WALKING ON THIN ICE

to lighten my backpack load in madrid, i tossed two print-outs of our poetry, then tore the blank paper off a bunch of lady k’s poems and kept the poems because they were too good to trash. i lost 6 pounds of pack by trashing poetry, art supplies and found objects for assemblage. our art supplies are down to 2 bottles of copper powder, a bottle iridescent white paint, a few shards of rusted bed springs from croatia, and a chunk of hash (i included the hash because we list it as “art supplies” on our financial sheet). in the clean-up, i found this poem i’d forgotten

Lady K

If Eve hadn’t given Adam that apple
I wouldn’t be smoking today.
Even so,
I tried to serve Sky God
but was drawn to that old Debbil Weed.
I became a happy pappy
papa puff daddy
gadfly to gladly
nouveau bohemian in old school crowd.
Sir Laugh-a-Lot of Pot-a-Lot
Queen MaryJaned
Lady Day to Lady K
Kafka to a kiss

when lady k first came into my life 19 months ago, she was so dark strange insane i called her kafka’s lady. as i helped lighten her darkness, i realized she was strangely sane, so i started calling her lady kafka, and that morphed to lady k. she’s still strange, thank goodness, but the dark’s departed. now we dance in moroccan light.

. . . . . . .

in house in walled city, we all ate from one plate. our host smoked hash mixed with tobacco - the one drug my body never took to - so i put piece of hash on a toothpick, lit it, and inhaled. night before at hotel with no water glass to capture the smoke, i cut a plastic liter water bottle into a smoking glass… assemblage artists are used to making do with what’s around within reach.

streets here are lined with orange trees full of oranges and vast herds of palm trees - thousands upon thousands of palms. this must be their sacred wintering grounds. gorgeous red and flaming magenta flowers everywhere. the sun when out is amazingly hot. the weather skips from mostly sun to rain to mini dust storm. intricate tiled patterns everywhere. repeated pattern is a reminder of god and the interconnectedness of all.

there’s a bit of english thrown my way now and then, but mostly i hear french or arabic. lady’s picking up french faster here than in france.

lady’s last blog ended with her feeling bad about the wee mewling kitten. i tried to make her feel better by telling her that even if we’d picked it up and brought it home, after i’d cleaned and skinned it, there wouldn’t have been enough of it left to eat..

. . . . . . .

time to put on our packs, do the old double shuffle carry to our new digs. our 6th moving on since we left albeihlan france 8 days ago.

citywide prayer woke us 4:30 a.m. - we hear the city pray / chant / sing repeatedly through the day. we’re traveling in a movie soundtrack, the scenes outside from art house films.

we displaced a nice retired french speaking belgium lady from her own home for 4 days. it’s a 6th floor multi-roomed apartment looking out over the Medina, the old city’s wall is 2 blocks away from the balcony. though two blocks here can be dangerous if you have to cross the street - you need to be nimble, calculate gaps, and hope for future and fortune.

we were to rent an apartment for 12 days 2 floors down, then rent the belgium lady’s place for 18 more days while she flew to europe. but when we came to move in today, we found a glitch - the folk there had 4 more days. so the belgium lady insisted we live here 4 days and she went to stay with a friend. this is a different world.

we are complete strangers, and strange, in this strange land. we stick out, folks watch us. our first day here we were picked up by a berber guide who knew we needed him before we knew we needed him. there’s no way we would have had such a propitious start without his help. we’d probably still be wandering the alleyways of the old city, trying to get back out. once we went to his house and met his family, everything changed. lady k’s going to have him show her how and where to shop, how to barter. he told us to ditch our ever present small backpacks because it’s a dangerous mark of tourist status. it would be so easy to be taken advantage of here - and i spose we are in that we overpay for everything so far - but our berber friend has made this a magic rather than a tragic start. who knows what is ahead, but this beginning is fairy tale fine..

it was a weird adventure our first trip into the Medina… as we went deeper in the twisty maze of alleys, i tried to first memorize sight clues to retrace my steps, then started writing down clues, then started taking a foto of each turn, and then gave up - except for my compass - i figured worse case scenario i could eventually get us back out alone using my compass. there were moments we wondered if we were in trouble being in too deep with no people around - had we not had the good fortune of a good man as guide, we may have been. sometimes it all comes down to luck and karma.

this world of Islam we’re seeing is nothing like we’ve been indoctrinated in america to expect - the folks we’ve met seem happier, kinder, gentler, more connected to the cycle of life than most. this is a poor country, so money is an abiding factor here, but courtesy, politeness, quality of life are serious aspects of the warp and woof as well.

from our roof you look out over the old city, the minarets, the mosques, and see the mountains in the distance surrounding the city. above the mountains a blue grey haze. and above the haze, what looks like magic clouds hovering but are bigger blue black mountains topped with snow. looks like a hollywood movie special effects scene. we walk through our own photographs, inhabit our own foreign film.

today i recover, do wash, sleep, relax - gotta get basic chores done every chance i get because i never know when i can clean the clothes or body again. i worry about getting enough water into my body, then getting it back out of my body, cleaning clothes and body, where to sleep, what to find to eat, and how to escape my backpack. after that, it’s all companionship, experience, and creation. not a bad life.

it’s been quite a journey, a journey that seems to be but beginning. i am so glad we stepped off the edge and came. before we left, lady k read that spiders fall to float - they start a strand of web, then jump into the void hoping the air currents will carry them to the other side. if they don’t, they crawl back up the web and fall again and again until they reach the other side. lady k says we’re falling to float. don’t know where the other side is, but we definitely jumped from the side we were on.