AD.

WALKING ON THIN ICE

last light of night spy satellite

May 31, 2007 No Comments

collage by lady
smith as gandhi with nehru – collage by lady

collage by lady
gandhi as smith with nehru

essaouira day 20

left at 5 this morning to walk beneath the stars. too late – sky already light. only light in the sky was the moroccan spy satellite that keeps its eye on marrakech. so i made a wish – i figure you can make a wish on the first star you see at night, so why not the last light of night spy satellite?

spy satellite light, spy satellite bright, last spy satellite i see in night’s end light, wish i may, wish i might have the wish i wish this morning light.

walking the beach, saw several groups of people with empty water bottles go down to the sea and fill them with salt sea water. it bothered me because we know they dump the city’s sewage into the sea here – which is why we won’t swim. their actions puzzled me until i realized they’re probably strange sea creatures who’ve assumed human form so they can walk the land amongst us to scout the enemy before they attack in retaliation for us poisoning their world. told lady we should walk close behind them, check for gill marks. we need to watch out for the fish folk.

on our way back, we paused to let a dignified elderly man in a brown star wars jellaba on a bicycle pass. he appreciated our courtesy, solemnly nodded and waved to us. as he passed, i noticed the ipod pod in his ear, heard teeny bopper britney spears type of “music” leaking out. proves you can’t judge an old man by his dignified cover.

see untold thousands of unwound wrist watches in display windows waiting to be sold. told lady they’re the only thing saving us… if all those time pieces were sold and wound and worn, we’d run out of time – it would end, and we’d all have to answer to that old unwound watchman in the sky.

the cyber cafes here – the folk are friendly, the equipment old, decayed, dying. believe this is where old computers and manual mice come to unite with their great virus in the why. my memory stick portable mass storage device picked up 3 viruses in the marrakech internet cafe. every time i entered my email password, i’d be sent to another screen saying sorry but can you type that in again? i never did. i just back paged and was where i should be. this is the land of scam, earth’s end is approaching and all they want is to steal passwords. small minds commit small crimes.

actually our unelected president george bush is trying to save the earth… he figures the sooner he makes earth unlivable for man and kills all of us off, the sooner mother earth can get down to the business of regenerating herself. so bush is an earthitarian.

and vice dick cheney isn’t really darth vader’s evil clone – he knows our #1 problem is overpopulation… he’s just trying to kill as many iraqis as possible to ease the problem.

death doesn’t scare me – though painful dying does. who knows what’s on the other side – could be pain and torment, could be the bliss of nothingness.

collage by lady
smith as nixon with elvis – collage by lady

collage by lady
nixon as smith with elvis

RICH PEOPLE TASTE LIKE CHICKEN

May 31, 2007 No Comments

Got your blog done?

“Yes.”

Is it a happy one?

“No.”

So you’re trying to educate our readers rather than entertain our readers?

“Yes.”

See, I’m trying to entertain our readers. Actually my blog both entertains AND educates – I warn them about the Fish Folk.

“Hmpf. We’re competing with each other. Actually, my blog is about you. I just write what you say.”

That’s cuz I’m trying to educate YOU. You don’t need no entertaining, cuz I’m entertainment enough. (And I’m also humble, crumbling and wise…)

“I write most of my blog in your voice now, Smith voice. I put Lady in quotes.”

Oh, right. I’ve noticed that.

“Maybe because I’m working on your biography.”

I’m LIVING my biography. Doesn’t make any difference. It’s all gonna be past tense some day anyway.

“Reminds me of the title of a movie, ‘My Life As a Camera.’ It occurs to me that I should write you in lower case, just like you do.”

No, I talk in upper case.

“We are our own bubble. Here, I’m going to change Noam to Gnome.”

Why?

“To be more entertaining.”

Oh, you’re a sad soul. Grasping at straws to entertain folk. How dare you sink so low. Sinking low’s MY job.

“I also have catchy titles, try and catch readers.”

Kinda like fly paper? I try a much more time-honored system. I just give them money to read. That’s where all our money’s been going; I’ve been meaning to tell you…

* * *

“The more I learn, the more I think criminalization of drugs is a way to disenfranchise people, keep a permanent underclass or a way to marginalize the opposition. It’s a tool of the rich. Same with the tax forms. It’s a way to frighten those considering political dissent.”

The rich use drugs, but seldom get caught. Occasionally you get your Rush Limbaugh, but he was caught as a result of looking into something else.

As long as you have alcohol and tobacco legal, there’s no way it’s justifiable to illegalize other drugs. Cuz the amount those two kill every year is probably a million times the others.

That’s another thing. Some of the far east countries tried to reject our cigarettes and our cigarette advertising. The WTO told them they had to accept BOTH, otherwise there would be severe sanctions.

Our new joke: eat the rich, they taste just like chicken. It’s essentially true, cuz the rich are cowardly chickens. And we outnumber them, so much. If we all stood up, they’d crumble.

“I want to live outside the system.”

I’ve been doing that my entire life, and it’s wearying.

“Actually if they disband Social Security, they’ll increase dissent. Social Security ties people to the system.”

Oh, they can’t do that. There’d be runs on Washington. The baby boomers would never put up with it: WE WANT OUR BENNIES. Saw a great political cartoon. A mass of baby boomers surrounded Bush saying, ‘Invade who you want, torture who you want, steal what you want, but leave our Social Security alone.’ That sums up American awareness right now.

“Oh, and the thing the Dems just passed. They coupled a good minimum wage hike with a hundred billion in Iraq/Afghan war funding. I remember when the Republicans said the whole war would just cost 90 billion.”

No, the Republicans said the whole war would cost 50 billion. That was their original estimate.

“Fucking assholes. I don’t trust the Democrats and the Republicans alike now. I’ve totally changed since canvassing for Kerry. I think the people who vote have good intentions but the party is rotten, corrupt. I’m voting Green next time.”

So. How many times can voters fall for the same lies? Mankind’s eternally hopeful, keeps falling for the same promises. Of course, if they bothered to do some research, they’d know in advance they were lies.

In 2003, Congress approved a 78 billion dollar supplemental cost for the war. OK? 2004, 87 billion. 2005, 82 billion. 2006, 72 billion. This year it’s a 100 billion, by the DEMS. That’s SUPPLEMENTAL. That’s saying, ‘We didn’t budget right, we need more to keep doing what we’re doing.’

