another life

2006-07-17T03:54:00.000-07:00

TOP 7 in order

2006-07-13T08:05:00.000-07:00

1, Emile: Or, On Education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Allan Bloom Avg customer review

2. On the Aesthetic Education of Man by Friedrich Schiller

3. The First and Second Discourses : by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

4. Habermas: A Critical Introduction (Key Contemporary Thinkers) by William Outhwaite

5. Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant

5. Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

6. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, by Rene Descartes

books I would like to read

2006-06-26T04:09:00.000-07:00

if anyone's thinking that they'd like to send me a birthday present, its books I want, as homecooking cannot be successfully shipped transcontinentally. I have a wish list on amazon.com but when I try to search it, its not coming up.
So. First try going to amazon.com and finding the section wish lists. Then search for lsthorizns@msn.com under the email option, because there are alot of benjamin dean bergers, and they have miserable taste in life. If that however does not work, I have taken the time to list all the books that are on it right here below. My suggestion it to buy used (but good condition) have them shipped to savannah, ga and then my parents can do a single shipment which will probably be the most cost effective. Sorry I dont have any updates, for theres been plenty happening. I write everything on my laptop and though theres an internet cafe fairly closeby, it doesn't have the disc port I need to transfer pictures etc. I have to go to Marakesh for that. But until then, I wanted you all to have this. Since this blog is directed to family moreso than my broke-ass-buddies, I feel comfortable signing,
With Love
Benjamin

Total Items: 20 Page 1 of 1 The Will to Believe, Human Immortality by William James Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $10.62 69 used & new from $2.68 The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1 : Reason and the Rationalization of Society (The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol1) by Jürgen Habermas Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $32.00 26 used & new from $13.20
Habermas: A Critical Introduction (Key Contemporary Thinkers) by William Outhwaite Price: $17.95 3 used & new from $12.50
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Routledge Classics) (Routledge Classics) by Max Weber Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $11.67 102 used & new from $2.98
On Charisma and Institution Building (Heritage of Sociology Series) by Max Weber, S. N. Eisenstadt (Editor) Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $30.00 24 used & new from $6.95 Max Weber : An Intellectual Portrait by Reinhard Bendix Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $27.50 19 used & new from $2.89
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $12.35 74 used & new from $9.89
Power and Terror : Postâ€“9/11 Talks and Interviews by Noam Chomsky Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $9.80 115 used & new from $1.18 Pirates and Emperors, Old and New : International Terrorism in the Real World by Noam Chomsky Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $12.60 74 used & new from $6.40
Multiculturalism by Charles Taylor, et al. Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $12.97 104 used & new from $2.99
The Birth of Tragedy (Dover Thrift Editions) by Friedrich Nietzsche Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $4.49 55 used & new from $0.72
The Genealogy of Morals (Dover Thrift Editions) by Friedrich Nietzsche Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $4.49 48 used & new from $1.57
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Great Books in Philosophy) by Adam Smith Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $10.01 59 used & new from $7.55
Critique of Practical Reason (Great Books in Philosophy) by Immanuel Kant, Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (Translator) Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $7.70 51 used & new from $4.96
Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, et al. Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $29.99 84 used & new from $3.50 The First and Second Discourses : by Jean-Jacques Rousseau by Roger D. Masters, Judith R. Masters (Translator) Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $12.95 77 used & new from $0.32
Leviathan (Penguin Classics) by Thomas Hobbes, C. B. MacPherson Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $9.95 Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, 4th Ed. by Rene Descartes, Donald Cress Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $8.95 99 used & new from $2.20
Emile: Or, On Education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Allan Bloom Avg customer review: Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $25.9565 used & new from $6.95
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (Dover Books on Western Philosophy) by Friedrich Schiller, Reginald Snell (Translator) Usually ships in 24 hours Price: $9.95 40 used & new from $5.49

my address

2006-06-10T06:26:00.000-07:00

currently relaxing on the beach after a long 3 weeks in sight. miss you guys. I hope you haven't all forgotten about me now that I can finally receive mail! I got to climb on the castle made of sand yesterday. you know.... some castles made of sand melt into the sea, eventually. its a big sand castle.

from jimmys song?

you guys suck.

Benjamin Berger
PB 43 Tnine Ourika
via Marakesh
Morocco

Whatever you wanna send me, letters, gummy bears, (the following word has been censored, do to concerns about our governments policy on domestic spying). It has been replaced with "shit." use this address until I tell you otherwise.

new post

2006-06-10T04:58:00.000-07:00

Tidings from a nomad
Visited my site this week, 10km from the biggest ski resort in Morocco, 50km S of Marakesh, elevation at about 7,000 feet. Its frigid, but as you can see from the pictures, breathtaking, literally. I don't have a project or any sort of task as such. I met my counterpart in Marakesh yesterday who was rather surprised that PC opted for the sight they did as it was not a priority for them. Safety and security issues I posited, using the Frenchified English words, then the Tashlihit, then I opted to my phone. Ur darns rizzo--no cellphone signal. (This is a better translation for what is meant by safety and security in the first place.) Nevertheless, I was pretty thrown off by this at first, not knowing whether I wanted to think about switching sites, cause like I said, its really cold up there. After a little deliberation I decided to push the ecotourism angle and proposed to work between my duwar and the ski resort, in hopes of bringing some of the ski bums that flock up there every winter into the park. The lady seemed enthusiastic about this, but its hard to know anything for sure here. There’s the language filter, the cultural filter, the gender filter, and There’s this sense that I'm starting to pick up that everything that’s happening was predetermined. Communication is really a process.
I had an experience last night that I thought summed up this experience well, and perhaps it will have some meaning to some of you. I walked out of the bar, a zwiyn hotel terrace sort of thing with overpriced sushi and heinikens and women, and I was trying to play a bit of late night soccer with these kids. Another man approaches, a shady sort, yet me fearless. Marakesh does this to me. A bit of soccer, but having forgotten my belt and mind stumbling, this had to come to a halt. Followed man into a nearby bench still visible from the hotel, where two others sat, drinking, smoking, kidding. Then one, slower than the others, pees in front of us.
Hshuma, shame on you, they say, and he defends his act defiantly. I don’t understand the argument except that my Americanness is a factor in the shame which he is bringing upon himself. Its all in Arabic. The talk goes like all talks go, questions you don’t care to have answered, but are asked simply because you know how. Then the slow guy asks me my name, me tired of this, because I've just shared all this information, so I told him my name was Mustafa, his name, which is of course the name of the Prophet also. He was very taken aback by this bit of news, questioned it for awhile, with me just iyyi iyyi iyyi, then guy #2 asks me the same, Mustafa I respond again, snu smitk? Abdelwahad he answers. That’s crazy, I say, me also, my name is Abdelwahad. Guy number 1 falling down laughing, the two others frustrated. Then they turn on me, something about speaking the name of the Prophet in Berber when they are Arabic, just because I am American (something something.) Me sitting, all three standing now, fingers pointing and suddenly I have to start defending myself. I've lived here only 6 weeks, Arabic, not yet, later, nshalla, permit me, My meaning is nothing, here my friends. They start laughing and patting me on the back, and I laugh with them and return to the bar quickly. Safi, Baraka, Bsslama. I take the elevator and it occurs to me that elevator operators are saints,
bowing their heads as people enter and exit, ferrying them up and down amidst drunken excesses. I say Nshalla again. I have no angle really, no orientation, and I can't really even tell if I'm in motion or not. Usually it seems everything is happening so rapidly, and then I stop and realize that I'm just a tourist aspiring to be more, and perhaps I'll get there at some point, but until then its just Bonjour ceva? Speak English? I give you good price. Friend price. Everything quality...............................is tsawlt Tashlihit?
is tsawlt Tashlihit?

Everything has an echo. At first I thought it was just rote repetition learning. People asking me the same questions again and again, my response, reword the question, my response the same, more adamant. mezziyn. But I hear it more and more. Words under people breath that no one else seems to notice. A woman gets into the bus, and we hear her say before she closes the door don't forget to wash her feet, addressing an older girl regarding a young child. Don't forget to wash her feet, she says again 3 minutes down the road, aloud. No one notices except me, men talking to men, not concerned with Chris Stapor's phenomenology.

Some thoughts on Hui, the first volunteer to early terminate, in no particular order. Born in China, moved to Savannah and learned English at Jenkins High. More comfortable speaking ghetto, but comfortable enough not. Lived on a fishing boat in Alaska for 6
months, then Hawaii. Boy there, tentative, not really anything she says. The Asian way, I think. PeasCorn isn't for her, she thinks. Still feels the upward pull of the American Dream, for she just arrived this generation, and she is still succeeding. Doesn't feel the guilt of living a frivolous life since the day we were born simply because we were free to. Something else she feels brought her here. The adventure for certain. The idealism too perhaps? Wants to head to the Netherlands, or maybe Spain. Family in the former, maybe a job teaching English in the latter. Spain sounds like its more a dream then a possibility. Always got the fishing job in Hawaii with the boy she is in all likelihood terrified by. Terrified in a way I cant remember being but used to be. We'll never be men in the eyes of these girls until we are married and they are as well. Maybe not even then, but for different reasons.
When we arrived in Orzazate she was great with the young girls. They all adored her, gave her their jewelry, and she panicked about whether or not to accept it. I remember talking to her about it, when I was still active, outside, was driven first and formost to integrate and learn the language rather than create a new self for myself. Under the banner or artist or activist, I will sound my homecoming. I remember telling her she must accept them and pay them back with gifts of her own. Make of your gifts what you will, I told her archaicly. She wanted to know what I meant, which I knew to mean she knows what I mean, but wants to know what exactly she has to give. It is strange when love finds you and you are only struck by the absurdity of it. How do you respond to such love? I have always respected her a great deal because of these girls, for she deserved their love, earned it without trying, and never sought to ignore it when it was made visible to her. Frightened by it yes. But a most worthy fear.
A Moroccan asked her tonight why she was leaving? She asked me how to say that she had to go. "You can't" I tell her. You can say that you want to go. You can say that you are trying to go. You can say that there is no other choice. But that would be a lie wouldn't it." "What other reason do you want to give him?" "I just want to say that I have to" "Shallah. God wills it." But that wasn't it either. I don't know if it would have been comprehensible had she said it. God wills a different sort of thing, colds in the winter time, soar throats if both passenger and driver windows are open in the car, things that oppose western science, but I have yet to determine whether God can will a person's decisions though they ought to be, and indeed are, subjected to a persons deliberative capacity.
She's a scientist on a very fundamental level, and foreign to me for it. I asked her once why the sky was blue, and she likened me to a child. Doesn't everyone learn this answer when they are 6 or 7 when they ask that most natural question for the first time. Me realizing I'd always assumed that question to be relatively inexhaustible. Different people, different states of minds, a new mythology with every answer, forgotten shortly thereafter yet retained somehow. Hers had something to do with light rays, angles of refraction. Struggles with spontaneous music, for she wants answers that are closer to fiction than fact. Paints too. I found this out today.
She would have made a great volunteer if she had more of that stupid, stubborn American will so many of us have to blind ourselves to everything but what ought to be best in any situation. Drink ourselves into a sexual oblivion, forget about the guilty days that proceed them, and blur those moments
with the rest of our life, forgetting details, categories, everything, something integral to this experience. The overall experience. Everything in its right place. This concept is easy for us who have so little moral conviction. For her it takes a good deal more self-knowledge. Which she seems to have.

