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found our visiting friends from poland – sort of. they reached marrakech and will bus here today or tomorrow. can’t believe we invited folk to cross countries to visit our refrigerator-less hot-water-less oven-less existence. although we do have old world crooked alley walled city street magic right outside our door, and hashish, so we’re not entirely empty-handed. i’d visit myself if i weren’t already here.
this is the final day of the annual 5 day gnaoua music festival. we’ve heard bits of bands scattered about the city’s various stages on differing days, and the music comes across like one continuous contiguous group playing the same song variation over and over – basic sound is mid-1970s live Santana with a bit of reggae, rap, trance and dance thrown into the mix. decent sound, but formulaic – like reggae, it’s essentially the same song over and over and over. except for 2 pay-to-enter enclosed concerts each night at midnight, it’s all free.
the narrow streets are packed with people. it’s like trying to push through times square in nyc during rush hour. lot of dreadlocks and lean young genderless flesh in long surfer shorts – with the occasional fat european gringo added for flavor.
saw a national geographic documentary on african crocodiles who starve most the year but wait for the annual migration of gazelle-like critters – when the hundreds of thousands of 4-hooveds try to drink or cross the river, the crocodiles go crazy in feeding frenzy. the massive flow of tourists past the endless stalls of vendors reminded me of that scene.
no room at the inn, so lots of concert goers are sleeping on the beach. lot more trash on the beach too. people are essentially piss, shit, trash producers – they come in, eat the environment, then poison what’s left with their wastes. iran and iraq used to be lush jungle before man came along and devoured it. so much for the garden of eden. we didn’t need no god to kick us out of eden – we poisoned our way out, killed it before we left.
our canister of cooking gas ran out – makes 5 times in past 7 months – ran out in liznjan croatia, albeilhan france, 4th floor marrakech, 6th floor marrakech, and here in essaouira. i’m learning how to deal with real life – unlike the ivory-towered intellectuals. as the real intellectual Noam Chomsky says, “The only thing I ever get irritated about is elite intellectuals, the stuff they do I do find irritating.”
lady’s been cooking tajines. a tajine is the basic moroccan cook pot (along with the couscous cookers) – it is a stoneware flat bowlish bottom with a conical stoneware top. you pile veggies and whatever else you can catch in the bowl, put the top on, turn the heat to the lowest it can go, and cook for 1 to 3 hours depending on what you’ve used. sort of like a dry-ish stew. tasty.
lady needs to write a world food blog – she’s picked up various cooking skills in each country… learned how to make pan coffee in croatia, came to terms with soup making in france, has made both old fashioned moroccan couscous and tajines here. each place has different foods in different languages and endless variations on cooking gear – from full stove with ovens to no stove at all to our current two burner gas camp stove.
there’s a melon here looks like a cantaloupe on the outside but is green like honeydew inside – best melon we’ve tasted. it’s difficult not knowing the names of things. i did identify a couple of the birds we saw in and on the ocean though – cormorants and egrets. and there’re a lot of storks in marrakech nesting atop the minarets. never saw these birds before. seeing all these vistas, peoples, birds, plants, animals past 11 months has changed the way i watch movies – now when i see a dusty arab town in a film, i think “i’ve been there, i know how hot and sweaty and dusty and smelly and bug-ridden that place is.”
did an old-day-smith: 9:30 a.m. – after jogging, lady’s cleaning up in her hammon (public bath – that’s her above and below this morning). i sat down, toked a jam jar of smoke. it pleases some bohemian beatnik bad part of my brain to start the day stoned. back in my cleveland days before lady came along like goldilocks on steroids, every morning i wasn’t at work, i’d buy a newspaper, make a pot of coffee, and get stoned sitting in the sunlight consuming the two. a nice life, but not something you can keep doing forever. after awhile you negate the magic and reality asks you to move along. this is only my 2nd morning stone in a year, and they’re both delicious. we’ll walk in the sun this morning and day flow will replace morning glow. by noon i’ll be normal – or as normal as a mutant can be. i walk among hooo-mans, who-mans.
told lady i toked and wrote. she said “you’re bad. i don’t know how you do it. as long as you’re happy.” it is getting harder… in many ways straight is easier now. i’ll be heading stoned straight for england, and straight in england i’ll be.
it’s never too late to go, flow, woo, do, be, see, yearn, learn – spurn the old, spin the new. adieu.
