As I said, I was on holiday last week – we were in Marrakesh, Morocco.

It’s a bit surreal writing about it all to be honest as the earthquake struck moments after our plane took off to fly home. 0_o

More surreal is the parallel universe where we didn’t re-book and went away on the original dates. We would have been just arriving at the hotel as the earthquake struck.

This is a video from the hotel we were staying at just after the event. Wild

Photos

I was planning on doing a full photoblog, but given events here’s a handful photos.

One of the highlights of the trip was going to eat at the women’s collective restaurant Al Fassia.

Reading

I read a buch of books whilst I was away:

Doom Guy: Life in First Person by John Romero

Great autobiography by games designer John Romero, the story covers his childhood obsession with pinball, programming for the Apple II, makign games, founding ID, making Doom/Quake etc, the disaster that was making the game Daikatana, working on mobile games, mmos etc. Moving to Ireland. The guy has had quite the life.

Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry by Jane Hirshfield

A 1997 collection of Nine essays by American poet Jane Hirshfield. Topics covered include poetry, form, poetic craft, originality, translation, meaning and compression. Fantastic book.

Spirit Possession and the Origins of Christianity by Stevan L. Davies

I finished this on the plane on the way out. Stevan Davies argues that the historical Jesus of Nazareth had little to do with the initial foundation and spread of Christianity. Instead he argues it was Jesus’ experience of Holy Spirit possession, and then the Holy Spirit possession experiences of Jews and Gentiles throughout the Roman empire, that gave rise to the Christian religion.

Hit Parade of Tears by Izumi Suzuki

This is the second collection of short stories published by Verso by cult Japanese author Izumi Suzuki – you may remember I was on Agitator talking about the first collection a while back – This collection was even more weird than the first. Full of weird UFO stories, this collections deals a lot with the themes of dissociation and alienation. fantastic.

Regular blogging/service will resume again next weekend.