grace is a gift for the fallen dear
you’re an angry blade and your brave
but your all alone
turning the shape of an angel born
on the trampled edge
when the doors of heaven closed

---------------------------------------------------
So after a brief lapse in journaling these last few weeks, I've now entered phase two of this experience. I've gone from being surrounded by Americans and bombarded with cultural, technical and language training for 10 hours a day for the last three months into the radical shock of having no one within 40 miles who speaks any English and having absolutely nothing to do. I live high upon a mountain, 10 km from the biggest ski resort in Morocco where I am able to watch tourists, Moroccan and French alike, ride past my little village without stopping. Day trips. Driving aimlessly. The last week before swearing in was a crazy one.
25 more new volunteers from the Health Sector rolled in and the partying didn't stop all week. It wore me out quite honestly as the whole time I struggled to keep in mind the change which was about to occur. A change which is first and foremost rooted in linguistic difficulties. And so here it is. Day four. Two years begin today. But permit me to back up, Tuesday. I wake up from the rooftop early, happy I'd stopped concolculating at a reasonable hour and had steered away from drink. I pack up the rest of my things, rounding them up from various peoples rooms and head over to a café where I try to order a smoothie but wind up with OJ. Frustrating because there were two options, smoothie and orange juice, and I asked specifically for "that one" and pointed, mashi Easar limon. Not Orange Juice. He hands me orange juice, and I have to argue with him that I will not pay ten d.H. for a glass of OJ because it should be 2 and I have precious little money. I finally give him the two and walk out, giving the 5 dirham piece he was pressing me for to a particularly annoying beggar. There is free Orange Juice in our hotel. I wanted a smoothie...
I lug one 50lb bag and my mandolin over to the bus station where I have a confusing exchange with the ticket taker to watch my bag, I have another one that I need to bring. He wants to know what’s in them. Everything I have. Kulshi dari. He is still trying to guess where I am from when I leave. I concoculate another wild story out of some leftover experiences from the night before, and roll into the madness of 50+ volunteers all saying goodbye to each other and reality as they know it, with a big smile on my face. Dieteresque. Much of the time I have been intimidated by these people, their numbers, their volume, their virility, but waking up before others always gives me a sense of my own power. Move confidently into their midst. After the final week it seems to me everyone is saying goodbye to the wrong people. The relationships I did forge over the last 3 months seem to have given way to awkward morning-after-sensuality sentimentalities. I am not a part of these and smile at them, yet I am saddened by them as well. These people are not my America, indeed I have always known that my people were not America at large, yet there is a strange nostalgia in watching them. Feelings are very real to them. I generalize.
The bus is leaving now, and I find myself sitting by our language instructor, female, age 25-30, extremely well educated, and probably the most meaningful connection I have made thus far in Morocco, certainly with a Moroccan, yet I am made uncomfortable by this. She is veiled, and it occurs to me that I have never seen her, and do not want to see her, though perhaps it is her innermost desire to be seen. I cannot pine for you. She cannot understand me on matters concerning sexuality and relationships. She knows the motions but not the impulses and experiences which are behind the actions she has identified as having to do with American courtship. She hugged me once, and I called her out on getting lessons on how to hug. Its very very awkward to hug Moroccans, and it was evident that she had practiced. Anyway, my goal was to make it through these last two days, and I keep averting myself. We sit together on the bus, I fall asleep for the first half of the trip, and after successfully ordering some chicken kebabs at the halfway stop, I sit down with her again and have her help translate a speech which I will make to my village whenever the moment is ripe. We roll into Marakesh at about two, me thinking I needed to find this very specific stamp which was sold only at certain tobacco stores, along with 16 pictures to process my identity card before I rolled out of town and up to my site. This was a process I should have given more time to, for by 6 I had abandoned the mission and was playing music on the patio at a Pizza Hut which
was the best damn meal I have eaten in months. I ended up staying the night at our favorite cheap hotel, sleeping on the roof in order to save 20 dhs, waking up at 4AM to 6 Marakesh minarets harmonizing in a earthshaking call to prayer. I prayed, just because I was awake, and I didn't see anyone else. Oh God who are our winged self...
The morning was pleasant, I never went back to sleep but read a little more, letters, books, wandered around talking to OJ venders, watching people set up their stands and vye for the best positions. I value my connection with this life (snocones) a great deal, but though I remember it all fondly, I forced myself to cast off all American nostalgia today. Today I was in a different place. Studying my speech, running it by some guys selling straw hats. I thought I'd met one of the guys before but he didn't remember me and said it was his brother. Maybe it was. They liked my speech. They laughed where I thought they would. Humor is always the test. Its really a challenge to tell a joke in another language, especially since our cheapest form of comedy, sarcasm, is not really understood here. If you can make people laugh when their supposed to, chances are they wont laugh at you. Comic relief is really necessary when dealing with all the translation difficulties. If you don’t make them laugh, they will laugh at you when you don't want them to. Furthermore, when you absolutely least want them to, that will be the moment where they not only laugh but break off into full scale Tashlihit and begin telling jokes at your expense. These jokes you will not understand, but you will smile and hate yourself for smiling.
(evan, I will always think of you when I slip into the you form)
I successfully orchestrated a process by which I moved 120 lbs of stuff about a half mile from our hotel to the taxi stand and picked up the pictures I got taken earlier that morning with compliments on my language. These go along way because they’re really big on constructive you suck criticism here. Immediately I got into a heated argument with a guy at the taxi stand who wanted 150 d.H. to take me 20km, and after walking away from him furious, another guy came over in a Mexico soccer jersey and started spitting English at me. I will take you and you bags for 100dh. The hell with you all I said and sat down by myself to play mandolin and the waiting game, happy to be able to respond angrily in my mother tongue. We finally got down to 40dh for me and my bags, (I'd done it for 15 before but I was tired of arguing. Then Mexico, who was a business partner with the first guy starting asking that I make a gift to him for helping to bring the price down. Money? no. 10dh? No. Pen? What you means this worthless pen that we have millions of in the back? No. Haha. Moving on. Taxi breaks down. Two hours. Some people stop. They look under the hood. Then they leave. Nothing changes. I ask a young couple who’s been sitting in the front seat if they speak English or Tashlihit. They say no and then the girl continues to repeat my question like 8 times and they have a good laugh about it. Would it have been just as funny if I had said Spanish or Hindi? If so how? If not why not? Humor like feelings are a social construct, but there is more universality in humor than feelings. Feelings are beyond me here. Anyway, we finally get picked up, and after a drive that I know is too far given where I need to go (I've done this before), we end up in the City of Fatima, There’s the hand with the eye on it painted on a rock, which incidentally is called the hand of Fatima. I meet a guy named Mustafa after a little wandering, he speaks good English, and I'm hoping to land him for a tutor. Anyway, that in itself totally trips me out, and I try for a moment to explain why this is all maktoub. He tries to follow me, and then loses interest as a bus pulls up full of tourists. He strikes it up with three girls from Rabat game face on, me not knowing how I fit in the picture. I want to help this guy out, but I don't know whether I am an asset to the cause or need to get out of the way. I flirt with the 2nd prettiest one, kissing her hand, and she gives me her address in Rabat. Like I'm gonna find this girl in Rabat. It seemed empowering for her. Anyway, I eventually end up on a bus out of town, back the way I came in, and after about 30 km, I'm on the side of the road, 120 pounds of bags, everything I own here, talking to a kid. Eventually some more tourists pick us up in this minivan. Man speaks English, worked in the States. I'm talking to him, happy to have someone to converse with in English, but all the while nudging the 9 year old in the backseat saying man, this is a pretty zwiyn (classy?) ride, eh, meaning that there are no farm animals riding inside it with us. Don't misunderstand me. Souk busses have more personality then all the Rav-4s Michael Wilsons parents could purchase.
We roll into my site at 4:20. Since then I've been running around trying to get certain personal priorities in order and making myself visible. Its really tough to try to learn 400 people names all at once. They’re are only like 9 names to choose from, but that still isn't very good odds. I checked out the incinerator that the last volunteer built them in 2002. Did a little inquiring about a house. No leads. The impression that I have is they want me to live with a family for all two years, probably because there is no available housing. And so perhaps I must build. The most important thing is my own kitchen where I can fry my neighbors chickens, and the freedom to burn whatever I need to to keep myself warm this winter. Dinner calls.

