I spent the night in Montecito. I splurged on a cabin due to this whole ordeal. It was adorable, and I would have loved to stay 2 nights, had I the cash and the time. I think this would be a lovely honeymoon/couple location. The town was charming and there was some delicious food and wine to be had.

The next day, I drove the 5 hours to our AirBnB in Orick, near the center of the Redwood parks. I met up with my friend Dan, and we went grocery shopping. I insisted on a bougie grocery store, and it being California, we didn’t have to go too far (just 45 minutes?).

A lot of this food did not get eaten!

But I ended up making feijoada on the 2nd or 3rd night. It’s a Brazillian dish that’s a comfort food for me. My mom was a missionary kid in Brazil and would often make it growing up.

Dale arrived on the second day, and the 3 of us went on 3-4 hikes over 3-4 days.

Me among the Redwoods

For my favorite hike, Dale, Dan and I went to an isolated part of the woods. I was tired of the crowds in the more tourist-heavy hikes. Who knew a forest could feel crowded! This hike took about 4 hours, and it was wonderful being among the trees and ferns, alone. Wonderful to hear a bubbling stream long before you came upon it. One of our party brought along some uhhhh, fungal enhancements, and that was my first time. I sat at this bench for a while, and nearly didn’t notice it because it was off-the-path. You had to climb a bit for it.

Each evening, we’d return and sit by the fire. I didn’t get a photo, but I stole this picture of the fire pit from the AirBnB page…

Our AirBnB was in the middle of elk resting grounds, so we saw packs of them here and there as we were driving around. They never showed up at our doorstep while we were there (as pictured above), however.

Dale and Dan were perfect housemates! Thanks to them for always being helpful with cleaning up, especially Dan going above and beyond for the final clean-up, and for managing the fire each night, and for all the things you took care of that I didn’t notice. <3

We spent some time on a beach the last day. After some strenuous hikes, it was lovely to nap in the warm sun, accompanied by the soporific waves.

On the last morning, Dale drove back to his home further north, and I dropped Dan off at the nearby airport.

Alone, I drove back to San Francisco to catch my flight home.

I swung through the famous “Avenue of the Giants” drive, enjoying my solitude after having my social cup filled. This was a magical drive, with the tall trees so close to the road.

Again, I was in my head, and didn’t take many pictures.

Food highlights

Crab bisque and white wine in Montecito

Fish and chips and beer in Fort Bragg

My mom’s feijoada recipe, obviously!

You know, these things can go so badly sometimes, crushes. They can waste a lot of your time.

In early/mid 2025, I developed a crush on someone. This someone had some wonderful qualities, but there were other qualities that didn’t seem a good match for me, and also the person was worryingly mysterious in the way that internet friendships can lend themselves to being. At first, they seemed to be crushing on me, something they even verbally acknowledged at a later date. But after I showed interest, they pulled away. I felt I was being played with emotionally; getting hot and cold treatments which had the effect of leading me on. But I could never be certain of anything the other person intended; my mind would run over their actions constantly and come up with an obnoxious lack of clarity.

Maybe they do care! Maybe they don’t! Maybe they’re scared! Maybe if they just understood that I cared, they would try harder! Etc.

The crush felt amazing, of course; some days I was glowing with it. But as I began to read up on limerence, I started to resent the all-consuming happiness. I started to want my old life back. I refused to be one of those people I was reading about who had crushes for months or years on end. I would not desperately cling to hope to avoid the pain of reality. I would be single; I would be hopeless; but at least I wouldn’t be delusional. So I white-knuckled through the bliss and came up with a plan to end it. One way or the other.

I asked my crush on a date.

And simultaneously, I took a vacation in their backyard.

I’d never been to San Francisco. It was on my bucket list. Especially on my bucket list were the Redwoods in Northern CA, and I invited my crush to that portion of the trip as well. My crush was clever; of course they were. Would I crush on anyone who wasn’t clever? I knew that if they were intentionally playing coy with me they would attempt to prolong my uncertainty by scheduling something else overtop my visit. There’s a read of the situation where one could claim that happened, but I’ll refrain from tactless judgments. It doesn’t matter; none of it matters, that’s the brilliance of the plot! They had a 10-day window to meet me and 5 weeks of warning. Whatever my hope-addled brain told me, there was only one truth: if someone were interested in me — and more importantly, if someone were worth me being interested in — they would fucking drive a few hours to see me after I had flown all the way across the country.

They had just driven into San Francisco to meet someone else, a seeming casual friend, a few months earlier.

They would figure it out.

What happened

Nothing. They blew off my date request for 4 weeks with a “maybe,” and silence for the rest of my reminders.

The week before, I got an actual, verbal denial. And I’m lucky I even got that — there’s a story about what precipitated my getting of that, and it might not have happened in that timing. Is it possible there’s a reality where I might have been silent-treatmented right up until the date?

Ah, well, it doesn’t matter, does it?

The brilliance of the plot is I didn’t need an actual, verbal denial to get my answer. I was perfectly happy with anything as it came.

I mean, I was devestated. But I was happy about it.

The trip itself

The trip itself was fairly low-key. Since I was devestated — totally blindsided, hurt, in pain, betrayed, sobbing my eyes out at times — I didn’t put any demands on myself. I upgraded my seat in the airplane. I booked an adorable AirBnB in the Castro district. I spent a lot of time in Poesia Cafe, writing a short story I was supposed to have finished a month ago, but was too distracted by the crush to do so.

I ended up finishing it in time! Phew!

I went to the Walt Disney Family Museum to see an exhibit on Mary Blair, including originals of her iconic artwork.

I also saw a huge diorama of Disneyland, and got a kick out of the included dinosaur section of the train ride. My friends will know how much I adore this part of the train ride; it’s so unexpected.

The date

Oh yeah. I ended up doing it anyway.

The restaurant was Cotogna. I woke up at 3am to get the reservation a month in advance, because they go fast. People rave about Cotogna on Reddit. It’s Michelin-star adjascent, meaning there’s a Michelin star restaurant next door, same ownership.

I had a fantastic time. I went to City Lights Bookstore down the block beforehand, a meeting place of the beat poets, and read their poetry during dinner.

The lady on the right was amazing at her job. She was handling the food service for the entire restaurant, doing quality checks on the dishes, finishing them where necessary, and calling for help to deliver them. There’s probably a name for what she does; I don’t know it.

When I left, I told her she was awesome.

A review of my meal:

• Eggplant panacotta thing: Delicious rich flavor, though the silky texture got old after a few bites.

• Ravioli pasta thing: Hearty and rich, but I should have gotten a different appetizer than the panacotta because it was hitting the same notes in texture and taste.

• Lamb main: Ohhhhhh my god, there was this marinated lamb shoulder thing on the right that was one of the best pieces of meat I’ve ever eaten.

• Mint gelato: The pastry chef was award-winning for his gelato and this was the among the best I’ve ever had. Fresh mint. 10/10.

As part of the date, I’d bought tickets to My Fair Lady at the San Francisco Playhouse. The Eliza was outstanding! Better than Audrey Hepburn, whom I’m not a huge fan of. And it was refreshing seeing a Henry Higgins who was closer to her age, in his mid-30s. The childishness of Higgins’s character works better at that age than the 50-something of Rex Harrison. There’s a trailer below if you want to see them in action.

In the end

Happiness in reality is better than happiness in imagination. My crush is no more! The date was still enjoyed alone.

10/10, would do again.

This is the one spiteful thing I’ll say because I’ve been so diplomatic, I think, and I’m allowed a single break: I doubt my ex-crush will be asked on a date like that very often in their life. Their loss!

After four days in the city, I picked up my car rental from Turo and headed up to the Redwoods. That portion of the trip, up next.

While my group ran off to dinner for their last night in Marrakesh, I stayed behind and considered my options. I called up my parents, who were wonderful in commiserating and advising me as I was freaking out.

Option 1 - I could stay in Marrakesh for the next 3 nights and wait for my flight home to London. This would allow me to rest sufficiently (both from the cold and from the sprain) and give me the best chance of surviving a 1+ day travel back to the States. The journey home entailed: a 5-hour flight to Heathrow London, an overnight stay in a hotel outside the airport, then an 8-hour flight back to Atlanta.

Option 2 - I could stay with the group. I would sleep in Marrakesh that night, then go to Essaouira for 2 nights. While this would require more energy of me, the group would ostensibly help me.

At one point during these deliberations, I got up and went to the restroom. I put weight on my ankle for the first time. And — I could do it! The ankle held my weight, and I could hobble around. This was an immense relief, and soon enough I decided I would do Option 2. I would do this because:

• I was sick of Marrakesh. I got take-out for dinner that night, and the thought of doing that for 2-3 more days was horrible to me.

• I wanted to mentally relax. I couldn’t wait to get back to the States where you were a normal person and people weren’t treating you like Ms. Moneybags and asking for handouts. The group was the closest I could get to feeling like a normal human being — even if a slightly neglected one.

• There was safety in staying with the group.

• I calculated up all the times I would need to walk, and it wasn’t that much. Walking around to pack, walking out to the taxi from the current riad, then walking 10 minutes through the medina to the Essaouira riad, then back again 2 days later. The 10 minute walk through the medina was the most daunting to me, but I figured I could make it work. The organizer assured me they could get a tuk-tuk if I needed one.

• One of the members of the group had an extra Ace bandage just hanging out in her suitcase, from a previous industry. This was clutch. It helped the pain greatly to wear it when walking around.

So we were off! I was excited to be leaving Marrakesh. I packed up my room (and took all those empty, messy room photos from 2 posts ago). I loaded up on Advil and hobbled to the taxi.

I made sure to tip Zora, Hasseneah and the hotel manager well before I went.

The road to Essaouira

I was in survival mode this day. I didn’t take many pictures of the road out to Essaouira. We headed due west for the ocean.

The countryside reminded me of California wine country. Here are two pictures I found on the internet.

Lovely open roads.

Probably the most famous thing we learned about in this stretch of countryside was the argan trees and the goats. The goats climb the argan trees, eating the fruit. The large nut/seed passes through their digestive system and, softened, is used to produce argan oil. (Although they can and do extract the argan seeds more directly too.)

We never saw any goats like this, but it was fun to keep a lookout for.

And then, we came to Essouira!

The redoubtable 10 minute walk

Up to this point, everyone was being mostly attentive and concerned about my ankle. When we alighted from the cab, the group leader asked me if I wanted a tuk-tuk. My options were: (1) Walk 10 minutes to the hotel, or (2) Wait 20 minutes for the tuk-tuk, and keep the whole group waiting with me — or wait alone. (Why didn’t we have a tuk-tuk waiting for when we arrived? I don’t know.) There was an emphasis on the preference of me walking.

I told the group, “I think I can walk, as long as we walk slow.”

They agreed.

Did we walk slow?

No.

If you’ll recall, the last time we went through a marketplace was Jemaa el-Fnaa — the scam capital of the world, if the stories are to be believed. The Essaouira marketplace didn’t have that reputation, but muscle memory is my only explanation for why the group was trucking it through the market.

In their defense, I did not repeat my request for them to slow down beyond an initial weak complaint. I was able to keep up, so I did. It hurt, but I survived the pain by laughing. Yes, I distinctly remember laughing throughout this walk — laughing at how little care or compassion I was getting from them, even in something so obvious as this.

I kept telling myself, “Almost there, almost there.” Because 10 minutes is really not that far, fortunately.

“Okay,” you say, “but how bad was your ankle, really? I mean you’re saying it’s bad and you’re making a big deal about it, but now you’re doing all this walking just fine, and taking pictures too?”

You’re correct, I could walk. But I felt a squeeze of pain in my ankle everytime I put weight on it. And that was with an extra-strength dose of Advil in my system. But I’d say, more than fearing the pain, I was afraid of making it worse. I was traumatized by how easily it had sprained before, when I was just going about my business as normal. It wasn’t a comfortable walk, physically or psychologically.

