Morocco: Act II

We drive across rocky ground for what seems like hours. We twist and turn avoiding hulking brambles of shrubbery. We double back in the face of sudden chasms, eroded ruts dug out by previous travelers. What scars are we inflicting on this desert, I wonder. A quick tumbling in the corner of my eye is not tumbleweed, but a broken down cardboard box rushing across the ground. It’s moving insanely fast, showing just how swiftly the wind is blowing. It’s almost five miles to the outpost. By the time we reach it, the sun droops low in the sky and is darkened by the torrent of sand invading us from the south east. Pulling in to park, we pass the sandblasted shell of an old four-door from the seventies. Stripped of every last piece, it sits there on the edge of the desert, hollow and vacant like the outpost itself. In a hurry, I pack and repack, trying to minimize our baggage into the desert. I’m marginally successful but still fight against the sand to get it inside where we’ll drink tea and wait for our guide. We meet the jovial Aussies we’ll trek out with and share the sort of idle chit chat one does in such situations. Before setting out, our guide helps us tie our headscarves for protection against the sands and winds. I deeply regret not buying a flowing white one like the Aussie’s. Other than being Asian, he looks just like Lawrence of Arabia.

We set off into the storm a real caravan: Jenny in front, then me, then the Aussies. We’re strung one to the next, each camel’s nose tied to the one ahead’s rump. At the front, we’re lead by a Berber guide, walking in bare feet, his head wrapped like ours against the storm. It’s slow going, but I feel good on a camel. They’re narrow and bony at the top of their hump, but the saddle cushions me and offers an iron bar to clutch when things get bumpy. Otherwise, I just sit up straight and sway with the camel’s rhythm. We head East and then South. For a long time, the outpost looms in the distance, a reminder of what we’re leaving behind. It’s getting dark and the wind is blowing fiercely. I worry we’ll come to camp any minute, still within eyeshot of civilization: children playing in the desert, still in the shadow of the city. But we trek on and on, and when it’s been a mile since I’ve seen a sign of man, I relax.

It makes me sad that I cannot talk about the desert without talking about dung. The whole way out to camp, Jenny’s camel left little presents for the shiny black beetles along the way. But theirs was an eternal Christmas, those beetles, along this path through the sand. For six years, every day, tourists trekked across this land atop these prolific beasts. For six years, every day, the winds blew the round pellets into every low valley, dusting the desert floor until it was painted a deep gray. Our guide trudges barefoot through it, kicking up black sand as he pulls us along. Throughout our time in the desert, it will be a constant struggle to avoid the dung as we make our way from place to place. I hate feeling squeamish about this raw land we’re invading, but I know this is not the natural way. It’s only our bizarre presence here where we do not belong that’s created this abundance. Without these breadcrumbs left by all the Hansel and Gretel’s who trekked out before us, I might have spent my time in the desert as one does discovering a new and secret place. But every dark patch I see speaks of dozens of travelers come before us. I don’t want the fantasy, but someday I do want a little untouched beauty. Mars, here I come.

After about two hours, the archipelago of dark spots on the horizon grows into a crescent of tents facing each other at the foot of a large dune. They’re a patchwork symphony of rugs and rope and posts. The large center tent is open and as we stumble off our kneeling camels, we’re guided inside for tea. We chat in growing cold and darkness until our guide comes and lights a burner that hangs from the center post. The hot white flame consumes a hiss of gas and is too bright to look at. When the food arrives, I dig in with a fervor and eat an obscene amount of vegetable tagine. Desert life makes me hungry, apparently. We walk out into the cool desert air, full and sleepy. The wind has died down and swept away the clouds leaving a bright and starry sky. A halo around the moon stretches on forever filling most of my vision. We tiptoe through a field of dung to a lie on a low dune and gaze up at the night sky. In Austin I saw an IMAX that dove deep into the space behind Orion’s Belt and lying there in the sand, surrounded by the infinite both near and far, I revel in the size of it all.

Sleep comes quickly, there inside our carpeted tent. But it’s interrupted by frequent howling gusts that bat the walls and drive sand through the roof onto our bed. The wind finds every seam, offended by the tent’s interruption of its long journey across the sand. We wake, covered in a fine layer of deep red dust.

After a tasty breakfast of omelets and jam, we take our guide’s suggestion and hike up to the tallest nearby dune. It’s less than a mile, and looks even closer, but it’s a steep climb through loose sand and we stop often for breaks. Every foot we climb, and every inch the sun rises, gives us a new landscape of rendered dunes to look out across. It’s hard going, but feels natural and we make good time. At the top, I pull ahead and rise over the crest full of anticipation for the view beyond. The sands do spread out into infinity. The sky does loom over the raw landscape. The breath is taken from me. But before all that I see the three beer cans and empty bottle of wine the last trekkers left. Lovely. But it’s a nice French bottle and the sun and sand have stripped the cans of their decals. If there were a bleached skeleton desperately clutching one of the cans, it would have been perfect.

At Jenny’s prompting, I rush back to her lower camp by tumbling down the steep and sandy dune. Round and round I go. It’s over in a flash and I sit up with sand everywhere. Everywhere. The barrier my clothes once served keeping me on the inside and the sand on the outside is now just a rough suggestion. I will be picking copper sand out of my ears for days. Back up we go to the dune top. We’re just on the edge of the Sahara. It extends South across half of Africa. But from where we sit, surrounded by sand, the Sahara is our entire world.

The descent takes about ten minutes, but after lunch we’re still in the desert so we set out again on another hike. Heading in a new directly, we climb a low dune and relax in the afternoon sun. There’s nothing to do but lie around and contemplate the sand. Beneath us, hidden from our camp by a dune is a darkened spot of sand, sprouting with green. To one side is a stone well. The closer we get, the clearer it is that the small valley is drenched with water. The sand is wet and glistening. I don’t understand enough about the desert to know why this water can live so close to so much drought.