Well the world made me long for you
But I'll never belong to you

---------------------------------------------------

Today rolled in early it seemed, but I found a strength I haven't had in a long time to hurl myself out of bed and get going on a good note. Finally feeling like I'm settling into the routine of nothingness, surprise, surprise, it didn't take to long! I have a couple cups of coffee with my host family. Their youngest son is home from Marakesh for the weekend where he works. Sleeps until 11. I can only imagine what he thinks of me as he nor his general age group of 16-23 have given me the time of day. No matter really. These are the sustainable future that I will eventually have to forge the tightest alliances with and will probably be fighting for them most, but all that in due time. I don't want to tag along with them and settle into that roll. I'm happy to play the fool with the younger kids. Anyway, coffee, Tashlihit. At about 10:30 I roll out and go for my first walk of the day. I decide early on that I'm gonna buy a pack of smokes today, so that was my first stop. Underneath the store that sells cigarettes, I see three men butchering and skinning a sheep. I tell them this is something I've never seen before. It’s a fascinating process, you guys really wouldn't believe the steps that have to be taken just to avoid having sheep shit in your dinner, my dinner. kif kif. There were good laughs, and anyway there's always that. I discovered that the imam of the village is also the butcher, although he doesn't butcher the animals himself anymore, he has two sons. I thought that was just splendid that there was no contradiction in this. But since you must kill to eat and rob the newly born of its mothers milk, let even this be an act of worship. Just as you were delivered into my hand, I too shall be delivered into a mightier hand. Your blood and my blood are naught but sap which feeds the tree of heaven.
From there I went and checked out that trash incinerator again. I have no idea how it works, even opens and as people are realizing that I work for the same people as their beloved volunteer Michael from long ago, they seem to have developed the idea that I am here to fix their incinerator. Knowing this, I'm hesitant to get sucked into having exclusively incinerator conversations with anyone because I don't have a clue what their problem with it really is, unless its simply that they don’t use it, and because I don't want to explain this misunderstanding to 300 confused Berbers at a later date. Nevertheless, I'm getting such a plethora of information right now that I think I'm just gonna roll with it. I finished that examination hearing explanations such as we don’t know how it works, its broken, its too small, and it has too much smoke and the imam who gives the call to prayer right above where they put it doesn't like it. I tell them to burn incense with the trash as a joke which they do not get or appreciate. Was it a joke or wasn't it? That’s always the question.
I head up to the roof and talk to these two kids. We watch everyone who's out and about and I scribble down names, nicknames (at least I think that’s what I was getting) bits of information, and my own observations. The teeth are strangely the most affective way of identifying people for me right now. Isn't that the way archeologists date stuff. Something like that sounds familiar to me, but no matter really. Tolstoy says at the beginning of Anna Karenina a that all good families are more or less the same buy all bad families are each bad in their own way. Smyth would criticize me for paraphrasing without trying to adopt the style of the writer but I don’t want to lose the analogy which was my original intent. Bad families are like bad teeth, and to speak more generally still, families are essentially teeth, if we are given to value judgments, which you my friends, definitively....
Moving on, I get home, have lunch, tajin which is what I would have hoped for, and after a good meal I head up to the roof , me happy to be up there, breathin in that cool cool mountain air. I sat down with my Brothers K and remember why I was so excited for this two hour reading session. Having just finished the Rebellion and Grand Inquisitor sections its on to the Life of the Elder Zosima, listening to the Medeski album notes from the underground which tickled me at first, but ultimately wasn't appropriate and I opted instead for some Philup Glass.
Let me say it again. That is a phenomenal book. What’s less, but significant to me, and hence you all: that book did more to define who I am today than any book other than the Bible, and for you people that haven't read it, I encourage you to please do that, for the sake of your own impoverished souls.
I came down (from the roof) around 5, had another cup of coffee, and then headed out for my afternoon walk. I'm not feeling it right off the bat, but I promised myself 2 meaningful sessions everyday where I'm outside interacting. Two hours when you don't share a common language is definitely tripper time so please, don’t mock my meager goals! I decide to break off into a wooded section justifying my isolation with the notion that I need to check out the...um...environmental features, facets of this...um...lovely terrain. And then I remember my woodcarving ambitions. That would kill some time in a meaningful way me says to meself, and so I start to break off a piece of wood that looks like it would be a good practice piece. I'll be damned if the whole forest wasn't Chinese Tallow. I mean, every single tree. I asked someone about it--a good man, whose name I need to learn tomorrow--and he says its used for wood. He tears a piece off a tree, slices a neat cut along the base, and sticks it in the mud.

It will grow he says. I know. I have seen it, I answered. I'm not really eager to make the big discovery that Chinese Tallow is taking over Toubkal National Park and that drastic measures need to be taken immediately, but at the same time, I have this information. Next time I'm in Marakesh, I'll go by the Ag office and make sure their not using these trees for reforestation projects, cause that seems like its asking for trouble. Sorry, I'm just thinking this out right now. Which I guess brings us up to the present moment. Where the story stops and life begins. Living the dream, dreaming about tomorrow, and forever trying to eliminate that invariable lag and commit myself to one or the other. Wish you were here.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Another day in the life. I wake up this morning with anticipation and dread for the day that I’ve essentially been waiting for all week. Souk day. The day all the men go to the market and all business gets done. I have my one cup of coffee just before 7, singing Going to California, and yawning sleepily. Our first stop is the police station, always a wonderful thing to wake up to. Anyway, bureaucracy being what it is, there is a problem. The three twenty dirham stamps that we picked up last week on a trip to Marakesh are for some reason not the equivalent of one 60 dirham stamp, not for mathematic reasons they explain, but because there is simply not room on the card to put three stamps. Fair enough.
Next stop is the post office. Good news there, I got my post office box open, but this was an unexpected expense 80 dirhams I simply didn't have, and got from my host father on a loan which I have a feeling made it impossible for him to do the shopping he expected to do, which I naturally felt terrible about. He tells me about 8 different ways that he is going to Marakesh after this in order to get the stamps and orders me to stay where I am until 2 at which point the transport will come to take me back up the mountain. Let it be known that Marakesh is a trip, and the stamps as I witnessed before are a process, so I saw no harm in making better use of my time than remaining stationary in some café where all the well to dos of the area talk about their business. I decided instead to talk a walk down by the river with my Brothers K. I even stripped down to my boxers and took a dip, which was probably inappropriate for me, but all the kids where doing it and damn if it wasn't hot. Anyway, I passed a couple hours in this fashion, when I decided to move around a bit more. I ran into a group of three guys who immediately want to know if I smoke. I laugh. I have never I say. There's this one girl with them who’s really got a fire under her ass and keeps telling me that she will marry me if I make her a millionaire. She laughs at everything I say and do until I finally have to just quit responding to her. Anyway, things are starting to level out, and me and one of the guys start getting to a point where we understand how we can connect, linguistically and spiritually, cause with the absence of language, you've got to think about that spiritual connection more actively, when two police officers walk up.
Andek (be careful) I say. They break out in hysterics and all of a sudden I have the impression I'm being set up and that this is the moment which I will have to tell everyone about when I'm back in the states next week, cause you know, he's just holding it. The police officers walk up, and the girl starts raging on them. Well the end result is that the police sell them about 400 dollars worth of stuff for a cheaper price than they otherwise would have, all the while eyeing me suspiciously. I'm trying to prepare a response in Tashlihit, knowing they wont understand it when they walk off. My hearts pounding. At this point, knowing the kind of business these people are applying themselves to, I decide it would be better to roll out. Which I do.
I buy a couple single cigarettes, smoking one right way and sticking the other behind my ear. I have no money you see. These were my last two dirhams. The urgency of this reality starts to hit home, so I call home, talk to dad. Wire money. Something about a 10 digit code. See if you can figure it out and get back to me. I hate myself for about an hour after this call and say a prayer to Dostoevsky's hero hoping to strengthen this relationship. In the absence of personal relationships, it is important that one maintains a close bond the heroes of bygone days, my own, and history's. I also pray for mercy towards all that come before themselves--Glory to the highest in the world, glory to the highest in me--only afterwards trying to understand what exactly I mean in this. There is another encounter, two men. One eager to mock me, and one standing back, willing to try to understand. Its always like this. I wish the other would step forward and speak, but I know that it must be this way, for the other would not know what to say. After all, it was not him that called me over. This encounter is not notable really, except as far as it is indicative of the many meaningless exchanges that will take place over the next two years.
The money comes through, and suddenly I am a happy man, carefree. I buy a glass of orange juice, and then another, laughing at the guy when he tries to charge me 25d for it, and then hitting him in the shoulder when his next offer is 20. We finally settle on 2 after I walk off without paying him a cent and he has to chase me down. Another man befriends me, and we are off, buying vegetables, arguing prices, learning words, phrases. This man ought to remain a friend of mine, for he is wholly honest and humble. I buy some fingernail clippers with his help, but in trying to save a few Ds I end up with some really shoddy ones that are already bent after one use. No matter, this will last me about a month, and now I know where to get more. Im out for dinner. The rest I suppose is lost, for I'm not able to hold my memories in the state I'm in. There was joy and there was difficulty. So be it.

---------------------------------------------------------

Today I wake up early. Very early, for yesterday I did nothing but read Dostoevsky all rainy day long, which caused me to fall asleep about 10 minutes before dinner at 10:30, and so I woke up at 2 and after lying there for a while I got up, shaved, and started reading Dostoevsky. I've tried really hard to maintain a normal sleep schedule here because everyone likes to ask what time you woke up and it seems to be some measure of character, which of course it is, but in what way I don’t really know.
Point is I'm up early, and I'm reading the part where Kolya meets Alyosha for the first time--incidentally I’ve really warmed up to the Kids section of the novel this time around, last time thinking it was just necessary filler--and I was thinking how long its been since I've had a teacher in the real sense of that word and that today I must find one, if that is not asking too
much, for thou knowest our needs before they are born in us. So off I went at 6:30 hiking down the mountain, expecting to catch the transit when it came by, but ready to get going, out, go. By 730 Im back where I started, getting lured into the transit as its coming back up to my village to pick everyone up. I finally get off some 20km below my village, and begin what I expect to be a 20km hike along a river to the City of Fatima, hoping to find the same prophet Mustafa I spoke of earlier I believe. And so on the way their were stops.

First I stopped in at an art gallery of sorts, elaborately made wooden doors with bronze and gold moldings, fountains, 6 levels, marble and tile, beautiful stuff. I take a brief look but they see I'm not their clientele and lead me up to the roof, pointing out the different villages, their names, who lives where, etc. I nice stop. I yell jokes down at a rasta man who the other guys has named Bob Marley. Its funny. There are like 12 names here, MoHamat, Ali, Omar, Hsine, Mustafa, Rshid, Said, and Bob Marley is one of them. I suspect my name will change from Mustafa to Bob Marley as my hair continues to grow, which disappoints me a bit, but perhaps is in good taste, metaphysically speaking. My journey is just beginning. I head down a ways more and as I'm listening to a new Mahavishnu Orchestra album I picked up, I hear a Hello calling to me. It is a game for the merchants to be able to identify the nationalities of all the foreigners who walk by, and knowing this, when I hear hello instead of the bonjour I am accustomed to, I try to reward the person who guessed English. Here are two guys, one making beads, the other wanting to buy from me. I explain to him that I'm out. We smoke cigarettes instead and talk about music. I'm getting to the point where I can have those conversations, find out who the kids are listening to over here, where the concerts are, what the Eurotrash hipster have come to Morocco to see. We talk about the Ganowa festival in Essouria. 6 days. Not like the festival in the desert. There an orgy broke out last year. Big festival, more control. Yes man, I understand the difference between a festival with 400,000 people and one with 40,000. Still good times. I try to explain the concept of a glowstick, but I haven't tried to have that conversation without the DVD of the prophet to prompt the imagination. He listens to some Mars Volta, at first head banging, and looking very into it, then deciding its not for him. Not everyone is ready for Mars Volta...I understand this. I play him some outkast and we eat some cherries that I bought. Then I go. iexxayi ad ddug. baraka.
I come to a larger village, the largest I've seen all day, but I don't realize it yet, because I'm hungry, and stop on the edge of town.

