Choose an image from T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and illustrate it through art, audio, video, or any other creative medium.

Paint a picture, put the words to music, make a mashup, photograph a scene, write a short story, bake a Prufrock cake… anything!

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

Here’s a collage example:

(Also submitted as a #ds106 assignment.)

For fear of boring myself¹ I’ll try to keep this post brief. I took advantage of the long weekend at the end of week seventeen to attend a holiday market at the American Legation, where Moroccan women sold handmade crafts to benefit various local charities. ² The next day I hosted the library’s second fundraising cinema night,³ which was a big success. Filled the library with happy third and fourth graders, who were surprisingly excited to be in the library on the weekend. They loved the film and some even helped me clean up at the end.⁴

Those who know me well⁵ will remember that I have very strong feelings about Thanksgiving. Thankfully,⁶ I haven’t had to deal with the horrors of selective history education since my elementary school days. But this year I found myself in a school for Thanksgiving, surrounded by construction paper turkeys, small children in various interpretations of Native American and Puritan dress, and an excited holiday atmosphere around the school. ⁷

The first thing I did on Thanksgiving morning was send the following card via email to my friends and family:⁸

Unexpectedly, this particular Thanksgiving grinch was summoned to photograph the Kindergarten Thanksgiving lunch in the lower school. Picture this: four Kindergarten classes (roughly ages 2-7) all sitting around an enormous row of tables stretching all the way down the hall. Now add in the teachers and a few parent volunteers rushing around the perimeter, frantically distributing food and ushering children through the crowd. Remember, many children are talking, many are yelling, but all are making some kind of noise. A group of troublemakers at the end decides to bang their plastic plates against the table in unison. Another group fights over their seats. And then the plates are filled with food and a hush falls over the room. Children pose for me, mid-chicken leg ⁹ and grinning.

Now, I’m not saying that my feelings about Thanksgiving have changed, but spending lunchtime with a room full of happy kindergartners made my week.

My eighteenth week in Morocco also saw the first meeting of the brand new upper school art club in the library. There are no official art classes for grades 7-12, so I started an after school art club with two other teachers. We’re just two meetings in, but it’s been great fun. Eventually, I think the art club will function as a kind of individual workshop time with group lessons for students who are interested in particular activities. We’ll be doing “traditional” art, knitting and crocheting, origami, sewing, beadwork, and much more! Teachers and students will take turns teaching the group, depending upon each person’s area of expertise. On the weekend I had more house guests, French ones this time, who were on a one-year bicycle tour of Mediterranean Europe. I showed them around town a bit and took advantage of the opportunity to practice my French. After dinner and dessert, we sat on a wall in the kasbah looking out across the ocean to Spain while a man played guitar and a group of giggling children practiced their flamenco dancing.

Week nineteen? More work. I had a dear friend visiting from DC for a few days, so we had great fun chatting, exploring the city, and figuring out which local foods might give him an allergic reaction. The week ended with another movie night, this time for the fifth and sixth grades.¹⁰ I celebrated my five month-iversary in Morocco with two Spanish friends, eating tagine and lobia at my usual haunt, and chaotic week twenty-one was full of “last week of school” activities.¹¹

Early Sunday morning I hopped on an airplane with two friends and–after two flights, a five-hour layover in Madrid, two more trains, and a short drive–we found ourselves at their cozy house in Wales. I snuggled into warm blankets and slept until morning.¹²

I have a secret to share with you, dear readers. After three weeks devoid of photos, blog posts, sunlight, and fun, I was feeling pretty demoralized. I seriously considered ending this weekly tradition for good, and instead returning to my pre-Morocco sporadic blogging schedule. And then I heard from some of you, in comments, via email or Skype, and even through a lovingly crafted letter in the mail.¹³ I thought for a while about my stress at work, lack of creative time, and shameful neglect of my camera and music. And you know what? Writing, reading, painting, photographing, music-making, and adventuring are the things that make me happy, and absolutely shouldn’t be relegated to the “well, if I have time” category.

