WALKING ON THIN ICE

Better version of my Ralph Carney video. This incorporates industrial activity I’ve filmed in Marrakech.

Carney gave me permission to use his song.

Ralph Carney II

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cooo coooo, coo … we hear that all the daylight hours as the doves melodically coo in bursts of 3, each coo a different length and pace. on the roof, one landed 10 foot away on tv aerial. it cood. i cood back. its head whipped around to look at me. i cood some more, trying various messages. dove watched awhile, perplexed, and left. i talk to animals. i talk to everything… a leaf blowing along, an obstinate jar lid, the sun, invisible forces which rule the universe but i cannot see, my self, my wife. sometimes some of them talk back.

if you were programming cyber doves, you’d be writing cood code.

sun is brutal here, powerful - a serious unkind force of nature. last week i shaved my head. now i’m solar damage. brain is fried. or it would be if aliens hadn’t stolen it. and marrakech hadn’t counfounded it. marrakech is insane. the passport control at the airport was really the insane asylum admittance board.

watching the european faces, most of the wives are having a ball, most the husbands seem wary, uptight. or arrogant, superior. i can understand both sides the equation - this is a place of odd unknowns

the city or invisible universal forces or the rats have done it again - ran a small bath to soak away yesterday’s aches, took a toke - went to get in and found cold water bath. hot water gas canister’s empty. joke’s on me. my relaxing bath is the punch line. maybe no hot water in next city, now no hot water this city. such a neat plot device. and they claim irony is dead. 5 days ago i blogged my gas worries - this is our 4th run-out in 4 locations in 3 countries in 5 months.

told lady there was only ice water for my genitalia wash. “genitallia wash? that’s unlike you.” yes, i’m trying to be discreet. it’s the new me. they call me discreet smith now. i’ll earn the name too - i’ll discreet little smiths all over their reality.

there were beggars begging on the bus before it left yesterday. man got on, showed his deformed leg, started chant begging in arabic. next girl came by selling gum and kleenex. she sat and stared at me. when i looked at her, she smiled sweetly, but lady says when i looked away she made a face and stuck her tongue out because i didn’t buy anything. so lady bought. then a man came down the aisle selling cakes. at a rest stop in another town, blind man got on demanding money. he was followed by a young mother with child. we gave everyone something except the cake man. need all the good karma we can rent.

africa between here and the coast is arid parched earth with a lot of rocks, sparse vegetation, and dry rivers interspersed with olive trees and scrub. the closer to the coast, the more vegetation. saw half a dozen camels grazing.

3 armed checkpoints each way. i get uneasy when i see men in uniforms with rifles out my window. i’ve seen too many movies to be placid. they want you to think it’s standard traffic, but they’re really mutant psychic vampires harvesting your fear glands. laughter defeats them.

too tired to sleep, started writing. lady asked “you’re not going to tattle on me are you?” that depends, what you got to tattle? “dragging you to strange towns for prolonged torture.” lady, that not tattling, that’s telling the truth.

yesterday in the old city, a fruit stand offered me a miniature peach while lady picked out fruit. i know i’m not to eat unwashed items in morocco, but we’d eaten one unwashed before with no problem. i wiped it off on my shirt, ate. spent long night in the bathroom, vomiting one end and diarrhea the other. back down to 173. smith’s weight loss program - eat a peach.

10 p.m. saturday night marrakech informed us we’d take a 3 hour bus trip 8 a.m. sunday morning to essaouira - to rent an apartment for 7 weeks. got up 4:30. bus left half hour late. trip took 4 hours. walked about the sea coast city 7 hours. 3 hour bus ride back. 18 hour day for 7 week stay. time is nebulous in marrakech.

saw three apartments. first had sad charm, with problems. third had shared kitchen and bath and a woman who kept telling us how quiet she was.

2nd was inside the walled city. go through the south gate, dip left, swing right, curve along a bit and you’re there. no fridge, maybe no hot water, stove is 2 burner camping stove hooked to a gas canister, and no terrace (to dry clothes). but it is alley level, has character, some magic, a bit of poetry. going to go live inside a walled city saturday, see what the will be will be. que sera ares.

here’s my 1st 3 essaouira fotos - may these set the mood.

