WALKING ON THIN ICE

looked at lady this pre-morning and said “what have we done?” we broke out laughing.

think we went off the edge of the earth to dust central in bug city. it’s said adversity teaches us, improves our soul. if so, we’ll be learning a lot here, contributing much to our inner growth. most of the world deals with bad housing, bad water, bad food, dirt, bugs - and people shooting at each other. at least no one’s shooting here.

we’re facing 7 weeks of little laundry, little personal hygiene, little eating, much dust, many bugs, hot outside but chilled within these tiled rooms. hope we don’t smell too much to get on the plane to leave morocco. probably quarantine us if we make it to england.

but our souls will thrive, our spirits soar, our sense of humor expand like arnold swartzenegger on steroids. adversity contributes to better blogs, so we should be in pulizter prize territory. we’ve alleys to explore within this walled city in which we live, and the west african atlantic ocean coast line to walk. there’ll be words to write, fotos to take, life to learn.

besides, after this there’s to be 3 weeks living in a tent. at least here there’s a bed to sleep in (however musty and dusty it be) and a door to lock.

after all, what are our options. you can always drop out of school - but life teaches no matter what, and dropping out isn’t an option.

gotta put a positive spin on everything - gotta fool you, and gotta fool us. especially since the toilet seat just tried to leave while i was on it - it’s not connected, so you have to adjust accordingly. in its favor, at least there is a toilet seat here. the other 2 places we looked at, the toilet was a hole in the floor.

went out before sunrise looking for breakfast. i locked our door. found hot bread and 2 free oranges (lady tried to buy them from a guy pushing a cart - he gave them to her with a smile and said “enjoy”). decided to come back to put butter and jam on our hot bread. our door was ajar. my fault - it takes 3 clicks to lock door, not 2. nothing taken. just lucky we decided to come back for jam.

we’re in a time machine - this is what america was like before personal hygiene, bug spray, money, and refrigeration. this 7 weeks will go like dog years - seem like 7 for every one. asked lady “can i go home now?” you don’t have a home, she replied, we sold it… this IS your home now. we’re living the way people once lived, the way much of the third world now live (and the 1st and 2nd world poor), and the way most will be living once global warming swarms.

i was lost yesterday, but regained my sense of the absurd today.

we move today. we’re on our way to the west coast of africa - essaouira, morocco.

may be out of cyber touch as we decend into intermittant internet access. if we don’t read and respond, that’s why.

the foto above is this morning’s sunrise over the foothills of the atlas mountains… we’re heading to where it sets over the atlantic ocean to the west.

What goes on inside my head is a sountrack to Popeye, where I am Olive Oil — attractive if I’m the only woman my age around — and where I say, “Oh yeah? Oh-oh-oh,” just like Olive.

I have fears of many Brutuses. Or if plural, is it Brutii? Or just Fear of the Brute.

When we first got here I found a capsule in the toilet. I thought that they dropped knock-out meds into our fizzy water.

The apartment had FOUR balconies. None of the doors would lock closed. I imagined Spidermen crawling up the sides of the building, or shimmying down the roof, or hiding in the basement stairwell in the night, waiting to creep up the stairs and force their way in to MY specific apartment. I imagine the concierge putting a bull’s eye in invisible ink right on our door.

So we’re in our last night of our Marrakech apartment. No one has cheated us out of our rent. The owner turned out to be no film noire villainess, but a wonderful woman who offered to let us come back for free in December.

The “avocat” turned out to dig poetry and art, and we’ve developed a friendship with him.

The concierge would not take a tip from us in a gesture of integrity. And I’d feared him taking the computer. Imagine that. When I look into his face, he beams and it’s a like I’m talking to a friendly Chesire cat. The smile is what remains in the afterburn as Smith and I walk down the street.

Our guide’s hand is doing well (he’s missing a finger in a carpentry accident.) The bandages are off. No blood, no infection. He’s receiving medical treatment.

Not only that, in the time we’ve stayed here, he’s added a room to his house. Houses go UP here. There’s the apartment wall, which is really just a fortress against the outside forces. And then people build new floors inside their chunk of building.

He employed three men for his house. So I’m feeling good. It was expensive to have him help us, but I still feel I didn’t pay him enough (even though we can not afford to do something like this all the time.) I figure we paid him $5/hour, and the average hourly wage for Moroccans is $1.63/hour.