This was a war that was supposed to cost 50 billion and paid for out of the oil we’d steal as we were greeted as liberators with flowers by the Iraqis. I guess Halliburton needs more money.

“What really makes me incensed is the Democrats. I thought they were going to change things. They’re the ones who approved the 100 billion budget.”

The Demo-fraidy cats.

“They’re not afraid. They’re corrupt.”

Some are both. They’re afraid they’ll be painted with the not-supporting-the-troops advertisements when they run. The only way to support the troops is to bring them home, NOW. Besides, every soldier over there right now is a war criminal.

“No, I don’t think people who are ignorant are war criminals. My brother’s over there right now. He didn’t know any better when he signed up; thought he was doing good for our country.”

NO, they are carrying out an illegal war by our government. The Nazis’ favorite excuse was, ‘We’re only following orders.’ The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal says that’s not enough. If you don’t do what’s right, you’re complicit in the crime. Every single one of our soldiers over there could be tried and convicted under the criteria for the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals.

Besides a lot of our boys are fighting the government and going to jail for it. Right now, saying support the troops means giving them more money to torture, rape and murder Iraqi civilians. Ignorance is no excuse; following orders is no excuse. Torture, rape and murder are crimes. And even the cooks over there who are just feeding the torturers and murderers are complicit, cuz they’re enablers. Every single person in Congress who voted for the war funds is a war criminal. This is WRONG. And the main argument I’ve read, why the Democrats aren’t doing anything now, is they want to win the next election.

“Screw them.”

And then MAYBE, once they’ve won, MAYBE, they’ll do the right thing. Meanwhile, hundreds more American troops are going to die. Tens of thousands more Iraqis are going to die. We’ve murdered over a million Iraqi citizens already. We’ve driven another three to four million from their homes that we know about. How much blood and misery do you need before America will stand up for what’s right?

“Plus 500,000 Iraqi children killed in the nineties from Clinton’s sanctions. What we’re doing in Iraq is de facto genocide.”

Yep. And that’s just children. Who knows how many adults. Of course, as we know from Gnome, America has never stood up for what’s right, and Americans have almost never ever stood up for what’s right. They killed the Indians, they lynched the Negroes, they put the American Japanese in concentration camps during World War II. It just never stops.

Even something we all know about. Ronald Reagan’s administration used CIA planes to fly drugs from Afghanistan to sell so they could use that money to buy arms from Iran to kill South Americans. It shames me to be an American.

“I see disappointed expressions everywhere when we tell people we’re American. It’s a bummer to them. And Hamid said to tell people we’re Dutch or British. I guess former imperialists are more palatable than current ones.”

Although to be honest, I doubt there’s a serious honorable government ever, certainly not now. Governments do what they want to do. And as I.F. Stone said, ‘All governments are run by liars and nothing they say about anything should be believed.’ And Ben Franklin said, ‘There was never a good war or a bad peace.’

I just can’t believe spinelessness of the American public. Sheep in the sheep pen.

“According to our friends in education, they’re making it so that people only look to authority for the right answer. Standardized testing teaches people to parrot what they’ve been told.”

Right, they’re eviscerating the educational system. We have a whole generation educated in ignorance, to only follow orders, to not question authority, don’t think for yourself. Bush has done more damage to this country than Hitler did to Germany or Stalin did to Russia. And I despise Jimmy Carter for backing down in his statement that the Cheney Bush regime is the worst in American history.

“Carter’s unsavory. His support of the junta in El Salvador, military aid to topple democratic forces in Guatemala, supporting the Mujahadin in Afghanistan, I think he also did something bad in Indonesia.”

Plus, as you said yesterday, Gnome wrote every single president since World War II could be impeached for war crimes.

* * *

“Actually, we’re enablers. By using gas.”

We don’t drive.

“We take planes.”

Everybody’s an enabler. We’re just trying to cut down on the number of our sins. But right now we’re both sitting here with PCs on our laps, probably made with slave labor somewhere. We’re both using electricity. The thing in our favor is with the poetry, art and blogs we’re fighting the bad guys, trying to awaken some good. We’ve got rid of our cars.

“That’s the main thing there. Getting rid of our cars.”

And we make all these little adjustments, like buying one BIG bottle of plastic water rather than three of four little ones. [We’re in Morocco else we wouldn’t be drinking bottled water.]

If you’re alive on this planet right now, you’re part of the problem. Nobody’s guiltless. It’s just a question of degree. Hell, even Al Gore uses untold thousands of dollars every month of electricity. Ralph Nadar flies around in airplanes. There’s no way to breathe and not be part of the problem.

“It’s essentially an overpopulation problem.”

Yeah, but even when we had fewer people, we still had the strong taking from the weak, the rich ripping off the poor. I don’t care how far back you go. You had priests punishing everybody else while they screw little boys. You have CEOs marketing death to their customers in cigarettes and alcohol. It’s not just overpopulation. We’re just very badly wired, for greed, violence, selfishness. Basically, humans say, ‘Screw you. What’s in it for me?’ And they’re not gonna change. Even if they could change somewhere down the line, there’s no longer any line. Some say a hundred years, some say fifty years. I think those are both optimistic.

“I know I don’t expect to survive to an old age.”

Oh, I never did either. I don’t know what I’m doing here. Maybe God needs a finger pointer and kept me around. If that’s true, She should have picked someone else.

In spite of all this, I’m a happy person with a positive outlook.

“Ha ha.”

There ain’t much life left, but at any point in anybody’s life they could be run over by a bus.

“Ah, the magical mystery tour. The Bus of Death before the light at the end of the tunnel.”

So I live each day as joyously as I can. Do no damage, try to be good. And leave ’em with a laugh…

“Tune in for more RANTS AND RAVES ABOUT WAR CRIMES AND GODS…”

– Lady K

THE UNIVERSE KNOWS WHAT’S GOING DOWN

May 30, 2007 No Comments

“So. You said you don’t believe in God.”

Nope. I don’t believe in a long-haired Dude sitting up there knowing everything, judging everybody, picking at his penis. I mean, if there are gods, He/She/It/They say, “You’re born weak and broken, but if you don’t shape up and do everything We say Our way, we’re gonna kick you around your entire life, and you’ll burn in Hell forevermore after you die.”

