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Trip Start
Mar 14, 2010
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12
Trip End
Ongoing
Marrakech, Morocco
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
oh, hi'ya. long time no see, stranger. the kid's been hit with a pinch of the ole writer's block and a dash of shitty internet service in morocco, yet again i pipsqueak and hope for the best:
paris. climbed sacrecouer and montmartre. neckcricked the eiffel tower. lived in the lap of luxury at casa david&eric. really though, three things stand out: 1) no? my daughter can't use your toilette? well howzeebout we dirty americans just pees on your restaurant floor. paris, terrible town to take a leak. 2) i'll go out on a limb and say that luxembourg gardens in the left bank has the all time greatest playground! a friggin zip line circling the perimeter! climbing-webs skying thirty panic inducing feet! whip-arounds that reach speeds requiring g-force measurements! beer for the dads! 3) vair-salleys: yeah, yeah, yeah, i get standing in awe at the adornments of gilded fripperies and mirrored halls, and excuse me for stepping off the reservation, but ole loooey quinze, the friggin sun-king fer cryin' out loud, had godawful taste in women! ragsdale spent a solid ten minutes mesmerized by a dark blue room hung with portraits of the homeliest looking wenches this side of a monty python skit...
upwards and onwards to morocco:
the theater of it all! to enter a marrakech souk is to unlock a orgiastic and felictious pandora's box. one meanders its narrows sampling nuts and fattened figs while haggling over a versicolored handbag one has no intention of buying, or perhaps, you would be interested in a moroccan tea set: handpainted glasses, brass tray and gild-plated teapot. it's as though the gods of impetuous purchase have seen the future and moved h.q. from the butt end of the checkout line and replaced the tic tacs and toenail clippers with an endless array of tapestries and silk brocades. ah hell, its all for sport, isn't it, lu?... we lumber on, smiling and weighed down by the aforementioned now purchased tea set...
the soundwaves of a souk do not horizontally attach themselves to your ears, but rather the groan of this echo chamber settles to the roughly hewn cobblestones like sediment in a jar, knits and it crackles, before rising like static mist and gaining ingress through your lower chakras. ' yallah, yallah, attencion', barks the backbroken mule of a man driving a handcart laden with cement and stacked wood destined for the furthest bowels of the market. the plaintive wail of lovesong, heartbreaking and doleful as though allah himself weeped the tears of the unrequited. the rhythmic 'drrrat, drrrat, drrrat' of the merchant's loose coins, palmrolled and wristflipped, the song of the siren guiding the unsuspecting tourist into a cryptlike shop, 'not to buy but to see to drink tea to love'. and everywhere and always, the murmuring of stooped beggers, moaned solicitudes in several languages until settling with a toothless smile on 'arigato'. above our heads, wood planks slat the sky splintering the noonday sun and softening the features of a people often misunderstood as hard and austere; a cyncism that can blind we interlopers to their subtler virtues. a merchant, his bearded visage, woodlike as though adzed by a cosmic force uninterested in the trifles of jocosity and merriment, deep in contemlative meditation, languourously lifts his heavy lidded eyes, catches a glimpse of c'trane and immediately his leadend horizon of a mouth upcurls and emits such highsquealed inanities as 'gaggagoogoo' (literally). cheeksqueezed we march on eying the endless kaleidocopes of handbags and and teasets...got-to-get-lulu-out-of-here...
we earn egress and find ourselves in djemma el-fna, the heart and soul of the medina. the low based timbre of the souk is replaced with a high pitched shrill from without. when the dying star reaches its western demise, every square inch of this square will be peopled with food stands and street musicians, pickpockets and acrobats, the hyperkinetic surgings of a land and its bounty. yet at midday, a half-filled saturday swapmeet quality descends, though instead of second hand schwinns, jackie collins' paperbacks and cast-iron pots, this asphalt square engenders the ubiquitous whine of the snakecharmer's horn, burkha-clad henna artists, and sudanese medicine men hawking the virtues of amber and cushion-seated teeth extractions. i notice younglovers walking casually hand-in-hand, she of scarf-covered head and asstight jeans and he, scraggly bearded, skullcapped and adorned in a 'public enemy' tshirt--god love this tawny and exotic town! cafe-lined, labyrinth-like corridors, and shouldered by squat pink buildings topped with a million and one satellite dishes, all pointing west, away from mecca, for even the omnicient one himself bows in supplication to skysport's tuesday futbol and arabic telenovellas.
i am challenged incessantly by young men eying my tattoo and then quickly won over by the incongruity of a westerner adorned in such cosmological musings--'ahneufs' .
california. i know california. the snoop dog...
and op-arah winfrey (comes a voice off stage left, hidden in the darkness of yet another handbag stall)
snoop, yes, oprah, no. she's from chicago
oh yes, i know chicago. that windy city...
and then, as if on cue, a tasmanian devil appears from the corner of the blacktop, tossing glassware and greenawnings before stopping directly in front of lulu clutching coltrane and frozen in abject wonder. marley and i, of course, are huddled beneath a now strewn pile of 'i love newyork' sweatshirts. our new friend having not inched from his stool, takes a casual sip from his piping hot minttea:
marrakech, too, is a windy city. but no fat people on television.
presently a mohammadean moon, gaunt'like and stiletto-stamped, slides filaments of electric silver light across the receding desert as we rollick the rails to fez.
until next time...
Comments
We still are missing y'all down South, but you sound like you are having an adventure of a lifetime! Love to LuLu and your beautiful children...
Diggin your ramblin style... feel like I'm on the ride too.
Fun!