I have fallen in love with Bollywood. Let it stand at that.
The best reason that's been invented for why not to do something is, in some capacity, "other people". Awaiting the approach of an obligation only to watch yourself not attend to it, as you knew you wouldn't, one feels the terrific feeling of not being reliable, a reclamation of self. I have let many of my relationships in Marrakesh fall into silence because I recognized I did not actually care to nurse embers. I am glad of it. Apologies and excuses make us overly sensitive and violently obsessive; we lose our good faith in no hard feelings.
The aquifer of self-possession has been replenished. In thanks, the hard laboring migrant workers of The Fragmented Beings of Personland have erected a new shrine to the inchoate Muses of Possibility, as stipulated by contract. In sum, everybody is very happy for not having to starve this season.
The other night, I went with Daniele and Alex, two bright Italian guys, to an alcohol/hookah bar. There were paintings of leopards on the walls. One practically had to walk on table tops to get to an empty, yet somehow still crowded table. Heinekens cost 5 euro, as much as a nargila for the three of us. Occupying one corner was a keyboard player enamored of ethereal sound patches. The other corners housed speakers through which burst the voice of the man walking through the backalleys of chairs and striking earnest Star Search poses with his cordless microphone. The smoke was sweet and the walk back to our hotel was wholesome fresh air. On the taxi ride over to the bar in the ville nouvelle, we talked about the origins of the shift from matrilineage to patrilineage, on the walk back to the medina we discusses whether the women at the table next door were hired by the men with them or what. A brief encounter with an unintelligible man who seemed to be claiming he was Bob Marley and knew Jimi Hendrix and wanted a cigarette. We walked by Club Med Medina and into our hotel, where Daniele and I had a discussion about ethics and metaphysics and Alex fell asleep with his socks on.
It has become foolishly easy to spot hash peddlers. Notice, without looking, the man who has begun to walk ten seconds after you've come into his field of vision, setting a trajectory which will lead him just in front or behind your own path. He will hiss "hash" or "good stuff". It used to be I would stop, smile, say no, and attend the rebuff; now, I softly bark no without breaking my gait, without moving a single disc in the spinal column. Making a phone call at one in the morning, I watch eyelessly as the trickle of men to and from Djemma el-Fna pass by, each man stealing at least a glance in my direction. The night is degenerate, and I'm not just saying that.
After reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X and listening to The Sacred Harp Singers, I have decided to become a black firebrand and singer of hymns in the Sacred Harp and Shaped Note style. On my road to these lofty goals, I have begun peeing in the bidet rather than walking down the hall to the toilet. I wonder if anybody ever thinks --hm, did somebody pee in this? Or in sinks, even. Not me, but it isn't unimaginable in a room without a bidet.
Happy Birthday Ma!
2.18.2007
Experiments in Friction (Part 1)
There is a man who walks blindly (whetherhe is blind or not, I do not know) down one of the streets joined to Djemaa el-Fna, proffering a palm and tapping a cane infrequently as he grinds out from his mufflerless larynx, "Ana! Ana!" That is, "I am! I am!" Another mutters "Allah! Allah!", and another prostrates himself before the multifarious assembly with one hand in the road and his head to their feet. I stick to the lesson I learned in Florence to give only for the sake of giving and pass by the beggars with the rest of the crowd.
Our hero finds silence only in the vampiric hours, a great din being had by the orgies of coin and paper skin 5 hours into moonlight. Luckily, he sleeps like a grave. Certain bands of the natives have accepted him into their hunting parties rather than make of him their prey (and what a strange powdery odor he has!). The blood is making its slow return to their veins, sanguinity is arriving.
The initial stage of calibration passed, I'm looking more towards the possibilities of this space than its limits, feeling more confident in my abilities to act and alter. I know better now than ever what it is to be alone, to wake up for your-self and know the day ahead will be had only through your-self. The boundaries being established, there is an infinity of pointnesses in the field.
Our hero finds silence only in the vampiric hours, a great din being had by the orgies of coin and paper skin 5 hours into moonlight. Luckily, he sleeps like a grave. Certain bands of the natives have accepted him into their hunting parties rather than make of him their prey (and what a strange powdery odor he has!). The blood is making its slow return to their veins, sanguinity is arriving.
The initial stage of calibration passed, I'm looking more towards the possibilities of this space than its limits, feeling more confident in my abilities to act and alter. I know better now than ever what it is to be alone, to wake up for your-self and know the day ahead will be had only through your-self. The boundaries being established, there is an infinity of pointnesses in the field.
I take a walk and get stopped every hundred meters with offers of hashish or to have mint tea in an antique shop with the salesman or to ask what it is I'm looking for. I'm just trying to walk, man. Can't it be that simple? I meet up with Naoufal, a young Marrakshi painter I met in his friend's spice shop. He is monomaniacal, speaks of his idea of "la ville qui bouge" (the moving city), which he claims holds the key to life for whomever views his paintings. He is not interested in other ideas than those to which he has laid claim. Experiments in friction, I try to deflate his head by way of gently critiquing his theories and practices. Not much short of a blow to the skull with a blunt object with a sharp object poking out from the end of it seems to have any hope of registering, so I direct the conversation elsewhere and the night swims on.