We pack our bags and lash them to our camels. We’ll trek out farther into the sand for a higher peek at the sunset before heading back to a new camp for the night. Already the sun is getting low, but our guide laughs off my concerns at the approaching darkness. The deeper we go in, the farther we must ride out. And while the moon lights a bright path, we traverse some narrow ridges along the way. I don’t mind the idea of falling in the sand. It’s the camel coming after me that arouses concern. We arrive at the foot of a dune in no visible way different than dozens we passed. But this is the one we’re meant to climb. This is the one from which we’ll watch our first desert sunset. It’s rough going, but we’re fighting against the rotation of the earth so we try to keep a good pace. Google maps tells me we peaked at about 500 ft. Imagine if you will, climbing a twenty-five story building. Taking each step. Now imagine that staircase flooded with sand. That’s what we did. I wish I could rave about the colors of the African sunset. I wish I had pictures to make you cry. But there are no clouds over the Sahara. The sun low in the sky, kissing the tops of the dunes goodnight, leaves the sky not in a fiery explosion, but a pale and gradual darkening to night. And now it’s dark. And we’re on a dune. And our camels are dots in the distance far below. It took a long time to climb up, and neither of us wants to take the same route back down. But the alternative is steep, steep, steep. It’s scary. Jenny is scared. I don’t want to embarrass her, but I don’t realize how scared until her peals are more tears than laughter. I joke, and I minimize, and I pull. There is a danger of falling. But the sand is soft and it seems more dangerous to stop moving. It’s a relief to get back on the camels and let them worry about the footing for a change.

This is the farthest we get into the desert. About five miles deep. From here on, it’s back to civilization, with a brief stop in the bronze age at a nomad camp. I’m still not clear on how that one differs from the tent camp we just occupied, but I have the hour long camel ride to wonder about it. Bumping along on Zero (my camel), I locate my ipod and enjoy a little Yusuf Islam over the quiet of the desert. Wild World, indeed. ‘Torn shattered and tossed and worn’, we stumble into camp. It’s always an appropriate arrival when the camels lurch forward into their kneel to let us off. I can think of no better rickety display of disembarkation than the way these massive beasts lower themselves. To match it, I’d have to walk in the door from a long journey, drop my bags, drop to my knees, and then drop face first into a vat of mashed potatoes.

Our tent for the night is more of a carpeted hut; a pillbox bunker upholstered in rugs and burlap food sacks. But whereas our last tent was just a series of overlapping layers, this one is built. The wind buffets the walls, but no sand squeezes through. We recline on thin mattresses by candlelight and wait for dinner. Mohammed (our guide’s young son) joins us for a while and sucks us into his car games. Jenny plays smashup for a while, but he seems more amused when I ignore the car’s form and treat it as a talking action figure. We here his parroting my english babble well into the night.

Dinner is another explosion of vegetable tagine. The food all blends together just a bit less that the deep dark sleep that soon follows.

We conked out especially early that last night on the sand to fit in a desert sunrise before heading back to the outpost. This time just before sunrise is the desert’s coldest and the only time I’m glad I brought my coat. But the sand is a simple landscape, and the sunrise in no way outshines the sunset the night before. The dunes have just two sides at any time; the one lit and the other dark.

We grab a light breakfast that hopefully will not disagree with our bumpy camel ride back into the world. The trek is over the moment the outpost peeks over the horizon. It’s a relief to be back, but this desert was the reason I came, and all I’ll have now are memories.

Morocco: Act I

We set out with the highest of hopes and rock solid plan to figure things out when we got there. Our rooms were booked, and our agenda set, but the details on how we’d get from one place to the next were less clear. There are taxis and grand taxis and drivers and buses. There are camels. We would make it.

The flight takes seven hours. If we sleep, we land in the Moroccan morning refreshed and ready to take in Marrakech. We do not sleep. We watch some Lost, do some crosswords, and generally squander our time to rest. I began The Sheltering Sky and girded myself against visions of post-war Morocco and the dangers of entanglements foreign and domestic. Our layover in Casablanca was one blink of an eye, and then another for the flight to Marrakech. We found our driver and headed out of the city to Kasbah Dar Ilham. On the way there, I believe I’m in Africa when I see a few cows riding atop the roof of a truck, penned in by the shortest of walls. We arrive at the Kasbah and it truly is an oasis from our long travels. Set in a palm grove, it is the standard for the places we’ll stay. We’re served steaming mint tea, a mixed BBQ, and vegetable tagine. While the food in Morocco is less diverse than in India, it’s well spiced and suits the environment in a way that nothing else could.

We grab a few hours of sleep before heading back to the city to see the Marrakech nightlife. The central square of the Medina is bustling with tourists and street vendors. We grab a bowl of snails from a stand for 5 dirhams (about $0.65). This is the cheapest food we ate and some of the tastiest. These are not French snails drowned in garlic butter, but Moroccan, boiled in spiced water, still clinging to their shells. Just off the Medina winds street after street of souks: small shops selling touristy goods to the streaming parade of visitors. I think I’ve finally overdosed on souvenirs and enjoy just watching all the madness. I’m enthralled watching a man lathe some shish kebab skewer handles with his feet. He uses his hands to spin the dowel along its axle using a little bow. It’s as if he’s trying to start a fire on a desert island. With his foot he pushes the chisel into the dowel, notching out intricate details into the wood.

We head back to the kasbah to catch up on the lost sleep and spend a night in the quiet of Africa.

