City II City

I don't have a sweet little story for you, just tidbits of windy towns and winding roads. We left Marrakech for Essaouira, Essaouira for Casablanca, and Casablanca for Fes. Essaouira is a beautiful seaside town, all crashing waves and rocks and ramparts.  The fish market was in full swing every morning, as troupes of boys hauled the big blue fishing boats in and out of the water and the fishermen displayed their catch at little tables.

We spent the (theoretically) 6 hour bus-ride from Essaouira to Casablanca chatting with an Australian couple, our new favourite people.  The view out the windows was often pretty spectacular as well, as the landscape varied from desert to lush fields.

Our new friends Robin and Michael tipped us off to the existence of a giant mosque in Casablanca that non-Muslims are allowed into.  Casablanca is otherwise a sprawling industrial city, an economic engine baring little resemblance to Hollywood movies of yore.

The Mosque was as impressive as promised.  It was built just recently in a direct effort to give Casablanca a jewel - something to anchor the city on the tourist circuit.  It was unbelievably enormous and ornate, with plush rugs covering the floors and exquisite tiling and carving at every turn.

We spent just one night in Casablanca and then hopped on a train for Fes. My mom adores trains so I think that maybe made up for the lack of alcohol in this country? (I doubt it - girl likes her wine.)

Fes is nice, so far.  My mom and I have agreed that it's definitely her feminine charms attracting the 20 or so propositions directed our way every day. "Hey, where you from? Holland? You're beautiful. Ca va? You speak English?"  It would be flattering if their intentions weren't written all over their faces. As it stands, mostly creepy.  I've taken to telling them (on my mom's behalf, obviously) that I'm from Kazakhstan and I don't speak a word of French (the common tourist language here.) Sadly I also don't speak English. Or Kazakh. 

Brave Dispatches II: So Fresh and So Clean

Ahhhh, hammam. Hammams (pronounced as two syllables - ham-mam) are Moroccan bathhouses. Locals do most of their bathing at these public steamrooms, heading to them twice a week to scrub themselves with black soap made from olive oil and charcoal and rinse themselves clean with scoops of water.

The hammams are heated by pipes running under the tiled floors. Everyone brings a bucket or two to fill with water from the pipes. Get your bucket, sit your (naked) butt down, and get scrubbing. It's also a super social experience - kids play together while their moms chatter and wash.  There are, obviously, seperate hammams for men and women (or divided hours).  

As you've probably guessed by now, I'm telling you all this because we visited one today. Our riad offers a visit (scrubbing included) and we couldn't resist. It took about an hour in all - we were scrubbed briskly, pulled around the place by the hand, lain on the ground to enjoy the heat coming through the tiles and rinsed clean via buckets of water over our heads.  It really does feel like we have new skin after all the scrubbing - getting rid of a couple of days worth of Marrakechi grime sticking to your body is a great feeling, let me tell you.

All in all, a good experience. I think my mom is starting to itch for some home comforts (she needs a GIANT cup of coffee, not a teacup of coffee, people!) but I'm just getting the adventure ball rolling. She'll be sipping tiny, super sweet mint teas with the rest of us in no time.  Until next time, bon voyage on all your own journeys (be they to the Casablanca or Casa Ritchie).

To Essaouira tomorrow! (Unless we change our minds...)

Brave Dispatches

Two nights in London, not a single funny story to be had. It was altogether nice, though.

I have this idea in my head, a mental catalogue called Things I Have Seen. I expanded it these last few days with a trip to the British Library and wanders around neighbourhoods I'd never bothered to visit before. I also ironed in a few old favourites - the Tate Modern, particularly, but a general rewandering around the grandly historic areas of London. For a history nerd like me, there's a distinct thrill to even just seeing objects or places once owned and inhabited by famous historic personages. Things I Have Seen, then, got a few highlights and underlines as I thrilled at Wordsworth's scribbles at the British Library and gaped at the statues in Trafalgar Square.

I've met my mother - she successfully navigated her way from Heathrow to Gatwick despite crutches and two different shoes. We're on a flight now to Marrakech - a city I doubt I'll be describing in words so soothing as "altogether nice."