Late the other night I went out to use the bathroom down the hall. A few Moroccan guys were talking outside of one room, one of them was very drunk. Drunk Moroccans say "I'm sorry" over and again as an apology to God for drinking, this drunk did not. He invited me to come into his room and have a drink with him. He was insistent and I have a penchant for giving myself to others simply to feel to what shapes their wills will bend me. We drink some wine, there is a woman in one of the beds he calls a whore. She is not a whore, but a secretary with whom he's been having a fling for his last ten days in town. The drunk says he invites me to watch a film with him and I submit. He ruffles through papers and discs in the night table drawer, inserts a dvd, and comes back to sit with me. It is hard-core porn, the kind that looks like the sex is being performed with mechanical efficiency and eroticism. The drunk laughs, the woman laughs, I laugh. He points to the screen, declaring "There is Italy and Morocco--no visa! no visa!" He asks if I want to pay for the woman in the bed and then points to the screen again, "toutes les routes!" I've seen this behavior before, playing porn for uninterested parties, and understand it as a warped assertion of masculine dominance. We drink some beer and he calls up his ex-wife for phone sex. The woman in the bed says he's crazy. I take my leave and get a knock on my door the following night. An invite to drink. A kiss on the neck? Is this Moroccan affection or a come-on? Though I do appreciate the practice of extracting myself from unattractive situations, of giving my will a shape of its own, I don't need this tonight.
2.07.2007
Fragments of a Month's Time, pardon my not tidying up
Oh boy, there's a lot of time to account for. A month according to my calculations. On the nose. Suppose I can start wherever I damn well please. Suppose I'll start from where I left off. Suppose that'd be simple enough not to get lost, though there seems to be no subjects of these sentences to be geting lost anyhow. anywhere. anywho?
One day Grey, a funhouse mirror from the alma mater walks through the door of my hotel, a figure that looms large in my mind as a subject and practitioner of the intimidating discourse of academia horrifyingly prostrate before it. This image is what I am working through in my plotting out this book project, it is my attempt to master rational discourse enough to lay it to rest, or at least assuage the terror of its embrace. He came and went, leaving me, if anything, in a slightly elevated mood, a little less fettered by the insistent domineering analytic mode.
Farid was starting to get on my nerves. I saw how he used me as the occasion and audience to play out the personality he wanted to be for himself as well as others; he was no longer just trying to fool me, he was trying to fool himself into another self. After having waited several hours for him at a rendez-vous point from which we were supposed to walk over to a lawyer who owed him money and yadda yadda yadda, I told his wife Bea I was ready to go to the police. I am no good with grudges. Thinking of Farid panicking over being sent to jail filled me with a slow remorse. What's done is done. Steam lost. I wanted so badly to believe Farid, my head is too hard wanting too much to see good, too much to remain open to possibility--to hard to be soft, pliant, malleable, giving. Soon after my proclamation of having had enough I got a small bit of money from Bea and the next day the whole family skips town. Two, three days later, when I'd come to terms with my optimistic hopes being dashed, Farid returns with more promises. We chased the wild goose one last time for old time's sake before he asked me for 80 dirhams. I said no, he went off to search for the money and I was supposed to wait for him. I waited a bit. A handicapped guy came and sat down beside me, and after the initial niceties and settled comfort came the hash offer. He left after a while of silence following my declining the advance. I waited. I left without seeing Farid again.
One day I begin reading very extra slowly, attempting to enter every word and phrase--it was gorgeous, your head, it simply swirls. Akin to walking down the street at 1/4 speed, you notice other things, perhaps deeper structures, become filled with a sense of beauty. Slowness is maybe also a path to the useless and enchanted being towards which I have been inclining. Some time that same day or another proximate, my thoughts started coming to me as sensations. I felt the thoughts as exterior as sense perceptions, exterior to a void (The Void? Atman? Self? Whateveryouliketocallit). The thoughts are things that call themselves a "me", and with a sort of mental sleight-of-hand self-alienation, the I is emptied. It is different and difficult to maintain, another sort of meditation I began to intuit on Elba, which has consequently gestated and returned to me in a more mature form. I think it leads to non-consumed fascination and agreeableness, at least that's the vibe I get from the Buddhists.
As much as there is a satisfied feeling of an additional weight of meaning when conversing in a second language, de temps en temps je me sens comme une fountain of homilies. It's good to find a native English speaker now and again.
Oh yes, no more worms. More vomit and other health annoyances, but I seem to be in what resembles one piece of Jake.