That presents two problems. God didn’t know enough to make us right, or if he left something out, he really shouldn’t punish us for not fixing it ourselves.

“Kinda like a manufacturer’s warranty.”

Except there’s no return. There’s no repair shop. There’s no frigging manual, and it’s very badly designed, this body of ours. We’re basically piss and shit machines. And like any idiot engineer, he runs the sewer system right through the pleasure park.

Which brings us to the Gnostics. They believe we’re ruled by an insane god, named Samuel. Insane Samuel. And there’s a smarter, kinder, more gentle compassionate god above him. Who wants to help us. But of course, being further up the chain of command he can’t very well let Samuel know he’s not doing a good job. So he sent the Snake to the Garden of Eden, to tell us the truth. We need to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. Of good AND evil. Just like shade without light, you ain’t got one without the other.

‘Course, good old Sammy’s been punishing us ever since for that one.

Gnostics also think Good God tried to run around Bad God with Jesus Christ. But we fixed Him. Killed him and turned him into a church run by sickos.

However, since I’m entirely inconsistent most of the time, I daily try to say my Buddhist chant, nam myoho renge kyo. Which I purchased for 5 dollars in San Francisco in 1966.

“I hear you saying that on the shitter a lot.”

Now, before we go into that, I have to say I find the Cosmic Order or the Universe or the Big It to be aware, with a hell of a sense of humor.

It communicates with itself along channels we do not know. But do have scientific proof of. I believe it was the Bell experiment, run with colliders. See, there’s a disagreement between Einsteinian Physics and Heisenberg Physics. Einstein says, “nothing can be known outside of locality.” Locality being if an event happens, the carrier wave that takes that data away cannot get further than the speed of light times time duration.

Heisenberg Particle Physics says that information is available to the Universe immediately, on the other side of the Universe.

Now, I’m not smart enough to know these things. But apparently, once electrons are paired, however that is done, they remain paired. Unlike many Catholics.

So the Bell experiment tested this. They separated paired electrons, probably using divorce lawyers, smashed the shit outta one of them with really big hammers.

And reversed its spin. Whereupon the separated hostage electron really far away immediately reversed its spin. Ergo, the Universe has some way of communicating with itself that is faster than light. Much faster than light. The implications of this are astounding. The Universe knows what’s going down.

Now, to get back to what I believe, before I knew any of this stuff, I found I could talk to Reality. Sometimes it would answer. Frequently it would play jokes on me. And it seemed to appreciate when I laughed.

“You’re some kinda funky holy man.”

Yeah, I got holes all over. Also, my own life would cause me to question my incredible string of luck and adventures. I shouldn’t be alive, and if I should have been, I definitely shouldn’t be here having this much fun.

So, to get back to Science. The Heisenbergian Universe – everything is true simultaneously all the time. You have your famous experiment with Schroedinger’s Cat in the Cat box. You seal him in a box with a vial of poison and a decaying atom. The atom decays at a known rate but you have no idea where the decayed particle will go. If it hits the glass vial of poison, you have Dead Cat.

Heisenberg says until you open the box, the cat is a) alive and b) dead and c) at every other possible point in between. It’s not until you ask the box, “is the cat dead or not?” that Reality collapses all the realities that are into one specific result to answer your question.

“Freaky.”

Another good example of this that they’ve done: a star blows up really far away. The light heads for Earth. Now, I don’t know the intricacies of this, but light is both waves and particles. Totally different constructs; they act different. So, if you choose to ask a question about this light using particle measuring equipment, you get one answer. If you choose to ask the same light the same question using wave measuring equipment, you get a different answer. It takes millions of years for that light to get here, so certainly your question isn’t going to cause something millions of years ago to do one thing or another. So both things are true simultaneously. Your question forces reality to collapse to A or B. Now, this is all very very crudely put. I’m not a scientist and I’m not really a philosopher. I’m more a class clown. But everything I’ve said so far can be checked and verified by the unafraid.

So, I started off praying to God, then I turned Atheist. Then I turned hippie-dippy flakey. And then I more or less turned into a Flow surfer.

Forgetting all that for a second, every single thing you do, every action, every thought process, can be done better or worse. You might say more efficiently or less efficiently, or more or less grace, or more or less correlation to whatever Is. The possibilities are endless. So if you do things Better, you’re gonna fight less head wind from the cosmic Flow. If you do things Worse, you’re gonna create more turbulence for yourself and maybe others. So there may not be an ultimate cosmic Right or Wrong, but there is a Better or Worse way to Be, that will cause you more or less pain. So to get back to Heisenberg, what you get from Reality depends on what you ask for. What you See rests upon what you Expect.

I’ve found that my Own Personal Universe has a tremendous sense of humor. And it won’t hurt you unless it has to. It’s not vicious. I add that last sentence because essentially, the universe is indifferent. So it’s a good thing you’re getting this down in case Morocco succeeds in crushing me.

A lot of people have said this basic stuff a lotta ways, from greeting card to serious. The power of positive thinking, do as you would be done, don’t do as you have been done. Buddha and Confucious and the Sufis had it down pretty good. But I don’t think anybody’s fucked it up worse than the Bush fundamentalist Christians.

What you have inside your head–how you are or how you’re taught–affects how you see, what you see and what you do about it. There could be a totally neutral Thing. So you got bad eyes, hateful mind, wicked heart… you’re gonna see a threat. You’re gonna do bad things, stupid things. So you’re gonna turn this neutral object into an Object of Evil fulfilling your own expectations.

If you have a good heart, a decent mind, honest eyes, you’ll see it as neutral or perhaps even as something positive. You won’t see bad so you won’t do bad so you won’t cause bad. Of course there’re limits on everything. Just cuz you see a bus coming at you as a fudge sundae don’t mean it ain’t gonna squish ya flat.

“I see it as the potential for individuals to reach some type of constructive Being by being together in a healthy way.”

You create your own reality. You are responsible for your own reality. As I said once before, if your corner of reality is a shit hole, you’re the feces.

“What does that mean about our situation in Essaouira?”

We’ve cleaned up this shit hole. And if by some sick trick reincarnation is true, the owner of this place is gonna pay down the line. We’ve already been rewarded – we’ve brightened the corner where we are. We’ve become more happy, less miserable as a result. You don’t like something, don’t whine. Do something about it.

