loves company. As does the cancer of fear and And the self-opposing sport Of dis-ease, aka complaining. These games aren’t suitable for children of any age. Programmed by the past, They render self-indentured self-enslavement masters, Leading blind souls to blindly trick Themselves into reenacting Butcherous dreams, or deaths by papercut, At the bottom of hopeless arenas encased in Barb-wired fences masked by good intentions. One day, it will all work out, Or so we tell ourselves and others. Truly a wishful doubt. Fear paralysis provides no nourishment for honest self-analysis. Good intention without good action leads only to Passive aggressive reprehension among other distractions, Restless skulls lulling themselves back to sleep On whichever tombstone they have come to call home. Step by step, blow by painful blow, In the field of office worker dreams, How do we still remember to wander home, Mortally wounded, naked, alone… Oh, but what beautiful, expensive tombstones we call our own. Mammoths of decadence, Ornamentation offering no comfort to the living left behind. I loved them deeply, the tombstones, that is. What did that presume of me? Shivering throughout, I somehow still maintained bathing In the cold rain of my own desolate tears. Nightmare after nightmare, My source of comfort, the occasional Engraving of a wishful thought left behind on an Abandoned family member’s memorial marker. I must have been sitting there for years. One day a ghost dropped by, Tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to come out of hiding. Why are you still sitting here? All the others have already come back to life, she sneered. Wait, what? I jolted upright in the last cemetery Of its kind, the one I cherry picked for things innocently Promised to never be left behind. The dead don’t really die, She gurgled, pulling an earth worm out of my eye. It’s called the circle of life. The lie of time, The greatest invention of man-un-kind, The never-ending joke, she coughed, Then choked out a Belly roll of uncontrollable laughter. And she was gone. Leaving a living dead girl to ponder Invisible air crawlers, Hundreds of thousands of hard-swallowed words, Seeping in and creeping out of my weathered pores. I touched my shoulder and felt her hand still, As I imagined, surely sent to me in mercy. Except there was no mercy to see. The only one standing there was I, And the only hand on my shoulder belonged to me. Prone to losing my way, I accepted the possibility of being insane. Then the voice whispered again, I’m happy I came. It was my voice. Three… Two… One… Awake (Source: Yoko Una Trine, Poems from the Dreamtime)
Some have said that I received an “activation” on this trip. People who visit certain sites—such as lands that carry strong energy, portals/vortex points on the grid, holy places, etc.—are known to be moved and activated.
Perhaps this is what happened, but strangely, I wrote this poem the night before getting on the flight to Israel. It came to me suddenly. I didn’t totally understand it. But it resonated with a large part of my childhood, adolescence, and young-adult years.
The wonderless mental-wanderer was I.
The living dead girl was I.
I think I moved to Alaska to get my pulse back. No joke.
I didn’t realize it for years to come, but I think I went to Israel looking for resurrection.
Perhaps other lost souls go there for this reason too. Perhaps this is why the trip felt so heavy. Jerusalem is a land of many ghosts.
Perhaps I had a lot of karmic history on this land (which I think is highly probable, because I personally think many of us have a lot of karmic history on many lands).
Perhaps I did see ghosts in Jerusalem, and perhaps they saw me too. I remember sensing them as I walked through the broken streets—feeling a dense weight on my chest.
Feeling like I couldn’t breathe.
Feeling like I was being followed.
Feeling like I was on the verge of attack.
Feeling light headed.
Feeling like I needed sit down…
…witnessing people rush over to catch me before I hit the pavement.
January 2014 — Letter to Friends about my visit to Jerusalem
(Sent via United States Postal Service)
The tour bus stopped high up on a scenic hill next to the renowned Hebrew University, first governed by Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. We all got out and listened to the guide’s quick facts and ancient lore about the city below us. I followed his finger as he pointed through the desert haze at different buildings and monuments, capturing my own photographic memories while soaking in the magnificent panoramic view. From that sunny vantage point, the ancient city of Jerusalem seemed calm, perhaps even at peace. But that’s how things often appear from afar, especially to tourists.
Once the bus descended into the city’s narrow and broken streets, I had seen all I needed to see. I felt a gloom like no other, spreading deep and wide into its long, lonely avenues. Beneath the haze, it was clear even in broad daylight that the horrors and unhonored memories of Jerusalem’s forgotten dead still lingered there, like thick smoke in a closed off chamber. Perhaps it was not the forgotten dead, but the forgetful dead who wandered Jerusalem, unable to find their way Home.
With a suffocating density in my chest, I sensed that there was no rest for the lost and forgotten souls who had suffered here or elsewhere, only to disappear in anonymity, mere pawns on the game board of religious and political conquests.
When the bus arrived at its final tour destination, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, I refused to get off. Lifting my feet up to my chest, I hugged my knees, heaving deep, unsatisfying breaths. Everyone else was outside waiting. I told them to go on without me. The perplexed tour guide explained that if I stayed behind, I would be alone on the bus for a few hours. I could handle that, I told him. I preferred it. The empty bus would serve as my sanctuary in a tormented and haunted city.
After twenty minutes of unsettled whispering outside from the other passengers, my friend came to get me. “You came all this way to see,” she said. “So come out and see.”
I swallowed her words like a hard pill. She was right. I had traveled all the way to Jerusalem from Anchorage, Alaska to “see.”
Like the lost time that passes between unfulfilled hopes and daunting regrets, what I “saw” haunted me…
I saw, or more aptly, I felt a deep rooted sadness and restlessness penetrating all around. One like no other I have felt before. I saw a land of ancient, nameless lost heroes, who had lived and died, and for whatever reason remained restless.
They say the stories we carry down from generation to generation depict the “winner’s history.”
We will never know the names of all the countless settlers and warriors who lived and perished on the holy—haunted—soil of this ancient city. But what I saw, what I felt, was a lingering anguish of nameless lost souls whose invisible presence, I sensed, was still searching for something… Redemption? Acknowledgement? Quite possibly, they could just be looking for a way Home.
After my experience, I felt compelled to share about it with you, my dear friends, and ask that through your words and actions, you may help carry and pass along this torch of love and compassion for all those left behind, still suffering in darkness.
Whether you are a praying person or not, you carry the gift of light in you that, combined with the light of others, will multiply and build a light house rippling far and wide, and perhaps help guide these and other lost wanders back Home.
Please join me as a link in this prayer for peace, rest, and transformation:
“A prayer for the lost and suffering. A blessing to the restless; may you all find peace.”
When I returned home, I can’t tell you how glad I was that—of all places on Earth—I lived in Alaska. Seeing what it was like on the other side of the world showed me that I could, indeed, handle the snow.
By March 2014, I started walking around Anchorage again—out of spite for the snow—despite being pregnant—and in spite of being offered rides by people, repeatedly.
Eat.
Peace.
Walk.
Re-peace.
Eat.
Peace.
Walk.
Re-peace…