Edition #125 - Tangier… Tragic, Magnificent, Home

“Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy.
Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live.”1

It’s about 6am. I’m on the rooftop terrace of my riad, looking at the peaceful body of water standing right in front of me, reflecting the immaculate sky benevolently looking over a city I’ve been so blessed to call home for almost 10 years now… Almost a decade already… It’s unbelievable in so many ways, especially as I’m not known for easily rooting myself, if at all, too deeply or for sticking around for too long… It isn’t who I am. My foundational bricks have essentially been relational for the most part, not really geographical.

I guess that transient motion of mine is probably due to the fact that, when I wasn’t basically living in a children’s hospital for a lengthy period as a kid, my parents would move over and over and over again, sometimes 3-4 times in a primary school year cycle. The notion of “home” is mostly the construct of an intellectualization on my part, a blurred projection of a “place” rather than a sacred form of sanctuary where you can find love, security, and anchor, where you can grow, experiment, find yourself, and move out to the world… Your own world. It all went backwards for me. I was trying to figure out both myself and the world before I could even understand the notion of “home”. And quite frankly, if the idea of having to stay in one place for too long makes me deeply uneasy and therefore deprives me of the possibility to find any personal stability and ensconce, it gave me the world and a self-perspective that defines the person I am today, one that is still evolving and knows it hasn’t arrived yet, or ever…

That’s why realizing that I’ve been living in Tangier — or with Tangier in my heart and mind — for a decade is quite phenomenal. For me it is, anyway…

A friend asked me if it made me feel “older”… Age seems to be a universal marker for most people, a point of reference or a measure by which we can compare our dreams to reality and our accomplishments to that of others around us. I find this non-empirical grading form too subjective to really “play” by its rules, but it makes me smile nonetheless… “Does it make you feel old?” sounds like “You must be tired of traveling, you’ve collected so many stamps in your passport already.”

For me, life is about cycles, seasons, or whatever you want to call it. It’s a marathon in which you hope you’ll avoid seeing the finish line. Let’s go off-road. How much further can I go? How much deeper can I dive? And on, and on, and on. You become old once you settle. You are dead when your only fight is to maintain the status quo of your own illusionary low expectations. That’s why I have the utmost admiration for my manager Bill: He has accomplished what others don’t even have the courage to dream about. For him, it’s never “Let’s keep on going,” but always “Let’s reinvent ourselves. Let’s evolve, create, morph. But with purposes and intentionality.” He isn’t old. How could he? Even his shadows can’t follow… That’s living.

So no, I don’t feel old. I feel grateful. Immensely grateful… Only to think about that agitated and transformative period of my life, one that went by in a succession of quick flashes and what appeared as a never-ending continuity of suspensive still frames, however long that painful pre-Tangier period of my life has truly been… It’s hard for me to paint you a clear image, but it’s like projecting a movie that seems fast, too fast, slow, too slow, damaged, restored, damaged some more, ripped apart and reassembled over and over and over again. It’s the sum of all those increasingly defying motions that ultimately offered me the opportunity to define who I wanted to be, to shape my character as I was going through it all. Older by definition alone, but seemingly a little closer to be a transitionary “whole”, that is for sure.

It might seem paradoxical to say that what makes me profoundly happy each occasion I have to come back to Tangier for a minute or two is the puzzling simplicity by which life’s complexity is being handled, shared, and communed here. It’s a dazzling city operating at people’s level, and I’m privileged that I’ve been invited to add my own colors to the vibrant identity of that myriad of unique individuals, all vividly constituting the fluid flow of its humanly rich and welcoming community. Simplicity, for a person whose existence has been all but simple, is quite a gift to embrace… At least once in a while!

Life creates life.

Your friend and brother,

Alex

PS: I’m inviting you to stay tuned to my Substack community and my different social media platforms as many changes are coming up and several news are about to be announced! It’s quite exciting to be in such a rejuvenating type of perpetual life motion. Where will it lead? I don’t really know… Only that it is one “now” at the time. That’s what gets me so enthusiastic every morning!