But if something’s wrong, don’t keep quiet just because you don’t think anything can be done. If enough speak, evil listens. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin proved that about slavery. Rachel Carlson’s Silent Spring defeated–sort of–DDT.

Saw a movie called Virus once. Pretty good sci-fi horror. Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Sutherland. Energy being came along, saw what man had done, studied history, saw the Middle East was once a gorgeous forest but we came along, ate everything, killed everything, poisoned the rest… decided Mankind was a virus, a cancer. Decided to save the Earth by wiping us out.

I have to say, except for Jamie Lee Curtis, I was rooting for the virus killer. And even tho it’s too late now to save the earth, even if we tried, which we ain’t gonna, it still comes down to how long we can keep our nest livable. And how miserable we’ll be during this time. Do good, last longer, suffer less. Makes no difference to Mother Earth, cuz after we’re gone, she’ll rest a while and seed a new garden.

We’ve turned the Garden of Even into the Valley of Odd. So if we’re wiped out, fair is fair.

“My death doesn’t really matter to me. But the idea of mass death is horrifying.”

I don’t much care about either, mine or mass. The only sadness I have would be your missing me. And we’ve had a close and good enough time, you have part of me always. We already have more in a short time than most get forever.

“I know I’m satisfied. I finally have love, faith. I discover another universe in you.”

I’m never satisfied. I can always do more; I can always be better. Like Camus says, ‘the sentence starts the day you’re born; it ends the day you die.’ See, I’m committing one of his sins. I still hope for inner peace, to live up to myself, to do it right. And hope is one of his sins, because there is no hope. There’s only living this life as aware as you can, as full as you can, in as many aspects as you can. I got that part down fine. If I could just get rid of the fucking Hope.

“Well, that’s back to your question again.”

What question?

“The question you ask determines what you receive.”

Well, I have a right to be hopeful. There’s no way I should be alive or have had such a wonderful life along the way. I got more stories than anybody. My first motorcycle ride I left the road at 100 mph and didn’t get hurt. Fell off a cliff when I was seven. Jumped off rooftops when I was four. Fell out of trees, rolled my car in my own driveway… I’ve shot up for 30 years, I’ve overdosed, I drank myself to death, ran from the cops 10 times, got away 9, two armed robberies… yet I’ve had wonderful friends, accolades, art shows, poetry readings. And the best friend and wife in the world.

“Aww…”

I hope for the best; I look for the worst. And I found in situations where there’s no time to think I do everything I can to stay alive. Yet I would not keep my life if I had to dishonor myself with another’s death unless the asshole were attacking me.

“Your philosophy actually helps me, you know that?”

This is the Church of Not Quite So Much Pain & Suffering. Maybe there’s a reason you feel helped.

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

S B Smith & Lady K

* * *

Smith sez if we drive away all our readers, we can shut this thing down, crawl into our holes, and lick our hashish.

4 in the morning

May 30, 2007 No Comments

foto by smith

essaouira day 18

took this foto last august in london. last week lady discovered the graffiti artist is named banksy, and his pieces are going for half a million dollars at art auctions. after reading a new yorker article on him, i googled his images and went to his website – the man has a great sense of humor, some wry cultural commentaries, and a decent amount of talent.

the unattached toilet seat slipped one too many times this morning, so i hog-tied it to the toilet. it can wiggle a bit, but it ain’t leaving no more. i’m a gentle man, but i do have my limits.

all water’s one water. i found two world truisms – children playing sound the same in every country… and men everywhere, as soon as a woman passes, drop their eyes to her ass.

2 locals told us folk call me “Ali Baba” because my beard looks like his.

essaouira day 19, morocco day 51 – 36 days remaining of 87

3:57 a.m. – this is the 4th consecutive morning i’m awake before 4, so i hear the morning prayers. listened to between 7 and 11 mosque minarets broadcasting, each starting the chant or singsong drone at slightly different times. after awhile it’s hard to differentiate when a new one begins since they intermingle so. they either broadcast different prayers, or the same prayers differently played. some drone. some sing. some chant. some shout. some moan.

speaking of slow drone moans, leonard cohen has this soft sad song “4 in the morning” about not being with the one he loves who is with his brother she married. i am with the one i love. my sadness is the unstillness in my soul. these morning prayers soothe me. but 4 in the morning prayers make for a long day awake. right now my love sleeps 4 feet from me.

there are 5 daily prayers in the muslim world – but here there’s six… 4 a.m. (morning) – 12:40 p.m. (midday) – 2 p.m. (?) – 4 p.m. (afternoon) – 8 p.m. (sunset) – 9:30 p.m. (evening). i search the internet but cannot find what the 2 p.m. prayer is. perhaps a different creed, or offshoot. many street shops close for an hour for the 2 or 4 prayer.

morocco costs our souls and my flesh much. yet it teaches and offers much as well. guess most folk don’t drop in for 3 months like we did, they just dip in and out for a nibble. wonder what it was like for william burroughs back in the 1950s before it was touristized? my recall is alan ginsberg and company had to come to morocco to save burroughs – that’s when they began collecting his writings and sending them off to the english printer – which became “naked lunch.” always loved that they sent the chapters off in one order, but the printer returned them in a different sequence – so they printed it as it was returned. it’s a nasty book, but a real one.

this place has upped the level of our writing. we’ve written 450 blogs in the past 11 months – thinking, writing and posting daily brings a fluidity i didn’t have before. i’m also getting better at understanding and describing. this journey’s taking all our money, and really racks my flesh – but it is so worth it. last night lady sat down, opened her computer, said “so, you don’t believe in god,” and we were off. got one of our deeper conversations down… be her blog today. that one and tomorrow’s should cost us a few inconstant readers.

back to my love now, to lie in the dark , listen to the ever constant roosters crowing, and try to sleep. it’s 4:14 a.m.

never made it back to sleep. the seagulls started competing with the roosters. the seagulls sometimes sound like the exotic animal calls in the old 1940s african jungle movies. it’s hard to get to sleep here because our alley is one of 2 main east west passageways through the walled city, and it becomes social central outside our window from dark until after midnight. then it’s hard to stay asleep because at 4 the prayers, roosters, and seagulls begin.

