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Whoa!
Here’s Gabe Gudding in “The Dangerfield Conundrum : A Roundtable on Humor in Poetry” led by Rachel Loden and K. Silem Mohammad — now in Jacket 33:
In other words, maybe humor is a triumphant display of detachment toward the inevitability of damage.
After the museum, we made our way to a little market square at the edge of the souks that lead to Jemaa-el- Fna. I’m not sure of the actual name of the square, but because it was the location of the touristy Café des Epices, Fred had referred to it as Place des Epices. Inside, we met a woman who had been living in Morocco for a few months. With her was a tiny kitten she had adopted and named Princess. Princess ran about the second floor of the café with a long white cloth tied to her collar; it was as if a Hallowe’en ghost had got loose there (albeit a ghost with a very cute squeaky voice). The woman was a painter cum carpet trader who lived, of all places, in Brooklyn. Here’s me looking very hot (as in temperature) in the Café des Epices, after having eaten most of a bland tuna sandwich:
And here’s the market scene I was looking at from the window:
We stopped in at one of the spice shops, where I bought argan oil (from a rare tree that grows only in a specific part of Morocco – it’s supposed to have healing properties), two different spice mixes, “berber whiskey” (a tea mix), and a little square of amber perfume. The seller threw in a ceramic pumice object for good measure. Here’s a photo of the shop, which sold pigments as well as spices:
I LOVED haggling, and I got rather good at negotiating in French, despite all those troublesome “quatre-vingts.” Buying something was an arduous, theatrical process, laden with struggle and gesture and undertone and manipulation; I likened it to a game of seduction. The sellers lure you in, you look carefully, perhaps inquire about a price, and then the fun starts – it can take fifteen minutes to agree on the price of, for example, a small carved wooden cat. Towards the end the pace of the negotiation quickens, until, breathless, you agree together on a (more or less) fair price – and both parties are filled with relief. What can one buy in Marrakech? Oh… so much! I only bought a very small percentage of what I would have liked to; unfortunately, Gary was not so enamored as I was of the bargaining drama. In fact, it drove him nuts to wait around while I was shopping, and I couldn’t really go out alone (more on this anon), so I ended up with rather lighter bags than I’d expected. But here are some examples of the goods one might buy if one had the time, the money, and the patient-enough travel partner:
etcetera, etcetera
(OK, I have to go to sleep now… the images for this next part will have to come later…)
We then went to Les Jardins Majorelles, in the new city, and looked at lots of pretty cactuses, vases, and tourists:
(We decided they were from San Francisco in Marrakech to research tribal dance)
We had a luxurious dinner (see chandelier below, imagine opera playing in the background) at our riad of chicken tagine with Kermit the kitten, whom I for some reason decided should be called Chester. He was rather difficult to photograph.
More to come! Really!
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Sunday, July 15, 4pm Celebrate Brooklyn & Workmen’s Circle present Frank London’s Yiddish CarnivalFor this concert of old- and new-school Jewish music, the luminary Frank London-who has played with everyone from John Zorn to They Might Be Giants and LL Cool J-will be joined by New York City’s hottest and most diverse group of Yiddish musicians for a radical festival in the park. Performers include the Grammy award winning klezmer band, The Klezmatics; television and theater star Fyvush Finkel; a rare performance by legendary Yiddish rocker Wolf Krakowski; Cuban Jewish percussionist Roberto Rodriguez; Rolling Stone’s #1 non-English group of 2006, Frank London’s Klezmer Brass Allstars featuring Brazilian percussionists Maracatú New York; Yiddish divas Joanne Borts and Adrienne Cooper; and the Festival Latin Jewish Carnival Orchestra & Social Justice Sing. |
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at the moment with:
1) corn nuts
2) confiture de figues violettes
where’s my overdue travel journal?
The sea lion said to the faun,
“You want to stay away
from 42nd around Times Square.