Our first full day in Marrakech, we devour as many tourist sites as we can. The Mederrsa Ben Youssef is an old school, built in the 1500s for theological studies. It’s a maze of small rooms, spiraling off into even smaller rooms. A few are done up historically to show how scholars sat and read from religious texts. I imagine they did a fair amount of duplicating as well. Next it’s on the Museum of Marrakech, where we spend about fifteen minutes. It’s a beautiful building, with a main room dominated by a mammoth lantern, but otherwise there’s not much to see. We cross the street to the Almoravid Koubba. It dates back to the 1100s and has some really creepy rooms under the ablution chamber. Wikipedia tells me that the inscription over the entrance reads:

“I was created for science and prayer, by the prince of the believers, descendant of the prophet, Abdallah, most glorious of all Caliphs. Pray for him when you enter the door, so that you may fulfill your highest hopes.”

We have another lovely dinner of meat for Jenny and vegetable tagine for me. Everywhere we go, the city is infused with dark warmth that speaks of hospitality given to countless travels over centuries. Marrakech is for tourists, but I feel like it always has been. One of the last stops between the ocean ports and the long long trade routes deep into Africa. We did not come for Marrakech, but we enjoyed our time there. We head back to the kasbah excited to leave in the morning for the desert.

To get into the Saharan Desert, we have to cross the Atlas Mountains. They get as high as 14,000 feet, but per my habit we take the low road and cross at a mere 7,400. The road ahead of us is breathtaking, and unlike any other climate I’ve seen. I really feel like I’ve gone somewhere. We climb through the morning mist. The road snakes through the peaks, and brings us by small nomad encampments. Many have setup makeshift roadside stands where they sell local minerals and geodes, and even fossils pulled from the Atlases. I contemplate buying some trilobites, but get a little creeped out when I see all the legs. It is not an easy drive, and we leave the windows open to get some air as the hair pin turns taken at breakneck speeds threaten our constitution. We pass a herd of black goats mingled within a heard of white sheep. Their mountain-side checkerboard of fluffiness is almost overwhelming.

By the time we’re through the mountains, we’re just a short drive from our stop at the UNESCO World Heritage Site Ait Benhaddou. We park the car on the side of the road and hike down some switchbacks trying to end up at the foot of the compound. But lying across our path is a river about 30 feet across and a couple feed deep. It’s free to roll up your pants and walk across, but the donkey rides cost a few dirhams each. For some reason Jenny is not allowed to ride alone, but otherwise we make it across without incident. Ait Benhaddou is a collection of individual Kasbahs that make up a decent sized fort. It’s similar in scope to one of the Rajasthani forts I saw in India, but instead of being a singular structure devoted to protecting a seat of power, it’s a community of families tied together for mutual protection. Like most historical buildings in Morocco it’s built from a mixture of dirt and clay and straw and rocks and wood. Every time it rains, the exterior changes. It must be under constant repair, but retains an authentic and timeless look. Movies of every era have been shot here, from Lawrence of Arabia to the 1990 adaptation of The Sheltering Sky. Even Time Bandits shot here. There’s such a beauty and authenticity to this place, and it’s set in such a remote location, that it makes some of the other sites I’ve visited over the last year seem like tourist facades.

For another few hours we drive down long roads stretching out across rocky African plains. We stop here and there for photos, but make haste to get to Kasbah Itran before nightfall. None of these places have clear addresses, and some have the same names as other establishments, but we find it just as the sun is setting the countryside into darkness. This place is weird. While it’s been renovated for modern use like most of the Kasbah hotels, it retains much of its archaic charm. The whole building is heated by a central fireplace, and once the fire begins to die a chill sweeps through. Electricity is strung haphazardly throughout with outlets hiding behind tapestries, and random wires dangling out of alcoves. Our dinner of meat and vegetable tagine is followed by a lively drum session from the Berber staff. It’s casual and festive and gets everyone in a good mood. Afterward, a young man in a robe and turban gathers the guests around a small table where he demonstrates a series of riddles and magic tricks using a few props like candles, coins, and glasses. It’s entertaining and we sit transfixed on his movements pretty late into the night. We stumble up to our room and pile the sheets and blankets from two beds on top of ourselves to warm us through the night.

We set out early for our last day of driving before we reach the desert. The landscape continues to amaze. The rocky vistas are flooded with bright green eruptions of grass and trees. It must be our proximity to the coast, but even as we approach the sands there is a well kept balance between drought and deluge. Films lead me to believe the oasis were rare jewels dotting the country, but maybe they only seem that way when one is on camel or on foot. We stop at the Todra Gorge, a narrow rift between rock cliffs where a thin stream pushes water fresh from a spring across the cracked earth. It’s a tourist haven with restaurants dotting the path, and rock climbing operators helping the ambitious scale the sheer walls. We wanted down the stream, snapping photos of the various amazements. Before long we’re back in the car and back on our way.

Amidst a barren stretch of land, white with salt, we pull to the side of the road at the site of a nomad well. There’s a makeshift winch built to add leverage for the water’s hoisting. Jenny poses for pictures as a nomad walks towards us from a ways off. I flash back to the amazing scene in Lawrence of Arabia where Omar Sharif snipes Peter O’Toole’s guide for drinking from his well. I try to explain to her the power of the line, “My name is for my friends, and my friends are not murderers!”, but I can’t pull it off. We hustle back into the car before the nomad reaches us and pull away as he holds up some small crafts he wanted to sell us.

Our last stop before the desert is a factory where the rocks and fossils mined from the mountainside are cut and polished into the tourist treasures sold at every turn. It’s an impressive operation with saws and grinders and polishers. I stand too close to the massive saw slicing a giant block into thin slabs and get covered in a layer of paste made from the pulverized stone and the water used to cool the saw. They make everything from tiny key chains, dotted with fossilized organisms to polished countertops teeming with trilobites and spiraled gastropods.