The roads thinned out as we reached the opposite side of the medina.

Our riad, Riad Mimouna, neighbored the ocean. Click through for pictures, but I stole a few off the internet to show here.

A nice fountain in the lobby — which I nearly fell into during checkout on the last day.

And the room…

I was instantly so glad I came here. The place was beautiful!

My view from the window…

People hanging out on the beach and rocks…

This was far and away my favorite portion of the trip. Even though I felt like crap! It was gorgeous. I could sit here and enjoy the view, something I didn’t have in Marrakesh.

Below, there’s day 2 of my ankle. You can see the line of the bruise where the Ace bandage wasn’t compressing it. Doesn’t look too bad!

Dinner

That night, we walked about 5 minutes to a dinner spot. Now that I’d made the 10 minute walk, I felt more confident about getting around. Above is the only picture I snapped of that place; a really beautiful spot by the ocean.

I did a stupid thing

The next day, I did a stupid thing. On the top of the riad, they had a deck that was bathed in sunlight. I decided a little vitamin D would help with my cold, and I ate lunch out there.

Neighboring houses…

It was wonderful, but I got way too much sun and burned my arms and neck. On top of that, I got the dreaded “travellers' diarrhea” that day — which is normal for Morocco and other developing countries. I’d dodged it for about 6 days, but it caught up with me!

So this was the “lowest moment” I was referring to in the last post. On the day before we left, I was stricken with:

• Lingering cold symptoms (runny nose, slight fever)

• A sprained ankle

• A sunburn that was giving me chills so much I was shivering (possibly sun poisoning?)

• Travellers’ diarrhea

I remember tallying all this up and just laughing in my misery, in my hotel room. However, the knowledge that I was leaving the next day got me through it! At a certain point, I made a run to the local pharmacy for Immodium. Advil and Immodium got me home on those flights…

At least my room was gorgeous.

Above is the view of the alley from the bathroom window (see below for full). I was grateful for this window — and the fact that I was on a corner of the hotel — because I could get a good cross breeze with it. Others in my group didn’t have this; just the one window facing the ocean. The hotel did not have AC, and it got warm in there.

Call to prayer

At this point, I’d been in Muslim countries for almost 10 days. I wanted to capture the call to prayer, which played out several times a day in every city or town I was in. On its surface, it’s quite beautiful.

The final night: our salon on the roof

That last night, our writing group met on the roof for dinner, which was provided by the riad. We read from sections of our writing — optimally, writing we had worked on during the trip.

The thing about writing is there is no barrier to entry. Anyone can say they’re a writer, and almost anyone can cobble together a piece of prose. This means that of the people who say, “I’m a writer” and present a work of prose, 99% of it will be awful.

I will admit — probably not very flattering of me to admit but let’s do it anyway — that during this trip, as I felt neglected and mishandled, I sometimes thought, “These people don’t even know I’m a pretty good writer. Why, I might be the best writer here.”

It wasn’t true, as it turns out: D is a great writer. But this instinct wasn’t about accuracy anyway; it was about stoking the fires of my self-pity. (“These people don’t even understand their mistake! Why, they’re not just spitting in Jaimie’s eye! Mine is the eye of a great writer!”)

That last night, I read my writing to the group. People seemed impressed — which isn’t saying much, since everyone was politely impressed by everyone else. However, the group organizer was much nicer to me after I read my writing. Maybe she would have done that anyway; maybe she felt bad. But… I don’t think so.

In the end, I got some satisfaction there.

Cats of Essaouira

When I went to buy some Immodium earlier that day, I was able to limp around and snap some photos of the streets. The common theme was stray cats.

Beauty shots

Essaouira reminded me of Aladdin; it felt like a city in a fantasy story. The dark brown bricks on the left in some of the photos below, that’s the sea wall of the medina.

Going home

At last!

Most of the group left for Marrakesh very early the next morning, 7am. But I was able to split a car with 2 other group members, and we left around 10am, which was nice. These two were kind and attentive to me during this portion of the trip, which adds credence to the theory that the reason I was being ignored the rest of the time was a shared group belief that someone else was looking out for me.

After arriving in the Marrakesh airport, I waited about 3 hours for my flight.

I boarded the 5-hour flight to Heathrow, London. After landing, I checked into my hotel at the Crowne Plaza — which felt like heaven.

It was just a normal room, but it had:

• Air conditioning

• Set prices for food and drink

• People who would help me if I asked but otherwise totally ignored me

Once, I was riding down the elevator to buy some water. There was an older couple, and the man asked me, “Are you here with the cheer groups?” There were a lot of cheer groups staying in the hotel at the time.

“No,” I said. Then I added — because it was a long elevator ride and why not, they started it, “I actually just got back from Morocco.”

“Oh!” they said. “How was that?”

I decided that they could see that I was worn-the-fuck-out, because pity laced the question. I felt compelled to answer honestly, and I said, “It was rough. I’m glad to be back.”

Then, they told me that they’d been to Morocco before and they also thought it was a difficult trip.

And I thought, Ah, that’s why there was pity in your question. And I also thought, I love you. Thank you.

Here’s my ankle, on day 3-4 after the sprain. The bruising was coming along nicely.

Two more minor hasslings

The next morning, I slept in and checked out at 11am. My flight was due to leave around 2-3pm. Although the hotel was just outside the airport, it was a 40-minute walk to my terminal. I asked for a taxi at the hotel desk.

The lady at the desk did not like this. She basically said, “No, you don’t need a taxi, you can just walk,” with the tone of “stupid American.” But I told her I had sprained my ankle. A part of me didn’t even want to say that. Lady, mind your own business.

I was hassling-overstimulated at this point; even a minor hassling annoyed me.

While going through airport security, I got hassled again. Some lady didn’t like that one of my 2 carry-ons was large. She wanted me to go back and check it. I stood my ground — the bag had some things I needed for the 8-hour plane ride, and the other bag was too small to hold them. Plus, for the flight the day before, also British Airways, I had carried-on both of these!

Nearby was one of the metal bag sizers (below). So to end the argument I fit my bag into it.

Meanwhile, as I’m doing this, there’s like 20 people being shuffled around me because I’m holding the line otherwise. She’s dealing with them while also dealing with me. When I got the bag in, I got her attention again.

“You forced it in,” she said.

“I didn’t force it,” I said. “I readjusted it to get the right angle.”

“You forced it.”

“Would you like me to do it again?”

I don’t remember everything else here, but the hassling lasted a little longer than this. I started getting really flustered. In the USA, the TSA is like God and it does you no good to argue with them — in fact, you’ll probably get punished if you do. I’m conditioned to be a sheep during this part of flying. But in the back of my mind, I knew this was bullcrap.

Eventually I summoned up the courage and said, “I’d like to speak to your supervisor.”

And immediately, she let me through. Ha!

But I was shaken. Exhausted. I needed a good stiff drink. (Afterwards, I learned that this is common practice for British Airways. They’re a bit of a cheap airline and their service isn’t up to snuff. Imagine doing this to customers regularly!)

The “good stiff drink” ended up being tea at the Fortnam and Mason’s counter. After settling down here, I cannot express how happy I began to feel. I was, as they say, walking on air. I perused the airport shops. It was fun to get a little taste of London, and I bought some loose-leaf tea and expensive chocolate.

The flight home was uneventful. I went back to work the next day, a slightly traumatized, more grateful version of myself…

… and had very little desire to think about the trip for the next year.

Thanks for waiting until 2024 to see pictures!

In conclusion…

I’m glad I went to Morocco. I’ve always wanted to go, and the countryside and architecture is worth seeing in person. But, the next trip I do is going to be something easier. And probably the next after that, too. I think I only have it in me to do a trip like this 1-2 more times in my life. Why spoil a good vacation?

As far as my ankle, it recovered fine with time. I never went to the doctor. My sister has a degree in physical therapy — or something related to muscles — so she talked me through a few things. It took about 3 months before I could jog on it again, and 4 months before it was back to 100%.

I hope you enjoyed this series! To everyone who told me they liked it, thank you. It made it easier to get each consecutive post out. I’m glad some entertainment could come of it.

Desert video

But before we dive into colds and sprained ankles, I forgot to share this video of the Sahara desert in the last update. This is the view from the top of my camel. To counteract the generous, gallumphing strides of the camel, much ‘image stabilization’ was used in the editing of this video (and ergo much cropping).

The Riad

First of all, the Riad we stayed in was lovely. I showed a few pictures earlier, but here’s much more of it.

This is the street outside the Riad. Where the woman is standing, that’s where you enter our Riad. There were other Riads on this street. Riad means “garden,” and it’s just a style of house in Morocco.

The bras are great, right?

And here’s the courtyard inside the Riad, with halls and rooms lining the floors above.

I was able to switch rooms, as I mentioned earlier. I asked for it, and it was granted to me. This was my new room, below, which was perfect and beautiful and adorable. And nothing smelled bad. It was one of the newer rooms built on top of the roof. It’s messy in these photos because I took them at the end of the trip.

The yellow sink is amazing. The problem with this trip is I saw so many great interior decorating touches that I got the bug, badly, to redecorate my apartment — and I’ve started doing that.

Below is the door I would use to get back inside the Riad. From there, I’d go down a stairwell to the ground floor and inner courtyard.

And this, taken from the same spot and turning to my right, is the walkway leading to my room. The door to my room is between the two pots on the right. Directly in front of those pots (towards the camera) is a stairway that led to an even higher roof, where we’d eat breakfast each morning.

And up there, a view of the city. It’s quaint how flat the city is; it feels like stepping back in time.

A word about the vibes

I don’t want to go into too much detail here, because the internet can be a small place. I joined up with the writing group about an hour late, when they were in the middle of our introductory dinner. Immediately I felt really out of place with them. Like they were giving me some kind of cold shoulder treatment. And this continued for most of the rest of the trip. Did the organizer tell them I’d asked to switch rooms? Surely that by itself wouldn’t result in a cold shoulder treatment, but it’s certainly possible if it’s framed just-so. Would the organizer be likely to vent such a thing? I saw a few things during the week that made me think it wouldn’t be a stretch.

Maybe it’s all in my head, though. Maybe they were just tired. Maybe throughout the week, the others also felt weirdly ostracized by the whole of the group. It is an odd thing to group up with strangers in a foreign country, and it’s not something I plan to do often in life. But, in Morocco, it’s not safe for a woman to travel alone, so it had to happen.

There was one woman in the group whom I clicked with. If something negative had been said about me, she didn’t hold it against me. I bought and read her book, “Where the Wind Wills,” a travelogue about her time in Africa. It was great! I recommend it if you enjoy nonfiction stories of adventure.

The writing part

Everyone morning, our group would meet for breakfast on the roof. Afterward, at approximately 9:00am, we’d do our writing lessons up there. The writing lessons involved the organizer speaking to us about writing for 2 hours. One day, we did a writing exercise, where we got to write, and I really enjoyed that. I wish there could have been more of that. But otherwise, it was just the lessons, and then we were told to find time to write in our off-time. There wasn’t much off-time — our schedules were very full — so I didn’t get much writing done on the trip. I was fine with that; the point was seeing Morocco.

All of this writing talk (and purported writing time) culminated in a “salon” at the end of the trip, where we read some of our writing.

Touring around Marrakesh

We were given a tour around Marrakesh, most of the major sites. Fortunately the weather was great this day. Below is the Kutubiyya Mosque, the central landmark of Marrakesh.

Trivia: This mosque tower is what you see in Walt Disney’s Epcot park.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take a ton of pictures of this area. I was exhausted and starting to come down with a cold.