One evening on the way back to the Hotel Andaluz I passed two guys killing time standing against a wall at a three-way intersection. One o of them asked if I spoke English. I replied in the affirmative without a hesitation in my gait. He then asks for an explanation of the word onomatopoeia. What?! I explained, we got on to talking about reading and writing, introduced ourselves and planned to meet up the following day. Locals on my wavelength. How strange. Yay! Mehdi and Patience (I didn't remember his name for a few days. It is Sabir, which means patience. That much I retained.) and I hung out and then ran into some musicians from the South with whom I ended jamming well into the night and from whom I was given my Moroccan name Jelali. The next night the guys from Kenitra and I went to the main square and then up to a sandwich shop where they got into a drunken confrontation with some Chaouenians later exlained away as being due to an offhand racist slur from one of the locals. There was hot speech and close crowding but not much in terms of blows, although one of the guys from Chaouen moved top chase out a Kenitran with a stone or ashtray in hand. To brain him was the thought, I surmised. There was more argument in the small square adjacent to Uta Hammam (the central square) which somehow got diffused. Only ten, fifteen minutes later in the main square more words are had, but with whom I do not recall (could have been the guys from the sandwhich shop following or completely new customers. A turtle gets mugged by two foxes. The police: what happened? The turtle: I couldn't tell, it all happened so quickly.). Words, headbutt, melee. One of the Kenitrans gets knocked over onto the guitar on his back and 5 or 6 people run up to give him a kick to the ribs, nobody viscious enough to aim for his head. I interceded here and there, but wasn't about to do anything where there wasn't ample space to get out of dodge or time to be recognized as a tourist. In fact, I felt strangely safe being Jacques who had been around for nearly two months; some of the Chaouenians recognized me and we talked about whatever it was that was going down. "It was a good fight," said Aziz's friend Ahmed when I gave him the story. Why was it a good fight? Because no blood was spilled, and moreover, they were all good men. And why were they good men? Because nobody brought out a knife; a rock, that's normal, but there are guys who walk around with knives already set to get into it. Everyone I talked to about this had a remark about how in America (or Canada for those under the impression) it would have been guns. The Kenitrans beat a retreat and went looking for the police. We got seperated and I went to get a shrimp and egg sandwich before going to sleep, the image of men rushing up to kick a fallen man still vivid and harsh in my mind.
Tangiers was all bustle and machines and somber light, a real clusterfuck town. Bought a ferry ticket for a boat on its way out just as they were handing me the ticket, some 500 meters away and before customs. I ran for it as best I could after 2 months of little physical exercise to speak of and now two very heavy bags of property. Through customs, to the ramp, a young man helped me with a bag and I offered him a hand full of coins out of which he picked the metal pieces rapaciously, cawing "yes, yes". The ferry had departed by the time I reached the quay, he probably knew this. I showed my ticket to the dock guys who hemmed and hawed for a minute and then said I could use my ticket on the next ferry to Tarifa. Somebody came by and asked from where I hail, again with the nicities and then the pitch--now that you're past customs, do you want any hash? It's from Chefchaouen. I figured he was the duty-free shop until later a man carrying decorative knives and mirrors walked past, looked to me, and I motioned for him to keep walking. Some men from the port came by and asked me from where do I come--America, unfortunately. Pourquoi malhereusement? Too long of a conversation, that, and you already know why. One guy kept saying to me Texas, Oklahoma, and chicken kebab over and over, this man was the head honcho. They started chiming in on how people from America are welcome, but how Bush is not, punctuating this with a gesture of slitting the throat with the thumb. I told them how I got thrown into jail for protesting the war and got several hearty handshakes. Chicken kebab. Mr. TexasOklahomaChickenKebab helped me get to the next ferry and on my way.
On the ferry a man from Guinea struck up a conversation of no real import that lasted most of the hour-long voyage. The bus he'd counted on taking that night was not running, so we split a room at a nearby hostel and split paths in the morning. Bus to Sevilla it was still dark at 7:30am I bought a bottled water and sugarice stick limon and hoofed it 200m or so to the station. Light rain and the bus came; in and out of consciousness;hills with lumps of bushes, thick cloudheads wedged between mountains; field of windwills pinwheels ballerinas save the stayed ones like machines ominously. Arrival and heavy bags. Canadians stupid asking for me to ask directions for them asking to follow me I lead the way not knowing where and nobody on the street seems to know the plaza I'm after. I decline their jocular offer to help carry my bags out of pride or instinct. We walk, heavy bags, heaving chest. Get bad directions that send us in opposite directions and I wish them luck not getting hit by a runaway boulder. I find new directions for myself and walk sweating hot heavy walk for maybe 3/4 hour before finding the hostel which is full up in the beginning of February?! As some consolation, I get invited to a cheap dinner and directed to another hostel. I check in, take a shower, send off a package, and go in search of peanut butter. Success! Nap and go to cheap dinner where I meet and hit it off instantly with a guy from San Francisco with a slight lisp and accent like cousin Eli. Unfortunately, he leaves for Lisbon in 2 hours, so we exchange information and he says "son of David" when I give him my e-mail. How strange.
