Book 1 #20 Out of Africa

Ochre City 

Axis mundi

The Bissets were finally returning to Marrakesh and asked us to go back with them.  

 I saw the adventure here was over.  

 The absence of my child was destroying me.  

 Tortured nightmares became intolerable. 

 What was he doing to her? 

 I began to seriously regret my romantic notions of leaving her with him.   

Back to Marrakesh we went, to live in fine style in the Bisset’s palatial mansion, where Tom painted and sold his works and earned us enough money to return to Europe.

Marrakesh had not finished with us yet. 

Living with the Bissets in the highly civilized rhiad-inspired modern mansion in the French Quarter was too good to leave. We had enjoyed their company in Tamri, camping out with all that entailed; then the expedition to Tafaya along the Saharan Atlantic Coast. That was another side of them as a group unit, becoming an efficient team of Leader, cook, navigators, scouts, troubadours, mechanic, and crazy kids as passengers. We all had a defined role. Mine? Cook’s assistant. Muscle when ensablé, fireside troubadour entertainer. General dogsbody. I was not just baggage.

I borrowed one of the family bicycles and took myself off exploring the city at every opportunity. I especially liked rising in the pre-dawn to cruise the markets or go out for miles beyond the walled oasis city to watch the sun rising over the snowy peaks of the High Atlas,  infusing the ochre city with glowing pinks and gold. 

Then cycle back in the morning cool to ride through the uncrowded souk in the stripy light and shade alleys, 

an effect created by the slatted awnings over the lanes. 

Very disco to ride under, traveling fast, like blinking on/off/on/off. 

Find an early coffee maker’s stall and sit discretely anonymous

 watching the normal life flow of the heart of this wonderful city.

Or to roam the King’s Gardens. Find extraordinary mosques, 

shrines, palaces.

Spend hours in wonder 

taking in the geometric tile patterns 

                                 on fountains, walls, floors.

I found the gardens. Among many, retreats of delight and wonder, I found the Jardin Majorelle.  So inspiring. That cobalt infused my being, so intense. I have carried something cobalt with me ever since; a bead, a truque, a thread of wool.


 Usually by nine or ten in the morning I’d return to the Bissets for the typical French breakfast of croissants & cafe au lait where the late risers were just emerging still tousle headed & bleary. That was when I’d retreat into the yoga room with early-riser Jeanne, her daughters and often Jean, for good sessions and meditation, if there was time.

I loved spending time with Jeanne who taught me so much about diet and yoga. Jean captured my mind. There he lives as a magnetic beautiful man who enjoyed his role as teacher. He would take me to his study and fill my head with his gleanings. His special research was the Prehistory of civilization. When we had been down in the Sahara he would wander off up the dry wadis for hours, sometimes alone, but mostly with his children. I tagged along too. He looked for prehistoric evidence and often returned from these sorties with a bagful of flints, old bone, stone tools, arrowheads. All exposed by the floods that whooshed through the wadis after rain. Around the fire at night he would examine his finds, sorting them, telling us all his theories about their origins, expanding into timelines and cultures of this ancient land. It all had me enthralled. I’d always wanted to be an archaeologist and he was my first mentor. It would be decades before my dream was actualized. Here in his study I could fill in the gaps of what little I’d understood so far. Most of his books were in French but I was a quick study and could basically understand the charts diagrams maps & other illustrations.

 I loved going through his stone artifacts collections and letting my hands and fingers absorb their inherent intelligence. He also had terra cotta and bronze statuary from ancient cultures.

 Facsimiles of the Venus of Dusseldorf, plaster slabs of cave art with bisons and hunters. Rice paper copies of Chinese and Tibetan and Sanskrit sutra texts. Buddha thangkas..And so much more.

Looking back I now see how each of these objects later played huge roles in my life.

It was an  Ali Baba's cave for me. Sometimes at siesta I would just curl up on his couch with one of his books and fall asleep, my head full of visions of Stonehenge, Çatal Hüyük;, Harappa, Olmecs.

The bookshelf shelf of works on comparative religions, myths, legends, drew me.