Jemaa el-Fnaa

This was the main square in Marrakesh. Supposedly, it can get really sketchy there — a lot of scamming, a lot of straight-up stealing — so we walked through it really quickly, and I didn’t have the opportunity to take many photos. I wish we could have taken more time here, but I trust the decision by the organizers to breeze through it.

Some of the square was open-air, and there were snake-charmers and monkeys and various things you’d imagine in a marketplace in Aladdin.

Some parts were inside — shops lining the walkway like you see below.

One funny story. As you’re walking past these stores, the owners are constantly calling out to you. I’m tall and obviously Western, so I was a prominent target. There was this one dude who saw me approaching (by myself; I was in the group but walking alone). He started calling to me, “Miss. Miss! Hello!” or whatever he said to get my attention, the Arabic equivalent. He probably started talking to me about what he was selling, too.

I just completely ignored him. With my sunglasses on, with my pixie cut, I stared dead ahead and walked right past.

I’ve kept his reaction on my phone for over a year now. I wanted to get it right.

As I began to pass directly by him, I heard and saw him start to laugh. A chuckle from his belly. “Hehehehe…. Oh my God.” His tone was like, This lady is ridiculous, who does she think she is?

As I passed him, I heard him continue to laugh behind me. “Hehehehehe….. eughhhhhh.” The “eughhhh” was an expression of disgust and futility from the depth of his soul.

That seriously cracked me up, but of course I didn’t let him see it.

While in Morocco, we interacted with so many people who were trying to sell us stuff, trying to get money from us. For example, even the manager at our Riad had this fake way about him. I’m sure he’s a nice guy — and I owe him because he saved my ass after my sprained ankle (and I tipped him incredibly well for that!). But he had a fake veneer. We never interacted with the real human there.

By contrast, the Riad bellhop — the one who had told me, “Enjoy your life!” when I’d first arrived — he seemed incredibly kind and genuine to me. But you could tell, those qualities were going to hold him back in matters of business. The cutthroat people are going to make more money off the tourists. The ones who are interacting with you in Morocco, they’re probably among the most cutthroat people in that society, a society that profits so much from tourism. The “cream” that has risen to the top.

So, I appreciated the rare, genuine interactions I had from the Moroccan people. There’s a few more of those to come.

The sun was setting as we left Jemaa el-Fnaa.

The Bahia palace

Earlier that day, we went to the Bahia palace, which was, um, a palace in Marrakesh? I don’t remember any historical detail of this. I think we even had a tour guide, but I was perfectly content to drool over the architecture and ignore everything else.

The amount of detail! Everywhere you looked.

The salesman who didn’t like me

At the end of this day, we went to a perfume seller and medicinal shop. Or was it alchemy? A chemist? Something like that. A place that sold things in jars — food, medicines, smelly things. It felt like a tourist trap, though. This happened to me a few times in Egypt: You’d go on these group tours and afterwards they’d dump you into these stores, and you’d get a talking to and pressured to buy things. There’s no locals around that you can see, just groups of tourists. As far as I understand it, they even cut the tour guides a percentage of their sales.

Egypt totally wore me out on this, so with Morocco I went in skeptical. I wasn’t in the mood to pay these things any attention. (Why are we so sure these items are even legit?) I was also getting sick, as I said earlier.

The salesman assigned to us was a Moroccan gentleman who had a very 90s gay effect — that exuberance you don’t really see anymore post 2010. It felt so odd and false to me; an old Western cultural export, washed up here, forgotten, never to be updated. While we were seated in a semi-circle, the salesman walked vials and jars around to us — asking us to smell things, to put on lotions, and so forth. At the 2nd or 3rd pass, I shook my head no.

His exuberance dropped away, and an intense negative expression flickered across his face. It was like he was thinking, “What if the others catch this bitch’s attitude? There goes my paycheck!” It was just a moment, but I saw it: fear and anger.

Then, he actually waved his hand in my face. His palm flat, he flicked his fingers up, a dismissive gesture. And kept on with his sales talk. The next person smelled the soap, and the next, and round and round he went, smiling and laughing, never offering anything to me again.

Either you’re in or you’re out, I guess.

This resort we went to

On another day, we visited this amazing resort in the countryside. We spent the afternoon there, lounging in well-decorated rooms, ordering drinks and hors d'oeuvres, eating dinner, riding camels. It was my 3rd time riding camels and I’m good for the rest of my life.

Utterly gorgeous. Perfect weather. I wish I could have spent a week at this place.

The aesthetic is transporting.

I especially enjoyed myself because I got some writing done while I was there.

I’d kill for that rug. Gorgeous.

Getting through a cold

I missed 1-2 days of excursions because I came down with a cold. Fever, exhaustion, sore throat, and so forth. This sickness felt incredibly rough because I had to deal with it almost entirely alone. I’m not a baby when it comes to getting sick either; I’m fine tending to myself. But in a foreign country, the logistics make it challenging, and I wasn’t getting much help. For example, I messaged the group via our WhatsApp thread, asking if anyone had extra Advil because I’d run out. I didn’t get a response. Eventually I located a local pharmacy and made the quick trek to buy myself Advil. Fine; whatever.

At another time, I asked if anyone could bring up a few water bottles for me. We had to drink water from bottles to avoid stomach issues. No response.

(In case I forget to mention this later, the group became much more responsive in the WhatsApp thread after I sprained my ankle. They weren’t like this the whole time, just at first.)

Food was a problem too. My first day of fever, I messaged the organizer to tell her I was too sick to come to breakfast, and I got a confirmation from her. By the time I woke up again, the whole group had left — gone to their excursion in the Atlas mountains. The breakfast table had been cleared. No one had checked in on me before leaving thed Riad, even though they had walked right past my door going downstairs. I had no idea what to do for food. When I went downstairs, the Riad was empty. The hotel manager was gone. Everyone was gone.

I could have messaged the WhatsApp thread, but I felt angry at them for ignoring my other requests. Ashamed too; I felt so degraded. Plus, they weren’t around to do anything anyway — all I’d be doing was guilting them for nothing.

My friend Mahdi, who lives in Tangier, whom I know through Discord, will remember that at this point I was messaging him, asking him how I could order food through the equivalent of Uber Eats in Morocco. He helped me out with his phone number — the app required a local’s number and my SIM number wasn’t cutting it. I was able to get food into the app’s cart, but I couldn’t finish paying for it; I couldn’t get the app to accept my American credit card. So I gave up.

“Why didn’t you go out walking and find some food yourself?” you may ask. Because everyone is staring at you, and it’s not exactly safe, so we’d been told. And while I had visited a few nice restaurants, I didn’t know where any quick service was — and I looked and felt like death anyway. I figured I could wait a while.

And feel really, really sorry for myself. Like you do when you’re sick.

Finally, in the afternoon, I heard sounds in the Riad. I came downstairs and two women were working in the kitchen. The maids. Zora and Hasseneah — a name which means “good” and “beautiful,” which is what she was to me.

When I asked them for food, they both jumped into action making me food. Asking me to sit down. While they prepared the food, tea and water, I burst into tears of relief.

They made me several meals over the next few days, ensuring that I was taken care of as I recovered, and I felt so grateful for them. (And tipped them well!)

Hasseneah particularly had this motherly, firm way that was exactly what I needed. She would bring me food and then say, “Eat this. It’s good.”

Or she’d bring me tea and say, “Drink. It’s good,” and she’d pat her throat to show what it was good for. “Drink, finish. Then, rest.” She’d point to the bed.

Bless that woman.

The broken ankle

By day 4 of the Marrakesh portion of the trip, I felt recovered enough to venture outside again. This was good, because I wanted desperately to do some souvenir shopping before we let Marrakesh. Although I’d be stopping in Marrakesh again before flying home, it would only be for a few hours. No time to shop then.

The group organizer kept hyping up this shopping center, and I was excited to visit.

Again, I’ll repeat the theme that I didn’t take any photos of this place because I felt sick and I was in a hurry. This was the only one I got, a shot from inside the shopping center and looking out onto the street. It was basically a mall — for tourists. The government set the prices here so you didn’t have to haggle.

Oh yeah, that was the other challenging thing about Morrocco. You had to haggle for almost everything. It was such a relief to go to this mall where the prices were fixed. Even if I was overpaying, I didn’t care. I didn’t want to mess around with haggling.

The organizer had only allotted 45 minutes for shopping, which wasn’t enough time for me. The rest of the group was hurrying off to a spa, having had ample time during the week to get their souvenirs. I told them to go ahead and I’d finish out my shopping and find my own way back.

You know how it is when you’re almost recovered from a cold but not quite? My energy was good, but I was sweating a lot that day. Still slightly sick, but able to push through.

When I’d finally finished shopping, I felt so accomplished. It was a load off my mind to get the souvenirs. I’m not usually one to care anything about souvenirs, but I love Morocco and I wanted to buy everything. Obviously a bunch of these were gifts too.

So, loaded up with 2-3 big bags, I started back to the Riad. My strides were long, quick, carefree.

And I slipped. On a step outside the mall. Or more specifically, on a ramp on the steps. The ramp was like the one you see below, except they were made of marble. They had no grip on them, like they would have had in the US.

I looked down as I slipped, and I saw my ankle bend inward. All my stuff flew everywhere. I started cursing, loudly. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

A Moroccan man ran up to me. “Are you all right?”

“No.”

“You’re fine. You’re fine.”

“No I’m not.”

There were two men now, standing over me. One of them went to get a chair from inside the mall. He brought the chair to the top of the steps, and both of them picked up my arms and set me down into the chair.

Then, they told me they were going to get some help — someone who spoke more English.

So I was sitting in that chair, in the 85-degree sunlight, sweating profusely from the cold and the frenzy of my shopping trip, staring out at an empty backstreet, and thinking, “How am I going to get back to the Riad? The group left. I have no help. No one will help me. I’m not safe. I’m a sitting duck.”

And then I passed out. I think I was just that shocked.

I was in this inky, black place, experiencing some kind of dream, some scene, some happy moment of life. I felt blissful in the dark. And then someone was shaking my shoulder, waking me up. “Miss! Miss!”

I remembered: I’m in Marrakesh. And I just sprained my ankle. I did not want to wake up, when I remembered that. Too many problems with that.

“Miss!” He shook my shoulder.

But I didn’t have a choice. I opened my eyes. A Moroccan man was handing me my phone, which I had dropped. I thanked him.

Various things happened here, and I don’t remember every detail. Somehow they brought me out of the sunlight, back into the entryway of the mall. There were Westerners around me now, such as a French man in his 30s who had sprained his ankle skiing in the past and knew what I should do. He talked me through how to sit and elevate my foot. A woman with an eastern European accent brought me food and drink from the nearby cafe (no one charged me). Helpful people like these… they lingered as I called the Riad, as the hotel manager agreed to come pick me up in a tuktuk. They waited until he arrived, in 5-10 minutes, and helped load me into the tuktuk. The French man in particular was very comforting. I’m so glad for him.

Not to give only the Westerners credit! The Moroccan men who initially helped me were amazing too. When I think about how easy it would have been for that man to swipe my phone and cash; he was kind and I’m glad for him. And of course, the hotel manager who got me back to the Riad and made sure I was comfortable: thank you to him! I think I tipped him the equivalent of hundreds of dollars in the US, haha. (Meaning how far the money goes.)

So, as much as I’ve complained about the predatory attitude towards tourists, at the end of the day, I think they’ve just decided we don’t need our money that much. When I had actual need, everyone came through.

Here I am lounging at the Riad, with ice on my ankle.

When I got back like this, Zora and Hasseneah saw me and did the Moroccan equivalent of rolling their eyes, expressing, “This again? We just nursed you back to health!” I laughed, shrugged and apologized.