my weight’s down to 170. it went up to 175 for a few days when lady started seriously stuffing me. my heart’s also mis-beating. this morning it went 4-skip, 4-skip, 2-skip, 5 skip, 9-skip, 143-skip. think it’s partly lousy diet, but mostly stress – both the weight and the heart. the croatian doctor’s first guess at its cause was stress, and i was sort of lost in croatia, worried about finances, worried about our aimlessness. then we started putting our bad boy manuscript together, figured out we could survive 2 years on the money we had, and then went to france which was the nicest place we’ve been – and my heart started beating fine.

morocco is serious psychological stress for me. i stop to write a note in my pad and i’m accosted by someone trying to sell me carpet, or spices, or cookies. and they won’t hear my no. it’s like sharks in the water – if you slow down, they move in for the kill. this life of theirs must be a sad way to live… you can’t see other humans the way they do solely as potential food without damaging your soul. and once you say no no no no, they always ask you where you’re from, trying to keep you still and talking just a wee bit longer so they can figure out where else you’re soft and vulnerable so they can take a bite.

the cookie selling young men are rather funny – we’ve been stopped by half a dozen of them with trays of excellent tasting cookies – each tray has exactly the same variety in the same arrangement, and each youth tells us they were hand made by his mother who’s named fatima. each cookie of course is priced twice what they sell for in the bakeries. they do taste good though. this is a scam oriented society, a what’s-in-it-for-me kind of place.

it’s even sadder because all these carpet and spice and cookie sharks are not poor people – they’re doing quite well – but they all want more, they want some of you. sometimes i think it’s not the money that matters as much as the process of getting some of it away from you. they’re sales junkies, con artists who need to play the game, greedy grasping souls.

i’d rather wait another 3 weeks, but i’ve considered finding some hash to smoke because cannabis increases the heart rate. it didn’t skip in marrakech despite the stress because i smoked every single night. but giving in to smoking now would disappoint me in myself – so i’ll wait. smoking’s never the answer anyway, it just creates more questions. i’m not giving in, and i’m not leaving morocco early. i will not be beaten by this country. served two thirds of our sentence so far, so can do the final month. i spent ten months in county prison in 1970, so i can certainly handle three months in morocco now.

i’m finally pondering the possibility of not making it out of morocco. i need decent food, and we can’t cook. going to the store today to look for cans of stuff i can open and eat. will make myself some oatmeal every morning.

if i do die, i told lady to sit my body out in the alley with my hand out – she could collect the coins to live on. also told her to write a short story about having one last goodbye sexual fling with my cold corpse – to jumpstart her notoriety. and if she needed money, she could always rent my body out for unnatural practices. i figure once you’re gone, you’re gone – what difference does it make, the body don’t care. flesh is flesh, it’s the mind that matters.

lady interjects: “I was thinking about having your head mummified and wearing it to the States around my neck.”

as ren & stimpy always say, this is one of those “happy happy, joy joy” blogs. it can’t always be all pepsi & popcorn – (i would never mention pepsi if it weren’t for the alliteration – i’m a coca cola hater from way back).

foto by smith

THE POSITION OF THE PRIVILEGED

May 29, 2007 No Comments

THE POSITION OF THE PRIVILEGED

“A common response that I get, even on things like chat networks, is, I can’t believe anything you’re saying. It’s totally in conflict with what I’ve learned and always believed and I don’t have time to look up all those footnotes. How do I know what you’re saying is true? That’s a plausible reaction. I tell people it’s the right reaction. You shouldn’t believe what I say is true. Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It’s something you have to find out for yourself.” Noam Chomsky, “Liberating the Mind from Orthodoxies”

Read a book, The Passage and Other Stories by Mustapha El Ghazi. All four stories are about the lives of the unfortunate in Morocco. From the stories I gather dissent is punished and there is an active movement for workers rights. There is also a cultural divide, a deference to authority which criminally stigmitizes people who dissent. I’m going to write him, try to start a correspondence.

Read a new newspaper — The Casablanca Analyst — published by two Moroccan professors of English. It’s the sole English-language newspaper in Morocco. Its contents are a strange juxtaposition of naïveté and sophistication. The paper addresses globalization/imperialism in a knowing way, but puts me off with its deference to authority of native church and state.

After reading this paper, I bought the latest issue of Newsweek. I’m keeping an eye on Fareed Zakaria. I’ve slightly agreed with a couple of his pieces in the past, but now I must take his analysis with a grain of salt. I’m also shocked that Newsweek pushes him as such a nuanced “expert” given his lack of basic, basic knowledge. (Heck, I don’t know much, but at least I’m not pushing myself as an expert on international affairs.) Here’s a letter to the editor about Zakaria:

“THE USUALLY KNOWLEDGEABLE AND clearheaded Fareed Zakaria has been seriously misinformed on recent Latin American history (“Right Ideas, Wrong Time,” March 19). He says Ronald Reagan supported human rights and democracy there. Not so. Reagan’s administration supported and armed the murderous Salvadoran junta, the genocidal Guatemalan General Rios Montt, the notorious Honduran death squads and the war of terror waged against Nicaraguan civilians by the contras. George W. Bush’s neglect of the region has been, in comparison, downright benevolent.” Patricia Sitkin, Linden, California

Specialization and elitism in education and journalism is killing us. Delegation of decision-making to “experts” is killing us. Knowledge acquisition is haphazard even among the privileged. And those who are privileged enough to be educated are often the most indoctrinated. We need to educate ourselves in history, especially recent history. And we need to know what’s going on in marginalized political discourse to get a proper parallax.

We send people “over there” while deferring to authority and a misguided belief in the benevolence of our state and its “elected” representatives. We should not delegate understanding to such an extent; compartmentalization isolates us from our representatives’ actions until we’re blindsided by the consequences.

* * *

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get somewhere else–if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.”
Lewis Carroll

“This quote is perfect for the decay of the middle-class lifestyle,” I tell Smith. “Mom says she’s had to work much more just to maintain her pace of life.”

“You know, there’s some figures on that. How much productivity has gone up, how much real wages have gone down, how one has to work longer. Productivity has gone UP, so we’re actually producing more per person. Yet we end up working longer for the same pay. So even without inflation, pay has gone down.”

“I know the dollar has lost a significant amount of its value just the past year. Another thing about labor – I appreciate labor-saving devices here in Morocco. I’m running just to make safe food for us. We could probably buy a refrigerator, but that’s just so wasteful.”