Back in the car, we race through currents of sand blowing across the countryside. It flows in ripples and waves, blanketing everything in a fine layer of grit. With our windows open, that includes us; especially our ears. It’s a few hours before sunset and a sand storm is coming. Roadside signs point the way to Merzouga where we will transfer at an outpost from our piloted car to our guided camels. But rather than follow the signs, at a seemingly random point in the road, we veer off into the rocky plains. Here, the desert is littered with shrubs. We’re off-road in the Sahara in a growing sandstorm that’s blotting out everything beyond a few dozen feet. We’re on our way to the desert.

More to come…

Happy Ending

This third time at Joe’s Pub was for a music and reading series called Happy Ending. The title comments a bit more on the narrative nature of the performances than the naughtiness of the event’s embrace. MC Amanda Stern follows in the same glorious footsteps as hosts of other cabaret lineups like The Moth, and How I Learned in her rabid self deprecation and referential comedy. Unprepared with a theme for the evening’s performance, she polled the audience for suggestions, calling on folks by randomly picking initials and berating their flawed ideas. “Rococo” and “Handsome Men” were rejected out of hand, but “The Alphabet” was deemed acceptable, and then left unmentioned for the rest of the night. It’s fine by me, as authors attempts to conform to these rando themes are usually a stretch detracting from their work.

The first performer is Holly Miranda, a pretty-pretty girl, grunged up nicely with a deep blue slightly sparkly guitar for a bit of flair. An ethereal lilt to her voice, she’s well beyond my busted capacity to appreciate music, so I can only assume she’s a genius. Her narrative interstitials charm me. She tells the tale of her teasing a dutch reporter, He reviews her album and asks, “Are all your songs about your highschool boyfriend?”

“I dropped out” she says.
“I’m gay” she says.

“I’m charmed” I think.

The first reading is by Josh Ferris from his second novel, The Unnamed. He’s a young guy with buddy holly glasses dressed in coffee house splendor. The story’s alright. It’s got a terse rhythm to it reminding me of James Elroy in a kind of bad way. I’m fairly certain the whole passage he read was written to justify his turning of the phrase, “futility made off with his heart.” It’s basically worth it. The story centers around a dude with some brain condition, giving it a Joe vs. The Volcano vibe. That endears it to me, as does the weird segue into the protagonist bonding with his daughter over season after season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I’m not used to such structured readings. Most of the events I attend are true life stories read without notes. I find their honesty and energy entertaining. I’m unprepared for how much power and drama is conveyed by a well prepared story, read aloud. The next reader, Ron Carlson, directs the writing program at UCI nearby where I lived for a year and six months and dated much of the student body. He’s a professional. Aged and experienced. His story is an intimate confession told by the inventor of a time machine, justifying his decision in destroying it and erasing the plan. It sounds trite, but deals with the arising issues in a practical and specific way. The time machine is destroyed not because of it’s broad effect on the world and its history, but because of the futility of attempted changes no matter how mundane. I hear it as a parable urging us to change our now, and move past our then. I hear it as encouragement that when you work on something for a decade or two, you get good at it. Real good. I’ll go buy his books.

Up last is Padget Powell, a disheveled specimen on the progression of the night’s writers from young turk, past wizened professor, climaxing with mad recluse. A darwinian illustration of the decent of creative man. For reasons beyond me he begins by demonstrating how he cuts his own hair. Seriously. He reads from his work “The Interrogative Mood: A novel?” It’s a series of amusing questions, parts koan, parts narrative delving into our perceptions on the past and how it effects our modern world. It’s a litany of questions flowing in one huge bulge across a country of ideas. There’s a rhythm to it, but it doesn’t quite build into a cohesive whole. It leaves me wondering how different the experience is from reading Dianetics (I understand that’s questions too?). On it’s own, it would have been an odd reading, but in the context of the other stories, classic in their structure and formal in their story, it’s a refreshing departure.

I stumble out into the cold slushy night. With a little help from the subway, I slide over to cousin B’s for family bonding. New York for me is the city of many stops. In LA there are one or two per day, but here, with the trains and cabs and bars there’s always one more out there in the late late night. It’s addictive and makes the city indispensable to its people. There is no way to move on. There is no substitute.

OCD in Williamsburg

Riding the L east to Williamsburg, I wish I’d found a sushi place to grab a bite. I have three delis within spitting distance of my new apartment, but a desert of options beyond. I assume somewhere along my route I’ll pass something more appetizing. I still think of myself as an unpicky eater, despite a mountain of evidence.

I travel freely across the city and amongst the boroughs, but not out of a comfort with the area. Rather, my lack of familiarity allows me to treat each stop as just another stop, just as likely to sit at the heart of a culinary mecca as a barren beruit. So when I exit the Lorimer station and Yelp shows me nothing, I am not surprised, but also not pleased. On my way to Pete’s Candy Store (no candy, just liquor), I stop at a deli for some antipasti salads mixed into a to-go container.

I’m there for an installment of the OCD lecture series. It’s something about Open City. Maybe Drama. Maybe Diatribe. I’m early so I sit at the bar and order two vodka tonics while happy hour prices make me ambitious. I eat my salad and read my book. I get into a little chat with the fellow to my left about his recent expulsion from his part-time gallery job. Later I make a note to remember that anyone as early as I am is probably an organizer of the event I’m attending. This one turns out to be the MC. I don’t like breaking down that wall between performer and audience, especially before the show starts. I’m reminded of the time I chatted with Dave Couliet, not realizing he was about to get up on stage and bomb before my stunned company as part of an ill conceived corporate bonding event. It’s a wonder I talk to anyone in public anymore.

Halfway through my drinks, and fullway through my salad I stumble elegantly into the meeting room. The walls are lined with hipsters and I feel like I’m walking a gauntlet. I wish I still had my beard. During my time at the bar, I went from awkwardly early to embarrassingly late. I’m supposed to cop a squat on the floor, but find a stool hidden under a table at the front. I sit between a couple, maybe on a date.

