Twice-Converted

One of the first things you'll notice driving the highway from Agadir to Tangiers is that there are cops holding what look like 19th century cameras at right angles to their eyes while dressed in their pretty suits and standing in the bushes. They only pop up every half hour or so, thus greatly reducing the chances of actually photographing one of these marvelous creatures in their newly adopted habitats when speeding by at a whopping 80km/h. Thanks to the French plates on Emilie and Sliman's camper, we didn't have to bribe our way out of any bullshit. The first night we stopped in Marrakech, I ate brain and slept in a tent just off the highway. Wasn't too keen on the sleeping situation, but the camper blocked my tent from sight, and I have strong enough lungs to wake up Emilie and Sliman 5 feet and one metal door away, if need be. I was refreshed in the morning (think it was the brain) and ready for another day of driving and music played too loud. Being on the road is almost a surefire bet to spark a rash of optimism, and it did...more or less.

The second night we camped in a mobile home lot. The most precious memory of this place was walking into the public bathroom and watching a guy combing his hair in the mirror; nothing particularly odd, it just struck me. Next day Emilie and Sliman dropped me in Tangiers as they made way for France. Took a bus from Tangiers to Ceuta/Sebta, a Spanish city on the Moroccan mainland. Whoever says Spain isn't part of Africa, I'd like to give'm a knuckle sandwich. At the border I was approached by a Moroccan with immigration forms, proffering his pen, telling me what each line required (It's okay, I can read English. French, too); I knew where this was going, but for some reason or other, allowed the drama to play out. After the form was filled I got the money hastle, responded with a reprimand (pliantly accepted!), gave the guy 5 dirhams, and was called a good man by an on-looker (couldn't tell if he was mocking me by playing the Uncle Tom). And so I went through the border and explored Ceuta for about three hours before heading back from "Spain" into Morocco. Three hours was enough for me to get a sense of this border town--everybody looks like they've done something wrong and they're trying to blame it on you. The people who live there know what they're doing, and the people who move there do, too. Also, I stopped by a gas station convenience store to pick up some Christ of the Sea mussels, fruit juice, a fun-size can of Pringles with which to scoop aforementioned Christ of the Sea mussels, an ice cream sandwich, and a 70 centiliter bottle of Gordon's Special Import Gin.

With my booty in tow, I walked toward the Moroccan border. This time, instead of letting the immigration slip get out of hand, I just took it from the guy offering them, said thanks, and walked on to the line ahead of me. He attempted to explain the sheet to me and I told him it was in my language, so I didn't need his help. He went back to his perch and muttered something in Arabic I could tell was directed at me, and so I asked him --What? --what? --you said something and I didn't understand --you didn't understand? --no, I didn't (everybody in line is looking over their shoulders despite the cordial affect we've both taken on) --oh, I said thank you --hmm. That was it, I filled out my form in peace and waited in line until this man was moved (good will? resignation? respect?) to tell me I could find a shorter line for non-Moroccans around the corner, and indeed, I did. The Moroccan immigration officer gave me a bit of grief, but stamped me through in the end. Then it was a bus to Tangiers and the night train to Marrakech. Then the bus to Tiznit. Then the grand taxi to Mirleft. And I'm back. Hard travel turned me into a grump for a day or two, made me want to make someone cry so I'd cry. On the up and up, now; finished a poem (though I don't believe it is finished with me) which is over on The Euphemist, enjoying not having to do anything I don't want (to do) or my body doesn't require (from me), playing at various virtual personalities. Narration is an ironicization of the self. Is that even a word?

Infamy! Infamy! They've All Got It In Fa Me!