It is rainy and moderately cold in Sevilla, I spend most of my time indoors trying not to spend money. Around dinnertime the next night, I headed out to find something in my price-range that was not fast-food and happened upon two street guys (read homeless or long-term travellers without steady funding) who spoke English very well. Jonas (pronouned Yonas) and Dragan, born in Sweden and Croatia respectively. At first I thought Jonas was asking for money, but then he said no, a smoke? and I said I don't smoke and that is how it started. Dragan thinks Americans are stupid for calling people African Americans and Latin Americans while whites are just plain Americans. Jonas love Americans because of the 1st and 5th amendments of talking and shutting up. They soon saw the outline of my character and we got along quite well. They were talking about why they give to other beggars or anybody else walking down the street who asks them for a cigarette when they're asking for money. They should give just as soon as receive, Jonas says, life is a circle. Yeah, chimes in Dragan, life is a fucking circle and I know it very well. I write this excellent phrase on the back of my hand and am found out, which I gloss over by explaining it as my way of appreciating things. From this they take it that I want to know about street life, which I do, and so set out to teach me how to beg and how to make people smile and how to make a buck without so much as conventional respectability. The world's a stage, now you try. And so I have to beg until I get something from anybody, even one centime will do. I learn quickly, they say, have great potential and could be living on the street in not but a few weeks' time. I start off timidly and become more playful, finally coaxing some money from a young French guy when I asked him in French for a bit of change for the next beer (I hadn't had a beer, but this was one of Dragan's favored approaches). 65 cents--good score! The guy thought it wasn't much, and apologised for it. You're (becoming) one of us now. At what point are my motivations to be ascribed to novel kicks and when to sincere and deep appreciation? The question is especially difficult because I have a deep appreciation of novelty, as the newness itself pushes at the boundaries of my experience and ideation, allowing for a broader and more profound self. In any case, they treated me as a person, not an observer or source of money. This made me feel good about them and suspicious of myself. Jonas had a slight actorly disconnect with himself, monologizing once in a while. He called himself a Buddhist and speaks 8 languages, his English with a hippyish lilt to it. Probably about my height (impressions of this sort are so difficult to gauge after being mediated by the passing of time), with a shaved head and blond clumps of dreads hanging from the back end. I asked why he was living on the streets, to which he responded with a laugh, saying he hadn't chosen this life and that he'd been looking for jobs in over a handful of countries. I didn't fully buy into this explanation, but let it pass. "People can be hard," he said, "But also people appreciate it when you don't steal and will sometimes give to you because you are honest and non-threatening, sincere and human." Dragan has none of Jonas' theatricality, speaking pointedly, simply, and in a tone, rhythm, accent, with a choice of words that make his astuteness seem cute or comical. He is so matter-of-fact that any unpleasant situations or messages lose any overtones or posturings with ends beyond those presently expressed, they become palatable, even, because they are so devoid of ill will, like something unhuman. He isn't without feeling, just honest. He is a man of about 5 feet 7 inches with a swarthy Eastern European complexion, a swirl of balding scalp at the point from which the grain of the head's skin begins it's spiral outward (seems like an important part of the body, like the point to locate 3 feet backor something where some people say the soul resides and oftentimes referred to as a point from which people see themselves during out of body experiences), a full but not overly full beard, and hands I don't remember but can imagine as being stout. Dragan's mode of begging is asking for 500 euros or, alternately, just a bit to pay for the next beer. He had pictures of when he'd written on a cardboard box something to the effect of "help me pay for a vacation" or just "vacation", and drew a picture of a little island half-circle sticking out from waves and with a palm tree sticking out from it. Here is a link to a site that belongs to some of Dragan's friends, might be worth checking out www.lazybeggers.com. The average passerby wouldn't think of 5 centimes as being worthy to give somebody anybody, butit does make a difference. Other things as well--Dragan sported a furby creature somebody gave him, and Jonas a flag pin with green and white stripes; he didn't know or care for the significance of the flag, just liked it for the colors and the fact that it was a gift. It may be that so many "street people" own dogs because they were strays, and the humans take the advantage to take and receive love from them, as strays themselves, in a way, become benefactors. Dragan lives with a small dog, the kind with short legs. Some month and a half ago he had seen this dog passing by, too skittish to come close, obviously a stray. One day as Dragan was eating, the dog regarded him from a distance. He beckoned it over, it did not come. He threw it a piece of food, it ate, he threw closer, it ate, and closer, it ate, until it was close enough to--LEASH! He threw a leash around it's neck and kept it with him for 5 days, feeding when hungry, petting when in want of attention, wrapping into a blanket when cold. In sum, he took it's freedom to teach it trust and love (Hello birth of governance!), and after the 5 days he let it off the leash to do as it pleased. It has not left his side since, and despite it's learned dependency, it is never physically tethered to anyone. As I am starting to think of leaving their company, I slip some money into Jonas' hat,hoping nobody will see. Jonas sees. He asks if I'm sure. I say that it is for the two of them to share. He says are you kidding? I don't know what that means. He says of course. Dragan isn't party to any of this, he later asks if I want to come with them to a house in which they're squatting and drink and smoke. I decline, then accept, then decline. Jonas invited me to stay in Sevilla and join them, which brought on a slight crisis of identity--insider or outsider, am I ready to do this, do I want this, now, why not, what about my things, what about other things. I did not stay, I was not ready to accept, I was also worried about getting consumption, I did not want to abandon my plans just yet, plans meant to be, built up to be, the hurdle I make myself jump before accepting another life, before uselessness and honesty, the uselessness and honesty of Dragan. But before the night is over Jonas and Dragan got into an argument and Dragan declared their friendship over, suspecting Jonas lied to him about a great sum of money shared between them in the past. Dragan went one way, Jonas another. I went towards my hostel, Jonas' direction. He said maybe he should give me the money back to give it all to Dragan the next day, and quickly rescinded, admitting he did not want to part with his half. He was acting all torn up, I asked if it'd be alright, he responded that it wouldn't be alright, but to have a nice life. Overdramatic and he walked off as I went into the hostel, but first watched him go off without a backwards glance--he was acting for and within himself, not me.
