Ben @ Morocco, Peace Corps Round 2

The Last Annual Volunteer State Road Race 500K

2015-07-27T11:45:00.004-07:00

Music inspired me for so much of the race, particularly this lady.

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Image by Joshua Holmes / RUN IT FAST

Thirty-six hours since I made it to the Rock, I showed up to the band hall. Everyone asked if I’d ran there from Tennessee, having shown up with all my gear still on. Natürlich, I went with it and told them I had. What I’d learned during the race was true: if you already have a reputation for doing such things as this, then you could as easily say you went two thousand miles as you did three hundred, or a hundred, or fifty, and you don’t necessarily illicit any stronger of a response. At a certain point, people just seem to think you can do whatever you set your mind to, they figure, and are totally capable of magical feats of endurance and are mostly impervious to pain. I too do this same 2-D flattening to other, better ultra runners, so I can understand the impulse. Saying a number like 314, really anything above 70 or thereabouts is already so beyond their lived experience as to be past some magical threshold. And yet one reason I’ve been attracted to ultra distances is in the quest to see beyond the magic of such a number and instead to be able to gain an appreciation for what such a distance means, what the lived experience instead truly is. To try and see if I can fit that into my head.

This race was long enough that you could severely screw up, more than once, and be able to recover and salvage your quest. For this race, when I got past two and a half days, I had a very tangible amount that I could latch on to. I was more than a quarter of the way, closing in on a third of the way, and so I knew I had to repeat this a little less than three times again. Later, it was a joyous text sent to my girlfriend Mina: “I’ve finished 200 KMs! 300 more to go!” At that point I had gained that sense of how far this thing truly is, though whether I’d make it all the way or not, I didn’t know.

Backing up now to the few minutes after finishing. We were there. Laz had written on a post that he hoped most to be able to see Terrie come up the mountain to the Rock, and to see her face as she stood there, hundreds of feet above the valley. She was surprised at how people had taken notice of her persistence, she told me, even the while using people’s prejudices to fuel her own efforts to upset those expectations. All of us at the end felt similarly, trying all the harder to make it when we knew there were likely people who had seen the standings and had written us off. In a moment of inspiration, I looked into my bag to see a copy of THE PERSIAN EXPEDITION by Xenophon, and the lines “The sea, the sea!” rang through my head, words shouted two thousand years ago to the Greeks at the rear signifying that those at the front had spotted their salvation.

Having made it to the Rock, against the odds and after a similarly epic voyage through steep mountains and endless valleys, the same such thrill as that pounded in my chest with each heartbeat. Terrie in her race report mentions how it took a few days for her to realize that the support crew for the race was truly rooting for her, a reversal that resembled a discovery of my own, back during boot camp, as to how—once red phase was over—the drill sergeants no longer seemed to be actively sabotaging our efforts but were instead mutely hoping to see each of us succeed.

Los Tres Amigos at The Rock

This was both what we came for and yet was not what we came for. Rather, we came for the Getting There. The act of getting there was the recombinant forge that would leave us wholly altered, the four people wandering that last quarter mile now far different than the ones who had been on the bus headed across the state to the starting line ten and a half days earlier. Crossing the gate into Castle Rock, we decided that the four of us were Dorothy (Diane), the Tin Man (me), the Scarecrow (Jay) and Toto (Terrie). Seeing that last clearing open before us and the handful of people there beginning to clap, we sang the small bit we’d rehearsed a minute before, arms enfolded and the lines ringing out “We’re off to see the wizard, the Runderful Wizard of Laz”.

Diane, Ben and Jay

Walking ahead of them through the beautiful and ethereal plantation’s row of trees and white fence, foggy at this early pre-dawn and the four of us now in Georgia, I recognized that the Tin Man was indeed my true counterpart. It seemed that so often in races my fatal flaw was less in my body and instead was too much a failure of desire, of not caring enough to push through when that was required of me. The irony being that the Tin Man is the one that feels the most deeply of all the rest, so much so that the reason he is ‘rusty’ is that he is maybe afraid to allow himself the indulgence of feeling something so strongly.

The man Carl pointed to the Rock and said, “Stand there where the shadow is." When I did that, the darkness of the evening allowing the small abutment and the chasm below it to seem as if at no elevation at all, flattening my perspective and depriving me of the view while beneficially easing my concerns over the height, next thing I heard was Carl yelling out to the group,“Done!” I was in the ledger, I was a Finisher, nine days twenty hours into it. When it mattered, this time I cared enough to see it through. I came back to see Jay head out for his turn followed by Terrie.

It was in these moments seated on the Thrown (an inside joke from Laz) that I recalled a conversation I had with Diane, sometime during an extended nap in a field a few feet from the highway and with our feet propped up on a wooden slat fence.

Photo found online

She’d spent twenty minutes telling me stories of the Bitter End 100 and the Bloody 11 W, accounts of Laz and Steve Durbin in action doing this same thing that we were doing now, "Vol State -style" as Naresh says. There now was Laz standing before me, having checked off the last of the runners for this year’s Vol State. In that field, days earlier, the stories she shared helped give me an historical sense of where I was in time and place in relation to many others and in different years, all having done just this very same thing. “Really what we are doing here is, for some days we are given the opportunity to participate in the great passion of someone else (Laz).” I told him this same thought in person once I got to the Rock. Those that call him sadistic are missing the point - we aren’t doing anything he hasn’t put himself through already. He wants us to enjoy the same rewards, insights and joys as he has experienced. He is the one, after all, who wrote the post about how he has ‘asphalt in the blood’, a great fever to get out there in each part of Tennessee and wander the roads. That he calls it a chance to know what it is like to be homeless for a week is maybe snarky but can also be as profoundly true an experience of that as the person’s empathetical sense will allow them to comprehend.

Jay’s family volunteered to drive me down the mountain. It was only from driving the same path we had just climbed that the full magnitude of the distance started to hit me. It took a full half hour to reach the motel! If the way to eat an elephant is in small, measured bites, by this point I'd been so focused on each manageable morsel that to see even just its trunk in toto was awe-inspiring. Having spent so much time going just from this turn to that bend, to then seeing each piece connected, seamless and spread before me, flowing into each other and so achingly long, was an astonishing thing. “I realize that this is the first time I’ve been in a car in ten days”, I mention to the family. The ten kilometers down to the base of the mountain, I re-lived the grief and the many points where the pain had grown to be intolerable to the point where I’d find myself lying flat on concrete, a cursory brush of my hand to remove the most egregious debris poking into my back, waiting for the pressure in my feet to recede. Coming up, when a car would pass, I began to sense that these were our own, driving by to tally our numbers, to prognosticate and to diagnose. One kind RIFer even handed me a headlamp after failing to notice me when going the other way. Passing then through New Hope, the first point where we thought to use our iPhone to check how far we’d come from the Kimball Super 8, we saw we’d gone 4.7 miles, which somehow we’d managed in two hours. That fact more than any other helped to keep us moving with vigor and optimism. Having started with such an unfathomable mileage, and then to find ourselves finally in the single digits was galvanizing for us all. From there, it was 2.5 miles to that turn up the hill, then a simple 10K from there.

Lake Nickajack, photo found online.

That turn, going up the hill, we recognized it from the bus: “When it gets pretty, that’s when you make the turn.” Coming up the hill from New Hope, seeing the sign for the train tracks before breasting the hill and seeing the lake, this was as close as we came to having our own “The sea! The sea!” moment. Still, we collected ourselves for twenty minutes before the serious climbing started, allowing the group to reform and enjoying some moments with Marv. Jay came a bit after me, later Terrie and Diane. I opened my eyes when I heard Diane ask, “Is that a train coming this way” and “How close are we to the tracks?”. Before I didn’t care how close I laid to the road, especially an hour before when, from my nausea, the many flashing lights from the runners and the bright lights of the oncoming traffic—as well as the fear that by having forgotten my GPS at the hotel, our best laid plans, “go two miles, rest ten minutes” repeat ad infinitum, would now be reduced to guess work and a terrible uncertainty over how far we had to go and whether we were moving at an acceptable pace—all this added up to my third and deepest period of doubt of the race. Somehow we’d passed the three-hundred mile mark and I still was on the edge of despair and fearful of finishing. We’d left the hotel knowing we had ten hours to go 14 miles, but flying blind, what did that even mean? Jan thought we were pushing our luck from having rested at the hotel until night had fully descended, though we needed it from having pushed hard for thirty-five miles on such little sleep.

The Canadian Contingent arrives at the Kimball Super 8 after doing 300 miles in five days.

The same pattern was reinforced that we’d come to know and expect. You do a thirty-mile day, though you still have ten miles left to make up in the nighttime in order to to make the mandatory cut-off at 7:30 AM. Showing up to the motel, feeling little more than an empty and burnt hull while standing fitfully at the check-in desk, reeking and resisting the urge to scream at the host for making registration last unbearably long, on a good day you’re able to take a cold bath, douse your legs in ice water and wring out your clothes to be somewhat more fresh, but on a bad day you just plop into the bed, elevate your feet and set the timer for 90 minutes or two hours from now, “as is”. And yet the same thing would happen, regardless. This is all part of the pattern. Because those two hours would feel like three times as long, even if you were in too much pain to drift fully into sleep. Upon awakening, you’d be startled to feel so much cooler and collected, impossibly fresh, or at least feeling enough so as to consider sustaining another concentrated effort of the sort that had a handful of hours ago reduced you to that same lilting, zombie state. Stepping outdoors again and the temperature would seem to be twenty degrees less. First, check and make sure you remembered to throw away trash, fill your water bottles, but also: do we need more food before we leave the town limits? Sometimes you’re fresh enough to remember all this, sometimes you wake up in a daze and stumble away far less prepared than you need to be.

Once you get going, however, your mind clears. What I’d told Terrie had seemed to come true: this race is long enough that it teaches you incrementally the skills needed to overcome it. Even as it gets tougher and the challenges pile on top of each other, you’d have become better and would be able to handle it. It might seem like it starts hard and stays at that same hardness, but really it’s gotten tougher and so have you. I’d done very little research other than reading Naresh’s race report and skimming two or three others. I did have an intuitive sense that 1) this race would be tackled by breaking it into thirds. The first third would be all adrenaline and would pass without a great deal of struggle just from having been fresh. It was also the flattest. 2) The last third (~100 miles) would be similarly ‘easy’ just from the fact that the end is in sight and you are motivated to finish it. Also, you’d have gotten through so much that if you are still in the game there’s no reason your will would break unless you took a wrong turn and ventured too many miles off course. And 3) the middle third would be the hellish part, where the aches and pains have piled up, you’re no longer seeming to make any progress, and whether you are at mile 120 or mile 180, you still seem to have an incredibly far distance left to go. Also this is the section where the towns are farthest apart, all of them a good twenty miles distant from the other, six or seven towns like that in a row, all on the same unforgiving highway. To get to one of these towns only to stock up and head back out, you’re making a big commitment and the temptation is to stay longer and recover.

Making it to that third section meant so much. After 215, it felt like the race was rapidly diminishing and a finish finally began to feel tangible rather than some strange abstract moment ahead in the future. It was around Wartrace where I made the first changes to my gear, something you are afraid to do but in my case it only made everything a great deal better. My trusty Army spandex had done so well for me in avoiding chafing, something that was my principal anxiety before the race began. But it felt like it was crushing my Vital Parts. Afraid of any permanent damage, I saw around day 8 that there were seams that would allow me to keep the structural integrity of them, and yet I could scissor away the crotch and be a great deal freer and more comfortable, so long as I took great pains to cover myself with my billowy hat when standing or sitting. Similarly I noticed my right foot had grown an enormous blister on the top of the foot, and there was my single most sore place on my foot in the same place. My preparation for the race had included a few barefoot runs each week, leading up to a 45 minute 5K barefoot run on asphalt to the Band hall and back.

Some days before leaving for Tennessee. For much of when I was little, I thought this was how feet naturally looked. And yes, all the dark parts that came into contact with the concrete were blister-free during the race. But...

...While that truly did a good deal of good in helping me cover the miles in my Hoka’s with minimal feet problems, I didn’t foresee that the effect would help prevent blisters from the bottom of my feet only. The sides and top didn’t benefit from the barefoot training and now the shoes were causing some bizarre and painful things there. Like the entire side of my pinky toe turning purple.