Mitch Horowitz wrote the book Occult in America. He takes the stage and launches into a litany of exposition. He hooks me right away with tales of his childhood fascination for magic. He talks about how happy he is to have rediscovered one of the passions of his youth when he stumbled into a job with a small publishing house. It sounds like the opening to Foucault’s Pendulum when he describes the fringe manuscripts he’d review, connecting him back to days in the early eighties when he scoured libraries for books illustrated with pentagrams and archaic histories of early western settlers. Were the eighties a time for such things? Or do we all go through a phase where Mysteries of the Unknown put us on the trail of bigfoot and the loch ness monster, aliens and esp? As he recounts his early days of Ouija boards and séances, it dawns on me that through my youth and up until the last decade I’ve moved from one fantastical mythology to the next. Starting with the mythic beasts of cartoons; moving on to Herman Hesse’s western interpretation of eastern magic; then Robert Anton Wilson’s woven tales of conspiracy and chaos magic.

Mitch goes on to paint a history of the occult and it’s migration to America as a tale of our own unanswered questions and a longing for progress in the face of oppression. Brought to the new world by refugees of religious persecution, the occult grew out the conflict between what these immigrant revolutionaries felt was right, and what their society told them was appropriate. With no social context to promote things like equal rights, or free thought, they found their voice for these concepts in whispers from the spirit world. Mitch ties it all together in a long train of thought culminating in some broad who packs up and moves to India, and then on to London where she hosts a young Gandhi as he struggles through law school. There can be no better example of the occult leading us towards cultural liberalism than by inspiring Gandhi on his mission of Truth.

So the historical portion of the lecture was enlightening. But once Mitch started in on the modern trends in the occult it became clear he’d not only studied up on the past, but drunk the cool aid of the present. I don’t understand how someone can have such a clear understanding of the historical pressures that lead an isolated society to fantasize answers that added comfort to a confusing time, and then buy into the very same answers years later. Where did this idea come from that those who came before us had a more pure vision of truth than we have today? The history of the occult is one of a search for earlier and earlier answers; before Jesus, before Abraham, before Vishnu, before Adam. Today we know the further back we look for answers, the closer we get to caves and trees and oceans. To be sure there are answers to be found in our origins, but not by theologists. What questions have been answered in the last hundred years that have not been answered by science? And what can be more contrary to science than the occult?

So as I move from a deep appreciation for the research and history uncovered by this lecture to a discomfort with the conclusions being drawn, I look around and feel isolated. The questions being asked by the audience place me in a minority of doubters. Glazed eyed boys expound their views seeking affirmation on their theories. The man next to me unwraps a piece of gum from his pack, a wad already chewed sometime ago. The girl to my left shares with me her book on Sexual Magic, asking if I’ve read it.

Despite the brief dip into madness there at the end, I left the lecture with a nicely framed picture of the occult as a mechanism for social change. The catalog of myth and rumor I’ve carried around with me for decades has clearly informed my politics. What are bigfoot and the loch ness monster if not parables for a connection between man and beast closer than what society at large recognizes? What lesson do they teach if not that mankind must think of nature as magical and precious; something that at any moment can vanish into mystery? The city of Atlantis: a cautionary tale on the decline of a civilized world. UFOs and visitors: a treatise against xenophobia and a battle cry to race to the stars. ESP: a call for sensitivity and observance of the ways we connect to each other. In every case I can think of, these stories of magic tie back to some yearning for progress, or some fault found with the current world. And throughout the 1800s and 1900s, they were real agents of change. Stories from the spirit world swept the country, opening peoples’ eyes to the possibilities of a morality beyond any single religion. Not until the co-opting of these concepts by the commercialized mass media interests did the occult move from a grassroots network of free thinking into a self-help service industry preying on the curious. Those same questions that once fueled Gandhi to rage against centuries of oppression, now fuel more and more minutes on the line with telephone psychics. The infection of ancient myths into conservative religious groups once opened the door to new ideas, but now only teach us about Harry Potter and the Da Vinci Code.

Not a bad night for the price of a few happy hour drinks. On the train home I finish my book: Mao II by Don Delillo. The guy down the car from me is reading White Noise. Weird coincidence, or the Universe telling me something?

BLT Fish Shack

Reposted From Yelp

J recommended the place, citing the word ‘fish’ in the title as a measure of its suitability to my diet. She’d been before, but never seen it so packed, especially on a Wednesday night. We waited around the bar for thirty minutes before being seated. A few vodka cocktails kept us warmed and distracted from any second date awkwardness. She wore a cute snow bunny style jacket that reminded me of third grade. But it’s stark whiteness blended oddly with the culty group that arrived dressed in matching white dashikis.

Round two: at the table. I stuck with my vodka tonic while she opted for a Greenhouse, or something, that came in a martini glass and tasted like candy covered sunshine. A warm loaf of bread arrived, cut like a pizza and soaked through with a garlic butter sauce. I’m not made of stone. It’s good stuff.

We ordered the lobster bisque and put together an a la carte combination from the raw bar. The soup was very good, with a kind of masala chai spiced quality to it. There wasn’t much lobster, but it was tasty and the whole thing had a nice flavor. I’m trying to slow down my eating and not rush through meals. I enjoyed savoring it, but J still had half of hers left when I’d finished.

Of the three pairs of oysters we got, the standard Blue Points and Kumamotos were nice, if a little briney. I was very happy with the Witch Ducks that I picked entirely on their bizarre name. They reminded me of the Virginicas I used to get in Seattle. The internet tells me Witch Ducks are raised in Virginia, so I wonder if there’s a connection? The rest was your standard raw bar fare: shrimp, crab and lobster. It was all fresh and tasty. I’ve been a lobster loyalist for a long time and had given up on experimenting with its preparation. If it wasn’t steamed, I didn’t want it. But I’ve had so much great steamed lobster in Seattle and Moncton that I might be looking for a little more these days. I remember a white wine grilled tail I had at one of my brother’s cook outs, and the miso glazed I had at Park Ave Winter. Suddenly my raw bar lobster with lemon doesn’t seem so delectable.

