sanemagazine: wonderful rubbish

Day Eleven
(continued from ish 221, day ten, in which we land at long last on stable and very sunny land.)
Wake.
It's early.
I believe I'd managed to shower, shave (probably, there's no telling for certain, though the distinct lack of stubble on my face and only slight razor burns would indicate the act of shaving probably did take place), do various other things that I probably do all the time in the morning, though, if you were to stop me and ask what I did that morning they wouldn't appear in the account. Not through any desire to keep certain things private (though that might be a good reason), but due to a certain lack of brain activity early in the morning, specifically the portion of the brain that deals with remembering things.
This particular morning my vacuum of brain activity was slightly larger due to the effects of the sun the previous day, which caused all events from moment I sat down at the edge of the pool on the roof of the hotel to the time I found myself in the hotel restaurant sipping a cup of tea without milk ^[1] to be completely and utterly irretrievable to my brain, just now coming unstuck from the gooey, sun-melted mess it had become. Not even the faintest recollection of the non-Egyptian sailor girl. Well, maybe the faintest. She was sitting by the pool, as well, I believe, looking consistently non-Egyptian and warm, and I have a sense, not a memory but a sense, of having eased myself into the pool to splash about and swim this way and that (as boys are wont to do when there are girls, pretty ones, around). And I have a distinct sense of the water in the pool being shockingly, almost impossibly cold. Past that, as I've said, gone.
So there I was, in Luxor, still, where the sun left permanent shadows at the corners of your vision and the locals never had bags under their eyes because all excess skin was bunched up permanently at the corners of their eyes from squinting all the time and my mind was just coagulating into something I could use again.
I decided, while my brain was still looking groggily about and not particularly involved in any decision-making process, to venture out into the city of light.
Seeing as how I was in a foreign country, I decided to do something remarkably unlike me, so I popped in a nearby bookshoppe, perusing the books about ancient Egyptian mythology (including a surprising number of Wilbur Smith novels) and postcards with pictures of feluccas and dusty rocks on them which I could now faithfully vouch that, yes, they were like that, in fact.
It was until I managed to get out of the shoppe that it dawned on me what I had in the little plastic bag I had in my hand that I hadn't had there when I entered the shoppe.
Ehm, I'd gotten a watch.
It's in Arabic. And I wasn't entirely sure it worked.
The hands seemed to go around and so forth like they're supposed to, but it seemed wildly random how fast they chose to go at any given moment. (Now, some months later they go much slower, to the point of stopping, as they did, one day, some two days after I'd bought it for seventy five billion of a currency that equates roughly to seventy five billion of them to 10p sterling.)
Now, for those that know me, they may be a bit shocked. Maybe not so far as to be appalled, but they're probably not feeling too comfortable at the moment. The same uncomfortableness you feel when you're hoping your girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife/friend/kid/whatever goes off and has a great time on their holiday on their own and learns many wonderful things but not too much, not so much that they change wildly and come back wearing white robes or headscarves or saying chak-ran all the time when they get back.
And with no locals to know of my inherent dislike of watches, there was no one to stop me from radically departing from my chosen path in life, watchless. I worried for myself, and for my loved ones back in their respective homes.
Seeing as how the hands didn't ever seem to be telling the time I expected them to be telling (nor did they coincide with anyone else's idea of the time), eventually I've reconciled with myself that, while it was an aberration, it was a mild one, since the watch didn't seem to work at all in the traditional sense and I could easily explain it away as an ironic watch purchase.

Wandering the city streets with my plastic bag, I ran into a few of my fellow travelers, including the fetching figure of the non-Egyptian sailor girl... my heart leapt and sung. Laurence Sterne would have been happy.
Having nothing else of note planned for the day, I joined them (and the lovely sailor girl) walking around the city of Luxor, past Luxor Temple, situated right in the heart of Luxor and by a McDonalds which somewhat ruins any attempts at taking a photograph of a stunning temple in the middle of a city by placing it's arches in between the pillars of the temple.
The one thing I have to say about the Luxor locals is that they would certainly take notions of the Sterneian soul to new heights. Ehm, that is, if Laurence had offered camels and other trinkets in return for favours and/or simply as a swap for your female companions. Which I'm almost sure he didn't.

¹ This is an interesting habit I picked up in Egypt (or interesting in relative terms, if you're comparing it to something reasonably uninteresting). Due to getting information somewhere about the dodgy state of a carton of milk we were being offered sometime probably back in the desert, I somehow formed the opinion that all Egyptian milk had gone off and/or would give me some horrible stomach bug that would make any number of zombie film stars with their fake guts hanging all over their shoes look like a pleasant alternative to the imagined pain and anguish I'd be in should I choose to partake of any Egyptian milk. So I began taking my tea without milk, my cereal, if we were offered it, without milk, and generally everything I would normally take with milk without. Somewhere along the line I had tea with milk without thinking about it, realised halfway through with dread, and decided to retain the tea on my person by swallowing it, as opposed to, say, spitting it out discreetly into a napkin or something. As I didn't die and didn't have any worsening effect on my condition, I resolutely resolved to still just hold off on having milk in my tea until I got back to London.

disclaimer:
We are slightly late this week.

