Am sitting here with aspirations to be a (more) complete bum, waking up late towards midday, having an omelette, orange juice and coffee and then a beer and then lying upon my bed, staring at the ceiling, daydreaming, drinking red wine and sucking hashish cigarettes across the afternoon and evening and wondering about everything and nothing …
View over old city of Essaouira, Morocco
Been 5 days of this now – on the desert Atlantic coast in Sidi Ifni, and really the past 3+ weeks have been this haze since arriving in Morocco; only the location has changed, as the blur has been constant.
Has taken a bit of software-reprogramming jumping straight into Morocco since leaving my comfortable, easy, dull existence as an English teacher in Korea, and the only continuum is large consumption of alcohol … mostly to enhance the enjoyment of my new life situation and recently partly cos I’m having writer’s block, or simply I can’t be fucked writing. I start a paragraph, a story with good intentions to blog and within 10 minutes it’s like: Why bother? You really wanna read this shit … ?
Anyway, if you’re still reading coming to the mess, bustle, heat, madness that is Morocco couldn’t be different from the calm, orderly, cyber-tech city of Seoul but I knew what I was in for as I was here in 1991 and experienced much beauty and chaos. Now the experience is quieter, away from the north, the tourist centers, the touts, the carpet sellers, the-Hey-mister, friend-need-something?
What I really needed when I arrived was to fuck … but before that happened I spend a week alone, smoking hash in a traditional room of a family town house in Essaouira, my window overlooking the main market thoroughfare across the old walled, coastal fortress town. All I did was eat grilled meat with salad taken back to my room, and stared out the window, drinking beer & red, and smoking up the whole week wondering where I was? Where I’d been? Where am I going next? I was the prefect zombie – mute, relaxed and not attacking anyone – but I’m sure the locals thought me insane: sitting at his window for 7 days, staring out at the world.
Okay, I did get out for a few hours – walked around to take some photos, used the internet, talked a little, bought food, water, alcohol, hash.
Yet the single craziest – they were a few – thing that happened that week from the view from my window a few meters above the street was this (that I wrote at the time):
An old veiled woman is shrieking outside on the street below, screaming at a smiling young man working within a small-scale building site. He can’t stop smirking; meantime she’s throwing stones from the pile of gravel at him, now in the direction of all the young men. It’s crazy, then over. But within minutes she has returned and now grabs a large rock and heaves it as the boys are laughing but yelling a cautious tone – maybe: careful, careful, no, easy lady – as she spits venom and continues the stone throwing assault as others watch as and walk by. I begin to video this scene. I saw the initial clash and it seems that something stones, sand shoveled, a loose beam narrowly missed the old woman and she I assume, said watch out, or be careful, ya trying to kill me? Off which the youth cheekily replied, what’s it matter – you’re nearly dead! Or as I imagined something to this effect as she went crazy.
And crazy she went further – she returned minutes later below my room where it stands above the covered, narrow alley, with a wine bottle and smashed it against the curb. She began throwing shards of glass at the young men; one perpetually smirking – he couldn’t keep back his grin if his life demanded it. She was eventually coaxed away by a middle-aged male … But later returned again, to throw more stones and shout.
And now back in Sidi Ifni, I feel that’s enough writing … More wine and hash please, waiter.
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