roamin' and ruminatin'

Last Day Bittersweet Blues

2010-06-06T04:18:00.000-07:00

Well I am sitting on the second floor of a little sweet shop sipping tea and eating little bits of Turkish delight, watching the rainy weather do a fairly good job at reflecting my mood. I am both ready to go home and desperate to stay and see more. We have had a great time here, seen and experienced many things, but the interest I have in the tourist sights is waning as is my supply of clean laundry. That's not to say I wouldn't want to stay, find some little quiet street to live on, a market to frequent, my own table for afternoon tea on the sidewalk. Hell, it wouldn't take much to convince me to pull up stakes and move to bozcaada, start a life selling wine or something.

To me that is one of the beauties of travel. Sure there's the novelty of new cultures, the beauty of new places, the freedom from responsibilty, but there is also the endless possibility for reinvention offered by transplantation. Travel begs the mind to consider the possibilty that if one can change his location, surely he can change other things about his life as well. The possibilities seem as numerous as the destinations listed at the Istanbul bus station. It's easy, all you have to do is go. When you are on the road it seems that simple, just set out and do it.

And I guess that is the hardest part about going home; it is an admission that it's not quite that easy. That there are ties holding you back, you aren't all that free after all. Sure, most of those ties are positive things like friends, family, a city one finds uniquely home, but that doesn't make the prospect of bondage any less palatable. In the end the hardest thing about going home isn't the trip, it isn't the arrival or the return to the responsibilities of normal life, it is the admission that you are not some rootless nomad after all, that the world isn't quite your oyster, that regardless of your willingness, you just can't do whatever you want. Real life is a burden you cant run from, but must continue to bear. And so, on the plane home it is best to concentrate on those things worth returning to, the very things restrictring your freedom to begin with; friends, family, and a city unique in a world of cities. A city that is home.

Back to Istanbul

2010-06-05T06:50:00.001-07:00

Well we have reluctantly returned to Istanbul from beautiful, relaxing bozcaada. This is no small feat, even if you ignore the intense personal attachment I have developed to drinking wine in the shade. See the journey involves a ferry, a local bus, a shuttle bus, another ferry, a coach bus, a train and a tram. It takes over 12 solid hours if your connections all work. It's enough to drain the energy out of anybody, but if that's what it takes to keep a place like bozcaada free of tourist traps, I am willing to endure it every time.

It was kind of a shock to return to the big, busy city at first, I find myself resenting the existence of other people on the sidewalk, cars on the roads, and hearing English in cafes. All this resentment, though, melts at the first sight of the minarets of the blue mosque piercing the sky above the Bosphorus.

We spent the day walking along the main road here and taking in the historic mosques and cemetaries. When we had enough of dead sultans, we headed into the grand bazaar for some serious shopping. About 2 hour later we emerged with armloads of stuff including a Turkish blanket, a beadspread, various trinkets and a copper teapot. The beadspread was the most fun to haggle for as it involved the shop owner chasing us down several blocks away to cede to my offered price.

We only have one day left here, and I think that is about right. No, I am not ready to go back home (I am ready to go back to Bozcaada) but I have had my fill of a place as busy as Istanbul. Our plan for tommorrow involves a little more shopping (spices!), some last minor sights, and, hopefully, some tea overlooking the bosphorus.

Sun, Surf and, um, Cherries

2010-06-02T06:25:00.001-07:00

As I write this I am sitting on a kind of veranda, open on two sides to the cobbled streets and on another side to the rolling surf. The fourth side is an airy white room full of antique dishware and light mosquito netting curtains covered the floor to ceiling windows which open onto the wide blue stripe of ocean. I can hear the thunder and swish of the water along the rocks as I sit back and eat cherry after deep red cherry.

We bought the cherries this afternoon for less than a dollar a pound at the market in the center of the village. This market, stocked almost entirely with locally grown produce, stretches for several blocks and is the empitome of plenty. It was an excercise of superhuman effort to buy only 2.2 pounds of cherries, because, after all, living in a hotel room, what exactly am I going to do with tomatoes and bannana peppers and green beans and eggplant and potatoes and cheese and so on?

The market was just being set up this morning when we walked out of town on the main road. The walk through the hills, along the vineyards and pine forests, was more than three miles along an island only five miles long. The road veered toward the coast and terminated in a beach fronted by water almost too clear to be azure. Unfortunatly (or fortunatly, depending how you look at it) the temperature in the breezy low twenties (centigrade, obviously) precludes swimming, so we hopped on a local bus for the ride home. Once back in the village we ate toasted sandwhiches within veiw of the harbor choked with bobbing fishing boats.

All in all it has been a spectacular day, full of sun and food and wonderful sights. Bozcaada is it's own little version of paradise, a relatively undiscovered gem, largey untouched by the pressures of modern tourism. This place exists for itself only and I feel lucky that we are welcome to share it's sun, surf and cherries.

The Bozcaada Breeze

2010-06-01T10:32:00.001-07:00

From the instant you step off of the derry, you realize that Bozcaada is a mediterranean island idyl, white houses and all. The village is stretched non-threateningly along thr clear blue water thr likes of which I have never seen. The breeze here is a ubiquitous reminder of the nearby sea and it kisses every cobblestone an eery scrub tree. We are talking a super small, everyone-knows-everyone kind of town here, enhanced by a million dollar view type setting. The streets are shaded by deep green vines under which old men and couples drink tea and sweating bottles of Efes beer. Thy chat quite obviously having known each other their whole lives. Thr sky blue water peeks out from every cross street on any given walk between whitewahed houses and little treelined squares at the foot of golden hills. Now, after the sleepless overnight bus ride, after the waiting in the second rate, dirty couch ridden bus station, after the local bus ride with schoolkids bumping through the curving countryside and after the blue-white waves kicked into our faces on the ferry, we are sitting in our own sea of blue and white chairs just off tr shady square, drinking beer in the breeze as it passes by on it journey from the Agean to Anatolia; just the place I want to be.

