Most tourists don’t visit the shoved-aside secondhand book dealers of Marrakesh. Nevermind the main Mosque is the Book Mosque. The City Fathers didn’t think they added class to the site.
Stan & I walked out to the book market and browsed. I hoped to find a Qur’an in French. My Dijon copy vanished years ago during one of 17+ moves.
The elderly proprietor of a rather stuffed booth turned to a western-dressed young woman nearby and told her in Arabic, here you help her. Poor thing, very flustered, helped me find one and handled the sale. I assume she was his granddaughter visiting from university and he figured she needed the practice in commercial French.
As we left Marrakesh, we passed one of many cats in Morocco. The black cat turned toward me (must’ve sensed I noticed him) and glared at me with fiery gold eyes (his back to sun).
Marrakesh by Mary Margaret Serpento
Marrakesh by Mary Margaret Serpento
Tangier by Mary Margaret Serpento
I came down with a nasty respiratory bug but managed to see the Fez souk. Found a copy of Legends of the Fire Spirits : Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar (Robert Lebling) in a book stall. Turns out jinn have dozens of species, including cat jinn. And jinn just HATE to be noticed. . .
one
then
two more
to spiral
outward, nature drawn
with mathematics. A bobbin
reels through subtle infinity — the mind to follow
–Mary Margaret Serpento copyright 2005
[From a conversation with one of the sales staff at College of Creative Studies (CCS) student preview party last night (May 2005). He knew of the Golden Mean (Leonardo da Vinci), and curious about the Fibonacci sequence and poetry. So I gave him a “demo/definition” Fibonacci.]
The vast majority (over 460 Fibonacci-no-haiku) are musical, when they’re not dance or escapees from the lab. But this one’s from a book author event.
long
wait-for
autographs…
scribble quick smile-ats
and isn’t that interesting;
serendipendous bits for memory afterward
–Mary Margaret Serpento copyright 2003
My favourite indie bookshop had an author signing this evening (October 2003), the first book in the Bartimaeus Trilogy.
While waiting in line, turned out the lady ahead of me is a teacher. She was intrigued by the idea of science fiction scifaiku. I mentioned in passing some of our other life forms, including Fibonacci. She knows about Fibonacci sequence but couldn’t picture how one would use it to write poetry. So I drafted this one for her about the event, [a couple tweaks for Kireji, but “serendipendous” is another *.mms coinage.]
Book Recommendations by MMS
“Kinda hard to pick from the 2,800+++ on hand, but here you go. In no particular order, chronologically or thematically.”:
The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
Romance. Treachery. Revenge. Riches. Redemption. Plus sailing off into the reader’s imagination. Timely too–the Count is a Catalan.
Vita Nostra (Marina and Sergey Dyachenko)
A sucker punch to the mind. Libraries catalog it as a narrative of abuse, but some disciplines can only be mastered the hard way. This one takes a exquisitely hard path to triumph.
Who stole Sassie Manoon? (Donald E. Westlake)
Not the Dortmunder crowd this time. A very good and profitable time had by all.
Luna Park (Kevin Baker and Danijel Zezelj)
Alik, a former soldier sent to Chechnya, now finds himself caught in Coney Island hallucinations–or are they moments in alternate history? Mr. Zezelj’s artwork captures Alik’s world in browns, greys, and sepia like a strobe newsreel.
Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit (Michael Zadoorian)
Some portraits are watercolors, some Banksy-esque and some are stepped-on chalk drawings. But Detroit’s like that.
Carl Warner’s Food Landscapes
Carl Warner shows you how he plays with his food. Advertising photography never looked so delicious.
Mary Margaret Serpento’s recommendations can be found in our on-line catalog: Shelter & Read!
Mary Margaret Serpento on the Charles Bridge, Prague.