Born to dis-satisfaction?

"There is no passion to be found in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living." -- Nelson Mandela

At the outset, let me set a few parameters: I am a very big fan of Nelson Mandela and all that he has come to stand for in South Africa and the world at large, that the work that he did and the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are inspirations to me and have inspired an awful lot of my academic work. That said, this quote bothers me.

And here's why:

How do we know what kind of life we are capable of living? What ever happened to the societal paradigm where we were born into a community, we did the best with what we had but did not necessarily seek to enlarge our lot, only to improve it through reasonable means, and died snug in a faith we didn't challenge? Now, I'm clearly not for this sort of thing-- I've been hopping international fences and taking classes in existential philosophy for too long now to pretend that I espouse this belief, but whatever happened to it and why do we have to doom ourselves to a lacklustre life if we fail to live a life which fully tests the limits of our capacity?

From birth in the First World we are pumped full of rhetoric regarding our capabilities; we are each destined for greatness, there's nothing we can't do if we set our minds to it, reach for the stars, aim high, genius is in the eye of the beholder and other such platitudes of bullshit. It's not really true. Yes, there are those among us who have the grey matter to make an impact upon the lives of others and maybe the social consciousness of our time, but they have to have the ambition to do so, the funding to procure the education which will enable them to do so, the luck to acquire either good health or the money to buy it, and the sheer roulette of fortune to make the connections and favourable impressions which will open the proper doors and the opportune times. That's more than any one person can control all by their lonesome, and yet we tell our children all these lies and dress them up as encouragement. We're not all capable of finding a cure for cancer. Not all of us are cut out for rocket science. In fact, a fair few of us aren't really college material.

Controversial? I suppose, but we're not all created equal in any way but rights and possibly the eyes of a benign creator if you go in for that sort of thought. If not, this all gets a lot bleaker. If you do, then the hope which is chalk and pinion to existence remains.

We aren't all brain boxes, but we can work steadily and heartily to the best of our ability. Is that what Mr. Mandela meant? That we can only find passion in pushing the boundaries of our lives and intentions wherever we find ourselves rather than offering another quote to the halls of high school graduation platitude? Can we not enjoy the passion of fulfilment at the end of a day of honest labour, of a cold drink on a hot day and the trembling of exercised muscles and a quiet mind? Can't we be happy with a quiet and ordinary life, or must we always be plagued by the creeping, whispering sprite of malcontent that we could have done better, that we might have dressed in silks and ermine and led a life of greater height?

And what precisely is this passion which we're supposed to want in our lives or else be doomed to live in the diminished lack? Google provides the definition of the noun as "1. Strong and barely controllable emotion; 2. A state or outburst of such emotion. Synonyms: rage, ardour, ardor, anger, love." Now, not to play the Gentlewoman card too heavily, but it would seem that our lives would be a little easier if the persons in control of nuclear arsenals and crude oil reserves had a little less passion in their lives. Does that mean I've condemned them to not living up to their capability?

Now, in all honesty, I've never been much of a fan of passion as such. I find it frequently involves too many fluids, but I am for satisfaction. I am pro-joy. Can we have those fulfilments in a quiet life? Might one gentlewoman find happiness and a piece of sky teaching average students to write simply and occasionally take a holiday to a distant place? Maybe that's why the above quote struck such a sour chord with me this morning, but let me put it to you, gentle and unfamiliar readers:

Must it be settling if our lives are not pushed to the brink? Is passion the aim? Can we be happy without it?

Saturday Sweet

I love Saturdays. Invariably there are hooligans mucking about on the street into the wee hours of the morning, but by the time I roll over and hug my feather pillow in the sunshine of the morning, they've deserted the streets and the only noises from opposite my windowpane are the pigeons, who coo and cluck in general good-naturedness.

This Saturday was a particular treat. The postman brought my recent purchase from The Exotic Teapot for which I was quite grateful, and the door buzzer was all it took to finally get me up for the day. I sprayed down my entire bathroom with Dettol to beat the encroaching damp and mold, and with the scent of bleach and productivity freshening up the air, I stepped freshly showered into my Saturday!

I'm a lover of tea. I haven't always been, but I'm a devotee of the heart now-- there's simply nothing better than a nice cup of tea precisely when you need it. Morocco brought fresh mint tea into my life, but my current fancy is this: my new glass teapot!

I will shamelessly admit, I like flowers. Yes, I'm a girl/woman/feminist/professional and I LIKE FLOWERS. I like the way they look, they way they catch and play with light, the way they sway in a breeze, the scent in a room, the softness of the petals and the expression on the face of the man immediately before he pushes a bouquet of them into you arms. I like flowers.
This tea combines my love of both TEA and FLOWERS! It's display tea, or blooming tea, and it's fabulous. You see, dear reader, why the acquisition of the glass teapot was necessary?!
Purchase of the actual tea is at the moment entirely through the tinterwebz, but I'm hoping that somewhere around here will start stocking it soon. Here's what it looks like pre-teapot:

A little like a tea tampon, I'll admit.

 They come in about eleventy-billion different varieties, and you can buy a sampler pack off ebay.co.uk direct from China for not very much. This does mean that you get a good variety of different ones to try and no idea what any of them are! It's fine, it's tea, you won't be disappointed. Next, introduce tea-pon to hot water:

It starts to open...

...And opens a little more...

In the meanwhile, I ate my delicious omelette with
onion, grated carrot, mature cheddar and various herbs.

And here we have it! I think this one is Lyrics,
though I could be wrong-- I'm going by the
picture on the ebay description!

See-- Flowers AND tea!

My little Moroccan tea glass, not filled with
mint this time, but rather the mouthful of
petals which is blooming tea.

Still going into the evening.

The nice thing about this type of tea is that you just keep topping up the hot water-- each bloom will give you at least two full pots of tea. I sprang for the teapot warmer stand, pictured above, and powered by a tealight. This I can get behind-- pretty, and keeps my teapot hot!

All in all, quite pleased with myself on this front. I've another teapot to fuel my quest to write up my dissertation and it's pretty to boot! Next instalment of Ikebana and the rest of the Marrakesh posts soon, dears, promise!

Marrakesh, Pt. II: The Souks

The title is a bit deceptive-- I didn't actually take a single picture in the heart of the souks, despite traipsing through them time and again. You see, dear readers, the stall-holders will fleece you for just about anything, including photographing their heaping tables and glittering Aladdin's Caves. To avoid being nickel-and-dime'd to death, I abstained. What follows, however, are a smattering of the shots I did snap.

Minaret of the central Mosque--
you can see it from nearly everywhere in the Medina,
which can be damn useful for navigation

Gardens adjacent to the Mosque

My travel companions, Lulls and Alpha

Oranges and Orange Blossoms--
The air was so heavy with the scent of orange blossom,
you could taste it. I doubt I'll ever use orange blossom water
in the kitchen again without some small part of my mind back-tracking
to the moment I took this picture. Love it.

A view of the mountains from the gardens 

The dyers--
A very helpful man (who did successfully sell us some scarves in the end)
appointed himself as our guide and brought us around and showed us all the
bubbling vats of dyes and hanging skenes of wool and silks.

Most of this is sheep and camel wool for rugs.

Lulls, in the properly tied cactus silk scarf--
yeah, silk made from cactus fibre. Awesome.

Alpha and our friend.
All the jars behind them are minerals and such to make the dye.

Alpha, humouring me.

Another time we found ourselves being guided about without asking for it: the Berber Tanneries.
The pits are full of lime and pigeon poo ("to makes the soft leathers")
and all sorts of foul smelling hides. 

The man who led us through gave us clumps of mint to hold over our noses
to combat the smell, calling it a Berber Gas Mask.

I'd seen these discussed in nature documentaries, but to see them
first-hand was a fabulous experience!

The main tannery for the city of Marrakesh (as opposed to the Berber Tannery)--
This place is massive. According to our guide, 200 men can work the hides here side by side.

2 men working side by side, rinsing the hides.

After being given to tour, we got the old soft sell by the Berber elders who were, to be honest, really good at not pressuring us into buying anything. Well, not pressuring me into buying anything I didn't already want to, that is. Alpha kinda caught it in the teeth-- they changed the colour of a bag she'd expressed moderate interest in, and then she really felt like she needed to haggle for it and it was all a done deal from there. But prior to that, they brought us into a room lined with bags and deflated ottomans and showed us the differences in texture between goat, sheep, camel, cow and calfskin leathers, as well as the different designs and embellishment made by tribes and families of different women. Then, in a side room, they sat us down on a low bench and served traditional mint tea while laying out rug after rug after rug. Geometric designs from the Low Atlas mountains, "picasso" rugs positively saturated in colour and jammed with pattern from the High Atlas, silk rugs with sparse line designs from the Sahara to the south, brought in on camels from the desert. One of the men produced the ubiquitous bic lighter from his pocket and, turns out, the way to tell if a rug is really silk rather than imitation synthetic is to hold an open flame to it. If it does nothing to it, it's real silk. If the shop owner freaks out, it's a fake. Handy tip, eh?

We'd made pretty clear that we couldn't really afford to buy anything (despite the fact that all three of us left with something) and they were up front about acknowledging that. Frankly, I think the tourist population in Morocco has been depleted by all the unrest in Tunisia and Egypt and they were rather keen to simply show us what they had, interact rather than sit idle.

Once you decided to haggle for an item, there was only one man to see-- the eldest gentleman there, and clearly the one in charge. None of this petty discussion of price: he had a wee ledger on which he drew boxes, one for his price, one for yours. You go back and forth until he shakes your hand, and the price is the number in the last box. They're tough, and you've got to hold your ground, but the camel leather weekender bag I bought will last the rest of my natural life and be my carry-on bag for-absolutely-freaking-ever (that's the technical term for such a long unit of time, by the way). It's incredibly light, solid leather, has pockets and I love it. Lulls bought a gorgeous light green silk rug and Alpha now has for perpetuity what's become known as "the stinky goat bag" due to the smell of the oil.

