hope, regret, aftermath, consequences

2003-12-17T13:45:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking much lately about individual responsibility. How much we are responsible for in our our actions, and how factors such as our genetic make-up, our early training and traumas, as well as current pressures, cause us to act as we do.

2001-06-21T02:04:00.000-07:00

Things I wish I hadn't done

Anyway, as I said in a recent chapter, I find myself now in a situation in which all of the things I had tried so hard to obtain in my life, and did obtain to some degree in some measure, are threatened. What were those things, and which are most threatened? The whole basket of things that I obtained follows: namely a professional career, money, security, a place in society, a knowledgeable stance in regard to the issues that move, shape, and direct our society, knowledge of myself, and confidence in myself as a talented marketing strategist, creative director, and conceptual artist, photographer, and filmmaker, and a comfortable relationship with and ability to satisfy my needs for excitement and sensuality, usually expressed in athletic activities like swimming nude, skiing and sailing, and in dancing, listening to music, watching ballet, cooking, eating, drinking wine, and having sex. This is a quick list, but you get the point.

What is threatened now is more or less everything to do with society, or with other people. The skills are not threatened, but the ability to practice those skills, take those stances and enjoy those activities, as my career has ground to a halt, and even worse, every shred of money that I had squirreled away has disappeared through the profligacy, abysmal stupidity, blind selfishness or sheer avariciousness of two women, my now ex-wife and my girlfriend/fiancee. Yes, of course, with friends like these….

Now, this thought brings up another topic, namely, that of control. Should I have taken more control in my relationship with these women? My overall experience is that even the most primitive of people, or possibly I should say, particularly these, are sensitive to being dictated to. So am I. I don't think anybody likes it, except soldiers and football players and dedicated followers, which leaves out the two women and a host of colleagues, to which this paragraph pertains. It might be preferable in fact to only involve oneself in or to create situations in which one does not have to exercise undo controlling behaviors in order to obtain the desired results. This is within my realm of experience. I have seen and participated in efficient, easily manoeuvrable social organizations.

Is this clear? Namely, when you find yourself having to become strident, screechy voiced or overly demanding in order to obtain results within social mechanisms, such as relationships, marriages, companies, or even sailing teams, one must realize that one is on the wrong team. Let this team go its way, depart company, and go on to another, a better, a more suitable team.

That my wife was completely ignorant of the workings of personal finance, or of contemporary mainstream client relationships, due to her prior immersion in either crime families or departments of state within the US government, which amounts to the same thing, was not my problem originally. However, once I recognized this situation it created a rather largish issue impinging on emotional, social and intellectual spheres, not to say financial for me.

These tangled issues went something like this: either I can treat my wife as though she is socially and intellectually retarded, and acknowledging this, completely ignore any input she has regarding any issue of substance in our lives, or I can try to work around her difficult if not impossible demands, and otherwise, treat her as peer, an adult companion, the helpmeet of Biblical lore I hoped I was marrying, and indeed she was competent in many, many areas, just not the more essential practical ones mentioned above.

I chose the later course of peer to peer, not being willing to either create greater hostility through demeaning behavior on my part, or to continue living with someone whom I was treating like a child. Of course, the consequences, however preferable in the short-term, were disastrous socially and financially and emotionally in the long term, as I was systematically stripped of every shred material belonging that I had, either through her continued profligacy and selfishness, or through the actions of her criminally inclined family.

So, should I have in fact taken more control, or should I simply have "opted out." More and more I am thinking that one of these courses would have been preferable to the ones I chose. I recall in particular l a dinner meeting I had with a youngish female colleague on my staff. She was upset and complained that I was a martinet, a dictator, a non-collaborative setter of goals who charged ahead, threatening to fire those either incapable of or unwilling to follow with adroit rapdity. I replied that given the intense competition in the international advertising agency scene, that I was just trying to keep our agency at top par, and to keep as many people employed as possible, without having to resort to layoffs.

When she excused herself to go to the ladies room, a somewhat older man at another table came over to me, and said, "I overheard your conversation, and if I may comment, I was in Korea, and you were just buried under the biggest pile of feminist crap I have ever heard in my life." Well, I am not sure he had got the point either, but there, in his comments, you see the extent of the dichotomy we face in attempting to find the useful mean. In retrospect, I think, rather than trying for another 18 months very unhappily to work with this woman and her like-minded colleagues, I should have looked for another job, thus freeing myself from demoralizng performance reviews that stated that I was "almost military in my expectations of other staff members," and that I " was not working with our people." Both statements may have been true, but I am not apologetic, and I would have been fired by these critical upper managers if the performance I achieved from "our staff" had been any less.

The Bible says, to paraphrase, "Don't be in contractual relationships with people who don't believe as you do," and I think this is good advice. The "working around" option that I have tried to employ for some many years, I think is fundamentally flawed. Though I have been able to get a few more cylinders engaged, I think my efforts would have been more efficient, my life happier, and the subsequent disasters less hazardous if I had simply opted out when I found myself faced with under- or non-achievers, or in company with those whose goals and priorities were significantly different than my own. The 12 step-programs and some hip yogic philosophers say it slightly differently, and again to paraphrase, "You can neither change another person, nor live their life for them, so stop trying! Let them be themselves, and you be yourself, and if there is a large area of shared interest within this formula, great, if not, split."

Shakespeare's play "Julius Cesar" begins with a scene of two people drowning together in a river, the one trying to save the other. This is taken as an omen against becoming involved in overwhelming situations. A successful director of avant garde films advised not working with people less intelligent than you are, for they will misunderstand, mistrust and despise you. The late radical psychologist Fritz Perls said it this way, "I am not in this world to listen to your constant yammering. If you and I can find common ground, and discover things we enjoy together, great. If not, see you later!"

While the wisdom of these statements was always fairly clear to me on the surface, in my present situation, it is almost luminescent, if not prescient. So, for my part, I wish I hadn't hung around trying to make the best out of doomed, significantly flawed, or less than great situations. We all know that feeling of being in a situation where the people and events suit us well. Why do we settle for less? Why did I? Fear of the alternatives or of the consequences of leaving? Or perhaps, even more unfortunately, those of us who suffered from varying degrees of abusive, non-supportive, or dysfunctional family upbringings or schools, often find the less than ideal situation cozy, because it is so familiar. We do not seek the better because the uncomfortable actually suits us. Feels more comfortable than daring to change. Feels safer, perhaps, than speaking out, striking back, doing something else. Alas.