I discovered the ideas of Mircea Eliade. Axis mundi. I wanted to find some evidence of Atlantis. Real tangible hard evidence. But apart from unproven myths associated with some ruins in Morocco on the north coast, and the explosion of Santorini, it seems it was just that.  A myth. I still liked toying with the idea of it. 

Madame Blavatsky's translation of the Stanzas of Dzyan had its' place here too..

What stirred Nothingness to become Something?  Time was Not, for it lay asleep in the Infinite Bosom of Duration.


Among the Sanskrit teachings  I came across the concept of kalpas, eons of time in which we grew, flourished, decayed and died, to return on the next turn of the Big Wheel. 
 Atlantis could fit in there, I pondered,  but the fossil record time line proved otherwise. Science knocked those notions right out of the ball park. Didn't stop me enjoying the fantasy, examining the pieces of the jigsaw, patch working a crazy pattern for an insupportable scenario in which our human civilizations had evolved from a galaxy far far away, cycling through many kalpas. Atlantis fitted in there; a myth carried through time as a warning, to which we never pay heed. According to the Sanskrit teachings we are now entering the 4th or maha-kalpa, an apocalypse of fire, water and wind. Let us reflect on that now as we cast minds back over our catastrophic devastating 2018 experiences. The ship of Fools with the Uber Fool at the helm.

Meanwhile back in Marrakesh fifty years ago, Tom was honing his preacher skills. In the evening after siesta I’d ride over to the Jamaa el F’na and find him all prophetic in his long white robes, enthralling bewildered groups of tourists and tribal visitors from Ghana or wherever, preaching his Dieu et Humanite raves. Brothers Sisters, We are all One. This is the Start of the New Age of Aquarius.  Share the Love. He would pass out little gifts of God’s Eyes and his preacher’s handbills, written out the previous kif-filled night, full of his naive pentel pen drawings &  philosophy. Then he would play his little tabla drums and I would accompany him with flute and dance, calling on other young women to twirl with me to the music. Some did, usually uninhibited hippy crazies, free as birds in foreign lands. But also young tribal men and women who just couldn’t resists, probably missing what was their normal as they navigated strange new cultures. I also vividly remember a tubby Texan strung about with cameras in a Hawaiian shirt doing a jig with us one night, watched by his little Lady Bird who looked like she wanted to just evaporate in sheer embarrassment that her Fred could do this to her. One for the family album ma’am!

Days passed, then it became obvious it could become weeks if we didn’t take stock. I had it in my mind to visit Fez. I had heard of the ancient library there where the saved books were taken after the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria, Maybe I would find clues there to validate my wafty hypotheses.

After a few weeks we left our friends, with regrets, and set out to the north, via Rabat, Fez and Cuerta. A parting gift from Jean to me was his book I’d been studying: Mircea Eliade’s Images and Symbols. His axis mundi was to influence the huge leap of faith we were about to undertake.

My mind was slipping away.  I lived in a fantasy world.  In Fez I met a Danish man who taught me the Me-Ta Loving Kindness meditation.  Breath in love, breath out kindness.  Me on the in-breath, Love, Ta on the out-breath, Kindness. Compassion for all life. A perfect fit for Tom's We are All One.  I sat in a loft over a musical instrument maker’s shop locked into my meditations, rarely going out into this amazing city, totally absorbed in my inner conflict, reading Eliade, writing my Little Ayesha story. Channeling the Spirit of Atlantis and the Guardians of the Universe. What!!! Yes I had lost it. I had transcended to another plane of consciousness.

Eventually I received a message in that crazed head of mine that we were to go to the to the Arctic Circle, to Lapland, where the Chief Disciple of Buddha (who ?) sat looking out into the Center of the Universe.  Somehow it was part of our quest.  It was the message from the Spirit of Atlantis. There we would find The Answer.  To exactly what I don’t know.   
Quel folie !  I was so psychotic, feeding a fantasia creation. My reality had become a mixture of world myths, astrology, macrobiotics and drug narcosis, now overlaid with a huge construct of the axis mundi.  A ridiculous potage of charlatan nonsense in which I channelled other-worldly spirits, Guardians of the Universe. And so on.