The bus back to Tarifa from Sevilla was accompanied by a soundtrack of mass produced lovesongs for mass consumption. The ferry was quiet. Back at the Tangiers port, I got picked out by a faux guide who told me there was no way to Marrakesh that night because it was the birthday of the king, Mohammed VI (lie). We do the dance for a while and another guy ends up picking me up and bringing me to the bus station (what's your name? Abdel. Abdel what, Abdel Malik or... Yeah, Abdel Malik, you got it on the first try, ha. Gee, what a quick-witted hustler you are Mr.Abdel Malik), getting me a good price for a 1am bus, and hustling me out of a wad of cash, and then asking for a souvenir of me (you will always remember me, but give me something to remember you). As he leaves me to attend my bus, he says "don't talk to anybody, watch your bags, and don't trust anybody." He must've been chuckling with that last one, thinking himself so clever to be telling me implicitly that I shouldn't have trusted him. I wait in the station, finish Ulysses, and am approached by two young men. They sit down and make nice, par for the course so far. I am Canadian. What color is your passport? Blue. Blue?, I've never seen a blue passport before, can I see it? No, it is with my things, I don't want to take it out here, no offense. Wow, a blue passport. More making conversation. I live in France and am looking to buy a European passport or a Canadian one. Buy one? Yes, for 2 or 3 thousand euro, are you interested? No, nice offer, but not for me. Yes, it is a good offer. But not for me. More talk. Say, why don't you come stay with me in Fés. Already bought my ticket to Marrakesh, thanks. Here's my mobile number, do you have one? No, what would I use it for, I'm from Canada. Do you have SMS, hotmail, yahoo? I have gmail, another e-mail provider. Period. No, I'm not going to offer it to you, chump. They exit stage right. I catch my bus and figure out how to get the seat to recline about 6 hours into the trip.
Now in Marrakesh, I've got a nice room to myself and the hotel has a terrace cafe that overlooks the main square, Djemaa el-Fna. There is no traveller scene of which to speak at the hotel, just tourists. A couple days of running around the city and I got bad food poisoning from which I'm still recovering. There is something rotten in the city, something malignant. Less interaction than transaction. You can see it in the swarms of people around Djemaa el-Fna in the evenings, people passing one another huddled in their own night.
One day Grey, a funhouse mirror from the alma mater walks through the door of my hotel, a figure that looms large in my mind as a subject and practitioner of the intimidating discourse of academia horrifyingly prostrate before it. This image is what I am working through in my plotting out this book project, it is my attempt to master rational discourse enough to lay it to rest, or at least assuage the terror of its embrace. He came and went, leaving me, if anything, in a slightly elevated mood, a little less fettered by the insistent domineering analytic mode.
Farid was starting to get on my nerves. I saw how he used me as the occasion and audience to play out the personality he wanted to be for himself as well as others; he was no longer just trying to fool me, he was trying to fool himself into another self. After having waited several hours for him at a rendez-vous point from which we were supposed to walk over to a lawyer who owed him money and yadda yadda yadda, I told his wife Bea I was ready to go to the police. I am no good with grudges. Thinking of Farid panicking over being sent to jail filled me with a slow remorse. What's done is done. Steam lost. I wanted so badly to believe Farid, my head is too hard wanting too much to see good, too much to remain open to possibility--to hard to be soft, pliant, malleable, giving. Soon after my proclamation of having had enough I got a small bit of money from Bea and the next day the whole family skips town. Two, three days later, when I'd come to terms with my optimistic hopes being dashed, Farid returns with more promises. We chased the wild goose one last time for old time's sake before he asked me for 80 dirhams. I said no, he went off to search for the money and I was supposed to wait for him. I waited a bit. A handicapped guy came and sat down beside me, and after the initial niceties and settled comfort came the hash offer. He left after a while of silence following my declining the advance. I waited. I left without seeing Farid again.