I walk by a café, I have seen hundreds of them today, and looking inside as I pass, something calls me back. I go in, find out the tajins are over-priced and buy one anyway, for I'm really hungry for something with meat. A guy jumps up to shake my hand, and immediately starts speaking in English to me. I continue in Tashlihit, for it is always a shock and takes a second to switch over when someone suddenly starts speaking English to me. Tells me that he saw me walk by, he was asleep, and woke up, and he recognized my face, had seen my face before, you are a prophet, yes? in English. My name is Mustafa. And I am not a prophet, but an American artist. The men laugh, kneeslapping, the women whisper among themselves. They wonder if there is evil at work. The man tells me that he has no education, school of life, yes. There is a tribe of us, some from Norway, Finland, German, french, American, I know man people, they help me and I help them. One girl, French, came here and visited the area, decided not to go home, made it as a singer. Still has a house next door to him, but is always touring Europe now, with an act the strongly incorporates Berber folk music with a neo french cabaret thing. Its weird stuff, but new, innovative, and of course that is something. The word maktoub (destiny/it is written) slips out of my mouth for the second time in Morocco, and it strikes me. Words like that slip out without a context over here, and there is somehow less pretension for it. I tell him I am going to see Mustafa of the City of Fatima because I need a tutor, and he speaks good English and is kind. He knows him. Number one man, he says. The new generation. We eat together and smoke a bit. He goes to pray and I plop down on a couch like device, of which there are many here, study a little bit, until more men come, and they are informed that I speak Berber. They all want to see me do my trick. I placate to them, more than I would have liked, being in an awkward state, and then he comes back. I understand what you are trying to do he says, first thing, in English. I have known many young people who have come here looking for themselves. I have lived with hippies from Norway. Now they are businessman, but they come and visit twice a year. I think it is good, and you are good for trying. I thank him, and after more smoking decide I must go, for I have a long ways as yet to travel. I say an awkward goodbye, promising to call, nshalla. I pass through the village,
and meet a couple musicians. I'm grinning, no doubt as I give an enthusiastic greeting. They call me back. You speak Arabic? Tashlihit. Tashlihit? excellent!! I get their numbers, I too am a musician. I want to learn the Tashlihit music. They are excited, trying to lure me in for tea and food, but I tell them I must keep going, not knowing why I am on one hand in a hurry, and on the other, utterly determined to walk the whole way. I walk about another km and stop in a field, grassy, trees, shady, along a riverside.
All my happiness here is simple, and it must be that way. My thoughts are simple, and I tell you it is a great relief, for if I had any pretensions right now, I would be furious with the whole damn lot of them. But I am a fool here and I know it, and if I am able to be a fool who says something beautiful or striking, or sets a model for some positive action, wonderful, So Be It, but first I am a fool. This is my Socratic prayer, for what would be truly damaging to me would be to believe that I am somehow valuable but misunderstood. May I never feel myself misunderstood in this country, but only and always a fool. I sit down in the shade and ponder. The question is right there waiting for me under the tree, although it hasn't occurred to me yet. Who will be my teacher? A young man my age, knows the music, knows the people, alive in his youth, superior language skills, or the older man, imagine Arnold Karp living in Israel, knows everything because he's sat and watched it go by. But content. Opinions and long-winded stories, but fascinating if you can learn that there is no hurry.
I prepare a speech and memorize it which says essentially that I value the school of life more than the passionate energy of youth and I want him to be my tutor. That I will be able to pay him 400 d.H. a month, though we sign for 500. I will explain that the other 100 goes towards supplies later. I enter the town and at once I hear my name called from across the river Mustafa, Mustafa, a new café, but the same group of men, this time with another man stern, having lived in Britain most of his life. I cross this ridiculous suspension bridge, 50 ft above the river, and half way across, I feel the bridge match frequencies with my steps and we working together now shaking, shaking, and Indiana Jones comes to mind, although I cant place the scene I'm thinking of. I rock it even more, out of happy spite, for I show no mercy in general to the fear of falling, and I yell out at the top of my lungs, shrill, and it echoes in the mountains.
On the way home, I flag down a transit, and there is this same man who I've encountered before, at the market, who I had been cross with because he forcefully tried to put me on a transit somewhere I had no intention of going, and now hear he is, after this day which has been quite full for me. Before in the market, I must tell, that I am scolded for yelling at him. He's just trying to do his job. Well this time I see that he’s unable to speak, because he’s making signs for everything and keeps addressing me with the French Miossioure. spelling? I understand and give him some water which he eagerly takes and an orange, one for me and one for him. It’s a nice ending for the day, juice spilling all over the back of this transit, with a kid who’s maybe mentally retarding, maybe just dumb, akin to me, during this stage, smiling. In America it would be frustrating to here people talking about you without talking to you, but here it is nice. I hear 10 men sharing the rumors that they’ve heard about me, where I'm from, what language I speak, whether I'm in the CIA. I pretend I don’t understand. I mirror the dumb boy, and we eat our oranges. As good as oblivion.
It has been a good day. I have found a teacher a supplier, and a tutor. These will come in handy over the next few years.

(Some past thought)
You’re limiting yourself a great deal in your attempts to be honest with your writing. Quit trying to touch upon the ultimate truth in yourself for you will never find it so long as you remain yourself. This isn’t an ethical exercise. Freedom is not only permissible in this line of work; it is a prerequisite. Lie you bastard. Make up your world. Why won’t you grab hold of this? You’re too easily influenced by what you see. Freedom is choice. –You’re exactly right freedom is choice. The ethical is kind enough to give us the tool necessary to eliminate itself, but you must choose. –My heart is too sensitive. Well then wait it out. We’ll present to you all the arguments on paper that you make, and if your words betray your own hollowness, then there will be hell for you to pay. But if you find that you have a case, and that case exists on grounds which you hold to have be valid on their own then we might make this ultimate choice, a camel going into the desert and returning the pregnant with 2nd child of the universe. –But my eyes. Where else does this strength come from. Wherever you think it. Accursed fragmented modern malaise. How does anyone hope to achieve anything? They’ve still got us whispered the Marxist veterinary assistant to the Russian peasant seven score antiquated from us and counting. I am looking for a form. By starting from this point? Of all points to begin, why here. Why stop here in the present.
(and now)
It is a new present. Inneluctable modality of the audible. A place to call my own. What in life is not sensual existence, for surely it goes beyond sex, and even stretches into ethics. Sex and money. This is all they ask about, while proclaiming that their religion is a great religion. Why should I believe this if it has this effect on the people. Is there something else I can chalk this up to, for right now it seems there are two options. Either they are morbidly and fatally corrupted, or they suspect me as being as much. Christianity tells me to opt for the latter. Make yourself guilty before all the world. And indeed I am. My actions have caused pain and suffering, and I have sustained myself on this blood while still maintaining faith by struggling to live ethically and remain compassionate in my soul. And so I have not erred as extremely as I might have. Yet I have not found any good in myself either. Only freedom which is not a good but only the expanse which pushes self realization away into the unknown future. And here I am today, in the unknown future. This future makes me want to cry, though I must acknowledge that even yesterday it made me yearn for life and made me aware of the thirst in myself that was unquenchable and alive, eternally. Whom has forsaken whom, God of my fathers. Never have I believed in my heart that indeed all things are permissible. I have always sought out what seemed to me like the most real of all possibilities set before me, and that was my standard for judgment. Yet that reality, which I sought, always considered sustainability and the capacity for growth beyond my comprehension as an element to take into consideration.
I lie, my most fatal moments were indeed those where I was not able to consider the possibility of growth in relationships which might come about were I only able to overcome some temporal obstacle. My heart aches and I long for understanding. Send me a sign, Lord of the heavens. I long to comprehend the good in myself as universally real, and I have yet to find it. Give me a memory of compassion and goodfeeling that will stay with me all my life.