All that ironic archival footage —
cheap booze — maudlin case studies of
ordinary Americans — amounts to
a mutant hybrid of clogs
and jellies, smacked up
with a giant ugly stick.”
“I’m not the most political
guy in this Absolut world,”
replied the faun, “I like facials,
waxing, manis and pedis,
mineral make-up, lash and
brow tinting, and vegan skin
products. I like the burly
bouncers checking IDs out
front, the recent suburban
excapees – and I’m interested
in Clinton or Obama right now.”
So the alleycats sing hallelujah
and become multiheaded animals
that seem funnier when you’re stoned.
Dark Empire. Meltdown.
Ethereality. Test your mental mettle:
Try a sour cherry, a sunflower
shoot, a sugar snap pea, or
a couple leaves of baby
arugula. Use some nautical
jargon – joist, fo’c’scle,
avast, poop deck – without
the all the motion sickness
and scurvy that tend to
accompany actual nautical
travel. You are filled with
the glorious aroma of
capitalism’s clutter: doll’s
heads, antique chemical bottles,
taxidermy, vintage dresses,
and human spines waving
among the thick seaweed
of the Bermuda triangle.
To say there’s a lot going
on in New York would be
an understatement. There’s
fuel consumption, deforestation,
free chips and salsa all night
long, mixing and scratching,
dark tentacles, acid-tongued
barflies, spaghetti, eraser
shavings, toothpaste, evil-
kid clichés — and a Victorian
ghost story pastiche of pot, porn,
punk rock, pro-wrestling, talking apes,
and (what else) pubic hair – done
up as a whitebox performance space
with lights, sound system, and
somnambulism.
Burlesque is hosted by Miss
Delirium: “I have long been
the whore of the nobility,
now I want to be the rabble’s
whore. Twig the Wonderkid
and the Astronettes spin
fist-pumping rock’n’roll, and
in a large skillet, I tablespoon
butter melts into a tablespoon
of olive oil at low heat. The wise
owl brews magical beer; turkey
sandwiches fail to put an end
to human suffering. Astroland’s
impending shutdown is the
perfect time to take trapeze
classes or have otherworldly
experiences with curving,
winding monstrosities like
the girl who used to doodle
unicorns and recently got
into vampires. She flips
and cooks for an additional
couple of minutes, continually
basting, unsettling you more
than dead pets or cold eyes.
There are many reasons
to leave the city in the
summertime: the heat, the stink,
the onslaught of tourists, the doll
filled with heroin, the bullet-headed
gangsters, the animated penguins,
the demonic hair extensions and kamikaze pilots,
the white roses, the avenging consciences,
etcetera.
Indeed, the market is a place for
curious eaters to educate their palates,
and the more you sample, the better
able you are to concoct a meal.
Wouldn’t you rather put up
with the TV you have and send
ten kids to school for 12 years?
Season liberally with salt and
pepper to taste imploring
language, compelling the audience
to accept its strange surroundings
and situations, bang and neck trims,
maxed-out credit cards and shuffle
and squelch of the sea.
The costumes are exaggeratedly
modern. An everyman, wandering
in the dunes of a seemingly
mythical land searching for
insect samples to collect
is soon himself trapped at the
bottom of a sand pit, captive
to an oddly quiescent woman.
The N Train slices through
the sea-air dusk. The coral lights
of the Wonder Wheel shimmer –
maybe for the last time.
Omitting the casualties, however,
doesn’t erase the endless
banality of poorly-paced
action and definitely-not-
clever one-liners. You have
so many different roads meeting
there, going in and out, underneath
the bridge, and people trying
to turn, cutting you off. They
don’t have bendy sex. A late
twist or is it? You have
to think about it in relationship
to the whole pelvis. Think
of the whole pelvis in space.
They are usually strong but,
like, tight. Late period zen
neo-noirs, familiar temporal
dissonance – it’s likeable but
somewhat doofy – inspiring
in a whole mess of ways,
a metaphor for the world’s
carnivorousness.
