Casablanca

Is where I just spent 6 hours... it's a ridiculously nice sports club/ outdoor pool thing, and i had the whole thing to myself. Now I'm a new shade of red, I thought the smog might protect me, guess I forgot my proximity to the equator. There's a huge pool, with rocks and palm trees and fountains and I had it all to myself... ahhhhhh... I read 1.5 books and also, just laid there. Alone. Then got to shower and get share a mirror with a totally unabashed woman, who sat down too close to me and let her pale doughy nakedness spill out into her lap while she blow dried her hair.

There are a lot of things my brother is jaded about, after having lived here for 5 years-the pollution, the traffic, the corruption, etc etc... but for some reason, this makes me like it more. The heady, sweaty air that smells like street meat, incense, asphalt, orchids (or some flower), tea, spices, astounding b.o., cleaning solution and ehxaust, and the humidity lets it stew and it smells like a city that's never stopped being 80 degrees and has just been churning and burning and it's never seen a blanket of snow or even a chilly night, just this hotness, this eternal flip-flop climate, neverending sweltering summer. The mishmash of random streetside businesses, the bike vendors that ride around neighborhoods, calling out what I hear as "ziiiii-ooooo" which I think is something to do with vegetables? The vendors everywhere with carts of huge fruit, or noodles, the huge mansions across the street from makeshift shacks, ditches filled with branded debris flowing next to huge beautiful balconied homes. It all reminds me that. I'm gone.

The taxi had to stop 2 times to ask someone on the side of the road how to get where i wanted to go. Kind of a helpless feeling, sitting in the back, motioning and speaking irrelevant syllables, hoping that if i point and repeat, he'll understand "uh, no keep going, keep going, straight, then left." He doesn't. And I guess it's human nature to still keep speaking, because I know he knows I don't understand one word he's muttering, so I smile politely, nod slightly. And still, we keep speaking. Baby gibberish at this point.