I wonder why things so often look more beautiful when in parallax, is it the excitement of a contemporaneous revelation and concealment, creating an object grasped by the mind in multiple intimacies smoothed in motion rather than the asperous edges of cubist pastiche? I look out the side window of a grand taxi, the hills the clouds the ocean. The clouds cast their insupportable shadows onto hills folded like fabric or skin, trod over the ocean and sunset, but lightly, somehow. The clouds are habitual, they inhabit your sense of the sky and disappear into themselves. The hills are habitual, the ocean is habitual. The horizon wanes, you are full of forgetfulness, and the world becomes like a thin sleep over you, eyes, skin, fingernails and all. Indulgent prose perhaps. I've found myself slipping into this decadence with some frequency as of late, as if my mind is trying to enchant itself and swallow the intellect. I am conscious of this lullaby, but am mesmerised. Feels like underwater fits and starts. Hoping the trip to the Spanish border this week will do me some good, that the movement will provide a revitalizing parallax of consciousness. Ran back and forth between cities North and South of Mirleft, trying to renew my visa without leaving the country. Too many kilometers, 200 dirhams in bribes, 3 days, several dopey motherfuckers and 2 upholstered doors later, I succumbed to the bureaucratic hope-vacuum. In fact, there was a hotel just next to the gendarmes station, called The Crazy Hope--should I have seen it coming?

The past week the hotel was filled with men of less than average height, the women were unremarkable. I met an aspiring novelist and an actress, both of whom upset me with what I perceived to be a lack of magic. A more likely source of my dismay was that they both seemed preoccupied with the practical outlying territories of their respective arts, which thus invested our exchanges with mediocritization of the sublime and infected me with this same preoccupation. Now in recovery. I have been making a bit of headway with the project I'm at; believe I've got a handle on one organizational thread, which should be enough to suss out the others and weave it all together.

Oh yeah, and here's a little story Youssef likes to tell sometimes when on the subject of religion:

a muslim came to a jew and it was ramadan. he needed a loan and his friend the jew next door could probably help him out of the bind. knock, knock, went the muslim at the door of the jew next door, his neighbor. the jew came to answer the door and was wondering who could it be at the door. it was the muslim looking for a loan and he said so, asking the jew. the jew said come in neighbor muslim and share a meal with us my family, and then we can sort out whatever needs sorting out, on a full stomach and with a clean mind. it is not yet sunset, said the muslim from next door, and it is ramadan, and therefore i cannot eat with you. i will eat with you after sunset, but the loan i need now, my friend the jew next door. the jew said, no, just come in and eat with my family, my wife has prepared a sumptuous meal plentiful enough to nourish the russian infantry. but it is ramadan, and so i cannot, replied the muslim. just share our table with us and i will give you your loan. and so the muslim ate with the jew family on ramadan, desperate for a solution to his financial crisis. when the meal was cleared from the table, the muslim asked again for the loan his friend the jew neighbor next door had promised him the muslim who broke his fast on ramadan. the jew took him to the front door, next door to the muslim's front door, the house's threshhold, and said goodbye. and what about the money, the bewildered muslim demanded. to this the jew replied: if you are not fearful of your god, how will you be fearful of me when i come to collect my recompense. the end.

