jackandthecitylights.org

This website is my canvas. It has become a reflection of not only what I see, but how I see and the inevitable changes this journey is having upon my perceptual experience of life. I sincerely apologize to my regular readers for the extremely long delay in an update. Though I acknowledge I could have done short cursory postings here and there, there is in fact a reason (well many smaller but one main one) that this giant gap in postings has occurred. While some members of my family were at one point worried I had died, I would have to say that in some regards this isn’t completely inaccurate. During the past few months I have been experiencing a profoundly devastating change in my understanding of what I was raised and inculcated to believe was normal, necessary, moral, acceptable, sane (jeeze I really could keep going here, but I’m sure you get the picture). The more clearly I begin to see, the more appeal the bliss of ignorance holds. But for now indignation has endowed me with a sense of responsibility I will manifest in my writing.

So to pick up where I left off… yes, I really was dressed in a nightgown and tucked in by an old man I had met only hours before hand on a crumbling one-lane road in the middle of nowhere at 1am. And yes I really did watch back to the future on a small television set upon a stand between walls of mud and stone. Though as unlikely as it may seem to find Michael J Fox and the Delorian in a tiny peasant’s village surprised I was not to find the Fox Movie Channel here. (More on how the dominant culture’s values and beliefs will be forced upon every last culture on earth to condition them to willingly submit their very souls to the insatiable maw of the global economy later oh, how there will be more of this later.)

Next day. Vomit, about eight days of sweat, and perhaps a bit of urine as well. These are the things that I was covered in and my clothes hung upon me heavily with in the hot sun on an impossibly steep dirt road, while pushing my stupidly huge bicycle along. Thankfully doing all these things didn’t detract from the experience of having food poisoning. No no, they just amplified it. My cyclists metabolism had been running at full steam for a few days now, and suddenly my poor unsuspecting digestive had been violently slammed into reverse.

In Orgiva I had met a woman who owned a garden villa just south of Marrakeche. As she did not have any renters she agreed to let me stay there without rent. Now 700 km later, sick, and exhausted from the 160 km day I had put in yesterday I had finally made it.

The following day two of the landlord’s children arrived. The greetings were followed by them setting up a little stereo and blasting techno and rap. “Food poisoning in the desert with really bad techno music, and 18 year olds… so this is hell”, I thought to myself.

I’m quite certain that the best place to experience food poisoning is a third-world country that has holes in the floor instead of toilets and buckets of water in place of toilet paper.

Just to keep my digestive system on it’s toes I somehow ingested some live bakers yeast while making myself some bread during the recovery process (side note: for a good time eat some live baker’s yeast). So when I wasn’t exploding out of either end, listening to horrible music, watching these kids do everything they weren’t supposed to do around mom, and just generally praying for the sweet release of death I was enjoying a relaxing life in paradise.

Perhaps one of the most questionable ideas I’ve had so far was my decision to ride the bus into Marrakeche. No stranger to interesting bus rides I used to take the legendary 174 home from Seattle twice a week. The 174 was famous for being one of the craziest, and most dangerous busses from Seattle there was. All the fights, crazy naked people on drugs, and in bus urination of good old 174 paled in comparison to the bus rides here.

To get on the bus you must first forget about any rights you think you may have to your personal space. Okay, you then must shove your way through a mass of about 20 people all trying to cram themselves through the door of an already packed bus. I have often worried as I have been more or less hoisted and pushed into the bus by the force of the tumult that if I were to fall underfoot I would trampled to death as in the stories I’ve heard about the unfortunate pilgrims in Mecca. If your lucky enough to get on you get to stand in the isle or up against the windshield with people standing on your feet and breathing down your neck.

Catching the bus in Marrakache is the same routine only this time while your fighting your way onto the bus you’re surrounded by a band of pickpockets that are emptying the contents of your pockets and bags. As I found out by loosing my knife (yeah, my knife knife. As those of you who were familiar with my zeal over that silly thing know it.) this way, you just don’t put things in your pockets you want to keep.

One less intense bus experience was marked by my daydream gaze out the window being interrupted at a stop at the sight of the bus driver who was sprinting off into the distance. I wasn’t sure if he was tired of being a bus driver or if he just had to poop. After he had gotten a ways away his errand became clear. I saw him stop to buy some tangerines from a random old lady who was sitting out in the middle of nowhere.

“It was that damn random tangerine lady again.” Try that one on for size next time you’re late to work.

Morocco has confronted me with some of the most basic effects of the human race’s negligence and disconnection to so some of the most serious problems that we face today. But really it goes far beyond negligence and disconnection, because these are in part just symptoms of a much greater problem. While living here I have been exposed to a series of events, sights, and experiences that by themselves render no more than the anguish and sadness that pervade the cause and the consequences that perpetuate them, however when I step back to look at them all together a larger picture starts to form. Within this larger picture themes and patterns begin to emerge that hopefully may hold potential to reveal answers, and the remote possibility of solutions.

One of these matters I have been exposed to is violence/abuse. This will be the guiding topic of a series of posts that are to follow this one as I relate to you situations I was faced with here in Morocco, how they correspond with influences from earlier in my life, and what they mean on a larger scale for you, me, and our entire culture.

As always, thank you for reading. Thank you for following along. Thank you for taking part in my journey. I appreciate your feedback, and opinions so keep them coming, and I will do my best to keep the posts coming despite the lack of electricity and WIFI.