MORROCCAN HIGHWAY
The Lions of Generosity travel red plains, across an open desert of low slung trees...on a taxi ride from Marrakech to Essaouira, the Atlantic coast waits. We have apologized for stepping on your beetle Marrakech, for swatting your tiny flies stuck to our walls impersonating cracks of plaster.
Squared haystacks dot the terrain, two trucks block our progress, two obstacles in the way of reaching 100 mph on this 2-lane highway. We have hundreds of miles ahead of us 2 lanes all the way. One truck turns we wait to pass the next. Navigating highways on foreign soil is a mirage, of course, we're foreign not the soil.
We've left the jesters of light and magic, the watersellers who will sell you the rain for a fair price. At the marketplace, birth of hustlers and survivors, rival orange-stands along the border compete for business...20 cents a cup for fresh juice...19 cents, 18 cents. Snake charmers hypnotize cobras with sensory overload. Snake's skin is reticulated chain, porous, lets every sound in...ssssskin is sssssensory magnet for sssssnake's body coiled on marketplace ground. They must feel/hear/see a million miles magnetized by light. If my every sense was heightened beyond recognition, I'd be hypnotized into doing anything too.
Pan-flutes and reed blowers penetrate steady rhythm of hand slappers, arryhtmitized mythics breathing ancient snores into smoked air. Swirled fabrics vortexed heads, wrinkled facings furrowed smiles. Side by side with storytellers and griots. Birth of spoken word has no TV, Word is TV. Multi-charactered one-man shows gifted with recollection, sharing a spot on history's time-patch, holding circles of listeners in tight attention who follow each movement with focused eyes. Hands move eyes, string-taut tied to fingers, to teller's parablia, to outcome of moral...
to window of burn, to smoked outdoor barbecue of dead baby lambs, to goat heads complete goat heads, to a feast of eyes and baby tongues, to ring bearers' come-ons, to whispers of pointed demons, to palms-up circumfery, to passers of light and dusk and outsider status, to maintaining different phases of full moon regalia. Water savior on dry land. An oasis of profiles in a land of skin. To the sellers of teeth on tables made of umbrellas. Conical-headed priest against an outline of smoke, rising from infamous night stench.
Gutted mime bats a million lashes, circling a crowd of seers. Insider says to be Outsider is to be. Yet Be'er says to be inside is. We pass fear of unknown on our super highway. Pass electric trees, shades that beckon. Desert is beauty to eyes of a smoked city. Better the smoke of sayers, smoke of magic outlined from night's carpet. Other taxis pass us, daring non-existent speed laws. Existing nonexistant resisting sized existers. Reflecting slays our distant vase, highway heat lines refract desert chops. Atlas Mountains at periphery, along road, women walk with balanced bundles on heads, postures and backs strong. Sense of straight is bred from ground. Camels and donkeys grazing, acres of land around each. Stone fence keeps the sheep in there is no gate, will keep the wolf out there is no wolf. Cows plod the road never stops.
We've crossed pinkies and have sworn to live outcome as it sways. To swim flow of life as each planned path is changed. As obstacles continue their insistence, as mounds appear in front. As each road flows before us, we cross pinkies as we travel the neverchanging horizon, and swear to the flow that lies ahead.