The bulk of his work was as a guide. He showed us the tanneries, the workshops. He found our apartment for us. He cheated us out of small change. He took us to two other cities. He built canvasses for my art (there are no art stores here.)

Our guide offered to let us stay in his house before we leave the country, as did the avocat.

“Logan looks like my mom. Same smile, same beautiful silver hair.”

“They didn’t have enough unique molds to go around for all the artificial extras.”

“So my mother has clones?”

“No, they’re not real. You don’t think there’s really 4 to 8 billion people on Earth, do you? They can’t afford to manage them all at one time. So the rest of the people are artificial sense droids, made out of little molds…”

“Artificial sense droids?”

“Yes, sometimes in the sunlight, if you stand just right, you can see the mold ridges, where they didn’t quite sand it right. Also if they sand it TOO well, you see this odd piece of nothingness. It’s really scary when you’re having sex at night with people you can’t see, and as you’re caressing them, you either feel that ridge in the dark, or that extra SMOOTHness.”

“I think you’re a genius.”

“Actually, I’m a genus. I’m the only one in my phylum. That’s why I’m surprised YOU wanted me. Most folk feel uneasy around me. Probably because I keep comparing them to the size of my freezer.”

“Oooh… So there aren’t any droids of YOU?”

“No, they can’t figure out how I work. When you first showed up, I thought you might be working for them, trying to find out more. Cuz you were too good to be true. But now I figure even if you WERE working for them, you’ve defected to MY side.”

“What about that panel in your head?”

“We haven’t been together long enough. Besides, I don’t want to expose myself any longer to this sun then I have to. Maybe in the dark of the night, I’ll give you a peek sometime. You’ll be able to see because it has this soft, phosphorescent glow.”

“Like a cauliflower brain?”

“No, it’s more like one of those lava lamps. More plasmatic.”

“Ah, cheap special effects.”

“Yeah, just like in the Frankenstein movies. All those little things going BWEEP, BWIP. More like a Tesla coil.”

“It was really you I was writing that poem about. You’re the next manifestation.”

“Of? Actually, I’m an infestation. The next infestation. I’m the early infrastructure for the next infestation affecting the nation.”

thursday:
we went down to the large square south of the souks inside the walled city tonight. lady wanted to try the outdoor food. were warned never to eat street food, but lady read the stalls were fairly well regulated. they lied - lady regurgitated, fed the toilet bowl her dinner like she was its mother and the bowl her hungry chick. i’m waiting to see if i’m to suffer also. told you marrakech wasn’t done with us. marrakech is a mad hatter tea party for alice in unwonderland, only without utensils and a lot more people.

friday:
we leave for 2 months in essaouira tomorrow morning. it’s a sea town on the west coast of africa. used to harbor pirates, so i should feel at home. the area has been occupied since prehistoric times, but the walled city was built by the french only 300 years ago. unlike marrakech, there’s no cars, motorbikes, or donkey carts allowed inside the walls, so it’s cleaner, quieter, and since it’s 3 times younger than the marrakech medina, it’s cleaner and less of a rat maze. (medina - The ancient quarter of many cities in northern Africa)

gotta gather, evaluate, discard, pack, clean, smoke the last of our hash, go out to one last dinner inside the old walls, sleep, get up and leave for move #33 in the last 11 months..

i will wait for the quieter newer town and see what i feel once i relax inside its walls and sample the poetry of our new old apartment with its heavily patterned tiled walls, its lack of refrigerator and hot water, its nearness to the atlantic ocean beach. but right now, i’m tired of this. we’re in our 10th month of world travel, our 11th month of moving on since we sold our place last june. we don’t seem to be moving toward a resolution, just more evolution. but since we’re not flat earthers, i spose evolving’s good.

i may also be tired emotionally and physically from serially smoking seriously good hash for 31 days dazed. back in 2005 when i’d smoked every day for 20 years and most days for the 20 before that, i was in shape. people don’t realize heavy drinking or continuous cannabis use requires being in shape for your sin. before i quit drinking 16 years ago, i was drinking 5 gallons of cheap wine and smoking an ounce of grass a week - and still going to work for 50 hours. i found hangovers were conducive to programming computers because writing code gives you something to do while you’re waiting to feel less bad.

