What am I going to write about today?
What am I going to write about today?
I have no idea.
So I think I will just ramble.
We had a new subscriber from Morocco this week. Morocco conjures up for me a magic land. Morocco! When I was in my early twenties, I went to Europe. I never got to Morocco, but I did get to a Moroccan restaurant in Paris.
I had traveled to Europe by ship -- that seems so strange now to travel to Europe by ship. I sailed on the Sibyak, an Indonesian ship under the auspices of Holland-America Lines. It was a very charming beautiful small ship. Incredible food and service. Much special attention, etc.
Anyway, I made friends with a young woman on the ship who was from Switzerland. I can't remember her name this minute, but she was what was called a jumper model. Jumpers were sweaters, so she was a sweater model. Somehow we were in Paris together, and we went to a Moroccan restaurant.
There was a belly-dancer who turned out to be the owner's daughter. She was fourteen-years old. I remember feeling almost in a trance with the music, the dancing, and the aromatic scents of the most delicious foods every dreamed of. Perhaps there were Moroccan sweet wines. I do seem to remember the aromas of plums and figs.
All varieties of foods were served to us on silver plates by two of the owner's sons in their mid or older twenties. I remember the two sons as young sophisticates, very skilled at serving, very personable yet businesslike, very efficient, no wasted motions, all elegant with warm brown eyes. And they kept serving us food and more food. The father was in the background, watching over everything. The mother probably was in the kitchen cooking. I can't say for sure now.
The only food I actually remember from that lovely lunch was cous-cous. I remember cous-cous only because we were laughing so much. I was laughing so much that cous-cous came out of my nose! Of all the foods we ate, that's how I happen to remember cous-cous.
This particular time in my life reminds me of a book called When Our Hearts Were Young and Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner. It was about two girls touring Europe and all the fun and amazing wonderful adventures they had.
After a couple of hours, after we had tasted every authentic Moroccan delicacy known to man, my girlfriend and I got up to pay.
The two sons would not let us pay. The father would not let us pay. Just like that. They wouldn't let us pay.
That's how it was when our hearts were young and gay in this Moroccan restaurant in Paris.
Comments
What a wonderful story. I felt like I was there.
Yup, so did I Lauren! I could have been one of the waiters. From nothing to write, we get this gem! Thank you.
You indeed could have been one of the waiters. A swift decision-maker who would have executed everything with efficiency and grace. Like art! Like dance! Every frame an exquisite shot. Perfect!
This was a great, ramble, Gloria! It makes me wonder if anyone else has a story they wouldn't mind sharing now that you have started a ball rolling. I, for one, would love to hear.
I left Holland on my way to New Zealand on The Sybayak on her last voyage in the early 60th. She was a lovely old ship I agree and we enjoyed the voyage. I went to sea with the same company first of to get my seatime after wich I went to Indonesia to another Dutch company to do the inter Island trade there and went back to Holland when Indonesia Nationalised all Dutch bussinesses. Mieke came to Indonesia and we married there. Small world Is it Not. A comment on todays Letter You and your team assist many and a big forrest is growing. Thank you. Love you All. Jack
Such a lovely memory. I do love how your stories put us right there with you. It seems the joy of you and your friend, your pure enjoyment of where you were was payment enough for the owners. What a gift you gave them.
Oh yeah ... and JACK sailed the same ship. HOW FUN IS THAT???
Beloved Chuck, as you suggested, I would LOVE to hear everybody's stories! Pile them on!
I have a war story. Actually, I have a lot of them, but one in particular concerns a seemingly inconsequential experience at the time, but now I see that it was a life changing event for me. I thought it worthy to include.
In 1969, I had dropped out of college, where I was studying physics and math, because of financial problems and a girl I was involved with at the time. I soon found out I was about to be drafted into the army, so I enlisted in the air force when a recruiter promised I would never go to Vietnam. Two years later, I found myself assigned to the civil engineering department of what was then called Than Son Nhut air base near Saigon.
