Hit Essaouira--bust. Some beautiful sights, but it smelled and was too windy. Windiness begot coldness. Touristicness begot overpricedness and unloveliness. Bad sewage treatment begot smelliness and smelliness begot queasiness and queasiness begot discomfortness and discomfortness begot dementianess and dementianess begot departureness. Genealogies of knots and dissolution. It wasn't all bad, however; I met a few people, rode over a meter-wide stream on a camel's back, realized how much I actually do love long walks on the beach, climbed among the ruins of a palace once inhabited by royalty, then Jimi Hendrix, now goats, sand dunes, and brush. I began outlining the novel and was met by disastrous disaster, which was mitigated by a small influx of ideas the following morning--what wonders the sleeping mind. Not to mention another book idea, which I had already started before having the idea of it. I was struck severally by whole stanzas of poetry. It was good, but felt too easy, as though I'd reached a plateau and now need to find the next sheer face of rockish headspace.
The bus to Agadir was driven by a madman who made the baby behind me cry and the kid in front throw up. I nearly lost my lunch, too, and I hadn't eaten yet. One more bus and I'd arrived in Mirleft.
Simply gorgeous. Even the ugliest thing couldn't help but feel beautiful, or part of something beautiful, here. I've already met about half the population of the town; on the whole, they are the most welcoming and sincere people I've come across in the Maroc. The only drawback being that once you step onto the street, you are immediately hailed to 3 different cafés and have to be a person, or at least person-like (personesque?). It is unfortunate my photos aren't registering when I try to upload them to this blog; imagine the pastoral shots in "Brokeback Mountain", only with the Atlantic to one side of the rolling hills and Italian clouds. Getting along swimmingly with one dude in particular, Rachid; it's nice to click.
Right off the bat I rented out an apartment, which I have now left for the social scene of a plush hotel on the cow-and-pumpkin main strip. And when the cow eats the pumpkin, eveybody goes home. The mother who owned the apartment I'd rented for some few days tried to guilt me, frenchlessly, into staying and then proceeded to foist a gold ring upon me. I fought off this gift for ten minutes and did win out (out of which I did win?). Firstly, I didn't want to be indebted to her, as she was almost surely going after, or after which she was most surely going (but where? and before which?). And then there is the little piece of information I'd read in Lonely Planet and retained for some reason or another about the Berber people thinking of gold as evil, in which case, I was trying not to accept a cursed gift. Curses and tricks aside, the family was hospitable to a fault.
With some luck, I chanced into a few good people I'd met around Morocco--Aliya and Josh from Chefchaouen from Canada and Dave from Essaouira from the UK (uk?). Funny little town it is. Rachid told me of what he called the Tradition of marrying a French girl and moving to France. Then somebody else said Crazy Ibrahim went crazy after theiving in the mountains for some time and the villagers across the board all prayed he would stop. Then he was crazy and everybody witnessed the quick turnover period of Allah's incoming messages. That being said, the empiricist in me would counsel you that if your prayers aren't answered quickly, don't hold your breath.
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