All’s well, I think. It’s difficult to trust people when so many are in need of money and I don’t speak Arabic very little French.

We went to Essaouira to view some apartments. Took eight hours to bus there and back even tho it’s only 150 km from Marrakech.

We found an apartment. We had to pay the entire amount upfront. Makes me wary, but we’ve dealt with the facilitator of this transaction before. He got us our Marrakech apartment, and there have been no problems. So I think we’ll be OK.

The new apartment is pretty. It’s in the old part of town. The walls are Morrocan tile. There are two bedrooms, so we can have guests. There’s a salon with one of those weird long middle eastern couches running around the walls of the room.

The only modern amenity is a flush toilet (better than the other option, which is a hole in the ground.) For a shower, we have a hose coming out of the bathroom wall and the water drains into a hole in the ground. But for 2 USD or less, we can use a nearby bath house.

The kitchen does not have a refrigerator or oven. It has a sink and a counter, and a camping stove hooked up to a gas tank. So every time I cook a hot meal we’ll have to eat it all right away. Although I suppose we could get a cooler if we’re desperate. (I haven’t seen any ice, tho.)

No laundry facilities. Not even a terrace or balcony to dry laundry. We have to use the living room or pay someone to do our wash.

Essaouira is more relaxed than Marrakech. There are fewer poor people. The town is on the Atlantic coast, and it’s always strewn with wind. People seem happier. We’ve noticed this in coastal towns, that people are more happy. Moroccans go to Essaouira for holiday as well.

After Morocco, we plan to camp in Scotland. Temporary accommodation is incredibly expensive in Scotland, but the reason to go there is for natural beauty. We might do some hitchhiking.

We’re tired. We’re very tired of talking to people who don’t speak English. Our guide in Marrakech has worked his way into our life for various things. For instance, we’ve eaten at his house, his mother’s and brother’s — all of which we felt obligated to pay for as though going to a restaurant.

Our guide does not speak English - just a few words here and there. And he speaks less French than I. We talk together in a melange of French, Dutch and English. So it’s exhausting.

And the dry air of Marrakech exhausts. If we go out for several hours in the sun, we are dehydrated and wiped out for the rest of the day.

I’m looking forward to Essaouira. Our friend, Blue7 and his lady Magda might visit us as well. Seems like a good thing.

A PIANO LEFT BEHIND

a piano left behind
music plays backwards
shadow hurries on the stairwell

blue night
yellow window

Lady K

SHOPPING LIST

his private emails
his documents
tall white paned windows
silver business sun
the polishing of floors by quiet men in uniforms
clackless tangent agencies
serene liquid floor wax

Lady K

when the motorbikes accelerate from the stoplight at night, the first few seconds sounds like the beginning of prayer broadcasts, so i think the 5 daily prayers begin at least a dozen times a day. it’s a constant camouflaged call to a spirit reality. i’m always a little disappointed when the prayers turn into motorbikes. they sing the prayers in amplified a capella, and it’s soothing.

in between the praying, there’s the braying of the donkeys - the sound of gods laughing here in marrakech.

Bought an elegant black jalaba with orange trim and a long sleeved beige blouse with brown trim. The trim is braid; it’s sewn on to the arms and down the front, coming out in little middle-eastern swirls. When I wear the clothes, I feel very feminine, beautiful.

I wander by a traditional clothing shop, decide to step in. Most of the shirts I’ve seen are fluorescent-colored and festooned with sequins. But the blouses on this sidewalk seem more sedate, elegant, more my taste.

So we bumble in and start paging through shirts.

Proprieter of shop enters. “Hello, Ali Baba,” to Smith.

Smith stiffens. We’ve learned that ‘Ali Baba’ is a dubious name. He’s calling Smith a thief. Even some of the panhandlers here call Smith ‘Ali Baba’ as they ask for money.

Proprietor grabs me, takes control of the script. I realize that this is going to be another typically-interactive Moroccan experience. It’s not something that I control. Marrakech is in charge.

“Here, what you think of this?” The man has an overly colorful shirt in his hand.

“Oh, I like the colors. I think it’s very pretty. But it wouldn’t be good on me.”