I did not believe in the premise by which we justified fighting this war, so I volunteered for every humanitarian mission I could find. This lead me to developing my own personal efforts by heading to a local orphanage to see what help they might need. It was my first visit to the first orphanage that I was to work with that this story concerns. I was escorted around the grounds and what I saw was heart wrenching! There were six Catholic nuns caring for about 300 orphans. They had some help from the few older kids with the younger ones, but their situation was impossibly difficult. There was a room with over a hundred cribs, all these babies needing cuddling and human warmth and so few to help. Food was woefully inadequate, so the children were malnourished and since sanitation supplies were almost non-existent, there were constant infections of all sorts. After my tour of the facility, I sat with the sister who was the head of the orphanage to discuss what I thought I could do to help.
After a plan was developed, she asked me to come out to the orphanage yard to meet some of the children. There were about 40 or 50 children playing in the yard from about age 3 to about 8 or 9. Sister called out to a few of the children in quiet Vietnamese. I was startled as it seemed all the children stopped what they were doing and began walking toward me. The closest to me lifted their arms for me to pick them up, and when I did, I received hug after hug. One little girl planted a kiss on my right cheek.
Now, in the most tumultuous seas of my life, when I seem to have lost my bearings, I remember this experience. I still feel the precious gift of the uplifted arms, the gentle but firm hugs and that little peck on my right cheek. The memory is like a dim but beautiful lighthouse to guide my way.
I did not re-enroll in the physics department when I eventually went back to college. I studied anthropology, sociology and psychology, hoping to find out why man can be so inhumane to man, an answer that, unfortunately, the college courses didn’t seem to contain.
My love to all…..Chuck
And what a beautiful worthwhile story. Did it change the whole course of your life?
How could it not ... this story may just have changed the course of my life.
Dearest Pam and Gloria, thank you so much for your lovely comments.
This was one of the key turning points in my life and helped guide constant minor course corrections along the way.
When I first enrolled in college, I chose physics and math, believing that if I understood how energy and fundamental particles behaved, I would understand the deepest levels of existence, and I wanted to help answer the important questions of life.
Even while serving my tour in Vietnam, I fully intended to return to math and physics when I restarted my college career. With the experience I mentioned, and reinforced by other volunteer and teaching experiences in Vietnam, I dropped this goal and decided it was a better use of my abilities to try to understand why people do what they do in forming groups, going to war with each other, hoarding the earth’s resources, and becoming so insensitive to the suffering of other human beings. As I said earlier, though, my questions were not being answered by studying social sciences at the university level and I saw no hope that they would be.
Throughout all this searching, I still held to a strict scientific worldview that all behavior is a manifestation of particle interactions in the neurons of the human brain, but I decided I needed to redirect my goals once more if my efforts were to have a meaningful impact with these problems. Like the parable of the little boy throwing starfish back into the sea, I decided to focus on helping individuals who were hurting rather than work on such abstract global issues. I decided to get an in depth understanding of nutrition and a medical degree with the idea of teaching physicians about nutrition, a field that is woefully neglected in most medical curriculums. My experiences in the orphanages of Vietnam loomed large in these decisions.
Eventually, I had another epiphany that seemed almost miraculous to me and that caused me to completely let go of my scientific materialism view of the world. Ironically, it was my background in physics and math and continued interest and investigation in these fields that played an important role in this dramatic reorientation for me, helping me to become awrae and accept that there exists another reality beneath manifestation of the physical world that better explains how it all works.
Thank you for your interest, Gloria……….Chuck
Wow, Chuck ... just saw the movie Angels and Demons today and just a day or so ago was listening to a radio show about how there is a study being done of people who meditate regularly (monks, nuns, etc.). They found that the frontal lobe lights up and the parietal lobes go dark -- basically that the sense of oneness turns on and the sense of time is gone. Our brains really do change, and now this same group is studying how to teach anyone to do this in less time per day. Apparently it's working -- brain pathways are changing.
It seems you are in the right time, have studied the right things, had the right epiphanies at the right time to make sense of all this.
Please forgive if this sounds a bit disjointed or if I did not make sense, but it's late and I'm about to go to bed.
My real point is that I soooo look forward to seeing where you take this ... I like your teaching style, Chuck.
Thank You, Pam ;-)