A favorite place, a new place

2010-05-31T10:01:00.001-07:00

As I write this I am sitting in my current favorite place is Istanbul, the tea garden in the Topkapi Palace grounds, situated cliffside overlooking the busy blue water of the bosphorus. I can see ferrys heading to Asia, I can map along the coast the places I have been, the appoximate location of restaurants where I have enjoyed delicacies like fish sandwiches. Indeed, we have seen and tasted many things in Istanbul, met the usual assortment of locals and globetrotters, but it is time to move on. Tonight, at about 1 am local time, Addie and I will board a bus bound south for cannakale, and from there catch another bus to the ferry terminal where, if all goes well we will head to the island of Bozcaada. I don't quite know what to expect when we get there but I have no reason to beleive it will be any less beautiful than the place I am sitting now.

A second day

2010-05-30T12:10:00.001-07:00

Today we started out by getting the necessary out of the way: the Aya Sofya. It's a lump of a brick building from the outside, covered with carbuncular domes and tumorous butresses; the last thing in the world you would expect to be beautiful, really, but once you step inside the space opens up into a guilded wash of ancient color, stretching from the wron paths on the marble floor all the way up to the magnificient dome floating on the structure like a cloud. Inside, the Aya Sofya is an absolutely stunning building. It was easy to spend the morning examing each little revelation of craftsmanship, from the obvious work of the mosiacs to the more subtle beauty of marble slabs placed with mirrored grains as if they were some giant unfolded tree stretched along thr walls. I could write about that building all day, but there is more than the Aya Sofya in Istanbul.

So from there we struck out to see the further reaches of the city that lay beyond the fisherman studded galata bridge. Seeing what was some considerable distance and formidable topography on thr map we opted for public transit, plunking our little red token into the machine to crowd onto the tram, winding it's way through the just-wide-enough streets to it's terminus, then taking a funicular he rest of the climb to what the guidebook described as "the heart of modern Istanbul" in Byoglu. And it was modern, and thriving, so interesting in fact that we walked back the entire distance we covered by tram. We ate delicious, cheap grilled fresh caught fish sandwiches under the galata bridge. We strolled through the stalls of thr spice bazaar, turning away offers of cardamom, chili, tea, and something called "Turkish Viagra".

By time we got back to our adopted neighborhood, we were tired and just sat in a sidewalk cafe and drank tea out of the curved little glasses. Since then we have just been chilling out soaking in thr city, and most importantly, eating massive, delisious and cheap Turkish food. Tommorrow we will head out to the bus station to book trip to Bozcaada, then more relaxing untill we begin the next phase of our trip!

Why I love to travel

2010-05-29T11:47:00.001-07:00

It's the little moments, the chance conversations with people from the other side of the world, the instant that you realize that you are not alone, it's just that everyone like you isn't staying still in you're homeown; they are out there, moving, nomads on the road. That was my night tonight. Be jealous.

Adjusting to Istanbul

2010-05-29T07:14:00.001-07:00

Well, it took 24 hours and involved the best layover I have ever had, spent roaming the bicycle teeming streets of Amsterdam, but we made it to Istanbul. We slept late this morning then spent a few hours riming the streets and getting our bearings, I am busily reassociating myself with that fish-out-of-water feeling that manages to make me both uncomfortable and exhillirated at the same time. We spent the morning wandering the streets and making aquantance with the vaults and towers of the main sights of the sultanhamet (golden horn) area.

I am doing things a bit different this trip, thanks to technology. I have my iPhone and wireless Internet, so as I write this I am poised on the edge of the topkapi palace gardens, drinking tea out of a battered bronze samovar and looking out over the blue water of the bosporus. There is much more to come.

Book Review: "Let the Great World Spin"

2009-11-23T17:55:00.000-08:00

It is no surprise that the events of September 11, 2001 have etched themselves into our national consciousness and have subsequently given birth to a subgenre of literature. The quest for the ideal 9-11 novel has been ongoing now for eight years, and the ideal has yet to be reached. Frankly, in this writers opinion, books like "Falling Man" "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" and purportedly "Netherland" (though I have not read the latter), all do a wonderful job of capturing the events and aftermath of 9-11, but fall short of describing the massive scar left in the lives of thousands, and the nation as a whole as a result. Sure they deal with the fear, the terror, the tears, but by focusing on the event itself these books simply rehash what we all saw on the news, and leave their narrative open to the reader's interjection of what he or she personally experienced.

Dos Passos famously incorporated the scattered headlines of newspapers into his novels in an attempt to provide a noisy backdrop of world events to the lives of his characters living in their shadow. In the same way we must adjust our literature to our hyper awareness of the history occurring around us. Such is the nature of modern, televised catastrophe; we no longer need to look to literature to fill us in on the events, we saw them live on TV, we know the context to the last pixel.

Instead we now look to literature to help us make some kind of sense out of what we all secretly know to be senseless, we need a context for our emotions. Thus I feel that in order for literature to appropriately document a catastrophe, one has to step outside the narrative boundaries of what actually happened, and move on to another plane to try and figure out what it all means. Despite some hesitiation to cubbyhole it as a "9-11 book", this is why I feel that "Let The Great World Spin" by Colum McCann is the greatest 9-11 book yet written.

I prefer not to give plot synopsis in reviews. Ultimately finding out what happened and who it happened to is one of the pleasures of reading. In briefest of summary, "Let The Great World Spin" occurs for the most part in New York in the late 1970's, centered around a group of people all tied together, rather loosely, by Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the two world trade center towers. Among the characters are an Irish monk doing a kind of self-imposed penance among prostitues, those prostitues, a grieving mother of a Vietnam casualty, an artist, and several others. Their lives, their little dramas of randomness, occur as a small corollary to the greater drama of a man making his artistic statement on the tightrope. Through these people McCann tells a story of chance encounters, and the way that we are all linked to big events through the propagation of small happenings. This, to me, is the key thesis of "Let the Great World Spin."