So here I am, back and newly motivated. I’ll be blogging the next two weeks from England,¹⁴ and then back to Morocco in the new year.¹⁵

And in the way of an apology for the delay, here is a special bonus photograph of Loki supervising my blogging. It’s hard work, but someone has to do it. He’s especially adept at catching stray commas.

1. And you, too, dear readers.
2. Bought a little surprise for my mum. No guessing! You’ll have to wait ’til Christmas.
3. These biweekly movie nights are going to fund new shelf labels, a better speaker system, new furniture, and, of course, books.
4. I may or may not have bribed them with candy.
5. Or casual acquaintances who have unwittingly made the mistake of bringing up the subject.
6. See what I did there?
7. The fact that there was no *actual* holiday that week didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits in the least, and the kids were still running around the school chattering excitedly.
8. I spent the next few hours feeling simultaneously accomplished and guilty.
9. Chicken was served instead of turkey, for the most part, due to availability. Other dishes included salad, fresh fruit, rice, and some Moroccan cakes.
10. Getting closer to buying nice things for the library!
11. I even managed to find a decent fake Christmas tree and put it up in my apartment living room, which now cozy and feels a bit more like home. After making construction paper decorations, and adding some house guests and friends to complete my little Tangier family, I was all set.
12. Rainy morning, of course, since this is Wales in winter.
13. You know who you are.
14. Hopefully with cheering holiday photographs.
15. The jury is still out on whether I should continue the “Morocco, Week __” titling scheme while in England. Maybe I’ll stop being lazy and write clever titles for each new post.

Later in the day, one of the more difficult kindergarten classes came in for their story. When it was time for them to leave the library, I tried playing the mandolin as they lined up. Worked like a charm. Twenty-four of the rowdiest children at our school quietly faced forward, lined up, and walked back to class. Admittedly, a couple of them nearly walked into doors because they were craning around to watch me play as they trotted off. I felt a bit like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. (You know, minus trapping the children in a mountain to punish their parents.)

The rest of the week went smoothly, and on Saturday afternoon I was off to Spain. You might remember from my last post that Eid al-Adha, the Muslim festival which includes sheep sacrifice, was coming up. Well, rather than listen to thousands of dismayed sheep bleating across the city (and smelling them roasting later on) I opted to travel to northern Spain. My goal, San Sebastián, (Donostia in Basque) was only two flights and a three-hour bus ride away. On the first flight I sat next to a young man who had never flown before. Through him, I remembered the wonder of seeing the tops of clouds for the first time. It was great seeing the look in his eyes in the moment when the plane lifted off the runway.

Smooth sailing at the Madrid airport, though I’ve never liked the place. It’s sprawling, sterile, unnecessarily cavernous, and always seems empty in relation to its size. I looked out the window on my flight to Santander and was lulled to sleep by the gray expanse of clouds and the sound of the engine. I woke up to turbulence and passengers discussing it nervously. There was a tense atmosphere as the plane shook and wobble its way through the storm, but I closed my eyes and ears, and let the airplane rock me back to sleep. We landed over water, with the last sunlight glowing faintly behind a wall of clouds. After crossing a drizzly runway, I splurged and paid 8.50 euros for a Spanish-English dictionary, figuring that it would be a good resource should any translation crises occur.³ Half an hour after my flight arrived, I caught the night bus⁴ to San Sebastián, about a three-hour journey.