“No we can not. That’s out of the question. Well, wait. You know what, maybe we could stop by the electronics store. See if they have a little teeny-weeny fridge. I mean, we paid 40 dollars for a heater. Maybe we can get a similar deal for a cool space. That’s a thought.”

“It would make life a lot easier for me. I wouldn’t have to cook everything from scratch three times a day.”

Even breakfast cereal is bad for Smith; we discovered it has too much salt. And though we have peanut butter, it’s not healthy to eat bread regularly. I want Smith to have many more years with me. When we digress from healthy eating, I see the effects on him immediately. He’s more tired; his heart starts skipping.

“Let’s go check the store,” he says. “They gotta have small things, don’t they?”

“I was lying in bed this morning, getting depressed. I was thinking about all the time required to buy food and cook and keep clean here, and how I don’t have the time I want to make art and write. There are no healthy pre-packaged foods.”

“Well, that’s true anywhere.”

“Oh, not necessarily. But actually, if you buy a pre-packaged salad in the US, then you’re also using plastic, which is bad for the Earth. And there are salad bars here, but we don’t know if the vegetables have been washed. You got really really sick one day when you didn’t wash that peach. You’re 61 years old. I don’t want us to have a medical emergency in this country.”

I was thinking also about how terrible it is that we rely so much on these electric appliances. I want to minimize my consumption of energy. Also thinking about how measures of rising affluence in developing countries cite statistics of things like refrigerator ownership.

When we get to a place we must buy things and then it’s not possible to carry them with us. What a waste. When we left Marrakech, I gave Hamid my leftover spices and staples and cookware.

When we leave Essaouira we plan to give our heater and cookware to a woman we’ve met on the street. We give her money every day, but it makes me ill to think about how much we’ve spent on our comfort versus how little we’ve given her. So I hope she can take our things and sell them or use them herself.

Also thinking about what I wrote about “professional” beggars since having roamed around more. I think it’s easier for the privileged mind to write someone off by thinking of someone as a “professional” beggar. We walked the Northwest side of the medina and found gutted buildings which were inhabited. We saw camps of men outside the city wall. These people have a nook to call “home” and are not sleeping right on the streets, but they are certainly not faring well. Perhaps the cops chase them off the streets? We noticed that they were gone the day the film crew was here. To be a beggar is a horrid, hard life, not a life one would choose.

* * *

Back to the worsening condition of the American worker. I’ll end with another Chomsky quote from the same article:

“Most oppression succeeds because its legitimacy is internalized. That’s true of the most extreme cases. Take, say, slavery. It wasn’t easy to revolt if you were a slave, by any means. But if you look over the history of slavery, it was in some sense recognized as just the way things are. We’ll do the best we can under this regime. Another example, also contemporary (it’s estimated that there are some 26 million slaves in the world), is women’s rights. There the oppression is extensively internalized and accepted as legitimate and proper. It’s still true today, but it’s been true throughout history. Take working people. At one time in the U.S., in the mid-19th century, working for wage labor was considered not very different from chattel slavery. That was the slogan of the Republican Party, the banner under which northern workers went to fight in the Civil War. We’re against chattel slavery and wage slavery. Free people do not rent themselves to others. Maybe you’re forced to do it temporarily, but that’s only on the way to becoming a free person, a free man, to put it in the rhetoric of the day. You become a free man when you’re not compelled to take orders from others. That’s an Enlightenment ideal. Incidentally, this was not coming from European radicalism. There were workers in Lowell, Massachusetts, a couple of miles from where we are. You could even read editorials in the New York Times saying this around that time. It took a long time to drive into people’s heads the idea that it is legitimate to rent yourself. Now that’s unfortunately pretty much accepted. So that’s internalizing oppression. Anyone who thinks it’s legitimate to be a wage laborer is internalizing oppression in a way which would have seemed intolerable to people in the mills 150 years ago.”

nanotech couscous

May 29, 2007 No Comments

foto by smith

“I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.” – Groucho Marx

essaouira day 18

saw two dogs on our walk yesterday standing oddly close at an even odder angle – sort of an ass to ass ‘v’. the larger dog keep turning back to the smaller, barking, then snapping at him. as we got closer, they resembled something out of david lynch via todd browning’s “freaks.” they appeared to be attached at a hind leg, and lady wondered if they were siamese twins. but no, they were stuck together, penis to vagina. i went closer to shoot them for the blog, but they ran off, the female leading, the male running sort of backwards behind – proof that man is lead by his member.

now that i’m getting over my cold, morocco’s switched tactics. last night it tried sleep deprivation (morocco must have read too many articles about vice-torturer dick cheney). hour after we went to bed, folks started congregating by our alley window, talking loudly. soon one female voice and one male voice got louder and angrier. went on for over an hour. the woman would get a little louder and madder and the guy’d raise the ruckus a little more. every few minutes someone would clap-clap their hands. finally they were screaming at each other – vicious sounds. the woman’s voice got more authoritative the louder she screamed, while the man’s started screeching and breaking. i expected massive violence, death. lady had her ear plugs in, but this cut right through. finally got up and opened our shutters to see dozens of people smiling and laughing having a real good time watching the two screamers go at each other. as soon as i opened the shutters, they started moving on. could hear them for blocks.

finally got to sleep after midnight. at 3, my dream woke me. i was in an all white castle bioform city made of nanotechs and couscous (couscous – A pasta made in northern Africa of crushed and steamed semolina… semolina – Milled product of durum wheat or other hard wheat used in pasta). the nanotechs would read your thoughts and transform the couscous into whatever you wanted. the city created anything lady desired, but i couldn’t make it work, so had to make do with the leftovers of other folk’s creations. couldn’t get back to sleep, and when the amplified drone of the morning prayers from the minaret woke lady at 3:50, i told her my dream. after laughing, she said “you can eat my leftovers anytime.” didn’t get any sleep from 4 to 6 when we arose due to talk and sex. after sex i murmured “hope i’m not stuck, like the dogs.” more laughter. i make my wife laugh a lot in bed.

