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