We rushed through the night, rain glistening on the ground, across a landscape so dark that it blended into the overcast night sky. The other passengers chatted quietly or slept. We stopped in Bilbao and I was the only one left besides an elderly couple in the back who stood to stretch their legs, then sank comfortably back down into their seats. I looked out at Bilbao and thought for a while about how shockingly different the scenery was from Morocco. Even after only four months, I was so used to the landscape, the structures, and the people that Spain seemed utterly alien to me. I had even been taken aback by the bathrooms at the airport, with their uniform, painted doors and automatic dryers. The road had rails, lights, and resembled most of the roads I was used to from the US. But where were the grand taxis crammed full of people traveling two towns over? Where were the boys selling onions and live chickens by the side of the road? Where were the familiar mosque towers in every village? What about the occasional run-down bus careening precariously as it rattles and whizzes down a mountain road? I felt a brief moment of homesickness for Morocco, until the Spanish bus driver honked his horn. That felt a little more like home.⁵ I arrived in San Sebastián at night, in the rain, and headed to a friend’s house. Undaunted by the howling wind and violent raindrops on my window, I went to sleep excited about my first experience in Basque Country the following day.

The next day it rained, too. In fact, I was told by my friend that it was the most unpleasant weather he’d ever seen in the city. Crossing a bridge by the port, I saw waves taller than any I’d ever seen, blown in by ferocious winds. We walked around town until every article of clothing was soaked, fingertips wrinkled.  Stopped into a bar for orange juice and warmth. It was crowded with refugees of the wind and rain, who chatted and sipped their coffee while waiting out the storm. We trudged home eventually, squelch squelch squelch, and changed into dry clothes. After a simple three-course lunch and a delicious nap, I spent the evening discussing psychology, learning Basque pronunciation, and listening to the rain.

On Monday the rain was light enough for me to explore San Sebastián all day. As my sandals were soaked from the night before, my friend lent me a pair of sneakers and off I went. Mid-morning, I slipped into Cathédrale Buen Pastor behind two women in beige raincoats. My plan was to stay long enough to dry off a bit, but it was so peaceful that I ended up sitting in a pew for three quarters of an hour, writing down my thoughts⁶ and admiring the Neo-Gothic architecture. Women walked in every couple of minutes, pausing briefly in front of the pulpit before continuing to the other side. Bells chimed nine times, twice, and sounded much more distant inside than out.

I looked at the arching ceilings and the orange-yellow light coming from electric bulbs attached to every few columns. It was so dark outside that even the stained glass windows were dim, barely illuminated by a gray sky. (So different from that day in Sacre Coeur when I stepped into a dappled pool of light that danced down from colored glass.) There was a pipe organ in the back of the cathedral. I’ve always wanted to be in a church when somebody is practicing the organ.⁷ To hear and feel the music as it ricochets across columns, in and out of pews, brushes against each colored pane of glass before catching warm candle air and rising swiftly away like a freed balloon.

Passing women gone, I found myself alone in the cathedral. Just me, the columns, and the shadows. Rows of wooden pews waiting for the next mass. I spent some time studying the confessionals; I’ve never confessed. I’ve only seen it in movies. I wondered briefly if it’s like going to a therapist. What are the differences? What does it feel like to have your sins peeled away? Do you feel light and free, or naked, exposed, and alone?

Sitting there, in the dim electric light, I was reminded of a library. Or maybe, for me, libraries are cathedrals. Holy places. I could so easily imagine the walls lined with books, every cranny and crevice, all the way up to the stained glass. Around the lower windows, climbing one at a time like ivy, books filling this beautiful, arched space. There would be the tallest ladders stretching up into the shadows. The pipe organ remains, of course, and every time it’s played, the books would shake off their dust and resonate with joy.

I wandered down the streets of San Sebastián, hunched in the rain. I tried on hats in a very fancy hat shop, and the Spanish-speaking saleswoman was extremely patient. Eventually decided against a hat that day, as none were waterproof. I followed the scent of fresh bread to a bakery and was amazed at the number of people bustling in and out despite the rain. A sign of a good bakery. I found out from a man in a music shop that there were no accordions for sale in the entire city.⁸ I played piano in a second music shop, but was refused an audience with the mandolin. I was drawn into another shop by a beautiful dress in the window, and decided to make it myself in Morocco. Whenever I passed a fashion shop, I received judgmental looks from the people inside. I must have been a funny sight; oversized men’s sneakers, voluminous blue skirt with pockets, mismatched turtleneck, tiny backpack. I consoled myself by deciding that, were they visiting for the weekend from Morocco with only a few items of clothing, most of which had gotten soaked the day before, they would be dressed that way too.

