tripartite

i dozed in and out of the train ride through the sierra nevadas to granada...the sun helped motivate me to write...upon arriving in granada, i found the right bus with the help of two other hostelers from singapore (i think?) and got off at cathedral. the pdf i printed out from the oasis granada website was pretty simple to follow from there. i lugged my rickety (noisy) small rolling suitcase up the narrow alley lined with moroccan import stores (you could practically taste the incense from 3 feet away) and followed the signs to the oasis hostel! the check-in was easy enough, i spoke to the german woman who i later learned was the head honcho and she said that it was a good thing i made my free call (what am i, in jail?) because otherwise she would have canceled my 2-night reservation alltogether (they were booked solid that weekend).

room 6, bed 6. took the elevator upstairs and met a nice aussie girl named belinda who had been traveling around spain with a friend and had also spent a little time in morocco. she's just moved to london, and hasn't found a PR job yet (so is traveling to put off the unemployment). i was relieved to find that the travelers at oasis were talkative, open, and full of tales traveling adventures. i took the map they gave me and went out walking, caught an alhambra bus (1€) up to st nicolas and tried not to get lost in the windy little corners of albaicín. i regret that i didn't make it up to sacromonte to the caves. apparently they have great flamenco there.

i went back down to the hostel to relax a little bit and caught up with a group that was walking back up to albaicín. the weather was pretty, if a little chilly in the late afternoon, so i decided to go back out with them. i forget the name of our guide, but she loves the phrase "hella" and hadn't heard it our used it in a long time. i took a picture of a garage that had "hella" painted on it in her honor. maybe i'll send it on to the people at oasis granada.

but i digress. in that group i met rick (not greg), a long-haired blonde, tan guy from atlanta georgia (and at that i thought of my aunt and uncle living around there) who has been woofing for the last few months (working for food and accommodation on organic farms in italy and spain, most of which are run by german or english people); paula, an austrian painter and graphic artist from vienna who had left her painter boyfriend behind, in granada to learn spanish; sharonne, a zany non-spanish-speaking, wheat-allergic and lactose-intolerant australian dentist who worked for 7 years after university, saving every last penny to buy a round-the-world ticket and travel for at least 1 year (of which she has completed 9 months) - she spent the winter in canada (started west in vancouver and ended in québec...wouldn't be my choice for a winter!!), 2 weeks in cuba and guatemala each, and got laid up in sevilla for 2 weeks with a terribly sprained ankle; some guy from south africa who's living in london; sam also from australia who has been traveling for a while selling stuff at these big road shows all across europe (people drive really fast on windy roads? i don't really know)...basically, i was kicking it with people living in the moment, seizing life by the horns. i like that aspect. everyone has a different tale to tell.

sharonne and i decided to get out to alhambra early (6:30-ish) the following morning (as i only really had a bit over 24 hours in the granada) as tickets are very hard to come by (they let in around 2,000 people the day of, and people line up for hours to get in in the morning). slept a bit after eating a ton of food at this all=you-can-eat buffet not far from our hostel, i think sharonne consumed at least 4 plates of mixed salads (she eats meat, but finding a rice-based diet is hard to come by across the planet), and walked up the *slight* hill to alhambra and arrived in the queue at 7 am. there were about 50 people ahead of us, and the line continued to build...we were able to get into the 8:30-9 am time slot to enter the royal palace. i was freezing my bum off in my sepia h&m shorts because the sun hadn't risen by 7 am, but by the time we started walking to the palace, the sun had come out and the ground had started to unshiver...

et deux

alors...i feel like a storyteller reading to imaginary children and possibly adults...darcy and i ended up on our last day roaming the streets in search of candles, and instead stumbled upon people hawking henna, so we thought, why not? and both got our hands henna-ed by this woman with stained hands in her living room while she and her family watched spanish soap operas dubbed in arabic. it's fading now, but it was beautiful...it wound up each hand from my wrist to my pointer and middle fingers...we opted out of the black. it was more expensive, and i think is a little too close to the henna muslim women actually get when they get married...

