Don't believe what you hear, don't believe what you see...

A U2 song keeps ringing out in my ears all day today, it starts with the words: "Don't belive what you hear, don't believe what you see, if you just close your eyes, you can feel the enemy..."

This seems to be the name of the game where I live now. I might just go insane and start looking for freemasons lurking in the shadows with dynamite and building tools. All is ready and the golden menorah is set up long ago outside on the street, disguised as a monument, of course... Ah well... It's not like I haven't lived in places like that before...

Today, I have indeed had a somewhat apocalyptic experience - a storm in the Dead Sea. That's right. A sight rare to behold, the sea was rough, waves crashing onto the shore, knocking the tourists off their feet, the wind upsetting the chairs, blowing off the towels, people falling in the heavy, bitter, oily waves of what, for once, looked just like a normal sea...

All of that was in 40-something temperatures, with the wind hotter than the air, a desert blow-dryer of some sorts, the kind of dry heat that makes you want put on all the clothes you've got and drink lots of hot tea. It reminded me of my trip to Sicily a couple of years ago, with the same hot wind and an official temperature of +47. I was afraid to make an extra move back then. Today was nothing compared to that experience, perhaps because the air now was even dryer and the sandy wind even stronger, but the sensation was certainly unusual. But my hair got 'blow-dried' in some 5 minutes. And hot drinks seemed strangely appropriate...

Back in Jerusalem, the temperature was 20 degrees cooler, a dramatic contrast.

Yesterday, I offically missed an opportunity to take a photograph of a lifetime, a potential award-winner if processed correctly. I now have only words to describe the undescribable, a visual parable that can only be represented and interpreted in images.

I saw a cage with white doves on my way to Tel Aviv bus station. Perhaps six or seven doves, white and fluffy, caged on the pavement near a shop of some sorts. A soldier, an ordinary soldier, in a uniform and with a gun, was squatting in front of the cage, holding his hands against it, in what seemed like an attempt to communicate with the birds. White doves and a soldier...

... if you just close your eyes, you can feel the enemy...