Peeing in the Bidet and Other New Developments

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!