But my own ennui with fish shack standards should not be held against them. I knew just what I was getting and was not disappointed. Next time I’ll be more adventurous and see where that gets me.

Epilogue: I like to fly redux

About twenty four hours ago, I sat in a plane that, from a standing start, headed west and leapt into the sky. At this point I should be clear: I did not rough it in India. Yes, for two weeks I worked harder than I ever have before. I dug and mixed and hauled. But I had a bed and hot water, and when I left for my tour I lived in nothing but the lap of luxury while traveling a land of squalor. So don’t feel it’s out of character for me to admit I upgraded to business class on my way back to the US. For double the price of my economy ticket, I got a row to myself with more legroom than I could use. I got incessant food service catered to my taste. I got a seat that reclined back flat where I could roll over and cuddle with a slew of pillows. Worth. Every. Penny.

I finished my Gandhi biography. I didn’t like it. I know. I’m the devil. But Gandhi was a whack job. Sure, the man bested the British Empire without violence, but that doesn’t make him someone I’d want to hang out with. The book was mostly about his eating habits with a bit about defecation thrown in for excitement. How can you live a life bent on securing freedom for hundreds of millions of people and write such a boring book? Granted, he didn’t have time to keep it up to date before he was assassinated. This is a warning to us all. Keep our biographies and tell-alls current. We don’t want our murderers to go undocumented, o we?

But reading it, along with awesome camel ride, made me crave reading Lawrence of Arabia. I looked in every Indian bookstore I could find, but their English book sections are devoted to second hand copies of Sue Grafton novels. So I boarded the plane with nothing but the Paul Auster I gave up on (my Habitat group leader recommended I give it another try, so I was considering it). But I was thrilled to find Lawrence of Arabia as one of the ten English movies Air India stocked on my video unit. If you haven’t seen it, it’s three hours of epic bliss. It makes me want to bury myself in the sand and bake for eternity. I should have toughed it out through another film or two, but I couldn’t stay away. I slept for seven hours. That meant that today, for me, began at 3am. I watched some more movies, listened to some music, and landed in JFK feeling refreshed, but like I’d been up for most of the day already. Yes, Air India lost one of my bags. A bag filled with gifts, so don’t be impatient if you feel you’re due. But they think they’ve located it back in Bombay so stay tuned.

Landing in New York, I was greeted by the shining sun reflecting off wide, clean streets. The western world is a fantasy of industrialism compared to India. It’s impossible to imagine the spanning of the gap between where this ancient civilization got stuck, and where we sprung to from out of nowhere. It must be our lack of history, our freedom from mistakes of the past, that’s enabled us to come so far so fast. Fueled by our rich surplus of resources, we are the epitome of the eighteenth century ideal of a nation. And that’s great. But what will fuel the twenty-first century’s vision, and where will it be fulfilled? Not here. We’re all used up and searching for answers to last centuries problems. Not India. They’re abandoning their current problems and hoping they’ll die off while a first world nation is born. By my count, there are too few frontiers left to support the founding of a new world. No doubt there are those with vision eclipsing mine. I hope someone’s listening to them. I hope they have an Isabel to give them a few ships and a crew to get where they’re going.

Tomorrow brings the second decade of the third millennium since this guy was nailed to a piece of wood. Maybe it’s the fifteenth millennium since we dropped from the trees. More importantly it’s the fourth decade I’ve walked the earth. I’m closer to forty than I am to thirteen. Only the fact that’s more depressing to my father than it is to me keeps me going (sorry dad). I figure I’ve got about fifty or sixty years left. I gotta get moving.

Day Twenty Four

Goa was a good break from my travels, but it would have been better right after Habitat. I could have cocooned myself on the beach for a few days and emerged ready to conquer the rest of my travels. Having it at the end of my trip was just a relaxing postponement of my return. Not that I minded. I hit the spa for one last massage before taking the long and winding road back to the airport. They sent me off with a box lunch of prawn curry and lentils. They sent me off right.

We drive by house after house nestled in the dense tropical foliage. Tourists trek too and from the little restaurants scattered around. Children play in the parks. Goa is lovely, but it’s not easy. The yearly monsoons drown the city without reprieve. Houses must be repainted every year. Those that are not bare the stain of mildew, black bags under the eyes of the house’s windows. Some are so bad the stain becomes a patina adding a depth of grime to the texture of the facade. But most are painted. Some with a new paint meant to resist the flooding. My driver is skeptical it will work. He says nature is more persistent than we are. We pass the ruins of the Muslim palace. It’s a few walls, and a few columns. Eventually, everything built gets unbuilt.

My flight to Mumbai has been delayed an hour. I consider my time left in the country and talk my way onto another airline’s flight. But this means I have to pickup my bags and recheck them in Mumbai. It’s probably a wash. By the time I get out of the airport, I’ve got five hours left to see one of the biggest cities in the world. And I’m stopped. Stopped dead in traffic. I think I spent about four of those five hours in traffic. In between, I saw glamorous Bombay versions of the strip malls that line every street in Delhi. I saw the same handicraft markets, and the same five-star hotels with their long driveways and imposing security. I saw the people kept at bay on the street, begging for money.

I did not see the slums. I did not see the world’s largest public laundry. I did not see the Parsi burial pit, nor the giant crows that live there. Bombay is a big city, but it’s clogged arteries make it tough to get around. I think I could have walked faster than I traveled today. Eventually I gave up and went to a five-star for dinner. Chinese. Maybe I hit my lentil limit.