One day I begin reading very extra slowly, attempting to enter every word and phrase--it was gorgeous, your head, it simply swirls. Akin to walking down the street at 1/4 speed, you notice other things, perhaps deeper structures, become filled with a sense of beauty. Slowness is maybe also a path to the useless and enchanted being towards which I have been inclining. Some time that same day or another proximate, my thoughts started coming to me as sensations. I felt the thoughts as exterior as sense perceptions, exterior to a void (The Void? Atman? Self? Whateveryouliketocallit). The thoughts are things that call themselves a "me", and with a sort of mental sleight-of-hand self-alienation, the I is emptied. It is different and difficult to maintain, another sort of meditation I began to intuit on Elba, which has consequently gestated and returned to me in a more mature form. I think it leads to non-consumed fascination and agreeableness, at least that's the vibe I get from the Buddhists.
As much as there is a satisfied feeling of an additional weight of meaning when conversing in a second language, de temps en temps je me sens comme une fountain of homilies. It's good to find a native English speaker now and again.
Oh yes, no more worms. More vomit and other health annoyances, but I seem to be in what resembles one piece of Jake.
One evening on the way back to the Hotel Andaluz I passed two guys killing time standing against a wall at a three-way intersection. One o of them asked if I spoke English. I replied in the affirmative without a hesitation in my gait. He then asks for an explanation of the word onomatopoeia. What?! I explained, we got on to talking about reading and writing, introduced ourselves and planned to meet up the following day. Locals on my wavelength. How strange. Yay! Mehdi and Patience (I didn't remember his name for a few days. It is Sabir, which means patience. That much I retained.) and I hung out and then ran into some musicians from the South with whom I ended jamming well into the night and from whom I was given my Moroccan name Jelali. The next night the guys from Kenitra and I went to the main square and then up to a sandwich shop where they got into a drunken confrontation with some Chaouenians later exlained away as being due to an offhand racist slur from one of the locals. There was hot speech and close crowding but not much in terms of blows, although one of the guys from Chaouen moved top chase out a Kenitran with a stone or ashtray in hand. To brain him was the thought, I surmised. There was more argument in the small square adjacent to Uta Hammam (the central square) which somehow got diffused. Only ten, fifteen minutes later in the main square more words are had, but with whom I do not recall (could have been the guys from the sandwhich shop following or completely new customers. A turtle gets mugged by two foxes. The police: what happened? The turtle: I couldn't tell, it all happened so quickly.). Words, headbutt, melee. One of the Kenitrans gets knocked over onto the guitar on his back and 5 or 6 people run up to give him a kick to the ribs, nobody viscious enough to aim for his head. I interceded here and there, but wasn't about to do anything where there wasn't ample space to get out of dodge or time to be recognized as a tourist. In fact, I felt strangely safe being Jacques who had been around for nearly two months; some of the Chaouenians recognized me and we talked about whatever it was that was going down. "It was a good fight," said Aziz's friend Ahmed when I gave him the story. Why was it a good fight? Because no blood was spilled, and moreover, they were all good men. And why were they good men? Because nobody brought out a knife; a rock, that's normal, but there are guys who walk around with knives already set to get into it. Everyone I talked to about this had a remark about how in America (or Canada for those under the impression) it would have been guns. The Kenitrans beat a retreat and went looking for the police. We got seperated and I went to get a shrimp and egg sandwich before going to sleep, the image of men rushing up to kick a fallen man still vivid and harsh in my mind.
Tangiers was all bustle and machines and somber light, a real clusterfuck town. Bought a ferry ticket for a boat on its way out just as they were handing me the ticket, some 500 meters away and before customs. I ran for it as best I could after 2 months of little physical exercise to speak of and now two very heavy bags of property. Through customs, to the ramp, a young man helped me with a bag and I offered him a hand full of coins out of which he picked the metal pieces rapaciously, cawing "yes, yes". The ferry had departed by the time I reached the quay, he probably knew this. I showed my ticket to the dock guys who hemmed and hawed for a minute and then said I could use my ticket on the next ferry to Tarifa. Somebody came by and asked from where I hail, again with the nicities and then the pitch--now that you're past customs, do you want any hash? It's from Chefchaouen. I figured he was the duty-free shop until later a man carrying decorative knives and mirrors walked past, looked to me, and I motioned for him to keep walking. Some men from the port came by and asked me from where do I come--America, unfortunately. Pourquoi malhereusement? Too long of a conversation, that, and you already know why. One guy kept saying to me Texas, Oklahoma, and chicken kebab over and over, this man was the head honcho. They started chiming in on how people from America are welcome, but how Bush is not, punctuating this with a gesture of slitting the throat with the thumb. I told them how I got thrown into jail for protesting the war and got several hearty handshakes. Chicken kebab. Mr. TexasOklahomaChickenKebab helped me get to the next ferry and on my way.
