Secret Sevening

Today, I went for a wander. I walked about the campus, earnestly in search of the entrance to the tower, the tower that grants one vision over Jerusalem. I found the entrance and it was decidedly like one of those abandoned towers one finds in the Secret Seven or the Hardy Boys. The dusty glass doors were shut tight and the shutters hung askew. Had there been rays of sunlight to fall through the dirty glass panes, dust motes would have been lit up as they floated in that leisurely fashion so reminiscent of abandoned buildings.

But the Secret Seven never give up. This was only more reason to set off on a search for that promised view, and set off they did. I thought the security of my venture slightly devious dubious, but that did not thwart me on my journey of discovery. Behind the tower, an ancient chair of black plastic adorned the outdoor living room of some highly suspect individual who was evidently trying to hide something (like the quiet spot and the chair for instance). The chair was placed on a trapdoor of some sort, evidently to distract attention from it, and distract it did for no one thought of moving the chair and descending to the deep dark depths of who knows where. Instead they belted it out of there to find a place less reminiscent of teenage boys having fun with herbs and smoke. The suspect individual mentioned above did not make his appearance, as suspect individuals are known for not doing.

Scoping around I wandered more and more into solitude, and the sound of male voices was not at all reassuring. The nice bit about being in the Secret Seven was always that if three of us got injured there would be one person to accompany them and the last to go find help. Not being in such a well-organized group, numerically speaking, I was a bit worried about who would go for help, when the voices stilled and I scoped a young lady running by. This did not appear to be the kind of girl who generally goes for sporadic runs without something chasing her, but this is what she seemed to be doing, since the carriers of the voices were not involved, and neither were carriers of other voices in sight.

She ran by. I followed her, at a leisurely and nonchalant speed (or I would have if I was one of those people). We came out to an open-air auditorium, with several gates that form what one could call an arch. One would not notice it much had the person you had been following (semi-nonchalantly, shall we say) not proceeded to climb the arch.

I reached her almost before she reached the top, and asked if I could join. See, such freedom – to run without being chased, to climb without having a mountain, resonates with me, and the child in me (me, really) wants to climb the arch too, instead of passing through like any normal person would. (No offence to normal people, you’re great. And you’re probably not that normal either, be careful around arches and blue skies and such. But actually please don’t, please stop and run for the sky).

She was running for the sky. She had spotted one, one which to me seemed really ordinary. It was in the sky, it was white and grey and it moved and changed shape and brought promises of rain, but otherwise it was really ordinary. But to her, this cloud was worth running like someone not being chased, climbing an arch despite the evident lack of signposts pointing “up this way,” and despite the danger of being followed by strangers who don’t understand clouds, and perhaps had never really seen one.

Together we tried to remember the names of East European countries and how they split up. She apologized for her English and I apologized for my Russian. Jerusalem feels like home, we agreed.

And then I descended the arch and she started walking across it to the other side. I asked her what she was doing, and without walking back she replied, “Just walking. Bye.”