All I can say to that is Happy Anniversary. Babe.



		archives horoscopes accessories contacts theatre fables home Search Sane: [A Note on My.Netscape.Com]		A Sentimental Journey Across Egypt, Libya, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Italy X Day Eleven (continued from ish 221, day ten, in which we land at long last on stable and very sunny land.) Wake. It's early. I believe I'd managed to shower, shave (probably, there's no telling for certain, though the distinct lack of stubble on my face and only slight razor burns would indicate the act of shaving probably did take place), do various other things that I probably do all the time in the morning, though, if you were to stop me and ask what I did that morning they wouldn't appear in the account. Not through any desire to keep certain things private (though that might be a good reason), but due to a certain lack of brain activity early in the morning, specifically the portion of the brain that deals with remembering things. This particular morning my vacuum of brain activity was slightly larger due to the effects of the sun the previous day, which caused all events from moment I sat down at the edge of the pool on the roof of the hotel to the time I found myself in the hotel restaurant sipping a cup of tea without milk ^[1] to be completely and utterly irretrievable to my brain, just now coming unstuck from the gooey, sun-melted mess it had become. Not even the faintest recollection of the non-Egyptian sailor girl. Well, maybe the faintest. She was sitting by the pool, as well, I believe, looking consistently non-Egyptian and warm, and I have a sense, not a memory but a sense, of having eased myself into the pool to splash about and swim this way and that (as boys are wont to do when there are girls, pretty ones, around). And I have a distinct sense of the water in the pool being shockingly, almost impossibly cold. Past that, as I've said, gone. So there I was, in Luxor, still, where the sun left permanent shadows at the corners of your vision and the locals never had bags under their eyes because all excess skin was bunched up permanently at the corners of their eyes from squinting all the time and my mind was just coagulating into something I could use again. I decided, while my brain was still looking groggily about and not particularly involved in any decision-making process, to venture out into the city of light. Seeing as how I was in a foreign country, I decided to do something remarkably unlike me, so I popped in a nearby bookshoppe, perusing the books about ancient Egyptian mythology (including a surprising number of Wilbur Smith novels) and postcards with pictures of feluccas and dusty rocks on them which I could now faithfully vouch that, yes, they were like that, in fact. It was until I managed to get out of the shoppe that it dawned on me what I had in the little plastic bag I had in my hand that I hadn't had there when I entered the shoppe. Ehm, I'd gotten a watch. It's in Arabic. And I wasn't entirely sure it worked. The hands seemed to go around and so forth like they're supposed to, but it seemed wildly random how fast they chose to go at any given moment. (Now, some months later they go much slower, to the point of stopping, as they did, one day, some two days after I'd bought it for seventy five billion of a currency that equates roughly to seventy five billion of them to 10p sterling.) Now, for those that know me, they may be a bit shocked. Maybe not so far as to be appalled, but they're probably not feeling too comfortable at the moment. The same uncomfortableness you feel when you're hoping your girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife/friend/kid/whatever goes off and has a great time on their holiday on their own and learns many wonderful things but not too much, not so much that they change wildly and come back wearing white robes or headscarves or saying chak-ran all the time when they get back. And with no locals to know of my inherent dislike of watches, there was no one to stop me from radically departing from my chosen path in life, watchless. I worried for myself, and for my loved ones back in their respective homes. Seeing as how the hands didn't ever seem to be telling the time I expected them to be telling (nor did they coincide with anyone else's idea of the time), eventually I've reconciled with myself that, while it was an aberration, it was a mild one, since the watch didn't seem to work at all in the traditional sense and I could easily explain it away as an ironic watch purchase. Wandering the city streets with my plastic bag, I ran into a few of my fellow travelers, including the fetching figure of the non-Egyptian sailor girl... my heart leapt and sung. Laurence Sterne would have been happy. Having nothing else of note planned for the day, I joined them (and the lovely sailor girl) walking around the city of Luxor, past Luxor Temple, situated right in the heart of Luxor and by a McDonalds which somewhat ruins any attempts at taking a photograph of a stunning temple in the middle of a city by placing it's arches in between the pillars of the temple. The one thing I have to say about the Luxor locals is that they would certainly take notions of the Sterneian soul to new heights. Ehm, that is, if Laurence had offered camels and other trinkets in return for favours and/or simply as a swap for your female companions. Which I'm almost sure he didn't. ¹ This is an interesting habit I picked up in Egypt (or interesting in relative terms, if you're comparing it to something reasonably uninteresting). Due to getting information somewhere about the dodgy state of a carton of milk we were being offered sometime probably back in the desert, I somehow formed the opinion that all Egyptian milk had gone off and/or would give me some horrible stomach bug that would make any number of zombie film stars with their fake guts hanging all over their shoes look like a pleasant alternative to the imagined pain and anguish I'd be in should I choose to partake of any Egyptian milk. So I began taking my tea without milk, my cereal, if we were offered it, without milk, and generally everything I would normally take with milk without. Somewhere along the line I had tea with milk without thinking about it, realised halfway through with dread, and decided to retain the tea on my person by swallowing it, as opposed to, say, spitting it out discreetly into a napkin or something. As I didn't die and didn't have any worsening effect on my condition, I resolutely resolved to still just hold off on having milk in my tea until I got back to London. disclaimer: We are slightly late this week. All I can say to that is Happy Anniversary. Babe.


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