November

by Elisa Stilo (Italy)

A leap into the unknown Israel

November. Jerusalem's sky has something. It has something in it. Hard to define. It's something barely existing in the background yet the nacred atmosphere it effects is unmistakable, like a subtle undefined bright layer that makes everything sharper and clearer in their colours and in their essence. That makes everything more consequential. I live in Rome, so I know a little about skies myself, but the clairvoyance sentiment that the Jerusalem's sky instils in those standing under it is something else. This pearled mantle gently laps over the Western Wall, over the Dome of the Rock and over the Holy Sepulchre, of course, realising itself in a fresh breeze, caressing the sacred narrow alleys. The Holy Sepulchre. This labyrinthic construction looks like it was made of spare parts of different buildings from different places and eras. It's inconclusive. It's the sky that makes it conclusive. It's in the sky that it finds its legitimacy, almost as if it didn't belong on this earth, as if its foundations were celestial and not terrestrial. As you enter the dark hall you're torn away from our reality. The strong scent of incense, the claustrophobic feeling, the haunted crowd vibrating, the bodies touching, the candles being lit and extinguished, the oil, the sand, the Babel of languages, the polished stones, the hanging shiny lanterns, the murmuring of prayers and blessings, the sweat, the scarves over the heads, the knees on the ground, the rattling of the rosaries, the shoes, the sudden inability to focus on the same subject for more than a second. Everything starts spinning around you, or you start spinning around things. The basaltic slabs that have been there for centuries don't feel so firm anymore. You look for a friend's arm to grab. But every arm seems a friend's one. Or none of them does. It's not the first time I try to describe this scene. To describe this Church, that is the exact anti-Saint Peter's, whose walls more than any others are drenched with some eschatological and alchemical scent, maybe a potion. To describe the faithful’s feverishly delirious state, the gurgling simmering of their souls. But words will never be as effective as images when trying to catch the uncatchable. The only visual experience that I could dare to compare to a visit of the Holy Sepulchre is a scene of a movie. The scene of when the new-born is being carried around the house in the film "Mother!" by Darren Aronofsky. That's it. There's nothing else I've ever seen that could put you in the same perspective. That could report the foolishness of it, the Irrational, the Medieval, the Magic spirit that one is forced to breathe when entering that church. The Sepulchre puts a mask on you. You have no choice but to breathe in that hallucinogen gas. The power of the stream ineluctably carries you with it around the curious naves' irregular plan. You flow under the timid light suffusing from the chandeliers. You flow past mysterious statues of knights. You float side by side with infinite waves of people: people you can't tell if are as lost and impotent as you are or are instead in total control of their consciences. Are you the only one subdued to the spell? Suddenly the stream veers and channels you through a sort of a dark hole in the wall. It's a passage. A corridor. A tunnel. Up. Stairs. First step. You grope blind. The mouth of the stairs widens into a new room, a chapel. The ceiling is so low that seems to be collapsing soon on the floor, that, for its part, isn't that stable either: it feels irregularly bumped and infirm itself under your insecure feet. Up here it's not brighter nor less suffocating than downstairs but as you try to stretch your neck over the heads line, lost in a corn field, you notice some shiny dots on the ceiling. Pearls? Gold? Crystals? Stars. A sky full of stars. But it's a heavy sky. A static firmament of stone stars. A sky carved out of the rock. This is spirituality. Stars in a cave. This is the Calvary.