Taking the time to pinpoint that the sore spot came from the side of my foot and not the bottom, I realized I could fix this with just taking my knife and drilling a hole in the side of my shoe. That was something I'd avoided until now, but Wartrace was a turning point: the same hellish two mile march into town that you find at the end of the Strolling Jim 40-miler likewise wrecked me here, but in a much more total way. Seated on a brick wall after a relentless push into town, the discomfort from my spandex, shoes, the heat and the terrible pressure in my body finally boiled over. Rocking back and forth, unable to suppress the pain, all I could do was throw myself into a heap on the grass and let it have its way with me. Recovering in the cool living room of a friend Sandy for a handful of hours before going out, the pain at its zenith, I knew that I couldn’t continue without being bold enough to make such changes in my gear, and from then on every such change worked well and I never reached as deep of a low point as that again.

I was glad that Jay and I rejoined for the last third. He told me the waypoints that he hoped to hit: make it halfway, that’s where his wife told him he needed to go in order for her to allow him to come back home. :) But beyond that was the Bench of Despair, which we arrived at together on our first night traveling together, and after that the only other one he hoped to get was mile 200. Prior to this, he’d be four or five hours ahead of me, would reserve a room and by the time I got there he was on his way out.

In hindsight, the timing of when we got to the Bench of Despair was a big help. It was five miles or so from our start for that day, leaving Shelbyville, the city which seems to last the longest and whose lengthy exurbs Jay said mentally destroyed him. Had he gone on to the Bench of Despair at that moment, he feels it would have been too great of a temptation for him to call for the Meat Wagon. He’d been eyeing that for some time, he told me. Instead, he rested a good deal longer than normal, maybe up to 6 hours, and we all headed out in the middle of the night. In the daylight those five miles would have been hot, hard, endless and totally exposed. This led me to see the wisdom of the answer I got from Paul the Astrophysicist, who gave this answer to the question, “Which parts up ahead are the hardest?” “That all depends on who you are, when you get there and in what state.”

This video reminds me way too much of the race, especially sleeping right on the pavement. "Who’ll help the tired soldier / Far from his own hometown / Carry these men and women / Who get lost when the Sun goes down"

As it was, after a twenty minute nap on the wide shoulder of the road, somewhat dangerous but reasonable considering the lights of oncoming cars were visible from a mile away, we got into the town, got our obligatory photos strewn despondent across the Bench and some ten minutes later set out. “After 200, I don’t have any more goals that I’ve been aiming for.” Jay told me. The last hundred miles is a great deal more dense in population, and having gotten up from the Bench of Despair, there was always a landmark ten miles away or less with which to bolster our concentration and keep us motivated, whether that be a mileage landmark like hitting 250 and 300 (high five!) or else checking off one of the remaining challenges, like the climb up Monteagle.

Photo of our first steps up the Monteagle Pass, the last light of day having been swallowed and the night projecting our souls over the deep. The second time in my life where you run at it for three, four hours and it only looms larger.

A lot of this run was showing up somewhere only to spend a handful of minutes glancing about as the faint impression of something that we caught out the window of the bus rose through our minds to meet and overlay itself onto the view before us. That happened a great deal, and the feeling of exhausting these memories, of having passed through all the landmarks that there were to be remembered, allowed us to further foster the hopes that we might get to that final landmark, the Rock, our departure point of the bus ride and our terminus of the run, and to get there sooner rather than later. It was great to get up from the Bench of Despair with the words of John Price echoing in my mind: “If you can lie down there and then get up, you will go on to finish. It’s a very small percentage of people that get past the Bench and don’t finish.”

Mile 288 Sunrise at Tracey City.

Such moments as these meant everything to us.

Photo courtesy of Dallas Smith

Other such landmarks that stand out was the town that had road construction on a part of the course near the town square—this obstacle was solved by waiting for a break in the traffic then “sprinting” up the side of the road past the workers—as well as the town that had the movie theatre. That stuck out because I remembered the British man asking John Price if people routinely went there to watch a movie, take a nap in the air condition darkness, or both. “It’s cheaper than a motel! And you’ll stay about the same amount of time.” Then there was the two steep roads going down (down from Castle Rock and Monteagle), both of which would now be Ups for us. The steep uphill on which the bus bottomed out and seemingly broke would be the Big Downhill to Jasper. Other ones included the small handful of turns that we took, or a random business whose sign stuck out in our minds. All were very welcome.

...To The Place I Belong

One motivator was the fact that my maps were laminated, hole-punched and hooked on a carabiner. Getting to each town, I had the satisfaction of pulling off that page and throwing it away. As the ten days progressed, this thick stack of more than thirty sheets grew less and less, visual confirmation that all was going to plan. Just now as I write this, I diced an onion, put it in a skillet with just a small amount of olive oil and salt. Five minutes later, entering the kitchen to stir and check my pasta, I was amazed at how the atmosphere was rich with this wholesome, earthy scent. What had been our stale and sanitized barracks had converted to the rich warmth of a hearth at home, with this one ingredient cooking away on the stovetop all that it took for such a transformation to be worked. Small moments of anger or despair in this race, which above all is a referendum on the person’s patience and self-knowledge, would flee as quick seemingly as they came over similarly small gestures. Tearing a page off of the ring was one such worker of magic, but there were many others. These were name games, telling stories, walking in formation and shouting cadence. I couldn’t remember much other than the one that goes “When my granny was 91, she did PT just for fun/ when my granny was 92, she did PT better than you/ …93, she did PT better than me/ …. 94, she did PT more and more/ …95, she did PT, the best alive/ …96, she did PT just for kicks/ …97, she up, she died, she went to heaven/ when my granny was 98, she did PT at the Peary Gates.”

I’d have liked to have played some of the ones I had on Spotify (“When I get to heaven, St Peter going to say, how’d you make your living boy, how’d you make your pay") but at that point my smart phone had been exchanged for a flip-phone. What I could remember, though, helped: on my GPS when doing these games or shouting cadence we’d cut a minute off our pace and everyone was a great deal less mopish.

After making it past Shelbyville, we found ourselves reunited with Diane, who had somehow gotten ahead of us. I told her that I had the image of her, for years to come, guiding other schmucks through their first Vol State's, which made me possessive and jealous, but then I realized she'd be telling Jay and Ben stories to them and I felt better. I told her she was the Virgil to our Dante.

Diane leading Jay and Ben through the abyss.

Photo courtesy of Gustave Doré.

Seemingly any time I felt like I was pulling away and forging ahead on my own, I’d make it only so far, become weary, and then I’d be leapfrogged. The three of us all realized this about our group--how breaking away was more illusion than reality--given that after a week we were all moving at the exact same speed, and this helped us focus on making the remainder of our Vol State a never-before-seen show of teamwork. A handful of the others would get ahead and stay ahead. Diane would read the names on her phone, mentioning how far ahead they’d gotten. Gary Price, Joshua Swink, Terrie, or the Astrophysicist in the floppy hat. The fact that she’s done this race five times before meant that she could tell where the people had likely spent the night and whether they were headed for a daytime finish or a nighttime one.

The leapfrogging continued but on a smaller scale. We began to call this our duck walk, both from how we were moving as well as how we’d stay in a line yet always changing out the leader. One of us would get hot and would be a quarter mile ahead of the others. Diane would get steely-eyed and would barrel forward, or Jay. I was the one with the GPS that was used to effect our self-imposed regime of two miles at a time, no stopping, then a ten or fifteen minute rest. Often it’d be me out front, dragging us further on in a death march, letting them know we had a half mile left, "so start looking for a good shade tree." We’d be going generally about 19-minute miles, sometimes better, sometimes worse, and at night that would slip to an occasional 17 minute mile, so even with a great deal of rest we’d average more than two miles an hour. We could count on being out there 16 hours a day, no matter what, and half of the remainder would be swallowed up in meals. Even if this was walking, it felt like a continual push.

Diane told us that for a month—maybe longer, maybe forever—we’d not go down a highway without scanning the horizon for the ecstatic combination of a well-manicured lawn and a shade tree.

And every day the boy would come

We’d be taking advantage of these occasions and would be happy to hear a car pull up with a recent finisher stopping by to check on us and offer their services if we wished to change from Screwed to Crewed. But there were others and they all gave us signs of life beyond the Rock, that of sleep without dreaded awakenings, of long cool afternoons with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Shoes other than mangled Hokas and garments other than athletic sweat-wickers.

Photo from Bill Baker

Family came out to see me as well, most of who did not know I was in Tennessee until some hours before they drove to see me. My step-sister, my mother and younger (of the two) sister. My beautiful niece. Later I enjoyed their surprise when they’d text me asking me how far I was, and it always seemed much further than they had anticipated. As slow as we went, we still went 100 kilometers every two days! I was glad to have shared the Tinyurl link with the race updates, and I knew there were people from Run it Fast and from the Band who were sending me messages online, though in the whole ten days I spent a maximum of twenty minutes being able to check them. Instead I was able to have the Corporal in charge of me share my number on the board during formation one day, so that for a good half of a week I received a trickle of supportive messages straight to my phone. This was especially good because I got most of them during that middle third which caused so much doubt and strain.

Walking with Terrie, asking her what epiphanies she'd had, we talked about the Bruce Lee quote here, and how that applied to the role with which we tasked ourselves, that of wedding ourselves to this winding ribbon of highway until it is done with us.

While there is a great deal more that could be said, catalogued, imparted to others, the great joy from this race is to not know all the details ahead of time, but instead to show up and live it. To know more is worthless since this race is such that you can’t read and expect to have an idea of what it is like unless you are there trying it. As mentioned earlier, I came wanting to know, to cross to the other side of experience and to put myself there, continually, letting the process work itself upon me. One lady became very enthusiastic about the race when she saw the first runners came through, and she set up a great spread for the runners, with pink signs a quarter of a mile away alerting us to a Road Angel up ahead. Arriving there at five o’clock in the morning with the sun on its ascent, somewhere in the 190s mileage and not so far from the Bench of Despair, you got to her place and there was a large canopy, four coolers with everything from drinks to Body Glide, and really luxuriant camping chairs.

Kim Nutt, our road angel, seemed to get as much from us as we got from her. Ten miles from the Bench of Despair and we got to her Oasis of Hope.

Photo courtesy of Dallas Smith

Here Jay and I reunited with Diane, almost immediately after which the extremely kind and sporty young mom came out to chat with us and see what we needed. This was a person who had become captivated with the race and was on first name basis with each of us, knowing who would soon be there and where the rest had gotten thus far. To be offered use of her indoor plumbing was so unexpected and joyful that we could not contain our great shows of gratitude and enthusiasm.

Interestingly enough, she remarked on how no person yet had been able to answer her question, “Why run this?” Given that I’m known as the poetic one of the bunch, with a facility for metaphor, the eyes turned to me and I raised my hand. “I’d venture to say that I’ve got a pretty coherent rationale for this craziness.” I told her how endurance sports for me are the best way to work the Coping Muscle. In my practice as an outreach counselor in middle school, all the problems kids went through could be traced back to the way they cope. Everyone copes, you ether cope well or you cope badly. A race such as this is like a controlled, an almost clinical laboratory environment where you have people watching over you as you seek to gain practice in coping. If things go awry, they are there to swoop in. That way, after a race like this you have a well-developed ability to cope, to handle what comes at you. So, in real life when you’re confronted with the unexpected, you can handle it.” She nodded. “That’s like saying, If I can handle something like the Vol State, I can handle anything. “ Exactly!

Some two hundred kilometers later we reunited with Terrie, and I was able to tell her that the single section we did together and in which we shared our observations and epiphanies was the highlight of my trip. “I’m glad that we are together again, here.” I told her. That night, close to a week before, we discussed many things but the comment that sticks with me the most was the fact that I compared this particular race to my favorite book, INFINITE JEST. “That book is written at such a higher difficulty level than anything else I’d ever read, it took six months just to read the first half. And somehow only three weeks to read the second half.

