* from a New Yorker article about Obama. I’m not an Obama fan – I think he’s as calculating as the rest of the Dems and Reps.
Steaming in the hammam this morning I had these thoughts:
Intellectualism for the sake of intellectualism is stale, bankrupt, elite. So I’m a thinker – this means I have to search out the most “elite” thinkers? Can’t I find inspiration by interacting with the average person on the street?
My writing about other people is sick. What would Hamid’s son say if he read my blog? My suspicion is that to write about people in an candid way is to exploit them. And it’s impossible to be honest when one does not know all the facts; one only knows the facts as they are perceived. Maybe honesty in journals is overrated. And I kid myself if I claim I’m totally forward. Maybe honesty is the function of serious fiction… Note to self: finish reading the Alexandria Quartet.
I tend to believe good and bad are distributed mostly evenly across all humans. Sometimes I believe rich people not bad, but human, and therefore greedy. I covet recognition and enough money to continue doing what I’m doing; I’m greedy. I try to rise above myself to be fair. Thought: the individual setpoint of fairness is the minimum comfort level one can bear. Shades of from each according to one’s ability and to each according to need…
My other suspicion is that the upper class really is so far removed from average human concerns that they are truly evil by virtue of obliviousness. I’ve also read rumors that the concept of altruism is a middle-class one. That the rich on average do not have this culture of altruism and fairness in which the middle class is raised…
I also believe in my own fallibility. When people are asked questions they are expected to have some soundbite, some consistency. They are expected to have come to some wise point in their lives in which they have the “answers.” I think that to claim consistency is to be stale, to have stopped growing. I do not have the answers. I only have my reflecting pool and the vistas revealed by trail…
The underworld is obscured behind its thick skin. My tangent mind walks in opaque soup. I used to work a little corner of it, peeling into electrical engineering, tinkering where other specialists revealed what’s under this rock or that. But I’ve lost my schooling in favor of broader experience…
* * *
There are many things I love about Morocco. I especially love morning. I wake up to the exotic moan of morning prayer followed by call of rooster and the first stirs of gulls. This morning, the solitary noise of a single musician played his way down our street.
But it’s not all good. Smith says, “the trouble with most travelogues is that they skip the shit. It ain’t all Pepsi and popcorn, you know.”
Oh, I’m tired. The days are pretty full here. I have a simultaneous dismay and enthusiasm for this country. First week I got here, I didn’t want to go to sleep because I wanted to explore the city as much as possible and I couldn’t wait for morning.
I’m still enthusiastic, but oh so tired. We’ve been here 45 days, and every day is a struggle to find something to make our existence more comfortable. Today we went on our third quest to find pillows. We were successful this time. Smith is suffering from allergies because the pillows in our apartment were chock full of dust. Although we wrapped them in two cases, the dust still puffed out. I do not understand why the owner of this apartment keeps it in such abysmal shape. This is her business. She should treat her customers better. I wonder if she *ever* washed the bedsheets.
It rained this morning and yesterday morning. I hoped the rain would clear some of the filth from the streets, but it just rearranged it. The storm sewers are thick with sludge, and the rain water sits on top of the street over the drains, unable to exit until the sun bakes it into the air. In the new part of the city, the storm sewers are permanently overflowing with pungent DayGlo green puddles.
Men clean the streets every morning, but they double as trash cans for the citizens. First thing in the morning it’s really raunchy. Fish heads and feces and lethargic dead-looking pasty-eyed kittens, cats with chunks peeling off or missing. Two dead rats this morning and bloated floating cockroaches.
Climbed over a fence to the shoreline which runs up against the city’s western wall. I passed a young woman. She was walking on the fence. She stopped me, said I should not continue on to the shore because it is dangerous. I thanked her, and we went out anyways. Some distance out, we saw poor people had made camps along the wall. There were several fires. There were no women, but lots of tattered men. In our explorations Smith and I stayed within sight of the tourist area to reduce the probability of our being mugged.
I’m tired of this. I see the beautiful shoreline, the city’s wonderful architecture and colors, but my overwhelming experience is of dirt and poverty and trying to stay healthy. We still do not have sturdy turds even after all our precautions of putting iodine in the wash water for our produce, not eating raw street food, drinking bottled water and even brushing our teeth with bottled water. It’s really discouraging.
In an error of judgement I bought chicken from an unknown butcher. I should have gone to his neighbor, from whom I’ve already bought chicken and not got sick.
But the transaction was initiated, so I chose a chunk of chicken with the skin on it. I buy chicken with skin. I figure it protects the meat from the flies. Maggots won’t hurt me, but flies carry disease in their shit and vomit.
As the butcher cut the meat into chunks for me, I noticed his cutting board. It must have years of soaked salmonella juice. And then I noticed the hands wielding the knife. Big patches of white on his skin as though he had lost pigmentation because of some skin malady.
When I paid the butcher, he didn’t even bother to wipe his hands, much less disinfect them. He took my paper money with his wet chicken hands and gave me change. Ew!
I decided the chicken was safe. It didn’t smell. I’ve smelled bad chicken from US grocery stores and I know when it starts to go. Heck, this chicken is probably safer than US grocery store chicken. Here the consumer can witness the processing.
I removed the deadly skin. This is the first time I’ve seen straggling feathers left in chicken skin. I washed the naked meat in iodine-laced water as an extra precaution.
Made curry chicken with gobs of fresh (and washed) cilantro. It was delicious.
We didn’t get sick, but it’s not an experience I want to repeat. I really gotta become vegetarian.