spent 90 minutes in hell yesterday. we went to the cinema to see Resident Evil: Apocalypse, a video game movie. was aware it was supposed to be a bad film, but knew it was going to be in french and figured since i’d seen the first, and it being a mindless horror/sci-fi/action film, my not understanding the dialogue wouldn’t matter much – i could still enjoy the violence and the monsters. instead, they showed us the new remake of The Dukes Of Hazzard. don’t believe i’ve ever seen such a mediocre movie in the theater. there’s not enough toilet paper in the world to fix this film. sole saving grace was its surreal awfulness mixed with the hilarity of seeing effete french come out of the bad guys’ mouths – often when their mouths were shut. and it was special to see a horrid hollywood movie dubbed badly into french while sitting in a seedy moroccan theatre. the moonshiner was a stoned willie nelson, and his wife was a still attractive wonder woman (linda carter). thought i was going to get one sublime moment at the end when willie started singing, but they chopped it. and it was good to hear waylon jennings singing the theme song. (see foto below where lady replaced waylon’s face with mine – i look crazier than waylon, whose songs include lines like “i got busted for something that was already gone up my nose so if you’re staying in a motel in texas don’t leave nothing in your clothes”). i never saw the dukes of hazzard tv show, but lady used to watch it with her father – she says the film is way worse than the tv series. how bad do you have to be before you’re worse than a tv show?

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” – Groucho Marx

collage by lady
me as waylon jennings – collage by lady

foto by ?
waylon as jennings – foto by ?

INDUSTRIAL ESSAOUIRA

May 28, 2007 No Comments

pics from our walk yesterday (we scour industrial areas and
dumps for trash, from which I make art)

Man in Jallaba

Industrial Effluents

constant compromise

May 28, 2007 No Comments

foto by smith

essaouira day 16, morocco daze 48

“Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It’s something you have to find out for yourself.” – Noam Chomsky, “Liberating The Mind From Orthodoxies”

here’s an observed truth that changes nothing – dogs defecate wherever they happen to be whenever they feel like it – frequently in the middle of the walkways here. cats go to the side of the alleys, add their deposit to piles of existing trash, then try to cover it up. cats are more discerning than dogs – got more class. saw fresh doggie doo this morning in the middle of the way, and it was gone within two hours – you could see a multiplicity of human dog doo shoe prints carrying it up the alley.

an inconvenient truth for me – it’s hard to cook, shop, or store here, so we started eating out more. the more we eat out, the more often i get the metallic taste of excess salt beneath my tongue and its singing in my ears, the more light-headedness i experience (though some would say i’ve always been light headed). once we discovered my high cholesterol in croatia, we changed to a healthy diet. kept it up most of the time in france except for their superb breads and cheeses. since we left france, it’s been bad to worse food all the way. an occasional third cup of coffee and not quite enough water are contributing culprits as well. if i can survive until we hit london in august, i’ll be ok.

not having a stellar flow day today. the good thing about oozing blood is it cleans germs from your wound. picked up a piece of broken glass in the alley to clean a gob of road tar off my shoe. cut my finger in the process. this alley is an immense petri dish experiment in mass germ warfare and mutant microscopic attack forms. lady just looked at me, shook her head, said “smart.”

we went walking north of the walled city because lady needed some serious trash for her art assemblages. area looked like the outtakes from the mad max movies mixed with surreal elements of the spanish art zen western “el topo”. seeing unnatural bright green pools of water burbling amidst the blowing sand and industrial detritus brought visions of post-apocalyptica to mind. a lone male walking in his star wars jellaba made me understand why they filmed part of the series in morocco. mumbling drunk stumbled toward us from the ruins along the sea like some george romero zombie, his arms out for balance or embrace. we were heading into a high wind, so breathed a mish-mash of industrial strength toxicities mixed with the grit. thank god the earth’s life expectancy is less than the toxins’ cancer gestation period.

one woman said i’m the anti-travelogue writer, that she no longer wishes to visit morocco, thinks we should leave now because she’s afraid we won’t make it out alive if we don’t. we’ll stick it out because there’s much to learn and see here, and this’ll make london all the more desirable (and london needs all the help it can get).

told lady yesterday i liked her blog because she showed the down-side of travel which traveloguers never do. it’s not all pepsi and popcorn, and it’s important to note that. still, all this is way more than worth it. i’ll never look at foreign films with the same innocent yearning again. at this rate, maybe the moroccan board of tourist fleecing will pay us to leave before we write many more true-life reviews. although a moroccan fan of lady’s complimented her on her moroccan blogs and urged her to keep telling the truth. she’s a gentle spirit, worries about offending people’s sensibilities – which makes one wonder what she’s doing with me.

it’s like in american movies – there’s always a full moon and an open parking place, there’s never any breath clouds no matter how cold it is, and you never ever see any horse shit in the streets in the westerns – in fact in the older westerns, there’s not even any blood when they’re shot… they lie there in their neat little shirts in their lovely lady’s arms explaining how everything happened and what to do about the bad guy and then with a little poof of breath close their eyes and die. no one in movies ever sweats or has body odor or hurts all over or has to use the bathroom. guess i must not be in a movie.

“I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.” – Groucho Marx

essaouira day 17

morocco’s trying to kill me. when i make it back to cleveland, i’ll have a t-shirt made saying ‘i survived 3 months in morocco.’

my heart’s beating irregularly again, i’m feeling occasionally light headed with frequent attacks of metallic salt tongue taste – and – this is my 4th day of a cold. lady’s cold lasted a day and a half. the spirit gets a wee bit down when the body’s ill.

this country’s trying to break me, kill me, finish me off. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA, it is to laugh. i’ll make it through our last 38 days and then i’ll do my victory dance on a pile of used moroccan maps.

lady asked if i hated being here. no – it’s cool here on the other side of the mirror inside the walls of this old arab city. each time we step out our door into our crooked alleys and i see the rough irregular buildings, stone arches, weird passageways, blue doors, white walls, throngs of life, i think ‘how marvelous,’ and my spirit soars. 3rd world poverty and the absence of cleanliness get me down, but seeing how others live is part of what our journey’s about. this is a magical mystery tour – only without the drugs. this is our 17th day without smoking, and i like it. don’t miss being stoned at all. gee, i hope i’m not growing up… after 61 years, it’d be a shame to become a responsible, mature adult. although i am reading noam chomsky on my computer, and albert camus in the bathroom.

what’s the difference between democrats and toilet paper? toilet paper has a stronger spine – and serves a function. what’s the difference between democrats and republicans? i’ve no idea.

