No such thing as a wasteland

October 21
“...one Prozac a day...”
–1985, Bowling for Soup.
We’re driving across a tan wasteland en route to Essaouira from Marrakesh. 1985 playing.
I hope that someday I’ll have something to say that will be helpful or beneficial to someone, somewhere. My experiences and stories to this point perhaps already are. Self-experimentation led me through a torrential stream of pain and grief, heartache and guilt — so should I continue to grasp what those things felt like and meant then, I may be able to retain compassion and understanding towards others who live through such feelings now.
I am thankful for driving through this Moroccan desert, for black and white lambs at the side of the road, for American students jumping stone fences to take a dump at the side of the road, and for the fact that I have no regrets.
It’s curious that for being able to learn so much and grow in academic and conceptual knowledge at a good rate that I take so long to learn the lessons of life. That I have to force myself through the smallest holes, run various painful gauntlets, fight until I’m battered, bruised, and sobbing until I learn anything.
That I had to dislike myself for so long, and that now I have to laugh myself through my own occasional awkwardness in order to actually love myself. And not regret myself. And not apologize for myself. Some people only learn the hard way, I guess.
And now I’m listening to Sandymount Set fast hornpipes. I can’t wait to dance in hardshoes again. Isn’t that strange.
Why do I have to be taken away from things to realize how much I love them?

goats in the argan trees. Morocco the insane.