i had decided before leaving for morocco that it would be a genius idea to take a boat, yes, a boat, from the eastern coast of morocco to andalucia (spain). because fez is in the center, and i had booked my flight back to paris from sevilla, i thought it silly to go all the way to tanger on the north west tip, cross the strait of gibraltar, and then have to go all the way through andalucia to get back to granada.

well...it may have been easier to eat the 200€ and fly from fez to granada.

here's how it happened: i bought a bus ticket from fez to nador. 110 Dh, 11 euro-ish for a 6 hour bus ride through the atlas mountains. downside - it left at 3 am. step two = ferry nador- almería. something like 50€, but i had to pay in Dh, in cash. that was another 7 hours of travel crossing the mediterranean. also note that i have not eaten, nor slept much this day. and all the moroccan or spanish people (of which there were maybe 20 or 30) on the ferry looked at me like i had 4 heads and a tail, some white chick wearing a green corduroy hat she bought in sweden to hide her unwashed hair traveling alone with henna on her hands who doesn't speak arabic or spanish. you can imagine.

so i arrived in almería exhausted and deliriously hungry and found the bus station but was AGHAST to discover that the last bus to granada had left a half hour before. i had not taken into acount the 2 hour time difference between morocco and spain. that's right people, next time you travel this way, always pay close attention to subtle things like NO DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME IN AFRICA. oh god, was a pissed. i broke down crying in the station. i think that transcends all languages.

i stayed the night in a pension in almería (hot shower, bed, that's all i needed) and bought a train ticket to granada for the next morning.

next: martha in alhambra!

début de l'aventure au maghreb

i get pissy when i'm dehydrated, hungry, and tired. i think i was all of these things on our day of plane travel to morocco. darcy graciously covered the price of my lunch at the airport in barcelona, and our flight to casablanca was definetely more on time than the one out of casablanca to fez. we saw some extremely trashy spanish people while we were sitting outside of the duty-free shop in casablanca, though this perception may have been skewed by my pissiness. i didn't have any euros, and of course there aren't any atms within the perimeter of the airport, and none of the restos take credit cards. so there i am, sans water or food, pissy mostly because darcy is there to witness my weaknesses while traveling, mais tant pis, there it was. we had to wait to board our flight for god knows what reason, but it was blessedly short.

we got 1000 Dh each out of the atm at the airport after being brisked through security (the scary guy was charmed by my french, and when i said darcy was my friend, he let us through without ripping open our bags) and took a taxi for 45 minutes (140 Dh) to our hotel. along the ride we began to see how geographically morocco fits into those blurrily defined categories of "second" or "third" world. it was intense, and we were only just seeing landscape at night.

we ate dinner at our hotel (named, paradoxically, "hotel fes inn") because we were too exhausted to wander around the new city to try to find a restaurant (and the neighborhood in which the fes inn was located left something to be desired). it was nice actually to just crash our bags (although the room they gave us had an enormous unidentifiable bug behind the bed so we quickly changed rooms) and not have to think about anything. the servers were nice to the point of artificiality, but no matter. we were tired and hungry.

the next day we asked for a map at our hotel (to no avail) and were directed to go to place mohammed V to the office of tourism. we decided to walk there as it was an astonishingly beautiful day. we got lost along the way, and had to ask for directions at some pharmacies, but people in general were very kind and sufficiently clear. eventually we found the small office, grabbed a map (shittier than the large, vague one we picked up at a tourist shop), and by this point were ready to eat. food is incredibly cheap in morocco, you can get a tea or fresh orange juice for 10 Dh (1 euro) and a full menu sometimes for as low as 40 Dh (4 euro for more food than you can possibly eat).

we then set out for the mellah (jewish quarter) and tried to find the old city (none of our maps agreed). the beautiful weather helped motivate us. upon entering the old city walls, however, all 3 disparate maps were rendered useless, and the 15-20 year old boys taunting us with their offers of berber massages and guided tours were tempting but since they tried to swindle us out of cab fare i played the role of cold-hearted bitch at all times. we never asked for directions. darcy can get berber massages from soufiane back home any time she wants.