There’s this crazy vocoder-sounding
effect, a fuzzy amped bass, and
a posse of boys salivating over
the watermelon while a circle
of girls booty-dance, periodically
shrieking, “take off your dress!”
at each other. Wild tigers I have
known speak about state power
and the individual to an elfin-eared
downtown ingénue at the Laff Lounge
with a soy patty in tow. Where does
the rectus abdominus insert? We still
soak our pinto beans for a fresh,
rigorous and creative experience.
Masturbation does not “desensitize”
the penis. Little piles of ash,
one after the other, in the middle
of the empty street. Give edge to
beauty – bump into a tulip.
Some songs deal in slower tempos;
others explore glitzy hotels
in the littoral zone.
As I write this, it’s about
95 degrees outside, and the
humidity has climbed to
somewhere right around 200%.
The perfectly steamed stink of
a great black dune of
garbage bags — you’re not the
only dude in the world furiously
beating off. Assembled half-truths
still constitute an irrefutable
larger one: the animation
is breathtaking and the
quirky characters – head-slapping,
small but posh — are adorable.
The smoking ban basically
changed my life. Now
everything’s more reflective
than most horrors — semi-
membraneous with tidal synth
build-ups and viscous vocals.
All mood lighting and
shiny, the slanted spiral surplus is
everywhere – standing still or
ambulating – glittery with glam
and real natural wonders that
lift their petticoats and
expose their backsides
to the hecklers —
ending (still thirsty)
in forced guffaws, creating
a massive collision of …
oh nevermind.
Glad to have missed this (from Accuweather.com):
Searing North Africa Heat6/20/2007 3:00 PMTemperatures soared again Wednesday as the heat waxed to a blazing pitch over Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Readings topped 115 degrees in all three countries. In Libya, the capital city, Tripoli, was a hot spot with 117 degrees, or nearly 25 degrees above normal for the end of spring.
Sorry not to have picked up the travel story again — so jet-lagged still… but STAY TUNED.
I feel weird – jet-lagged, trying to make myself stay up until normal bedtime. This sultry afternoon I went to get first a cup of tea at the Bengali bakery – to keep me up – and then a pedicure – Jenny, expert salon employee pumiced away at the callus that had developed on my right big toe tromping through the souks and the marchés, through madrasas and palaces, museums and metros. The world, this trip reminded me, is bursting with various and chaotic splendor.
We took a red-eye that stopped over for four hours at Heathrow, where we ate some odd food (Gary’s sausages, he swears, were “bangers”) and wallowed briefly in the accents, which we could not help imitating. Long lines at Heathrow and curt signs posted saying not to bother the airline staff or you would be sent home. One bag only permitted. Liquids in Ziploc bags. It’s always been a hassle to travel, now more so than ever. Frayed tempers. My hair a giant dried-up frizz, sharpness in nose – I wanted to cry. That feeling of yanking oneself over an ocean. But I did feel that it was an omen to see this:
We arrived in Marrakech on time, at just after 7 in the evening and just in time for a sunset. Tiles in the airport – air hot and dry. Met by an extremely tall Moroccan man who drove us to the riad. My French had to kick in instantly. Driving up to the city, he explained that we were nearing Koutoubia, the great mosque that sits just across from the Place Jemaa el Fna.
The rosy color of the walls. Veils. Whizzing motorbikes: vweeeeeeee, vweeeeeeee. Heavy smell of diesel. Then inside the medina – whoa, crazy driving – into labyrinthine streets. Much street activity – shoppers, storekeepers, donkey carts, teenagers out in the cooler evening air — and we were dropped off at a little place we later learned was the Place Moukeff – car too big to go all the way to Riad Safa, where we had booked a room. So our luggage went on a kind of wheelbarrow into a tiny twisty little street where Gary tripped on a rock in a dark stretch of alley. Kids running there, screaming, trying to grab our ankles. A doorway: our riad.
