WALKING ON THIN ICE

night 1.
we’ve expressed to marrakech, from spain we hied to be.

we lived 7 weeks in the land of kafka. 8 weeks in the land of camus, 13 weeks in one of tesla’s lands, 4 days in cervante picasso country. morocco’s william s. burroughs to me.

madrid got the last word - its airport cafeteria gave me food poisoning as we left. i had to hold myself together on the 2 hour plane ride and the hour through customs to the hotel. so once again i’m ahead of the norm - i got the runs before getting to morocco. spent my first evening here in the water closet. i swear monty python’s writing my life story. thank python i’ve a sense of humor… at least i’ve lost another couple pounds in the process. gone from 190 last december when my heart started mis-beating its freeform solos down to 176 this morning - that’s the sliver of silver lining in reality’s wicked wicked sense of humor.

the madrid airport tvs listed platform B for our flight, but the counter clerk said A. we went to A, and the tv said it would be B20. i said “aha, surrealistic bingo.” i sat down on an empty bench to jot a note, and the other end tipped up in the air like a see-saw and i saw the floor from its point of view. we go back to B20. 15 minutes before boarding, the tv decides it’s going to be A2 after all. surrealistic pillow anyone?

while waiting to board, lady k cleans out her bag, tearing the sensitive identity theft word bits out of the papers she’s throwing away. she puts the torn word bits in her mouth and eats them. guess this must be how poets replenish their word wells. i tell her if she’s that hungry, i can feed her.

well we’re here in north west africa, and we both feel a bit overwhelmed. told lady k we’re doomed, that marrakech will devour us, we’ll never be seen again… our madrid blogs yesterday will be the last we’re heard from. folk will wonder what happened to the smiths… we’ll become famous. then i suggest we be silent for a month just to make folks wonder.

ate our breakfast under the north african sky out in the courtyard amongst the palm trees, green grass, large red flowers on big bushes. we don’t know what we’re doing, but we’re doing it. and excited by it. we have last night & tonight in an ibis hotel, & a third night reserved in a riad - a palace-like luxury hotel in the old city. that gives us today and tomorrow to find a place to rent for a month.

our clothes are getting stinky… we were spoiled the past 5 months with having a washing machine and an outdoor line to dry. once we rent our own place, i can start washing clothes in the sink and hanging them about the room. i get any stinkier, stray street dogs are going to start mounting me.

our maps show nameless streets in the old city. around me i hear arabic, french, italian, spanish, german, english. we’re off the map, in the land of babel.

flying in at night, the lights of marrakech morphed from a jeweled scarab beetle to a mutant spider to the cosmic turtle carrying earth through space. earlier i looked down at the cloud catcher african mountains - on one side an endless sea of clouds, on the other open earth.

day 1.
dazed too. walked this morning to the medina - the old walled inner city. thought we’d get a feel before looking for longer lodgings. 4 hours later guided out with an invitation to dinner with an appointment for maybe 4 week apartment inner city, and a good chunk of brown moroccon hash that’s stronger than any i’ve known.

if we live in the inner city, it’ll be the first time i’ve moved to the inner circle.

going into what i knew was a maze, i first memorized how to return. then turns took turns too many, so i start taking fotos of each fractal alley branch. eventually give up entirely. felt safe with the man we were with with his half-missing middle finger. have to trust someone who can’t give you the finger. carpentry accident still bandaged and bled. he wove us through much of medina - forges, bath house bath boilers, stone bakers, metalsmiths, wood in-layers, weavers, foot wood lathers, mosques, chickens, cats, donkeys, sheep, antiquity, 2 foot high arched stone passways, everyone everywhere doing or selling something.

i asked where i could score hash and it shifted - took us to his house, met his family, had sweet mint tea and homemade pastries with the missus, met two teen sons, got asked for dinner tomorrow and help perhaps finding lodging.

life is strange, love is sane. half way in to the medina i’m thinking i’m out of my league, maybe marrakech is a mistake, maybe move on. now we’re seeking siting.

bought a lighter with a hamster on it because in london lady k says to me “there’s something in the hamster needs washing.” i often wonder what in the hamster it was.

day 2 not over yet. we’re to rent a 4th floor double balcony apartment overlooking the old city, 3 blocks beyond the wall. had dinner/lunch with abdul assasi and his son. watched his wife thrice steam cook and fluff the couscous. much goodness, many threads to the weave. perhaps the most complicated 2 days i’ve stumbled into. thank python for an understanding universe. all this but a taste - more tomorrow when we have a base.

(actually, none of this is happening. england, amsterdam, krakow, croatia, italy, france, spain, morocco have all been illusion - lady k and i never left cleveland. all this time we’ve been living beneath the stadium tending mushroom herds in the dark… we just made all this up to fool our friends into thinking we left america 8 and a half months ago. today at lunch our host said the harry potter movie on the tv wasn’t reality. lady k said “what is reality?,” and the teenaged son said “exactly” and broke out laughing).