4/4/09
In answer to the Rev’s assertion that it is nice to be in civilization I offer the following two photos of Sevilla’s beautiful waterfront….looks like the king needs to come here to.
Despite the festivities planned here for Semana Santa, the idea of sticking around while groups of inquisition style monks move through the streets dressed like the ku klux klan doesn’t appeal to me for some reason. I made an attempt to find a couch on couchsurfing, but was told that the city is packed be ause this is Europe’s biggest religious party. Frankly, I don’t really need to be here for a celebration of the crucifixion of christ, so I’m moving on to Portugal today…hopefully it will be cheaper there…and warmer…per normal, I arrived on a nice sunny day and today is overcast and cold…do I have so much power that I change the weather everywhere I go? And why can’t I change it to sunny and nice?
It is pretty here at night though…and seems to be a pretty nice city, which aside from a lack of garbage pickup has a lot to offer…especially if you are into drinking…which, these days I am not.
ABC stores have made it to Spain! Not just Hawaii anymore!
4/3/09
Well here I am, out of Morocco and very glad to have a little break from the constant circus. Sadly, there was a bit of a tragedy before I left. The first of the Vagobunnies were born on one of the coldest nights I’ve been there and when we found them, they were all five dead. We hadn’t expected them to birth so soon and hadn’t made adequate preparations. It was a real bummer to dig their little pink bodies out of the straw.Two more rabbits are pregnant though and Hanane tells me we also have several new chickens that just hatched from eggs as part of our farming project. And I finally remembered to take a picture of my famous camel hair blanket from Fes!
Yesterday I woke up, said see you later to Hanane (cause I will see her later) and her Mom and then caught a petit taxi to the grand taxi to the train in Fes to Tangier where I caught a boat to Tarifa in Spain, by that time it was a little after 6 pm and I was fairly tired so I got a pretty nice room, had a hot shower (a real shower!) and ate a bad spanish pizza. I think, on the whole, Spanish food is pretty bad.
After that I slept like a log in a bed with springs and woke up to toss a coin to see whether I should head to Lisbon in Portugal or go to Sevilla, here in Spain first. Heads told me to come to Sevilla so I rode the bus for four hours after having some coffee and a pastry and waiting in windy Tarifa’s sorry excuse for a bus station (its a bus stop really!).
The bus ride was comfortable and I arrived in Sevilla at 4pm where it is hot and there is some sort of big festival about to take place. Lucky break that, except the hostels have jacked up the prices 25% because fo the demand. No biggie on that one though, the festival might be worth it.
The trip across southern spain was uneventful. Tarifa looks very much like Lahaina in Maui and has most of the same surf shops. I sat on the beach for a bit this morning and enjoyed the wind and sand. As for the rest of southern spain, it seems dirty, smoggy, dusty, and not very picturesque. I didn’t have high hopes for Sevilla, but arriving here, it seems pretty nice. Lots of sunbathing in the park, beautiful architecture, and even a mosque they stole from the moors and converted to the worlds 3rd largest cathedral.
The Cathedral reused some columns and elements from the mosque, and, most famously, the Giralda, originally a minaret, was converted into a bell tower. It is topped with a statue, known locally as El Giraldillo, representing Faith. The tower’s interior was built with ramps rather than stairs, to allow the Muezzin and others to ride on horseback to the top.
In doing a little digging, I find that this was the home of one of the greatest Sufi mystics ibn Arabi (aka Dr. Maximus)
A vastly prolific writer, Ibn Arabi is generally known as the prime exponent of the idea later known as Wahdat-ul-Wujood, though he did not use this term in his writings. His emphasis was on the true potential of the human being and the path to realising that potential and becoming the perfect or complete man (al-insan al-kamil).Some 800 works are attributed to Ibn Arabi, although only some have been authenticated
Also it was the home of Ibn Khaldun, the first real anthropologist, so my forefather by educational lineage.
…an astronomer, economist, historian, Islamic scholar, Islamic theologian, hafiz, jurist, lawyer, mathematician, military strategist, nutritionist, philosopher, social scientist and statesman—born in North Africa in present-day Tunisia. He is considered the forerunner of several social scientific disciplines: demography, cultural history,historiography, the philosophy of history,and sociology.
Also Seville is the setting for Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor in which Christ returns to earth and is arrested
The main portion of the text is the Inquisitor explaining to Jesus why his return would interfere with the mission of the church. The Inquisitor frames his denunciation of Jesus around the three questions Satan asked Jesus during the temptation of Christ in the desert. These three are the temptation to turn stones into bread, the temptation to cast Himself from the Temple and be saved by the angels, and the temptation to rule over all the kingdoms of the world. The Inquisitor states that Jesus rejected these three temptations in favor of freedom, but thinks that Jesus has misjudged human nature. He does not believe that the vast majority of humanity can handle the freedom which Jesus has given them. Thus, he implies that Jesus, in giving humans freedom to choose, has excluded the majority of humanity from redemption and doomed it to suffer.
And of course, The Barber of Seville,
The opera is featured in the Our Gang comedy, “Our Gang Follies of 1938″, in that Alfalfa is tired of just being a crooner and decides instead to actually sing opera, auditioning for “The Barber of Seville”. In fact, after his intro in the follies, he comes out on stage with an accordion shout-singing “I’m the Barber of Se-VILLE!!”
and Don Juan.
Don Juan is a rogue and a libertine who takes great pleasure in seducing women and (in most versions) enjoys fighting their champions. Later, in a graveyard Don Juan encounters a statue of the dead father of a girl he has seduced, and, impiously, invites him to dine with him; the statue gladly accepts. The father’s ghost arrives for dinner at Don Juan’s house and in turn invites Don Juan to dine with him in the graveyard. Don Juan accepts, and goes to the father’s grave where the statue asks to shake Don Juan’s hand. When he extends his arm, the statue grabs hold and drags him away, to Hell.
While it may mean that I end up in hell, I freely admit that I just went to Burger King and ate a whopper with onion rings plus a caramel sundae and it was completely delicious and satisfying. The king for this king.
This is a picture from the Moroccan Hollywood trip I didn’t get to post before, nice huh?
And here is something else I didn’t get a chance to post- Morocco Escalator fun. When we were in the train station in Marrakech I was surprised to find Hanane had never been on an escalator…turns out she isn’t the only one, we sat next to one for about 45 minutes and watched people trip, encourage their mothers and children and circle and ride it again and again.
and finally here we are in Russel Crowe’s costumes from Gladiator. yes, she is 4 foot 8 inches tall or else I am a giant…actually, I’ve found myself more than an inch shorter than I’ve been in the past…really odd…there must be a problem with the tape I used…
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Vago Damitio is the Vagabond in Chief. He is also a writer, blogger, traveler, adventurer and teacher. He has spent his life mastering how to have incredible adventures on minuscule budgets. Someday he hopes to have the option of using gigantic budgets for miniscule adventures.