Complaints, poetry, and images from the last couple weeks

2006-04-29T15:17:00.000-07:00

Where do we stand in relation to true religiosity? It seems our cultural progression has continually moved toward an ethic by which we respect the sacred, regard it as something of value without retaining any real sense of what the sacred truly is. Our atheism is dogmatic, in need of little to no real demonstration or evidence because it seems so rational, yet all the while we understand that rationality itself is nothing but a means of justifying values which we already uphold. Diametrically opposed values each of which we are loathe to abandon. We understand that reason is not value creating, and that it is only man's creative passion which can give birth to new gods, yet to adhere to a religion, to abandon ourselves fully to that religion and to its full demands, why this is a concept utterly absurd to many of us. We take evidence against it to be self-evident, when it seems more probable to me that it is only that sense of individuality and freedom of thought which is the fundamental ethic of our culture which makes our submission before the sacred so incomprehensible. But not wanting to offend, and perhaps through a degree of insight as to the value of mythologies, we elevate religion as a concept appropriate for others, even commendable, for it is an important feature of culture and culture is what gives value to each individual. In elevating what amounts to the idiosyncrasies of others to a position of high regard, we ourselves move further and further away from what it might mean to stand before God in absolute submission. Consequently, we are in no position to produce an art which has the capacity to create new gods, nor believe in them were they somehow summoned from the dust. We who talk so easily about the sacred are like a man who keeps a toothless circus lion around the house to experience the thrills of the jungle.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
I speak from a different place this evening, not wrapped up in experiences which need to be shared but from a longing and a confusion which is my deeper dwelling in this land. I watched a few sections from the play tonight and was overwhelmed by all that I was able to walk away from. Right now the personal connections are shallow at best, and though I will not be so dishonest nor liberal-minded to say it is not to a degree the people I am with (volunteers not nationals) for most are empty martyrs with nothing to give but their time and their tears, there are on the other hand many thoughtful, caring people here. We are simply distanced from one another because we lack the meaningful cultural experiences which might have otherwise brought us together. Music brings those of us who play together into a value-based relationship of a sort though 4/4 songs praising the individual and freedom hardly seems the torrent rushing with might to the sea we had always assumed it was. Drinking provides the norm of ecstasy we are are accustomed to, but those times are few and far between for we are very busy, and we are very alienated from ourselves. Furthermore, we are all recovering from addictions which range from the norms which many of you are enjoying right now: comfortable beds, toilets, sex, consistent electricity, drugs, companionship, sports, buffalo wings, alcohol, family, a routine, etc etc etc. It is hard for anyone to know what to stand on from their past, and our training encourages the most liberal open-minded respect for all possible ways of life, all 1001 values, that we are empty vessels. Except for one thing. Each has their own memories, which they guard, each in their own way. None of us are able to be principally shaped by the world around us. Our mission is to help bring to people what they believe they are most in need of. What they would like to see for their children. Across the board the answer is access to water. Yet in giving them this we are also disposed to providing something else, which to the philosophical mind provides greater stimulus though I am hard-pressed to say whether it has greater value: Through this process, unity among peoples is an ideal set before us. Unity between Americans and Moroccans. Unity amongst villagers, in the sense that we encourage the formation of local associations, even insist upon it as our first prerogative. Unity concerning values, our values of freedom and capitalism and egalitarianism and w/o wanting to be too critical, bourgeois sentimentality. Unity within ourselves - for we are all here due to that yearning for self-knowledge, that fundamental drive which differentiates us from the goats and sheep and turkeys and camels which are my daily counterparts. What a contradiction though. We give up everything we know for the sake of giving depth to our own perspective, and yet to preserve this strange faith that we will find internal unity through it...it seems naive. The whole thing seems very naive to me right now, yet the power of will and belief is an awesome force and I have no intention of burning whatever bridge unites these two dichotomies, imaginary though it may be. Perhaps doing something tangibly good in a world where that seems very difficult and problematic for many of us is the fire on our horizon. Rank the actions of man as you will, each course seems to be for the benefit of some things and for the detriment of others. Say what you will of values, it is in the cases of ignorance and not revelation that we choose between them. Whatever tomorrow brings, it will need good earth to stand upon. Goodnight everyone. Thankyou for your thoughts, prayers, and letters. They mean a great deal to me.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I discovered today that there are no morally ambiguous words in either arabic or berber languages. I suppose this makes sense given the arabic fascination with aristotle, a greek, and in the tradition of socrates/plato who was the first to note that a difference exists between the ideals of which men speak and the manner in which they actually live. His conclusion was that they were ignorant of the truth. This seems to be the explanation which the culture as a whole seems to recognize. Then christian doctrine employed original sin, inherent in all the sons of adam, to explain this gap between the truth and human reality which falls short of that truth. Existential doctrine which proceeded neitzsche's pronouncement that God is dead hoped bleakly that man could create new gods knowing that they were in fact only the offspring of man's creativity and amongst 1001 possible values that may be equally sufficient. When this thought came to America, it brought with it words like commitment, will, and created a culture who's ethos was founded upon respecting every possible value system, every persons free capacity to choose their own value system. We have succeeded in creating people who for the most part hold this doctrine in high regard. We maintain the permissibility of all possible ways of life (so long as they do not infringe upon others) yet we have also demonstrated in our daily lives Dostoevsky’s prediction that without God everything is permissible. The vast majority of men do not feel any guilt about this, and indeed, this is precisely the point. We have words like charisma, commitment, and will which are our new values imported from Germany, and they are our new good. Yet we are the most uncommitted people an advanced society has ever known, as our marriage rate attests to. In Arabic and Tashlihit it is not possible to say "I thought I wanted" "I felt I needed" "I should have" "I felt happy, sad, rushed, depressed, exhilarated..." You are those things. The word feel exists but it is reserved for rare moments in which God bestows upon you a personal truth. I felt I had to. it is the divine explanation for something which is not otherwise explainable. Words like will, decision, commitment, even "should" do not exist. Talk of the future is always proceeded by "in sha allah", translated for us "godwilling" but is more literally if God wishes. There is no "should." There is only the truth. I do not believe that people do not have notions of many truths and ways of life being permissible. Certainly most people are very aware of cultural differences which they are eager to try to bridge. This is an important element of their culture, and it has contributed to my assessment that these may on the whole be the most hospitable people in the world. I don't know what to make of all this. I often recall shadi's question of what freedom really was, a question which has never been put so forwardly to me as it was by him. Freedom to deliberate and choose between possible goods. freedom from a single right. Yet does not majority opinion continue to be that right for us. Who among us does not struggle to overcome that urge to be what others want, and the tendency to define that model as something that we have chosen for ourselves. Today was definitely the first day I was able to get any sense of the perspective of the people around me on some of their own terms, and it has been a flash which has permitted me to consider all the big questions anew. Im not terribly afraid of this although I suspect I ought to be. Most of our values are cheap. Its our ingenuity and our optimism that has made our nation great. Concerning values, we have a great deal to learn.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Another interesting feature concerning language and worldview: mnshk aylkmn is used to ask the time is literally translated "how much has the time reached" For someone who has always favoured a teleological view of the world this is a relief, yet precisely because of that teleological view there is the sense that I am taking a step backward in some greater historical progression. I do not feel when I'm walking around talking to people, looking at the shops, buying meat, washing laundry by hand that this is what it must have been like x number of years ago. Clearly this is now and real, and no one here is yearning for a washing machine or pre-packaged meat. Today is Easter Sunday, and as I'm writing this many of you all are in church, singing songs I wish I could hear. Two of the girls tried to present Easter as a cultural thing to be shared, and so they bought a few dozen brown eggs to dye and hide in the hotel, which incidentally did not dye very well due to the colour. They also took names for a secret Easter bunny gift giving thing. Didn't sound like my kind of thing so I didn't do that, partially b/c I was afraid that I would forget to buy something but mostly because the whole thing rang sour with me. I did dye a couple of eggs this morning though. We took an oral language evaluation yesterday which was frustrating for me. Most of what I've been learning has not been from the book, and the test took things exclusively from the book and did not permit me any of the acting and french and spanish which have been essential tools for me in conversation. I did fine, but I didn't excel by any means. We leave Orzazate on Tuesday to go back to our Community based training sites for 8 days, which is probably the longest we've stayed in one place since we've been here, and during this time were going to work with the local association to outline a plan for managing the trash in the community. Things are rolling along, but I'm definitely at my worst when I'm back in Orzazate with all the Americans and the staff. Most everyone is great 1 on 1 or in small groups but the big group dynamic does not play to my strengths and weighs on my frustrations. The week has certainly been a good one, the holiday most notably. I think I was the only one of the volunteers who really enjoyed their day off when they didn't have other Americans to spend it with. I ended up at a party that Nordin organized for two communities in the area, and played in a soccer game. It gave me a lot of time to wander around a meet some of the faces which I'm starting to recognize. As for right now, I'm gonna try to catch a nap. Hope you all are well.

------------------------------------------------------------------

What is this path whose possibility has manifested so quickly? Where would I have it lead us all? Surely it was always with me, but lay buried beneath a garland of duties and moral sanctity which has now been set aside me on my night stand as I lay down to receive whatever dreams give birth in me, be they heavenly ecstasies or nightmarish visions.

I have gazed upon my surroundings and listened attentively to the directionless melodies of this new choir, and I have been allured by all I perceive. Everywhere there is energy, uncertain of itself or its capacity, yet unwavering in its tenacity to become fulfilled within a higher self and grasp its deepest human need.

Yet the danger is ever-present. In each mad exertion whereby heaven and hell are bent together by our sheer will, we call out audaciously our demand that shape-shifting ** wrestle with us. And when we discover as we have time and time again that the flesh is weak and eternity is boundless, we grasp hold of a piece of the truth calling it our home, our lifeboat, our vindication, and blind ourselves to the rest.

And we call this our character and proudly claim it is the spoils of victory and the fulfilment of our search.

But I say that these represent only a desire to be legitimized within yourself, and what you call your love is only a web of love promises made that you might stand both within love, and aside love as its keeper and its judge. Though we struggle to bind our love, it never ceases in altering its nature. The deepest longing of the soul will not be blinded by our idolatry, for longing seeks infinite expanse, and will open our eyes, even as we struggle to blind it.

And though it is right that we must time and time again become consumed in totality and vision, only to seek refuge in what is low, having found ourselves helplessly small, and hopelessly lacking, we must be not be afraid to stand firm when it is the life giving earth which is planted beneath our feet. We must stand humbled before the depths of the soul and its playground, confident in the path of our dreams, joyful as we live among men, and unyoked by the burden of daily life.

Every action ought to pave a road upon which new dreams might be born. And every expanse ought not to be sought out that it might further the needs of our character, but rather that in this great motion of struggle and submission, that which is our character might be dissolved and we might remain only as an open hand, absorbing light, and reflecting wisdom and serenity.

Dwell not on the judgments of others but explore the truth which your soul knows of itself before those judgments are even perceived. And if you find in your youth that your soul does not yet know itself, go in search of it beside the solitude of the forest. And if you find in yourself strength as well as weakness, knowledge as well as ignorance, joy as well as pain, sweet submission as well as rebellion, then what credence can one who would judge you possibly possess?

Look away. Seek yourself within the lightness of your spirit, and the willingness of your own noble actions.

Look away

Look away dixie land.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What wind will next direct your course, oh AmErika?
From what ground do you hoist your flag?
Even here I see it waving in the wind, but the majesty has been dethroned
The purple mountains now concrete grey.

A man asked another if he had ever seen an airplane fall from the sky.
I gazed upward through a hole in the clouds, recapturing anew, my youth and the brotherhood which accompanied it
rolling, tumbling, before terminal velocity took hold.
He smiled proudly, ironically, through a facade of moral indignance.
I was there, he answered.
32nd and Broadway.
I could see him fingering his pistol.
He took a slow drag of light tobacco, and turned away from us.
To fall provides total freedom for an instant extended.
3-deminsions of possibility.
New angles of orientation opening and closing at a rate incomprehensible.
Then suddenly one, frozen locked in a stare with the ground below,
approaching inevitably, yet tiresomely slow.
The moment of impact takes hold of the body, holding you in the position of contact.
Only the impact is not there.
The perfect actor, in the same dumb action movie.
Silent ThhWoocsshce of relief, ninety-eight seconds later.
Weight absent you go on, floating to ground like a feather.
Just as you knew you would, science smiling, amused that human doubt still persists, despite the evidence forever piling up.
There was a parable I used to remember which concerned the sowing of seeds in good earth.
I've forgotten it, remembering only that fertile soil is somehow essential.
And that a seed can be choked.
AmErica.
I love you like a mother, for you have given me all I really know.
Yet it is cancer I suck from your teat,
and I am too old for the teat anyway.
And if I find myself speaking your name with nostalgic fondness,
it is for the promised land of which you spoke.
Not for the desert which you are.
That promised land is still lives in my heart, though its beat is unnatural, rapid
for I can taste it in the air i breathe, which passes through my blackened lungs.
God of my fathers, lead me to the good, which is such, in and of itself.
God of my fathers, show me what is singularly best, better than all else.
God of my fathers, teach me to stand.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Perhaps a narrative is in order. Things have been happening, important, interesting things I believe, but of what can I speak? Inevitable censorship of addressing a multitude, this must be overcome.
I was informed yesterday morning that I will be spending the next two years of my life in Toubkal, the highest point in North Africa, at the center of the largest mountain range in all of Africa. I am by no means disappointed by this news, but it does not put me at ease in the way that spending this time on a coastal city might have. The temperatures will be extreme in the winter, and as far as development is concerned, there is plenty to be done. Perhaps Chris will be interested to know that I will be above the tree line, so with the exception of the 18 olive trees I have planted in during staj, I will not be planting any more trees. My future is with people, developing a community which is environmentally sensitive, rather than working on specifically environmental projects. Since I have been here I have observed my own capacity to be much better suited to social and political situations externally and cultural comparisons internally. Conservationalist ideals remain ideals for me, ideals which as of yet I have been unable to align my actions with, yet I fall out of every discussion which debates the value of lugubrious or decipherers trees in a region. I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of what these arguments hinge upon, but I have every intention of speaking with a regional expert from the Dep of Agr before I make any decision like this. I just don't have a philosophy on the matter, and don't have anything to build one upon. Consequently, I'd be going off of what a bunch of silly American biology major know-it-alls would tell me, and that seems foolish.
At any rate, I'm leaving tomorrow to go to my site, as those of you who have talked to me recently already know. I will sincerely miss my friends at Ait Ben-Haddou. I have no expectations that my next homestay family will match them, and am only thankful that I had that experience once. Every need I had during this preliminary period was met by them. The area is beautiful, absolutely worthy of its UNESCO World Heritage status which places it alongside Mayan and Aztec ruins and Yellowstone Park in terms of its...--I don’t want to say value, even historical value. Its that magical sense that history is taking place now, just as much as it was 1000 years ago. I remember camping aside Yellowstone Lake when it was still frozen over with Evan, watching birds fly over in the morning and considering sustainable living, and saying to Evan when he awoke that morning that romantic thought may be the greatest danger that the western world has come upon. The unity of beauty and death, of beauty and sin. How natural these connections seem to us today. How easily we can unite two ideas which ought to be mutually exclusive and feel ourselves wiser for having this capacity. Today's Blakean marriage: the marriage of nihilism and optimism.
We have begun work on our final project for training, which consists of compiling a book of NGO's active in the region, outlines of their goals, and testimonies from villages who have worked in cooperation with the NGO's in the past, along with examples of successful and unsuccessful grant requests w/analysis. I have been very active with this project amongst our group because I've been able to have the closest relationships with the pivotal association members, though it has been on hold these last couple days due to the antipation of finding out our sites, and travel plans, laundry, drinks, homestay gifts, etc, etc. I hope we don't lose motivation for this project after we return from our sitevisit. We all have a great deal invested in these families and this village, and I hope that we don't lose sight of that after seeing our home and project for the next two years.
Other projects from the week have included the installations of improved cookstoves, and Environmental education activity in the elementary school for earth day, interviews with the Dep of Water and Forestry and the head of a women's commune which produces goat cheese and handicrafts. The latter, moved me with the story of the organizations origin. 8 years ago a French nun came to the region and after living in the area for about 6 months as a relative unknown, she rounded up all the girls and said follow me, I'm going to teach you to make handicrafts, or something of this nature. After bringing all the girls in the village together, she sent them out saying, bring your mothers and your aunts, so that they to can participate. Perhaps there’s nothing remarkable in this story except the mythic way it was presented to us. It reminded me again of the value of myth as a source of unity, and it has forced me think about the story of any project I undertake. Utility is not the principle issue, and I will need to remind myself of this time and time again. What is important is that people see themselves as part of something which is socially, historically, and perhaps even religiously significant. I don't know how exactly I fit into this, but I understand that it takes more than paperwork and successful networking and communication to create something meaningful.