we’re going unstoned to the next town because it’s time to refresh. won’t even look for hash because a period of clarity is more desirable. i came to marrakech to smoke, and i smoked. i’m going to essaouira not to smoke, but to reflect and write. my 8 months straight out of the last 10 have shown me being straight hath its charms. my month toking here taught me getting stoned is fun but not the answer, and that being stoned can be work - especially when a city like marrakech can turn on you so quickly and change your plans.

speaking of plans - morocco through 1st week in july, 3 weeks camping out in scotland, 1 month london (to read poetry to an audience again), one month back in the south of france - then it gets iffy… either 2 months in cleveland and a month in mexico, or a month in mexico then 2 months in cleveland. after that we may live in mexico or guatemala or chicago or seattle for up to a year to finish our book/s. who knows said the shadow to the lack of light.

“I lost a pound. I hadn’t shit for three days. Then I just made a fast big firm one and lost a pound.”

“I’ve decided we’re piss and shit machines for Mother Earth. I think it’s Mother Earth’s plan. She wants us to dig up this mineral in country A. Put it into fertilizer in country B. Put it on crops in country C. Ship the food to country D, where we eat it an shit it out. It’s Mother Earth’s way to get the mineral from A to D.”

“Well, Global Shipping of food is not part of Mother Earth’s plan.”

“Global Shitting is.”

I make coffee, give a cup to Smith.

“Thank you. Oh yeah, you’re a lady, K. Well, I met a little lady and she a shady gray. But when I lick her lapidarry it the only way.” He’s saying stuff from a poem.

“You wanna lick my lappy, happy pappy?”

“I wanna read again.” We need to be among poets badly. I’m looking forward to London, where we plan to have a reading at the Poetry Cafe.

* * *

Dream last night. My arms were contaminated with bad soil. Visible tape worms squiggled about on the the undersides of my arms, burrowing under my skin. I tried to get all them off, but there were too many of them.

Looked at my arms, and eight of the worms succeeded in getting completely. I watched them make fluid movements under the skin.

Fortunately then I woke up. Good to be in this reality rather than that one.

When I first started my travels, I’d wake up in the dead of night and worry about my family. I’ve been gone so long that I’ve stopped doing that.

I feel guilty for not calling my grandmother. Mom says she might be slipping a little more into Alzheimer’s grasp.

I do write letters to Grandma, but it’s cumbersome to set up Skype and I do not want the reality of Home invading my current, more independent reality.

Sometimes I dream about Grandma, and she’s a little girl or a kitten I must protect. Heartburn.

“now that’s sexy - a naked woman reading camus” i say as i peer into the bathroom, see lady k in the tub reading “the rebel.”

the image above is a new piece by lady k - she thought it unworthy, but i think it’s a keeper (even though she’s already given it away). she titled it “marrakech” and gave it to mohammed. that makes folk in the u.s.of.a, london england, krakow poland, lizjnan croatia, albeilhan france, and marrakech morocco who now own her art.

muhammed’s mother was quite amazed we walked through the maze of the medina last night to their place - think she was surprised we dared walk alone, and that we found her door. all along our way, heads would whip around in disbelief. as usual, we saw no other tourists. we were stoned, and the way seemed unnaturally long. lady said “are you sure we’re in the right alley?” i replied i think so, but can’t be sure. not the most reassuring answer.

sitting here sweating. once the temperatures rise above the upper 80s, marrakech becomes a blast furnace. cannot believe the force of this sun. gives a foretaste of global’s warming.

hamid’s here making lady 10 canvas frames for art. i started putting on my shoes and he bacame concerened - told him i was only going up to the roof to hang clothes. he wanted to come along because it’s not proper to be alone with european women. told him to stay. he gave us a small chunk of hash, said zero zero. stronger than the rest. i think he thought we’d buy some after tasting it, but we’re done for awhile. this stuff is only fun if it’s done in cycles, otherwise it gets to be work.

our web access has gone wacky as well. this town is squeezing us out. been a worth while stay though - maybe learned more in a month in marrakech than much of the previous 9 months travel. this place is for harder and hardier souls than mine.

i’m digging down to my surrealistic sense of humor, going to wrap myself in a protective layer of it because i know marrakech - it has me 40 more hours. it’s not done playing. with humor, i can be in on the joke and laugh along.

u.s. secretery of defense robert gates says congress can’t give the defense department only two months of funding because the defense department is not known for spending money wisely, and has already spent more than it has. where is monty python when we need them? i think cheney and bush realize what horrible things history will say, so they’re making sure there’s no future to write.

can’t end on negative note, so loop to positive start…

“now that’s sexy - a naked woman reading camus” i say as i peek into the bathroom, see lady k in the tub reading “the rebel - an essay on man in revolt.”

