Thoughts in Fes

Thoughts In Fes
Fes, Morocco
September 14, 2007
Homepage: http://canciondelvagabundo.googlepages.com/
North Africa Page: http://canciondelvagabundo.googlepages.com/northafrica

“Ali Baba Ali Baba Goodbye,” said the manager of the hotel that I spent a few days at in Rabat. Wherever I go I hear this joking taunt. I don’t mind it, it is better than the yells of “Bin Ladan ” that I would get in China. “But who is this Ali Baba guy?” I wondered a while back. “Isn’t he a genie or something?” So I read Arabian Nights and I still do not know why people call me by this name. It is because of my beard and vest, this I know, but after this I do not get it. But I like nicknames.

I walked by a guy in the street last night that looked just like Joseph in a Christmas time manger scene act. I stopped still in my tracks. I did not know wether to run away or kneel down and pray. He was tall, had a long black beard, a long brown cloak, a thick walking stick, and nice big wool hat. I like big wool hats. I like Morocco.

Then I walked by a kid in a T-shirt of a US heavy metal band. Here is one for Pico Iyer I really dislike Pico Iyer books. For some reason they just make me feel really orderly and gross: like I am a business man in an airport pulling around a wheelie suitcase with cell phone stuck to my head. That kind of feel. Imagine what one of those guys feel like travelling around in those stiff and starched suits, having to shower and shave every day, working. I throw Pico down the well with Dan Brown- deep, deep down into the well.

It is funny what certain writers make you feel like doing.

I still find myself wondering about the proverbial idea of “home.” Always thinking of how comfortable it would be to there- when I finally find my people.

But I know damn well that I am not going anywhere and that my people are those that I meet on the road. Thus meaning: Right Now is home. But would it not be fun to run out these last glimmering days on my youth running with my peers? Without a thought it my head, just running, rather than putting this effort into writing for stinking magazines! I don’t care about magazines, I don’t even read them.

But then again,
I just want to be some old crow poet sitting up in treehouse grumbling to myself with Mira throwing cookies up to me every now and then.

I am man of constant sorrow
I’ve seen trouble all my days
I am saying goodbye to Colorado
Where I was born and raised

I am going back to Colorado
The place that I started from
If I’ve known how bad you’d treat me
Honey I never would have come

I just sang those words as if they were my own.

But home, I know that I am not going to any sort of “home.” Why the hell would I want to do that? I have a home. I keep being swept away from it, but I still have one. It is where Mom and Dad live. But these boots that cover my feet are my are also home- though Mom and Dad do not live in them. Is not Home wherever you find romance?

I find romance in my boots.

Do you think, when all was said and done, when all of Penelope’s suitors were killed and skewered; do you think that Odysseus would have given up the adventures of those twenty years to have been home and safe in his wife’s bosom the entire time?

I don’t think so.

I think that Odysseus went to save the lady Helen not for honor, but because he was bored.

So I wander on, because I know what is behind me already.