...continued...

debt (maghreb-ish adventure part 1)

scene: rer b towards charles de gaulle airport
time: roundabout 9 pm

this will teach me and my sense of military time...i arrived just 2 or 3 minutes after the last flight to barcelona boarded out of charles de gaulle on vueling airlines. i thought my flight left at 11 pm, but it boarded at 9 (i switched 22 and 20h)...so i was panicking, and found the next flight out was at 6h45 (early in the morning) on air france, and the very gracious woman at the air france desk got me the last "under 26" price ticket for that flight. i stayed in one of the ultra-expensive but hella convenient hotels right next to the airport, exchanged textos with yvonnick and concluded all he wanted was to baise an anglo, and slept 4 hours before hitting the long security line. i was able to check in pretty quickly with the automatic check-in (i had a paper ticket) and from there things were ok.

upon arriving in barcelona, i caught the bus from the airport to placa cataluña and then the metro from there (my let's go espagne [in french] served me well throughout the trip) to tarragona, the closest stop to calla de bejar (darcy, sandrine [another toulousene swing dancer], and i were staying at a pension there). the spanish schedule seems to start around noon, with brunchy type meal at 1 or 2, dinner at 10, and partying til 6 am. we didn't exactly follow that, because swing dancing takes it out of you!

darcy and sandrine were in the advanced levels of the workshops, and generally had classes at opposite times (darcy would have one in the morning, sandrine the afternoon, so i was able to spend time with both of them, in alternance, each day). we walked around a lot, and i saw the fondacion miró and the picasso museum, as well as the barri gòtic on my own (i loved it for its windy streets, closed shops with graffiti and sunny open windows). la rambla was beautiful, full of vendors and travelers and tapas bars selling sangria and various fried items (food was cheap, but i didn't eat healthily in barcelona).

the swing soirées were really fun, it had been so long since i danced! people of all levels came from all over the world -- berlin, the states, sweden, ukraine, obviously france and spain, ... -- but they were still short some leads and even proved to be cliquish! so just like at the cleveland exchanges i had been to in the past, it paid to be agressive. i particularly enjoyed dancing with sebastien, a quiet, small, bespec-ed parisian that reminded me of daniel from oberlin in his light leading.

for the crazy dance, i wore hot lime green leggings bought at that store near the mediathèque musicale at les halles (-3), a black mini skort with a silver band, huge star hoops, sparkly barettes, and a bright yellow wife beater. i think leads may have hesitated to dance with that. darcy called the outfit "a 12-year-old's idea of a rock star." i also decided to wear my huge sunglasses from h&m inside the metro. i couldn't see anything.

darcy and i left by train from the central station at around 9 am for the airport...

...to be continued...

jolivet rituals and cool air

my first ever contrôle, or partiel, or whateveryoucallit, was a mild success (hasn't been graded yet, but tant pas): the subject was "chant de linos" by jolivet. he gave us 10 points to consider before giving us the first hearing of the excerpt, and from the downbeat of the first bar i was home free. it was the version with strings and harp. i talked about ritual and jolivet's compositional color palette...

iván is intellectually provocative. of this i have no doubt. yvonnick is having coffee with me tomorrow afternoon. i might have to feed him leftover hummus. we concluded at dinner that it's probably too strong for a 9-month-old's taste pallette. she's cute though, that maéva. i played her the solo from "boléro" and thought about the crisp, windy air.

plan for crazy dance at bar"swing"ona: wild stripey tights from the sock store at les halles (to buy tomorrow) and black short skort with a silver band, bright yellow tank top, star hoops and bright glittery barettes bought at pimkie. feel free to ajoute something if you can think of anything else that would make the outfit more tacky.

yahya al-shabih, fatimid cairo, egypt

what i should be looking at. instead i created a flickr account:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/parisianmelon/

i miss listening to alison krauss.