HYENA CLITS and YODA BLOOD, other tales from the RICH WORLD ESTABLISHMENT

“So the Internet’s buzzing that it’ll be between Clinton and Giuliani.”

“Yuck,” I say. “I’m voting Green. You know, I don’t trust the Dems any more. Obama came in looking all pretty — but it turns out he’s scum. All options on the table and that kinda talk. There’re only a couple decent Dems left.”

“Yeah, maybe John Edwards.”

“The rest are controlled by the corporations.”

“You know, it’s illegal for a CEO to NOT kill babies.”

“What they need to do is make the laws the exact opposite of what they are,” I joke. “And all that Republican activism dismantling class action lawsuits, well that was just so people wouldn’t have any recourse against the corporations.”

“If we do manage to put in a decent honorable president, in a week the corporations or the military or the CIA or the Republicans would try to have him assasinated. Just like they did to RFK. JFK was killed cuz he tried to shut down the Vietnamese War and he didn’t give Cuba back to the gangsters.”

“Some people are advocating a military coup.”

“Yes, and I can’t believe it. Some commenter on a political site was advocating killing politicians.”

“Well, I think it’s the rage of the intelligent youth. They can’t get good jobs as easily. Like my brother. Extremely intelligent, but too shy. Does not have the social skills to get a good job.”

“Also, he looks alternative. So they’re punishing him for not conforming.”

“God. At least I’m thin now. That’ll help me if this creative investment we’re taking goes bust and I have to be a slave again, get a job.”

“Oh yeah. You’d be more hirable cuz you’re thin.”

“Sad world.” Although I don’t know if a Rich World establishment would hire me if they bother to google me.

“Besides, we only have to survive five more years. After that, there’s nothing to get jobs in.”

“It’s all like I thought it’d be. Bad.”

“It’s a weird cycle now. Three months ago, they said the polar ice was melting faster than they’d thought it was. Now this week, they say it’s even faster than they thought three months ago.”

I’m writing this down real fast. A fly attacks my hand. Steve squashes it.

“They like to bite me when I write. They’re very literary bugs. I gotta learn shorthand.”

We walk through a gas station. I pause to look at interesting collage garbage on the ground. A Moroccan interrupts us: “Are you looking for something?”

“No, we live right over there. Thanks.”

We scuttle across the street to the grocery store. I buy a bag of ten croissants, decent ones, for the equivalent of $2.40. I pull one out, and it’s the mother of all croissants, the largest one I’ve seen.

“Look at this. It’s huge.”

“That’s the queen.”

“It is? How do you know? Maybe it’s a male croissant.”

“No, croissants are matriarchal.”

“How do you know?”

“Just look at the curves. By the way, did you know that hyenas are matriarchal?”

“They are?”

“Yes. The clit of the hyena queen is like a penis. And another thing about matriarchies. You’d think they’d be kinder because they’re led by females. But the Queen Hyena had two daughter pups. Only one could be Queen, so she let one cub kill the other.

Besides, Mag Thatcher proved that women are just as fucked up as men, just as evil.”

“Yeah. Look at Hillary Clinton.”

“I don’t want to look at Hillary Clinton. She disgusts me. The thing is, it really bothers me that I still like Bill Clinton. And he’s a fucking son of a bitch! But he’s got charm. He’s just as bad as the rest of them.”

I remember the nineties, when Tony Blair was fondly referred to as Britain’s “Bill Clinton.” And Bush called for “compassionate conservatism.” We’re starting to recognize the shadow dancing.

* * *

“Well, I don’t have a blog today. Just some snips from commondreams,” says Smith.

I do have an article about Paris Hilton. She wrote a petition, said she provides beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives.”

It’s like she’s saying, “You can’t send me to prison! I’m one of the beautiful people!”

“I think she’ll get a lot of valuable life experience in prison,” I say. “You did.”

“Well, you know what her agent said, don’t you? It’ll probably make her more of a celebrity than before.

