Dear Jerusalem

Dear Jerusalem,
Ah, the holy city. I can feel the religion seeping from your bricks and mortar. I can see the religion in your markets, with the street peddlers pushing stars of David and crucifixes, the orthodox Jews draped in black, heads covered and beards flowing, the Muslim women covered from head to toe. I can hear the religion at five in the morning when I am awoken by the Muslim call to prayer, and again at six when the bells start ringing. Are you guys competing with each other, to get in early to God? He's always there, you know.
On your streets I met the Prince of Jaffa Gate. That's what he called himself anyway. He bought me beer and offered to buy me for camels. A charming courting process I think. Later I saw him following tourists, draping his arms around their shoulders, maybe offering them camels for their daughters, trying to usher them into his store. How appropriate, I thought, that the Prince of Jaffa Gate be a beggar.
I walked the path of Jesus, and his mother too. I went to the church of flagellation, only to be disappointed by the lack of flagellation. I watched a Jesus mosh pit as Christians queued to see his tomb. I tried not to laugh as all this worshiping was interrupted by the arrival of a little known politician and her entourage. Cameras suddenly swung away from poor dead Jesus and to the President of the Ukraine. How fickle your attention is. I thought of Jesus and his golden idols.
I pondered the Western Wall and the Jews rocking back and forth, pushing their prayers written on small pieces of white paper into the cracks between the stones. Do they clear them out at the end of the day, put them in envelopes and post them direct to God? Do they throw them away, bin upon bin filled with prayers? That seems oddly appropriate.
I met a Jew in a hostel who buoyantly informed me he was off the the Wailing Wall to complain. To who, I asked. To God. I am not satisfied, he said. The next day he did not leave his bed. I drank last night, he said, my body does not like alcohol. Whose does? I did not think I needed to ask how the complaining went, or whether God had answered his prayer for satisfaction.
I watched the Christian tour groups in their red and yellow hats, walking down the steps of the David Street Suq. I watched them point out the praying Muz-lims and stare at their covered women. I followed the tour groups across Jerusalem to find the churches and mosques. I watched the Muslims walk amongst the Jews, and the Jews amongst the Muslims. I saw the Christians throng together, sheep after all, looking for their shepherd. I silently applauded the opportunistic Arabs selling bread from wagons in the Jewish Quarter on Sabbath. I navigated your streets, Jerusalem, with a tourist map, and a belly filled with five Shekel bread. I did not find one of the Gods the people came to see.
But on your streets, Jerusalem, watching the Jews and the Muslims and the Christians, I thought, for the first time, that we might just get out of this alive. Hope, for Christ's, or Allah's, or Yahweh's sake, hope is what I found in Jerusalem. And maybe, just maybe, that's as close to God as I will ever get.
Sincerely,
Helenahandbasket

Dear Kibbutzniks Part 1.

Dear Kibbutzniks,
So I realise that we volunteers come and go from your lives like tides. We stay at your home for a few months, make a few mistakes and leave. We're usually far from our families and our friends, we're usually female, and we're usually under twenty-five. Hell, most times we're still in our teens.
I understand that on a Kibbutz volunteers have pretty much the social status of, let's say, I don't know, rats. Attractive rats. Attractive rats that you guys want to fuck. So maybe that metaphor isn't working. Maybe it is. After all, you're all so pushed for variation in the female population here you'd probably screw a rat. If it was big enough. And maybe even if it wasn't.
In my time here -which may be brief if someone actually reads this, but hey, I'm really not holding my breath for that to eventuate- I've come to accept that you think of us volunteers in three ways. Sure, there are some exceptions, I'm not dismissing your entire community, just the majority. It's a generalisation; that's pretty much what I do.
1) Slaves: we do the shit work you don't want to do. Packing your fruit, cleaning your toilets and your dishes, making your food. Those kind of things. I'm okay with this. It's fine. I didn't come to a Kibbutz thinking, wow, I'll finally be treated like the princess I really am inside. Jolly Jeepers I'll sleep on beds made with fine linen and bake myself in the sun until I resemble a well rested leather hand bag. No. I came to a Kibbutz well aware of the fact I'd work like a dog, sleep on a metal-framed bed with a chip-wood base, communal sheets and some kind of bug infestation that keeps me up at night. Well rested I am not.
2) Disposable Vaginas: what a beautiful world you live in. Maybe you should explain the never ending round-about of vaginas that come into it to the Palestinians. Who needs forty-seven virgins and a bad case of "Mum I just exploded myself" when you have a constant flow of vulnerable young females coming into your life? Did I just solve the middle east crisis? I think maybe I did.
3) Potential Gene-Pool Diversifiers: Hey, I just made up a word. Good for me. Anyhoo. Kibbutzim are small communities. The families here are old. The gene pool must be shallow. So here we come, ready to live the Kibbutz dream. Maybe we'll fall in love with a long-haired, Fabio-like apple picker who'll teach us the joys of the simple life and make love to us under apple trees or some such shit. We're willing, we're ready, and you're waiting in the wings for the standards to drop until any man capable of speaking in full sentences with both verbs and nouns seems to have the verbal skills of John fucking Keats. And then you strike. Wham! Six months later we find ourselves imprisoned by perpetual teenagers, probably impregnated, and looking at a long -long- prospect free future where the skills we've learned in the actual real world don't mean dick. Yippee! Sign me up.

Sincerely,
Helenahandbasket

Dear Mum and Dad

Dear Mum and Dad,
So I know I'm supposed to be a grown up now. I know, I know, I'm 25. Yeah, I know, at this point I should be able to like, make my own bed and I don't know, earn my own money and shit. And yes, I realise that I should be taking responsibility for myself and doing all other kinds of wonderful adult-like things that I'm pretty sure I haven't worked out yet. Like paying bills. And rent. But here's the thing. I'm on a fucking Kibbutz. Sorry Mum, I know you don't like me to swear when I write. And the thing is, right? The thing is I don't have to pay bills here. Or even cook. Or do my own laundry. Hell, they even supply us with free condoms and tampons here. I'm probably not learning the kind of life skills that would help me out in say, Brisbane. But on the plus side I can chop a mean carrot, or potato, or onion. My chopping skills are supreme. I'm so glad I went to university. That degree is really helping me out here. No seriously. My rapidly accruing HECS debt is so worth it.
Now this may be a testament to my immaturity. I'm pretty sure it is. I mean begging your parents in the public domain is not exactly the most mature and rational thing to do. But I'm going to do it anyway. Remember how before I went away, I put all of my clothes in boxes? Yeah? Cardboard ones. Brownish. You'll recognise them when you see them. I think I may have even neatly stacked them in my cupboard so they'd be out of the way. That was nice of me, don't you think? I think it was. Well the thing is, I'm freezing my tits off here. And seeing as 1) I'm still yet to write the definitive Gen Y novel; 2) I earn 11 Shekels a day; and 3) I'm 200 meters from the Lebanon border, and public transport here is not exactly, how do you say, existent, I can't really get anywhere to buy clothes. You wouldn't want me to hitchhike on my lonesome, would you? That's not safe! No, not safe at all. Not just because there are crazy people out there and I am, as you know, very, very pretty. But also because Israelis drive like tweakers on speed. I think the aim of their driving is to see just how fast they can go with their wheels still on the ground. And trust me, it's faster than you think.
So I'm begging you, in the most un-grown-up way possible, please, please, please, please send me some clothes. That little blue pea coat with the hood, the leather jackets. Yes. Please send them to me. I'm cold. Brrrr. Cold. Icy. Please? Mum? Dad?
Sincerely,
Helenahandbasket