WALKING ON THIN ICE

marrakech is a barter and favor town, whereas i’m a fixed price kind of guy. i’m also an analyzer, a flow-arounder - skills i cannot utilize here because i’ve a paucity of input to evaluate, and what input there is, none’s in english. it’s as if i’ve taken all my mental abilities and gone to a place where they don’t matter. so i’m down to karma and luck. one can never safely evaluate one’s own karma - and luck is, well, luck. sometimes i think a good heart and fantastic luck is all that’s gotten me through 61 years of misadventure… sure hasn’t been prudence or planning.

lady k bought a white jellaba - that’s one of the full length hooded robes you see in star wars. with the hood up, she looks like princess leia walking through the old city. i bought a white loose morrocan top. had to haggle. paid too much. abdul made him throw in a pair of baggy blue morrocan pants and return some money. since i’m getting all these clothes, maybe i should stop shaving my head, let my hair hang, go hippie. i got the dope and the chick, may as well do the hair and clothes… except once you discover the freedom of shaving your head, it’s nigh impossible to go back to having hair. especially if you travel and are unsure of your next shower.

i think basic smith is shaved head, black jeans, black t-shirt with something enigmatic printed on it, and white beard. at the d.a. levy festival 2 years ago, a cameraman read my t-shirt that said “The broken light bulb at the end of the hallway tour” (for Harry Dean Stanton with The Call) - he told me that was the saddest thing he’d ever read. Lady K says my enigmatic t-shirts were what first caught her eye… then my poetry. see, cool clothes and poems do get you women.

i was with the hippies back in 1968, but never of the hippies. seems i was never OF any one group, tribe, clan. closest community i’ve found are poets and artists. now, 39 years after the hippies, i’m finally starting to live the life. talk about being a slow starter.

lady k is cooking dinner in 2 nights for abdul’s family. he brought some pots over tonight to loan her. we offered him some of our hash and he said the same thing i’ve heard repeatedly across america since i started smoking in 1968 - “here, use mine, it’s stronger.” he was right, it was stonger - so of course i ordered a pinky finger’s worth of his.

i love being stoned, and i love being in a strange place. but neither are enough by themselves because that still leaves purpose. what here in all this chaos is my purpose? what do i do in this bailiwick of confusion? what am i to glean? perhaps my purpose is to lose my purpose - i am after all the “agent of chaos (dot com)”. can’t believe after 61 years i’m still looking for purpose.

lady’s creatively bursting. her french is sprouting, her camera eye focused, her written words running wonderfully well, and her latest uploaded video of the marrakech souks is especially cool. and she’s set up her assemblage work area to start making art. i suspect my purpose may be to provide lady k the track on which to run, the board from which to spring.

as for me, i’m to keep on shadow dancing before the darkens arc.