Proprietor walks away in haste to find something else. “Many good things here. Good quality.”

Proprietor looks at Smith as though he has authority. “What does your father think of this one?”

“No, that’s my husband. It’s a May-December marraige.”

Proprietor looks confused. Smith is 27 years my senior.

“I’m May, He’s December,” I explain in French.

“OK, here. You try this one.” He holds a blouse against me, matching the fine-trimmed arms against mine. “What you think, Ali Baba, good, no? Very elegant.”

“It’s too small.”

“No. It is good for you.”

I try the jalaba on.

“You look elegant. Grace. That’s high quality. Hand made.”

I look at the stitches, which are obviously machine made.

“What’s the cost?”

“For you, 700 dirhams. Very good price. High quality.”

“I don’t know if I want this. Let me try that one.”

I try on a string of undesired jalabas. I end up at the first one.

“How about 300 for that one?”

“No, how about 600?”

“That’s really much more than I have budgeted to spend. I have to think about it. I can come back because we are here in Marrakech for 10 more days. Would you consider the blouse and the jalaba for 600?”

Somehow I get him down to 550 for the two items. It’s my first semi-successful “bargaining” episode. Normally I just pay what the asking price is.

He touches me as we leave, growls, “You Berber Woman! You get good price. Yes, You. You Berber!”

But I still feel like a half-dope. Last shirt I bought shrank.

i ask lady if she needs an aspirin? “took one. found it on the carpet. said ‘ooo, that’s what i need’ and popped it in my mouth.”

walked in the palmerie, a huge multi football stadium-sized dirt area with a hill and hundreds of palm trees growing in various symbiotic clumped dance poses in 40 foot tangos. saw a fallen palm, 25 foot of scabrous wood worm bark segments stuffed with shredded wheat. everything on the tree is fibrous - there is no wood in the tree. the palm leaves look like woven basket. it’s a big fiber stalk, looks like a young dune worm.

pin pointed part of my problem - i am an analyzer, reactor, and manipulator of flow. each day has a natural flow you can dip in and out of, ride a ways. not here - marrakech is stochastic, turbulent, it jabs at you, tosses events and people into your path just to see what you will do. last night hamid shows up at 7 and builds canvas frames for 90 minutes on our floor - that was not on the schedule. today he comes back to finish - another 3 hours of social interaction i was not expecting. i did laundry while he was here. come back down from hanging it on the roof, and mohammed is here as well. they’ve just left, and i’ve done nothing but react and respond to what the day’s thrown at me, which is 3 hours of hosting. i am not natural host material.

now on one level, this is cool. life is fuller when it has unplanned content. but it is easier to absorb such content and flow with the new roll when you have a permanent base of operations with which to deal with it all. we sold our base place last june, have been homeless since… or rather our base since has been each other on one level, and inside ourselves on another.

part of this journey is to teach us to be a double-bonded stand-alone unit, so i guess this is all for the best. i’m told essaouira is a quiet slow moving seaside town full of artists. perhaps our two months there will re-group me. or perhaps there’s nothing within to regroup… maybe i’ve depleted my essence by dropping little bits of me as we went along so i could trace my way back to my self past.

on the other gland, perhaps 2 dozen days dazed by smoking brown moroccan hash is fuzzing my focus. maybe ole debbil weed is leeching my life away. of course i smoked every day for most of 20 years, and every chance i got for the 20 years before that, so it’s not like i’m new at this. but all that was with having a base place, a hole i could crawl back to and lick my reality back in shape. that’s it, there’s no down time here.

we’re down to our last days again - leave for the coast week from tomorrow. i got those old decompression chamber blues.

poet jack wrote “I worry about you giving away too much and the cops come to grab you. And you are a decent human being even when you forget what you know. Everybody does. Just don’t get crotchity.”

don’t think i could stay crotchity long - too much already in my life to be thankful for. hard to be a curmudgeon when you’ve been lucky. i thought about the too much angle. my dilemma is i’ve always used my life for my material. mom’s passing produced some of my best
short work ever. not to do it now would be unnatural, and probably unwise.

ke wrote “Would you say this is one of the best, in the broadest sense, experiences of your life? You did get a two-n-one package, new wife and new environment(s). New everything, almost.”