Let's Assume (X) Until We Have To Assume Otherwise

The other day Phil, an Englishman who's been travelling for the past 9 or so years, and I walked up a hill to the ruined old Casbah. Why was it ruined? Well, the damned thing seems to be built of sandstone. Kids take ten minutes with a rock and they've carved their name a quarter inch deep into the old barracks. As we walked back into town, Phil wanted to stop by a work-working shop and pick up a present for one of his grandkids. And so we did. A young man and woman received us, Phil bargained for a trinket, the deal went through. And out we--no, wait. The man tells me the girl wants to know my name: Jacques. He says she wants to give me her phone number: I take it. Do I have a number: Well, alright. She wants to make me a present I can come by to pick up tomorrow: No, too kind, don't want to put you to any trouble. No, it's no trouble... Boils down to me saying I'll come back to receive my present from this girl who has yet to speak two words, let alone allow an expression to pass over her face. We left. The next day I played chess and did not visit, though at one point the man from the wooden-things shop walked by and asked if I was coming: yeah, later. And so the next day, I returned, alone. Salaam Aleikoum... Nobody in the shop, hurrah! Oh, here she comes. I'm brought to the back room and sit down with the family as they finish their lunch and coerce me into eating with them. Jacques, from America, not married (shit, why didn't I lie? curiosity, I suppose), travelling alone, no, he's not my father, staying in Mirleft for a while, from America, Chicago... You get the point. The two of us get sent off by the rest of the family to go back to the house and get the present she's prepared for me. I'm suspicious, not without reason, of everything going on. They could be sending us off so later they can claim I took her virginity and have to marry her--two things of which I will not be having a part. We go, she speaks French poorly and asks me about France. I attempt to get it across that I'm from America, not France, and the furthest I get in this endeavor is instead being asked about life in Mauritania, but this only lasts the length of a goldfish's memory and then we are back to France. We arrive at the house and knock to be let in. No answer for some minutes, and I say pas grave, I don't need the present now (or ever). We are permitted entrance shortly thereafter. Zahara goes into a room and pulls out a diamond-shaped wooden block with the initial J inlaid in silver. She asks for my e-mail, we exchange e-mails. She suggests a walk to the beach. Oh no, alright. It takes about half an hour to walk to the beach, the sun is strong and she's wearing a parka over her sweater without complaint. She talks to me in fragments about money and Morocco being no good and France is the promised land and how I am pretty and we could get married. I respond with the opposite tack, parrying and feinting for each thrust. I say I don't believe in marriage, that it is a form slavery, that France is a hellhole and Morocco is paradise, that money means nothing--laying it all on as thickly as I can, while trying to remain in her good favor so that she wouldn't go along with attempts to defame and marry me against my will should such events come to pass. At the beach, we come across Crazy Ibrahim--I have a witness! No, but he's Crazy Ibrahim. We sit and talk about more of the same nothing, her scalp is greasy and she's wearing a parka over her sweater in the strong sun while trying to make conversation which is obviously floundering. I feel bad for the girl and am slightly upset with myself for being in this situation. She teaches me the Berber word for rock: azrou, and we go back. I say goodbye, as does she with a tint of defeat, and hope this to be a story without sequel.

Another the other day, I passed a dead dog in the dust, repassed it some hours later and it had lifted its head to pant some pants and I thought how could this not mean something, how could this not be shouting at me to listen up. Then another day there was a baby donkey outside the internet
café pushing its snout at something in the dusty right angle where street and sidewalk end one another. And some other day I came across a litter of new-born pups in a cactus patch. Just thought I'd share that.

Brief example of how to reread this blog: The other day Why was it ruined? with a rock and they've wanted a young man wait, the man phone number. Well, don't want alright to tell you she wants to make me to give me no trouble...

The things we save for people about whom we care less.

How Do You Tell Your Good Days From Your Bad Days

Two new poems posted on The Euphemist, one of which might be very good. And I've still got a mild case of cold feet for a mohawk. The maids make my bed every day and the room smells good and not like me. Found peanut butter, but it needs a slight honey modification. I feel as though I've lost the capacity, or just the will, to express myself in coherent narratives. Have become fond of (or trapped by) ambient, enigmatic expression, as though my words are the expositional section of the fugue of my consciousness, sounding out the subject and it's false answers. I demand a synthesis from the dialectic between the comforting solipsistic thesis that the richness of life is more important than that speculative inference which leaves no room for living, that steps make the path and living is the frontier of life, and the paralysing historico-objective ideal antithesis. Synthesis or dissolution. Many people and flying daylight. A German photographer took some portrait shots of me; it was uncomfortable to think myself the object of our attention, the disjunct between me as a face and me as a me, and don't get me wrong, and attention, and management. My god, always the same face, hair, body--I'm surprised people don't get bored out of their minds looking at each other. Uncomfortable until I realized myself art object and collaborating artist. Playing a few games of chess a day and finding this same fugue-like interface with the world keeps me from caring too terribly much about much other than constants imminent and eminent. Respectfulness and deference) are oftentimes avoidances of interaction. People are different on vacation, I think. I'm getting more sensitive to enjoying people, so that when they leave it is as if I'd attached a little piece of my heart to them, feeling the pinch of pain and regenerating tissue. Phil, Mehdi, Marie, Hussein, Chase, Norbert, Megan and others.