In McCann's world of the 1970's New York, no one is alone in a vacuum, much like reality. The self-imposed principles of a conflicted monk mix with the hardscrabble lives of prostitutes to create a situation in which a car accident can change the life of a young artist forever. Each character woven in this story is fundamentally flawed and deeply conflicted about their life and philosophy: the monk about God, the prostitutes about family, the artist about her lifestyle, the mother about the meaning of her son's death, and so on. The meat of this novel exists in the way the flaws of each character play off of the others.

That being said, there are significant flaws in the development of character that are partially a symptom of what McCann is trying to do. Except for the monk, the central character, I felt that the characters were simply sketches, often stereotypical, thrown in to fill the plot, never given an opportunity to fill the outline the story so tantalizingly provided. Each one of the characters put in this books deserved an entire novel, and surely brevity was a factor. Instead most characters are whispers of what the reader would want to know. However, by nature of McCann's attempt to capture a whole little world of a single incident, proper attention cannot be paid to each character, so perhaps my complaint is inherent in the structure of the novel.

In the end McCann finds redemption in the ties that grow with common suffering of random acts. Under the aegis of great events we lead our small lives, much like the characters of "U.S.A Trilogy", not isolated as we thought, but tied together by the mere fact of proximity. We are each other's causality, and through that we can affect each other's futures in a way that those great events can never hope to. In the end McCann brings the story to the present, and without giving any spoilers, proves to the reader that even from the darkest of situations, like the country experienced in 9-11 (the very, almost literal, antithesis of Petit's walk) can produce hope that touches the lives of thousands.

Second (or Third, Possibly Fourth) Chances

2009-11-23T11:25:00.000-08:00

I have decided to breathe new life into this blog. Originally it was supposed to provide a day to day account of my doings, but that wasn't very interesting, and is much more elegantly handled via twitter. The second incarnation of the blog was some kind of creative writing project centered around New Orleans, but that didn't work out because I just never feel confident enough with the quality of my meager output. This lead to the third incarnation of the blog, a travel updating tool with a side operation in flashes of inspiration. This worked pretty well except the inspiration was as fleeting as the money required to travel. Which leads to the fourth incarnation of this blog: whatever. Thats right, I am going to post a little bit of everything, hoping to continue to emphasize quality.

The first new thing to come will be book reviews culled from my own voracious reading. This will give me an excuse to re-read many of my favorites and try to work out exactly what it is that I like about them. Look for a book review soon, and maybe i will remember not to forget to keep the blog alive again.

Not Like Most Mornings

2009-01-14T04:40:00.001-08:00

Most mornings it is difficult to wake up, to say nothing of the effort required in getting out of bed. It can seem so difficult to face the cold air on your skin so recently accustomed to the soft warmth of sheets, the icy floor and dark potential of the dawn, still sitting in the corners with the dirty laundry and the dust bunnies. This morning was apparently different. This morning was not like most mornings. At a shade past four my eyes snapped open, looking for a drink of water as i often do, but i never did manage to get back to sleep. Its a rare treat to be able to lay in bed wide awake, in the pre dawn peace, listening to the heater churn against the cold. It is even more wonderful to lay there and not think about all the terrifying possibilities held within the things you have to do later in the day. Usually this experience is so enjoyable and relaxing it lulls me back to sleep, but not this morning. I braced myself for the shock of the cold and got up.

The room was filled with ice white light, flowing in from the racetrack behind the house. The big stadium lights hanging in the backyard sky like little moons, bright but without heat, cold and hard early morning light. It is a solitary enough spectacle that by the time i got in the car, i was in a downright ponderous mood. I put on TV on the Radio, the song was Tonight.

It was random chance that song was next on the CD, but it fit perfectly as i drove down empty streets lined by sleeping houses. Here and there the kitchen light was on, the storefronts and coffeeshops half lit and occupied by shuffling staff trying to wake up. This is the perfect song for a pensive passing 37 degree morning. The layers are deep but flow by the ear slow, the sounds drawn out and desolate, yawning at the edge of darkness at even the highest notes. As breakfast joints with single patrons hunched at the sterile counters glide by, as security guards unlock crystal doors made parallax by easy speed, as tired eyes absorb redlight tinged coffee steam at the wheels of clouding cars, bassoons moan to the melody of distant whistles' echo, like a song overheard. The resonant tinkle of reversed wind chimes frost the air and I wondered why mornings seem so different than evenings despite the common darkness. I guess it is the desolation, it is the abandoned look of roads and buildings, cities left empty overnight, left to the few pioneers of predawn to reoccupy for the mornings residents. Hopefully they have a good soundtrack for the paling blue morning world.

Gustav

2008-08-29T17:53:00.000-07:00

Just dropping a quick note to let everyone know I am evacuating out of harms way. Look for me heading westbound on I-10, to Baton Rouge, in a river of people and cars packed with what we all, when forced, decide is important. The best way to keep up with me is going to be on twitter, since i can easily update it via text message. The address of my twitter feed is www.twitter.com/searingblue

A Little Update

2008-08-09T18:23:00.000-07:00

I am sitting in my living room, enjoying that feeling of contentment that comes from a stomach full of saturday chili, sipping the last of my beer, watching the olympics. Yes, i am back home. I have been back for a while, but it takes more time than it seems it should to get back into the flow of things. After a couple of rough weeks readjusting to work and a couple of rough weeks trying to handle all the questions about how your trip was, i am glad to finally spend a long and silent evening to myself. I am trying not to let the images of far off places which currently beam their way into my house tempt me away quite yet; I need to rebuild the bank account, and, a new one after this trip, my energy. But man, it would be great to be wandering about China right about now.....