2001-06-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

Choices, Inactions, Sloppiness, and Wounds

I am contemplating a major piece of artwork, major in that it will be fairly large, and major in that it will be confrontational. Perhaps too confrontational to hang in my own home, where it's message will be seen, as it is partly intended, to be an accusation. I am feeling less mellow than when I wrote www.agapanthus.4t.com

But, more to the point, is confrontation a bad, an immoral, or a sleazy thing? Is confrontation, is hostility, is the recognition of injury or of injustice wrong, too controversial, or unworthy of a person of spiritual leanings? I ask this not because all of the spiritual leaders we have today seem to shy away from what I would call worldly, real, meaningful, or political concerns. They voice concern over tame issues, prayer in schools, or the death penalty, that affect few people in significant ways. And they shy away from damning the Russian involvement in Chechnya, or from criticising indifference toward global warming, the lack of global universal education and the wholesale slaughter of animals and the natural environment.

So here, I, a teacher of the path to spiritual enlightenment, of spiritual truths, of mind body integration, not only contemplate but plan, and design a confrontational art work to expose, to bring to the light, to cause discussion and recognition of, in my own home of perceived injustices. Of injustices perceived my me, to have been committed against me.

It is not so much the issue that Selene, the perpetrator in this case, is more loving, kinder, and more sympathetic than were in many respects the other lovers, wives, girlfriends I have lived with. That is and was my problem

Nor that I am shackled into this relationship for the purpose of feeling loved and wanted. That I might perhaps be better off alone, is uncertain, but that she and I would both be better off more independent of each other is sure. As would most other people in general for this is the real difficulty

Being dependent as we are on each other, and also being interdependent keeps us bound together. While at core, we are all alone in spirit, and can only find our true selves in a state of solitary mediation, whether that is a moment of reverie when listening to music, watching a film or meditating, or watching the sun set over the surface of a lake. Even when dancing with a loved one, or in a loving embrace, or in the act of love itself, though the moment is enhanced by the presence of the other, our reverie in that moment is our own.

This giving up of freedom for other things, other perceived receipts, is awkward, demeaning and humiliating to me at this time. Who I ask understands or appreciates me, other than indeed myself at this moment. No one. And the answer is perhaps the same for everyone on the face of the earth, and yet we pretend to ourselves that we are the center of the world to other people. That we are best friends, spouse, girlfriend, colleague, when in fact all this matters hardly at all.

We scrape and bow to gain favor, and we shed any trace of dignity.

Further, most of what we have done in our brief lives has been wrong. This is a major breakthrough of awareness, and I am not trying to or even suggesting that we be depressed or guilty about this. Maybe it is even liberating to realize it. But it is true, is it not? Get over trying to show how all your decisions fit nicely into one smooth tangent fitting into another. In all probability your life has been one of total chaos and it will certainly end that way, despite your, my or anyone else's attempts to candy coat it. We will either die gasping horribly for breath, shaking violently in paroxysms of a stroke, in anguishing pain from a heart attack, in excruciating aching and weakness caused by cancer, or in some milder delirious state caused by drugs to ameliorate these other conditions.

Again, I am not trying to be depressing. I am just trying to step up to the plate of reality in what I see as a world in which fewer of us are at all able to admit to, acknowledge, recognise or distinguish anything resembling the truth of our own lives.

And basically the problem is one of culture. A culture of denial. The woman who cries all the way home from being drunkenly mauled by a so-called lover she spent Saturday night in a bar with, who mistreats and despises her, is a victim of her own inability to extract herself from the cultural shrouds she has encased herself in. Within which she feels strangled, but unwilling to escape. (http://issestars.diaryland.com) We are all, or many of us, like this. No?

So, Selene's having spent some several months of living expenses, paying for an apartment in Rome, in which we no longer live, was to me the dropping of several thousands of dollars into the toilette bowl of oblivion. She poured my lifeblood there so that we now cannot afford to go back and close up the house, and we are financially strapped, unable to pay but a few weeks more rent here. There are a large number of our things, my things, which we will never see again because we cannot afford now to go to Rome to get them, and would not be allowed to, in anycase, without paying the rent.

So I am designing a painting of me lying naked on the filthy floor of the world, my legs straddling a toilette bowl, while floating above me, a blond-haired angel casts thousands of dollars into the toilette, whilst I groan, dying in weakening agony. Written on the toilette are the words "for Roma," so Selene will know for sure that I am referring to her spending all that money for an apartment in which we no longer lived, no longer lived for 15 months, in fact, no longer lived for $6,400 worth of rent and facilities payments. Enough money to keep us safe and sound, dry and secure here in France for another six and a half months, while we try to get the design business up and running, while we take a few days off in summer to go swimming. But these are options no more.

Maybe I would not feel so badly if there was a good excuse for having wasted all this money, but if there is, I do not know it and she has not communicated it to me. That she delayed her planned trip to close up the house on several occasions because she wanted to see her other boyfriends here or there during that month is not so much irritating, as it is now, in the face of the wastage, an outrage.

Another complicating factor in all of this, my intuition, the voice, said not to contradict Selene's instincts in all this, and to remain silent, so I did, though when I brought it up in September she cried and told me to back off, and when I brought it up in January, she said she was going back to Rome in a few days. That was six months ago, $2,700 ago. So, my own intuition is complicit in all of this, since I did bite my tongue for much of the last 15, and certainly for the last five months.

And who knows, maybe there is some ameliorating factor here, a blessing, a miracle, a painting to be discovered that will be worth thousands, which if events hadn't transpired exactly as they did, would not have been available. Who knows? Maybe I will be rejoicing instead of seething and mourning.

But for the moment, I am almost completely without money, due to the inactions of another. Precious money, whose preciousness I did not appreciate with such intensity earlier. So here is already one benefit. I doubt that after this minute, I will ever again be also frivolous about money.

And as I write this I think of my wife, who took all the money I could give her, and then her family took more, and in her divorce settlement, she took every last cent that was not already here in Europe with me and Selene. And I writhe in anger and I spit venom in vehement despising of her and her family that this has happened to me, and I want to write her letters full of hatred, full of thoughts of the most violent and bloody revenge.

All of these are about the absence now of the precious money whose energy had the power of life to lift me from here, take me to the beach and let me swim in the sea, rent a piano, have my teeth cleaned. So I am also filled with thoughts about all the money I wasted at various times in my life, taking both success, and nice, expensive things or rare moments for granted, and with thoughts about the bad decisions, wrong steps I made, that have inexorably led me here. So I will perhaps write another chapter or two about these two areas, of self-injury, which together explain why my once full bank account is now empty. I lie, instead, on my back, staring up at the ceiling of a public urinal, dying, while my blood pours into the toilette.