A non-feeling like white cow in a snowstorm occasionally; of sentiment a wall discovering, others.

Allah's Inbox

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.

He Was Drunk And Everything Seemed Hilarious

Last week in Marrakesh was my last week in Marrakesh; this week was Rabat staying with Noel, a Cameroonian soon-to-be kinesiotherapist who reminds me of Henry Miller. Noel's taken me on as a little brother of sorts, and is one of the few people I've met in Morocco with whom I feel I can interact as a whole self. And tomorrow I leave for the windy beaches of Essaouira and Mirleft.

Went to a bar with two Germans I'd met in Marrakesh and who were passing through Rabat. A Moroccan who apparently lived in the States for some 25 years began talking with us. It was hilarious--I understood where the Germans were coming from, where the Moroccan was coming from, and where I was coming from, while each of them appeared to be in the dark concerning anyone else's take on the interaction. The Moroccan, Mahjoub, told us his cousin owned the bar and that it's for, surprise, prostitutes (not surprise prostitutes (I think)). He bought three or four rounds for us. I went to the bathroom and some drunk walked hunched out of a stall, telling me, "oui, vous pouvez entrer, et soyez le bienvenue au Maroc":yes, you can go in, and welcome to Morocco. I filled three hands worth of notes that night. Wondering, though, if this note-taking is vampiric, like photography; an admission of impotent neglect of the moment, where the place is absent from the self and the self from the self and the place. Still chewing on that one--if you don't like the answer, ask again.

Met back up with Sabir from Chefchaouen, he studies here in Rabat. Was treated by him and his friends as a philosophy faucet to spew out conjectures on various prompts. Didn't do much for the ego, as I didn't greatly value those objectifying me as teacher thing.

In Marrakesh I accidentally ate a semi-rancid eclair after having left it out for two days. That afternoon some guy starts up a conversation with me and I talk to him, as he doesn't seem bad, per se. He invites me and the Germans (Andreas and Laura) to drink a coffee with him, okay. He wants us to buy hashish, less than one gram for 150 dirhams--ridiculous ridiculous ridiculous. The going rate is 20dh/g is what I tell him. I make it known he is not on my good side, moreover that I do not like him and tell him he can leave us. Just then, Laura comes over and suggests we all go to the alcohol market together. Laura and Andreas are new and have not caught on to the fact that this guy is no good. We go. It occurs to me that Laura looks like what I'd imagine Emma Gerstein, Ruth's childhood best friend, to look like at her age, 21. We have the same birthday, I think only the second person I've ever met with the same birthday as me. We go to the alcohol market down the stairs of an unmarked door with a man standing watch. It is mayhem down in this cramped speakeasy-like place, people coming and going as fast as they can, trying to escape the eyes of God or the king's police. I tell this dude who has tagged along with his cousin that he needs to pay for his beers if he wants any. Of course, he has no money on him and promises reimbursement, he just needs to go by the post office on our way back to Djemaa el-Fna. It is nearly 8pm, the post is closed and we know this. Things are confused, we all leave. He starts telling me to translate to Laura how he wants to spend the night with her and how she is beautiful and stupid shit. I do translate in hopes that she would understand this guy is an ass. No definitive luck. The guy tells me I don't trust him and I sat yeah, that's how I am. He responds by saying he hopes we become very good friends. I say inshallah--if God wants. We go for dinner and beforehand I ask him if he has money to eat, since he didn't have money for beer. Beat him to the punch so there's no oops, I have no money or oh, I thought you'd invited me. He says he's not hungry. We eat. We go back to the hotel and he is still pushing hash at Andreas and dick at Laura. He drinks 3 of their beers without asking, spills by my bed without saying anything about it, and I find the puddle upon coming back to my room at the end of the night. Didn't see him again and all the happier for it.

Rabat has been good. Looking forward to creating a new space for myself. Over and out.

What Comes Of The Idiosyncracies Of An Unwitting Solipsist?

