Sand Is a Metaphor for Fuck You
Jul. 27th, 2015 10:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingThis morning I was informed that I will be spending a week in September in Israel. My days will be mostly divided between Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University, but outside the cities is a huge and terrible desert, and I'm going to have to put in some time there too.
I was complaining about this on Facebook, and people have been all, "That's so cool, it'll be like Mad Max!" Don't get me wrong, Fury Road is a fantastic movie, but the desert is legitimately the worst thing. To quote from the introduction to Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert:
I was complaining about this on Facebook, and people have been all, "That's so cool, it'll be like Mad Max!" Don't get me wrong, Fury Road is a fantastic movie, but the desert is legitimately the worst thing. To quote from the introduction to Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert:
Confronted by the desert, the first thing Americans want to do is change it. People say that they "love" the desert, but few of them love it enough to live there. I mean in the real desert, not in a make-believe city like Phoenix with exotic palms and golf-course lawns and a five-hundred-foot fountain and an artificial surf. Most people "love" the desert by driving through it in air-conditioned cars, "experiencing" its grandeur. That may be some kind of experience, but it is living in a fool's paradise. To really experience the desert you have to march right into its white bowl of sky and shape-contorting heat with your mind on your canteen as if it were your last gallon of gas and you were being chased by a carload of escaped murderers. You have to imagine what it would be like to drink blood from a lizard or, in the grip of dementia, claw bare-handed through sand and rock for the vestigial moisture beneath a dry wash.
On one hand, I'm going to need to stock up on summer scarves, order another pair of polarized wind goggles, and resign myself to dying from skin cancer. On the other hand, my administrative assistant booked me a three-day layover in Paris, so at least there's a silver lining.
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Date: 2015-07-27 03:37 pm (UTC)Off the Latest Things page
Date: 2015-07-27 05:13 pm (UTC)Unless you get social invitations to places other than TA and J-lem, you'll go along Route/Highway 1 between TAU and HU and not see anything like proper desert. Most of that route is either green, because agriculture, or it barely qualifies for semi-arid/semi-desert.
But go to the South, then yes, that's a big ol' desert, and sorry, but I really loved it :P That dry heat's way better than TA's heat+crazy humidity.
Enjoy the food and the coffee!
–N