Some would say I went too far, what do you think? If I were to scream with my next to last breath, at these two women, "You stupid fucking bitch" Is that too much to pass the lips of a holy man? Is that an ungenerous attitude or stance?

But since people respond much more to love, I do not scream this at Selene, who stands looking sweet, attractive and forlorn, barefooted as she does the dishes, I cooked the dinner, F.Y.I., and I feel genuinely sorry for her sadness, and attracted to her, and loving towards her, though my own injury is still at the front of my mind, and in my heart, as a sadness, a sense that I am wounded.

I am calm now. I am no longer angry. Grant me a moment of peace in my last few seconds of life. The cool of the bathroom floor feels good against my back. I am beginning to black out and to embrace my demise calmly, reverently here on this altar.

Bordeaux, June 14, 2001

2001-06-18T20:02:00.000-07:00

Culmination, decision day

Can we assume that if you see a beautiful picture, even a scene in a film, perhaps of a beautiful landscape, by a lake, a river, or a beautiful beach, that the people in this picture are relatively happy, that they are not fretting with the anxiety that someone on an assembly line, or someone caught in traffic, or riding an empty subway train at night, or arguing with their spouse in a really dirty apartment, might be fretting with? Does that seem like a natural and realistic assumption? Does it? It does to me.

Yet, just minutes ago, I was on the banks of the Garonne River, in one of the most beautiful parks in the world, the air cool and still, the sun hot, people lying in the lovely lush lawns, tree limbs bending over to the water, and I was in a state of almost complete mental and emotional hysteria, and physical tension. I was distraught, beside myself and ready to do violence, or if not, certainly ready to contempalte it. Is this because I live on the Garonne, see it everyday, and its wondrous beauty no longer has the capacity to calm me? Anyway, it was a beautiful scene, and I was completely upset, though I admit I was restored partly by being out there, absorbing its beauty, and by ruminating on my anxieties.

I know what happiness is, maybe for the first time in my life. I used to grit my teeth and slog through the newest difficulty, hoping to get through it to the endurable, tolerable existence that I had known before. I was going from known status of okness to known status of okness. But I was not really holding out for joy, or anything like it, because I didn't know it. Perhaps, I was seeking a kind of fulfilment, an imagined level of activity and compatibility that seemed enticing. A new girlfriend, a new job, a good feeling about myself. Close to happiness perhaps.

But now what I seek is palpable, I can feel it, I know it, and I will know it if and when I see it again. I am seeking days lying on the rocks in the Aegean, listening to the lapping waters, swimming in the cool blue seas, drying in the sun on the rocks. Playing with my cats in the garden, eating simple dinners outdoors. Walking to the market. Reading, writing, and possibly taking the bus to Athens to do business. Maybe this is too specific an image.

Let's just say, I would like a beautiful room, a wonderfully responsive piano, and a deep water beach, warm air, and days of swimming, and eating good food without the anxiety, anger, frustration, humiliation and self doubt that grips me now.

The cottage in Rome. My intuition said not to hassle Selene, and I didn't, but now, at this moment, it looks like we are out thousands of dollars, which costs us all kinds of freedom and choice, plus all the belongings in the cottage, a great handsome suit, my best pair of dress shoes, a leather jacket, all my notebooks, some great CDs and a stereo, not that all this has that much monetary value, but why, if I am not to return to Rome now, did I spend all this money, or sit by while Selene spent it, to have not the things, not the cottage, and no money. If there is sense to my intuition telling me to keep silent, it is not evident at this moment.

Right now, I would rather that I had said "Go to Rome immediately, get everything, and close up the house." About 15 months ago. So, why am I here in this state of agony instead, having listened to my intuition. I would rather have the money or the ability to go to Italy right now. As it stands, I can't even go to the beach here, so broke am I.

So, in addition to being frustrated, upset, disappointed in my current state, there is this whole other thing about following my intuition. So many things come up here today in no particular order, all equally important to the heart and mind, about hearing, listening to, and following the guidance of my intuition.

Don't go to Bordeaux -- this is related to the whole issue of following my intuition, the voice, very carefully, which I have been resentfully not doing completely of late. I came to Bordeaux out of a sense of frustration about what else to do, having heard very strongly for three or four months, "Don't go to Bordeaux, don't live at Allen's apartment for the summer." I know I have mentioned this elsewhere, somewhere, but then of course, off we did set, having left La Rochelle, having decided to live there, having fallen in love with it, we got on the train, and a disastrous train ride it was, and the apartment was locked, the neighbor away, though it all eventually worked out nicely. The point, rather than more or less steadfastly NOT going to Bordeaux, and not going to stay with Allen, we, I, did.
The zen/yogic life -- ok this too, is a biggie. The above entry by the way also refers to those times when I do not follow clear advice from the voice, and when I try to push the voice to give advice that it is not ready to give. And these times tend to occur when I am hung over, or not living the zen life style. E.g., sick. Having had too much non-macrobiotic animal fat, cheese, meat, butter, or perhaps, chocolate the day before. Like last night, going to Allen's after a faintish but also clearish, "don't," because Selene wanted to. And though it did produce an offer to stay at his apt again for the summer, when he goes away, and even into the fall, it also produced some weird events, his putting the dresser out into the street, sort of showing off his new wealth, and even the offer to stay, not without a bit of probably well meant advice, all of which was extremely depressing to both of us. So, given the choice, again, I think I would not go.
My health -- again, related, my health is now in a state of extreme decline, to which I am partially blaming il vocce for not permitting me to go swimming last summer after we got here, and for advocating not going back to Rome for the summer. How can Rome be worse economically than here? Anyway, what with the humidity down here on the river, and admittedly my smoking, now given up again forever, and all the hangovers from all the partying this winter, my health suffered from my not doing my exercises and from my not running, and then the colds, partly brought on by the partying, and then of course, the last and almost fatal blow, the allergic asthma. And though rain or shine, I ate fairly macro, and I walked about ten miles a week, the robustness of my swimmers' body health suffered. So will I jog? Will I start running? Will I go swimming this summer? And if so, where?
This has all been so exhausting that I cannot continue, and will have to continue later, in another chapter.