My Brief Tenure as a Marrakeshi Shopkeeper

2008-07-21T14:11:00.000-07:00

One of the nice things about the more open, face-to-face personal type of commerce that occurs in most of the non western world is that this interaction can lead to so many unexpected things. Yesterday for example, we were shopping for various berber trinkets and came across a bracelet and bead stall. his merchandise was great and his prices reasonable, so i bought a few things from him. then we started talking, and while a whole world of tourists passed by and idly fingered silver and glass we told each other about ourselves, shared some tea in the bead crammed back room. To the busy sounds of night we sorted through old beads and antique coins, laughed, told jokes, and became friends. Then the shopkeeper had to run an errand, and asked me to watch after the stall while he was gone. i was honored, and for a few precious minutes i watched the parades of people walk by and look at my merchandise. I watched each hand and each set of eyes to judge degree of lust and intent. I looked around the glittering, 3 foot extent as my own domain. I didnt sell anything, but for a brief time i was master of a multicolored land of silver and glass, echoing arabic, all lit by naked light bulbs, humble shopkeeper for longer than most.

The Night City

2008-07-20T05:47:00.000-07:00

I have heard marakesh referred to as the Red City, as it is indeed a pale shade or sandstone red by sunbleached day. But there is no heart to this city, no life or soul, as its inhabitants shy away from the triple digit heat, and venture out for only the necessities. So its really just another north african city by day, most shops selling souveniers and cell phones to middel aged tourists and eurotrash hipsters. But this is not the marakesh i have come to love; for that you have to wait untill dusk, about 8pm, when the sounds of drums and horns begin to rattle the foodsmoked air of the souks around the djemma el fna. In the space of only about an hour, the square is transformed from a busy but sparse pedestrian mall into a seething crowd of musicians on drums, horns, lutes and fiddles, snake charmers (yes, honest to god from-the-movies snake charmers) circling cobras, and best of all, stall after flaming stall stall after stall of cooks, sending delicious smoke high into the setting sun. This is the Night City.

The crowd of the night city is immense and encompasses all age groups, from old whithered robed men to young t-shirted couples. Crowds gather in circles around performers lit by the bright balls of kerosene lanterns and diners eat on long tables beneath cantenqary strings of naked lightbulbs whose light is amplified and disbursed by the stove fires meaty smoke. Hours can be spent here roaming, watching, dreaming of a time long ago when this scene was all there was to know about life. i became obssessed with capturing it in pictures, took dozens of flashless photos trying to keep my hand steady, but compared to the real thing they looked so flat and hollow.

Needless to say, if you took a flight to marakesh right now, where you could find me. I will be sitting beneath the luminous smoke, swimming in the sounds, eating, drinking and soaking in the scenery of the Night City.

Yes, Fine, I Took The Marrakesh Express (now stop singing)

2008-07-19T08:53:00.000-07:00

Just got into marrekesh, oh, 20 minutes ago and i am freezing in the air conditioning of the cybercafe after sweating it over here from the train station in what i am pretty sure was a very well used, vomit green Yugo.

To catch you up, I was very sorry to have to leave chaouen, it was a relaxing place, beautiful and full of nice people, and most importantly, not nearly as hot as fez. While Chaouen was a cool, laid back mountain town, fez is a bustling, busy place, thick with the heat of the desert and people packed close in the labrynthine paths and alleyways of the sprawling medina. the short trerk fro, where the taxi dropped me off to my hotel was a noisy, fast paced gauntlet of men trying to sell me rugs, take me on tours, find me a hotel, or just procure for me some hash. I powerwalked through it all, saying no, no, la, la, la shukran, seer fhalek, and soon i found myself standing in the covered courtyard of my tiled covered hotel. I met up with josh, christina and john and we will be travelling together from here out. i met up with them in excellent style, waiting for them while drinking tea with two dutch girls i met on the bus in from choauen, josh et al had no idea who these two girls were who ran up, saying hello and knowing their names. The three of them looked pretty tired from their trip dozn from tangiers, so i went to dinner and out wandering the medina with my new friends instead.

The next day, the crew was recharged and we set out to explore the medina. Fez is all tans and greens and aging woodtones that seem to creep into the walkway from the sides, a claustrophobic place, packed with people walking past laden mules and childrens soccer games. It has all the noise one would expect of such a scene all rising up between the little eves of shops to bounce across the latticework sunshades, sounds of a busy, ancient city travelling down bending corridors to return to the ear older, thicker with time. I am not sure we did anything in particular that day. yes, we did see a hundreds of years old tannery, and yes, i bought a new bag made of camel leather, but that doesnt seem to stand out (unless, of course, i am using the bag). What stands out is the seeming impossibility of everything, the sheer number of corners that each seem to hold a new shop, extravagantly tiled fountains that spring out of broken walls, squares exploding out of the tiniest of alleys and everywhere people, people, people. Everything and everybody that happens in life happens in the medina, all at once. There are old men, crouched in jallabas, hanging from canes and shuffling forward amidst card players and legions of stray cats, women with towels walking to hammams and shopkeepers sizing one another up from across tense but freindly paths, as they have done all their lives. I am certain i could walk in fez, round chunk of bread in hand, forever and never be bored.

There is, however, more to morocco than fez, so this morning we jumped on the train, the fast one, the marrakesh express. after several unpleasant hours during which that song echoed incessantly around my skull, i was able to take a look through the glare and out the window. what little was left of the rif mountains fell away to vast expanse of hard sandy ground that didnt even seem to move by the train. no villages, no farms of consequence here, just miles of nothing. It went on this way for a while, the opnly releif being when we approached the atlantic coast near casablanca, i was retracing my steps. but soon we swung west and mercifully moved the sun to the other side of the train. Now the flatlands rose in huge hills stippled by the dusty green of bushes and cactus plants for miles. now and then rocks would burst through the surface of the dust in mysterious ragged clusters, the only shade and detail the eye could see.

This went on an on and on untill, all of a sudden we crossed a deep green river and slammed, full speed into a world of green, lush grasses and trees on the outskirts of marrakesh. The train pulled in and i took a cab to my hotel, which, mercifully and for the first time in days, has air conditioning. Now I am writing this feeling a bit like a character in some novel, just because i am here, in as fabled a place as marrakesh, so often taken as the genereic for exotic (if that is possible), writing this just a hundred feet from the djemma-el-fna, and that is where the plot of this novel leads me next. I will let you know what happens.

