Notes on The Journey To The Kasbah

I really do not have the peace I need for creative, poetic and actual good writing. So I must make notes. Hopefully to capture a little of what I feel and see. but it has become really painful to contemplate. There has been far too much tension, the story of our little adventure with the duties and obligation of serving and being served has exploded into something much bigger and harder to wrestle into shape.

Should I start with cats? There are three of them, perhaps four, a dappled brown black am mostly white, meek little thing who so desperately wants a home and someone to snuggle up to(but who has the mostly aggressive and terrifying style of climbing a tree), a gray and brown little boy who is wary and tough and very handsome and a classic tabby, not as orange as our homeboy Pumpkin. There maybe an older larger grey cat on the grounds but we are not really sure.

After a journey to the south of the city to see a kasbah that had been gloriously converted into a luxury hotel, she had our cab driver stop at a local store on the side of the road on the way back, and had the most wonderful time purchasing a few cans of tuna and sardines, picking up a little Moroccan Arabic on the side and reveling onto the contact and feel of the place, run by a father and his son. The cab driver dutifully went with her to the store, to assist, translate and teach, with the natural responsibility of man of this place, a servant but also a host and a father and guardian of the precious girl

The sardines were for the cats of course, as we were having a lite supper, if any supper at all after a huge lunch at the kasbah. And none of the fare would have served the cats very well. She waited for them to come. I remained in my nice jacket from the afternoon and she called to me to take off the jacket before I helped her open the can sardines. This made sense but it had a t first sounded like she had requested he take off his shoes before assisting. This put him off alittle even as he removed the shoes. He put them back on after he had removed the jacket, with a slightly exasperated air but the open of the can would change his mood. It called for a slow steady application of strength, something he could set himself up for and work into and the small controlled he gained of the object and the process would return some satisfaction.

Feeding the cats turned into a circus. There was reason to for everyone to be screaming at each other before. But the stress of the different animals showing up all at once, instead of their previous behavior of showing up one at a time, thus allowing for a controlled distribution of portions, made for an unfriendly and uncharitable chaos. The people treated each other poorly and thus the animals were made to suffer. They also treated each other a little poorly, with hissing and swiping as the jockeyed to eat the first portions. There was controversy about the second portion and where the animal that was to get this serving was located. This I am afraid lend to the poorly supported but not entirely dismissible fourth cat theory. It also lead to screaming and recriminations between him and her. The pleasure of feeding the little dears was denied him and sole claim of the privilege, based on her being the one to actually have purchased the sardines, was awarded to the precious girl.(No allowance, or even memory of his having sacrificed a third of his diner the previous night in order to feed what was then though to be two cats was made.)

Much of not all of the tension of the evening and the cats derived from the partial failure of the day’s journey. The late arrival of the cab, the mysterious misunderstanding of how the time of the cab appointment and the subsequent time of the reservation at the kasbah came to be changed, and then the up and down nature of the kasbah, totally befitting a hill fort but really inappropriate for the old and infirmed woman,conspired against her daughter’s enjoyment of the day. There was an unintended argument about the reservation. They were out late and thus the kasbah lunch area was completely deserted. She wanted her mother to see the place. She wanted her mother to be what she had been and not the interminable burden she had become, dragging, dragging, desperately dragging, hindering, hapless, helpless, in need of constant service and care. ing the little bell please and a man will open the door.

This put a large pale on her day and she began to needlessly pick at her mother. The mother many peculiar and largely unconscious actions became a constant irritant to her, until she struck at her, asking a question that a reasonable adult should have been able to answer but which her mother hadn’t a clue. “Where are you staying?” The mother thought she was asking where it was they were having lunch, where they were at the moment, but in either case she really didn’t know the answer. It wasn’t important really that she knew the answer but the daughter keep poking at her, chiding her and repeating the question. He of course couldn’t take this and again was unaturally cast on the role of the mother’s protector, the performance of which would only result in total dissolution and uncreative conflict.