What I realized was that it’s not that the book got easier, but that the sheer length of the book had afforded me sufficient opportunity to improve as a reader. Because I stuck it out, it had raised me up to its level. This race does the same thing: the easier, flatter first part is the introduction, and it’s hard, it’s a long way, it’s hot. At this point you are exposed to these aspects but not the other more difficult things that come later. And you’re given enough time to learn how to manage them. Then in the middle you get some rolling hills, the towns are further apart, and you get introduced to the rumble strip. Each of these come gradually, and you have ample time to incorporate them into your repertoire. Later you’re more tired, you’re fighting the clock, there’s a lot more steep elevation. It’s throwing everything at you. But I can see that by the time we get there, we will have grown to the point that it doesn’t seem any harder than what we’re doing right now. Just like the book.”

Not long before, we had been surprised when three or four trucks passed in quick succession, the middle one of which - too close! THWAP! - gave us a ringing hit to our elbows by its right-side mirror. Overcoming that and realizing we were OK, I told her how Naresh, both in his race report and in an email to everyone on the list-serv some days before the start of the race, mentioned how at a certain point the dream he harbored was to be hit by a truck, only slightly, and so have an honorable excuse by which to drop out. I told her that we now could do so, but we both came to the conclusion that we’d make it to the Rock and that to have been hit by a truck would only add more to our glory for having not given into the easy out. I mentioned that I’ll write to Naresh and share this tidbit with him. I feel the same is true for him, had that happened to him.

Another final note is that I should share the inspirational quote that I’d tell everyone that stopped to ask what we were doing and where we were going. This grew to be a bit tedious, especially as the time crunch started to affect us, and even more from the fact that during the second half of the race it started to feel less like they were curious and more as if they were cross-examining us. I could imagine them thinking, “I will ask them, and if they say something other than ‘Hickman Kentucky, on the way to Georgia’ then I’ll know that all of the others have been lying.” Ha!

The thing I would tell them was “It’s so easy to have a dream and to write it off. 'That’ll never happen, why even try.' But to me, half of the joy is just in the trying. When thinking about it that way, it becomes a lot easier to get out the door. Once you do that, who knows how far you’ll go!”

And that takes us further back, to that first third of the race, where the adrenaline kept you going and you first start to tackle the challenges unique to this race. You’re hoping to fatigue that Coping Muscle and to spur it on to grow. But that’s further on, and yes the joy comes from the moment after you’ve thought about quitting, but decide not to. The moment when you continue on as you had before, despite. But the joy also comes in the setting out, where it’s all still unknown and you venture forward into it. Of showing up at the airport and Sal and Caleb are there, your flight was an hour behind and your phone mysteriously stopped getting signal of any sort, but they know its you because you’re the one wearing the Scott Jurek pack and have on Spandex. Of that first dinner at the buffet in Kimball, trying to wrap your mind around who you will be and what you will have to do to make it back there, the 299 mile mark, which is at the top of the hill right before you go under the Interstate and cross the 300 mile mark. Or a day later, having eaten lunch and taken the slightly hilarious photos on the Bench of Despair, all fresh and clean, before showing up at the Last Supper, surrounded by a huge crowd of Fit, generally lean and lithe people who all have a story, often a turbulent one, and who all understand the allure and—at least here among us—need not give explanations. While it doesn't end up that way, at that moment we are all potential finishers, and later being behind so many of them, I gained comfort from the fact that we all joined and met in that room and we all tread the same path of highway, step for step.

As I told Terrie, whether you want to or not, the idea of this race is a fishing hook that gets lodged into your brain, and no matter the length of your initial incredulity, once it is there it starts to take root, to fester, and you begin to look at it from an ever changing viewpoint that over time continues to knock until you’ve at last shown up on the ferry, too. As Paul said in my brief encounter with him, “Everyone should do the impossible once. When you get there, that’s what it feels like.” My own turning point came from the realization that 1) Tennessee has the best races, 2) I want to do all the good races Tennessee has, and 3) Vol State is known as an especially good race, and an especially “Tennessee” -race, so in following that progression of thoughts I kind of elided in my brain over a lot of other gnarly facts and just accepted my fate that one day I’ll run Vol State, too.

And now I have!

Por fin, we made it out of the Inferno.

Thanks to everyone. Tennessee truly is a beautiful place, and I was blessed to be able to visit 24 of the most resplendent small towns in a ten day period. To get to cross it on foot, unsupported except for the dozen or so Road Angels that saved my butt—like once when I left a town, only to touch my water bottles and realize that I’d already gone a mile and had not filled up any of them, they were bone dry, but if you wouldn't know it as soon as I realized that, I looked up to see a mini-van had parked a mile ahead and a hipster girl with the most spotless porcelain skin was walking towards me with three water bottles in her hand!—is as transformative and joyful as they say, as well as every bit as difficult as they say. While we didn’t get the ferry this year, pretty much all of the iconic experiences wound their way into my path : sleeping in cemeteries, church welcome mats, being chased by hillbillies, screwing up terribly and having enough time to fix it. Nothing else like it!

Un gran bisou.

PERSONAL SIGNIFICANCE

A sense of wonderment; cultivation of the absurd*; acknowledgment of mortality and the undermining of it limits; rejection of our lifestyle of comfort. A statement about the obesity epidemic found along its path, of which I once was a part; a rejoicing in movement and the outdoors; a taste of the epic alongside my gratitude for the small, wonderful things. Just as much a chance to eat all the biscuits and gravy that I could fit (not to mention double fisting the deathly delicious gas station corn dogs along the way), as a chance to go across 10% of the United States on foot in less than a week and a half; acknowledgement that for good or ill, I love ultra running and the ultra Lifestyle, and that this was a way to embrace my sport in a big way, so much so that I told Diane one day “I realize now that this race isn’t about numbers or suffering or any of that. Really it’s just an initiation into the Vol State family.” You then ask yourself, more than once, “do you belong here or not?” Proving to myself that yes, I did. For all the gory and untenable anguish that you might expect, there was just as much laughter, joking and storytelling. Something this all-encompassing delivered the goods on all accounts, whether harrowing and profane or sublime and jubilant.

A lot of this was even before the race, but the race offered it’s own significance that didn’t come until I was on the road. This was all point-to-point. After enough time, I realized that a great part of why I was continuing forward was from being powered by my own curiosity. To keep going at least until the next hill, some two miles away, and see what lies on the other side. To make it to the market and see the people there and whether there are any interesting characters to chat up. One man struck me as resembling a great deal Papa Hemingway, who I hope to emulate when I retire, moving to Cuba, fishing, writing and sharing rum and cigars with the locals (such things I’d tell myself, helping to give me a sense of my place on the timeline and to remind me that the two hundred miles left would someday end). The scenery maybe at first seemed to have that Flintstones quality, but before too long I began to see the subtle changes in the landscape, and how they grew more pronounced until the landscape was unrecognizable from that at the beginning. Watching such a change as that unfurl, almost like a time lapse photo, by that point I knew I was on the big gear of the clock. What do I mean?

I’d talked with Jay and Remy at the beginning of the race on the bus, about how a person’s feeling of time operates in the same way as the gears of a watch. You begin on the smallest gear, watching the minutes slowly tick by. Eventually you’re moving and an hour has passed, though that first hour seems to take a long time. Once a few hours pass, though, each hour after that seems to be here and gone even faster than the one before it. That first three hour segment likewise, which from other races I’ve done I see is the next bigger gear. Once your mind moves up to that level and gets through the first revolution of it, the three-hour segments afterwards move all the quicker. At a fifty-miler, then, it takes a good while to get from the 3rd hour to the 6th hour, but next thing you know one time you check your watch it’s 8 hours in, and seemingly the next time you look at it it’s now already at 12 or 13. I had a suspicion that there were more, larger gears beyond that and in a race like this I’d be able to have my mind drift even further upwards into their realm. Having now gone through it, I can remember a point in the race when I reflected back on breakfast only to have realized that the breakfast I was remembering was from a day earlier, close to 40 hours before. It felt rather more like 12.

*re: the Absurd. In some ineffable way the race kept reminding me of WAITING FOR GODOT, which Diane and I would bring up before both laughing like lunatics. “It’s the only play where nothing happens, twice!”

During our late night / early morning jaunt past Parsons, talking with Terrie I mentioned how I was able to gain a greater peace of mind about my race prospects from having surrendered to the idea that “I will be out here for the whole ten allotted days.” Whether I make it to the Rock or not, now there was no equivocation about whether I call the meat wagon or not. All too often in races longer than 100K, I’d throw in the towel rather than trudge forward, and much of the time from having feared that I was now moving slower than the minimum. Especially having joined the Army, there’d no longer be any DNF’s, though you might get the occasional DQ on time. We never quit.

My first moment of crisis came during my first night alone. The miles were achingly slow, the hills lasted far too long and I slept on a side road, there were no churches with soft mats and the only light came from a gas station a mile away.

The fear of mediocrity is one of the worst because in a sense you're succumbing to the very insidious belief that, of course you're not tough, of course this was bound to happen. But the sun rose and I made the effort to push on and catch up with Jay.

Having resigned myself to being out there helped to ease some of the mental anxiety. But furthermore, the next thought that comes is “Well, if I’m going to be out here for that amount of time, might as well take advantage of it and give what is necessary to get to the Rock.” This became the new standard. I consoled myself whenever doubts began to creep up by shouting (usually in my head, sometimes out loud) “Progress, progress” at each new footfall. Hitting each 50 mile marker, especially the later ones, gave me the kind of adrenaline surges that you see in professional wrestlers. If I were close enough to a concrete block I probably could have ripped through them with my face. On the bus when we were driving, so many were trying to think of better ways to consider the race, things that seemed more manageable to them. “It’s like a double Badwater, but you get so much more time to do it.” I went for the opposite tack, just to make light of it, albeit it in a darker way: “Yeah, you know, it’s really like just a million steps and then you’re there!” Coming to terms with both the length and the shortness, often jumping between the two, emotionally helped whenever I was in a rut. When the miles didn’t seem to come quickly enough, I focused on how in such a short time span I’d already covered so much. When they came so fast, I’d fuel myself further with wonder in thinking how far I was going.

Also talking to Terrie, I mentioned how at a certain point you ask yourself, “If not now, when?” Sure we were suffering, but physically I was in as good of a position to finish as anyone, or as I'd ever likely to be in the future. It’d only be a matter of willpower then, or a failure of such, that would decide the fate of the race. Such reminders of mortality and the fact that you only get a limited number of tries helped push me on. I’m not one to let opportunities go by and don’t have a great deal of regrets, but of those that I do they are some real doozies that ache still to this day. This could easily be a lasting bruise or a real ‘shiner’**, I told myself.

You must imagine Sisyphus happy.

The hours or days of feeling alone in your torment before the ecstatic moment of recall: you’re not alone in this suffering. There’s Jay—especially Jay—and Diane right there, taking their shoes off and elevating them on the scrubby bit of hill where we’ve decamped. Ten minute warning before we start off again. Finding that you’re not alone, what more fundamental and basic form of coping than that?

**This is the only metaphor I could find where both results sounded really painful, whichever way it goes.

Really, I wasn't alone, I had the whole 10th Mountain Division watching me. SFC Joshua Swink, also from there and finishing two days ahead of me, made sure of that! "Now we've got ten thousand eyes watching us" I told him. "That's why, that'll help!" he responded when he told me that this photo of us together (below) was now on the 10th Mountain Light Infantry Facebook page. While that certainly helped, I most looked forward to the day when I'd be back in my own formation, that of the Army Band, and how proud I'd feel in being able to tell them that I did it. Having already come back and experienced that very same moment, it was worth it.

Climb to glory! To the top!

Read about SFC Swink's motivation to run and

consider giving to his For Beydn Foundation here:

http://www.forbeydn.org/

Preparing my kit. One of the best moments was walking on Highway 412 and being passed by a convoy. Each LTV that passed, I'd tap my forehead and they'd let a big roar belch from the truck's horn, the soldiers inside pumping their arms.

The legendary push through the Italian mountains by the 10th Mountain Division, something I drew my inspiration from. There's a good chance I've passed alongside Mount Belvedere in real life, which in Italian means bel + vedere, or "beautiful sight". Out during Vol State, you looked for inspiration everywhere. Many of my strongest dreams during my lifetime have been found in and around the base of these mountains.

In fact, one of my motivating talks I gave myself whenever I started hurting was "This is a small price to pay." That's maybe the biggest secret of all, and now looking past this time in my life, the 9 months since I signed up where I've had this hanging over my head, I hope I have the strength to apply that same perspective to other things that I care about.