We were greeted by Jean Michel and Frederic, the kind proprietors of the riad. Jean Michel, sportive and brisk, explained this little hand-drawn map of the medina to us. Fred reminded me of Ray Bolger, lanky and with a wide grin.
Riad Safa was so beautiful – with its open courtyard’s magnanimous orange tree, its perfect décor down to the tassels on the curtains, the tastefully placed antique travel ephemera, the woven cushions, or this lamp outside our room:
Dinner of sandwiches on the terrace, prepared by one of the two cooks at Riad Safa – I didn’t catch the names of these two angels, but their sweetness was so palpable I could only think, whenever I saw them, “orange blossoms!” — then showers, and then to bed under nearly unnecessary mosquito netting (I saw only one mosquito in Marrakech the whole time we were there) (but it did look nice and reminded me of home) that first night for two very weary travelers.
————
(written mostly Monday morning)
How to describe that feeling, going to a place for the first time, that it is ever so much more like its representations than you had expected? Stepping out of the riad into the hot light and the rosy, dusty pathway – a woman passes in full djellaba and veiled face – like a pastel kuroko – can this world still exist? Did the Medina evolve out of sheep paths? Or what else explains its twistiness? The walls – both the outer wall and the walls that set off the houses – the fondouks – from the street – are like fortifications, it’s true – but the colors are so sensuously soft and the details so exquisite – iron knockers on doors the shape of hands, curled iron grillework, arched passageways in nested layers – that it feels more like a collection of secret places than a place of defense.
Gary proved – unexpectedly – to be a brilliant navigator, clutching the little map Jean Michel had given us and finding the first fountain, then the second, that were the landmarks on the way out of the little piece of the maze where Riad Safa nestles. We were tentative on that first day – our first stop was the Medersa Ben Youseff, which is no longer active as a madrasa, but was filled with huge tour groups exposing both impractically and insensitively a great deal of skin. The amazing madrasa:
I kept entirely covered while I was there – though not always my head – and must say that I found the uncovered skin and body-conscious outfits I saw on tourists and “loose” Moroccan women much less attractive than the variety of djellabas – in sherbet hues, embroidered in arabesques – I loved especially the pink ones – so elegant and groovy on whizzing motorbikes. Moroccan women are breathtakingly beautiful – perfect oval faces and hair twisted up and clipped at the back, when not covered by a djellaba hood or pretty headscarf:
I didn’t make it to a hammam and that makes me very sad, as that is supposed to be the best way to get to know Moroccan women; I didn’t even buy any of the famous savon noir they use for gommage polissante. Sad! But I was only there for four days, and they were hectic, and hot, and full days – and I must admit to being culture-shocked. Strange! I’ve been to Hat Yai and Penang, SuZhou and Prague, Virginia and Merida, Hastings and Ubud – but Morocco was different. Not just because it was a Muslim country (for so, after all, is Malaysia, and so is, for that matter, much of my neighborhood!), but because it is (arguably) Arab.
Did I mention that outside the Medersa was an herboriste outside of which hung enormous loofahs and some REAL leopard pelts? I don’t have a picture to prove it, but there they were. I surely was in Africa. The Medersa was a study in intricacies. If you are, as I am, a tile fetishist, you MUST go there.
The lobby of the Marrakech museum held the hugest and most impressive brass chandelier one could possibly imagine. Recesses that once served as fountains held audio speakers that played luscious and hypnotic oud music which I would happily have bought had it not cost even more than it would here in New York.
Exhibits of Berber jewelry and embroidery sent me into utter ecstasy.
Even the bathroom was gorgeous:
I transformed myself for a moment into a pasha, a brazen orientalizing fool. OK, for more than a moment. What can I say?
To be continued!
http://youtube.com/v/0GrGCJI-bZI
In the meantime, please enjoy this.
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Stay tuned to this space for reports on our trip to elsewhere.
Otohime 