a freewrite i composed yesterday after a weekend of late night reflections.

hand on the small of my back wine
stained your shirt fruit salad with
chopsticks gummy obsession emerging
from pockets inevitably squishy from
constant body heat jointed hands fluid
i slept deeply subconsciously imagining
flamenco and a deep tan away from the
harsh words of boys not-yet-grown-up
i am not sick because i am not dying
taxes voting ballots visas contracts papers
the trails of bureaucracy could not touch
your mission does it come with 10 years
6 months of hungarian cigarettes
how to formulate the right thought in
each of your six languages such a virgin to
all of it in many more ways than one
one ear to caceres this argentinian whose
rhythms touched me i never understood
the lyrics never guessed their political
underpinnings assumed their romantic liens
and throaty disclaimers ultimately he
overdramatized the case misread my
interpretation maybe he's right but
the least i can do is give the smooth
blue-eyed harmonica player a shot
idle at a café consider the present a gift
i can never return reimbursement out of
the question ink drying quickly the the
page the scattered drunken drippings
of my incandescent mind though sober
my network connection slowing to a
trickle with six languages do
writing and turns of phrase become
empty and without dubious implication?
jean was right i stick to my borders
théophile bra drew mystical pictures
and scribbled almost illegibly in the
margins his second wife died young
but it barely paused his stream of creative
output she probably never asked questions
or demanded explanation he required
precision of language and intention
i was never quite that lucid my carte
orange guaranteed free public transit
but the time factor was never taken
into account maybe intimacy will
come with the dawn of spring rain
banished come april self-portraiture
a way of immortalizing a moment
a thought an expression that belies
a glimpse of my perplexed sometimes
muddled soul a soft cheap grey
hoodie quest for a clearer path for
someone to "meet me one day on the
street and get me, take me at face
value, and not be blown asunder"
even if once in a cirulean blue moon

bonne fun soirée

friday, all day, shopping for swing shoes and cute going-out-in-fez-and-andalusia clothes in les halles. accompanied by, of course, meredith benjamin.

friday night, soirée at the 5th bar with caro's friends, rue mouffetard. too much drinky smoky for me. not my scene. nice couch surfers though, have to seriously think about joining tea/coffee, because i don't at the moment have a couch on which people can surf. if i move in with kat in new york, we will have to get a futon and join couch surfing. best idea ever.

saturday afternoon, musée de la vie romantique. the collections of george sand. anyone know what other famous literary person she had an affair with? frédéric chopin for sure, i learned that in "impromptu" with hugh grant. there's someone else. cyrille suggested albert camus, but i'm not so sure. i don't think he was the same époque.

karine had the sweetest party for which i for some reason bought almost 2 kilos of super-expensive hummus imported from greece and a mix of delicious strong olives. needless to say, i returned home after a looong walk from the 18th with ivan the 6-language-speaking spaniard with half the olives and hummus. we ate sushi rice, drank ginger pineapple and kiwi lime juice (those are 2 separate juices, they were totally delectable and freshly made) and had fresh fruit salad and/or these other delicious tart-type desserts. even though it was a little chilly outside, the party was so nice, lots of artistic types, a lot of musicians, though i did meet a woman who has a british father doing her doctorate in art history here in paris (?) and works as a professor of "art plastique." she should teach me all she knows.

overall, a fine fine weekend, and the sun has finally come out! i read that the weather will be 60s and 70s-ish in spain and morocco. thursday night it's bon voyage for darcy and martha-she leaves by car from toulouse with some people, i'm flying out of charles de gaulle at around 10 pm and arriving in barcelona at around 23h30, and hopefully i'll find a taxi or somesuch to carry me off to the airport, where i will crash and wake up anew for my first day in barcelona!

the plan is: with darcy, 4 swingin' nights in barcelona, 4 nights in fez (possibly a train ride to chaowen for a day); solo, a boat ride nador-almeria, 2 nights at oasis hostel in granada, 2 nights in sevilla, fly back to paris april 17. true adventure!