Glory, Glory

So Xmas is upon us in the (un) holy land. Tamira and I will go to Bethlehem to see what its all about. Bethlehem is 15 kms from Ramallah, that's about 15 minutes by car under normal circumstances...but as we know, it is anything but that: We are counting on about two hours (with holiday traffic at the checkpoints of course—ok, maybe three). We've been studying our route and hopefully by xmas eve we'll know what we are doing. We thought donkeys might be most appropriate in speed and symbol.

I promised I wasn't going to glorify Palestine or its people in the opening of my blog and so far I have kept true to my word. But I have to say, people here are making this very difficult for me! There isn't a day that goes by where Tamira and I don't walk out of a shop, a meeting, an interaction and not shake our heads saying 'it can't be so, people just cannot be THIS nice!' The other day we went to buy a printer. The shop's VISA machine wasn't working and we didn't have cash. They said: "Just take it home and come by and pay us tomorrow, don't worry." Hello? Did you hear that?! 'Please take our merchandise oh person we have never met before and come pay us some other time'. I think that might have happened to my grandmother in 1910. This happens to us daily. So there it is, a broken promise, glory, glory. Crazy.

Other than that we have been working on a small film about Mahmoud Darwish, the late great poet laureate of Palestine. Darwish is most often described as 'the people's poet' and yet his poetry of the last many years is so very dense, so very difficult. I think it doesn't actually really speak to 'the people' any longer but his legacy does. I would argue too that as soon as you are appointed 'the people's' anything, you really can no longer belong to the people as you have become but a symbol and symbols are the exact opposite of the people—they are singular and external—no doubt one of the reasons Darwish resisted this title for so long. But it is through his words, his work, his poems and given time to actually sift through that I believe is the way back to the so-called people. It is in trying to find the rhythm of Darwish that we hope to work through the rhythm of the life lived here. I am attempting to follow the directive of my friend Fady: to shed my skin and still be in it so I may get closer to understanding.

Glory, Glory be.