Tom too enthusiastically shared a lot of this mirage construct. I was his seer, his muse, his connection to other dimensions.  “Far out !” was his memorable comment, vigorously embracing the new vision, his eyes like windmills as he processed it all through the drug haze oh his 3^rd pipe of the day.

So, compass set to the Center of the Universe, sails full of the winds of Karma, Eliade & the I Ching in our baskets, we set off from Fez on a course out of Africa and across Europe; passing through many countries, cultures and adventures as we homed in on this crazy mirage destination; the central axis for all future orientation? 

There ALL would be revealed. 

 Talk about dreams of Unknown Khadath ! 

We had to test this Truth.

Down the Yellow Brick Road we went. 
 Towards the Arctic Circle.

But here the story goes awry.  
 Fate showed its' hand. A lay down misere.

 Here belief gets suspended 
to the point where I still wonder

about the forces of chaos and butterflies farting 

making hurricanes happen in Rio.... and all that.

Thus ends Book 1. 

A donkey walk down the Atlantic coast of Morocco. 1968

Book 2 

 covers the next years, walking from Spain to India, with a few side tracks along the way. 

Yes, it is written, but whether I survive long enough to polish it up to Blog?

....stay tuned.

Book 1:8 The Rif

 Alice Falls into a Wabbit Hole

The Secret Doctrines

THE ETERNAL PARENT WRAPPED IN HER EVER INVISIBLE ROBES
HAD SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES.

TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN THE INFINITE BOSOM OF DURATION.

UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE WERE NO AH-HI TO CONTAIN IT.

THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS WERE NOT. THE GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY WERE NOT,
 FOR THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET ENSNARED BY THEM.

DARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS ALL,
 FOR FATHER, MOTHER AND SON WERE ONCE MORE ONE, 
AND THE SON HAD NOT AWAKENED YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL, 
AND HIS PILGRIMAGE THEREON.

Book of Dzyan

Cafe Hafa today

Next day we left the riad and decided a last visit to the Cliff Café would be a great exit memory to take away from Tangiers. Tom struck up raves with a group at an adjacent table, American college kids traveling across North Africa in a kombi. Four guys and twin girls who were younger sisters of one of the guys. All in their late teens & early twenties.  Chinos, check shirts and backpacks. The girls were in shorts and desert boots with khaki military style canvas shoulder bags, their hair in plaits. They wanted to go to the Rif and buy up kif in quantity and Tom thought it would be an interesting experience.  I didn’t really want to be a part of this. They were not the kind of people I enjoyed being with, gap-year kids mainly. One of the guys, a Canadian, was nice enough, but the others were noisy and arrogant and like so many Americans (obviously not all – there were/are many luminous exceptions!)  I met on my walk, thinking the world was there for them as their playground to plunder. Maybe it was their front to get through the culture shock of an unknown world with noisy self-assertive bluffing. Definitely not into simple living and high thinking, more like simple thinking, high living. They just wanted to get stoned, out-of-it, wasted. Most of them were hung-over from a night in the bars. 

So I said I’d rather prefer to stay in Tangiers instead. I wanted to find beads and colored threads to take on the donkey walk and I hadn’t begun to explore Tangiers properly. I wanted to find the ethos that had inspired so many expat creative spirits, the worlds within the obvious exterior, to tread in the footsteps of Hemingway, Bowles, Burroughs and others whose very names conjured up fantasias I wanted to immerse myself in, to milk and sorb. Tom did not have this lust of the soul, his world was the hippy dream. Then Arlo turned up, minus all his instruments except a few flutes, and he seemed keen to go along. Tom turned on his full charm offensive, determined to convince me, saying it was only a side-trip, we’d be back by dusk and we could stay another day if we wanted.  So when it came to decision time I went. Truth was I didn’t want to be separated from him. The beads could wait.