I picked up a poem I'd started one night in Fés, it's now on The Euphemist. Just a little thing. Now revising a story about which I don't know how I feel. It's been happening a lot with narrative lately, my own and others--I just don't seem to have that discriminative faculty to the same extent as I used to. Easier with poetry, but not hugely. It's as though, paradoxically, the more I look, the less I see--the more perceptive, fewer borders drawn--enchanted by language rather than any particular usage, everything being good as what it is. We'll see, I guess. It is both disconcerting and exciting to be mystified by even myself, to fall into formlessness or habit and not know into what degree of either one falls. The joys of particularity are envisioning imperfections as perfect, or at least as radically uncertain (joyously arbitrary). Either I have lost some assumptions or they have become invisible.

I feel sane, and in a good way. There are a few gnats in my room with whom I've been trying to figure out how to make friends, but I keep forgetting this and blowing them away when they get close. Not that they are substitutes for humans, or even for pets, but curious presences. Curious presences which I can personify while zoomorphing myself. Still, there is sanity in this.

My words are leading my thoughts, unsteady ground of intuition does not belong to the order of trust and accountability. Words coming before meanings, the watery movement, easy and

I met Jalal 2 at a café and he said I was only two minutes late; I pulled out my watch and it said I was on time. I showed him and said perhaps my watch is off, I can change it later. It was very Moroccan of him to tell me I was 2 minutes late and not give a thought that he may have the wrong time. Perhaps there is something implicit in making a rendez-vous that one must arrive early to avoid being late. I do not care. A man passed by in a three-wheeled wheelchair-like contraption appearing to have some degenerative muscle disease. Watching him and imagining how much he must rely on others, how decimated his independence, I reflected on how ridiculous was the man strutting by in his leather jacket that he walked with what appeared to be so much self-importance or so little fragile humility or such misplaced values. This I read into/projected onto twenty seconds of some stranger's day. I feel very human.

We went to see some tombs, there was a room for children. All those little unknowing bodies. Then we saw two palaces and waited to meet up with Jalal's girlfriend. I accidentally drank tap water, but it was fine (which reminds me for some reason of someone's story about arriving in Delhi I think during a flood and seeing dog carcasses being swept off on the tide). The girlfriend arrived and was cold cold, clearly upset with Jalal for something and not willing to humor anybody. Jalal was dopely trying to pull her hand onto his thigh and she pulled it back again and again as he lovingly told me several times how she was his "puss" and asking isn't she pretty. I should have gotten up and left, but instead I left my body at the table and refused to take on any awkwardness.

That same night I went with Jalal 1, Premier Jalal, to the hookah bar, Audisia. He and another worker, Mustapha, and I walked in the same direction as their boss, who was on his way home. When our path diverged from his, we waited about 20 seconds and turned back around to hail a cab. As we turned onto the club's street, the cabbie asked if we were going to mosque. We entered an unmarked door to the side of the main entrance where the Italians and I had entered the week before. Apparently the downstairs is for the older crowd, described to me as a livingroom. We ascended a staircase and came into a room of benches, music, and smoke. Neon lights outlined the moulding and strobed slowly all night. It seems as though the drinks are half as expensive if you come with your own Moroccans. Everybody was having a good time together, not trying to prove or judge anything; I was relatively at ease. A girl named Selma sitting with us began smoking a cigarette with her navel. Another girl picked me out to dance in the crowded space narrowly afforded by the benches. Reticent at first, I danced and began to enjoy myself, getting compliments on my dancing and then another wave of constriction. She looked at her watch while dancing and I was loose enough to freely be myself in the midst of whomever, so I took her wrist and pretended to study the watch, mockingly approving of the time. I sat down and the girl continued dancing at me. Jalal remarked approvingly, "look at the waves" of her butt. Her eyebrows were very precise or painted and not very expressive, her face was some mix of uncertainty, thoughtlessness, and boredom. She bent over to tell me something. Give me money. I laughed and said what? She repeated for me and I laughed again and she talked to Premier Jalal. He told her to knock it off, we hung out a bit longer and then called it a night. I have resolved that the next time I am propositioned by a hooker, I will tell her she can pay for me.

One does not learn to dance, but unlearns what keeps one from dancing.