Marrakesh: and a risky tale of failing and winning

Something is happening that I can’t quite explain.  It’s like that black diamond feeling when I’m skiing and I’m a bit out of control – frightening and yet exhilarating.  That rushing sensation, the wind whipping my face.  Worried that I might just crash, a tangle of limbs and metal.  I can feel the ice under my skis, lurking just underneath the powder. I can hear the scraping sound.  Side to side, faster and faster. I wonder

I wonder if I can stop. 

I think maybe I don’t want to.

I’ve been doing new things this past year and I want to tell you.  I’ve been starting other things, too -- in real life and in my head.  I have been taking risks.  And I have been failing.  I have been failing often.  But I’ve been trying again, once, twice, three times.  I have been succeeding, I think, almost.  Maybe not. 

I’m in a place that I don’t know.   I’m at the edge.   

Maybe you're standing out there with me, too? 

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PS I couldn't be more excited to have this little blog voted as Best African Weblog in the 2014 Annual Weblog Awards.  Many many thanks to those who voted!  Thrilled to be the first Africa-based blog to enter into the Weblog Awards Hall of Fame:-)  So very grateful for your support. xo 

Mopti, Mali: and a tale of good manners

No matter how much you have

or no matter how little,

your small kindnesses will not go unnoticed.  Especially to strangers.

I've been learning about good manners in Mali. {good thing someone got through to me:)}

Marrakech: and a tale of Peacock Pavilions in the news

 You know, it wasn't a fairy tale building Peacock Pavilions.  To the contrary. There were disasters.  

There was the contractor who spent all of our money, leaving us with a building site only a third complete. There was not one, but two mortgages.  There were our retirement funds cashed in in their entirety because we didn't know what else to do.  There was a foreign government who wouldn't issue us permits for reasons we couldn't understand.  There was a building crew that spoke a different language than we did.  There were windows put in upside down and staircases torn out because they were wrong, all wrong.  

Yes, there were bodies strewn in the wake of the making of this dream of ours.  There was depression.  There was a desperate wringing of hands, over and over and yes, over again.  

So remember....Peacock Pavilions wasn't made from fairy dust but from a mixture of hardship and folly. Don't let the pictures in the glossy magazines fool you.

And speaking of those.....

An 8 page feature in the February/March 2014 Elle Decoration, the Netherlands. 

Thanks to Laura van der Linde for sending the images above our way.

My tips for Moroccan-style entertaining at Peacock Pavilions are on Lonny in March.  Check out the floor that was done by Melanie Royals and her team.  My inspiration for that project was African wax resist patterns on cloth. See the Lonny story here.  

Images by Patrick Cline

Peacock Pavilions is mentioned in Vogue Italia this month as a great place to stay in Marrakesh:-) Take a peek at the story (in Italian) right here.  Many thanks to Alessandra Turci.

PS It's finally Spring time in Marrakech. Sometimes the Spring is all the more beautiful when the winter has been especially cold, yes? Hope you are managing to thaw out wherever you are.  

Philosophy's Amazing Grace: and a tale of how I learned a lesson from a beauty product

I had given her the middle name, Grace, in a fit of gratitude - so desperately thankful that she had been born without the problems the doctors predicted.  

Back then, when they were tiny, I still believed that I could greenhouse my children.  I thought that I could give them just the right ingredients -- the right teachings, the right lessons, the right examples -- and grow them into the sorts of people that I wanted them to be.  I learned fast that parents were important but not that important.  I learned that my children were their own people, independent of me and what I did and said.  That they developed their characters and characteristics largely on their own.  I had to content myself with floating on a wide perimeter of their existence, where I would cajole, encourage and chastise, understanding all the while that their love of basketball and math and drawing really had very little to do with me and a great deal to do with them.  

I continued to try, nonetheless.  Sitting them down for "talks" and "life lessons". They mostly put up with me.  

I was in New York roaming the aisles at Sephora looking at products that promised to restore my youth in a few precious drops.  I also needed to buy a gift for my daughter -- the one with the middle name, Grace.  I stopped at the Philosophy counter in front of their Amazing Grace products.  And I saw it -- the lesson.  

I read it.  And then I read it again.  Then I stopped the saleswoman and asked her if she had read it.  She said she had but she stopped and read it with me, anyway.  We both nodded at the message's relevance.  It was like a song whose lyrics we suddenly paid attention to -- instead of just listening to them carelessly as if they were in another language.

I bought it for her, for Skylar Grace.  But I also bought it for myself. For the reminder that it gave me, for the lesson that it taught me.  

{If I had been duped by smart packaging, so be it.  I had paid far more before for far less.}