On the ferry a man from Guinea struck up a conversation of no real import that lasted most of the hour-long voyage. The bus he'd counted on taking that night was not running, so we split a room at a nearby hostel and split paths in the morning. Bus to Sevilla it was still dark at 7:30am I bought a bottled water and sugarice stick limon and hoofed it 200m or so to the station. Light rain and the bus came; in and out of consciousness;hills with lumps of bushes, thick cloudheads wedged between mountains; field of windwills pinwheels ballerinas save the stayed ones like machines ominously. Arrival and heavy bags. Canadians stupid asking for me to ask directions for them asking to follow me I lead the way not knowing where and nobody on the street seems to know the plaza I'm after. I decline their jocular offer to help carry my bags out of pride or instinct. We walk, heavy bags, heaving chest. Get bad directions that send us in opposite directions and I wish them luck not getting hit by a runaway boulder. I find new directions for myself and walk sweating hot heavy walk for maybe 3/4 hour before finding the hostel which is full up in the beginning of February?! As some consolation, I get invited to a cheap dinner and directed to another hostel. I check in, take a shower, send off a package, and go in search of peanut butter. Success! Nap and go to cheap dinner where I meet and hit it off instantly with a guy from San Francisco with a slight lisp and accent like cousin Eli. Unfortunately, he leaves for Lisbon in 2 hours, so we exchange information and he says "son of David" when I give him my e-mail. How strange.
It is rainy and moderately cold in Sevilla, I spend most of my time indoors trying not to spend money. Around dinnertime the next night, I headed out to find something in my price-range that was not fast-food and happened upon two street guys (read homeless or long-term travellers without steady funding) who spoke English very well. Jonas (pronouned Yonas) and Dragan, born in Sweden and Croatia respectively. At first I thought Jonas was asking for money, but then he said no, a smoke? and I said I don't smoke and that is how it started. Dragan thinks Americans are stupid for calling people African Americans and Latin Americans while whites are just plain Americans. Jonas love Americans because of the 1st and 5th amendments of talking and shutting up. They soon saw the outline of my character and we got along quite well. They were talking about why they give to other beggars or anybody else walking down the street who asks them for a cigarette when they're asking for money. They should give just as soon as receive, Jonas says, life is a circle. Yeah, chimes in Dragan, life is a fucking circle and I know it very well. I write this excellent phrase on the back of my hand and am found out, which I gloss over by explaining it as my way of appreciating things. From this they take it that I want to know about street life, which I do, and so set out to teach me how to beg and how to make people smile and how to make a buck without so much as conventional respectability. The world's a stage, now you try. And so I have to beg until I get something from anybody, even one centime will do. I learn quickly, they say, have great potential and could be living on the street in not but a few weeks' time. I start off timidly and become more playful, finally coaxing some money from a young French guy when I asked him in French for a bit of change for the next beer (I hadn't had a beer, but this was one of Dragan's favored approaches). 65 cents--good score! The guy thought it wasn't much, and apologised for it. You're (becoming) one of us now. At what point are my motivations to be ascribed to novel kicks and when to sincere and deep appreciation? The question is especially difficult because I have a deep appreciation of novelty, as the newness itself pushes at the boundaries of my experience and ideation, allowing for a broader and more profound self. In any case, they treated me as a person, not an observer or source of money. This made me feel good about them and suspicious of myself. Jonas had a slight actorly disconnect with himself, monologizing once in a while. He called himself a Buddhist and speaks 8 languages, his English with a hippyish lilt to it. Probably about my height (impressions of this sort are so difficult to gauge after being mediated by the passing of time), with a shaved head and blond clumps of dreads hanging from the back end. I asked why he was living on the streets, to which he responded with a laugh, saying he hadn't chosen this life and that he'd been looking for jobs in over a handful of countries. I didn't fully buy into this explanation, but let it pass. "People can be hard," he said, "But also people appreciate it when you don't steal and will sometimes give to you because you are honest and non-threatening, sincere and human." Dragan has none of Jonas' theatricality, speaking pointedly, simply, and in a tone, rhythm, accent, with a choice of words that make his astuteness seem cute or comical. He is so matter-of-fact that any unpleasant situations or messages lose any overtones or posturings with ends beyond those presently expressed, they become palatable, even, because they are so devoid of ill will, like something unhuman. He isn't without feeling, just honest. He is a man of about 5 feet 7 inches with a swarthy Eastern European complexion, a swirl of balding scalp at the point from which the grain of the head's skin begins it's spiral outward (seems like an important part of the body, like the point to locate 3 feet backor something where some people say the soul resides and oftentimes referred to as a point from which people see themselves during out of body experiences), a full but not overly full beard, and hands I don't remember but can imagine as being stout. Dragan's mode of begging is asking for 500 euros or, alternately, just a bit to pay for the next beer. He had