FUN FACTS

All that was promised came true:

-The backpack, shoes and clothes weighed 12 pounds total. I lost seven (3 kg) during the 10 days on the course.

-The chest straps on my Scott Jurek pack I called my car dashboard. Hanging on it I had (L to R, looking down at it) watch #1 telling me the time, watch #2 telling me the mileage, my tunes, flashlight, USB charger, sunscreen, pepper spray. Had a DVD a 10 disc CD changer and a subwoofer but they fell off during one of my naps.

-I slept in a cemetery on a beautiful gazebo.

-Temperatures were 100+ for 1/3 of the race, 90's for the rest and one coolish day that was maybe 86 or 87. In the words of Joshua Swink, "The air temp was 100 with a heat index of 105-107 and an estimated 150 degree temperature rebound from the asphalt."

-Reached out to Naresh and we had this exchange:

-Diane told me how they worked together and she got into running. Within a year of his first run he'd done a 100 miler and Vol State, I believe she said, and he did so wearing Vibrams. "He was in incredible pain but he had a great smile the entire time. For months great swaths of his skin peeled off."

-Slept on the welcome mats of a church repeatedly

-Nice people welcomed me into their fold for a little while.

-I drank from a river more than once, using a 0.1 micron filter on my water bottles.

-Between 900,000 and 1.2 million steps were taken.

-A drunk hillbilly chased me with his dogs at 2 AM. After some days of not running, I ran.

-80 Starters, 20 DNF's, four countries or more represented.

This guy finished during the middle slump of the race, and reenergized us all.

-I never did a training run longer than ten miles. I was at military training until May, ran a 50 miler, three weeks rest, ran a second 50-miler, three weeks rest, and then off to Chattanooga for Vol State. Not the ideal training, but what I did instead was follow my platoon sergeants at music school who led us in a bunch of this:

Conditioning Drill 3, the fifth video on the list, can make people sweat just from thinking about it.

Doing enough CD 3 at 10 reps and I made it across Tennessee.

-It hurt less to run down to Jasper than to walk, so run I did. Those that know, know.

-Bill Baker and I shared a moment when I learned that Joshua Holmes never did this uncrewed. "So that means if I finish Screwed, I will have one-upped the great Joshua Holmes?" Dream that is of Bill Baker's, he got a glint in his eye and nodded. "I'd suppose so."

If you haven't yet, please visit my donation page for the New York Road Runner's Team for Kids, and pitch in $10. Thank you. https://www.runwithtfk.org/Profile/PublicPage/21251

We had fun at the back of the pack!
Diane: "They're going to get on to us for dragging this out."

The last two runners to lay at the Bench of Despair until next year,

when the despair continues!

Superdave made this video, it captures it in a way that words can't. Enjoy!

Thanks for reading.

For FUTURE MOROCCO PCVs

2013-06-29T11:51:00.002-07:00

Are you going to serve in Morocco with the Peace Corps? GREAT. It's the best.

Here's the advice I've given to a future trainee. I hope you find it useful. I once tried not to give too much advice--its better for you to discover it on your own--but I've come to see that most of this is meaningless to you, even if you read it many times UNTIL YOU'RE ACTUALLY THERE.

Q: Thanks, Ben. What can I do to get ready for the language? Do you know of any online tools to get ahead in learning their dialect of Arabic?

You're welcome, this is good for me, it's helping me to relive the process. I'm probably going to post this info to my blog, in order to help other people too. But I'm unemployed at the moment since my job at a school has gotten out for the summer, so I have lots of empty hours.

To summarize my advice, given that you have half a year to get ready :
-learn Arabic script

-learn the basics of French (especially numbers, their alphabet, and simple questions). People will hear you speak Arabic to them, but will respond in French, especially in markets. Also, learning French is something you can do throughout the time you are there. Some volunteers set goals of reading all the Harry Potter and Hunger Games books in French while they are there. I read a magazine each week called Tel Quel, and it was both a way to keep up with national news in Morocco and to practice French.

-looking at the onlince PC Arabic textbook (link below) will help, give it a little bit of time everyday, but they'll still make you go through training. I wouldn't worry about trying to figure out the grammar, and instead would focus on vocabulary. You can start making your flash cards now! The grammar is pretty easy but you need a teacher for that to make sense.

-make vocabulary cards NOW with the verbs in the back of the book and from different sections that highlight grammar.

For language, you can download the book now :

http://www.friendsofmorocco.org/learnarabic.htm

On this site, it says : download the new 2011 darija book and then 'associate audio files'. Darija is the language of Morocco, it's part Berber, part Arabic, part French. It's very different than Modern Arabic. There's not a lot of use for studying 'Arabic' like you get in college textbooks until after you've been in Peace Corps. However, DO LEARN the script. For me, their Arabic is like that of a person that didn't know how to read Arabic trying to speak Arabic. "real" Arabic has lots of 'short' vowel signs that aren't written. Moroccan Arabic sounds like someone trying to speak Arabic that doesn't know what those vowels are, so they just run the consonants together with the occasional 'long' vowel, that IS written. So, the word 'accept' for them is this : qbl. Yes, Q B L, with nothing in between. Learning Moroccan Arabic then hearing someone speak Classical Arabic, you hear the same stuff but with 10x the vowels, and so the words flow more beautifully and sound twice as long. Standard Arabic for 'accept' sounds like : qu-bi-la. (Even though written it would look the same for both). And I'm not being critical, this is just a natural thing that occurs linguistically. And it ends up taking on a life of its own.

My feeling this happened because of people not having highly developed schooling and literacy for hundreds of years. The same thing kind of with our English and the different accepts that developed because our country was a bunch of frontier land settled far from England. You have the words in front of you but dont know how to pronounce something, so then you decide on your own way and everyone around you follows that.

Before I went, all I studied was the arabic script, and that was a very good thing that helped me a lot (signs and things are written in French and Arabic almost always, sometimes just Arabic, so being able to look at a road sign and know what it says is important). PC when I was there did not teach script, and they went through great pains to create their own romanization of it. You'll see this is in the book. I think it was the wrong way to do it, when people spend nearly as much time on learning the PC roman alphabet way as it takes to learn the real script. For me, the roman way was more confusing, and it made the pronunciation harder to remember, as well as missing out on having any kind of long-term skill (being able to read Arabic) that you can use after you leave Peace Corps.
The best book for learning the alphabet script is Alif-Ba. You can buy it online, and it comes with a DVD. One month with that and I was fine. It's really fun to be able to write your friends and relatives names (or the occasional tourist that you have a crush on) using Arabic.

The PC alphabet is like this :

capital H means one thing, (the sound of aHHHHHH, or aspirated H).
little h means a different thing.
the 3 is the letter they use for the "ayn" sound, which is the sound of a goat.
if the letters S, D or T have a dot above them, then it means you accent the sound of that letter.

It gets confusing when you have all of the letters written together, because then you start reading it like its English, and its not.

Last bit of advice, language wise : if you're placed in a Berber town, where they speak Tashleheet or Tamazight, make the appearance of trying to learn it.

One reason I wouldn't invest too much time right now is the fact that you're not really there until the plane touches down. People break a leg, and then they get deferred to another country later on, or who-knows-what.

I'm having so much fun writing all of this to you, maybe I'll get to work on those memoirs that I've been meaning to write. I promised my Moroccan family not to write about them, so this will be just for me to enjoy and keep. In fact, if you want a good project to work on once you're there, I'd like to write kids books that feature a Western character and a Moroccan character. I've got one that I'm going to do and I'll send it your way. But it'd be fun to make that into a cultural outreach project.

Tala f rask! (its a saying they have that means, Take care of your head) Broken down it means
Tala : take care
f : of
ras : head
k: your.

But you say it all together : tala frask.

*I know with Rosetta Stone, they used to have one month subscriptions to languages for 50 bucks. I'd plan on doing that with French. Especially if you hope to visit other parts of Africa, French will be a major help. It's also worthwhile studying it because 1) it's like a 2-for-1 deal, being able to learn both while you are there, and 2) you will make a lot more progress very very quickly with French because of all of the cognates. So you will feel more confidence early on. And also because you may end up working with government people in the ministry, and in government there is a bias for French over Arabic. Also, with its bilingual nature, pamphlets and forms are printed in French and classical Arabic, so its worth it to be able to read the French side and understand what people are talking about that way.

Ben,
I saw your posted on the FPCV page about being a volunteer in Morocco, and I got to take a look at your blog! I have two questions I was wondering about:

1. How tough will it be to be a vegetarian there?
and 2. What were your free time activities like/did you do any side projects?
Hey,
Depends a bit how strict of a vegetarian you are. Usually eating with another Moroccan, you'll be sharing a giant plate and picking what you want to eat from that plate, often by dipping bread into it and picking up what you want with that bread. So a big dish of lentils, and you are all making a claw out of bread and grabbing stuff like that. If you are fine with meat being cooked with vegetables, and you just pick the vegetables, it'll be no problem at all. I went through my two years like that, since I stayed with a host family the whole time. Vegetarians are not unheard of there, with so many European tourists that have interesting demands. Also, you can use a tradition they already understand as Muslims (not eating pork) and then just tell them that you take the same idea but apply that to all kinds of meat.

It's harder if you hate the idea of stuff being cooked together, but not impossible. Probably easier there than in most other Peace Corps countries. In my case, my not eating meat became a joke. Humor can help diffuse any tension. During training I was more picky, so the family cooked an extra plate of eggs just for me. Training, we usually ate with other volunteers, so a lady was contracte to cook HUGE salads. I dont think you'll have much worry.

Once training is over, there's a second mandatory home stay with a family lasting two months. This might be the hardest time as a vegetarian, since you're probably in a small town that has less exposure to tourists and also because you're not eating half of your meals with other trainees. BUT after those two months, most people end up moving out and living completely on their own, cooking their own meals 3x a day and so they are able to be hardcore vegans with little trouble at all. You'll like it: all your produce you'll get at farmer's markets and it's all fresh. Eating in Morocco was a never-ending joy, though a bit repetitive. Some stuff I didn't know was not vegetarian until after I'd been there more than a year: the 'berber pizza', is a kind of bread with a spicy interior, but it's really made using lard smeared on the inside of the bread, enough for the spices to stick. Or how the dates were especially yummy, but I learned to not look at them too closely because you could find insects crawling inside some of them (so, to spare myself I'd just eat them without a whole lot of scrutiny). Also the cous cous is made with lard.

Foodwise, lots and lots of bread, olive oil, vegetarian tajines, big plates of almonds and dates.

As far as activities and my life outside of work, a big part was traveling all over the country. I was in Bolivia for 8 months and rarely left my town, but in Morocco I made it a game to try and visit all of the people in my staj ("cohort", you might say). That really was fun and enlightening, too, because I saw how different the experience was for everyone, as well as the enormous variety in how Moroccans are and how they live. I saw everyone that made it through the whole two years (close to 30 ppl), though not the towns of the people that left early. I lived in the South, and so there were lots of chances for outdoor fun, hiking, random bike rides, marathon training. I read five hours a day (two in the morning, three at night) without feeling like it negatively impacted my service. Especially in Ramadan, it was fun to try to be invited to random people's homes for tea.

Morocco is a very good country for its proximity to other places. I flew to Spain several times, to Italy twice, and after my service I flew to Mali then overlanded it back to Morocco, through Senegal and Mauritania. To be able to fly to Spain (60 dollars round trip) just to see a concert was awesome.

Peace Corps is a good time to develop new interests and talents. Learning guitar, or an Arabic instrument (I tried to take lessons for the Oud, but the music teacher got shuffled to a different region and I lost that possibility). Writing, too, is especially good to do. I put a lot of effort into my blog, though I was told not to mention my host family at all.

If you get into a region with people you like, then that really makes the experience. There was always a get-together for someone's birthday, or a chance meeting in a city like Ourzazate just to decompress and eat good international food. Once a month I'd go just to buy nice groceries, including a tube of Pringles and hole myself up in a hotel room for a night.

The way I got to see so many volunteers' sites was because I'd try to volunteer on helping their projects getting up and going. With Youth Development, there were camps a couple of times a year, and I'd always sign up for the most remote one from my area, since that allowed me a couple of days going and a couple of days coming back where I could make a giant loop of the country and stay with volunteers along the way. Other people would just do the ccamps near them, because only a certain amount of funds were given for travel, but I thought that was a mistake. There's no reason to hoard lots of dirhams, it'd take forever for them to add up to what one paycheck in the States would be, so with that in mind I'd splurge when the opportunity presented itself.