It’s interesting about the agent. Her defense was, ‘I know I was on probation. But my agent told me it was alright to drive.’

Her agent actually testified that it was his fault. Judge refused to believe it. So she fired her agent.”

“Whoa…”

“And now she’s rehired the agent back. So within a couple days, he took the blame for her, got fired, said it was good for celebrity, and got hired! That’s man’s earning his percentage!”

“I wish we had an agent. You are the agent of chaos.”

* * *

Smith says something wise. Thinks about it, then says, “I have Yoda blood in me.”

“Yoda blood? Oh, is that one of the pints?”

We speculate that he’s got all kinds of weird blood because of almost bleeding to death from a hemorrhaged throat, just like Jack Kerouac.

“Now there’s an interesting scene I didn’t want to be the center of. I’m in the intensive care unit, bleeding to death. Doctor had just given me five units of blood. Then he takes my pulse. Turns to the other doctor, says, ‘Where is all this blood going?’

They thought five units was too much, but it wasn’t enough. The one doc said, ‘We’ll put one more unit in and see if it does the trick. After that, we’ll have to think about it.’

I don’t know what five units of blood is or how much is in the entire body, but the dipstick was way more than a quart down.”

* * *

I’ve read that the dollar is continuing to lose its value. One reason is because the government is trying to keep our exports cheap. But I think it also has something to do with our debt. Also read that the Euro is now more popular than the dollar for currency speculators.

I think the best way to protect money against inflation is to diversify the currencies - put your eggs in different baskets. But that’s just my opinion.

Dollar / British Pound
5 years ago: 1.45 dollars to pound
today: 1.99 dollars to pound

http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?from=GBP&to=USD&amt=1&t=5y

Dollar / Euro
5 years ago: 0.9 dollars to euro
today: 1.35 dollars to euro

http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?from=EUR&to=USD&amt=1&t=5y

went into the old city for dinner at mohammed’s, cooked by his mother. thought it might be another financial situation, but it was social this time. went up to his rooftop terrace to see his puppy. sat on the roof in the growing dusk, the breeze soft and cool bathed our scorched skin, swayed the flower trees as martins swooped overhead, the palm trees silhouetted against the fading sky while we were soothed by the amplified sing song drone of the sunset prayer - the prayers are closer and louder inside the walled medina, which we looked out over.

moments like this make lesser moments more bearable.

while on the terrace, i made a wish on the first star i saw. mohammed said it wasn’t a star, it was a satellite camera which watched marrakech. i’d made my wish on a spy satellite.

ahh, the dogs begin to bark. must be 10 p.m. - they start every night as soon as humans leave the streets. up here on the 6th floor, their barks bounce off the tiled courtyard, ricochet between apartment buildings. cats run the city by day, dogs by night.

next day - we’re down to 2 days to decide what to take with us, pack, and clean up this place. we leave saturday morning. be our 32 moving on since leaving the states last august, our 33rd since selling our place last june. i’m getting tired of moving on. new isn’t new when there’s always more new.

marrakech has turned a wee bit nasty since we rented an apartment in another city sunday… i think it’s jealous and has decided to make us pay our final 5 days here. monday afternoon hot water gas ran out. monday night i turned into an exorcist clone expelling liquids from both ends of my body due to eating unwashed fruit. this morning the kitchen sink started leaking all over the floor. i was expelling the rest of last night’s liquids in the bathroom, so the sink decided to join me. be something poetic in that if it weren’t so painful, nasty and messy.

on the good foot, the concierge replaced our gas this morning and refused our payment of appreciation in the process. and there can’t be much more left for my body to expel, so i’ve got to start feeling better any minute. and more good news, we’re almost out of smoke - i’m tired of getting high every night. who’dda thunk i would ever say that. in my defense, i’m now in my 17th year of being sober, and i’m down to two vices: cannibas and caffeine.

now i’ll have yesterday’s bath, wash off last night’s sickness, this morning’s sweat. the simple joys of world travel.

walked 2 hours bare-headed through 95 degree african cloudless sky sun. believe my brain pan shrunk. thank god i wasn’t using it. understand now why life forms here automatically seek shade. i went from tree sidewalk shadow to tree sidewalk shadow. i’ve become a shadow seeker.

I sniff my pits. “Gosh, I stink.”

“Why?” Smith asks, incredulously. Today was 90 degrees in Marrakech.