As the title of this post (and obviously my future book) alludes, I'm clearly not the first person to ever go to London. I know I sometimes find other traveller's breathless reports of Mexican beaches or NYC cityscapes irritating - however, it's my belief that you're reading this because you'd like to be and therefore appreciate my posts on the day-to-days of travelling.  As such, I will proceed to blog, confident in the knowledge that I am indeed the first person ever to travel to London.  My brave dispatches will continue in this vein. 

PS. We're in Morocco now!

my life in songs

Looking back at what songs define where I was or how – the xx still makes me feel lonely and quiet and drinking cider on the bus and maybe a little bit of softly-lit surface-level multi-heartbroken, too.  There’a a Butch Cassidy remix of a Band of Horses song that I listened to on repeat then – straightening my hair and spending my Saturday nights with an apple by myself in a rose-themed bath.

There’s a song I’m sure was only played to J. and I in Australia – it’s a dance song and you all know it but I’m perfectly sure – just perfectly, perfectly sure – that she and I are the only ones that have ever heard it, too.  It lit up nights out and days in and bus rides.  Those days were filled with Ben Howard’s Old Pine, too, a song that could make anyone feel little bigger and a little smaller inside at the same time.

There was a summer of Nicki Minaj – she makes me think of a boy I thought of then.  I spent that (distant, now) summer on my bike (like always, I guess) with Nicki or else spinning around secretly with someone I’d bounced right into, right off of meaning and into a pair of open arms.

The next summer was driven entirely by that song by Of Monsters and Men.  You know the one I’m talking about – your summer was driven by it too.  I lived that summer inside my skull and forgot to turn on the lights the entire time.  This song made me cry.  What didn’t?

Last year’s cold days in the library I floated on a foggy sea of Alt-J.  How could I listen to anything else?  I was alone again but it was okay this time – drifting from a summer of jagged unexpectancies and a sort of choking sadness into a year of ambivalent okayness. 

I’m kind of still there and it’s a little bit astonishing to me, sometimes, to realize that I’m as steady as a prairie road.  I’m surprised to see my body is ok with how I’m treating it in all but the most superficial manner.  Obviously, I listened to nothing but Major Lazer for months.  How could someone so oddly floatitioned listen to anything else, you know?

tell me (let me)

I tell myself a lot of stories, usually just a line or two of my life.

We size our successes against those of others, we forget how enormous they are in the face of someone else's showy and colossal successes. Our problems, though, we measure only against ourselves. Our problems are enormous; we forget how lucky we are to have the problems we do. It's an incredible blessing that the worst thing I have to fear is mediocrity.

I think a lot about this mythological happiness that we're all chasing, some dream state where all things and feelings are warm and your mind is always well-lit and flushed with roses. That dream state is all that keeps us going, but I at least really have to accept that it's okay to just be okay. There's no failure in not having a bliss to follow. It might show up one day or it might not. In the meantime, stasis is a few worries that refuse to heal over and a few small pleasures, tumbling about my every day. 

It's so much more convenient not to believe in love.

I would like to evacuate all the feelings from my body now

and instead of having feelings I will exclusively fall in love with mountains and go on dates with them and I will sit on the hillsides and the sun will be kind of warm on my skin but also not quite warm enough?  And the mountain will be like "I am a mountain, I do not have a jacket to give you" and I will be like "that's okay mountain, I am pretty self sufficient anyways" and then I'll go back to my cabin and wear a big sparkly dress and drink champagne by myself.  It's nice to date a mountain because you don't have to share your champagne.

all photos by miss j. sebeer.

Seattlite

Pigeon toes, wandering by myself on tiles with a million names. I embraced optimistical possible possibilities. I'm speaking mostly to my subconscious, your sleeping self is speaking too. I'm curious, as I certainly was.

Living in these bones is impossibly boring. I looked up a map to living a sparkling lemonade life but my city pushed me here and i'm marking myself return-to-sender. I'm completely fine and well, but no one's just fine and well with a sparkling lemonade of a life.

Ugh, this confusion. Know that you'll find me, mind pulled back into my core and secure to my spine, back where I was, marked fire on the map. Picture, for one second, a satellite moving around the earth.