i left my heart in the wilderness

alright, this is slightly girlish of me but i'm secure enough to go through with it. here's an amazing poem i found. this is how i want to live my life.

To the primal wonders no road can ever lead; they are not so won.
To know them you shall leave road and roof behind;you shall go light and spare.
You shall win them yourself, in sweat, sun, laughter,in dust and rain, with only a few companions.
You shall know the night - its space, its light, and its music.
You shall see earth sink in darkness and the universe appear.
No roof shall shut you from the presence of the moon.

You shall see mountains rise in transparent shadow before dawn.
You shall see- and feel! -first light, and hear a ripple in the stillness.
You shall enter the living shelter of the forest.
You shall walk only where the wind has walked before.
You shall know immensity,and see continuing the primevil forces of the world.
You shall know not one small segment but the whole of life,strange, miraculous, living, dying, changing.

You shall face immortal challenges; you shall dare,delighting, to pit your skill, courage, and wisdom against colossal facts.
You shall live lifted up in light;You shall move among clouds.
You shall see storms arise, and, drenched and deafened,shall exult in them.
You shall top a rise and behold creation.
And you shall need the tongues of angels to tell what you have seen.

by Nancy Newhall, written for Ansel Adams

stories from the desert to come. right now i must go to my bed and cry out my depression caused by the fact that i live in a big, crowded city and not with the desert folk. god bless them and their smelly, noisy camels. i can't even see the stars here.

he called me john

so the other day i called a guy i had met last week who offered to give me arabic lessons. he said he'd meet me outside of my apartment at five o'clock and we'd go to his house. he sounded sort of weird on the phone though and even though he's an english teacher he had a hard time understanding what i was saying. but i thought it must just be the phone. so at about 4:30 he calls again and asks if "i can get out of my bed to come meet him?" so i go downstairs and amstanding there, looking for my friend khalid, when this young kid with nice clothes and slicked-back hair walks up from behind, grabs my arm and starts walking with me, and introduces me to his friend halawa as if it were the most natural thing in the world. in fact, i think he may have even called me by name. he even tells me he'sbeen trying to call me. yes, 4 or 5 times in the past few weeks. so i almost tell him i'm meeting someone and can't walk with him but he seems absolutly confident that i'm supposed to be with him. so i start trying to rationalize what's going on. i look at him really hard tomake sure this isn't the same khalid with a different hairstyle. when i'msure it's a totally different person i think, maybe it's khalid's brother who i never met and he forgot to mention. but things get weirder. his friends are calling him khalid. so ihave no idea what's going on. he takes meto his car, a new volks wagon, he must be loaded, and we get in and as 5 more moroccan guys pile in the backseat he pops in a backstreet boys casset and they all start singing along as loudly as they can. he tells me this is where he learned english; from nick and the boys. and they're all acting like they know me and i'm their best little white friend. so by this time i'm laughing to myself as to the absurdity of the situation. and we start driving out of town. for all i know, they could be taking me to algeria to sellme into slavery. but instead we go to this guy's house (which is nicer than mine and a lot nicer than matt's.) and i meet his sister and mother and they introduce me to "an animal" which turns out to be this really ugly guy they all make fun of. and they tell me that the guy i'm sitting next to likes men and not women. so i teach them the invaluable english word "gay". and after we break the ramadan fast with lots of sweets, little baked fish, and one huge, whole fish that they call "the mother", we watched somemoroccan television and went back out to hit the town. so they take me to the Hawiian billiards hall and we play some pool. with mariah cary blasting in the background. of course, they love her too. along with 50 cent and shaggy. yes, all the best of american music. they also love weed on occasion. but not during ramadan. so after i get beat 2 out of 3 at pool, they all have to go back to work and i tell them i need to go home.so my new friend khalid, who never once showed any suprise in finding me waiting for him outside of my apartment, walks me homeand promises to call me next week. wow. i can just imagine, after i shake hands with them in departure and they give me their numbers and smile and laugh and hug me and i walk out, all of them looking at each other as they wave to me and saying "who the hell was that guy?" so that is how i came to spend an evening with perfect strangers. i later find out, in a freak coincidence, that the guy who worked here this summer with jay patterduss, had used the same phone i'm using and had also befriended a guy named khalid who i accidentally called instead of my khalid. his name was john. so younever know what might happen in good ole morocco. who might pretend to know you in order to take you to his home for dinner, cruise around town with you, and buy you three games of pool. oh the machinations of the rich young moroccan mind. but it doesmake one think. if in america, a friend of yours whom you hadn't seen for a couple of months calls and arranges to meet with you and when you show up at the appointed pllace and time and a complete stranger is instead waiting for you, would you take them to your house and feed them and offer them drugs and alcohol when ramadan is over? i think not. i wish america whould be more open; more friendly and trusting. a place where you don't have to think twice about suggesting illegal activity with a stranger.