2001-06-14T22:28:00.000-07:00

Intentions to accommodate the self's needs

It is my intention to find a way to make a living. Possibly less important is how I got to this place, where I am out of money. Yes, I can point to a number of short term factors, most of which are not mentioned in the prior bok, Nights of Agapanthus, http://www.agapanthus.4t.com 1) In the divorce settlement, Alexsaundra took all the money I had saved, which I didn't defend against since I didn't have any money, and didn't want to go into debt or to be a party to this unjust proceeding. This is a story in itself. 2) Selene spent about four or five months rent and living expenses by NOT concluding the arrangements in Roma, paying rent on an apartment where we didn't live. 3) I had anticipated that with the design capabilities we have, professional look, excellent features, avant garde approach, number of people with connections and friends we are meeting that someone would want a web site between last August and now, about ten months come to think of it. But not a single cent. 4) I thought that the clients we had relationships with at that time, would pay their bills, and probably ask for more services. Not a cent. 5) I thought that maybe I would sell a few paintings, and fortunately, I did sell one, for full price. However.

So, if I had known that I would be here, I would have behaved differently, possibly. Though I kept mentioning to Selene to go clear up the Italian situation, and she reacted angrily that I was pushing her, and though I mentioned it at least once every month, --? -- would I have done anything differently in this area??? One issue here was that starting in February, my intuition said not to mention this anymore, so I kept pretty low key, though I did mention it about once a month.

I also thought, this is 6) With all of the various web promotions we were doing, have done, and had planned to do, that our sites would get continuing streams of traffic, and that some of these people, one out of the now more than three hundred, would want a web site, buy a painting, something. No!

Another aspect to this, in addition to second guessing myself, is that I am scared. Maybe more on this later.

Somewhere in here is all the partying, and the sex with others fiasco, which definitely cut a wide swath through my life, all the partying, the writing about sexual liberation, the trying to pick up and date other women here in Bordeaux, in Normandie. So, this was confusing. Though now as it sinks in, it is sobering. Here we have to mention Deek, Le Petite Bateau, and all that, Bernice, Fantoufe, Annabelle. Oh boy, and all the late nights and revelling here, which I honestly thought were leading to meeting people, and there was much of that, and also many hangovers, and eventually no new business, no money from that route, just a lot of web design freebies for artists, and getting to know a lot of people, and getting also to know myself better, who I am and what I really want.

Yes, I love to go out and party and dance, and flirt. I love it as much as any one can ever have loved it. Maybe that is my legacy! I have loved partying, flirting, dancing, trying to get women to sleep with me. Online, inperson, at restaurants, in bars, on the street, in gallery openings, I love cruising, the chat up, getting phone numbers, putting my arm around her, kissing her in the street. I love it.

But it, this lifestyle, has seemed not to contribute to the business aspect of things, and in reality, didn't turn up a lot of real friends or intimacy, and even backfired a bit at times, I think. Possibly Claude and Bridget were turned off when they got the report from their friends that we had tried to pick up at the boat show, and maybe also, Vincent at the Petite Bateau, and of course, the whole Fantoufe fiasco with his brother the restuaranteur, even if that was just a one time fiasco with people we will never see again, it was a bring me down.

I have written about this before recently, and will write more probably. It is evolving and I am learning from it, from my return semi full time to the partying lifestyle that characterised my time in Normandie and now here, about a year and a half, maybe starting in fact, in Roma with Bettina, to whom I should definitely write.

So, the lessons learned are fairly obvious to me, though may sound not very interesting to you. First, I learned finally, now, as stated above, that the pressures on me to pursue this kind of lifestyle were pretty strong, and though I have regretted, doubted, criticized, and second-guessed this lifestyle, now I can finally abandon the regrets, and say, despite all the hang-overs and the other things I might have done instead that this was me, that I wanted to pursue social activity in a party environment, and that I found cocktail parties, bars, gallery openings, and beach parties more interesting than chatting with someone at a macrobiotic dinner or at a booth at a trade show, all things considered. I wanted to boogie!!! I was cruising. I wanted to find attractive women to chat up, to dance with, to affiliate with, to sleep with, and all the excitement that goes with finding someone compatible.

Secondly, the sex with others thing with Selene was a huge pressure on me, and though I feel the pressure less now, it was a bit crushing, and I turned to cigarettes for a temporary rage suppression devise recently, just as I had in my twenties. I would never have thought I would go back to smoking.

So, third, is that smoking, even if everyone you know is smoking, and even if you feel that you have got to smoke, is a no-no, for all the reasons we all know. A related fourth, drinking too much, staying up too late, again, no-no, same reasons. I thought I was well past these lessons, but no. The reasons they kept coming up through my thirties and forties, not to mention in my evr-lovin' twenties, is that I wasn't past them. Further, that in alcohol and tobacco and that ambience, I was looking for music and the forbidden sex, which seemed to lurk hidden within. Not necessarily, but it is confusing, when you and everyone else has 3-4 beers in them and are all swaying, rockin' and clicking your fingers to Purple Haze or Honky Tonk Woman.

Fifth, this is the really big one, however excited by the momentary rush of having someone interested in you, keep your cool, and possibly let it pass, but definitely keep your cool. For me this is key because I get so excited and crazy and run around and laugh and joke, and the next day, they say I was too crazy. Ok. So, it is almost like I need to do the things I really want to do and hope that in so doing I will find people, events, entertainments, and sex, and stop looking already. Just do what is so exciting, as in sailing, travelling, swimming, painting, business, or even dancing, or whatever. But sort of leave the looking itself aside. As hard as that is to do.

(Rereading this, returning to the earlier question, is this the path to money as well? Forget about it?)

This is sort of obvious, but I spell it out because at the earlier period of my life, when the party lifestyle seemed to threaten my ability to pursue a career, I had demeaned it and regretted it, casting it into a kind of black sheep of the family role, something I was ashamed of, denied, and wanted to go away. This denial had obvious side-effects, and back firings, usually in the form of the frustrated party animal breaking loose at a few inconvenient times. So the struggle in this regard, which has been successful, has been to give the party animal free reign until he could calm down, find his head, and proceed somewhat constructively. Since I am the party animal.

See, it worked. As I write this, I feel like I never want to go to another party. But that is not the goal, the goal is to find accommodation, satisfaction, release for the needs that grip me, move me, excite me, are me. And part of finding that accommodation is to be able to live more or less comfortably in society, which requires money, which even given all my hard work and meagerish pay over the years, even I had taken too much for granted.

