Jerusalem Syndrome - Marc Maron [46]
It became clear that no one could speak English, and I was getting antsy. Then one of the men took a bag of pot and a pouch of tobacco out of his pocket, dumped some of each into his hand, crumbled it, and rolled two large conical joints. The only other time I had seen joints that looked like that was in the centerfold of High Times magazine when I was in high school. He lit one up and started passing it around. The other he gave to our friend, the little Arab guy, who then gave it to us. I lit it and took a deep hit and passed to Kim. She took a hit. We got really high.
Kim and Oriella tried to communicate with the others. One of the women knew Hebrew, so Oriella was able to translate. It became a group effort to understand the most mundane elements of life: Where are you from? What’s your name? What do you do? I sat and watched the cinders crackle and float up lit into the pitch-black sky and trail off as ashes. There was a timelessness to it. The Middle East, Egypt, a campfire, Bedouins: It was real Beat, primitive Beat, tribal. Whether there was a God or not or which God it was if there was one didn’t matter. There had always been people sitting around fires, laughing and telling stories, intoxicated and alive, explaining who they were by making pictures with their hands.
As dawn began to break we walked back down to the hut. Oriella went to sleep. Kim sat down on the beach. The sun was beginning to rise over Saudi Arabia. I took off my Nikes and left them at the edge of the water and walked out into the Red Sea. Everything about my life seemed so distant and unimportant, ridiculous. The sky was a pale purple, the mountains were humped shadows in the distance. I felt full, whole, beat. I looked down and saw my feet moving along the floor of the sea through the clear water.
14
IT’S been three years since I went to Israel. I no longer have Jerusalem Syndrome. I found that the cure for it was essentially living life. Nothing seems to have turned out the way I thought it would.
Since the trip, I have separated from my wife. I have given up smoking, drugs, and booze. I am no more Jewy than I was before. I am painfully present most of the time. Being on stage seems to be the only reprieve from my insanity that I have left. I still believe there are no coincidences, but I no longer think I am the chosen one. I think the path of my life has been to follow a trail of crumbs being dropped unintentionally by a God eating a piece of cake as he walks quickly away from a dinner I wasn’t invited to on his way to deal with the end of the world.
I recently received a strange request. My mother’s friend Rosalie called me. I have known her since I was a kid. “Marc, hi. It’s Rosalie. How are you doing, sweetheart?”
“I’m fine. How are you?”
“Everything’s great. I have a question for you. Would you be interested in coming to Albuquerque and performing a benefit for the synagogue?”
“I don’t know. Why? What’s going on?”
“Well,” she said, “the temple isn’t doing so well. The rabbi has Parkinson’s, the cantor quit, membership is very low, and all the kids from your group are gone. Only the older people are left.”
“Sounds sad,” I said. “I don’t know. It would be weird.”
“Oh, come on, Marc. We thought it would be wonderful if you came out and did your routine,” she said in that tone that made me realize I was being told that I was doing the show. “We could raise some money, give the congregation a little morale boost, and maybe some of your old friends would come out.”
“I don’t know. I