WALKING ON THIN ICE

essaouira day 6, morocco day 39:

in books and movies, when something’s repeated, it’s a clue. our apartment toilet seat is not attached, so moves - and can even fall off, with or without you. we also have 4 iron dining table chairs with round wood seats. the seats sit on the chair unattached - you move, they move… you move the chairs, the wood circles crash to the floor - a sound highly magnified by the tiled floor and walls. what does this metaphorically mean? what plot device does it serve? perhaps it signifies “we better watch our ass.”

the cockroaches seem to have lost interest in us now we’ve scrubbed the place and cleaned their camp stove cockroach motel (you can check in, but you can’t check out). they’ve been replaced by tiny black ants. i don’t mind them so much - they’re kind of crunchy, like rice krispies.

there’s 2 prices here in the markets - the usual price for the locals, and the 2 to 10 times higher price for caucasians. this blatant rip-off discrimination gives us a feel for what minorities experience every day of their lives in the united states. hmmmm, “united” states - what a lie… it’s more the rich and powerful united against every one else. i don’t believe in heaven, though i know this life on earth is hell, but sometimes i yearn for the 1 god 1 belief 1 heaven thing to be true so the rich would roast in hell when they die.

this being constantly besieged by beggars for moneys and ripped-off by the not-poor for more is souring how i see, hardening my heart. i’m going to create a new product for the tourists, call them beggar blinders. put them on and you can’t see the poor. we’ll sell them along with out 3rd eye patch which when worn in the middle of your forehead over your insipient third eye blocks enlightenment - figure the republican and c.e.o. enclaves will eat them up.

but it’s not all doom and gloom. yesterday a greasy clothed drunk accosted us laughing, demanding money. i held him away from lady, my hands filthy from the touch. a middle-aged arab lady in a burka started admonishing him, shooing him away with her hands. he went. we thanked her. it sounded like she apologized to us for him. wherever you go, there’s good and bad in people, places and things. from what i’ve seen in 61 years, there’s more good people on the earth than bad - though it seems the more money people have, the slimier they become. people like dick cheney lie their way out of serving their country, people like george bush lie and cheat and steal and desert their outfits in war time and let daddy fix it all. there is great evil and sin at the top. my only consolation is they are not happy people, not sound souls, not integrated spirits. i know it’s unkind of me, but i hope some how some day some way they suffer. may they return in their next life as diarrhetic cow dung in a field of dung beetles.

lady says the french phrase “ensemble tout devient possible” is pronounced “onsom two devi-a posseeb.” i love the way french sounds, and i like the french people we’ve met - but their language drives me up the wall because they only pronounce 2/3s of each word. why bother putting all those extra letters and syllables in when you’re not going to use them. they talk with lazy tongue, mush of mouth. the phrase means “together all becomes possible.” i guess they mean all’s possible except saying all the word.

told lady telephone sex mystified me since you couldn’t see or touch the person, or even be sure they were who or what they claimed. “what could you possibly get from phone sex?” i asked. “baby telephones,” she replied.