wow, yes... i really resonate a lot with your experience, especially the getting kicked out of school, and the 'unlearning'.

i never could take europe totally seriously after seeing over the edge of it, and to a great extent i still can't, no matter how i feel i should!

the most telling realisation i think came from the beauty of the markets in Tangier, the feast for the senses they were, how pleasurable it was to smell the tuberose and ripe melons, and see the incredible ethnic mix of people and traditions, a melee of awesome.

i reflected on the local safeway in ken high st. with -whoa!- electrically photobeamed self-opening doors, and inside the rigidly marshalled fruits and veggies in military rows, all looking like clones in their horrible, fluorescent-lit ghost world, all bland and shorn of any sensuality. the people too...

and i reflected... we think we're more 'evolved' than they are, we actually pity them, we are so damn sure we're better, further along, more fortunate.

and it hit me hard between the eyes... if we can be so wrong about some things so simple, i had to question everything else we assumed too.

i laughed out loud, i realised we were at lewis carrol levels of ridiculous, we had fallen in love with our own reflections on the shiny chrome reality we were creating, and the Madmen were busily concocting spells to keep us in the mindless consumer trance that kills the soul and stifles the imagination, cauterising the magic out of life.

it broke my heart, even as i laughed...

we had eschewed nobility, somewhere it had been jettisoned in favour of self regard, and the hunt for the slickest deal.

people told me, 'you love morocco, you'll love india more', and there was truth to that, as i stayed 6 months there too a couple of years later.

but morocco was my first peep out the eurobox, and i'll always have a soft spot for her because of that!

really enjoying these reminiscences, thanks for uncorking them, guys...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty