Cosmic Prose

Natasha Regehr

Tag: Cosmic Prose (Page 6 of 8)

Tonique!

November 21, 2015 / / 2 Comments

What do Canadian teachers do when Morocco grants them a Wednesday off to celebrate Independence Day? Why, they go to the spa, of course, to work out all the knots and kinks acquired on Monday and Tuesday.  This knotty exposé (the closest to kinky prose you will ever find on this site) explores one woman’s search for the nonexistent no-man’s-land between “relaxant” (relaxing) and “tonic” (???) massage.  Relax, dear reader, and enjoy the show.

IMG_3582Massage in Canada involves sheets and undergarments.  Not so in Morocco.

I should have been prepared for this.  I discovered at the doctor’s office that those modesty-inducing hospital gowns are nowhere on the Moroccan radar.  I made a similar discovery at the esthetician’s and at the hammam.  Why would I think massage would be any different?

I will not trouble you with an exhaustive narrative of the experience; I will simply provide you with a helpful chart for future reference.  I suggest you print it, laminate it and keep it in your purse; it will be an invaluable aid next time you are considering an afternoon of pampering in Casablanca:

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Going Solo: I Can Do This

November 15, 2015 / / 6 Comments

It happened this weekend that my desire to attend an out-of-town event exceeded my fear of going alone.  Here’s the story of my first solo excursion outside Casablanca to attend the Visa for Music showcase in Rabat.

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Going Solo: Part 1

It is 1:25 pm (or 13:25, as they say around here), and I am triumphant. I have skillfully and cheerfully accomplished the first of the many daunting feats before me today: I have boarded a train. Continue reading

Chins up!

November 10, 2015 / / 8 Comments

Things for which to be thankful, upon schmucking your chin with great force upon your classroom floor:

  • Just yesterday you dispatched a child to the office for some boxes of tissue: essential in staunching the blood as you dispatched yourself to the nurse’s office…
  • …which is conveniently located just one floor up from your music room…
  • …which no longer looks like a crime scene, because someone came and mopped up all the little pools and trails of blood.

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Exultant!

October 27, 2015 / / 3 Comments

What I Learned at my First Moroccan Choir Rehearsal:

  1. Our voices are part of what makes us who we are. Use them happily!
  2. Funny sounds are welcome here. They help us find our missing courage.
  3. Mistakes are welcome here. We enjoy being human.
  4. We are capable of great beauty. Just look at the smile on our conductor’s face when he hears our sweet crescendo.
  5. We (every one of us) can access, activate, and feel that beauty. Just look at everyone else’s faces. Our souls are showing.
  6. People are welcome here. Even people who still think in English. We don’t mind helping them wade through the French if they get a little stuck.
  7. We like each other. You can tell from all the kissing.
  8. We both use and do not use sheet music. We’re flexible that way.
  9. We are all so glad to be here; we have found our musical home.

Choir: Take Two

October 11, 2015 / / 6 Comments

This is how you audition for a choir in Casablanca.

First, you hear people talk about it a bit, and you have a brief but friendly Facebook exchange with someone who apologizes for his poor English, even though his English is pretty fantastic.

Then, one day, someone mentions that there are going to be auditions tonight at 7pm, and you go and ask your angel of a French teacher if her driver would mind taking you to the appointed location. You feel you can do this, because you bawled your eyes out in front of her after your last cataclysmic audition, and she gave you her phone number, and said, “Call if you ever need anything. I have a driver.” A driver who speaks neither English nor French, but that’s okay, because your angel of a French teacher hops in the car and goes to the audition with you, even though she’s just worked a ten-hour day. This is what angels are made of.

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How Do You Solve a Problem Like…

September 20, 2015 / / 4 Comments

Sound-of-music-nuns-630x315This is what it’s like to audition for a choir in Casablanca.

First, you email the director, in impeccable French (or, should I say, infantile French that has been nicely elevated by your conveniently bilingual pal back in pleasantly predictable Canada). The director emails you back –eventually– in a casual French that lacks the standards of punctuation and capitalization to which you have grown accustomed in such exchanges. No matter. She is a native speaker. You will allow her this linguistic license.

The content of her message is, essentially, “call me, maybe.”

The second step in auditioning for a choir in Casablanca is a brief moment of panic. Continue reading

Magic Carpet

August 31, 2015 / / 6 Comments

Sunday has become my own private Independence Day. It started last week when, rather than waiting for a ride home from church, I bravely embarked on my first solo taxi ride. I was terribly nervous. It turned out to be terribly fun. I chattered (if one can call it that) in French the whole way, and had a good laugh with the driver after declining his spontaneous marriage proposal.

So this week I decided to be doubly brave. Go to French church. Leave the dictionary at home. Understand the first half of the sermon. And then (to prevent a messy brain explosion), slip out and trek, explorer-like, to the city’s old medina.

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Villains and Fiends: The Day I Joined the Mob

August 22, 2015 / / 0 Comments

In Morocco, I measure my successes by kilometres travelled and items purchased. To get anywhere, and buy anything, is pretty much always an ordeal in one way or another. And my own fears have prevented me from accomplishing either of these tasks independently for far too long.

Fear of what, you ask? Pickpockets? Lewd men? Crooked taxi drivers? Corrupt policemen? I was warned about all of these, but not nearly as emphatically as I was warned about that most notorious of North African villains: the Moroccan Driver.

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Morocco Me: Surf’s Up!

August 13, 2015 / / 0 Comments

I am beginning to think that everyone in this world has an analogue somewhere on another continent. And that a great many of them live in Morocco.

I’m sure you know what I mean: that niggling feeling that someone reminds you of (or perhaps is) someone else. In fact, one of the very first people who greeted me in Casablanca has a vocal cadence much like one of my synchronized swimming buddies in Canada. So, in my head, I call her “Morocco Sharon.” In the confines of this small campus, I have also met Morocco Dave, Morocco Catharine, Morocco Sarah; Morocco Tania, Stephanie, Krystal, Vera, Crystal, Paul, and Darlene; and, most curiously, Morocco Snow White and Morocco Barbie.

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