For my generation:
I have also wondered if we are in fact beyond this in America, for it goes hand in hand with what I have thought about our progression as a nation, and truthfully, I don't believe we necessarily are. We are just so accustomed to monumental stories, dumbed down into media clips that a new mythology would have to take on a different form, one which places it beyond the media at least in its preliminary stage, yet touches the souls of people. The former will be more difficult than the latter, for the media sees itself as possessing jurisdiction over anything which takes place. What is important is that the new story maintains an apolitical status at all cost, and escapes the liberal / conservative dichotomy. I don't think this necessarily means attacking both sides vehemently, as many of the contemporary political thinkers I have read as of late have chosen, but praising something which both can call their own, but which both sides fundamentally lack. I recognize the ambiguity of this, but I can say no more of it at this time. This new story which I envision as art backed up by relentless social activity, must go beyond its medium into a lifestyle or subculture if you will, following the precedent of the Beats, and its leaders will need to play an active role in the social, as well as in the creation of the art or mythology. It is pivotal that the two realms are not wholly independent of one another, for both must support one another. In the former case, the social was left to act blindly, in all likelihood due to the absence of a positive social vision within the art. Consequently, the social movements which resulted simply took the form of a more active liberalism, which was immediately counterbalanced within the political dichotomy. If it is to have an impact on a national level, it must be able to recognize and utilize historical and cultural events to present itself to people, advancing aggressively, recognizing and avoiding the questions it cannot answer, and receding when it does not provide the immediate answer. For those of you with an interest in what I'm saying, please write to me with your thoughts. The question of what is next is one which I finally feel I can began to address from this vantage point, and I am interested in any dialogue you all find time for. That said, it is time for me to call it a night. Hope this update finds you all healthy and empowered.

With love and aspirations,
Benjammin

Ssalam Alekum

2006-04-08T06:18:00.000-07:00

Ssalam Alekum - I'm back in Orzazate after two weeks without contact and communication, and so reflection is long overdue for me, and all you family and friends who have been so kind in your emails and your letters deserve updates on my life, which becomes more and more strange and unrooted each passing day.
Since I last contacted you all I returned to Ait Ben Haddou for 4 days with my host family which becomes more and more comfortable though communication is still naturally weak. A highlight of those few days was a late night trip to the Kasbah to play Ganowa music with Nordin and his friend Hussein who is a wonderful artist and a quiet though enchanted soul. His walls were decorated from top to bottom with paintings, blue men on horseback charging towards the viewer, depictions of the old city, landscapes, all commercial for tourists, but all somehow capturing the spirit and culture of this place and these people, who hold fierce ties to their way of life. His music, all in 5/4 time, singing the notes he plays, no chords, quarter-step differentials, on a three string guitar with a plastic pen used like a kapo, to give each note a buzzy twang, with others chanting around him, "express", "express", and me playing mandolin, to my own ears in keeping with the feel and mood and notes, to theirs a confused effort like my language, comic, then annoying, then interesting. Jumping from sandbag to sandbag across a river, no moon, guided by constellations, the saharan cross which is a compass to those traveling through the desert, Hussein explains, roughly, mapping the stars with rocks on the mountainside, into which his house was built 500 years ago while Magellen was off at sea, and Enlightenment thinking was preparing to give birth to Western Civilization. Laughing, Nordin the actor, mumtil I called him to everyone's delight, Hussein the creator, me the comedian at my best, the wanderer at my worst. Alone and failing despite their attempted explanations to see the joke I had just made, giving up, "rmig, rig adgent, la sul ahuzayz, la sul tashlihit, afek", twisting my hand aside my ear as if driving in a screw. im tired, i want to go to bed, no more music, no more tashlihit, please...its making me crazy.
The following night we went to another friends house to help build a roof of bamboo, mud, cement, and a plastic tarp, blue. I left for I began to feel uncomfortable with this man, who seemed to mock me. Seemed. Intuition is a miserable means(philosophically speaking) of discerning anothers sentiment in and of itself, but it is all I have to go on here. I went and had tea with Paul and his family and we discussed salt mines up river, and the cost and methods of distillation and his son whose right eye is clouded over, blind, in need of American care, in need of a visa, would I help please, me unable of course. lla shyll - may god make your life easier. sounds like life is hell. went home and played cards and music with abdulawhad, home from school in orzazate, kind, intellegent, and withheld.
Last week the pace of life slowed down a great deal. Field trip to stay in Toubkal with a current volunteer, one year into his training. Bus to marakesh, taxi to Asni, then wait 3 hours before the first taxi to take us the last 9 km. Would have walked if we'd known of course. Arrived late, and cooked hot dogs for dinner. played chess, played music. Talked about his life. No rule that he hasn't broken. Not a rebellious kid, not a model volunteer. Just trying to get by and hang onto what he knows. Determined to finish. Implementing a fairly big water project to bring tap water to a village divided in to because ten years ago investors brought water to the lower village to attract tourists and put up resorts, leaving the upper village to fend for themselves. Nearly 400 people his project will benefit. Two resevoirs, all the water meters in place, all the piping lines drawn, just waiting for the grant money to come through. Visited a gazelle and big horn sheep reserve, low population count because 8 years ago all the animals got out and were either killed or lost. none recovered. Berbers like to hunt and the Water and Forest is undermanned and ussually indifferent.
Marakesh last night, 3 bottles of wine, negotiated with above average language skills. Marakesh is an enchanting city, a city with a pulse, and these are few and far between no matter what part of the world you find yourself in. snake charmers, music festival atmosphere, lost in a maze most of the time, hashish, me leading others through it all with my shirt which reads "you'll never get out of this maze" others following it, annoying overconfidant me with their concerns about place and time and policy and rules and dangers. They are scared to see me so unafraid and free, and I am scared that their fear might at any moment descend upon me and leave me asking myself where I am, what I am going to do...looking for a way out. A polish woman finds us, perhaps in her early thirties with bright blue eyes, penatrating, amazing, and hair already beginning to grey. She alone for two weeks in Morocco, backpacking, trying to see everything, meet new people. She spent 6 months in northern India teaching English. Familiar with Dostoevsky. Unfamiliar that Americans could be as well. "Ussually when I am travelling, Americans are the last white people that I will meet up with, for they are closed minded and hide themselves away. No desire to get to know other people." Me thinking what could she believe in if we Americans are set in our beliefs, for I have begun to fear our blankslate tradition relativism driven towards nihilism, protected against it by our physics and our optimism that things really are better today than they have ever been before, and tomorrow we'll be even better. Only economic depression can kill the Dream. Or lull us awake for a little while.
Forgive the voice, those of you unfamiliar with it. I felt I needed a little bit more literary freedom than I have previously permitted myself. I will be returning to Ait Ben Haddou on tuesday after a tree-planting project tomorrow. Furthermore, this thursday is the birthday of the Prophet, an important Islamic holiday, and I will be celebrating it with my Moroccan family. I have not looked ahead past that on the schedule, but I will be in touch, and will have electricity and rizzo, so feel free to call. Hope all is well. I miss you all.