Well, you can probably tell I really liked my time there. It was mentally hard, but your enjoyment rises and falls just like your confidence level, and lots of the challenges can be postponed til the moment when you feel up for it.
I wish you luck, and don't hesitate to ask me more questions!
Friday
5:27pm

Ben

Hey man,

I thought of another thing : there's no dating in Morocco. Doesn't exist outside of Casablanca and Rabat the capital. This led to two pretty lonely years. As beautiful as the girls were, with some exceptions somehow psychologically I couldn't get past the fact that they started seeming to me to be more like sisters and cousins. My advice to a guy would be to bring a Fleshlight, or some such thing.

Some other things I thought of : in Morocco, there is a giant mountain called Toubkal that is fun to do, and you can snow ski AND surf, plus the touristy things like riding camels. If you run, there's an epic race called the Marathon des Sables, and that can be a good opportunity to race it and raise money for charities . I did it and loved it. Also, some volunteers started a health outreach program where 10-15 volunteers and Moroccan health people ride bicycles for a weekend from town to town into the mountains, and you get to camp out on an island and have a barbecue. This was one of my favorite things.

Lifestyle things, I enjoyed sleeping under the stars in the summertime when it was too hot to sleep inside the adobe casbahs. The first few nights I was so excited and in awe of the innumerable stars that I had to return inside in order to calm down enough to sleep. Lots of hours watching Barcelona and Madrid matches with full-to-capacity cafes of my Moroccan friends. Plus all the great Islamic holidays where everyone empties out into the streets.

What's your story? Did you get an invite to Morocco? Or somewehre else?

This is a great song :

As much fun as it is that I'm describing, there's an equal balance of despair and doubt. And I mean EQUAL, 50/50.

Top songs of 2011

2011-11-25T00:50:00.000-08:00

Songs with heavy rotation on my iPod and the best songs I saw performed live this year

And the next are songs that I performed on stage (and in front of friends in their rooms or balconies)

The Moroccan way of making it official

2011-10-20T13:46:00.000-07:00

First print your name.

Then the red stamp.

Then the signature on top of the stamp.

Poem for Nkob

2011-10-04T11:51:00.000-07:00

''Limitless Wealth''

// 2 years is nothing; a student says to me.
How wholeheartedly I agree!

Apparently the spirits are conspiring to make me smile,
the moment i most earnestly start to crumble

::::

Crepuscular rays paint the far end of the sky,
competing for splendor and glory with
their children in the East, (the mountains I've tried to climb)
large golden clouds bursting with long-withheld rain.

Barakalah!

Slowly they wink out and so the ebullient clouds conquer the sky,
continuing to loom, evermore daunting,
filled now with the blood of a consumptive night.

If you never swim the same river,
we're doomed to never return here
no matter the many times you might come back.
The less the rain, the harder the earth,
the faster the flood carries us away.
That's alright;I'm ready to go.

Barakalah!

The gendarmes take caskrout,

the usual tea and the usual smoke.
They make such a handsome picture!
No photography's allowed - but I am given a peek.

Transfigured and dying (for such is what travel most truly means

'to have the heroism to choose one of the many paths',

ignorant but invigorated as to what´s ahead)
Im a magnet that pulls all the haggard, shining spirits
out to the streets for one last--no, one more --
verbal fête, one final Moroccan tête-a-tête//

This was a nice 'advice' post on a PC Mali blog

2011-09-24T04:42:00.000-07:00

http://wakingupinmali.blogspot.com/2011/01/best-advice-ive-ever-received-my-advice.html

2011-09-24T04:02:00.000-07:00

My Mudir for the SOS village told me a joke that I wanted to share.

One difference between Arabic/Tashleheet and English is that in English our salutations are questions :

how are you? how's your family? are you alright?

For them, its more like declarative with no really questions or answers.

Eh! Addi! Tarsa! La bas! Bixihir! Kif dayr! thenna! mitanit! hamdullah! hamdullah laybarfik!

Therefore you can pick and choose and just shout out the ones you feel like saying at that moment, and noone waiting to hear a certain response. That's fun because it means you dont have to pause, but just say 8 or 9 of them and they're talking simultaneously with you, saying their eight or nine, and its only awkward if you look at them and listen like you're expecting some kind of response. So ideally, you get two people doing this at the same time, full force, not listening to each other because listening is not the point!

Person one: Eh! Addi! Tarsa! La bas! Bixihir! Kif Tarsa! La bas! Bixihir!dayr! thenna! mitanit! hamdullah! hamdullah laybarfik!

Person two: Eh! Said! Tarsa! thenna! mitanit! hamdullah! hamdullah laybarfik! La bas! Bixihir! Kif dayr! thenna! mitanit! hamdullah! hamdullah laybarfik!

Simultaneously.

But the joke comes in when a person learns English the dialogue method, without anyone explaining what the words literally mean. So, two kids talking, one says : 'how are you' is like 'bixihir', kif kif. 'Mitanit' is like 'ca va?'

So the joke is, a Moroccan student is trying to speak English, and it's something like this:

A: Hello?

M: Hello how are you

A: Im fine. And you?

M: Im fine. And you!

A: Im fine.

M: And you!

: p

2011-09-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

This came from Time's site : its a person that live-blogged 3 different events at the same time, and the result reads like a strange postmodern novel about ADD, national values and ennui- possibly by David Foster Wallace?-- sadly, not to be.

In my mind, I can imagine CNN having put the 3 live feeds side by side on a tv screen. Maybe its a taste of things to come?

75 minutes. Now it is time to rehash the old debates about Mitt Romney’s efforts to reform health care in Massachusetts. Nothing new is said. But as Romney defends himself, the Miss Universe pageant really kicks into high gear. Miss France, Miss Kosovo, Miss Columbia and Miss China all move on to the next round. And to add insult to injury, the Patriots score another touchdown. It’s now 21 to 14. Good game.

76 minutes. Perry, once again, attacks Romney’s health care efforts. Miss Angola and Miss Australia move on to the next round.

77 minutes. Perry again defends himself. Miss Netherlands is moving on.

78 minutes. Blitzer asks Paul who should pay to take care of a 30-year-old man who goes into a coma without health insurance. “What he should do is whatever he wants to do, and assume responsibility for himself,” Paul says. That would be tough to do in a coma. Miss Ukraine. Miss Panama. Miss Costa Rica. Miss Philippines — they are moving on.

80 minutes. Bachmann really wants in on this conversation. She pulls a Huntsman and tries a dual attack on Romney and Perry for being wishy-washy on repealing ObamaCare. “If you believe that states can have it and that it’s constitutional, you’re not committed,” she says. “If you’ve implemented this in your state, you’re not committed. I’m committed.”

82 minutes. Cut to commercial. Miss Universe has a montage of all the ladies shopping and dancing in various locals around Brazil. The Dolphins just kicked a field goal, making it 21 to 17. 3:36 left in the third quarter. Really good game.

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2011/09/13/what-you-missed-while-not-watching-last-nights-tea-party-debate/#ixzz1ATocoIlb

ANYWAY, congratulations (apparently) go to : Mitt Romney, the Patriots and ANGOLA and Senhorinha Lopes

Favorite moments from the past week

2011-09-14T09:12:00.001-07:00

--dance party on our last night together as a staj, the 44 of us left from the original 66, and the best moment of that was dancing the twist to Little Richard

--afterwards, Eric H appeared and thanked me several times for having recommended INFINITE JEST to him - he appeared as if he hadn't slept since he'd finished reading it, and talked about his newfound need to 'read it 8 times' so its lessons soak in ever deeper. Especially for a book that can be so NOT wonderful to some people, to share it with someone that likes it as much as me is GREAT ;)

--the man at the Velada on his day off recognized me in the Dar B3ida (Arabic for Casablanca) area at a bus stop in L'Oasis. Good eyes, especially since I was in my jilaba and turban! About that, Sam said: You look like the real thing, a convert.

--Similarly, it was nice to sit during my physical with Dr Taofik and feel powerful, accomplished, that of a person who has lived in a part of Morocco that many urban Moroccans would be unable to handle. Cara's Casa friends likewise said: Ya'll are crazy to do that! And you don't get a car? How do you get around?? Isn't it hot? There's no (X), there's no (Y). :§ And to now be among those that have 'done it', and so be able to intimidate the softies in the cities without even needing to say words feels good.

--having the thought: never again, except for rare exceptions* will I ever allow myself to work for a place that requires 'samples'of all my bodily fluids before I am allowed to enter it and again before I leave it. It felt good to take my last one to the laboratoire d'analyses and now I'll likely not have to go back (except in the instance that I'm diagnosed with schistosomiasis, which has a strong likelihood of happening).

--Reunited with my guitar Betsy, and came up with a great new chord full of raw energy and an ambiguous mood : C/F#.

--watching tears come to Adriana's eyes after our goodbye and our many promises ''I'd rather meet you in Colombia than in South Carolina, I think!'' with Peggy C saying ''Heck, I wanna come!'' In my book, tears of sadness can mean that you either did something really wrong or that you did something right.

--Books: Getting sucked into Isabel Allende's ISLAND BENEATH THE SEA, especially sinc it is a reminder of the primary influences on my life, the primacy of Latin America in my heart and that, as good as North Africa is, it's a poingant and important, but ultimately a passing stage in my life. The same goes during other moments of the week -- Ali Records giving me a copy of FREEDOM, the new Franzen marvel (30 pages in and Im in love with the book already)

--Going to the beach with Jeff and Will, qnd two Moroccan lifeguards maybe saved my life when I got pulled past a long row of 6 foot waves by a ripcurl. I wish I could have taken them out for tea!
We followed that up with a jam session on the bus, sharing Will's yukele, writing a song in Darija on the spot, and entertaining Moroccan people all at the same time.

--Fast Pizza four times, once alone, once time each with Sarah, Caytlin, alone and with Catherine B.

--Goodbye hour with Amina -- each person was told to give her one of the roses from the table and tell a story of why Amina made such a valuable impact on our service. On my turn, I reached to give her the whole pile, since I wish I could. But I sat them down, picked a nice one and then whispered my tribute into her ear rather than sharing it out loud.

--Going to the Chinese embassy with Sam and Pete. Id not even thought of getting a visa for there, so I was glad to have run into them and to have similar plans as they.

--This photo:

--Adding old country-director David L into our final group photo, then having four others come up to me saying they'd missed the photo shoot and needed me to photoshop them into it, too.

If you need a little more DL in your life, here's the green-screen version

Good looking man!
Use with caution and respect, or we'll come beat you up, wherever you is.

--At the Last Supper, I was voted: ''Most likely to end up serving jail time after stalking Shakira and/or Sade.'' Fair enough, then on the one where we all voted, me and Ewald got voted most likely to end up homeless. ''That's OK, if that happens we'll come back to L-Mgrib and Islam will take care of us!'' For my acceptance speech, I remarked : If this is the future awaiting me back there, jail time then homelessness, I think I'd rather just stay put here!'' If I could do it again, I wouldn't have said anything but would have started singing : ''there's a fi-iy-re burnin deep in my soul''. That'd have been classy.

--buying a ticket to Mali, then ordering a bird guide, ''Birds of West Africa'' -- hope it gets to N'Kob by then. It's not a ticket home, but... I figure Ive earned it, a chance to regroup and go to the Other Africa that's on the side of my backyard. I might even get to Timbuktu.... :) though I heard it's heyday was 150 years ago.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011 Royal Air Maroc 523 Economy | Boeing 737-700 Passenger (73G) | 3hr 35min | 1434 miles
Depart: 9:25pm Casablanca, Morocco Casablanca Mohamed V (CMN)
Arrive: 1:00am Bamako, Mali Bamako (BKO)

--waking up naturally everyday for the last month at 7. Its been a very good positive difference in my life!

*NASA, is the only one I can think of, and only if I get a COOL name for my position, like ''Galaxy Defender Superior Maximus'' or somesuch.

'Til next time! Keep it classy, Dallas.