2001-06-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

Revising, regretting and remorse

I have already somewhere here described some of the foolish behaviours I engaged in due to the euphoria I anticipated as a result of the libertine, sex with others, open marriage lifestyle, all the benefits of which proved utterly illusory, intangible and disastrous, more or less as I had predicted all along, when the idea was first proposed to me. See www.agapanthus.4t.com for more details. So the last six years have been for me, in business and in my personal life, a relearning of old lessons.

The most simple and basic of these is something like: "I have been around the block enough to know what will work and what will not work, and going along with someone who is advocating something that will not work under the banner of "new, improved, or different" leads only back to square one. As I more or less knew it would all along, so take charge of your life! Don't say yes when you feel no, and don't expect someone else's belief in a chimera to prove magical. And by all means, don't go along with it!"

Something like that.

As for the one benefit of the open marriage lifestyle, I have a complete disrespect at present for the traditonal marriage concept, and for everything related to it, including being true or faithful to someone you don't love anymore, and to being held in some kind of sexual slavery or purdah for the sake of the conscience of society or for the sake of the self-respect of some other person with whom you aren't having sex anymore. So that alone was a benefit worth all the pain and suffering, embarrassment and humiliation.

But as for the actual bedding of women, joyful sex, freedom, energy, feeling better, and more liberated, it was illusive. People in general are suspicious and insecure, as I said elsewhere. If you find anyone who wants to have sex with you or is in love with you, my advice is to take advantage of it, unless they are completely looney, which is pretty likely, because the rarity of someone nice opening themselves to a sexual experience is extreme.

By implication, the other thing I have learned is that the surest way to ensure that something or someone will not pan out, will not work out, is to extend yourself toward that person or event. Like reaching for a bird in a tree. If the bird wants to eat out of your hand, it will. Gently open your hand, show it to be full of seed. If the bird is hungry, it will come. Otherwise, forget it. Like in tai chi, keep your balance.

Speaking of tai chi, this extended cold, flu, hayfever, asthama and other ailments of late have really cut into my practise of this sacred art, and I long to return to it full time, as in Bretagne and Greece.

I am visualizing being at peace, in a dynamic peace, a year from now (not having committed suicide when the money runs out as part of me longs to do) dressed in my black tai chi suit, fit, strong, tough, and in a better situation vis a vis things like aerobic exercise and the damp cold of life here on the Garonne River.

So, I made a total ass of myself with my euphoria about being both in a relationship and being able to date openly. I over-extended myself, I had a few dates, slept with a few women, caroused way too hard, and basically learned a lot. I wish I had not needed to learn this lesson and that I had played the piano instead. Maybe that will come, too. The piano.

And as I said a couple of times before, I long for blue, warmish water to swim in. As in now. It is summer.

4 June 2001

Bordeaux

2001-06-12T22:18:00.000-07:00

Self worth, doubles, nightmares and life goals

Do you ever wake up and think your life is a nightmare? Or wake from a nightmare, glad to find yourself in your own bed? Or wake from a dream, saddened to find yourself awake, so beautiful was the red-headed lover you had just met and bedded in the nether worlds? Or find yourself in reality, standing beside a large palm tree on a shady beach, where the waves are crashing, the breeze, is gentle, and everything, including your health, state of mind and financial situation seems fine?

Such is my life, and it puts me to think of doubles, of contrary forces within myself. Of yins and yangs. Of perceived goods and bads. The Hindu truth that everything is an illusion, seems more true today than yesterday, and at times, I can see the energy fields around me shimmering, even on dark cloudy evenings.

So, last night as I lay dreaming about how to do web pages for everyone I meet, I also dreamt intermittently about falling in love with, making love with, and offending the red-headed woman and the brunette (these women were so attractive to me, so perfect for me, each of them, interesting and cosmopolitan, smart and aware, tall and slender, my heart ached to be close to both of them, and they seemed in love with me!), they were equally offended and upset with me, and the colleagues at work told me to just calm down, I was also aware, more so when I awoke, that my dreams were me talking to myself, that I am not wholly integrated, that there were parts of me that could learn from other parts of me. That I was the red-head and the brunette, and me and my colleagues, and my ex-wife's boyfriend of whom I was jealous. All me, all at odds.

2001-06-11T21:09:00.000-07:00

The Stress of the Open Marriage

For the moment, let's not consider what Tony Soprano would do if he found himself in an open marriage, e.g., that his wife had a boyfriend with whom she was having a sexual affair currently. But I will say what stresses this has caused me, over the long term, being the last four years. Though I do spend something on the order of 150 pages more or less discussing this in the novel Nights for Agapanthus at www.agapanthus.4t.com, that is fictional, and focuses more or less on the immediate present of the several weeks Selene is away with her boyfriends in England and Germany.

The first thing that comes to mind, possibly this is a stress, is that I want out of the situation, and always, have, more or less, since I found myself in it. Not that I want to be in a relationship with one, true blue, for me only woman, who would expect the same kind of suffocating loyalty from me, no. But I do want out of the situation of being with a woman who is seeking affairs with other men while I more or less feel lonely and not good enough, despite her protestations of undying love and affection.

So I am not relishing some aspects of my present life, though it is pretty enjoyable. Thus this stress is robbing me of complete enjoyment of the present. Of my life. I find myself wishing that I were in a large house, perhaps a small one would do, in Italy, near Naples, more or less right on the sea, or quite near to it. See my recent blog on wishing.

Not that I wouldn't want to be with Selene in Naples, too, but I would like to be more independent. That is the one thing I learned. Maybe living separately, or having the option to be freer. This could require more money. To be sure, this living in France is great, on the Garonne here is quite magnificent, beautiful doesn’t do it justice, and I would like to transition to Nice or Naples or something similar near Genoa right away. It is summer and I want to swim. Marseilles would be okay.

So I do not know what to do. What actions, thoughts, prayers, ablutions I should perform at present to change my life. Much of this is brought on by the open marriage, though only partly.

Okay, also stressful is the whole thing about wanting to find a woman to have sex with, since Selene and I are not, as noted in Agapanthus, doing it that frequently, more due to her lack of interest than mine. (Am I treating her okay, or am I at fault? I am pretty caring, and she says it is her.)

This connects directly to this obsessive need I have, now that Selene has been going off to see other men, and has been talking to other men about going off to see them, and going to the travel agency to pick up tickets to go see them. This obsessive need has resulted in my misbehaving a bit, usually in the form of getting too drunk, see the other blog I posted about that, and the usual misbehaviours associated with that state of mind.

