Decloaked
The last time I updated here, I said I was journeying off into the desert. More than three months since, if I had readers I didn’t know they’d probably be a bit worried about me.
No, the trip was only a week as planned. A similarly brief description: the sheer scale of the landscape (mountains en route, then sands as far as the eye can see) was vastly impressive. I got to ride a camel through what was technically a sandstorm. I hung out with very friendly hosts and a weird mix of nice-on-average visitors circling a middle-class artistic hippie locus, although there was far too much deference to native musical and spiritual authenticity. (I judge modern clubs better at trance rhythms, and the music that gave me shivers of joy was Without Why on my MP3 player in the airport.)
Whilst deserting, I also got to enjoy the practicalities of a cloaking device: a long hooded covering formally called a burnous. It’s particularly well-suited to the soft places of Morocco: quite light, warm when need be, a shelter against sand and wind, and a keeper of personal space.
Back here, I already regularly wore the cloak as a dressing-gown around the house. Then I visited my parents in London over Christmas; wanting to minimize what I carried, I tried it as my outdoor coat. And at the start of this year my regular furry black coat went away for repairs, so I wore the cloak around town for a couple of weeks.
I really quite liked it. Warm and light as previously noted, it is also great for my regular extra thirty minutes of sleep in the back of the 43 bus during my commute out to South Queensferry, and it didn’t take me too long to learn how to not trip on it. But it gives off very loud pretentious goth vibes, whilst I’m a quiet and dispassionate goth who does not seek to provoke the staring or the cries of “hey, Aragorn”.
So now that my furry coat is relined and returned, I have disengaged the cloaking device. Ironically, said coat itself wants to be worn by a 70’s rock-star even further removed from my character; I guess I learned to forge my signature coat long enough ago that this ceased to worry me.