“Because my pussy got hot outside. It’s from the stink. It’s my funk. It rises up.”

Smith asks, “Why aren’t you wearing those special chemical panties that cool you down?” He’s referring to our plan to save global warming by selling refrigerated underwear to all the women because of their hot vulvas. More hot vulvas = dead beefs = global warming by a simple reductionist philosophy.

“Can you explain to me again why more hot vulvas equals global warming?” I ask Smith.

“More hot vulvas equals more men in heat wishing to procreate which leads to little babies which leads to more dead beefs to feed them.”

“Ah, The men need beef for their babies.” I see. “Why does more dead beefs equal global warming?”

“I didn’t say it caused global warming. That’s just another problem. But I did say the hot vulvas contribute to global warming!”

“Yes, but it’s poetic to blur the intent.”

* * *

“If we get back to the States there will only be this much of me left,” Smith says. He demonstrates by pinching an inch of air between his thumb and index finger.

“You’ll have shit it all out.”

“And wear and tear, shriveled by the heat. So did you take one of those multivitamins?”

“Yes, I did.” I was worried to take one because I think they’re for men. I don’t want to stimulate any male-type hormones.

“Ginseng is good for you. Supposed to help you sexually and supposed to soothe you.”

“Hmm.” I’m skeptical. I figured anything beneficial for a male’s sexuality is by definition not soothing.

“I used to drink Ginseng tea, to try to soothe myself when I was selling shoes to women…”

“Why would you need soothing for that?”

“I’m not a salesman. Women would come in to buy a pair of shoes. We were required to try to sell them a belt and accessories. I found this intrusive and demeaning.”

“You’ve got class.”

“So I needed all the soothing I could get.”

“I would get really turned on if you tried to sell me a shoe.”

“Actually, I didn’t have to try to sell the shoes. The women came in for those. Altho the old joke is true. Many women keep saying their feet are smaller than they are.”

“Hm.”

“I also did the display windows for the shoe store. I musta had a sense of style.”

“There were two hispanic channels on Mom’s TV package. And the one thing that’s immediately obvious is that they wear more revealing clothes on the Hispanic channels. It’s more a culture of flesh.”

“In Brazil, they worship the body.”

“I’d better not go to Brazil then. My body ain’t worshipable. I want to be worshiped for my mind, and my talent.”

“That reminds me of Camus’ essay, Summer in Algiers.”

“I gotta finish the Rebel. I got 50 pages to go.”

“Is it necessary for me to read it?”

“No.”

“Any new insight?”

“Well, his basic premise is that murder is not right. And he’s saying every single rebellion, including the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution, they all resorted to murder.”

“Ah hah.”

“And going back in history he went back to the Marquis de Sade, tying that in with the Revolution. And he gives history of French revolution including what the different thinkers were saying, etc. etc. For example, he explains Nietzsche a lot. I got a lot better understanding of Nietzsche from here (Morocco) by the way then what I’ve had before. Which is not much. And he goes into Hegel, Marx…”

“Ah hah.”

“And all these revolutions, all these grand plans for perfect happiness for man…. have the same three points.”

“OK…”

“They all think that if you get rid of the bad guy, be it God or the State or Capitalists, everything’s gonna be hunky dory. Because Man would then be in charge. And Man is inherently basic and decent and good.”

“Well that’s shit. That’s what Ayn Rand thinks. Man’s good, so let *the* Man be in charge.”

“And they all say, number two… People you’re trying to help, let’s say, the workers, who are suffering injustices and misery. It’s OK to make them suffer and hurt more because you’re going to save ALL of mankind down the road. So you can hurt a bunch of little guys now, and it’s all right. Cuz you’re gonna make more Happy down the road. In fact, they say it’s better if the worker’s life gets worse…”

“Oooo…”

“Because it’ll make their eventual salvation occur that much more quickly. Not only can you *hurt* them, but you can hurt them *even more*. So those are the first two points, you can imagine what I make of those two arguments.

And the third thing: no matter what their philosophy is, they all say that, ‘Someday everything’s gonna be alright. But until then, you gotta put US in charge.’

“Sounds familiar.”

“For example, the Communist government was supposed to fade away after it got organized. ‘Cept it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”

“Sounds Keynesian.”

“And this book, Camus, who wrote the Rebel, it alienated him from most of the French left. Because Sarte and the entire Left had build their whole dream and argument on Communism.

