Jerusalem is too damn holy for it’s own good. I’m not saying everyone who lives there is nuts, that’s obviously not the case, but it just seems that way. But then, I mostly hung out with tourists. They’re definitely nuts.

When I was last there a short time ago, I stayed in a youth hostel near the Jaffa Gate, and the first person I met after the people at the reception desk was a guy who claimed to be Jesus Christ. I later learned that he wasn’t the first guest that month to have made that claim. But one has to expect that sort of thing.

It’s called “Jerusalem syndrome.” You think you’re God, or Jesus or Moses or angels are telling you to convert the Catholics to Christianity or something like that.

There are two Jerusalems: the first is the capitol of Israel. This isn’t a particularly interesting place. Some decent bars and restaurants, and aside from the big museums, there’s nothing really there, but then for the most part nobody goes to see this Jerusalem, there’s no reason to unless you’re a lobbyist or a film fan. Everybody comes to see the other one, that place where religion lives. Holyland-land.

Holyland-land, or more properly, the Old City is not really a city at all, but a tiny walled village about one kilometer square. Going all the way around the city walls will take no more than half an hour at most, and within one will find just souvenir shops, churches and synagogues…. and those two huge and decorous mosques that denominate everything.

Had Jesus been French all these people would be in Paris. But no, Jesus was Jewish and this is Holyland-land, where all things religious took place thousands of years ago, even though you can still feel it. That’s what drives people mad. Why only the other day a bunch of monks got into a fistfight in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Each wanted a better place in a procession. Some things will never change.