I rested for a long time. I didn’t dare try to put weight on my ankle initially. I’d never sprained my ankle before, so I was approaching the situation very cautiously — probably too cautiously, honestly. Below is a picture of the first hour of swelling.

Various people in the writing group came into the room, saw this swelling, decided it wasn’t bad, and left to get ready for dinner. They were unfazed. But they hadn’t seen what I’d seen; they hadn’t seen my ankle bend inward.

At this point in the trip, however, I expected no sympathy from them. So I took it in stride. Everyone plays different roles in groups, and I was the pathetic, dramatic malingerer. Whatever.

There was some discussion (among the group organizers, and among my parents whom I called) about whether I should go see a doctor. But I held off on doing that. It would require me moving and I wasn’t even sure it would help much. I was much more concerned about the logistics of getting home; my flight would leave Morocco in 3 days. The group was leaving for Essaouira the next morning. Could I still go with them? Would I need to stay in the Riad, alone again? Just cooped up and waiting for a flight?

It was the second lowest moment of the trip.

The lowest moment, that happens in the next update.

Stay tuned!

This is the difficult thing about visiting developing countries. You take things for granted, like shock absorbers. Your mind is opened to new ways things might be broken or avaricious opportunitists might try to make a buck. Live and learn.

Here’s the path we took, more or less.

Below is the bus seating situtation. I grabbed a single seat right next to the door, which has a big open space in front of it, which helped me with getting car sick.

There was a bar that would jam into my knees (I’m tall), so I had to sit in all kinds of weird positions.

Atlas Mountains

First we passed through the Atlas Mountains, a range south/west of Marrakesh. I didn’t get any wide shots of the mountains, but there were many villages where people lived. Berbers, they’re called. The driver stopped so we could take pictures of these houses.

I like the satellite dishes in the collage photo (above right).

See the woman hanging blankets on the roof?

Ait Benhaddou

Ait Benhaddou is a city where many films were shot. Lawrence of Arabia, The Mummy, Gladiator, Game of Thrones, Kingdom of Heaven, and so forth. Hundreds of movies.

There’s also a film studio near here, Atlas Studios, where sets are built out that fit the Moroccan vibes. Like this Egyptian one…

We didn’t stop at Atlas Studios though, just drove past. You could see a lot of it from the road.

Ait Benhaddou was great though.

Here’s a billboard in one of the buildings that show the movies filmed there.

People used to live in these old buildings, but I believe they said 90% of them have moved to the newer buildings across the street. I naturally wrote “street,” which is funny, but I meant river. That’s a dried up riverbed between these building groups.

Night 1: Small scams & cuisine

We stayed overnight somewhere I got no pictures of. It was about 15 minutes off the highway, in the Atlas mountains. The room was good… nice textiles and a comfortable, well-pillowed bed made it feel somewhat luxurious. The bathroom, however, was bare minimum. It’s like if you went into Walmart and bought a $10 shower, a $10 toilet and a $10 sink. I’m mentioning that because the contrast is funny, not because it bothered me. I was grateful just to shower.

Before I got my room, we ate a group dinner. I was exhausted during this dinner and started to get a migraine. I went to bed early and slept through the loud Berber dancing and music they were doing. Several of the hotel people hassled me about going to bed early. “But you don’t want to stay up for the party?” Fortunately, “I have a headache,” didn’t provoke much argument.

However, rewind: immediately after dinner, they gave us a big talk about what we were going to do the following day. They must have overbooked the trip, because they went down a list and asked about 10 of us, person by person, if we’d be okay sharing rooms with other people. And, they didn’t say it like that; what they said was:

Jaimie and Jasmine, are you okay sharing a room?

So you’re put into the position of being the rude one, who objects not simply to sharing a room, but sharing a room with Jasmine, who is sitting right next to you. This sort of thing deeply annoys me because I know many people aren’t comfortable saying no, and will go along and be put out, when they paid for something different.

I told them no.

But Jaimie, if you don’t share a room with Jasmine, she’ll have to get a room in another building and she won’t be with us. Do you really want to kick Jasmine out of the building?

Yes! This is not my problem! It’s you who didn’t plan correctly!

So, I got my private room. (And Jasmine did survive the walk in the dark.)

The next morning, we had our Moroccan breakfast. Moroccans eat a sugary, carb-filled breakfast. Not a lot of protein, not for tourists. I was dying for protein, so I bribed a waiter to bring me an egg. He brought me a 3-egg omelette, and, out of an abundance of gratitude and relief, I tipped him $5 (in Moroccan dirham). (And $5 goes a lot futher over there.)

I’m sure eggs are readily available in other Moroccan joints; I think we were just being nickled-and-dimed on this trip. It starts to get exhausting when this happens. You feel like you’re being squeezed for money and you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

During this 3-day trip, we were also being stopped at a few vendors and offered things for sale. It was the same when my mom and I went to Egypt in 2017. This is what touristy places do. I accept it, but it’s wearing in a way you can’t prepare for or easily mitigate.

Ouarzazate

The next day, we stopped in Ouarzazate. I love all of these photos. The architecture and housing is so fascinating to me. How they run wires over the walls. The cracks in the mud brick. The tile. How the dirt dries. How the shadows fall.

Then we walked around on the outskirts of the city. Honestly, beyond the cool architecture, there wasn’t much interesting about this place and I think we were all wary of getting tired out. Many of us were exhausted from the previous day’s Ait Benhaddou trek, and it felt like they were trying to exercise us like dogs.

Actually, it felt like they were inventing walking tours for us as income for the guides (who would ask for tips at the end).

Women in Ouarzazate, washing clothes in the river.

We ate lunch somewhere, and then descended from the mountains for the last stretch of road to the desert.

I wish I had taken pictures of the transition. I trawled around on Google and found 2 that do it some justice.

As we descended from the mountains, the topography initially was like the left photo. You can see the fuzzy sand dunes in the distance, on the horizon, on the left. Then, as you got closer, you realized how massive these sand dunes were next to the line of buildings in front of them (the right photo).

It was surreal; it reminded me of a Mario game. Rows of lumpy, giant sand dunes. You imagine the Sahara desert will transition in a flat way. But the stark effect of those rows of hills on the horizon, like mountains of sand; it isn’t far off from a 2D scroller.

The Sahara desert

After we parked, our guides helped us wrap our scarves like Bedouin.

Then we got in a 4-wheeler and drove about 15 minutes out to the camels. (We packed an overnight bag for the desert camp, taken separately.)

Again I’ll use the word “surreal.” It was surreal walking through the sand when the sun was still somewhat high. The world was reduced to two shades of color: orange and blue. The only variation was the gradients or shadows in each — the ground having more gradients than the sky. A picture doesn’t do this justice; you have to imagine seeing these two colors everywhere, all around. It’s like walking through a painting or cartoon.

When Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia said he liked the desert because “It’s clean,” I’m fairly sure he was being insincere and avoidant. But in the visual sense, I did find it clean.

The guide took a ton of pictures of us on the camels making various cheesy poses. In our group, we had about 15 people. Only 3 of us went to the luxury camp, so there were only 3 of us in this troup.

Later, we dismounted and watched the sun set.

Desert camp

Our camp was lovely. We had dinner in the main tent and I enjoyed the room to myself, sans argument about it. The wind was whipping all night, rasping at the plastic window covers. I had a dream that men were coming out of the desert, opening my window covers, peaking in on me sleeping. (Funny how I remember this a year later...)

I didn’t take a photo, but the inside of the tent looked more or less like this (below).

There was a private shower/toilet/sink, with signs about reserving water.

This desert camp was the best part of the tour, by far. Maybe the best part of the trip. I wish I had spent 2 nights there.

The camp offered more music/dancing, but I was exhausted and sore after 1 hour on the camel, and went to bed.

The trip back

We woke early, at sunrise, to ride the camels back to the bus.

Our Bedouin guide, waiting for us. When we walked up to him, he scooped sand into a souvenir bottle and gave it to us. We tipped him for that. I purchased a nicer bottle for the sand in Marrakesh, and I still have it — it’s sitting a few feet away from me as I type this.

Once we boarded the bus, it was back to Marrakesh — with a day of straight driving. Nothing eventful happened. Except, we passed a truck that had overturned in the Atlas mountains. Its cargo, watermelons, had gone all over the road. Some had burst open with incarnadine splashes. Berber people parked their cars and gathered them up, bearing them off on their shoulders.

In another village, our driver stopped for dates and passed a tray of them around the bus. He said the village was known for its dates.

I got back to the Riad around 7pm and met up with the writing group.

Exhausted. I really should have planned a rest day in here, but I had no idea the Sahara trip would be so strenuous. I thought sitting in a bus would be somewhat restful. But, all the bumping and shuddering took it out of me.

Our relationship with travel photography is interesting these days. You go on a trip, you take hundreds or even thousands of photos. Photos are cheap now, why not snap a photo of everything? And multiples?

With this glut of content, is it any wonder we don’t look at our travel photos much anymore? (At least, this is common enough a sentiment to be a meme I’ve heard several times.) It’s too much to wade through.

I’ve been thinking about this lately as I’ve sat down to edit my travel photos. Who are these pictures for? Does anyone want to see them again? Do I? Why am I spending my precious time on this? (The last question is about trying to get to the bottom of why I’ve procrastinated this task, for a year now, and yet not given up outright. It’s obvious I want to do it, so why?)

I want to share. If I were cursed by a Substack ghost, if I were told, “You can only share 10 Morocco photos. Would you still like to share them?” I’d still say yes.

And that sounds fun too. I’m much more interested in this idea than sharing everything.

I think I’m just overwhelmed at the number of photos. So, in an attempt to push past whatever discomfort I’m feeling… well, I don’t know what I’m saying at this point. Am I apologizing for posting less photos than someone might want? That seems silly. I don’t think you’ll know or miss those doubles.

Thanks for letting me clear my throat.

My trip to Morocco

It was nice traveling to Morocco from Instanbul, only a 5-hour flight instead of the horrible 12-hour one to Istanbul. I landed in Marrakesh around 3pm, cleared customs, changed my money, and tried to find the driver who was supposed to take me to my Riad, or hotel.

A picture of the outside of the airport. (Imagine more cars, and more sand/dirt.)

It took about an hour to track my driver down. I bought a SIM card (I got “ripped off,” overpaid probably $20) and tried calling the Riad, and finally the guy showed up. He was annoyed at me for having called the Riad.

“I was here at 2:30. Where were you? You weren’t here!”

“I guess my flight was late,” I said, although I didn’t think it was.

He continued to blame me in a roundabout way, and saying he wished I hadn’t called the Riad. Wonderful. I’m in strange country by myself, for the first time, and this is my welcome. And, I’m telling you this story for a reason. I didn’t know it at the time, but this sort of thing is very Morocco — at least from my 10-day experience.

He drove me into the city. After I used the French word for “Thank you,” “Merci,” he shook his head no and taught me the Arabic word for “Thank you,” which is “Shokran.” I immediately gave up on using French there, despite having read a traveller’s guide for it on the airplane over.

I’m going to do a little time-traveling here. In a future post, I’ll go into my Marrakesh photos. For the time being, let me just talk through my Pixel photos and quickly say what happened on my first evening.

My first night in Marrakesh

I arrived at the Riad. When the hotel manager greeted us, my driver gave me a meaningful look and I quickly said service had been excellent and played the game of praising him and covering for him. He had done a good job once he had showed up, so it seemed like a small thing at the time. He was pleased and went on his merry way.

The hotel manager — let’s call him Yusuf. He’s going to be a recurring character.

He showed me to my room. It was small, but well-decorated.

Isn’t the bathroom adorable? This is a very Moroccan shade of blue that pops up throughout the country.

The view out my window. (More pictures of the Riad courtyard in the future.)

I went out on my own for dinner, which is daring for a single woman in Marakesh. But I was assured that I was going on a safe road, and night was a ways off, so it would be fine.