Kitten napping in sunshine--
This little guy was in a doorframe enjoying some sunshine.
What you can't see are the motorbikes and scooters zipping past
inches from his head! The whole medina is full of cats, some waiting for
bites to drop from the butchers' tables, but most lounging about being cats.

View down from our perch on the terrace at Cafe Arabe to the street below.

After hacking our way through what must have been a comparatively deserted run in the souks (I think they must be easier to navigate when they're busy--hear me out on this one-- because despite the increase in people to navigate around, it wouldn't be possible for every shop owner in the history of ever to hail you with their wares) we needed a bit of respite. A trio of sprites on the terrace of Cafe Arabe was just the ticket, and the breeze was fabulous.

Terrace of Cafe Arabe.

View of a bit of wall art visible from the Terraces de Espices.

Giant woven rooftop teapot? Yes, please!

Sunlight through the shade umbrella.

Oranges in the tree and a motorcycle = fabulousness!

Our third venture into a cafe, this one called Bouganviellea, can you guess why?

Not a rooftop terrace, but a delightful courtyard oasis is a nice escape as well.

Still to come: Jardin Majorelle, Musee de Marrakesh, the Main Square, and the FOOD!

It's coming...

Wild croci outside the University Office!

Slowly but surely, the signs are everywhere.

Nearly Spring

It must be spring-ish somewhere 'round these parts-- the British-born Daffies are 99p at Markies, and that's the surest sign of the season's approach. Soon there will be little bunches of daffodils in every corner Tesco, every Spar and Cooperative up and down the country, and for this, I am grateful. I've missed watching them open in the thin Aberdonian sunlight, the vase on my windowsill guarding my elbow and gradually filling my office with the scent of freshly opened petals. Anything to dispel the lingering sense of the uncanny generated by my reading of Bataille's The Tears of Eros. Absolutely anything. More on this book at some later point.

To sum up... DAFFIES ARE COMING! That is all.

Bus-Stop Encounters

I don't know what it is. When my friend HPC first pointed it out, I didn't believe her, but I've come to accept that it's true: people just walk up and talk to me.

I can't really explain it. I've been told that I'm intimidating-- really, honestly scary at times. And yet, if I'm standing in line at the grocery store, if I'm filling my car with gasoline, riding in an elevator or on an escalator, maybe browsing books in a store, just minding my business and strolling through the park, people seem compelled to talk to me.

At first, I thought this happened to everybody. If there's somebody else waiting at a counter in the cheesemonger, don't they make polite chit chat about how they just love orkney cheddar? Or if you're standing around on the train platform, make some dig about how public transportation is so unreliable? I mean, I never actually initiated any of these conversations, but I responded cordially and went about my business.

It turns out, apparently this is not the case.

For all this, I can't really explain the phenomenon. It just happens. Take today for example: I was perched at a bus stop on Union Street, the main drag through the city centre. It was around 7pm and I sat with my two bags of groceries and played around with my new mobile, trying to figure out how to change the ringtone. I still haven't figured it out, but in the meanwhile an elderly gent shuffled up and sat next to me, and asked me the time and if i was looking forward to my tea. he was kindly enough, with his pageboy cap and tweed jacket, and he walked with a cane, which I find automatically endearing. I said I was looking forward to fixing some supper, and he told me about how he'd been out for the day in Inverurie to visit his brother-in-law, and the two together had gone to visit yet another brother-in-law who is in hospital. Now, bear in mind that all of this information was completely unsolicited.

Now, I've got a Midwest accent that you can spot at a 150 yards, there's no denying it. Frankly, it grates on my own ears nowadays, and I don't really know how anybody can stand listening to me-- my own voice annoys me, let alone anybody else. And there's no pretending I'm from 'round these parts, either: my Scottish accent is still appalling, despite my best efforts. Le sigh. So when he asked where in America I was from, I wasn't all that surprised. I told him Michigan, and he began to tell me about how he knew where that was because he'd been driven in a military convoy along the Trans-Canadian Highway for his flight training out in British Columbia during WWII. He told me about taking the ship over, how they docked next to the Queen Mary, how he saw the Statue of Liberty for the first and only time at 4 in the morning, how women had laid out the best breakfast he's ever tasted on the docks upon their arrival, the fresh fruit, eggs and meat they had only dreamed about while on the steamer from Ireland. All the while, I smiled and nodded, laughed at the appropriate moments and genuinely marvelled at what he was telling me.

Telling me, a perfect stranger.

I guess it's the same way women hand me their infants while I'm working as a photographer's assistant. I even once had a woman thrust her newborn into my arms at the local grocers so she could have both hands free to paw through her purse in search of an elusive debit card. Who does that? People have handed me dogs on leashes as well, told me about their caring husbands, cancer scares, family vacations and housing plans. Mostly I just nod and smile, half-bemused and half-bewildered.

So, is it just me, or does this happen to you as well, my dear invisible readers? Do you have bus stop encounters with charming old gents who make you wish that your bus was five minutes late like it usually is?