2011-08-13T09:41:00.000-07:00

Voyage to home.... suggestions welcome. Its going to be something like this-- and magically, its the same money as it'd be flying from Casa to Memphis direct... so, explain that to me!

Sep 10
2 year anniversary in Morocco--- party!

Oct 10 - le debut du fin
'' 11- Going towards Lausanne, maybe see some PCVs along the way

'' 21-Go to Paris, Sara and Beth will come in the morning!
22,23,24 morning in Paris.
'' 24- Go to Lausanne again for the night
'' 25- 5 Terre for two nights
27- Rome
28, 29 - full days in Rome

Oct 30 - Fly to Morocco
'' 30, 31- Marrakesh and Ourzazate
Nov 1,2 - Nkob with the family
'' 3,4 - Desert and then back to Kesh
'' 5- B&S fly home

Nov 6- Layoune, Dhakla and the Sahara

Nov 14- Meet Dad in Marrakesh
Nov 20 - Dad leaves for home
Nov 21- Go with Sam to Portugal and Spain for one week

Nov 28- Fly to Shanghai from Paris, visit my teacher in Wuhan
10 (?)- Korea, visit KUECA volunteer Joo-hee in Seoul
15 (?)- Japan, visit my old friend Mai in Nagoya
19th (?)- California, SF and LA

Jackson!
http://www.tennesseetreasures.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=204

OCt 28 - Murakami epic new book comes out, I've pre-ordered it just five minutes ago so it'll be waiting for me when I get back home. The money is on him winning the Nobel this year, easy--you heard it here first!

2011-08-06T02:44:00.000-07:00

Makes my heart all aflutter --I was there. The same square This is actually a pretty good capsule summary of all the things I've done in Morocco in my time here : tea, dates, schbekiya, watching a Barça match, hanging out and talking to the retailers, endless exuberance and reptitions of Waka Waka, seemingly never getting tired of it, both me and them. But I don't see any henna-action** !

It's really cool to see the name Yanet -- the Caribbean way in Spanish to write 'Janet', just like I saw a woman earlier who spelled her name Jhoana, the way in Bolivia that they do to write Joanna, since otherwise it'd be Hoana if you pronounce the word as we write it normally.

**I like the Spanish version better, but asi es.**

And the big Moroccan pop act :

But the act most dear to their hearts was Cat Stevens -- and in that jilaba, he knows how to score brownie points from his audience.
''This is maybe one you learned in school''. Yep, they teach it and everyone gets a dose of it here.

**In the first ten seconds of the clip, you can see the remains of the Argana cafe, where it exploded earlier this year (now its behind a big construction sheet, but I saw it before they hid it away). Two weeks after the explosion, I was staying at a hotel on the same block! My thought was, it's the safest place in Morocco right now is right here.

Two Italian tourists were here, seated next to me as I ate, and they asked ''non c'e polizia?'' ''Non, c'e! Ma non hanno i vestiti usuali''. There's no police? No, there is, but they're not wearing the usual uniforms. You don't see them until something happens and then you realize how many there are, all over the plaza at all times.

Favorite moments at camp so far

2011-08-01T15:27:00.000-07:00

--painting the Indian flag's wheel on Mari's nose

--LOTS OF MUSIC: singing Unchained Melody and my best songs at the Advanced 2 class, before practicing Lean on Me together with them all. And working up a version of NO ONE by Alicia Keys with a 13-year-old that's got a 35-year old voice, and enough sass to share, expecting good things from this so long as I'm able to get her to stop rushing the lines.

--Sang an original song to Sara's and Katey's Beginner's 1 class... ''the months of the year''

: )

--able to show my impressed state at the fashion show's girls' clothes by the Moroccan hand gesture, flicking all your fingers out at them.

--Ilhem, Ilhem: her birthday here, on the first full day and going with her to the beach for the first time in her life to swim. Happy to see her willing to wear just a tshirt in the water, and so be able to enjoy the experience a lot more.

--Reading JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH during my down time.

--Watching the singer-girl discover a baby's shoe in the pile of trash during our found art activity for Environment club... pouring a pile of trash on each student's desk and giving them glue and paper. Then the baby girl's shoe turned up in the pile and the biggest, most natural laugh I've seen in a long time, the laugh of a 13-year old that's not yet turned self-conscious or guardedly inward.

--Sitting next to Jack while he played the Ahedous in the Celtic style, backing up a record by the Chieftans, Live at Mag Molly's... '''fulfilled whatever need THAT was, alright!'' he says going out the door, sitting the drum down.

--Discovering the White chocolate MAGNUM bar.

--Sharing summer camp with the Zagora camp

--Few counselors wanted to go on the Azzemour field trip, but it turned out to be one of the great highlights so far, with the great art murals scattered across the ancient medina, the Portuguese stronghold followed by a few minutes overlooking the river (next to a synagogue, first one I've seen here) and finally an hour of Moroccan call-and-response chanting on the bus ride back, everyone including me at full FULL volume the whole way, something that made me so pumped up that I had trouble sleeping the rest of the night. Yes, it's true, as another PCV said, these songs kick our Americans' kids' songs' asses. Twinkle twinkle is nothing compared to ''Atoura... something-something ATOURA.... ATOURA... ATOURA.....''

--Also on that trip, Christine let me wear her blue-turquoise scarf, just bought, and I got people stunned at how perfectly it resembled the color of my eyes. ''Ok, this is going to be the dust cover for your first album'' Doug said, snapping photos.

--it's COLD at night here

--feels good to be waking up early, 730, reading some and then a full day, going nonstop until 11 pm or later.

2011-07-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

Feeling Optimistic about life and everything. Lots of exciting changes to look forward to!

I found this picture, and feel it captures that spendidly.

It's supposedly Billie Holiday, 1946 in NY. I'm not certain of that, but it doesn't change what I think of the photo.

''Bienvenue dans un noveau monde'' When Nkob no longer is Nkob

2011-07-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

Today, I left my house, went to the cyber and discovered that the electricity had gone out. News to me! If you don't have electronic things, and you don't use the light because the window is open and you're in bed reading a book, you might go until the nighttime before you realize something's not normal.

Well, can't get online like I planned, so I try to find something else to do instead. Ten minutes later, I'm seated with the baker, he's having caskrut, the afternoon snack, so instead of being a customer, I'm an invited guest, manuevering into the oven room to sit, share tea and shoot the shit with this other Addi, a man with a generous smile, big dark mustache and leathery black skin. Besides us are the giant pile of wood that he needs to make his bread, several empty cigarette wrappers and large bottles of oil. In his dish is a mixture of olive oil and strawberry confiture, ''toot'' in shulhah. ''Toot yatfuut' I say, strawberry is yummy. Yatfuut bzzzaaf, he replies, very tasty!

Two others join us, one of the European Moroccans, a ten year old boy in beach shorts named Mustafa, and an older man that seems mostly blind, potentially senile. They likewise are invited to imbibe and we spend 35 minutes. Halfway through this time, I notice the light has come on again and I can hear once again the refrigerator humming in the corner. I wait some time because I know it'll take that long for the cyber owner to get back and charge everything up again.

In these moments, I brought up how, in summertime, everything's different. The town becomes two or three times larger, with all the families coming back loaded with money from Europe. They arrive in their cars, they fill the cybers and you hear them talking to each other in French. It's Nkob, but it's no longer my Nkob. And I'm no longer a native, they expect me to be a tourist, when really they are the tourists, the interlopers.

You walk outside, and don't recognize a face. But it's not the only change. Even before they came, Nkob stopped being the Nkob that I fell in love with. This makes it easier as I prepare to leave, since in a certain sense, Nkob's already left me. The old lovely things I can't find so readily anymore. Now, it'll take a new person to come and discover its new charms.

Walking back to the cyber, I notice a sign that I'd never seen before, there on main street: ''Bienvenue dans un noveau monde.'' Yes, thank you. Where do I go to find the old one?

Some changes:

--my beloved running trail is gone. It's been the home of construction,( a lengthening of the aqueduct), and now you just see piles of concrete. The path still exists, but is now located higher on the hill and is too steep for my enjoyment. Before, it was the one place that I'd retreat to, a dirt path through the palm trees before exiting onto the major road. When I was marathon-ready, running 30km several times a month, this was the one that saw me on the way out and welcomed me back on the way in.

--the Kasbah isn't the same. The owner (not my dad, he doesn't own the place), said: no more tourists here. Before, I used to go home and be happily surprised to see a Dutch family of 4, or a lone Spanish man, a group of Pollacks or else a German college student. Some of the best times has been with these people, and it helped keep things from getting stale. Now that's no longer the case, and so that's another important aspect, a definitive one of my experience here, that won't be regained before I return home.

--The Gendarmes have nearly all been replaced. I was lucky and got along very well with the old ones and these new ones don't seem as readily given to playfullness as before. My favorite remains in place, though, which I'm glad for.

--Peace Corps itself is radically different // I'm glad to be going home now. The end of an era, when PC did more work in the bled (countryside) and without such a concerted focus on the numbers of people reached.

--Good friends are no longer located in Nkob. Lahcen, the cafe mainstay, a worker at different times in three different cafes while I was here, who I spent several months teaching Spanish to, has now left for a job at a cafe in Ourzazate.

--Other students have graduated the past month and will not be in Nkob when I get back after Ramadan.

--and smaller things, like the fact that I'm now on a tourist visa now and not my official work permit. There's such little time left, there was no need to refill it; how there's no dates this year, since the weather wasn't right for good date-growing conditions in the same way it was last year; how I'll soon turn my bike in to PC, doing it on the way to camp in order to not worry about it later; how I've thrown away all the excess and find all the stuff I want to take home will fit in two boxes, instead of the two suitcases and one carry-on that I brought here with me.

Likewise, there are big changes that haven't necessarily affected the Nkob I once knew. What I mean is, the neverending construction of new houses and hotels has been a great big change in the town, and its been able to retain its basic Nkobien flavor. Five more years of that, though, and it might no longer be able to do so.

The Nkob I knew was a great one. It's no longer around, so I was glad to have come when I did.

Something to look forward to, once back home

2011-07-08T04:47:00.000-07:00

the 2011-12 Met OPERA live in HD season at your local movie theatre!

http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/broadcast/hd_events_template.aspx?id=15114

Some good looking shows, especially the last 2 of the Wagner ring cycle. I should get my tickets as soon as they come on, these things sell out fast!

Wagner’s Siegfried– New Production

November 5, 2011

In part three of the Ring, Wagner’s cosmic vision focuses on his hero’s early conquests, while Robert Lepage’s revolutionary stage machine transforms itself from bewitched forest to mountaintop love nest. Gary Lehman sings the title role and Deborah Voigt’s Brünnhilde is his prize. Bryn Terfel is the Wanderer. James Levine conducts.

The Enchanted Island– New Production

January 21, 2012

In one extraordinary new work, lovers of Baroque opera have it all: the world’s best singers, glorious music of the Baroque masters, and a story drawn from Shakespeare. In The Enchanted Island, the lovers from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream are shipwrecked on his other-worldly island of The Tempest. Inspired by the musical pastiches and masques of the 18th century, the work showcases arias and ensembles by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, and others, and a new libretto by Jeremy Sams. Eminent conductor William Christie leads an all-star cast with David Daniels (Prospero) and Joyce DiDonato (Sycorax) as the formidable foes, Plácido Domingo as Neptune, Danielle de Niese as Ariel, and Luca Pisaroni as Caliban. Lisette Oropesa and Anthony Roth Costanzo play Miranda and Ferdinand. The dazzling production is directed and designed by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch (Satyagraha and the Met’s 125 anniversary gala).

Wagner’s Götterdämmerung

February 11, 2012

With its cataclysmic climax, the Met’s new Ring cycle, directed by Robert Lepage, comes to its resolution. Deborah Voigt stars as Brünnhilde and Gary Lehman is Siegfried—the star-crossed lovers doomed by fate. James Levine conducts.

2011-07-07T05:43:00.000-07:00

Things ok here! There was a strike one day when it was extra hot and we didn't have any water for two days. The first day, they were OK, but when they woke up and it still wasn't back, then they hit the streets. This time at my house we were not prepared at all for it, and I ran out. It's strange how you have to start reprioritizing everything, asking questions that you'd never thought of before: what's more important, having a little to brush your teeth, or to be able to flush the john? To be aware that you need to divide it up so you'll have enough for both.... To boil spaghetti and then keep the milky looking juice afterwards, just because you might need it.