We, all nine of us, jammed into the van and I guess someone knew the way and a boy who seemed to be about fifteen decided he’d drive. Big mistake!  It was awful. I endured hours of uncomfortable bumping round on the rear floor of the kombi, unable to see the passing scenery and not knowing where we were.  Eventually we stopped on a ridge surrounded by dry lands with a tiny hamlet visible way below down in a deep narrow valley. We slid and stumbled down a goat track into a wadi with a few huts up on the banks where we were challenged by some tough and mean-looking Moroccans who  herded us into a bunkhouse to supposedly wait for the OK on the kif deal.  I had no idea that I was in any kind of dangerous situation, deluded by safety in numbers and kif was legal, wasn’t it?  I was so very tired so I climbed to the top bunk looking down on the others. I had my drawing book with me and started drawing a mandala, but soon it turned into a view of the chaotic mind-state churning inside my head.

Deus-X 

 There was a general air of paranoia and unease.  Everyone was stoned.  The guard by the door wouldn’t let us out and no one was happy with that.  It certainly wasn’t the mint tea and honey bread Moroccan hospitality they’d expected. 

At first Arlo & Tom played happy music on drums & flutes, but as the hours dragged by Tom became very weird. He amused himself and no doubt some of the others (he liked playing to an audience) by taunting me, telling me I was Alice about to go through the Looking Glass, drumming and singing mocking songs, about a little girl who thought she was a princess and kissed too many frogs, parading my naivety before the others until, inside, I was a wretched humiliated wreck. Except I didn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that with any response, maintaining my Mona Lisa sphinx mask, feigning indifference. Was his previous loving caring behavior all an act, a ruse to get me to this place where he would sell me to some filthy peasant? I played it cool, deflecting and ignoring him and instead of going crazy from his stupid teasing, I wasn’t going to give these people a scene to show them our frailty. Finally I fell asleep. 

I was woken by the arrival of a group of dirty tough-looking men and some raggedy kids who herded us out into the yard and told us to go.  Apparently there was no kif today, or maybe they didn’t like us, or thought we were a bad risk.  Certainly the latter would have been true.  Back up the hot steep slope we all slowly plodded, with the raggy kids herding us, twirling little lariat ropes, mocking and sneering at us, throwing insults and spitting to show their superiority over the dumb foreign bimbos.   I didn’t like the feel of it all and broke the spell they were casting by picking up the youngest, a three-year old with a runny nose full of pussy snot and playing with him.  Laughing and dancing with him on my back, playing horsy. By the time we reached the road and the kombi the mood was a little less hostile and paranoid and the kids went back down the hill, thankfully. My hair was slick with snot, but we were safe.

While waiting for the rest of the group to get to the top of the steep path I sat sharing a joint with the Canadian, a student from Vancouver who was being very stand-offish with me, as if I had broken some unspoken race rule in my behavior.  So uncool!  I was still feeling very insecure after the whole experience and this guy didn’t help.  I felt I had to soften him up too.  So I started talking about the Native American Indian Church and the peyote, about which I knew stuff all, only parroting what Tom and Arlo had told me, and how much of that was reliable I didn’t know.  I said “Peyote is a cactus.  You eat the little buttons and it gives you a spiritual mystical experience”  I mean, what did I know ! Nothing!  The snotty Vancouver kid must have picked up on my bullshit and he threw it back at me “ a cactus ?” he replied with a dismissive snort, using deep irony, as if he knew it all, and the facts were otherwise.  Well I didn’t know at all, so I just let it ride, replying “mm” and gazing out over the Rif valleys in what I hoped was a cool front of stoned Sphinx-like reverie.   

 Inside I started churning.  Paranoia set in as I went thru the Looking Glass, spiraling inward, feeling myself shrink and disappear in a tiny black spot.  I was lying.  I didn’t know.  I was repeating stuff I’d heard Arlo & Tom discussing, but with no real knowledge.  Rosemary Clooney started singing “Sailor Boys have talk to me in Eengleesh”  in my head. All the way back to Tangier I lay on the kombi floor wrapped in my hooded burnoose fighting it, feigning sleep, but in a demented state, cringing in shame at my inability to speak The Truth.  I seemed to be in some court in which I was being judged as fit or unfit to continue on the quest.  Was peyote a cactus, or not ?  Answer the Truth or be Damned. 