so on a more serious note, i am off to the desert for a week. mind you, not just any desert, The Desert. the sahara. my supervisor is sersiously forcing me to make out a will because we're not going with a local guide and the man driving us is apparently not one whose knowledgable friends jump at the chance to ride with. so it should be a real adventure. unfortunatly it will only be a week long, or will it... oh, and congratulations to georgetown. i don't know many details yet but it seems she has finally been freed of the evil that was gathering around her. so no promises of posts from the middle of nowhere. survive as best youcan. perhaps you can copy my previous posts to your computer and read them in a new font or different color and it will be like hearing from me anew. and in the meantime, i'll be thinking of you all as i cross the blazing sands and try to find some kind nomads to take me in.

old men do it best

so i was invited to go to a hemam the other night by a man i met here. all i knew about these places is that lots of men get together in a sauna-like place and bathe. so we get there and everyone's in their underwear. except for this big black guy who feels the need to be naked. i can't imagine why... sowesit down on the floor, yes everyone's on the floor, and get big buckets of hot water and start washing. so i'm basically doing what my friend is doing and after washing our hair three times he asks if i'd like a massage. of course. i like massages. so he calls over this wrinkly old man in nothing but a loan cloth. and he squats down and grabs my arm and starts jerking me about. then washing me. oh yes, i get scrubbed down by an 80 year old arabic man. he definatly washes just about every inch of my body with his bare hands, pulls me backwards over his knees until i almost black out, makes me lie down on the floor and shoves his knee into my back and then takes this washclothe which feels like sandpaper and scrubs all the dead skin off every inch of my body. i have been violated. no worse than in the pha house mind you, but this was a stranger. after that ordeal, we moved to the cooler washing room where you do your own scrubbing. or so i thought. as i'm trying to soap up my back this kid, he must have been about 15, offers to help. who am i to refuse? i don't want to be a snotty american. so he comes over and gets carried away or something and i get a second going-over. not quite as intense as the old man but still enough to feel as if the kid took a little part of me with him. suprisingly, at the end of the night i felt cleaner than i ever have. my new baby-smooth skin is the envy of the expatriate community. needless to say, this country will probably now be flooded with phas wanting to get a piece of the action. but then men here go to the hemam once a week at least. which means not only are they cleaner than all of us, they're also a lot gayer. but man, i got a working-over from that old guy. he reminded me of ghandi. except not a pacifist.

one month to holiness

alright, i do suck. it's true. especially at this blog thing. but, after actually looking at tonight for the first time in a good week and a half and seeing that 11 whole people cared enough to leave me a message, i'll try and do better. to my credit, i have been in the mountains for the past week. without a computer. so if you get restless that you haven't heard from me in a while; you can't sleep because of it or your day just doesn't seem to go as well without my wisdom in your hearts, be of good cheer, i will return. no, i haven't been savegly murdered or even better, taken hostage (although i pray for it every day) but i have found some nice people who i'm sure wouldn't mind helping me contract aids. thanks for taking the time to comment, those that did. it's nice to hear from people i know. to get my fix i've been listening to colt's cd. which my brother loves, by the way coy. so what's my life been like? let me tell you, and use paragraphs. oh the novelty.

america should care more about soccer. morocco had a world cup qualifying match against tunisia the other day. all day long people had been singing in the streets and driving around with moroccan flags on their cars honking their horns. i live above a café and when it came around to game time i happened to be there, drinking some coffee and reading The Autobiography of Malcom X (someone tell tyler). well the waiter told me to go upstairs and packed into this tiny café were a few hundred moroccan guys about my age. well, being the only white guy there i was somewhat of a novelty and so they all gave me their drinks and made me sit with themand that sort of thing. i told them tonight, for the game, i was moroccan and oneguy kissed me. and when morocco scored, they picked me up in the air and tried to teach me the national song. sadly, it was a draw and even though morocco was the only undefeated team from africa, they didn't qualify and tunisia did. one point. so there was no party in the street and everyone went home crying. and the white guy just sat there, drinking his coffee.

it's also very strange being in a muslim country during ramadan. at about 5:30 every evening (it gets earlier every night) the streets become deserted and stores that are normally open close. except the cafés. they've been closed allday so now they open. well, if you don't have a family to go home and break fast with, you do it in a café. it's the moroccan way at least. (oh, and have i mentioned the café i live above is known as a place to pick up hookers? it's a nice little side buisness for a guy alone in a 2 bedroom apartment.) so you'll see outside these cafés, guys who have an entire meal layed out infront of them, just waiting for the call to prayer. and they just sit there and stare at their food. and stare. and, well, i guess i don't have a cool ending for this story. they stare some more and then eat. but, i was invited into this dirty little café the other day by a strange moroccan who spoke english. he even bought me a drink. of coffee. and then we talked about his family for an hour. it was really weird. so that's my life here. trying to get out to the mountains as much as i can. befriending strange men in cafés and moroccan whores. trying to get lost in the old city. those sort of things. with luck, none of you will ever hear from me again. that's the goal at least. oh, i willalso mention that i'mgoing to the sahara in a couple weeks. sohopefully i'll meet some nice desert people who will take me in and raise me as one of their own, roaming the desert and hearding camels. what a life. those lucky bastards.