One of Those Days (the Good Side of the Expression)

2008-07-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

It was supposed to be a low key, prove-that-this-is-a-vacation sort of day today. I started out right on target, waking up at 10ish to the call to prayer from the minarette right across the square from me. It is the most peaceful, haunting sound in the universe, and immediatly let me know that i was in a different land. I love that sound as it echos across the countryside. I have decided we need minarets (and imams) in the US to pray for us in the morning, day and night. Watch, because i wrote that, right now, homeland security has flagged me...oh well.

Anyway, i started out by walking downhill, WAY downhill, to the bus station to get my ticket for the next day. Some people have said, since this is a middle stop on the line, the busses fill up fast. I tried to make a reservation, but the answer was either or i dont know which. Either way i am just gonna hope for the best tomorrow. I have to be in fez by 8 pm for my hotel reservation. it might be close....

MAtters past are more concretem and interesting than matters future, so i will continue to relate my day. I walked back from the station and, of course, got lost in the medina. This was ok, it is good to get off of the tourist track, and i was looking to start doing some shopping anyway. I was sort of hunting down a nice guy i had met before, he complimented my good luck bead on my neclance from india. I never found him, because, on the street, i started talking to another shop owner. He was very nice, wanted to know all kinds of things, wanted to talk. We went to his shop, a little dark woumb of carpet, clothes and blankets. We sat one cushioned benches and drank tea from a nearby cafe while talking about life, and travel, and the inherent goodness of the vast majority of people. He had some stuff i liked, so we started to look through itm slowly, no pressure. Before long i had whittled the stack down to one carpet, three blankets and some pottery. I bought them all, haggled an insane (for me anyway) price. Now i have another bag to carry.
After the transaction, we sat around and talked, drank more tea and relaxed. Then, out of nowhere he invited me to lunch. Sure, i thought. Then he said it was at his house. I was speachless, buch managed to nod in acceptance. A short walk through the medina and into deeply local areas, i was reclined on a long cusioned couch, playing little games with his two year old son while his wife cooked. The rooms were simple but comfortable. cool and breezy, white painted walls surrounded wall couches of deep red and browns. I washed in the spigot of the bathroom, and let the air dry my face while resting next to the low table. A small tv was on, and i learned about the king of morocco. We ate wonderful, fresh food all grown here and bought in the markets, fried fish from the river, tomatoes from the valleys and herbs from the mountains, bread baked in the medina, all fresh. We drank tea and sat in the breeze, and i learned about, and participated in real moroccan traditions, feeling at home. ABout 2 hours later we bid goodbye and i threaded my way back to my hotel, like i belonged here. After all, i did everything like a moroccan, from haggling to tea to even eating at a friends house.

I was very lonely last night, especially after posting and after chatting with some people online. It was painful to watch the little groups of people stroll about ion the lammplight in the square, laughing and eating in that pale but impending atmosphere that indicates good realxing times before th peace of night. It is no exaggeration to say i felt terrible. I read untill i slept just to feel less lonely. But today i was reminded of the advantage of travelling alone. You meet more people, you do more things, you have a more authentic foreign experience because, by being without a friend you are stripped of your last tie to home, the last reminder of a place that isnt the here and now. That, is why i was fortunate enough to eat with this man's beautiful family, and that is why i love to travel.

From the Blue and Kif Colored Hillsides of Chaouen

2008-07-15T07:41:00.000-07:00

I finally have a chance to relax, sit back, watch Morocco, and write, though it is on this rediculous french keyboard with this completely unhelpful French spellcheck, so pardon the typos. After a (mostly) uneventful flight-i did have to jump a security line in paris to make my flight on time, but i was wwith a bunch of angry moroccans, so they took care of the arguing with security part-I landed in Casablanca at 9 am. Being a little tired, i was glad i sprung for the pickup service, so i got to the hotel no problem, to dedcided not to waste any time. Within, oh, say a sweaty hour i had navigated the mostly empty streets of sunday casablance and plunged deep into the medina. Now the trusty lonely planet says this medina is no big deal, a modern (19th) century attempt to replicate other places in morocco, and, for my first few blocks, they seemed correct. stall after crowded stall of ripoff louis vuitton purses and cheap t-shirts arent the kind of thing that one comes to morocco to see. At least the merchants were up to snuff, calling to be, trying to befriend me, asking me to (sorry no quotes oin this keyboard). If i hadnt already been through this gauntlet in India, I think it would have been overwhelming. then a man comes up to me, anmd starts the usual, where from questions. i humor him and let him follow me, and over the courser of the afternoon it turns out that while he is a merchant, and wqould really love for me to buy stuff from him, he is more interested in making a friend. the two of us wander the medina and he introduces me to all his shopkeeper friends. then he says i must see the real medina, the secret ones the tourists never see. I, he states, will be a moroccan. Its a crazy journey of dark alleys and narrow crowded passages, and i follow as close as i can. just when i had been convinced he led me into a dead end to rob me, we take a sharp turn and the passageway opens up into a thriving market.

stacked from ground to ceiling, lining both sides of the square, are piles of every kind of food imaginable. Amidst an all moroccan crowd, below the leaping arabic shouts of vendors, i can see tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, TWELVE different kinds of mint, potatoes, and cactus fruit. Through all opf this my eye follows the cart of a a couscous salesman down an alley. We follow and he leads us to aanother square teeming with fish, thousands of fish. qbove white tile and newspaper there are stacked everything, clear eyed, from perch to tuna, sharks and sting rays. huge piles of shrimp like it was st bernard parish. and all of it packed in there smells like NOTHING. all of it one day fresh. We continued past bakers and coops of chickens and oceans of eggs, and at every stall we stopped to say hello to the owner. finally we left the markets and stopped for tea.

