Dear Family and Friends:

"Putting the 'real' back in Surreality"

....

Hmm. In case you thought this place could get any wierder--

They installed a mobile-home type "can" here. You know, like the big containers they load onto the back of semis, like the ones that get offloaded from cargo ships in ports? Well, this one's white and smooth on the outside, very inoffensive to the Western Eye, and on the outside is written

(Behold the Majesty)

"THE GREEN BEAN."

A coffee store? Can this be?

I stepped inside and was immediately transported to another dimension. Japanese pop rock is playing on an overpowered stereo, but at a tasteful volume. The floor is actually real masonry: thin slices of gold/brown marble laid out like asymetrical tiles. The menus read like Peet's Coffee menus. The Hadjis behind the counter speak intelligible Engrish. It even smells like any coffee shop back in the states-- no mean feat given that this country smells like ... something... not quite like years of slowly rotting waste but... ewww... Anyway. This is surreal.

I look outside. Sure enough. Same sand, same blasted Mars-type landscape. I turn around. Espresso is available at inflated prices. I feel at home.

In the halls of my heart, classical music by quartet slowly crescendos. I order a triple shot mocha and prepare for the jitters. Oh the jitters!

...

I once told my brother, having watched enough Western movies to make this comment, that there really wasn't anything more surreal than a man, or anyone for that matter, alone and wandering in the desert. Clint Eastwood, The Duke, the unforgettable Mr. Fonda. Shoot. Even Jesus had his forty day fast alone in the wilderness of Judea.

I have a modification to that statement:

There's nothing more surreal than a man in an espresso cafe in the middle of freakin nowhere. Look on one side: you see the smelly wadi and the primordial reeds shifting uneasily in the wind. Look to the other and there isn't unadulterated nowhere, but big blingy white can with coffe inside.

Sure, there's fewer deep, satisfying spiritual parallels to be drawn, but dang. the feeling.

It's a wierd one.

:D