In the early evening, I returned to the cathedral for a second time. It was even more deserted than it had been earlier in the day. The rush hour street sounds were muffled and distant, and when I sneezed it echoed all around the room. The stained glass was dimmer than ever, and I closed my eyes for a few minutes as all my thoughts drifted away into the dark. I had pintxos (pronounced “peen-cho”) for dinner, and they were so good that couldn’t stop thinking about them for hours afterward. (A pintxo, dear reader, is the Basque version of tapas, only about ten times more delicious.) Went to bed and dreamed of picnics in the sun.

On Tuesday I woke up early with sunlight⁹ trickling in through my window. My first stop was a recommended bakery, where I picked up a baguette and a croissant. Ate the croissant while crossing the city, much to the envy of passers-by on their way to work. I walked through the old town and climbed up, up, up the hill to the old fort.¹⁰ Clouds were spread out across the sky in ripples, like a worn out blanket, sea glimmering below. The ocean was dappled with sunlight, and the rugged clouds above made it look like two landscapes instead of one. A red sailboat bobbed miles out, as clouds floated past it and the ocean changed color with the sun. I looked the other way, over the city, and saw mist rising off the buildings and hills. I sat in a park at the top of the hill, nibbling my baguette and enjoying my first glimpse of sun in three days. I listened to birds chirping and muffled footsteps on stone. Too late in the year for tourists, the people who passed by were runners, dog walkers, middle-aged lovers. I tried to lure a bird in front of my camera with a piece of baguette, but it got the better of both me and the bread. I walked down, squinting in the sunlight, past happy dogs and a family on a picnic.

On the bus to Santander, I watched the Basque countryside drift lazily by. Old stone farmhouses with terra cotta roofs. Rectangular and blocky with small square windows, they made me think of cow herds, strawberry jam, and family around the fire. Every so often, the ocean would appear between two hills. I remember thinking about the huge valleys going by with sheep grazing on the slopes, then remembering that I was going by, not the valleys, and certainly not the sheep. Other roads twisted through fields and trees, disappearing into the hills. I thought about how I would like to come back and explore every single one of them, given the time.¹¹

In Santander, I visited yet another historic cathedral and, for the first time in my life, lit one of those tiny prayer candles.¹² I bought yarn at a knitting shop, sipped tea and read a book in a café, visited a dive bar with a friend, and ended my day curled on her couch, crocheting a scarf and listening to Spanish television. In the airplane on the way back, I looked out the window as we crossed the mountains of northern Spain. There were roads zig-zagging up steep slopes, and I imagined cars simply tumbling backdown. The sun glinted across rivers, like spotlights in succession. Further south, a dense cloud bank hung over farmland. The clouds looked so solid that it seemed it would hurt to fall into into them. They were packed tightly, with a band of blue sky above, followed by another stretch of solid, white clouds that ended in a line near the horizon as if painted on with one, long brush stroke. In the midst of turbulence, the flight crew offered fake cigarette packs over the intercom. “Tobacco flavored. They produce NO smoke!”

1. If you didn’t catch all my pre-Halloween adventures in the last post, go take a look.
2. Ironically, I think this was the closest I’ve gotten to dressing like a Moroccan. Long skirt, long sleeves, head covering…
3. I had a printed page of useful Spanish phrases, too.
4. The bus driver had a passenger list, and knew my name as soon as I reached for my UK passport.
5. Morocco may be the only place I’ve been where drivers honk more than they do in Washington, DC.
6. Most of this post was written by hand in the cathedral, on the back of my San Sebastián map.
7. When do they do it? In the middle of the day? At night? Does it wake up the neighbors?
8. So much for my half-baked “buy an accordion and somehow transport it back to Tangier” plan.
9. Finally!
10. Thanks to the pleasant weather, I was out of the man shoes and back in my sandals, skirt, and leggings.
11. There is a beautiful coastal path from San Sebastián to Hondarribia, a neighboring town, that takes about ten hours to hike. It’s already on my to-do list for my next visit to the area.
12. I spent about five minutes deliberating over this, but decided eventually that one does not have to be religious to light a candle. I decided that I would light mine to send good wishes and love to my friends and family back in the states.