The hotel bellhop was the one who reassured me that I’d be okay walking. “Enjoy your life,” he said. Ie, “It’s safe, don’t worry about it, just have fun here.” But “Enjoy your life,” is an ominous phrase; it made me chuckle to hear him put it in those words.

A quick Pixel snap I made in the streets. A gorgeous city!

I swung into a shop to try and buy a scarf for the desert, which I’d forgotten to pack. I think it was a scam shop. When I priced the scarves out into dollars, they were something like four hundred dollars for just a piece of colorful cotton cloth. That, or it was a store for the ultra rich tourists. I left and bought a scarf at a shop nearby, probably one made in China, and I probably overpaid. It was about $12.

Then, I had dinner at this place, with a view of the main minaret. I want to type, “The main minaret, in the center, the one you think of when you think of Marrakesh.” It’s because this picture doesn’t make it look like much. But, Marrakesh isn’t much. It’s a flat city! And not large.

When I asked for a table here, maître d' asked me if I had a reservation. I said no. She went and got a man (the manager?) who asked me if I planned to buy a drink or a meal. I said a meal. Then he let me sit down — even though the restaurant was completely empty. Hahaha. At first glance, you think this dude is not wanting to seat someone who will take space from someone who wants a full meal, but no, I think this is just a way to pressure you into spending more. Oh, Marrakesh.

By the time I left, a few more people had arrived, but the restaurant remained 80% empty.

Then I went back to the Riad and prepped for my Saraha trip in the morning.

A word on safety

I found Marrakesh to be safe, but I was smart about where I went and when I went. YMMV. The place is certainly scammy, and it’s not hard to believe there are sinister characters about.

The conflict over my room

When I took a shower that night, my bathroom smelled like skunk. It reeked until I went to sleep, and seemed to have cleared after I woke up, thank goodness. But I was disappointed by this; I knew if I showered in the future, it would reek again. I was also worried about the possibility that, after I returned from the Sahara, I’d be stuck in this smelly room for the entire writing retreat. (Ah, I forgot to mention, I booked an extra night at the same Riad where the 7-day writing retreat would be held. It was set to start the day I returned.)

I won’t go into every detail of this. That next day, I called the leader of the writing retreat to ask to be assigned a different room. I don’t know what happened here, but it was like we were speaking different languages. (I say that metaphorically — she was American and I’d talked with her twice before the trip started with none of these problems.) It’s like she had some defensive reaction to me. Like she thought I was going to be a diva.

Look, I admit it’s slightly high-maintenance to ask for a different room. And even slightly, slightly rude to ask for a different room knowing I’d be pinning the smelly room on another of the writing retreat attendees, all of whom I’d “met” over a Zoom call the week earlier. But I didn’t care. I asked.

Sometimes I think maybe I shouldn’t have. It was… an awkward retreat.

But, that’s a story for future post.

Next up: Part 2, the trip to the Sahara desert

There’s a specific line of hotels (Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton) where Dragon Con happens. (82 days to DC24!) I’m very familiar with the navigating these hotels, and it was fun to see them mostly empty. A nostalgic area for me.

Outside of the Hyatt

Lobby of the Hyatt (video)

Lobby of the Marriott

Outside of the Marriott

I nearly walked up this way an hour earlier, yikes.

There’s a venue in Pelham, TN, where they turned a large cave into a concert venue. It’s been on my list to visit for a while, and when I saw one of my favorite singer-songwriters Ben Folds would be playing, I jumped at the chance.

Walking from the gravel parking lot down into the cave is a slow descent. The cave entrance looks like this…

But let’s back up a bit first.

I’m trying to use my camera more often. I’ve had the busiest year; you don’t even know. Things are starting to slow down, and I’m trying to get back to my other hobbies. I’m keenly aware I need to edit/post my Morocco pictures, and that’s coming very soon. In the meantime, the process of creating this post is actually me trying to get my workflow down so it’s less burdonsome to post.

In the spirit of this, the first few pictures are from my nice camera not that you can tell.

Here’s the hotel I stayed at in Kimball, TN. I think it’s out of focus. I left my camera off for so long (1 year) that it lost all its settings, and I’m in the process of putting it back together.

I got the hotel on points.

Here is the view from the parking lot toward the other side. A small lake, and there’s a highway beyond that. Notice how foggy it was? I had a whole other side trip planned for Rock City Gardens. But since a major attraction there is Lookout Mountain, and I didn’t think I’d be seeing very far on this foggy day, I skipped it.

The rest of my photos are from my phone. Because the concert was in a cave, I didn’t want to mess around with low exposures and so forth. I’m the laziest photographer. I seriously shouldn’t even have a nice camera.

I dream of being the kind of person who is into photography, but in practice it doesn’t really happen.

It was pretty cool walking down into the cave, and then seeing this…

That’s Ben Folds’ opening act, Lindsay Kraft. She didn’t know how to play the piano before 2020, when she couldn’t get these musical songs out of her head and taught herself to play. Now it’s 2024, and she plays pretty decently, and accompanies herself singing.

Here’s a few bad pictures (from my phone!) of Lindsay from later in the show.

Here’s the top of the cave…

So, this tour was called the “Paper Airplane Request Tour.”

You write a request on a piece of paper, fold it into a paper airplane, and throw it onto the stage. I was too far back to get a good picture of this, but I stole one from Reddit.

Great concept.

My request was this…

… but Mr. Folds played a set list in the first 40% of the show, and sung this song third! So I tore it up, didn’t throw it.

Here’s the full set list, if you’re curious. Mostly I’m saving this for posterity. I love his music, and it was a blast to see what he’d play next.

Capable of Anything

Sentimental Guy

Ascent of Stan

Fragile

Kristine from Seventh Grade

Effington

Still Fighting It

Phone in a Pool

Me and Maurice

— The requests started here —

Missing the War

Not the Same

(Someone requested “Happy Birthday to Jason” so he made up a song for that)

Song for the Dumped

(Someone gave him a multiple choice which included the last song and the following song, so he quickly played a few scores of “Song for the Dumped” in minor as a joke.)

Emmaline

Learn to Live With What You Are

Careless Whisper

Barrytown

In Between Days

Carrying Cathy

Rock This Bitch - In a Cave (w/ Lindsay Craft)

Zac and Sara

Encore: Underground

“Underground” contains the chorus “We can be happy underground” and was too perfect for the setting.

Ben Folds always gives a great concert. He loops the audience into singing parts of the song with him, and when he’s not singing, he’s communicative and playful.

Evidently this is the first time a grand piano has been played in a cave? This was told to us, but it feels difficult to believe. Maybe he meant this venue, or maybe he meant a full concert, or both.

As I said above, I was worried about going by myself. What would I do? You can’t just read a book like at a restaurant. And unlike a movie, there’s much more potential interaction with other people. But, now that my cherry is popped, I can see myself doing it again. It really wasn’t a big deal at all.

It felt like rehab — or like I imagine rehab might feel.

It was strange being in close quarters with people but not talking to them for 9 days. (On the 10th day, you could talk.) I didn’t mind not having the ability to write at first, but by day 7 I was longing for a pen. I cheated and brought in protein bars, because I wanted to make sure I got adequate protein, but I had to quickly scarf them down in my room before going to the dining hall.

The campus was beautiful: a few buildings in the rural Georgia woods, a small pond with lotus flowers, some minimal gardens here and there. Very peaceful, and we had perfect weather. It was nice to get away from everything and not have to worry about travel, food, or anything else.

Just whether I could survive 4-6 mandatory hours of meditation a day.

The schedule

The meditation part was incredibly difficult. Below, you can see a sample of our schedule.

As I said, the men and women were segregated. Different sleeping areas, different dining halls, and different sections in the main meditation hall. I really enjoyed the segregation and wish more aspects of my life were segregated, although I understand why that isn’t the case (and why my life would probably be worse if it were).

There was some interesting gendered behavior. On the evening of day 10, after the 6-7pm meditation, we were told to take a 5-minute break and reconvene in the hall. This is what we’d be doing all week; same schedule. So, the women promptly did this. We were all sitting in the hall, waiting for the discourse. However, the men were 95% absent on their side. Just empty mats, everywhere.

What was going on? Well, they were all outside talking! The teacher had to send someone outside to ring the gong to get their attention. The woman seated next to me, Juliana, turned and joked to me, “And they say women like to talk,” and we had a good laugh about that.

For 9 days, Juliana was just the unnamed soul at my side for every sitting.

I was fortunate to have 2 very quiet sitting partners on each side of me. Nichole was on the other side of me, and she lives in Atlanta about 30 minutes away from me.

This is a little scatterbrained, but it’s tricky to capture everything. Each organization structure I imagine has its faults. And of course I won’t capture everything, but I’d like to do some justice to the complexity.

Play-by-play

I’ll try to talk about each day individually, and let’s see what comes of that.

• Day 1: My prevailing thought here was, “Holy shit, this is hard. Can I even do this?” I didn’t know if it was physically possible for me to sit that long, since I’d never done it before. When you sit for so long, your back aches. When you don’t have any distractions, the pain consumes your attention. A level 3 pain may feel like a level 7 after 45 minutes on the mat. Also, during day 1, I was learning the schedule. It was a LONG day.

• Day 2: I had the reassurance that I could sit for that many hours, but now I had to see if I could keep it up each day.

• Day 3: Each progressive day, I felt a little better. On day 3, I wondered, “Am I having a good day? Is this what people mean when, during their YouTube testimonials, they described ‘good days’?” It felt like a half-good day. I don’t remember much detail from it, but I was settling into the cadence of the retreat and already starting to have insights that made it feel worth it.

• Day 4: They sprung an extra 2 hours of meditation on us this day, during when I’d normally take a break. They left the instructions sitting in front of the oatmeal pot at breakfast. Because you can’t talk to anyone, if you misread directions or misunderstand, there’s no way to get clarity later or even realize you’re incorrect. So, after 1 hour of sitting, we had a 5-minute break and were told we were going to do a 2-hour formal sit immediately following. I had a panic attack during this 2-hour sit, and I had to talk myself through it. On this day, we started “strong determination,” which means you weren’t supposed to change posture at all. You could, but you weren’t supposed to, so I was resolved to do my best. After 1.5 hours of this second sitting (2.5 hours total), I gave up and stretched out my back. I was angry at myself that I’d been beaten by it. It was not a fun day.

• Day 5: Each evening, there was a recording of Goenka talking through the method. On the evening of day 5, he dropped a lot of Buddhist “theology” on us. He discussed the reincarnation cycle and how the Vipassana method could be used to break the cycle of misery continuing from lifetime to lifetime. I’ve heard people say this talk is a real bummer because Goenka talks a lot about misery, but I don’t think that’s why at all. We already accept we’re miserable, on day 5. Instead, it’s a real bummer that you’ve spent 5 days working so hard only to learn that the man in charge has some faith/belief about the reason you do this, which he hid until this moment, and which you don’t share! So you’re left to wonder, “Well, why am I doing this?” Evidentally many people quit the course on day 6, and I think this is why. I had to make up my own reason for doing it, which is this: I think developing a mindset of equinimity and developing resilience to aversion/craving is valuable. Goenka continued to reference this “theology” for the last 5 days, but I ignored it.

• Day 6: I was incredibly bored this day, probably my first easy day. I realized that I’d have to push through boredom in order to complete the course, and I wanted to complete it. I decided that days 6-9 would be the hardest, because we could talk on day 10 and that would break the monotony up. So I counted down each of these days, 1, 2, 3, 4. Basically, I accepted my boredom and refused to let it dictate how I followed-through with my goal, which is an important mindset throughout life. (How much of me getting my eating/diet under control is exactly this struggle? A lot of it.) “Boredom” is also a nebulous concept, and if you break it down, it can be different things… and usually just some form of aversion/craving. Sometimes I was “bored” when I was actually tired of sitting with pain. Sometimes I was “bored” because I actually craved a pleasurable experience. So it helps, with boredom, to dissect it and call a spade a spade.

