We are listening to Dirty Three's Whatever you love you are. If buildings could write songs, I think that this is the music they would make.
That's a bit romanticized, but you get the point, and yes, I do understand how gay that was and am considering deleting the sentence.
We went up to Okaimden in the Atlas mountains yesterday for a little bit of home. I had forgotten what mountain snow was like. It's a far cry from Chicago's blusters and I was shocked by the oceany smell of it. The pollution of Marrakesh has been getting to me. I get headaches walking home through a constant haze of diesel moped smoke. It's like in high school when oil dripped from the tailpipe of the 25 year old Cherokee. Everyday. Every ignition jettisons a sputter of oil and a cloud of black smoke. America's pollution can't touch this.
The higher altitude cleared my head for a few hours and got my ass handed to me in a righteous snowball fight. Moroccan's got no mercy. It was far warmer and more pleasant than Midwestern storms. I had so much snow in my hair that it was actually frozen. Excellent. But I was not cold. We played, we skied, we ate Berber tagine and rode donkeys. All in all a good day.
We also got sunburnt and made it to bed shortly after eleven and slept like babies.
I dreamt I ran a haunted orphanage and woke up scared, for a man-not a ghost- broke in a pulled a gun on me.
With any luck I will finish my book today, for it has me in a fever of 'love-lost' nostalgia. I am anxiously awaiting the ending; who will die? Probably everyone.


The first Advanced Topics seminar went well. We are now open for suggestions on future topics, for mine all involve either wars, literature, or the internet. Keep in mind that 'Origami' has already been done...