Huge figures of authority and power loomed over me, pouring their vibes into me, insisting that I change my ways or be dammed. These people I was with were actually the disguised Council of Higher Beings. I had somehow arrived in their Cosmic Court on trial for my worthiness to be admitted to the echelon of higher minds, now found to be a fraud. Fatally flawed. Only Pure Souls qualify to live with the Gods and I was found lacking.

Then I slept again and woke to everyone getting out in the dark in a square in Tangiers. My mind had cleared; it had all been a bad dream and things felt normal again. I was pleased to walk away from the others who all resumed their dumb kids personae. 

But the experience had unlocked an inner world I hadn’t encountered before, although the more I explored the notion, the more I could find the source in ghostly memories of my time of exploring the esoteric a decade before, when I spent lunch hours browsing the Adyar bookshop next to my workplace in Sydney.  

The Extraordinary Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Reading the Theosophists , especially Madame Blavatsky,  had intrigued me then with all the references to enlightened beings, yogis, shaman, the Cosmic Brotherhood, the wise ones and so on. 

Threads that had persisted to bring me here, now, filled with the need to find that enlightened state for myself, first-hand, real. I had unleashed an inner need for contact with high minds, the real thing. Not just high-minds but fully enlightened all-seeing, all-knowing Immortals who roamed the Universe seeking the Ones who bore their seeds and waking the Sleepers. That way I could find the truth about It All. Did these higher beings exist? Immortal telepathic minds who existed on another plane?  Madame Blavatsky..... she was the key!  In her writings about Tibet she had supposedly encountered such beings in the high Himalayas and translated some of the ancient scrolls like the Stanzas of Dzyan, which some said were written in a language unknown in human ethnology possibly pre-dating Earth, from telepathic transmissions by cosmic entities.

Memories of those early readings came flooding back, filling my mind with questions I could only answer by finding the proof myself. Had some ancient beings from Atlantis survived in some secret sacred place somewhere, some Shangri-La only accessible to those who had passed the tests and were pure minds? Were they the spirits who had entered my mind and had showed me the Way? Was I being called to join the Illuminati?

I would test that and find the truth of that notion, I thought, as we hiked up the Medina hill to Sven and Ute’s pad to beg a bed for the night. We’d see Tangiers tomorrow and then get on the road again.  Atlantis was calling and the signal was getting stronger…come to me…come to me….I heard from deep within.

I determined to stay clear of tourists after that experience.  I had it out with Tom. If we wanted the real higher mind states, we must surround ourselves with those intelligent enough to understand and act accordingly.   Only mix with those on our trip, as much as possible.  Like minds. Travelers and those on the quest, the Way.  Deeper inside I determined to only speak the Truth, and otherwise remain silent.  The better world had to have the right information in it and if I perpetuated bullshit, then I would never get it right and we would never get it right.  So went my shredded reasoning, brainwashing me onto the Way of Truth.  Damning me and redeeming me simultaneously.  The Utopian Tunnel vision that excluded being human and fallible, the way ahead was a quest to join the Immortals in the Pantheon of the Gods. Simple beautiful people. You could see it in their radiant eyes – the Light of Love and Beauty – a warm light that shone from them and was reflected back from the wellspring of Love within me, surrounding us in an aura in which we bathed and were uplifted.

See what you want to see, hear what you want to hear. A sure recipe for delusion. The ravings of a tortured demented naive fool. Arrogating Ignorance. But I did have some of it right; buried in the morass of warped fragments of nonsense I was trying to patchwork into a quilt of a workable reality were pieces of an emerging grand design.

The germ that still lay covered in the husk Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.- from Stanzas of Dzyan

Anu 2008 - Apophysis

But for now let’s move on to how the romance of Casablanca met my  naive expectations in Blog #9 : Ayesha Reborn.