TRANSITION
This I had a great weekend driving around Western North Carolina with Todd and Susie. But this morning I woke at 3 a.m. and realized that I had done nothing to get ready to go to Morocco in a week. I knew there was nothing I could do to get ready at 3 in the morning, but as I began to wonder what could go wrong I couldn’t get back to sleep. So finally I got up. And once up I didn’t do anything more to get ready ready than I had lying flat on my back. Instead I read about Putin’s problems in the Ukraine. I was all for the Ukrainians defeating the Russians but there was no way I could help them, either, at 4 in the morning or any other time. So I went back to bed and slept through taking the trash down to be picked up which is now something else I will have to do before I go.
But that woke me up and for the rest of yesterday and today I ordered stuff on Amazon and did the errands I need to do before going on a month away. And now I’ve almost cleared my list of things to do and am just waiting. Except for my electronic stuff I am packed in half a carry on bag, which was easy because I’ve done this three times already this year and each time take a little less.
There are other things that I should have done, that I meant to do, that I now no longer can do. Babbel urges me on every few days to continue learning French beyond the few phrases I learned in Paris months ago and have now forgotten. Too late to learn French, which is what is spoken in Morocco in addition to Arabic which I will never try and learn. I have a Kindle ebook on the history of modern Morocco which I guess I can read in Essaouria in addition to learning French.
But the real shift that happens when I suddenly wake up to the fact that next week at this time I will be walking on the wide sandy beach beside the huge fort, the Medina, where my Airbnb is hidden among the winding narrow lanes crowded with tourists. It is the sudden transition which wakes me up so that I suddenly am no longer coasting mindlessly along but am beginning to open up and concentrate fully. I should have started packing two weeks ago instead of just now because in those two weeks I would have been more fully alive. It is that feeling of being on tiptoe and not knowing what is coming next that makes travel so stimulating. Instead of sleep walking through the day as I do here I will have to wonder about how to find a good meal, how not to have my new iPhone lifted again, not get lost or miss connections, not know how to get along when the only languages I can speak are English, German and Hindi, how not to embarrass myself by somehow breaking hidden rules or expectation. And those are just the practical things such as packing is now. The really stimulating things will be to leave everything American behind, all the things I am used to, and to open myself up to the colors and smells and hustle and call to prayers of Essaouria. It is the stimulation of the feel of the new that will enliven me and make my time in Essaouria intense. All my lack of preparation will make the newness of Morocco even more intense. It will be the things that I can’t prepare for such as my pink house landlady in London inquiring about my bathing or doing Pilates on a mat on the kitchen floor when I was trying to cook breakfast, or in Paros, Greece, having my landlady inviting me to her kitchen table to eat a bucket of snails that she had collected in the mountains after a rain. Those are the things that I can’t prepare for.
The reason I am spending a month in Essaouria is not to learn French or the history of Morocco, it is to be alive in a way that only being in a place that is brand new to you can make you feel. I have already had a week of anticipation that has made me wake up and pay attention to life (riding around Western North Carolina had the same effect). Now I’ll have a month of uncertainty and delight, and then will follow months when the memories of my visit to Morocco will reenliven me as my memories of riding Amtrak, visiting London, Paris, Winsen and Naoussa have done all year since I was there.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 