• Days 7-8: I looked forward to the meals, which were almost always delicious, and my naps and walks in the woods. I didn’t let myself think, “Will I finish this course?” and instead told myself, “This is my life now,” and made the best of it.

• Day 9: On this day, I learned the true meaning of boredom! Things became incredibly tedious. I stopped meditating competely. I went to the mandatory sittings, but I planned other things to occupy my mind. I thought through a novel idea I’d had, through issues in my life, and so forth. Sometimes I remembered pop songs and “listened” to them in my mind. Also, I wanted to tear my hair out with how repetitive Goenka was being at this point. I had to make a game of predicting what he’d say next, as he repeated himself 5-6 times, sometimes. He wasn’t only talking during the evening discourse, but he’d preface some of our sittings with instructions. I swear, you could have put him on 4x speed, and also thrown everything he was saying into ChatGPT to cut out all the repetition, and read it in 20 seconds and had full comprehesion. He also chanted. I knew about that going in, so I didn’t let myself be frustrated by it, but… I will not miss the chanting.

  Also they sprung 2 additional 1-hour meditations on us this day. I also told myself, “You have no control here. Expect them to take your time. Expect them to not care whether or not you’re miserable.” I think my experiences in childhood granted me resilience here.

• Day 10: I continued to not meditate and instead thought about other things. This is the day we were finally allowed to talk to each other. This was a huge relief. A weigh lifted from my mind. I felt saner. The day passed quickly after the talking was allowed.

• Day 11: We were told the day ended at 6:30am, but surprise! They added 2 hours of mandatory meditation/discourse starting at 4:30am that morning. And, they asked us to stay and clean, which took about 2 additional hours. I didn’t drive away until 9:00am. But at least I was free.

Why it was worth it

I’m really selling the misery of this experience, but I’m glad I did it. I had some massive insights into myself, things that will prove immensely valuable for as long as I live. Here’s a few of them:

• I figured out that my back muscles are shot. Until this week, I’d been too busy to slow down and investigate this, including the nerve pain I was feeling whenever I tried to sleep on my left side. I just assumed I was getting old, or I needed new pillows (and I’ve spent about $250 on pillows in the last year). With my free time, I spent about 15-20 hours massaging my back with a lacrosse ball, and now the nerve pain is gone when I sleep on my side. It’s also more natural to stand up straight; my shoulders hang properly. I know you may be thinking, “This is a small thing,” but sorry, no. It’s been 2 years and I never figured it out, and my sleep was taking a huge hit. Who knows how long or how much this situation might have deteriorated before I had a clue.

• With the meditation, I was able to observe my anger before/after. I clearly noticed the chemical certainty that came after I had a surge of anger. Because there were no distractions, I had two strong senses of my mental states (the before/after) to compare with each other, to understand what was going on. This will help me, in the future, to doubt whatever resolutions come out of my anger, and to avoid making a situation worse with my unfounded certainty.

• I was able to talk myself through a panic attack. Now I know I can do that.

• In the downtime, I was able to see my “daddy issues” clearly: namely, the way I am numb to men treating me badly in the shortterm, though it eeks at my soul in the longterm. There’s some theories about daddy issues out there that never resonated with me, but using my own experience, I was able to come up with a theory I like and understand. Maybe one day I’ll write about it in more detail. Just looking at the effect now, it’s a lot easier for me to accept that — no actually, he doesn’t really give a shit about you, that’s why he’s treating you that way. Unlike your father, there’s no reality where he actually does care deep down. And to let that go — because you don’t get to be liked by everyone. And to give your time to the people who actually do treat you well.

• I came up with solid ideas for 2 writing projects. One of them is a novel I was able to flesh out the bones of.

• I though through many small, future life things — family, career, health, etc — various conundrums, probably 6-7 different things. For instance, I came up with a mindset with which to approach my career, which feels more peaceful, sustainable and true.

• I loved giving up my cellphone, and experienced the value of not having a distraction at hand in any given second. I’m looking into the Light Phone at the moment. I’ll keep my smart phone for travel and for some dedicated tasks around the apartment, though.

• With meditation, I learned how to manage the sensations of pain better. I observed how I often run to pleasure to escape painful things.

• As I said earlier, I observed how I use “I’m bored” to rationalize giving up on my goals. I know now to dissect what that actually means.

• As I was thinking of my writing ideas, I caught myself in this pattern of thought where I’d like something and then 5 minutes later think, “Well, I’m sure my instincts are totally wrong and it’s actually bad somehow.” I saw how much I gaslight myself. I know that shows up when I write a lot, and I’m sure it shows up in other areas too. In the last few years, I’ve been building up my artistic confidence, and this is just further progress towards that goal.

The silence & disliking people

I’ve heard it said that 70% - 93% of all communication is nonverbal. During the 9 silent days, I noticed there were 2 women I had a strong negative reaction towards. To put it plainly, I didn’t like them. However, I wasn’t sure the basis of this judgement, so I was laughing at myself as I was thinking it. I kept trying to analyze what was going on.

I’m not going to go into much detail here, since I’d be horrified if they ever saw this post. It wasn’t intentional, and I don’t think my judgment should matter that much here. It was more interesting just to observe it happen. If I were in the normal world, would I be as aware that this was happening? Probably what I’d do is gaslight myself and say, “You’re crazy, you should like these people.” But in a situation where we haven’t even talked, and I feel so strongly about it, I didn’t even attempt to try to reform my perspective. I let it be.

It was a good lesson to me, because I don’t think I’m unique. Sometimes people will just get a sense from you, based on nonverbals and their subconscious, and they just won’t like you. And there’s nothing you can really do to change that. They’ll use your verbals to justify their position (which is what I did on day 10, when we were talking), but really the judgment is based on something larger than that.

It’s an important lesson for me because, in the past, I have fought for certain people to like me. I’ve seen people disliking me as a challenge.

Miscellaneous

It was nice to finally talk to people. There were mysteries throughout the week I wanted to solve, like, who pounded on the wall on days 8 and 9? I was able to track that person down and laugh about how alarming that loud knock was amid the silence. (She was knocking at the course manager’s door, which makes sense, but I thought it was someone knocking on a wall.)

Although I was turned off by Goenka himself, everyone who worked the retreat was incredibly nice, supportive and chill. One of the servers even went out and purchased my allergy medicine for me because I hadn’t brought enough and left it at my door. So amazing! (Oh, you’re allowed to talk to the teacher or course manager about things; it isn’t complete silence. You just can’t speak to the other students.) So, you feel the love from everyone.

It wasn’t that hard to be silent. It was hardest in the dining hall, because when you’re trying to get your food in a confined space, “Excuse me” has so much utility. But we muddled through. Also, the silence was always weird out on the walking trails. You’d pass a student… in total silence. There’s something unnatural about that.

We weren’t supposed to kill bugs, so I had some exciting experiences relocating spiders out of my room using a yogurt cannistor and a piece of cardboard.

On day 10, after we started talking, everything was so funny. We were all high with relief. A modest joke would have the room rolling.

After I left

I could feel how addicting the phone felt. The touch/scroll thing is mesmerizing to the mind. Soothing. Yikes.

Initially, I drove for 1 hour in silence, just processing everything. Eventually I thought, “I guess I should listen to some music, since that’s what I’ve been really wanting to do.” When I was bored in my room, I’d quietly sing songs to myself.

My first song choice was “The Ascent of Stan,” and my God… that experience. I heard that song differently than I normally did. The haunting piano melody. Then when the chorus kicks in, with that pounding beat. Beautiful.

This song is newly special to me.

I’m seeing Ben Folds in concert next month!

Going forward

I plan to keep on meditating. I’ve been doing 20-30 minutes in the evenings and mornings, each. We’ll see how that goes.

I tried reading this novel when I was 17. I got very close to the end, and gave up about 7/8 through. I didn’t know it at the time, but a lot of the plot points and nearly all of the character psychology went over my head.

Well, my coworker recently talked me into trying it again.

I devoured it

I deeply, deeply loved it. I was reading the Count’s dialogue out loud to myself, so I could savor it. What a great character!

The writing was amazing. Complex characters. Realistic, interestingly structured scenes. Humor. Suspense.

And I loved the irony of Edmond Dantes interacting so much with the young man who should have been his son. I loved their relationship. The moment when the Count (who is Edmond) starts teaching Albert (who is his enemy’s son) how to deceive people… so good.

Literary criticism about a nearly 200-year-old novel

But everything after the duel turned sour. It was like I was reading a book that wasn’t finished, an ending that had never moved beyond a first draft.

Later I learned that The Count of Monte Cristo has two authors. Alexander Dumas collaborated with Auguste Maquet, whom he collaborated with on several of his novels. At one point, Maquet sued Dumas for more money, and the judge ruled in Dumas’ favor, saying,

"Dumas without Maquet would have been Dumas: what would Maquet have been without Dumas?"

So, my theory is that Maquet wrote the ending, and Dumas never had much of a hand in it.

But without further adieu, here’s what I disliked about the ending — and I stewed on this stuff for quite a while! These are raw notes, so I apologize for their courseness.

• Villefort going mad… it happened so quickly, I didn’t quite follow it. He was suddenly interested in the poison problem, and then seeing his son made him go mad? Huh? The combination of these make it feel messy — just do one of these feeding into the madness. As it is, it seems like the madness is just a convenient way for the writer to resolve both of these developments at once. 

• Danglars… we wait until the end for his revenge moment, and how it’s resolved is the bandits capture him and he has to use the rest of his fortune going hungry. So he’s hungry, and then when Edmond Dantes reveals himself, Edmond just says, “Do you repent?” And Danglars says yes, and then that’s it. That’s it?!?!? WHAT. This is what we held off until the end for? Just a moment of recognition for Danglars, and Emond saying one thing, and we’re done?! This is the moment you save for last? What a joke.

• Edmond Dantes thinks, “Maybe I could love Haydee, maybe she does see me as more than just a father.” Oh, you didn’t get that by the fact that, about 40% through, she was begging you that she saw you as more than a father, and you rejected her? Leaving off the general commentary about this section, that it’s “creepy” (I don’t disagree; to modern eyes it is creepy). It’s just not compelling. The character wasn’t developed at all. She’s a nothing character. It’s “hot” that the Count gets her, plays into the fantasy of the character, but it’s not compelling. He should have ended up with no one. It should be have been…. He wondered if he could rekindle with Mercedes, and always kept her around, and stayed near her just in case she needed anything. And he watched Haydee grow and become interested in Albert, and that gave him enough meaning — through the two of them growing together, he felt like a grandfather, his two non-children, and since he was a non-human that felt appropriate. (I’ve rewritten this in my mind so it’s the true ending.)

• Am I crazy for disliking the resolve with Albert? I admit I loved their bromance. The part when the Count started training Albert on the art of deceiving people? Brilliant! Maybe that was just me, bringing something to the text that wasn’t there. It’s absolutely true that the Count was over-flattering Albert and faking him out, and I love that. And yet, was it all completely a lie? This is the character I think the Count consistently sweet-talked the most. Surely because of his love of Mercedes, he saw something compelling in Albert. It would have been nice if, after the duel, the Count thought — hey, this kid is a good kid, I’m going to make sure he’s safe from afar, and not spoil his development with my explicit presence.

• I liked the resolve with Eugenie and her tutor. I had been thinking Eugenie seemed lesbian-ish, and I was hoping the book wouldn’t be down on her for her love of art and desire to not marry. And bam, she was. A little too on-the-nose, but it was fun. She’s a minor character; I forgive being on-the-nose with them.

