NYT’s Jet Lagged:
Jerusalem these days is barely a day away from Santa Barbara. In 36 hours or so I moved from a society that seems to have annulled history — and even parts of reality — to a place a millennium away where the very fury of human hopes and grievances, the constant debate of this world and some other, give reality and history a moment-by-moment urgency that reminds us why the Sabbath and holidays were first called into being. I could have made the same trip at home — these days (thanks partly to air travel) a drive across most American cities will take you through most of the cultures of the world. But to move from winter to summer, from a comfortable nation to an unsettled one, overnight is to put both into startling perspective.
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The deeper point of air travel, though, is that it shakes up and reconfigures your sense of what is important and how you construe value — or safety or peace. On Easter Island on Jan. 1, 2000, no one I met was fretting over Y2K. In Bolivia, where I’ve celebrated two recent New Years, Paris Hilton was not on many lips. And flying to Jerusalem is costing me less than some friends spend on a night on the town. In Syria, in the 21st century, I traveled for five days across the country, with car and driver and guide, staying in five-star hotels (in upgraded rooms, no less) for $350 in all — barely more than I’d pay for a single night’s stay in an indifferent New York City hotel.
Air travel this season has brought me intense interrogations in private immigrations offices, valuables lost in security checks, an enormous carbon footprint and a 14-hour delay. It’s also brought me to a great clamor of chants and prayers in a city of flickering candles.