And even though everybody knew what Stalin was doing, murdering millions… none of the left could say anything, or Did say anything.

Then Camus came along and said, ‘Look. This is wrong. The emperor has no clothes. This is wrong…’

Actually, it’s pretty hard reading. Foreign names I can’t remember… but it is worth reading. I had trouble staying awake sometimes, tho. And today, I got in my bath and decided I wanted to read The Rebel, and I want to sit there with my eyes closed and relax.”

“Hm…. the rebel’s relaxing.”

“It’s gonna take me a month to read me a book that would normally take me two days max. I mean, you’re talking 270 pages.”

“Well, Marrakech is like an encyclopedia.”

“Yeah, but I can’t read the print.”

“Hahaha! Yeah, and you’re forced to look at it!”

* * *

“Boy, I hope I didn’t say anything bad in this. I’m pretty loopy.”

“You sent it already?”

“Yeah. Oh well. I’m a writer. I’m supposed to be able to dispose of other peoples’ feelings, make them my ‘objects.’

* * *

I think about how many intelligent people there are who could fix the overpopulation and depletion of the planet. If only they could just get together and fight the power. But all the intelligent people are working 60 hour weeks trying to hang on to their jobs before they get offshored.

“I decided that all the brilliant people are too busy to worry about politics. That’s why nobody’s doing anything. Their brains are all engaged in engineering problems.”

“Well, I’m a paranoid obsessive, so I have time to look at the news.”

“You’re not paranoid, you just know the truth.”

“I think it was RD Laing who said just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

* * *

I dangle myself on the balcony door, twisting luxuriously in the warm night air. I watch the yellow windows across the blue expanse of darkening city scape. I see that I’m being watched. I casually pull the blind closed.

I tell Smith, “We can watch all the other windows. We can just turn out the lights, and watch.”

* * *

After my last draw, I ask, “So what do you think? Are we being changed by Marrakech?”

“Yes, because we’ve learned things. And you’re changed when you learn things. Plus, we’re now reddish-brown. Plus Marrakech is so interesting, it takes away my interest in visiting more normal places. You know what? I’m going to take your tape to seal off the bottom of this bag. So I can use the top again.”

“Hm.” The bottom broke on our bag. Cheap baggies from England. Bottom of my passport baggie also broke.

“Marrakech has also made me realize I’m tired of traveling.”

“Yeah, a month of Marrakech will finish anyone off. Off to the souks! Or the glue factory! Or the tanneries… When I get back to Cleveland I’m gonna wonder where all the donkeys went. If there’s a Cleveland.

You know, I’m reading this article on Commondreams.org, “A look back from 2017″ by Paul Campos. 2017 seems like an attainable number. Maybe we’ll make it to then.”

“You mean I gotta put up with ten more years of this?”

“Yeah, I think you’ll live that long.”

“I have but one goal: to be the last lifeform standing.”

“Oh, dear.”

* * *

Wow, I just saw this article, “US Hospitals Charge Uninsured More, Study Says.” It’s true. People who are uninsured have no idea what the cost of their treatment is, unlike the insurance agencies. So the hospitals take advantage of the ignorance.

I imagine this accounts for the new field of medical tourism to Thailand or India. The fucking hospitals are going to get theirs, yet.

* * *

excerpt from George Monbiot’s article on commondreams.org about the complicity of Europe in modern mass crime…

“But who will cast the first stone? There is scarcely a government in Europe which does not have something to hide. The UK, Germany, Italy, Macedonia and even Sweden have been assisting the CIA’s programme of “extraordinary rendition”: kidnapping people and delivering them to states which will torture them on America’s behalf(7). Poland and Romania appear to have allowed the US to use secret detention centres on their soil to process them. Austria, Germany and the UK rely on worthless diplomatic assurances to justify handing refugees to governments which torture their prisoners(8). Poland warns that “teachers who reveal their homosexuality will be fired from work”(9). France supports African genocidaires. Spain repatriates unaccompanied children(10). Ukrainian police torture sex workers and force them to confess to crimes they did not commit(11). The United Kingdom bans peaceful protest and continues to occupy the country it illegally invaded. Lift a stone to throw at Serbia anywhere in Europe and you will find something unpleasant cowering there. Better to leave it on the ground. The price of being left alone by other states is the tolerance of mass murder.”