• I was waiting for a scene between Noirtier and the Count/Edmond, because I thought they were both badasses and it would be cool to see them sort of respect each other. Even better, Noirtier was indirectly the cause for Edmond's issues, and I wanted to see how they'd acknowledge that. There was a moment between them, but it was off-screen. WHAT. Show us that! I'll just have to imagine the moment; the Count approaches Noirtier, who is totally impotent by paralysis, and there's a moment where you think the Count will be mad at him, but he's not, and he says something like, "We all must act according to the dictates of our conscience" or whatever — and then they go on to have a discussion about how to handle Valentine, and they bond over their mutual desires to (1) change society and (2) help the young people.

• I liked the Debray character, consistently. Lucien Debray. I first fell in love with him when, as the book summarized: Madame Danglars was chatting about the Count to Debray, who was very interested. But when the Count actually entered the room, they’d both arranged themselves to appear disinterested in him. Madame Danglers was tinkering on the piano, and Debray was leaning against the end of the piano, thumbing through a magazine. What a great moment! And I loved Debray’s resolve with him conning Madame Danglars. A nice closing scene with them in that rented room. They deserved each other (though Debray made out better from their relationship). 

• I was sad Franz was not a larger character, and that his history with the Count was never written. (Note: I’m not sure what “his history with the Count was never written” means anymore, but I’ll leave it in case it makes sense and I’ve forgotten.) I now think that the section where Franz met the count on the island, took the hashish and had the drug-induced dream… this was written after-the-fact in order to foreshadow/resolve the ending with Maximillian. Unfortunately, it indicated to me that Franz was a more major character than he ended up being. 

• I understand the utility of having the Count return to the Chateau D’If and relieve his trauma in order to spur on his veangeance (which actually, didn’t even happen, he leaned into mercy… but nice misdirection). However, it was pretty un-subtle. Worse, it opened us up to the psychology of the Count, when he’d been barred from us from the first part of the novel. I thought this was the correct choice, keeping him mysterious and at a distance, and I didn’t like this transparency at the end. I think it detracted from the strength of the character and concept. Here’s how I would have done it, if necessary: Show us from the prison warden’s point of the view, that the count is retracing this — keep us out of his thoughts. Then at the end, you can have some quick dialogue where the Count says he’s “resolved.” Then the guy still feels electric and dangerous. Resolved to what? we wonder.

• I can imagine a better ending, in my mind, with the Count staying near Mercedes and Albert. However, what I can’t imagine is the excellent dialogue and poignant arrangement of these moments. I suspect that is Dumas’s contribution to the novel, and that Marquet did the plotting/structure. I suspect that Dumas was more removed from the last 20%, and this is the steep drop in quality I’m seeing. The ending is thematically correct; or, I should say, it’s one version of thematically correct. But there are other thematically correct ways to end it — such as, leaning more into the tragedy of what Edmond Dantes undertakes. And, perhaps the reality of this would have been enough to pique Dumas’s interest and keep him engaged. I felt disengaged from the ending, so it’s not hard for me to imagine Dumas was as well. Of course, this is just my best guess about what happened there.

Other things I liked

• When M. Danglars confronts his wife, Madame Danglars, about her failed speculation. Debray is in Madame Dangler’s room, playing with Madame Danglars’s little dog on the couch. First M. Danglars bluntly tells Debray to leave, then he sits on the couch. When Madame Danglers’s dog comes to him, M. Danglars grabs the dog by the neck and hurls it onto the other couch. Madame Danglars is surprised by it. This sets the tone for the rest of the scene, including some electric, bitter dialogue. Striking.

• I’m betting this is one writer’s strength, probably Dumas — and without this brilliance, we’d just get a scene where the husband and wife talk, with a neat little pin in the end, “I forbid you to speculate again,” or something like that — just the rote building blocks, and none of the sizzling details that make it realistic and interesting on the page level. 

• I love the dialogue. The highest compliment is I was reading it aloud. 

Professionally

I’m been at my current company for 2.5 years. I’m not sure why I started out talking about my job, because it’s also the area of my life I’m mostly likely to sound really mopey and victimized about. This, despite having had two conversations with people in the last month who have looked with envy on my job and asked me how to pivot into my field. 

My current thoughts about my job can be summarized as: it’s difficult working in the corporate environment. You’re liable to run into people of various qualifications and moral standards, including those lacking in both. If encountering these kinds of people unsettles you, makes it so you can’t enjoy your days, stay away from corporate.

I’m likely to blog more about this in the future. Corporate life is new to me, and I’ve been chewing on the best way to approach it. I really appreciate my 2-3 friends who have expertise in this area, and who have discussed it with me, because I’m flying blind. (Ie, no one in my family has experience with it. I have 1 extended family member who has a corporate job, but we talk once every 2 years or so. We talk biyearly.)

As a human body

I moved apartments in October, and it’s taken a few months to catch up with the busyness of that. It has been an incredibly needed thing. I despised my last apartment; I spent Covid lockdowns trapped inside it, and there wasn’t even a balcony. My current place is on the ground floor, has a patio, and has trees and a garden just outside my window. It’s gorgeous. It feels like an English cottage, and I’m decorating it similarly. 

I’ve also lost 45 pounds, and I’ve spent about 1 year hovering there. I’m making more aggressive plans this year to break 50 and get beyond that. I’ve been doing “mindful eating,” which is tedious, but the point is you make brain changes; you only change things you want to change, after working through your desires and fears and so forth. This way, the progress you’ve made should stick around even through rough times — so they say.

Social life

I am dating and seeing good success there. Last year, I was hung up on creating a dating profile, but with the help of my wonderful friends, we were able to get some pictures I don’t hate and get that going. It’s only January, and I’m already on a third date with someone tomorrow. Dating is much easier than I thought it would be. It turns out, it’s really about being chill and having fun, and if it’s not that, I can find the next person where it is.

Last July, I accepted a position as moderator of a sizable online community I’d been involved with for 3 years. Moderating was a lot of fun, but I stepped down from the position in early December because it didn’t feel like a good fit for me. That sucked. I’ve been grieving it — honestly, it reminds me of what happens when you leave a church, which is something I’ve observed and experienced a few times in my childhood. The grieving has had its ups and downs, but I’m pleased that the sun has been peaking out from behind the clouds more often lately.

Life is short. Since we have a limited amount of time, it’s good to spend time on things that are actually furthering your life goals, giving you positive mojo, and so forth.

Entertainment

I’ve been trying to work on this. TV was a huge source of entertainment to me, and so was movies. But both have sucked in the last 5 years. So many things are becoming preachy, but honestly, the larger problem is that the writing is just not good these days. I’m not sure how this could be possible except to speculate that studios don’t value that, don’t know how to spot it, or aren’t rewarding it. You watch things from the 40s or 60s or 90s and the writing is often so crisp. Now, our best movies are 50% or 40% as good as those.

Remember that year when everyone was in love with that cowboy movie? What year, what movie was that? (Looking it up.) Ah, The Power of the Dog, 2021. People were going on about that movie, and guys, it was just OKAY. It was kind of sloppy, kind of mishandled in places. It needed a few more rewrites.

But, if you go back and watch HUD (1963, Paul Newman) — which is a movie I watched and rewatched in the last 2 years — it SINGS. A movie I’d never heard of before 2021. The dialogue is fire, the cinematography, the characterization, the story, the opening scene, the ending scene, all of it, exactly appropriate. It’s a film. 

So basically, you’re better off finding movies you’ve never heard of, from past decades, and trying those out… than you are watching anything being released now. 

And TV is similar.

I started watching Frasier.

Writing

I’m getting better at writing. I tried my hand at 3-4 short stories in the last 2 years, and they aren’t awful. I understand certain techniques much better. Right now, I’m a little burned out on a longer short story, and I’ve stalled out on the act of writing altogether. But I have a lead on what to work on next: my perfectionism. I need to give it up. I’m planning on journaling about that as soon as I’m done with this post.

Though, of course, it won’t be solved in a day…

Vacations

Last year, I went to Disneyland, Istanbul, Morocco… where else? NYC. I saw Josh Groban in Sweeney Todd and perused the MET Museum. This year, I’m going to lay low. I may do a local 10-day silent retreat in late April, and I’ve booked a writing retreat in November, during which I will see Chichen Itza. Yes, Mexico is laying low in my book.

By the way, the Morocco pictures are still incoming. I’ve been prioritizing my portfolio first.

Goals

This year, I want to focus on trying to be happy. Lately, I’ve been catching my mind going to worry — trying to find something to worry about, something that needs to be fixed. The reason my mind is doing this is so that, eventually, I will work myself into a place of contentment and happiness. So that one day I will look around and think, “Aha! That was the last thing that needed to be fixed! It’s all fixed now! Now I can be happy! Now I’ve earned it!”

However — and I don’t want to go too far into the theory of this — that’s not how it works. The striving never ends; the happiness never comes. You have to make it stop, on your own. And that’s my goal: to work on letting myself rest and enjoy my relative success with certain things. To want to be happy on par with how much I want to be growing. If it all works out, those will be in balance.

We met early, 9am, in the historical district. A taxi wound through the narrow streets near the waterfront, depositing me between a food-and-magazine vendor and an entrance to the subway. It was a little awkward at first, since I was the first soul on the scene, 15 minutes early. Various Turkish folk passed, going about their business, a few of them glancing curiously at me. I felt conspicuous until the other ‘white people’ started showing up, 7 of us total.

Our food tour guide appeared, introducing herself.

We all mispronounced her name from the email. Gonca. We took it like “Gonka,” but she told us it was “Gonja.” Turkish consonants.

And then, we were off to our first stop.

Tea! Turkish people drink tea with their breakfast. Coffee is its own thing.

Gonca had purchased “simit” for us, a bagel-like bread that’s a staple in their diet.

The tea place was down this alley. You see the tree trunk? I sat right next to it when I drank.

A cat clawed up the trunk and perched.

The above sort of mise-en-scene is so interesting to me. The blending of junk and beauty. There was a lot of that in the historical district.

Our breakfast was good enough. I like bread, so I liked simit — bland, like a bagel is. The black tea was fine, but immediately after this, she took us to an even better spot.

She explained things about how the tea was made. I do not remember the explicit details. Something about the clarity of the tea — holding it to light, you can see when it’s quality.

Then we sat down and had our breakfast-breakfast. (Our second breakfast.)

Turkish food is delicious. Easily some of the best food I’ve had anywhere in the world. Yes, doing this food tour increased the likelihood of me saying that (because I was being exposed to higher quality things), but I really dig the Turkish cuisine profile. It’s Mediterranean. Healthy.

Kahvalti - the Turkish breakfast. It’s cheeses, meats, pastries, vegetables, honey, boiled or fried eggs.

When Kristin and Mac took me to breakfast on my first day in Istanbul, they recommended kahvalti. I was thinking, “I’m on vacation, I want pancakes,” but I caved and did as the Romans do. It’s all delicious and fresh. So much of the food in Istanbul is the sort of freshness and health we pay extra for in the States, but it’s cheap there.

Below is rose honey… so good. I dipped the bread in it.

After this we continued our walk through the historical district.

Gonca took us to a store that made baklava. She bought some for us to have with coffee, but she left it somewhere at some point. So I didn’t actually try this stuff, which looks pretty great. (But I had a lot of baklava while in Istanbul.)

Another store. People were lined up here, purchasing their lunch.

I think we stopped at this store primarily for their restrooms, but it was cool to see the variety. There was a whole section of the store for olives.

We hopped in a ferry and crossed the river for our “East” portion of the tour.

(Note: this was a geography thing, an homage to Istanbul being the doorway between continents. We didn’t change up the cuisine.)