ADVANTAGE: I get to decide how to organize the books.

DISADVANTAGE: I have to reorganize them myself.

ADVANTAGE: I can order new furniture and study carrels.

DISADVANTAGE: It’s up to me to explain to the carpenter, who only speaks Arabic, how to make those study carrels.

ADVANTAGE: I’m in charge of ordering new books.

DISADVANTAGE: The library doesn’t have a budget yet for ordering new books.

ADVANTAGE: I’ve been making book recommendations to faculty here over the summer.

DISADVANTAGE: Sometimes they don’t want to return the books.

Nonetheless, some pretty exciting things are in store for the library and AST’s one-woman EdTech department. Hold onto your hats, and stay tuned to my blog for further updates!

Before I moved to Tangier, I obsessively researched daily life and culture here. I scoured the internet for expat blogs, chatted with a few Moroccans, and even made lists of potential challenges. I packed only culturally appropriate clothing, brought extras of hard-to-find items, and did my best to soothe my family’s anxieties.² Upon arriving, however, I discovered that the things I had been most concerned about, such as harassment, religious intolerance, and independence, weren’t an issue at all. Now I know these are still early days, but I’ve been here exactly a month³ and my experience has been almost entirely positive. I’ve found that if I behave and dress in a culturally sensitive way, nobody really gives me a second glance. Sometimes I get curious looks, but there are enough Europeans and Americans here that I’m not really a novelty. I wear long pants most of the time, usually paired with a t-shirt or blouse since it’s too hot to wear long sleeves. Sometimes I cover my arms with a scarf, but only if I’m worried about sunburn or cold. To be honest, I could probably wear shorts and a tank top if I liked, but I prefer to blend in. I walk like I know where I’m going, even when I don’t.⁴

The calls to prayer, which are broadcast via loudspeaker from each mosque five times daily, don’t bother me. Because I don’t know much Arabic yet, it just sounds like beautiful songs and chanting. It’s incredibly soothing to listen to, and often puts me in a creative mood. I’ve only had one discussion about religion, regarding whether religion is necessary for psychological well-being. I’ve never been lectured, criticized, chastised, or proselytized to. I’ve been inquisitive about religious and social customs, and the Moroccans I’ve met have been delighted to share these things with me. I learn so more every day here than anywhere else I’ve lived. I’ve had fascinating discussions about the cultural differences between the north and south, and how westernized cities like Casablanca have become. The importance of family in Moroccan life. My friend Adil, whose extended family has been visiting during Ramadan, said this to me last night:⁵ “When I have my family at home, with me, I feel very happy. Ramadan is a special time because they are here, and I love them very much. When I have my own house, I want to fill it with family all the time, to always have them near me.”

I spent most of my evenings last week working on a secret art project, which I hope to unveil gradually over the coming weeks. When I wasn’t drawing, I was learning to cook Moroccan food, spending time with friends, pressing flowers, and throwing extravagant dinner parties.⁶ I watered my plants and, one windy day, restored overturned pots to the proper upright position, scooped the dirt back in, and apologizing to the plants.⁷ I marched into a bakery and asked for one of each type of Moroccan pastry.⁸ On Sunday evening I went to the beach and watched people enjoying the last few hours of the weekend as the sun crept toward the horizon. A man ran back and forth with his two dogs, who bounded through the surf like puppies. A woman watched her children swimming, and two toddlers destroyed a sand castle. I watched the sunset at Cap Spartel. A couple of cats joined me,⁹ though they were fickle in their attentions, abandoning me for a boisterous Spanish family who dropped chicken scraps as they ate.