“It is good for a man to judge himself occasionally. He is alone in being able to do so”. Albert Camus 1942

foto by smith

THIS IS NOT THE WAY YOU ARE

May 27, 2007 No Comments

I do not feel mentally well. I’m in a bit of anguish over what I’ve posted in this blog.

I’ve written about other people. I wonder if I’ve objectified people in Morocco in a way that I would not in Cleveland. And I’ve posted candid conversations Smith and I have had about friends’ opinions. Maybe I should keep this stuff to myself.

I want to write what I perceive, but I want to be fair as well. The notion of writing openly about everything for literary truth seems a guise to me today, like having my cake and eating it too.

I don’t know what to do about this. I don’t think there is a simple solution. And I’m at odds with Smith.

On the other hand, one of the lessons I get from Smith is that only by being totally expressive can I be fully creative. To censor oneself makes writing political calculation.

When Smith and I started our relationship, he warned me. He said he doesn’t censor himself about anything and that most people can’t handle it.

At the same time, he suspects that his openness has hurt him in his art career.

* * *

I read the above to Smith to get his opinion.

“When I write, I am brutally honest about myself, my faults, my past,” he says. “When I write about others, I try to be honest but fair and kind. I do not write to get even, or to hurt. I write to reveal, to get closer to truth. Anybody who writes, pre-censoring themselves, so as not to offend another person, is dishonest, and will never write great stuff. Don’t hurt needlessly, don’t cover up heedlessly. Writing for others’ needs is currying favor, is buying respect, is a lie not worth reading.”

“Thank you,” I say. “That makes me feel better.”

“Believe me. I couldn’t feel this more. It’s like all those people who give presents to buy friends. When the presents run out, the friends will turn on you. Besides, by writing honestly, you might actually help the other person.”

“I do know that I’ve never had actual dialogues until you.”

“I’ve never seen this, you know. I mean Keraouc was good at reconstructing dialogue, but I’ve never seen dialogue that’s been captured as it’s being said. It’s good stuff you’re doing. I’m embarrassed sometimes by it.”

“Why?”

“But I would rather be embarrassed than lose it. Some of our conversations show my faults. Plus I twinge sometimes with your genitalia crudities.”

“You’re the king of genitals.”

“Yeah, for a small one I use it large.”

“I mean that’s what gave you notoriety. Putting your genitals with the amerikan flag and a dead fish in the Peoples’ Art Show.”

“Yeah, but the reason I use my genitalia was because of fairness. Art always shows naked women, never naked men. I really like naked women. I like to use them in my collages. To be fair, I had to use myself. So my use of my own genitalia was a moral precept. I had no idea the notoriety that would result. Plus, to set the record straight, I put three non-offensive pieces in the first Peoples’ Art Show. John Hunter, who produced it, told Masumi Hayashi, whom I was going with, that he needed some outrageousness to jumpstart the show. And he asked her to ask me to put in more offensive pieces. So I did.”

“One of the things that attracts me to Wendy is that she can talk about her cunt being a cunt.”

“Or Katie Daley, her blowjob poem. She goes back to my using my genitalia to be fair. Men can talk about sex and conquest in crude terms. So why’s it wrong for women? Give me a break. The worst part of being alive, besides my lack of inner peace, is everybody’s a fucking hypocrite.”

“I think people are put in situations that makes them hypocrites.”

“No, their brains are wired that way, according to what I’ve read. Just like vampires can’t see themselves in a mirror.”

“I love how you mix fiction with reality.”

“What do you mean, fiction? Vampires are real. But, just like vampires can’t see themselves in a mirror… folk can’t see their own weakness, shortcomings, hypocrisy, bigotry. They’re all a bunch of ethical vampires who don’t appear in their own mirrors. There should be warnings on each one of their mirrors, just like on the side mirrors of cars when they say ‘things appear closer than they are.’ Their mirrors should say, ‘this is not the way you are.’

“Ha ha.”

“There’s almost nobody I respect. But thank God for that *almost*. I’ve read what you’ve written. It is GOOD STUFF. You would be eviscerating our blog, our journey, our experience, our education if you cut it or stopped.”

“And I do admit I’m wrong.”

“I don’t think you are wrong. I think you’re right about every single thing you’ve said so far. As far as the intellectual question, that’s been going on since time began. As far as the naked greed and need we see here, ditto. We are not plastic surgeons. We don’t do reality lifts. And we’re not babysitters.”

“Thank you, I think you’ve talked me out of my depression.”

“If the people who are offended aren’t secure enough in their own identities to handle it, they need to get to work on themselves.”

“Thank you. I feel 100% better. I really do.”

“You know, I actually know what I’m talking about. I think I’m morally right about this. Of course, I could be one of those ethical vampires. I could see this golden blue-eyed guy in the mirror… who’s got all his teeth!”

“Ha ha ha. Oh dear.”

“This it is the it it is.”

and now a word from our sponsor

May 27, 2007 No Comments

foto by smith

some folks fear our travel blog entries will end once we return to the states in 4 months. not to worry. after 14 months in other cultures, the un-united states of america will be just one more extremely strange land to blog about.

plus we’ll be moving down to new orleans with its own otherworld adventures. since new orleans is probably not the best place to await next hurricane season, after 6 months or so we might move to seattle, so there’s more blog travel in our future.

lady still be lady, i’ll still be her tramp, so The Adventures of Smith & Lady will continue no matter where we be. the main reason we’ll be settling down for 2 longer stretches (besides being tired of always moving on) is to finish our manuscripts, get them submitted. we have my bad boy past memoirs, lady’s fat girl book, and 3 books of poetry to put together – hers, mine, and ours. but i think the best one will be her book of our conversations… be easy and fun to read, original and unpredictable. i think she created something unique there. she even makes me laugh when i read them, and i was there when they were said.

after that, we plan to travel. the world’s going to hell in the corporate hand cart, and we want to see more of it before its expiration date. want to explore nepal, greece, south america, maybe mexico, more of africa, an island or two somewhere, alaska, and the far east.

so as long as there’s electricity and the corporations don’t succeed in stealing the internet as they’re trying to do, you’ll have our blogs to put up with. everyone who knows me knows i can’t keep my mouth shut and i never stop producing – so what else can i do.

but i tell you one place i’m not coming back to – morocco. glad i came, be glad when i’m gone. it’s rather like shooting up – nice to have done, not nice to do.

foto by smith