We ate kabobs. These were amazing. The meat, the vegetables, the bread, a perfect union. I could eat these every day.

Then we had this dessert… a pasta-like bread (striated, like lasagna).

Put some powdered sugar on top… so good.

Below, this was one of my favorite meals. I ate this my first night in Istanbul, and had it a second time here. I wish I could recreate this in the States. Maybe I can, but over there it’s just street food — abundantly available.

It’s a rice, bloated with butter, with chickpeas (yellow) and shredded chicken on top. Bland, so you spice it with pepper and fresh chilis. Delicious.

After this, we strolled through the market and saw many things. I’ll just share the highlights.

These, above, were almonds sitting in ice. (Looking at this photo, I’m realizing other nuts are sitting in the ice too. This must be about having them damp and cold.) It’s an interesting way to serve nuts, right? The skin came right off, because of the moisture, and they were soft to chew.

Muscles. Ganca couldn’t purchase these for us because of the risk of food poisoning, so we bought them on our own. She showed us how to squeeze lemon onto them.

The muscles are pre-packed with rice and spices. I don’t like fishy-tasting things, or squishy texture, so these were a good way to say I’ve tried muscles. You’re mostly experiencing the rice.

Mid-afternoon, we stopped for Turkish coffee…

Gonca described to us what makes some Turkish coffee more quality than others. It’s about the foam on top. Coffee is served with Turkish delight — that one there is flavorless.

I really like Turkish delight. I like chewy sweet things (like gummy bears).

And then, pizza! This was called something else, but it’s essentially cheese pizza.

For our last stop, we went to this courtyard restaurant. The roof rolled back to show the tree above. (You can see the trunk there; the canopy is full of beautiful leaves.)

We tried raki — Turkish alcohol. It was good! Kind of like vodka.

The whole tour was 8-9 hours of walking around, so I went back to Kristin and Mac’s stuffed full and exhausted.

It was a great experience. In the future, I’m going to do food tours in places I visit (time permitting). I always wish I’d try more food, and this is a way to knock that out.

Next post, I head to Morroco!

To explain why I went to Istanbul, I should tell that you that I also went to Morocco. I’ve wanted to go to Morocco for the last 15 years of my life, and this year, I did go.

The thing about Morocco is that it’s hard to fly there from the States — there’s very few flights that are direct, at least not from Atlanta. I don’t like the stress of the failure points that are connections, and I usually shell out extra for direct flights. For Morocco, the advice is to do a longer layover in a European city. So, looking at my options, I decided to swing by Turkey for a 4 days and visit my friend Kristin, and her husband Mac, whom I had yet to meet.

It turned out Istanbul was my favorite visit of the whole trip, even beating out Morocco — for reasons I’ll go into in the Morocco post(s). I want to go back to Istanbul one day.

While in Istanbul, I stayed in a small house on the edge of a large forest north of the city. This was the view outside my window.

This part of the city was more poor than others — at least, it seemed so to me. Don’t quote me on that. There were chickens and roosters and goats and so forth, but the area is built up enough that it felt odd to have farm animals. Hearing them was relaxing, though.

This is the view of the road. It’s the blue house on the left, where I stayed.

When I showed up on Saturday, this whole road was transformed into a farmer’s market / bazaar. We had to go through someone’s bag shop (purses, suitcases, etc) to get into the house.

The next day, Sunday, was a runoff election. We went sightseeing all day, and when we got back we could hear gunshots going off. I was worried; I wasn’t sure if the election news was good or bad, if they were angry shooting or happy shooting, or how xenophobic the election participants had been... I had no clue!

There was a man standing under the awning in front of the green house up there. As we turned the corner, we saw him firing off what looked like an automatic rifle down the street, in the other direction, pop pop pop pop. And with wide eyes, I said, “Get in the house,” and fast-walked in. We stayed indoors the rest of the evening, while people continued to shoot guns and drive by with loud, happy music. (Turns out they were happy.)

It was an interesting evening.

Elsewhere on the street…

The mosque, which would play the call to prayer at regular intervals (as all mosques did).

There were cats everywhere. It was the same in Morocco.

The first Sunday when Kristin and Mac took me out, the weather was awful and I didn’t get amazing pictures of the mosques.

But the architecture is still gorgeous…

The beauty in all the details is dizzying. It’s the sort of thing that brings tears to your eyes. It’s humbling. Peaceful.

This mosque is the Blue Mosque. I thought that this was the mosque that I’d had on my desktop background for 4 years, but that was actually the Süleymaniye Mosque, and I saw that later. That’s near the end of this post.

Inside these mosques, you’re required to cover your hair if you’re a woman.

Renovations of the interior were just completed after 5-ish years, so it was a busy spot.

It’s really impossible to capture the beauty of these ceilings on camera. Some of these, I just zoomed up on the detail — that’s the one area a camera lense can improve on reality.

I love how that vertical pattern erupts from the bricks. And, you could hardly even see this from the floor of the mosque.

The way the gold catches the light.

The texture of the stone.

Okay, let’s take a break from the mosques! We’ll get back to them.

Roman stuff

It turns out the Romans were also in Istanbul Constantinople Byzantium. They moved the capitol here. This is called the “Stone of Million,” and was built in the 300s. It used to be a triumphal arch.

It’s funny because people are generally just walking past it, ignoring it.

It marked the miles to different locations in the Roman/Byzantine Empire. “All roads lead to Rome.”

There’s this dump right next to it.

Under the ground in this area, there was a cistern built by the Romans — the Basilica Cistern. Constantine and Justinian both took part in building then expanding this (200-300 AD).

Funny story: it costs about $25 to walk through this thing, but I didn’t actually pay. I couldn’t find the entrance, and I mistook the exit for the entrance and just wandered in against the flow of traffic. Of course, at a certain point I knew it was the exit — but I kept going because, if this had been a Disney theme park, someone would have said, “Hey, this is the exit, don’t enter this way,” and I would have said, “Great, can you tell me how to find the entrance?” and everything would have been okay.

Sometimes the quickest way to figure out the right way to do something is to do it wrong and wait for someone to correct you.

But, no one corrected me! None of the guards gave me the time of day. (Yes, I tried to get the attention of one, but he kept talking to other people!)

Anyway, I bought something from the gift shop, so. It’s all good.

It’s so cool to imagine this place without those bars, just the stone.

Galata tower

This was a watchtower built in the 1300s during the Ottoman period.

I’m scared of heights, and going out on the deck was difficult. I forced myself to do it, but I couldn’t enjoy it and quickly slunk back inside. The railing is so low that if feels like you’re going to just flip over the side.

That’s the Suleymaniye Mosque up there.

These chains are interesting. They were used over the course of six or seven centuries (800-1400ish). They extended over the river and prevented ships from entering the bay/harbor.

An assortment of memories

Istanbul is hilly and made for some interesting streets.

This is a university bookshop. Browsing cats.

This is a Russian style house. Istanbul used to have a lot more of this style of architecture in its very recent history.

We ate at this cafe near the Basilica Cistern.

Baklava (delicious!). Black tea.

Kristin, trying to figure out where the cotton candy is. There was a Turkish kind of cotton candy she wanted me to try. Because this was the election runoff day, a lot of places were closed, and the city was pretty empty.

The “Spice Bazaar.” It’s a touristy spot. Locals shop elsewhere.

A cafe I wrote at — a few hours here.

Apparently these steps are a hot Instagram spot.

Men washing and removing their shoes outside of a mosque.

Finally, two more mosques

First, the Süleymaniye Mosque. This is my favorite mosque. Easily. I love the size of it! It’s intimidating. And I love the colors inside.

Inside…

Adore those pink stripes.

I wish I’d had more time to spend in this one, but I did sit on the floor for a few minutes. Notice the woman praying below, to the right.

Next, the Hagia Sophia. This was built in in 537 AD, which is nuts. It’s crazy how enormous this mosque is! It doesn’t seem possible it could have been built so early. It feels like something this big should have been built in at least 1500.

(This is not my photo! I just neglected to take an external.)

This was a Christian mosque. People associate this style of architecture with Islam and the East, but it began as a Western thing — or at least, it began as a Christian thing.

Inside, you can see the original Christian images.

This was the foyer where we took off our shoes.

In the main hall. It’s huge! Two floors of columns.

I believe there’s more Christian imagery around, but it’s been covered up. Controversially, the latest person in charge of Istanbul has remade this building into a functioning Muslim mosque.

Which feels sad to me.

After about 2 minutes in this room, I got kicked out. They were starting the call to prayer, and this is the men’s place of prayer.

The woman prayed here, in a smaller room to the side.

It felt sad to be kicked out of a place that’s more in line with my own religious heritage than the people who have claimed it. As I navigated the streets around the mosque, the call to prayer filled the air above.

Normally, I find the call to prayer to be mysterious and beautiful, but in that moment I thought the man’s voice was shrill and nasally, and far too loud.

Up next

Also in Istanbul, I went on a 7-hour food tour. That will be my next post, and then after that I’ll go into the Morocco leg of this 16-day trip.

Then I got to thinking about West Side Story, another recent film that is masterful with visual storytelling.

Spielberg is a shepherd of people's attention and awareness.

To show you (“show don’t tell” right?), here’s a breakdown of the opening scene.

0:19 - "Slum clearance" sign.

0:49 - Overhead shot of the rooms, showing the actual destruction of personal items, humanizing it (bathtubs read well fom a distance?)

1:13 - Close-up of a wrecking ball, pulling back to show broken architecture (pretty shot!)

1:19 - Leading to an impossible(?) shot of another wrecking ball beneath it, so you get all the angles. You remember the symbol: wrecking ball. Spielberg often does impossible shit like this. Watch him close and you see it. I love him; what a trickster.

1:28 - Zooming down to the Jets erupting from the broken rubble -- a powerful symbol of their role and motivations in the movie.

1:38 - The paint cans. Their literal motivation in the scene; they're going to paint something. Spielberg always gives his characters motivation. This is a big reason his characters feel real.

1:45 - The snapping is a big thing for the West Side Story musical. He gives it a strong moment here.

2:00 - Intro of Riff and his girlfriend Grazi, who is a subject of conversation in an early scene later.

2:07 - The entire reason she's dressed skimpily is for the moment here, when Riff calls, "Jets!" Their eyes snap to him. Now you know this guy is their leader; only a leader commands a man's baser impulses like that. You also know they're the "Jets."

2:11 - Oh, but they like him too; look at the way they smile at him. (Source of conflict later, when their old leader tries to win them back.)

2:20 - "Men working." They are not.

2:26 - Their hostile relationship to the police.

2:52 - Another sell that the Jets value the group more than women; it's that important to them. And, a clever moment to be interrupted.

3:06 - Spielberg is very careful with the singing and dancing in this movie. Here he has the Jets ease into it. What they're doing in their dance initially fits with their motivations, too. (Ownership gesture, punching)

3:28 - Fucking great dance at perfect angles to show it off. Lots of that in this movie.

3:39 - Establishes their hostile-but-tolerant relationship with the Puerto Ricans.

3:57 - Here we see Riff adopting a newcomer in the group. This is important because of who they choose NOT to adopt later.

4:18 - Great staging of the Puerto Rican sign covering up the Irish sign; now you understand what's going on here, what they dislike.

4:37 - One thing I admire about Spielberg is he moves from implicit to explicit. He rewards people who notice stuff early. Now, for the idiots in the audience, you see what they dislike: "Puerto Rico" -- not just the flag, but the name is there. I shouldn't diss the audience idiots; this is also important for the smart viewers. You need to know things for a storyteller to build on them. Now we know for certain: they hate the Puerto Ricans.

4:44 - Riff tells the girl, "Beat it." Because he was just nice to a newcomer (and continues to be in the film), now you know they dislike her not because they aren't open to new members, but because she's different in some way: she's a girl.