After nightfall, I climbed the stairs to the top of a little café, where I sat on the rooftop with friends and had a meandering conversation, half in French, half in English, and sipped mint tea. The call to prayer, echoing from a nearby mosque, interrupted us and we paused to listen. They asked me if I knew about the prayers, and I asked them if they knew the name of the man chanting. I wandered the Kasbah at night, listening to half-mumbled conversations of men in doorways, and running my fingers along crumbling city walls. I ate pastries on a hill and looked at Spain, twinkling away across the ocean. Watched the big dipper rise over the water. Returned home and drew late into the night, with crickets outside my window and the curtains billowing and tickling my feet with each cool breeze.

1. Gabriel, you’ll regret this.
2. My friends were a different story; immediately upon hearing the news that I was moving to Morocco, they demanded to know when they could come visit. Some even wanted to come with me.
3. And three weeks of that during Ramadan.
4. This is a useful skill for any city.
5. I may be paraphrasing, due to my abysmal memory.
6. I take my dinner parties very seriously. There were three courses, unless you count wine as a course, in which case there were four. Two vases of freshly picked wildflowers on the table, napkins, parsley garnish on the main dish, place settings, candlelight…
7. I heard somewhere that if you talk to plants they’re much healthier. This is the excuse I use when visitors observe me walking around the house mumbling to myself.
8. I ordered three of one I’d had before, halwa shebakia, and the man behind the counter gave me an incredulous look. “Just three?” Moroccans usually buy these in bucketloads during Ramadan. “Okay,” I conceded, “Four.”
9. I lured them in with the promise of food, then took surprise close-ups from ground-level. They were not amused.

As promised, here are my four most recent paintings. They’re actually finished, which is more than I can usually say! We’ll see about continuing this trend.

Everyone should have blue skin.

spring

summer

fall

Voila! I’m going to save up for a couple of canvases² so next time I don’t have to paint on paper.

1. Have I lost you yet?
2. Did you know: en française, ‘canvas’ is ‘toile’. Not to be confused with etoile or toilette.

And just because I love you all so much, the person to guess the highest percentage of these correctly will receive a special prize! So go on, I dare you.²

1. Including not getting home till after 11pm every night last week.
2. Isn’t this so much better than some dumb post about toys?

"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each"

"I do not think that they will sing to me"

My sunburn notebook from two years ago:

And one extra this year because I had so many leftover magazine clippings:

1. I fell asleep on the beach for four hours or so…
2. I hope my mother didn’t need those magazines.

“Saturday Night” brings retellings of myths and fairy tales into a contemporary atmosphere through an unusual setting: a bar that—instead of serving drinks—serves stories. Characters go to this bar for the same reasons one usually does: companionship, escape, distraction, stress relief, solace, and entertainment, for example. Each retelling addresses its reader in some way, though it’s not always enjoyable or comforting. But then, some of the characters aren’t that pleasant either.

For a retelling of “Sleeping Beauty”:

“Snow White”:

“Little Mermaid” retelling:

Poetry retelling of “Pygmalion and Galatea”:

–

On a page of story ideas:

A toad’s eye:

A cartoon man with an oversized tie standing on someone’s closed eyelid:

Brainstorming page for a poem:

Random face:

Linguistics notes:

More linguistics notes, and a Very Hairy Man:

Mermaid, and other observations:

An imagined doll outfit:

Someone you may recognize, but–as observed–not the correct age. And eye with arrows:

Feathery Tuesday:

Almost November:

A Halloween skull hat:

Shocked that it’s Saturday:

Random mermaid:

The evil elderly:³

More eyes:

1. Sometimes even accompanied by equally strange text!
2. From “Mr. Fox“, in case you didn’t get the reference.
3. Extra credit: “Scapegoats“