A couple of other things. One, Selene's relationship with Deek, which was stressful enough in and of itself, being humiliating and scarey, resulted in this also humiliating thing about his becoming a client of the marketing business, when in fact he was just leading us on, letting us develop marketing plans and designs for him that he never intended to pay for or use. That was humiliating, and disruptive of the business at the very least.

Next is the issue about being up front about having an open marriage, which upset some people so that they didn't want to associate with us socially or come to our house. That may have cost us money, too. And finally, is that in this inebriation with living the swingers' lifestyle, we played up to people and couples we ordinarily would not have, and were cooler and more critical of people we might otherwise have been closer to.

In this category are three issues. One, how did I find myself in this situation, no money at present, living with a woman with whom I am not having sex, having left my beautiful wife, though that was a good move for all concerned, and having been crucified in a disastrous divorce proceeding. Also, not being able to swim at present, when the weather is turning swimmable, I know, already in Greece.

So for the present I am focused on swimming, now in the warm sea, since I am here in southern Europe. God get me to the sea!!! And money or energy to make that possible.

And in the reveries I have, I know for sure that like a card game replayed, that I have not completely played this hand as well as it could have been played, to the limit, for the highest score. The hand I was dealt had problems, but there were within it a number of assets, moves, advantages, and options that I did not take, and I am suffering for missing them now. I mention this a bit in Agapanthus, but it takes a major portion of my thinking now. So, in one or many ways, if I could go back, even for a limited number of "moves," I would be able to be in a significantly better situation right now.

Do I sound like Faust bargaining with Mephistopheles? Or, let's just admit, for as much as I can tell, there is no bargaining with the stewardess on this flight.

2001-06-10T01:46:00.000-07:00

This may be a longish, scrambled and disoriented connecting of the various dots.

I woke up feeling sad, weak and frightened. Sad because, though the beauty of the dawn here overlooking the Garonne and the wonderfully leafy trees is spectacular, I am missing the cottage near the sea south of Rome.

Weak because the energies that I had wanted to accumulate by now have not materialised. Healthwise and financially. I am still suffering from bronchitis, a cold, hay fever and asthma. Though it is much much better than several weeks ago.

Frightened due to the absence of money, that I am more or less at the end of my financial rope, that the Picasso, on which I spent a fair amount of time, money, and energy has not materialised as a sellable item. That I am not now where I thought I would be financially. In fact, far from it. www.amiapicasso.4t.com

And that the other efforts that I was putting so much energy into as long ago as three years, have not paid off at this point. The Internet start-up in Greece that crashed, the Internet start-up here in France that has been a non-starter in terms of attracting paying clients that appreciated the level of high quality design, and the various concepts for beginning a measurement company.

Much less the yoga, and art initiatives, though I have certainly got closer to both of those goals. At least artwise I have got over the hurdle of being able to confidently present myself as an artist, and to actually sell work. And much of the web site looks pretty good. www.viciouskaktus.s5.com

So, weaker than I had hoped to be at this point, and more financially fragile. And at loose ends. The whole discussion about the probable outcome of the potential new French alliance for the Internet design firm is so vague at this point to not offer anything other than potential. We need cash flow. (Hey, and we offer 20 percent commissons on leads that turn into business.)

So there is the what to do issue. My intuition has said, "Don't do anything!" which I think is in the Carlos Castenada/Don Juan sense of "don't strive after" anything, but merely do those things that you feel moved to do. So today has me planning to send off the letter about Giles's sculptures, possibly write to Julie about the new Agapanthus features, and Mark also, answering his letter about it.

There is also finishing the economic analysis and "why have a web site" article for the zen/\era site, for sending off to the board members, Katie and others. Maybe a brief note to my parents on the walk along the Garonne. And sometime, possibly tea time or this evening, writing the poems from my notebook for inclusion in Agapanthus and entering the online poetry contest.

And also sending the note to the Times correspondent about Agapanthus.

All or some of this will result in a flurry of email notes back about the various topics, but probably no cash at all. Yet, I will have done what I thought to do, what I was interested in doing. Connecting the dots.
This may be a longish, scrambled and disoriented connecting of the various dots.

I woke up feeling sad, weak and frightened. Sad because, though the beauty of the dawn here overlooking the Garonne and the wonderfully leafy trees is spectacular, I am missing the cottage near the sea south of Rome.

Weak because the energies that I had wanted to accumulate by now have not materialised. Healthwise and financially. I am still suffering from bronchitis, a cold, hay fever and asthma. Though it is much much better than several weeks ago.

Frightened due to the absence of money, that I am more or less at the end of my financial rope, that the Picasso, on which I spent a fair amount of time, money, and energy has not materialised as a sellable item. That I am not now where I thought I would be financially. In fact, far from it. www.amiapicasso.4t.com

And that the other efforts that I was putting so much energy into as long ago as three years, have not paid off at this point. The Internet start-up in Greece that crashed, the Internet start-up here in France that has been a non-starter in terms of attracting paying clients that appreciated the level of high quality design, and the various concepts for beginning a measurement company.

Much less the yoga, and art initiatives, though I have certainly got closer to both of those goals. At least artwise I have got over the hurdle of being able to confidently present myself as an artist, and to actually sell work. And much of the web site looks pretty good. www.viciouskaktus.s5.com

So, weaker than I had hoped to be at this point, and more financially fragile. And at loose ends. The whole discussion about the probable outcome of the potential new French alliance for the Internet design firm is so vague at this point to not offer anything other than potential. We need cash flow. (Hey, and we offer 20 percent commissons on leads that turn into business.)

So there is the what to do issue. My intuition has said, "Don't do anything!" which I think is in the Carlos Castenada/Don Juan sense of "don't strive after" anything, but merely do those things that you feel moved to do. So today has me planning to send off the letter about Giles's sculptures, possibly write to Julie about the new Agapanthus features, and Mark also, answering his letter about it.

There is also finishing the economic analysis and "why have a web site" article for the zen/\era site, for sending off to the board members, Katie and others. Maybe a brief note to my parents on the walk along the Garonne. And sometime, possibly tea time or this evening, writing the poems from my notebook for inclusion in Agapanthus and entering the online poetry contest.

And also sending the note to the Times correspondent about Agapanthus.

All or some of this will result in a flurry of email notes back about the various topics, but probably no cash at all. Yet, I will have done what I thought to do, what I was interested in doing. Connecting the dots.

2001-06-08T19:53:00.000-07:00

The Importance of Wishing

Thinking about swimming in cool, clear Aegean waters on hot days makes me feel better all over while I am having these thoughts. More or less the same for thinking about playing a beautifully responsive piano in a lovely room. And I feel better thinking of myself living in a nice condo full of art works in someplace like Venice.