Tea here is a point of national pride. It comes to your table, inevitably situated on the edge of some busy thouroughfare, in a small silver teapot. The contents, the color of light beer, are almost immediatly poured into your small glass. this, my friend said, is american tea. the glass is then poured back into the teapot to allow the tea to steep longer. We chatted about life in Casablanca for a while untill the tea was ready. about half the glass is filled with a light amber liquid. This, he says, is morrocan tea. It is sweet and delicious and caffeinated and oh so sweet with mint and honey. We drink slowly talking untill our glasses are empty. we pour the remainder of the teapot into the glasses. It comes out a deep amber, almost brown, and my friend says, this is moroccan whiskey. We toast and drink, and, well, its pretty much got that fire in your gut kick of whiskey. I am hooked on the stuff now.

He led me to the edge of the medina and said goodbye, I felt bad for taking up what amounted to almost 3 hours of his time, so i gave him 100 dihram (about 14 bucks). for the company and the inside information as an introduction to morocco, it was worth every penny.

I left for Fez the next day, barely missing my train and spending a little longer in the station than i had planned. When the next train arrived, i realized that it was a local, and had seen about 25 years of service. The next four hours was one of those travel experiences where you tell yourself you are going to have a great story when you get back about being trapped in a small, 1970s orange vynl compartment with no AC and 8 people, two of which are children practicing whistling and another 3 are adults in the heat of a political discussion in arabic. Its a better story when i get to use my hands.

When i got to fez, i set out for my hotel. Most of the way i was followed by a pack of high school kids practicing english on me a begging to give me a tour, you know, for more practice. I finally lost them and checked in to my hotel, then walked to get my bus ticket for the next morning. ON my way back to the bus station, i decided to see how long a walk it was to the old historic, medina. it looked pretty close on the map, and while it was 100 degrees or so, it was a dry heat. After about 30 minutes, a few dozen hills with a view of scorched earth and one proposition by a prostitute in full bhurka (yeah, weird), i was pitting my stubborness against my fatigue, when i heard a shout over my shoulder. A man on a tiny little scooter pulled over to the side of the road and motioned to the seat. Figuring why not, I jumped on. What a thrill to be throttled at 50 miles an hour through third worl do or die traffic, scooting around busses and between lines of cars, shooting down back alleys and dodging pedestrians. He let me off at the front gate of the medina with a smile, and drove away.

Figuring that was going to be the highlight of the day, i just sauntered around a few of the midieval passageways, the place just felt ancient, but i will save a real description of the medina for when i have spent more time there (in a couple of days). I took a cab back to my hotel and ate at a sidewalk cafe. Moroccan food, though it defies description, is delicious. I went back to the hotel figuring i would turn in, but met a guy from chile. We were bored so we went out and had a couple of drinks, and I am glad we did. Fez comes alive in a display of fountains and lights at night, children play in the streets and old men watch them from the lamplit oasis of teahouses and cafes, there are voices and laughter, in direct opposition to the city by day. Overstimulated I finally made it to bed at about 12:30.

About 6 hours later, this morning, i got up, packed and boarded the bus to chefchaoen. The land in morocco is dry looking this time of year. The brown hills roll up into the horizon, dotted only by the dull greens of trees and the bodies of sheep and shepherds. The ride was not bad, i had a window seat and watched the plains near fez heave up gently into the rif mountains, which became green with the leaves of marijuana (kif) plants. when we rounded the bend to reveal chaouen (i know, i spell it a different way each time) the city jumped off the hillside a vibrant blue. Beautiful.

So all day today i have been wandering around the medina here. I have a great hotel, right of the main square, my room, though tiny, open directly onto the breezy 5th floor terrace. I can see the whole city climb the rocky mountians around us. I have spent hours in the narrow aquablue alleyways that snake along the foothills, getting lost and, instead of getting the directions i ask for, getting a pot of tea with random people. The shops explode onto the street with bright colors, and children run by playing or carrying tea, fresh bread and vegetables to various shops.

Well, that gets yall all up to date. I am doing great, i love it here, and every day is an adventure.

Thats not bad for 45 minutes of nonstop typing, huh?

More later!

The eve of something big

2008-07-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

Writing this quick hello in a slightly tense pose, perched at the edge of the couch and trying to make sure i have remembered everything. I am tired and want to go to sleep but know that, really, there is just no way that is going to happen. I am in that pre-trip mood where one rambles about his house in a mess of anxiety, obsessive list making and giddy excitement. When i manage to sort out my thoughts, or at least shut them up for a few seconds, i realize that i really am prepared. Tomorrow morning i will get on a plane, which in combination with several other planes, will deposit me on the far shore of the Atlantic, at the edge of the largest desert in the world, the northwestern cusp of Africa, Morocco. It is going to be an excellent trip, and i hope my apprehensions are quickly drowned out, as they usually are, by the sense of wonder that accompanies geographic and cultural displacement. Anyway, keep me in your thoughts and prayers, and keep my blog in your bookmarks, because for the next couple of weeks, i am out roamin!

Just Another Saturday Night

2008-06-01T17:38:00.000-07:00

The houses are spilled out into the porchlit, torchlit street, glowing and thumping with the sounds of Saturday night in the neighborhood, the block party milling n curbside clumps claiming larger and larger slices of the street. Conversations bubble, ripple in the paved river. On this porch, laughter and clinks of ice laden drinks dripping wet in the thick summer air. On that porch the air purrs and smacks with the approval of people with sagging plates around a table packed with food. On yet another porch a man sits hunched over a rumbling set of speakers crashing echoes across the block and every other housefront displays a tableau of of smiling social faces seated beneath bug haloed bulbs. In the middle of it all, on a curbparked truck, slanted, one black man sits in his element, sprawled on the toolbox in the beercan laden rusted bed, sipping a beer and musing on politics. He is older than he should look for his age, whatever it is, and i know this because his bearded wrinkled face cant hide a set of bright and busy eyes as he remarks:

"They gonna kill that man, you know. you can't tell me you don't think they will, cause you know, if Barack Obama gets elected, we all gonna get our 40 acres and a Cadillac. Used to be a mule we had comin', but its too late for that. My great, great granddady could have used it, but its Cadillacs now. And when all us folks get what we've got comin' we gonna keep the Cadillac and sell the land (what do I need land for, anyway) we gonna take that money, spend it, and make the economy strong again. That's what will happen. But you KNOW they ain't gonna let that happen, they gonna kill the man before it happens. That's why its important that the first black President has a good Vice President. I don't wanna see the man hurt, but that's whats gonna happen, because he wants to set things right, give folks whats coming to them and some people'll do anything to stop that."