I felt like a stooge, I had money so I was able to buy a Fanta. If you got money, you're OK. And even conserving, you're going through it faster than you wish. The big 5 liter jugs are unweildy, and I kicked myself when it tipped the wrong way and the water gushed out onto the floor, losing about 1/3 of it before I could upright it.
Sadly, though I figure they were able to make-do somehow, a family happened to have the final night of their wedding the day the water stopped. It's almost like the opposite of the fear Americans have: whatever else, you don't want it to rain on your wedding day. This then, was a strange inversion of that. To open the tap and you just hear a gurgle and then nothing. But then, you think: this was the time when they were making couscous (very water intensive, because you steam the couscous for 3 hours or more, which means continuously adding water whenever it gets low). But then, to think, they had to make it for 150 people or more? Even if they changed to serving tajine platters, that also relies on steaming in a big way.

But that moment is past. In a way, it almost was a practice time for Ramadan, or you might say an eyeopener about what Ramadan this year will be like, in AUGUST. When, even if its there, you can't access or use it until the night falls. But at least they'll be mentally prepared for it, whereas this took them by surprise and so maybe they felt its lack more strongly.

PnL!

Baghdad - Photo Gallery - Pictures, More From National Geographic Magazine

2011-06-29T04:02:00.000-07:00

Baghdad - Photo Gallery - Pictures, More From National Geographic Magazine

This is a very nice photo gallery, seeing the rebirth of this blighted, ancient city. Worth checking out!

And while I'm at it: let's say you want to understand more about the MidEast/North Africa. What to do?

TV / Movies
The big channel here is 2M, and I'm sure they have programs with French subtitles... if you're Francophone -compatible.

Books
that I've read and would recommend to others:

THE CAIRO TRILOGY by Naguib Mahfouz
NINE PARTS OF DESIRE by Geraldine Brooks. This one is considered biased, I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing all the time, but there's good portraiture.
READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN by Azar Nafisi. This is eyeopening in the sense of, you get to see it from

These are good, I've heard:

NO GOD BUT GOD by Reza Azlan
MY UNCLE NAPOLEON

Music

Possession and Hemispheres by Lily Afshar

My Iranian-Turkish-American friend wrote saying this brought him back to his childhood in Tehran.

Saharawi music
TINARIWEN - the thing guaranteed to find a welcome home on your iPod

I'll be sure to come back and update this over the next 2 weeks, make it more comprehensive.

Overheard on Facebook

2011-06-28T05:18:00.000-07:00

MIKE D: saw goats climbing trees near Marrakesh today. I don't understand.
AD-ROCK : argon oil!
MCA: ? what kind of goats or trees were these?
MIKE D: they were white billy goats in what may have been olive trees, but I'm still unclear as to how they climbed. or if some Moroccans just put them there since it was by the road.
AD-ROCK: they're argon trees - read up on it - that's how the nuts are harvested and made into oil
MIKE D: what?! no wonder argon oil is so expensive.
AD-ROCK: yeah exactly, the goats regurgitate it and then they process it from there - super weird!
MIKE D: wow, I love this country.

---

I gave these people monikers to (needlessly?) protect their identity. The last line is one strongly evocative of Calvin and Hobbes to me.

And while we're at it:

''French, misguided American Girls and the other options out there''

2011-06-17T11:18:00.000-07:00

Yes, the posters in high school said, the promised land has it all, all the splendor of life missing from ittle-bitty Jackson, Tennessee:

-Wine as a way of life, cheese as a dessert, fine art and people wanting to look at it, shopping and the vespas to help lug back the loot

Populating this land and filling it with the passion, love and romance you're missing are European dudes and dudettes somehow able to be both sensitive without being stale, cool without being clique-y; beautiful beaches and balconies and the associated Starcrossed Lovers and the Consumptive Geniuses chronicling them (or their own) ecstastic excesses. People that hold Baudelaire up just as high as they do the Clash.

But not only that, these posters say, you also get :

-world-renowned literature, cuisine, fashion, public transportation... the list goes on. Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg -types on each corner.

AND, miraculously enough it's true. I've seen it with my own eyes. Kissed them lips! Of course, I'd say, Jackson Tennessee has many of those things, too, so long as you know where to look. If I've been to an Iranian feast there, I figure there's a great deal more hidden among the enormous walls of the gated communities and elsewhere than is apparent to the eye. But the point of what I'm writing today is, the question to ask yourself is: How do you get meaningful and worthwhile access to that Utopia?

And that matter of access becomes important when you're 13 and you're choosing which of the two you want to study, Spanish or French. You're a high school student and you want to experience the aforementioned things, too. SO to help you decide you visit the classroom. The Spanish homeroom has posters too but the portraits of Che, Frida and Frida's Man are missing that Euro-chic ... too strong of a whiff of revolution and socialism. You're looking for indulgence.

So you head to the French classroom. And it's all right there. You decide, this is the one for me. And, all across the US, most girls seem to sign up for French, dreaming of Bordeaux and baguettes. Most guys go for an easy grade, and a few are aware that Latin America has its own treasures worth pursuing, so they sign up for Spanish.

Having been there and done that, take a look at your French teacher. He/she's gotten access to the Continent, she's an insider. But don't be fooled: wave bye to her/him, go back down the hall and sit down at the front of the classroom there. The Spanish class is where you want to go. Then, study it hard so that when you go to college, you'll have a great base to learn the one you really want: Italiano.

Why not French? Cut to the chase, right? Shortest path between two points is a straight line. Well, that's a complicated question, but everything I said before, all those great provincial things somehow miraculously happens to be part of the Italian panorama, too, not just the French one. And, luckily, the people there are much more willing to share access to that lifestyle.

Lots of American high school girls have worked hard to master the language, to adopt France as their sovereign guide for living their life the European way, and most of them never get the satisfaction promised to them. Language-wise, people seem to flounder somewhere between Intermediate to Advanced and never are able to superate* that. Or, say you do, but you discover the dirty secret, that often it's not the sexy beautiful romantic gorgeous language that you'd heard it was. MY issue has been more, I've learned from nonnative people who have studied both that a person can be good in French or in English but not both. Excelling at one comes at the cost of the other. That is closely related to the same problem that has haunted me, of how it's not removed quite far enough from English for it to be able to stick.

Similarly, the social aspects of trying to get access:

You're walking towards Paris with your arms wide open, only to find when you get close that it is hugging itself, hands buried in the crooks of its elbows and facing the other direction! And you're so blinded and hurt by this, you don't see that the rest of France is still virgin territory** and it's watching you go through this process, its arms open wide and making beckoning motions-- ''we don't get tourists 'round dese parts, z'etes bienvenues ici''-- but malgré you, you're already back on the plane with your ego bruised.

Italy, on the other hand, is around the corner and is standing there alongside Statale 25, eager to hand you the keys and the helmet to your own Vespa, AND waiting for you to come so you can both head South together. For those lucky few that still are fighting for what was promised them back in French 101, off you go to Italy, down towards glory, you in the driver's seat and him/her behind you, arms wrapped around your chest and the sunset off to your right framed by the port of Riomaggiore.

Sure, Italy doesn't have Proust, but those artifacts--from a France that no longer is-- have been universally consumed and have been made their own in Italy. Maybe in the '30's it was useful to know French if you were interested in being among the avant guarde, but that was quite a long time ago and both seem to have not contributed to high culture since Warhol/Botero took it back over to our side of the pond, NYC and Latin America, in the '70's.

A real-life example of this : a friend of mine at the Sorbonne still gets shut-out and dissed for not speaking absolutely flawless French, and in a way her relationship to her adopted homeland has become a passive-agressive one, with an unhealthy dose of ''trying to prove my worth to them.'' Again, not everyone is surrounded by the Parisian Ecole 'Normal' Superior elites, nor is everyone in France a P.E.N.S.*** but... Still.

By stark contrast, Italian people are surprised when anyone other than them has studied their language, and often react joyfully, even to the point of helping you. Not everyone, of course, but often enough to keep your motivation going, to help you along towards the Eat Pray Love -ish Utopia you're seeking. And Italian words seem to me more able to stick in my brain, and yeah maybe it looks a little unwieldy/ugly/confusing on paper at first (until you get the accent down, something that ain't so tough to do). Not at all like a good French accent.

Likewise, both are concerned with looks, a lot more than us Americans for sure, but in Italy it's not the be-all-end-all. That makes a difference.

Let's back up : does this seem that I'm telling you to forget the fantasy of learning French and being accepted into French culture? Or, worse, to settle for less before you even begin? No. IT's more: love the one that loves you back, and it's: think of the value you're getting with the amount of effort you're putting in, as well as to remember that France doesn't have a monopoly on European whimsy and charm.

The French version just seemingly demands lifetime devotion before you're accepted, and the ones that are willing to do that end up making a career out of it, up to the PhD level. Whereas, Italy can pay big dividends with just a passing interest and it is willing to accept a more realistic amount of dedication required of you before you're 'in'.

This came from considering how, of the people I've known, a lot more of those who focus on Italy and Italian have found their dreams come true, rather than the many who focus on French and have their heart broken when they are unable to self-actualize into Amelie, or the man into Jacques Brel****.

*a real English word

**In the same way here that we say, there's the United States and there's Texas, they should say the same.. there's France and there's Paris

*** did you catch the penis joke? say it out loud and you'll get it.

****Not a Parisian nor a Frenchman, I should point out, and maybe that's partly why I adore him.

P.S. But-- here's the fine print--I'd say, do both. Noone's making you choose at all! And learning one actually complements the other, 'faire' and 'fare', etc.

Some things to be happy about

2011-06-10T11:57:00.000-07:00

-- while reading is about the last thing i feel like doing this summer (ive read 40 books so far this year), I was glad to be on the roof at sunset reading. the best spot in all of Morocco to be during sunset, with a book of Chekov short stories and the endlessly mutating colors in the sky all around, with the palm trees in a vast expanse below me, following the river flowing down from the mountains in the distance

-- walked by my family's hanut, the guy came out, took me to a room and pointed towards a sack of flour. OK, so I grab the corners on my end and next thing you know we take it across the street to the women's cookie co-op. Thirty seconds of work, and the lady in full Berber dress is handing me a half dozen cookies to enjoy the rest of the night

--Nkob is endlessly fascinating and gorgeous

--had a nice night yesterday, pizza AND couscous. But, sadly no couscous pizza.

--an easy ride to Agdez this week to get money from the bank, it can take anywhere from 2.5 hours like today, or 5+. Even better was seeing two people I knew : one a Spanish speaker and the other a younger man wanting to know Spanish. So, more chance to share my Iberian passion with them!

--being happy for Youtube, and the endless amount of nice songs there, e.g.:

--OK, the sun is setting, time to go on the roof with my copy of ''Kite Runner'' or ''The Harlem Renaissance Reader'' and enjoy life, with the aid of a Maoufid chocolate milk box and a Coconut flavored yogurt. Even two of each, potentially, I'll have to check the fridge.

found an old OLD email -- one of the ones in my DRAFTS section that never got sent

2011-06-02T03:33:00.000-07:00

I recognize this has a Krapp´s Last Tape -type feel to it, when I insert my comments from now on what I wrote then. Ill try to keep that to a minimum, for that reason.
---
September 2009

Nice day today. Tomorrow we are going to the market. Went swimming in the ocean, and I feel like I really fit in with some of these people. I participated in Ramadan by not eating lunch,hanging out with the muslim language professors instead (arabic is fun! but it's really unusual). Then, a group of people came looking for me because they expected me to be there.

[Update two years later -- I only passed up lunch once in order to be with the Language coordinators, but wish I had done it more: doing that and I felt much more welcome by them the rest of the time we were together, something crucial since they were the first introduction to Morocco and its people]

People are surfing, and I will take some of my money tomorrow and try to buy an Oud. I want to get one and show it off for a few days to other musicians that might be interested in learning it. So that is exciting to me to be playing something new. There is a gorgeous terrace outside of my window, and we have done yoga on it each night, overlooking the ocean. I'm getting better at reading the arabic script, and the staff is so supportive.