For years before I moved to Greece, where I lived either within sight of the sea or walking distance from it for two years, I had imagined living and swimming in Maui. There is nothing in my experience so similar to looking out from Maui at the islands of Lanai and Molokai as standing on a headland south of Athens looking out toward the mountainous island Aegena.

And when I first looked out at Aegena on my first afternoon in Greece, it seemed to me not only that I had got my wish, but that I had somehow manifested it. By wishing. By thinking about what I really wanted, by holding a vision of it in my heart. For spending some moments of almost every day living within what seemed like a fantasy at the time, of my fulfilled wish. Of being in Maui. Of living near a warm sea. Of looking out at mountainous islands. Of swimming whenever I wanted in a perfectly swimmable sea, almost every day.

Yes, the winters were cold in Greece, and the sea too cold to swim in until late spring, but then…it was perfect, and I was in it. For two springs and summers. And more than at almost any other time in my life, I felt as if I were really living my life. As if I were living within a dream of my life as I really wanted my life to be.

And I think wishing had something to do with all that. Both getting what I wanted, and knowing I had got when I got it.

So what am I wishing for now, and why did I leave Greece? The short and succinct answer is that I think I have strayed a bit over the last two years in my wishing program. Yes, I have got much of what I wanted, many wonderful aspects to my life, answers to prayers, and yet, I have also become aware recently of just how far I am right now from what I really want.

But let's see what I got. I got an atelier on a beautiful street, in a big capacious house with high ceilings, where I can paint and write and design to my heart's content all day and all night. Where I can invite clients in, have parties, or relax and be myself. And my apartment is right on a park that lines the Garronne River near Toulouse France. It is one of the most beautiful parks I have ever seen in my life, so I can go out every day and walk along the river, whether it is a blustery windy fall day, a crisp icy winter day, a dark moonless night sky filled with stars, or a summery breezy day. I can walk along the Garonne whenever I want. I see tall old trees and wildlife, and look at buildings that were ancient and classic when Louis XIV was first crowned at the beginning of the 1700's.

And a social environment that is largish and friendlyish, which is another topic in and of itself. A social environment where I am experimenting with being another me, more the artist me, as well as the writer, designer, strategist me. More the party-going artist me. Which I also wished for, hoped for, envisioned, wanted to experiment with, being an artist within a large group of people who were recognizing me as such, as opposed to my being in my closet, knowing I am an artist, without anyone ever seeing the works, or reading the poems. Now, not only is there the Internet site, but I give it out, and invite people over to see what I have done, for better or worse. I think this is starting to be a whole other entry.

2001-06-07T00:17:00.000-07:00

Moderacion

So, at some point I have to admit that I have been drinking too much. As a good woman friend, an ex-lover of mine, put it one morning staring out of her kitchen window at the cold northern California rain streaming down the windows, "Too much alcohol in too short a time." For all I know, she had cribbed it from someone else, too.

Alright back to the point. Not so much "how much is too much," but "you know when you have had too much." There are signs. More on which later. And there have always been excuses, more also on which later. There are also different circumstances, though the main thread is the same.

I am seeking euphoria. An escape into euphoria. An euphoric experience induced by alcohol in part, but hopefully to be induced primarily by the fond glances and caring caresses of a wonderfully knowing mother goddess. A woman whom I can accept. From whom I can accept affection and feel better about myself, because she likes me. (It may be important to point out that I am not seeking an older woman per se, but a woman whom I can respect and admire, love and adore, carress and fondle for hours without tiring. A woman who will for a time fulfill in me the need for the presence of the feminine.)

Already those who have taken any psych can see all the danger signs. Looking for approval from outside of the self. Normal in a social animal, even necessary to some extent, but carried too far, leads to the loss of the sense of self. Is that where I am? Possibly, or at least still on the road there, since I have been on and off this road for most of my life. Is this part of the excuse?

So I go to parties, this is the circumstances part, which are usually attended by any number of fairly attractive women. Wine, possibly all manner of alcoholic beverages are served, and as I and we drink more, we become more sociable, more friendly, more flirty, we exchange phone numbers, I chat with one of them (her! by now) in the corner, touch her arm as I make certain enunciations and points, go to get us more wine while she bums a cigarette or pees, and maybe we even share a hit or two of some of the Moroccan special that is making its rounds.

Typically, at this point, I am in a fair state of euphoria, albeit chemically induced, and I may be tripping a bit on my own vibration, definitely a plus, though flight time is limited. Thus the term "crash."

Due to my victories over the severe guilt I experienced as a younger adult, the hangovers are not so bad, I can get up and do, and complete most of my day's work, projects, shopping, cooking, cleaning, and a fair bit of sipping wine to recover. And I am more or less whole again, except for the nagging memories of the hangover, and the by now more nagging issues about "what am I doing this for?"

I will save the excuses for later, and refer here only to the search for the ultimate approval of the feminine earth mother goddess, who if she knows how to wear expensive jewelry and cashmere, so much the better, also if her English is almost as good as her Italian, French, or Spanish, bueno, tres bien, buono! Though not exactly in that order, though why not?

Her age is not nearly as important as the way she walks, carries herself, the light in her eyes, the way she moves her hands, and how she feels about her sexuality. As in, she loves being a woman!

Okay, if I had ever found such a person on these voyages to the various parties that seem to attract me like a fly, I might behave differently. I am not a serial dater. If had had bedded and gazed for hours into the eyes of a beautiful woman of late, I would be more even keeled. And, I do live with a beautiful woman whom I love, though as I mentioned elsewhere on this medium, we aren't doing it that much anymore, though holding her in my arms still makes me dizzy, more also on which later. Her name is Selene. Maybe I have started revealing the excuses.

Just walking into an art gallery today to see if they might exhibit my photographs, I was invited to join some artists and art-interested patrons for an aperitif next week. Tres bien. But, possibly, here we go again?

A specific event, or two perhaps, has brought me to reveal this, discuss this here, since reflectons on them have been richocheting around in my head for a couple of weeks now. One specific event was that I was accused by one party-giver of having crashed the party, e.g., he accused me of not having been invited, no invitation, though this was false, I had been. Then he accused me of having had too much too drink at his prior party, true, and of having behaved badly, also possibly true depending on definitions.