The best thing I saw, stuck in traffic, a fish market on the side of the road. Like the one in Goa they had fresh fish being sacrificed to the flies. For the first time I see too many fish living in too small a bowl, filled with sea water; a small net stretched across the top to keep them from leaping off each others’ backs and onto the pavement. They still try. They try really hard. The water boils with their effort.

So in India, when I sit on the floor in the airport and I look out at the long, long lines in security and sense all that raw water rolling in one unbelievable huge bulge over to America, and all those planes going, all those people fleeing from the immensity of it, and in India I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that god is Vishnu? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old…

Sincere apologies to JK, but when you write something like “folds the final shore in,” how am I supposed to not think about it at the end of a long, long travel across a strange land where I don’t find what I’m looking for.

Goodnight India. Good luck with everything.

Day Twenty Three

Goa sits on the Western edge of India, pretty far down the coast to the South. Unlike Rajasthan which was under the rule of the Mugul emperors, Southern India was under the control of Bijapur kings. There must have been some dissatisfaction with this arrangement, because in the early 1500s the Goan people invited the Portuguese to come in and replace the Islamic Bijapuris. I guess the Hindus figured they’d get a better deal from the Catholics. The Portuguese come in with their ships and soldiers and take the region. This foretells the decline of the Bijapuris in the region. They officially kick the bucket in the 1600s when Aurangzeb conquered the rest of their region. We remember him from that time when he killed his brothers and locked his father up in the Red Fort where he could stare at the Taj Mahal until the day he died. So in this instance, Goa was ahead of the rest of India in falling under European rule. But when India gained its independence from Britain in 1950, Goa was still under the rule of Portugal. It took a brief military action from the Indian government in 1961 before Goa was united with the rest of its newly self-governing people.

Basically, Goa had a much earlier, and slightly more recent connection to Europe compared with Northern India. The effects of this can be seen everywhere. The buildings are an interesting combination of Spanish style adobes with islamix/hindu design elements. Like northern India, it seems like most of the modern buildings were constructed in the 50s, but in Goa that means charming bungalows and sprawling estates. I get the sense that the Indian people have really taken advantage of the infrastructure left behind by the Portuguese. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I feel like the Goan were lucky to be subjugated by Europeans instead of the Muslims. Granted, the Europeans were invited, but the Hindus still had to contend with the Inquisition, destruction of their temples, and forced conversion under threat of expulsion or death. So it’s not like it was a cakewalk.

We drive into central parts of the city, up in the mountains, and visit old churches. I’m shocked at how many there are. It seems like every sect is represented, most within shouting distance of each other. There are facilities for the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and a bunch I cannot remember. They’re beautiful and imposing; gilded with gold and dense with statues and murals. Bom Jesus Basilica houses the body of St. Francis Xavier. He lived and taught in Goa. When he died, his body was returned as per his wishes. Now he’s in a glass coffin atop a large base. If you fight the crowd of people vying for a view, you see him from the side through the glass wall. Creepy.

These are pretty standard churches and cathedrals, but they were built by the same workers who built the Islamic/Hindu structures before. There’s definitely a local influence, especially in the decorative murals covering the walls and pillars. Many of these were white-washed away, so I wonder if they weren’t more explicitly Hindu in some places.

Later we visit a couple Hindu temples and I’m struck by how beautiful they are. I’ve written before about the gaudiness of the others I’ve seen, but these are built from wood with a tasteful use of marble. No doubt this is my cultural bias coming through, but the merging of the Hindu with the European style is more pleasing to me. Next to the temples stand beautiful lamp towers. They’re at least ten meters high with as many platforms for lighting lamps. Each level is a ring of windows letting the light shine out. I don’t see any of the historical ones lit, but they built new ones for the launch of the Goa Film Festival four years ago and the effect is striking.

For lunch I take a tour of a spice plantation. I see all the staples in their natural environment. It’s kind of boring. The food is good, but not particularly spiced. The best part is the giant Banana Spider I see between the trees.

We drive around Panaji, the capital of Goa, and I feel like I’m in the south of France. The roads wind between market streets and parks, and official looking buildings. My guide points out where all the public officials live and where the children go to school. We take off on foot and look through some shops. When I buy some gifts from a spice merchant he says to me, “That man was my student.” He taught physics for 30 years at the high school. We get back onto the street and now every few men he passes, he tells me was a former pupil as well. It’s a small town, and having lived and worked here so long, he seems to know everyone. It makes me feel welcome, and on tour with a town elder rather than a paid guide.

We stop at a lookout point and he shows me a tamarind tree. I look for pods but can’t seen any within reach. Our driver sees what we’re up to and goes and gets some medium sized rocks from the road. He’s amazingly good at throwing the rocks up into the clusters and knocking down a few. There’s a broad variety of flavors to the tamarind based on how mature they are. The fresh ones are soft and sour and the skin is bound tight to the meat. I eat this first one with a permanent pucker. The dried ones taste like the candy I’ve had from the Chinese grocer. The best are the ones right in the middle where the meat has shrunk a bit and pulled away from the skin, but it’s still moist. These I can bite and chew until the meat is gone and just the dark smooth seed remains. The driver goes nuts and I leave with a bag full of pods. Good for digestion, my guide says. Anytime I ask what something is in India, I get “good for digestion”.

One the way back into town we stop at the beach and I hike out to the water. It’s a deep beach and I’m surrounded by other tourists making the same pilgrimage. The sun is setting, but the beach is crowded and children splash about in the water. There’s a big contingent of nuns in simple habits. They’re having fun taking pictures with tourists and laughing along with us at the children. I knew Goa was popular with tourists, but I didn’t realize that most of them would be from other Indian states. At least on the sites I’ve seen there have been few westerners. That’s been a theme of my trip. I think a result of using a local tour company for my itinerary. That served me well in most cities, but in Goa, I would have preferred to be with the other foreigners. Part of it’s charm is status as a Mecca for expatriated hippies and I would have liked to see that.

