NOTE: This is in draft form, but I didn't want this communique to fade away, so I'll just post it and work on a 2nd draft later in the week at Casablanca Airport, where I have the unfortunate luck to have a 10+ -hour layover...It's been a busy week, and I want to do justice to these words, so I wait.
To add to writing style, drafts, etc., I like to outline my work by starting with headings for whatever it is I am feeling like writing about. It's usually a mix of things that happened during the week, encounters with people, thoughts while cycling, music, da kine, etc. Anyway, it's centered around road-tripping through the high-Atlas Mountains and Jebel Toubkal ('mount' Toubkal) — the highest point in Morocco & North Africa. It's a love story, actually, but not a deep love story...
Music to accompany my words: Gordon Lightfoot's 'Sundown'
falling into lust w/a mountain: Jebel Toubkal
sea level to 4167 meters of your raw intimidating granite slicing through the sky, your rarefied air I greedily breathe in
A mountain fit for fleeing Titans, after Zeus's fury. The Pillars of Heracles (2 mountains straddling the Strait of Gibraltar) stands as testimony of Titan strength Heracles wasn't a Titan... only a Demigod: remove this
up close & personal
- 1st date 2024: unexpected immediate physical attraction
- lingering feelings somewhere in the back of my hard-drive
- 2nd date: remote 'coffee' meet-up
- 3rd date: Can this really 'be' something? No, but I enjoy a good challenge, and at over 4000 meters elevation, I enjoy that you manage to take my breath away. I will train. I will prepare. I will see you again in October, 2026...
Now, I just have to convince Mohamed to join in. I'll need a 'wing-man' to keep me in check...
- UPDATE: he said YES!
my heart belongs to Poseidon's tides, but I'll check you out, Toubkal; let's see what kind of music we can make together: a symphony, a solo, a fado
in search of this mountain's tides, rhythms; allow me to flow within your high tides
- bikinis for base layers
- surfboard for trekking poles
- salt in my hair; snow on my Hoka One Ones
mutual attraction
- let's let it play out for what it is: a high altitude fling w/no strings attached, just delicious memories that hit harder than any sea-level riptide
reminds me of a Gordon Lightfoot song: Sundown.
He wrote it, as rumor has it, about a groupie that enjoyed hooking up with famous musicians at concerts in the 70s. She always left him at sundown- 'creeping down my back stairs.' There is this one opening verse that gets right to the heart of the song/emotion
"I can see her lying back in her satin dress in a room where you do what you don't confess."
This one as well:
"She's been looking like a queen in a sailor's dream, and she don't always say what she really means."
sunrise union
a vertical one night stand with the eARTh itself (2 days to summit from Imlil)
temporary fixation
- this jebel doesn't want to hold my hand; it wants to see me sweat, to scrape my knees on unforgiving prickly shrubbery, to see me beg for the summit sunrise
I wrote this for you — extending late into the Bewitching Hour while just a Moonlight Mile on down the road — because I felt your presence. I saw your outline in the shadows as I was creeping down your back stairs. Just as Gordon Lightfoot's hook-up left him each day at sundown, creeping down his back stairs and onto other conquests, I will return to the sea. I could never give up King Neptune, after all.
I daydream: intermittent scenes from 'the big kiss' float through. I will rise at 4:00 am. I will witness the sun rising over the Sahara. You are, after all, the both the root and roof of Morocco and North Africa beyond. Our interaction, brief. Let's move on from one another. I have other mountains to fall in love with, and I've set my sights on Portugal's. As I creep down your back stairs, I'm already focused on another's embrace. Think of me fondly, though, from time to time as I will you: your ruggedness, your height, the danger — from the solace of my beach towel...
Sometime, during some sundown, my future self might lament that our sunrise together will have ruined all other sunrises
I made you a mix tape. (SO Gen-X) Yes, I'm smitten:
Rebel Rebel- David Bowie
I can't get no Satisfaction - Stones
Smooth- Santana
Steal my Sunshine - Len
In the Evening - Led Zeppelin
Grace, too - Day for Night - The Tragically Hip
Still - Macy Gray
Deeper Shade of Soul - Urban Dance Squad
Learning to Fly - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Take Me Home Country Road - Israel Kamakawiwo`ole
Just the Way You Are - Milky
Dreams 1977 - Fleetwood Mac
My Sweet Lord - George Harrison
Harvest Moon - Neil Young
No comments:
Post a Comment