man sums it up nicely. it’s such an experience, have to write about the whole thing just to make it make sense.

besides, these are little crimes. as hamid said last night as we aired out the place “business,” he pointed at the hash, “prison. smoking,” shook his finger, “no prison.” and names are changed. besides, who knows, we could be lying, making all this stuff up. i did say once we’d never left cleveland, were raising mushroom herds beneath the gund arena. have you ever mushed a mushroom herd? it’s almost as bad as shepherding snails along the old snail trails.

decided to let the hash run out. getting stoned is not as important as it used to be to be to me. perhaps getting stoned periodically would be more fun than nightly. lady said the hash made her feel more creative than happy. asked her when her last happy stone was, she replied the first night we smoked here. makes sense - first stone after a dry spell is always more fun. last night was my 23 night (and a few days) in a row. it is still fun, just not as much fun. it’s the old less is more syndrome, whereas i’ve always been more a more more much more kind of guy. although i am learning - being beaten about by reality for 61 years does teach you a few things

but we ordered more hash anyway because lady read about blonde hash on the internet and wanted to try some. hamid came over last night with some wood and canvas to build lady something to do art on. after as we sat around smoking, she asked if he could get blonde hash. he said yes. but then as he was leaving he said it would be red hash. so we’ll see what we get. the stuff we have is deep chocolate brown. you could press it into candy bar shapes, wrap it in candy wrappers, and walk it past the censors… it’s all letting people see what they expect to see.

coming by mcdonald’s, hamid said in pidgin english “no good to eat.” last night he saw us open the window to air out the hash smoke and said pointing at the hash “business, prison - smoking, no prison.” more hamid lessons - he says it is bad to put fruit in the fridge in black plastic bags (which are ubiquitous here) but that clear or light colored plastic bags are okay.

very few folk wearing eye glasses here - those that do are usually the young. and a lot of people with missing teeth. my own missing teeth don’t stand out here.

people sit everywhere against building with cartons of winston cigarettes which they sell one cigarette at a time for a dirham (about 12 cents).

walking thru the souks, i smell incense, hear the ululating polyrhythmic arabic music, and think what a rich tapestry they weave in this poor city. on the way out of the walled city medina maze, hamid asked if we wanted to do fruit shopping. when we said yes, he turned down a little side alley. i told lady i knew where we were going - 2 east alleys south where the best food vendors were. and i was right. this rat is beginning to learn his maze.

hamid keeps taking us to the non-tourist areas of the old city, often walking us through working areas where we’re not always welcome. half the folk scowl and demand we leave, the rest smile and welcome us. except for electricity, they make things the way they’ve made them for thousands of years - and i’ve seen foot powered lathes for the powerless.

we have 2 large and 2 small backpacks, 66 pounds of possessions. so we don’t have much stuff. but what we do have is often unfindable. everything’s here until it’s needed, then it hides in bags inside bags beside bags inside the 4 packs, or on a temporary shelf somewhere. double trouble to a dynamic duo when both seek stuff, move stuff, replace stuff. we’ve become bag people since escaping from pod land.

communication is at best iffy, even between lady and i who nearly speak with the same tongue. in her blog she mentioned i said i’d be crushed by a falling word sign - that the sign would say “peace on earth.” i’d said the word sign would say “peace,” then thinking being crushed to the earth would be peace because death is peace, i added “peace on earth” meaning also “pieces on earth” since i’d be in broken segments beneath the sign, then threw in “there’s peace in pieces.” it doesn’t make any difference to her story though - her truth is as true as mine. none of us truly understand another, even when we hear what was said - as the caterpillar said to alice, words mean what i want them to mean, not what you hear.

lady asked me if i’d blogged. said no, why should i, nobody reads it anyway. she went to the stats page and found someone looked at 71,690 pages of walkingthinice from june through december 2006, and had accessed 84,707 pages in the first 4 months of 2007 - with 29,059 of those in april alone. our readership has jumped since lady added us to myspace. i’ve learned again and again it’s what’s inside that counts, not what the outside does - so why do i look to other’s comments and our site traffic for my own validity? why can’t i live up to what i know and am? if i could always remember what i know, i’d be being a decent human being.