Tuesday we split into two groups and go to live with our training host families for about 9 weeks. It will be good to get into a routine and to see how fast we progress, but it will be sad to say goodbye to about 20 of our 63 person group.

I'll try and update my blog and write some more in-depth things for people that don't know about this process. I was able to talk toWilson online earlier, and he was making quiche. He used 4 eggs to make one deep dish quiche, and so i was able to send him your recipe. supposedly he got i

The food has been fine so far. We have a vegetarian table and tonite the staff made us french fries in place of the rice and meat that the others had.

Goodn ite~

i love you

2011-05-28T06:40:00.001-07:00

Seated in a room with some medical volunteers, listening to them talk about their upcoming projects, the last Med projects as such for Peace Corps Morocco until another revolution in programming brings the program back. They seem really with it// there's talk of blood pressure presentations, SIDA workshops (AIDS), diabetes, dental hygiene, hand hygiene, food hygiene. And so forth. We always were jealous of each other, us programs. In one room, silent intense discussions about the more intractible developmental issues. In ours, hysterics, antics and the discussion of how to best utilize Hangman as a student retention and English warm up activity. Learning all of the words to a half dozen camp songs. The jealousy consisted of entertainment vs. legitimacy. They had the levity we never did, and we had the exuberancy. Though I feel they maybe expressed their jealousy the more, we kept our doubts to ourselves as to our function -- at worst, we pass two years as babysitters and ping-pong peddlars. At best, YD can be transcendant. Likely, we persevered because we had a ready audience and clearly delineated goals. But since when was PC ever about that? Especially with YD, you could literally do the same thing in the same place, outside of Peace Corps and make a great deal more money from it. In other words, there's a potential downfall to losing our unique position, we become banal.

There's a huge swarth of changes and a lot of upset people. How do I feel about it? Is it a good idea? What does that question mean and how can people know what a good idea is? The internal gas combustion engine seemed like a good idea over the battery powered kind. But even if it has its upsides, I recognize this is a tragedy, necessary or otherwise, and so I want to say GOOD JOB and that it's Enviro, Health and SBD that most genuinely reflected the purpose of Peace Corps: going out to the places where literally no other aid groups go. And unlike the aid groups--and unlike the now-ascendant Youth program here in PCM--they learn the strange, difficult languages that few speak. And they don't go to the cities in their land rovers but live in the same housing as their constituents.

PC HQ is focused more on numbers, so we'll be in the cities where you can have 100 students a week. Arabic with small bits of Berber to those going to those sites. In comparison, PC Bolivia put me in a town with 300 people. So its a matter of quantity vs quality. But I can relate very strongly to how it feels to know that your work is going to reach a dead-end when you finish: they canceled three training groups during my eight months there, and saw many PCVs go home disappointed that their replacements were sent elsewhere. With each one canceled, we could more clearly feel that our work would be disrupted significantly and the threat of the entire program never recovering. So, a similar spiel.

---
Having a good conversation at the moment : ''I found with my Colombian girlfriend that I'd end up always speaking Spanish to her, and she'd speak back in English to me." W.T.F.? It seems backwards, until you realize... if she speaks native Spanish at me, I'll get lost after the first syllables. Likewise with her if I get down-and-funky with some English awesomeness.
But this girl next to me, learned the same thing through PC life : she found she'd speak Tamazight to her community, and when they could they'd talk back in English. More complex to understand is how these French speakers from all parts of the world, and they'd speak French to her, for her to speak English to the others. Rather than speaking French directly to the others. Haha, not sure but that's what they preferred!

----

So, I've couch-surfed. Something I had not heard of, however, is Monastary Stays. So that might be a thing to keep in mind next time I'm in monastary-type territory // Ireland, fall 2011...? //

Hello from Tangier

2011-05-27T09:47:00.000-07:00

Salam walaykum kulshi

Doing fine. Realized just now I've seen nearly all of the corners of this country Morocco in the past couple of weeks--// Agadir to Tangier to Zagora and elsewhere. Pretty astonishing breadth and range, from a Casa night club to the most rural places, and now here within sight of Spain.

A friend from spring camp, Aaron Z, said one of the pitfalls of our model for Peace Corps is that people are headquartered in their site and the nearly endless hours there start to become their conception of the entirety of Morocco--you might say, misinterpreting quantity of time with expertise about what is Moroccan. If you're in your Berber hut washing your clothes day in and day out, you start thinking that is the complete picture, and you're maybe feeling down a lot of the time and so don't have a generous opinion about this place. But if, two days later, you're out dancing at 2 AM surrounded by mainly Moroccans, you have to adjust your perspective about the country. Most of us don't get that, or if we do then it's in our regional city that has the same whiff as the town you came from. I see I've had the fortune of being in enough places all over this country in order to fragment the sovereignty of Nkob as my basis of comparison. That Morocco is still able to surprise is a happy thing for me, even a necessary one. In doing so, it demonstrates its vitality, the same symptom you might have in a healthy marriage.

Here the surprises are the families and women out till midnight, laughing with friends. If not for the veils, you'd see the same with old teens or college students. And much more. OK, more to come. Hoping to get back into the swing of things with my blog. to do that, I'm hoping to review, reflect and come out with some posts of higher literary value than the dubious ones where it's just music videos that I'd been into while here.

This is nice, from CNN.com:

Ten must-read blogs from the Middle East

(CNN) -- Political unrest across the Middle East has increased appetite in the wider world for comment from within the region, and some are turning to bloggers for insider views on the events unfolding on their television screens.

Social media -- including blogging, Twitter and Facebook -- has played an often-crucial role in organizing the protests sweeping the region. But it's not all politics, and blogs about the ups and downs of daily life can offer a fascinating glimpse of real life in the Middle East.

Here, we have drawn up an entirely unscientific list of 10 of the most interesting blogs from the region.

The bloggers come from a variety of backgrounds and countries. Our only criteria were that they are based in the region, write mostly in English and have something worth saying.

Politics in Egypt and the wider Arab world

Arabist is popular for its insightful comment on Egyptian politics. Often thought provoking, it's a good place to monitor developments in post-revolution Egypt.

The principal blogger on this site is Issandr El Amrani, a freelance journalist and commentator for several international publications. El Amrani was born in Morocco, and has lived in Cairo, Egypt, since 2000.

The Saudi woman who got tired of reading "expert" opinion on her country

Riyadh-based mother of three and post-graduate student Eman Al Nafjan, 32, set up her blog Saudiwoman as a response to reading non-Arabs and non-Saudis giving expert opinions on life and culture in the kingdom.

She said: "I felt that I would rather represent myself instead of having others speak for me. There was no long-term plan but eventually I became addicted to it. To me it's an outlet and a way to voice my concerns about everything, including Islamophobia, human rights violations and women's movement in Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian/Israeli conflict."

Saudiwoman was a finalist for Best Asian Blog in the 2011 Bloggies.

Bahrain's "Blogfather"

Mahmood Nasser Al-Yousif, the author of Mahmood's Den, is a long-time blogger who has been described as the region's "Blogfather."

Al-Yousif was recently arrested and briefly detained by the Bahraini authorities. He describes his blog as "an Arab man's attempt at bridging the cultural gap. Trying to make a difference. Failing a lot. Succeeding once in a while."

Young Yemeni woman reporting on protests

Afrah Nasser is a 25-year-old journalist at the Yemen Observer. Nasser has been blogging for just over a year, featuring politics, news and views. Her recent posts have been about the protests in Yemen and include updates from Sanaa's Change Square, a focal point for protest in the capital.

She said: "I love to blog about political topics especially since the revo started. It's my gateway to express my views freely. However, that caused me trouble sometimes."

Nasser said she recently received a threatening message on her Facebook account. Her response? She just translated it from Arabic to English and posted it on her blog.

"Rantings" from Egypt

The Rantings of a Sandmonkey was an anonymous blog until its author Mahmoud Salem went public, saying he had been attacked close to Cairo's Tahrir Square during pro-democracy demonstrations in February this year.

Salem said his car was destroyed and he was beaten up by pro-government thugs in the days before the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.

Sandmonkey has just won the best English language blog -- a people's choice award -- in The Bobs, Deutsche Welle's Blog Awards.

German broadcaster Deutsche Welle said in its citation: "The activist blogger's witty and courageous writing has called for freedom and democracy in Egypt long before this year's uprising."

Flower of Jordan

Naseem Tarawnah, a 24-year-old Masters student, writes the blog BlackIris, named after the national flower of Jordan.

Tarawnah, who lives in Amman, wrote on his blog: "From cultural journeys to poetic ramblings, this blog was created, amongst many things, to address Jordanian issues ranging from the political to the social and to chronicle the extraordinary voyage of metamorphosis that this nation has embarked upon."

Tarawnah is also co-founder of 7iber, an online citizen media platform in Arabic.

Black Iris has won two Brass Crescent Awards for Best Middle Eastern Blog.

Poetry and politics from Gaza

LivefromGaza: 360 square km of chaos is the work of Lina Al Sharif, a 22-year-old English Literature student at the Islamic University in Gaza.

Lina, who started LivefromGaza in 2007, said: "The purpose of my blog is to reflect on the life in Gaza, in general, and on my life particularly.

"My blog's biggest achievement has been in giving a chance to the people of Gaza to narrate the situation as experienced by them.

"I believe my blog helps me to share and to educate people, not just on the hardships, but also the good times."

Definitely not silly, but she is Bahraini and worth reading

Amira Al Hussaini is regional editor for North Africa and the Middle East on Global Voices, an international community of bloggers. She has her own blog, called SillyBahrainiGirl, but is more active on Twitter.

She says in her blog: "A Bahraini girl is never silly but there are some factions out there who insist that we are not given our place in the society."

Want a break from politics? Try 248am for a slice of Kuwaiti life

Mark Makhoul, 32, a creative director at an advertising agency, began his current blog, 248am, in 2005. Mark's wife Nataly Tawil, a designer, makes occasional contributions to the blog. The pair are both Lebanese and live in Kuwait.

While it may not offer the political insight of some of the other blogs on the list, it does present a slice of life in Kuwait, covering art, technology and more, with lots of reader contributions.

And it's not entirely without controversy ... Makhoul is apparently being sued by a Japanese restaurant chain over a negative review.

For something completely different ...

Cartoonist Maya Zankoul, 24, has gained international attention for her blog, Maya's Amalgam, consisting mainly of her illustrations.

Zankoul, who grew up in Saudi Arabia and now works in Lebanon, said: "The workplace in Lebanon was not allowing me to fully express my opinion about the things I was noticing about living in Lebanon and the Lebanese society, so I decided to start my own cartoon series, telling stories from my daily life, from my point of view -- all in illustrations."

Maya's Amalgam has been online since 2009 and her blog illustrations have been made into two books.

Did we miss out your favorite blogs? Which blogs from the region do you think are "must reads?" Share your favorites by commenting below.

Links referenced within this article

Arabist
http://www.arabist.net/
Saudiwoman
http://saudiwoman.wordpress.com/
2011 Bloggies
http://2011.bloggi.es/
Mahmood's Den
http://mahmood.tv/
Afrah Nasser
http://afrahnasser.blogspot.com/
The Rantings of a Sandmonkey
http://www.sandmonkey.org/
attacked
http://inthearena.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/04/police-attack-cairo-tweeter-destroy-car/
BlackIris
http://www.black-iris.com/
7iber
http://www.7iber.com/
Brass Crescent Awards
http://www.brasscrescent.org/
LivefromGaza: 360 square km of chaos
http://livefromgaza.wordpress.com/
SillyBahrainiGirl
http://sillybahrainigirl.blogspot.com/
Twitter
http://twitter.com/justamira
248am
http://www.248am.com/
Maya's Amalgam
http://mayazankoul.com/

Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/04/14/bloggers.middle.east/index.html?hpt=Sbin

2011-05-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

30 day song challenge part 2

song that reminds you of a person

song that reminds you of a place

song that reminds you of an event

meeting my best friend Cristy Paez

a song you know all the words to

''i can dig the earth until past my death, just to cover you with gold and light'' - song you know all the words to. not true-- i know the syllables that are maybe like the words he says, is about all--but i take the rules more as suggestions. 30 Day Song Challenge

Miscellaneous and evocative videos

2011-05-20T10:12:00.000-07:00

Day 5 and 6 of the 30 Day Song challenge

songs that remind you of a place, and of a person