July 30

It was a little bit cooler today, which was a relief. Summertime is very slowly coming to an end. I will be sort of glad. Jerusalem is getting really dirty now. Trash is blowing around, and it's about time for some rain to settle the dust. I saw a street cleaner the other day, but it would take 20 street cleaners to make much of a difference. Occasionally I see men trimming back some of the overgrown vines, but I don't see much evidence of any real knowledge of gardening. They never cut anything back far enough to get fresh green growth, and they don't fertilize. They don't compost, either. What a pity. All those nice leaves going into the trash instead of back into the soil where they belong.

When I lived in Indiana I hated to see the summer end. Towards the end of July I deliberately shut out of my mind the knowledge of what the date was, and put all my attention into getting the most out of the last days of summer. Unfortunately, this also meant I often forgot my mother's birthday, which was August 4. I do remember one year, some time in the nineties, when we had nice weather clear through November.

I am always hearing people saying things like, "You simply must [do this, see that, go here, go there], it's simply fantastic!" But we don't have any opportunity to do all those things.

Several times in class the teacher has asked us what we do in our spare time. I never have any thing to say. I, uh, well, study Hebrew, write on my blog, and sometimes mess around on the internet. One guy just simply could not understand why I didn't have an MP3 player. Maybe after I finish level Gimmel I'll reward myself with an MP3 player. Or maybe not. He says they don't cost much at all. Well, plane fares do, and you can't have everything. And I do have a digital camera and a computer, which is pretty wow, really. And he was amazed when I told him I had never been to a movie. Why not? Well, they're not real. Learning to live real life is a full time job. There isn't time left over for living an unreal life, or watching an unreal person's unreal life. And there's the next life to think about, too. If you fill in all your free time with whatever is handy (books, music, food, work, study, internet, shopping, sleep, etc.), you'll never notice how empty you really are. When you get good and empty, that's when you realize that you'd better feed your starving soul. Better, of course, not to wait until you're starving. To be healthy you have to cultivate an appetite for healthy food. And you have to exercise. Prayer is pretty good exercise, wouldn't you say?

Unknown tree.