I've begun self-catering, which provides a much needed break from tagines and fills my pockets with some extra dough. I got a pair of babouches the other day--traditional leather shoes. They're yellow and a little too small for my feet, but they're supposed to be worn with the back of the shoe bent under your heel, so they fit fine. I also went to a nearby hammam, public bath, with some other travellers a few days back. It is cold up here in the mountains, and after coming out of the hammam my core temperature must have risen a few degrees, and I was warm for nearly the remainder of the night. I think it was that same night I attempted to play the card game Mao (from Reed and Hyde Park, where you don't tell anybody the rules, they just have to figure them out as you keep making up new ones) and met with just less than mild success. Haven't played since.

I took a rare excursion from working on the writing and the translating to hike up to the destroyed Spanish mosque about 20 or 30 mintutes out of the medina with a Quebecoise girl named Laurence. She's been travelling for I think half a year and welcomed by fortunate circumstances at nearly every turn; the world is conspiring with her as it is wont to do with people up to the bobbing and thrashing and occasional inhaling of water of going with the flow. From the mosque tower expansive view of the rolling hills and mountains dotted with villages and dappled with sunlight breaking through cloudbeds as if pointing to hidden treasures, wind watering the eyes, and a connection with a human. Then back to my hovel to pound out Whitman and move words from notebooks to other notebooks, books to notebooks, mp3 players to notebooks. Notebook notebook sore back bending over notebook notebook eyes failing notebook.

Next day Farid's wife offered me heroin. I said no thanks and told Farid and he got upset at her and told me how giving someone heroin is like shooting them, only they die little by little instead of all at once. I noticed how thin his face was, how much skin he had, points of sincerity coming out of his contracted pupils. I went and got some Amlou, which is almond butter with argan oil--the closest thing to peanut butter I could get. A few days later I mixed it with nutella and now I'm a golden being of transdimensional properties.

Laurence got to meet Farid before she left, which was good to have someone who I thought would get the situation and his idiosyncracies just be able to witness it, him. I am still waiting for Farid to reimburse me. Bea told me he has a slip of paper laying around the house that says he has to pay 600 dirham or go to jail which he may or may not be planning to show me when he sees I'm not lending him anymore money. What a weird tangle they are and we are. I'm disappointed in Farid's supposed plot, but I shouldn't expect much else. It doesn't mean we can't be buddies (I hate that word, but friends wouldn't do) if he doesn't get pissy when I don't give him anything. It's been on my mind.

Other things I've done this week:

Hanging out with the Ahmed, Mohammed, and Abdulmalik at the restaurant and waiting on Farid. Ahmed is the owner, Mohammed the waiter, and Abdulmalik the large joyously retarded uncle of Ahmed. They told me they took me for 25-28, which came as a pleasant surprise following years of my face looking younger than its years.

Reading Ulysses and my thesis adviser's The Logic of Culture while pilfering unscrupulously from each and more. I've been more concerned with moving ideas than incorporating them, working in preparation for that work and wondering whether preparing is the thing to do.

Playing with the Tao and putting it down--picking up, out, and apart. Trying to loosen my grip on the rudder and life vest while clutching ever more firmly to soaking and dissolving pages of books I can barely read anymore, my eyes blurring strained splashed blinking.

I'm in Morocco working on writing, translating poetry, meeting people. Surviving ain't that hard.

Yeehaw.


Also, Happy Birthday Baloo! I love you times a million.