Brother -
You've been on my mind a great deal as always, and perhaps more than ussual, for I always find that my heart and mind turn to you when I am challenged and lost. I received a letter from C.R. today which posed a question to me that cut me to the quick, and unable to respond I chose to drink his question away in hopes that it would lead me to a more honest place with you. Three hours later, I find myself here, on a rooftop looking out over all the emptiness of the sahara desert, listening to the alien drunken shouts that seem to dissolve as soon as they are released. Chris asked me why I was not able to have a conversation with you the night before I left charlotte. He told me it weighs heavily upon you. How can I say to such an inquisition that the whole of my life is a dialogue with you. And am I even able to defend the legitimacy of that dialogue when the actual communication which ties our temporal worlds together ceases to exist. I here you there. You accustomed to putting your voice to paper and me feeling daily that I am losing the fluidity of my thought amidst the foreign voices which fill my head. I can only say that you are in my heart as I walk through what are often difficult days for me and the assumption that the same holds true for you is one which is beyond consideration for me. I do not dare raise doubt on this matter. And if perhaps I robbed both you and I of something essential in not permitting our spirits one more convergence that evening, it was only because you were to remain even after the others had departed, though distance stands between us. This appears to me now as cowardice, though at the time it was certainly emotional exaustion after an agonizingly beautiful night of goodbyes(how could I have said goodbye to you first) And at the end of the night and the following morning, what words would have been unearthed that would have escaped that miserable realm of saccarine sweet cliches, and exausted apologies, and yes yes yes everything and nothing. I cannot answer this question with any certainty, but I have observed that I choose to build my most important relationships on silence and understanding. I believe you know this of me. For better or worse, it is me, and now more than ever, for my life is a silence, albeit a frantic displaced comedy where I find myself hanging on every word of the most borgeouis surface conversations and repeating words like rock (azzru) and river (wissef) and I'm full (shabaH) in fear that I will need them later. Silence is my sanctuary, though it is lonely and of dubious merit.
I do however wish to share with you a thought I had late yesterday evening, following a brief reverie over morrocan wine and dostoevsky with a well educated polish lass on a hotel terrace in marakesh. (despite chris's hypothosis, women it would seem are more in and of themselves than a mere social phenomenon, though perhaps this is more apparent when one's dealings are with continental women.) we as Americans or perhaps participants within a liberal democracy, care little for truth it would seem, our principle concern being our capacity to manipulate nature not according to our needs or even our reality but in allignment with weimer republic/nietzscean ambitions, new gods, man gods, hallowing and worshiping whatever shadows confront us within the abyss of modern self, humorous or horrific, contradictory or self-validating, theraputic or revolutionary. forgive me, for this is not the intended subject of this letter, though I wish as always to encourage you to ground reality within nature, and the nature that is a part of our self, without falling into the trap of reducing self. For nature is the ideal which should be cherished most when it withholds itself from man's corrupting hand, and without the truth that nature reflects, we have only man's manipulations of himself to hallow as art and call clever and innovative and new. In short, affirming the classical in every possible romantic way. this is indeed a shortcoming of mine, but one which I shall not concern myself with any longer for this letter is for you, and chris shall remain a witness.

Written on the first page of my Tashlihit notebook under my name Bn-Jamil (translated (imperative) build beautiful OR shepherd)...

What is the whole of friendship divided in two but man in his completeness; the yearning for perfection balanced with the realization of degradation.

Do write to me when you receive this, and tell me of your life, your thoughts and your art, and of the unity in which these three stand balanced. I miss you more than any.

With Pictures

2006-03-26T09:41:00.000-08:00

Hello. All finished with the first week of homestays. Experience was all that I could have asked for. My family has 4 brothers and an older sister who is engaged to be married this summer. One of the brothers goes to the university in Orzazate which from what I can tell is somewhere between highschool and college for us. The two oldest brothers run the shop and lead tourist excursions into the desert. Nordin and the brother in the university speak some English which is nice. Most of the time Nordin and I communicate in Spanglishahit, as his spanish is better than his english and mine is still better than my Tashlihit, although given another 5 weeks or so, that may no longer be the case. Our site was great, and if the pictures I took eventually upload through this modem, you will see for yourself. The Kasbah where we are located is internationally known, and although this made for an increased tourist population, it was still marvelous to see. There are 9 familys that still live inside, though I have no idea whether that is immediate family, or otherwise. Everyone in each village is connected in some way, and its hard to delineate where a family begins and ends. We're still working on 4 hours of language a day, with one or two interviews. Last week we met the Moqadim who is the head or the village, the immam(religious head), a few farmers, and the vice president of the local association for culture and development. Our other assignments have been predominantly mapping the communities resources.

Its hard to talk about myself as an agent within all this. They keep everyone very busy, and on my days off, of which this has been the second, ive spent the majority of the day playing catch up with the language, handwashing laundry, and finding various odds and ends that I need around town. Today we had to prepare a presentation for tomorrow as well.
I fed a baby camel the other day, and spoke to him exclusively in Tashlihit. My language skills are deffinately at their best when speaking to animals and children under 8. We've done a great deal of hiking, and except for the sandstorm that slowed us down one day, the weather has been fairly nice. Its deffinately T-shirt weather in a no T-shirt country, but I'm doing better with the sun. The key really is covering up here. Its the sun that kills you, not the heat. To the left is my brother Nordin, and me in a freshly purchased turbin. This has been a rather jumbled email, for I'm trying to show you all an experience before I've had time to reflect upon it myself. It really is crazy how quickly you adjust and start to take thing for granted. I dont even blink when I hear the call for prayer being bellowed over the loud speaker above the mosque 5 times a day and I have a sense that walking through my own front door would some how be more alien to me today than walking in a mudhouse lined with bamboo built into the side of a mountain. Human adaptation truly is a remarkalble phenomenon.
Another question/thought that has filled my leisure time: what is the American tradition and does it still exist? When we analyze what the community could do in order to develop itself, the thoughts seem to all concern money. Cheap marketing techniques to steal a D here and there. One person in our group was baffled that there was no one at the door to take money when people entered the Kasbah. Someone even brought up those I love NY tshirts as a positive as something to draw upon. I've also been reading the book Dr. Reed gave me on our last encounter, titled The Closing of the American Mind. He seems overtly pessimistic about everything but it has kept me in a dialogue about what it is in American life that binds us to ourselves. American individualism just gets shoved in your face when your in a culture that really tends to be reserved and withheld about what they want. We have big dreams, and its encouraged even back to the childrens books we read, and if dreaming is not a virtue but a vice, I wouldn't know where to begin assessing meaning. I dont know where I mean take this, but the notion of tradition, whether it be intellectual or religious, or familial, or even political is something that seems lacking in the daily lives of my generation. Vive Le Dream, I guess.
For those interested, this room was supposedly used in the movie gladiator. We came across it wandering around the Kasbah, and were informed later that it was a significant place.

This picture was taken at sunset here in Orzazate. It really is a wonderful point at the end of the world, for if you go another 20 miles you hit an ocean of sand which goes on for another 600 miles.

I miss everyone and hope thing are going well at home and in Charlotte, and in Athens, and Florida, and anywhere else my past or present peeps may be living. Consider perfection.

cell phone

2006-03-13T11:18:00.000-08:00

so if anyone wants to call me, i have a cell phone. all incoming calls are free for me and probably cost you a fair chunk of change, so I understand that there will certainly be some who do not utilize this option. There was some issue with a sim card today which was utterly lost in translation which prevented me from calling a couple of you to give you my number, and consequently, im still not sure exactly how this is going to work, but without further adieu, the number from the united states should be: 011-212-10255705.
Also, I discovered that although my blogsite has an option to change your password, it does not yet allow you to create a password in the first place. so, as things stand, ill just watch what I say, and if you want to know more, you'll have to call or email.
Communication deficiencies aside, I must say this experience has been, is, and is going to be remarkable. Never have I been in an atmosphere where so much was demanded of me. We were given our post assignments today which lets us know first and foremost, the language we are going to be speaking for the next 26 months - Tashlihit - and through that we have been able to deduce the area of the country we are going to be working in. As far as geography goes, I'm very excited, and I'm very excited about the 4 other volunteers who will be working not with, but in the same proximity with me. They are all very down to earth people with varying backgrounds, and while when I awoke this morning, I was hoping to learn Arabic, I am happy with my placement. I will be located on a national park in the high altas mountains near Marakesh, or perhaps (1/5 odds) on another national park closer to southern coastline. I will still be placed within a small village within the park working with the communities who are still permitted to live in the protected areas, working on sustainable, and perhaps renewable energy options because as the law reads, these people have the right to take trees from the forests if they need it for fuel. which of course they do. One of our jobs is to find the technology and work with the community, regional associations, federal govt, and international organizations to bring this to them in a way they can agree upon. The funding seems to be there, what is needed is someone on a grassroots level to work with the people and educate them about more efficient ways of going about their daily lives. There is a great deal of talk, and a series of success stories where solar power has been utilized effectively. The difficulty lies in the integration process, for these people are not used to change, and if they are given new technology without understanding how it works or agreeing as a community about how it will be used, projects tend to fail. The training we are undergoing right now is designed to enable us to do that. Training consists of 5 two hour sessions every day, at least 2 of which are language, one script and one spoken. Today we had another on the hierarchy of different federal associations which we fit into, who we report to and why Peace Corps has chosen to work with them rather than other organizations. Another was on integration techniques, and we were given the assignment of going out in the city with limited language skills, and finding out both subtly and directly what people want or believe they need. We then assessed the responses that were given and talked about which might be considered if mapping out the needs of the community at large. Naturally there were no expectations for todays activity, but it was still fascinating to catch a glimpse at the process. We are all so far outside our comfort zone right now that there is no point in reaching for a rock to grab onto. People laugh at us, and people come to us with questions and fascination and its all the same. Next monday we leave to go to the villages in which we will be doing the majority of our training within and will begin our homestays. From then until training is complete we will spend about 5 days with a family, still keeping the same training schedule within that village but in a much smaller group, and then return to the undisclosed city we are currently in to debrief. (If your staring at a map and wondering Dad, it is where they said I would be doing my training!) Then off again.
The food is great, the program is extremely well organized and the trainers are respectful yet demanding. How I'm going to continue to retaining information at the rate its being given is beyond me, but so far, so good.
The best times to call me are between 1:30 and 2:30 PM and 3:30 - 5:00 PM EST. Hope all is well.