pictures of when he'd written on a cardboard box something to the effect of "help me pay for a vacation" or just "vacation", and drew a picture of a little island half-circle sticking out from waves and with a palm tree sticking out from it. Here is a link to a site that belongs to some of Dragan's friends, might be worth checking out www.lazybeggers.com. The average passerby wouldn't think of 5 centimes as being worthy to give somebody anybody, butit does make a difference. Other things as well--Dragan sported a furby creature somebody gave him, and Jonas a flag pin with green and white stripes; he didn't know or care for the significance of the flag, just liked it for the colors and the fact that it was a gift. It may be that so many "street people" own dogs because they were strays, and the humans take the advantage to take and receive love from them, as strays themselves, in a way, become benefactors. Dragan lives with a small dog, the kind with short legs. Some month and a half ago he had seen this dog passing by, too skittish to come close, obviously a stray. One day as Dragan was eating, the dog regarded him from a distance. He beckoned it over, it did not come. He threw it a piece of food, it ate, he threw closer, it ate, and closer, it ate, until it was close enough to--LEASH! He threw a leash around it's neck and kept it with him for 5 days, feeding when hungry, petting when in want of attention, wrapping into a blanket when cold. In sum, he took it's freedom to teach it trust and love (Hello birth of governance!), and after the 5 days he let it off the leash to do as it pleased. It has not left his side since, and despite it's learned dependency, it is never physically tethered to anyone. As I am starting to think of leaving their company, I slip some money into Jonas' hat,hoping nobody will see. Jonas sees. He asks if I'm sure. I say that it is for the two of them to share. He says are you kidding? I don't know what that means. He says of course. Dragan isn't party to any of this, he later asks if I want to come with them to a house in which they're squatting and drink and smoke. I decline, then accept, then decline. Jonas invited me to stay in Sevilla and join them, which brought on a slight crisis of identity--insider or outsider, am I ready to do this, do I want this, now, why not, what about my things, what about other things. I did not stay, I was not ready to accept, I was also worried about getting consumption, I did not want to abandon my plans just yet, plans meant to be, built up to be, the hurdle I make myself jump before accepting another life, before uselessness and honesty, the uselessness and honesty of Dragan. But before the night is over Jonas and Dragan got into an argument and Dragan declared their friendship over, suspecting Jonas lied to him about a great sum of money shared between them in the past. Dragan went one way, Jonas another. I went towards my hostel, Jonas' direction. He said maybe he should give me the money back to give it all to Dragan the next day, and quickly rescinded, admitting he did not want to part with his half. He was acting all torn up, I asked if it'd be alright, he responded that it wouldn't be alright, but to have a nice life. Overdramatic and he walked off as I went into the hostel, but first watched him go off without a backwards glance--he was acting for and within himself, not me.
The bus back to Tarifa from Sevilla was accompanied by a soundtrack of mass produced lovesongs for mass consumption. The ferry was quiet. Back at the Tangiers port, I got picked out by a faux guide who told me there was no way to Marrakesh that night because it was the birthday of the king, Mohammed VI (lie). We do the dance for a while and another guy ends up picking me up and bringing me to the bus station (what's your name? Abdel. Abdel what, Abdel Malik or... Yeah, Abdel Malik, you got it on the first try, ha. Gee, what a quick-witted hustler you are Mr.Abdel Malik), getting me a good price for a 1am bus, and hustling me out of a wad of cash, and then asking for a souvenir of me (you will always remember me, but give me something to remember you). As he leaves me to attend my bus, he says "don't talk to anybody, watch your bags, and don't trust anybody." He must've been chuckling with that last one, thinking himself so clever to be telling me implicitly that I shouldn't have trusted him. I wait in the station, finish Ulysses, and am approached by two young men. They sit down and make nice, par for the course so far. I am Canadian. What color is your passport? Blue. Blue?, I've never seen a blue passport before, can I see it? No, it is with my things, I don't want to take it out here, no offense. Wow, a blue passport. More making conversation. I live in France and am looking to buy a European passport or a Canadian one. Buy one? Yes, for 2 or 3 thousand euro, are you interested? No, nice offer, but not for me. Yes, it is a good offer. But not for me. More talk. Say, why don't you come stay with me in Fés. Already bought my ticket to Marrakesh, thanks. Here's my mobile number, do you have one? No, what would I use it for, I'm from Canada. Do you have SMS, hotmail, yahoo? I have gmail, another e-mail provider. Period. No, I'm not going to offer it to you, chump. They exit stage right. I catch my bus and figure out how to get the seat to recline about 6 hours into the trip.
Now in Marrakesh, I've got a nice room to myself and the hotel has a terrace cafe that overlooks the main square, Djemaa el-Fna. There is no traveller scene of which to speak at the hotel, just tourists. A couple days of running around the city and I got bad food poisoning from which I'm still recovering. There is something rotten in the city, something malignant. Less interaction than transaction. You can see it in the swarms of people around Djemaa el-Fna in the evenings, people passing one another huddled in their own night.
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