I didn't need to tell him that it didn't matter, we had to elect the man anyway, he knew, and I didn't have the heart to tell him he was probably right about it all anyway. Crushed by the resigned nature of long lives of hopelessness exposed at last to a struggling tiny glimmer of something better, what was the point? I gave him beer and in unspoken commiseration we sheltered in our culture, speaking of things that mattered but seemed less looming, talking about music and Mardi Gras Indians, each a little sadder, a little more beaten by the dangers of hope than when we first met.

For Papaw

2008-02-20T18:44:00.001-08:00

My Papaw (that’s my grandfather to those of you from more prosaic backgrounds) spoke to me for the last time from the slightly quieter edges of a hectic, vaulted room the weekend after Christmas. “The Lord has blessed us.” I could just barely hear his heavy accented voice spoken through the echoes of happy children playing, the high exaggerates lilts of fresh stories and stale jokes, and the peals of laughter and hand to knee impacts inspired by their conclusion. He said this to me staring out into this loud mess of people, just under a hundred of them, all his kin, his family from him down. His own busy brood there celebrating, Papaw just happy watching, puckered mouth just a bit agape in a smile exposing his last few teeth, his normal paunched posture straightened in a sweet paternal composure, presiding over this thing of his making. Scanning the faces of children running and the smiles of the clusters of adults he tells me, “Yeah, we have been blessed, to look at all of ‘em, we haven’t lost but a very few, we all doin’ alright, some better than others but we all got what we need.” He was as proud a man as I have ever seen, sitting like a minor king of north Louisiana in his special, softer chair, and because I know his story, the story of his family, I knew why.

See, just a generation ago (more or less, keeping track gets complicated) we were people with nothing to our names, poor in a poor agricultural South. Papaw married Mimi after her first husband died, and his first act as husband was to take what little money he had and pay the doctors bills for the birthin’ costs of her first two children. “They are mine now,” he explained, “I paid for ‘em,” and from then on they were. The family continued to grow as it floated across north Louisiana, towns added to the family ledger almost as fast as children; with Ringold, Transylvania, Tullulah, Delhi, and Jonesboro came came Tom, Tony, Martha, Becky, Barney Jr., Cathy and Marilynn, seven in all spanning nearly thirty years. They were each of them different, motivated, mischievous, entrepreneurial, jokers, intelligent and curious each in various quantities and combinations but all sheltered under the same fatherly love. He looked out for them, provided as best he could and I think as he was scanning the busy Christmas room he was remembering all he did to raise them right, not just the parenting tasks; teaching his children indefinable things like how to be a “good man”, but the jobs as a cotton picker, foreman in a cotton gin, a gas burner parts salesman, and lastly monitoring the terrifyingly harsh ring of the funeral home phone, taking in the news of who in town died. That’s all a lot of work, but I think he knew it was worth it. He told me as much; being blessed and all is quite a statement from a man whose lungs were torn from years of tobacco smoke and cotton dust, a man who, even into my life struggled with drinking, spending solitary evenings on the back porch so the children wouldn’t see him. A man who worked hard all his life not to get rich but to just get his family by, laboring at land, machine and life, only finding peace scaring the deer away from his garden, watching football, or listening to his family talk the evening away. But his work paid off in the end, he quit smoking and drinking (cold turkey), retired comfortably in the home his children built him, found Jesus, and all the while raised up a group of the most loving, intelligent, successful and just plain “good folks” I have ever met.

So when he died, and he was placed, like a regal patriarch, hand crossed gently in his coffin amongst a sea of grateful flowers, his wife and children, and their spouses and children, and their spouses and children dropped all matter of important business to come to this tiny Louisiana pine tree town to be together as family like Papaw had somehow taught them.

Now, as you know funerals ain’t for the dead but the living, and Papaw’s funeral was no different. Each one of his kin found comfort in their own parts of his life. I can’t speak for my family, but for me comfort lay not, as was often cited, in his peaceful passing or long eventful life, not in the fact that the town post office closed on the day of his funeral or his universally held stature as a great man, not even, as many in my family did, in his religion ensuring his due place in heaven. No, I sat there with the other pallbearers, my cousins aged 7 to thirtysomething, all of us suited in the front row of the church packed on a Wednesday afternoon with friends and family (by necessity, mostly family), and I found the comfort I needed. It came to me as the choir sang a song whose notes my mind placed high in the heavy air above a dusty 40’s cotton field. I looked around and saw in the faces of my family the face of my grandfather. I reviewed what I knew of their histories and I saw his firm but loving hand, a little gruff but ultimately sweet, like when he’d rub his unshaven cheek against mine and it would scratch like sandpaper. In that moment, remembering, looking at those people, I think I saw what he saw, what he tried to tell me at Christmas: he was blessed, we were blessed. It’s a simple matter to build something static, like a house, but its quite another to do what Papaw did in crafting, with love, work and patience, a dynamic and living thing like this family, a hundred different people who do a hundred different things but live together to a single, indefinably good purpose shaped by their upbringing; something vague and ridiculous sounding like “love”.

Papaw knew this family was what he gave, he knew we would make him a proud man, and he knew that he could have aspired, through his whole long life, to nothing greater than this family, and in this we have been blessed.