But it’s on to my river cruise where again I am the only westerner on the boat. At my guide’s recommendation I sit near the back. I was well to heed him as the music is thumping and riotous. After every few songs, they’ll break the DJ set and bring on a team of Goan folk dancers. I really enjoyed the Rajasthani dancing. It had all the rhythm and exoticism of belling dancing, without the creepy stripper-like quality you sometimes see in the US. So I was excited to see the Goan version. The troupe comes out in island wear, with the men in kurtas and wrap skirts and the women in tropical saris. They dance in line and hold hands, forming a circle that they rush in and out of. It’s childish and reminds me of the stilted dancing in the Spare Me My Life video. Very odd. But it’s always nice to be out on the water. Our boat is flanked by others lit at every corner with bright white bulbs. Many are floating casinos with neon marquees naming them Casino Royale or King’s Casino. Deck side they’re having similar performances to mine. We come back to the docks, get back into the car and head home.

This was my longest day of sight seeing since leaving Delhi and I’m exhausted. I start my journey home tomorrow, but have a nine hour layover in Bombay. I’ll try to finish strong and see as much as possible, but nothing right now seems more inviting to me than an aisle seat and an ambien.

Day Twenty Two

At one of my other cities in Rajasthan I ran into some of the people I’d been in Ranthambore with for the tiger safari. They broke the sad news that the very day I left, they saw a tiger that afternoon. They showed me a picture they snapped and then admitted they only saw the tiger’s butt as it walked off into the trees. So that’s the question. Is it better to let the tiger remain a mysterious beast, tucked away in its dwindling habitat? Or better to see it’s ass walking away from you? Having gone on a dolphin safari, and seen only dolphin butt, I think I prefer the mystery. At first I thought I’d go zero for two and get stood up by the dolphins also. We’d been out on the water for a good thirty minutes and they’d yet to make an appearance. But my guide pointed back towards the beach and there were a pair dipping back into the water. I saw them a few more times, but just their fins and backsides. I’ve got mixed luck with animals these days. There was that squirrel that jumped my foot before. And today I saw a pretty big lizard on the beach. He camped out in the shade of my chair for a while and did this awesome thing where he puffed up his throat. But the tigers and dolphins have been pretty standoffish.

Tomorrow I’ve got a fuller day of sight-seeing in Goa. It’s been mostly resort living for the past two days, so I welcome a change of scenery. I didn’t need to come this far to sit on a beach, and I don’t want my trip to just peter out lounging by a pool.

I did take an archery lesson and a yoga class today. But both were these lightweight, self-esteem building seminars where the instructors were concerned with making me feel good than teaching me anything. The yoga was more like naptime than exercise. I wish I’d seen a real yoga ashram to an authentic taste of Indian yoga. All I really got were a few spa-style classes that focused mostly on rhythmic breathing and relaxation.

Regardless of what happens here in Goa, I know I’ll see some stuff in Bombay. A business associate from the area recommended a number of places that sound interesting. Like an open pit for the disposal of dead bodies? Something about the cultural beliefs of the Parsis. Sounds great, right? Stay tuned.

Day Twenty One

Stepping into the Udaipur airport, I leave the old world behind. Gone are the dusty roads, open sewers and sweatered goats. Once you get off the surface streets, transportation in India is rather efficient. From the trains to the planes, they have a clear system for herding people from one place to another. It’s not the same as ours and involves more papers and lots of luggage tags that get stamped here and there. But it works, and it’s orderly. After so long on cars and busses, it’s shocking that I can cross the country and land in Bombay in an hour.

I only have an hour layover on my way to Goa, but the view into the city alone is worth the flight. Coming in for landing we skim the surface of the world and pass within shouting distance of the largest slum I’ve ever seen. It’s not surprising considering how few I’ve seen, but when I got to know Bawana, I thought they’d be the same all over India. They’re not the same. Bawana was set on an ordered grid of streets, with each shack on it’s little plot. This is an explosion of tiny homes, built from repurposed wood and cardboard, pressed together over every inch of space between towering apartment and office buildings. There is no grid. The roofs of the houses overlap as scales on a snake, coiling this way and that into every vacant corner of the city. Granted, this is land near the airport, but it’s still an awesome sight to behold. There are no roads or paths visible from the sky. Everything’s land-locked, penned in, immobile. There must be passageways under the rooftops, but if we can’t see them, then they’re cast in permanent shadows. Likely hidden from the heat, but also the world outside.

When they say India is the land of contrast, they’re usually talking about the rift in wealth between the upper and lower classes. But it’s a broad country and landing in Goa, I see the notion of contrast applies to many other things. The land here is tropical. I regret having used the word ‘lush’ to describe anything in Rajasthan as this makes even the most manicured park there look like a barren dustbowl. There is a density of palm trees that makes me feel like I’m in the Caribbean. The drive to my hotel is along small roads between rolling hills. A former Portuguese colony, Goa is full of old churches and Spanish-style tile roofs. The windows are open and the warm, wet breeze clings to me. I realize I’ve been dusty for three weeks.

The hotel is lovely, but again I’m surrounded by newlyweds and families. A few retirees thrown in for good measure. I walk up the beach and browse some small shops setup in shacks. Fishing boats line the shore, grounded for the night, full of nets and tackle. The sun sets over the water, just as it’s rising in New York. I realize it’s me that’s setting, not the sun. I eat alone at the beach, with only my lobster and giant prawn for company. I think I enjoy it more than they do. I will be happy here for a few days, but I ache for home. I change my flight and cut my stay short. They don’t have to be, but the hotel is amazingly nice about it. I fly in a few days and my new flight gives me nine hours to explore Bombay. A few small changes cast the past in a different light.