2006-03-11T10:04:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone. im writing from an undisclosed location in morocco because ive learned during our security briefings, of which we have had many, that i am required to password protect this blogsite. this will have advantages for me, because I can talk openly about where I am, and what I am doing here. Also, there is some law or ruling about losing publication writes to anything which is posted openly on the internet. I don't know if that will ever become an issue, but you never know, maybe one day I'll want to write a book.
The plan is this. The password is going to be kentucky which I think will probably be the easiest thing for everyone to remember. I'm going to have this posted for the next week or two so anyone interested in checking up on me will have it. After that, I'm going to password protect this sight, and remove this section of the email. Dad, show Mom how to use the password login if its not obvious to her after her computor classes.
Life has been interesting, but so far relatively easy. After 3 days of orientation in Philedelphia, we flew into Casablanca, and then immediately drove 2 hours up the coast to Rabat. The coastline seems very prosperous for the most part, and greener than I ever would have imagined. 52 of us, all in the health and environment sectors, did another 3 days of orientation on security, health, transportation, motivation, commitment, emergency action etc etc etc. I think I acquired another 20 pounds of stuff to lug around just in logistical handbooks and paperwork alone. The night before we left Rabat, I had planned on staying up all night studying Arabic knowing that I had an 8 hour busride to sleep on, but a couple people informed me that I was being teased about being antisocial so i decided there would be time for Arabic later and I ended up staying up talking with various people about all that we were about to embark upon. Two of them were in the health sector. One was a Mormon girl from Utah who had never left her state is engaged in a spiritual struggle between her religion which pressed her to marry, and her heart which led her here. The other was focused on her long term boyfriend who she left behind. I listened to both attentively, humbled before the understanding of just how powerful commitments are upon a person. It seems that everyone here has been struggling within a dichotomy of their own creation, and both sides of the ocean have come to represent for them, concepts much bigger than the locations themselves. It has been said and disputed that we will never really be able to understand the lives the other volnteers in the group have lived. It is certainly true right now, for it seems that as soon as we got on the plane, a division which we'd been living under ever since this application process begun, suddenly disappeared. Now there is just this. What exactly this is, we are waiting to find out.
I was glad to say goodbye to those two girls, because they were the first I'd permitted myself to be really open with at this stage in the process. I'm warry of such easy emotional outlets at this point, and while the orientations really instilled in us the need to be an emotional support system for one another, I still remember Chris Ginnaruses's words (though I have no idea how to spell his last name) "There's always time." I know Miles remembers them as well. Anyway, the environmentalists of the group, 22 in number, traveled to the undisclosed location which we are currently abiding at. The drive was substantial and the landscapes we passed through ranged from huge snowcapped mountain peaks to miles and miles of desert expanse. Its truly a different world once you cross over those mountains. And so hot, though I heard its only 77 degrees F. All that bitching we do in GA about, "its not the heat its the humidity..." I don't buy it. Here the saying would have to be, "its not the heat, its the sun!" I have yet to see a cloud, and we can see for miles from where we are.
We got the day off today, the first since I left Savannah, and slept in until noon. I had an interview to discuss the type of site I would prefer to be placed at, and weighed the pros and cons of about 80 different scenarios. Since then I have been roaming the market, practicing my Arabic and trying to get comfortable with the currency. Most people I've encountered thusfar have been very honest, yet difficult, for they lie to my about prices, or give me the wrong amount of change back just to see if I'll catch it. Then they laugh and lecture me on it in a broken Frenglish that I dont really understand and slap me on my back saying "No problem. You dont speak arabic, I dont speak english! No problem. There is no problem." I imagine Shadi would be especially amused if he could see me in these scenarios, but I don't fully even understand why. So far I'm about 2 for 6 on catching people tricking me on money, to the best of my knowledge, and my streak is growing.
Its about time for dinner. We start our 11 week training tomorrow which is expected to be much more strenuous. I think they gave us about a week to get all the wishy-washy American liberalism out of our system, and it must have worked because if I here another person start a object because they are offended by words like peasant, academic, back-country, or take up 30 peoples time to talk about their feelings and struggles, etc, I'm gonna go nuts. It seems like alot of these people are used to being the token liberal in every group and dont know what else to talk about. I trust that everyone is relatively consumed by their own lives, but thinks about me from time to time and I wouldn't have it any other way. I wanted to get a cell phone today, but it didn't happen, but that is going to be a communication option which I will keep you all up to date on. If anyone gets the chance, do shoot me an email, I've received none, though I hear reports about people wanting to know how to get in touch with me. And don't forget that password. You will need it for my next post.

BenJammin
lsthorizns@msn.com

2006-03-02T06:52:00.000-08:00

To My Family
I guess I should begin by thanking everyone for the Christmas gift cards, and the birthday money, (and was that Valentines day that just came and went?) this year, and over the years. I'm terrible with thankyou notes probably due to a tendency I have to be terribly long winded when I'm put in front of a blank page, and intimadated by those tiny stationary cards, and I believe my dear mother would have me send my apologies long into the night for all the ones I've forgotten.
As I'm about to make my break for the east for the next couple years, I wanted to put a little more time into these letters and without dwelling on thankyous and apologies for too long, and share some thoughts about our family that have impacted me over the years. Unfortunately time is not something I have an abundance of these days, so I decided perhaps I could speak generally to you all, rather than particularly to each. We are a diverse bunch, and while I would never claim to speak on everyone's behalf and encompass every individual with everything I say, I trust that you all will indulge me and a few moments of reflection.
In these past weeks of my life, I have felt an urge to seek out those values which I find most deeply imbedded in me lest I ever start to forget where I have come from. It should surprise no one that such considerations have led me back to you all, for we are all very integrally a part of each other. Let me begin with the women in our family, for all families seem to begin and end with women.
Our family is comprised of very strong women, and one of the greatest measures of strength I have witnessed, the measure which the family unit seems to hinge upon is the capacity to stand constantly in the balance, and with different voices calling out for attention, create the conditions that all might come together over dinner with a prayer and loving hearts.
I have seen the backs of the women of our family bent over backwards out of determination to hold all the competing elements of life in this balance, and like the phoenix which rises from its own ashes, they are born again each time the family is brought together in the evening to share their daily stories and meager dramas, their injuries and their fears, their retold jokes and reworked arguments. And in doing so, they reavow their daily commitment to each other evermore.
I have also seen the backs of women in our family broken by these elements, and I have seen them emerge stronger and more awake in a fuller knowledge of what they truly needed to live and what they were ultimately accountable for, and may every mother who has been brought to this point and instinctively grabbed her children be forever blessed. Even if life be but a game, it is one which can turn upon us ruthlessly and without hesitation. The light bestowed upon one who in times of danger considers the welfare of the weak and meager before their own, will always be a light upon faces, even if they themselves be blind to it.
Without such women, the family--without which our would growth would lack purpose and direction--could not exist, and to you women I offer my most heartfelt gratitude.
Yet also have I seen women, particularly those young women of my generation, and those eternally young at heart, who indignant at the demand made upon them to stand in the yolk of family life and become accountable to so many, have opted instead to shatter that balance rather than support it. Of these I must comment that they are wise in their aloneness, sorrowful despite being often at a loss for tears, proud in their self-determination, unique in their outlook. Yet even when they are in the grey, they still walk the day with open eyes, willing to be moved or pulled if the right moment were to appear.
You women are the prophets and thet soothesayers, the explorers and the revolutionaries, the wanderers, and even the exiled. You have slammed doors upon your family, as they have sought to bar you from pursuing yourself. May you remember still to open that door with the same determination by which it was slammed. Long ago have you realized your value as a teacher is greater than your value as a martyr.
As I prepare to enter into an Arab country where I do not really know what to expect as far as gender norms goes, I have considered many of you in your freedom, and considered the decisions about your life you have made in your own cultural context.
Some have gone forth confidantly, casting aside every chauvinist male who didn't believe he should be doing buisness with such a young woman, and though they have risen to the top of their chosen field and find themselves surrounded by a loving family, they pull their hair out for stress.
Some have pursued their life as if it were a dream, and though they have realized the dubious nature of a dream from which one cannot awake, they embrace life even still.
Others have pursued society only to renounce it in favor of the domestic life, and in truly placing family at the center of their devotion, they find that they are highly honored by everyone in the family. I have seen in each of you your own unique strengths, and they are most apparent when you don't doubt or belittle yourselves.
For the holiday cooking, I also thankyou.
And you men? What have you created around your lives that was not the product of your clever prudence and your foolhardy stubborness? I have seen the fields you have sown with your own pride and self-confidence, and in your determination to be better, to work harder, and to outsmart the other man, you have reeped the fruits of that harvest. Upon the back of your drive and your passion, we are all pulled into the future, into a world which you have forged for us a world which we are to inherit from you after you gone. Have you done all in your power to prepare us to take hold of that torch?
Dear patriarch, long have I considered your decisions, and many times have I said to myself, the will of a strong man is accountable to no one. This is the foundation of all governance, whether it be called democracy or monarchy. Just as the citizens of the state must adjust and live under the conditions set by in place by its government, so has our family been bound to live under the conditions you have imposed upon us. Yet we are also taught that power is transfered from below. And again I have justified your governence, for it is yours to resolve the discord as best you can.
Under your pen we are divided amongst ourselves, yet by your hand we are tied together just the same. Such is power, I have often supposed, and long have I withheld my judgment. In my youth, I have struggled to renounce power over others, for the moral weight which it entails I have never envied you. In growing older, I have found for myself that power is bestowed upon each man, and though he may be seeking only work, love, or respect, still he may find power. May you relinquish that power willingly and happily when that task is all that remains for you to accomplish.
And you other men. Strong, loving, dependable. Rocks of constancy you have been to us and to your families you are the light which shines high in above the dark water as we enter the harbor, and by your light, we find our way back home again and again. Never will you forget that your power lies in the hearts of your wives and children.
Yet of this, you must be warned as well. Oft have I seen you grow sluggard, and though avoiding the worst of those snares which are set for any man foolish enough to roam through life enchanted with his immediate affairs or stubborn enough to believe he is master of his life, you let other duties roll carelessly off your back. Too secure have you become upon the thrown which you sit each evening, and when you are crowned by your wife's wide-eyed devotion, you have built a mold for yourself within her gaze.
Forget not that it is yours to lead her to a better understanding of herself, for as she is fulfilled within herself, so shall you be fulfilled more deeply within her. Forget not that the children of a silent god must look elsewhere if they are to find a song of praise upon their lips.
You men are all shepherds in your own right, and each has a philosophy by which he looks upon his flock. May the way you look after your families be a corelative with the manner by which you would have your children carry out your legacy.
And cousins. Our time is fast approaching. Let not the life we would settle for distort our vision of the world we would have always walked in. Let us lose sight of neither the strength our family has instilled in us, nor the stone over which we have seen them stumble. Let always be mindful of the history we have together, for soon there will come a day when it is ours to determine which of these old bonds are to remain intact.
I am off to Casablanca. I will remember you all with the setting sun. May it one day carry me back home across the ocean.

2006-02-22T19:38:00.000-08:00

One more week in the states, and it should be an exciting one if I'm not paralyzed by the path in front of me. Just finished an amazing 6 weeks of work with Claire, Shaun, Marty, and others adapting "the prophet" into a theater production. For those who might not know, it is a work of poetry/proverbs by a Lebanese-American from the 1920's I believe. Critically our adaptation was not all that it might have been, but there were beautiful moments on and off the stage that I will never forget. I cannot imagine a more wonderful place than Orphalese to spend these last few weeks before my journey to Morocco. This week I need to 1) pack, 2) fill out numerous forms that have been neglected for the pursuit of art, 3) spend some time with my dear friend Daniel who is returning from Germany after a year and a half over seas in order to receive acceptance letters a most prestigious list of graduate programs, and 4) if everything goes smoothly, make road trip up to Charlotte to get down with my moe.rons one last time. I made an interesting connection while working on this play. Jane Hadley, the drama chair at Queens University, and perhaps the only one who fully shared claire and my enthusiasm for this project, informed me that her nephew Andy is with the Pcrps in morocco working on small business development. There is another connection which exists through Toni and Ron Peacock in Augusta, but knowing the social circles they keep... Anyway, I took a look at his blog tonight and decided that it was time to start one of my own. Hopefully it will be discovered by each and every one of those friends and family members who have demanded updates. And for those family members who no longer feel it necessary to put words like "email," and "technology" in quotation marks, I trust that these will be passed along to those less internet savvy family members, my dear mother especially. Thankyou all, and wish me luck.