Writing and Twittering

2007-11-29T14:42:00.000-08:00

I guess I am a twitterer, a one line poor poet, confined to the small cell of one hundred and fifty characters. An interesting problem indeed. To say all that needs to be said. to get across that gut punch emotion, the split second realization of what occurs in front of me. 1-5-0 characters, spaces included. Get the point across quick and concise and nothing less. What is the essence, what is the impact? Just write it down in the spur of the moment, and somehow, the twittered poem falls into its dictated little place, perfectly. And what ends up on the page is just the bare bones, just the skeleton of what is really there. Instead of fleshing it all out, laboriously and verbosely myself, i just provide enough structure that you, the reader may add all the tone of your emotions and muscle of your experience to make the body that you want to see. But maybe this is rationalization for laziness. It could be argued that the role of the writer is to provide not only the bones, but the flesh and blood as well, to lay out and embody, with words, not only an idea, but a story, no, even a world, that you the reader are merely to inhabit and enjoy, like a tourist looking out of the tinted window of a slow moving bus, "To your left, a metaphor for passive observation" and so on. But no, it is not a justification of sloth. The greatest works of art are great because they allow room for personal interpretation. After all, unread books may contain entire worlds that the author has carefully constructed and they just sit merely unheard of, while paintings are snapshots of worlds that have not yet existed, and are waiting to be created by the viewers interpretation of line and color. So I say the greatest stories are those half-told. Thats the beauty of an exercise like twitter. Instead of me telling you what the scene looks like, how I feel, what is happening, I try to pick the representative snapshot of what I want to say. Think of it as a word painting of a moment, just waiting for you to wander by the gallery and build a world from my picture.

The Streetcars

2007-10-10T18:42:00.000-07:00

The course and feel of all cities are based upon the vagaries of their near and distant pasts. The spiderwebs of streets, the snaking of roads through otherwise orderly grids, building walls skewed to orthogonal fronts or vast tracts of fallow field in the midst of a crowded teeming city are all gentle whispers from the very first urban foundations of a places history. In New Orleans, no whisper is softer, or more compelling (as the softest whispers often are) than that of the streetcars.

Yes, the last loud echoes of a lost age still whine and clatter down Canal Street, and the newest ruins still follow St. Charles through a twisted and muddied strip of earth, but there us far more said quietly in the broken and crowded backstreets of the city.

Its nearly always the decay of the facade of the present that exposes the structure of the past, the passage of time ironically sending things backwards through time. Here the decay of our streets exposes the beginning of the backwards telling of the story of the streetcars, because in the late 40’s and 50’s, when pretty much everything in America seemed to take a sharp turn in the wrong direction, the big push was to modernize New Orleans, starting with transportation. Cobbles and rails and wires in the air were not modern, they were relics of a crumbled Europe, no, modern was asphalt and concrete and roaring buses. So the cobbles and rails were paved victoriously over with smooth, futuristic matte black and the wires were ton down to clear the air for the black and acrid clouds of progress. The streetcars were retired from common use and the buses thundered across the new, modern face of a city which even then had no business being modern.

Today we still have the buses and the asphalt, and the clatter of the streetcars is absent from all but a few lucky streets, but there is a growing whisper. The facade of the modern New Orleans is cracking and reminding us of a lost time. See, our roads are legendary for their poor condition, in part because of municipal dysfunction, but also because they are built atop a foundation of cobbles and rails, so as the buses and cars pass they pound through the asphalt and upon the cobbles, which, placed only for the loads of buggies and horses and model-T’s, give way into the soft delta soil. The smooth asphalt above cracks to accommodate the movement and a pothole forms. The pavement around the pothole slowly chips up into pittering gravel and the old grey cobbles see again the light of day. From there the cracks cross the weak seams of stone to find the solid rail beds, and, designed to carry the weight of steel and bodies, the rails do not move. So as the cobbles and asphalt sink, twin cracks form along dual ridges tracing forgotten rails and snake perfectly smooth through the streets haunting their old paths such that today, 50 years after being eliminated and buried, laid between lightposts that still bear rusting wire clamps, the city is again traced with the routes of the streetcars, and the city lacks but the familiar clatter of times lost to progress.

Hey There

2007-10-05T16:05:00.001-07:00

Just to let everyone know that I am still alive, just busy recently. I have a piece written, but its taking me a while to get around to typing it up. Sit tight for that.

If you still need me related information, I have decided to start a twitter page, which will prove how busy I am, and also probably fall into disrepair and be forgotten, like this blog.

Its at www.twitter.com/searingblue

2007-09-11T10:08:00.000-07:00

Its Monday Night and this is New Orleans, right? So that makes it time for Red Beans and Rice. From there its just a matter picking the stove to put up the big pot of beans to boil up red and thick and the white pot of rice to come up soft and all mixed together with a couple of beers in a hungry stomach to the rowdy noise of friends and fall football. But its Monday Night and this is New Orleans so the fun don't end with dinner cause the game keeps going and the conversation lasts longer (with fewer commercial breaks) so soon the TV is on mute and its just the floor show of words and jokes and laughter bouncing in the oh-so-friendly way of Monday Night conversation. Full stomachs, though, make for poor endurance so soon its time to head home and nobody drove cause its Monday Night and this is New Orleans in the neighborhood so we walked and now its time to walk home feeling full and heavy along the bayou with visions of bedtimes and ceiling fans dancing and spinning in our moisture beaded heads. It is not to be, you see, because its Monday Night and this is New Orleans so you have to say high to all the people you meet on the street and definitely say hi to all the people you see sitting sipping sweating drinks on porches and before long you too are porch sitting on an unknown porch laughing, talking birthin’s, dyin's and mamas heritage, and all the little histories and nuances that make up the rich and worthwhile lives we live down here. The conversation moves in midnight from porches to sidewalks to the street and pulls in passers by and the neighborhood gels in the early weeknight streetlight, standing knee bent and hipped all discussin' life, living, love and how its Monday Night and this is New Orleans. But it is Monday Night, New Orleans or not, so everybody breaks up into strands, each off a couple of blocks to his own house and new friends and old acquaintances of casual waves are bid goodbye to reassurances of “you know where I live!” and off into the solitary night of home life we each go reminded now, again, in this town, in the neighborhood, we are not so alone.