At the prior party, I did tell him that I thought some aspects of his art work were poorly done, though I had highly praised others. I did ask the woman he was with if she would leave with me, though since he was clearly gay, I couldn't see him minding much, or is he still in the closet? And I did hug, and pretend to pick up and carry out the door one of the other women with whom I had been chatting, alas, after nearly everyone had left. She didn't seem to mind at the time. So this situation is ambiguous.

Sounds more or less like a fun party. Though I had clearly had too much too drink that night, having been to three other wine tastings before, and toward the end of my near two mile walk back home through narrow winding streets, I did trip on a curve, loose my balance, and bang my knee and graze my head -- though only apparent damage, slight, to the knee. Nevertheless. This whole episode pained me somewhat, particularly after being asked to leave this artist's next party about 10 weeks later. I huffed out.

Sounds like I am building a fairly tight case for increased moderation. But wait, it goes on. Your honor, we would like to bring exhibit B before the court, the dinner with the three women. Alright already. Here I was clearly out of line.

I was at a gallery opening. I had too much to drink. As described earlier, chatting away with a variety of people, an elderly art patron and a middle aged woman, a proclaimed punk artist, dressed in a t-shirt and red leather tights, and sort of reddish purple hair. And then I noticed a clearly almost elderly woman touching a wooden sculpture of what was obviously a form highly symbolic of a vagina and clitoris.

As she ran her fingers over it, so I too began caressing it, touching my fingers to hers, smiling, agreeing together that it was beautiful, sensual, and ultimately sexual. She invited me to have dinner with her and her friends. I agreed to this after getting the phone number of a much prettier and more down to earth woman, whom I promosed to call the next day.

Okay, here we can see a bad pattern already. Like my roommate's best friend, who when asked by a beaitufiul woman to go home with her as the bar closed, said, "I would love to but I have to go home with this other woman to get laid," only to find himself standing on the sidewalk with no one about ten minutes later. I should have continued my chat with the clearly nicer, clearly more elegant women whose phone number I obtained.

Okay, so thinking to myself that my sensual, clitoris adoring new found friend would bed me quite lovingly and sensually, as she had caressed the sculpture, I accompanied her and her solidly built friends around the corner to dinner, which was fine, and we all had a lot of laughs, and a little dinner, and some more wine. Though as my intended lover either became more drunken or sobered up, it is similar some times, she admitted that she was married, and would not be able to see me that night, which by this point upset me.

I retained my composure until we were outside, whereupon I coldly told them all good night. So much for the big laughs with the American. Upon calling the funnier of the three, a fairly wealthy and successful interior designer the next day, I was told somewhat coldly that she was in a meeting and had to go, despite my trying to say how tres jolie it had been to meet her. Perhaps, my abruptness had been regarded as offensive and uncalled for. Perhaps, I behaved badly. Again. After hanging up the phone, I threw away her card.

So I did linger over a few guilty moments about these two incidents, as I showered. As I tried to sleep. To mention money right now is to begin on excuses. Again.

Your honor, we would also like to bring before the court exhibit C, and its correlative exhibits D and E. Okay, okay, okay! Yes I recognize these events. They are perhaps compromising, in a self-abusive sort of way. Or, I might say, definitely they are. Examples of the worst sort of self deceit. The kind one recovers from quickly if one is fortunate.

Okay, I go to an art gallery opening attended by plenty of people I know, after admittedly attending a prior one at which I had one glass of wine. At the earlier one, I had been a bit aloof, but no more so than anyone else, I had actually spoken to the featured artist, and complimented his work, and I greeted an artist I had spent some time with, but he didn't come over to speak with me. A very lovely and wealthy woman somewhat older than I danced around me, but when she heard me speak bad French, vanished.

I made eyes at a young and to me unattractive student in a bulky sweater. And I asked the proprietor if I could exhibit my work, and gave him my web site address. To be followed up. The main attraction at this gallery was a flotilla of tiny plastic army tanks arranged on the floor like a large flower, and a collection of waist high sculptures of dildos molded out of plaster, plus a shelf full of clay vaginas, all sort of heaped in a tangled pile. It was called an installation.

The point here is that at this second opening, about half a mile distant through tangled ancient narrow streets, doubling back briefly to pass by the house of the elusive Madelina, I had arrived having digested the wine, and having chastised myself for perhaps being too aloof earlier. I sipped the wine, I spoke with my friends, Selene was there, I looked at the photos, one or two of which I really liked, I sipped more wine, got more wine for Selene, and began chatting with an attractive, tall, willowy woman whom I had met about two months ago, where I had also had way too much to drink, but cannot recall any bad behaviours, except perhaps the slightest slurring of a few words in French. This time, even more so, the chat was brief. I got her email address. She had not looked at my art work, or the previous blog: http://www.agapanthus.4t.com

I, however, was not untouched by these events. She was very attractive to me. That she is almost young enough to be my granddaughter is not beside the point. She obviously likes my attentions, but that is it. Look but do not touch. In fact, don't even stand too close.

So by the time the Moroccan special had made it's rounds and Selene and I departed for home, I was in altered time and space. I had made a plan to send an inviting note to the willowy maiden. Then it happened. Having taken Selene's favorite and longer way home, against my advice, we ran into some other friends, bags of beer and wine visible, headed to a "private party." We, with encouragement from me, were invited, and off we set.

After I bought a bottle of wine, and tripped on the coins I paid with. A two franc piece and a twenty franc piece, to make up the required 22 francs. A two and a two ten piece to make 22. The proprietor of the all night store, a rocky looking blond guy with absent, as in nowhere at all, blue eyes, seemed amused.

Selene and I made our way with the other revellers towards our house, and into the den of the party. Music, beer, wine, and Moroccan specials, of which we did not partake. But I did invite one of our young friends into the bathroom with the proposal that she and I would take our clothes off while Selene took pictures. I could post the picture here, but, it shows me alone, dancing totally naked, since I think she had no real intention of fulfilling her half of the obligatory show and tell. This has happened to me a couple of times recently with prospective models. To her it was a joke. I was the joke.

The next day, I started to realize that to the willowy one, I am a joke also, as are my older man's attentions. As is my art, since I am not young nor a student, as is my writing, since it is in English, not in Francais.

The other referred to exhibits are a similar party attended by Selene and me after a chance meeting in the street, she was wth her boyfriend, he delcined to go to the party, and a similar party I attended back in Hartford, when after walking home totally hammered, and waking the next day to a numb sense of nothing, I decided that all such partyings had to stop. So I am repeating a pattern I earlier had got the better wisdom of. And initiating a new pattern, which I hope to cease, chasing after younger women. Foolishly. Perhaps I should simply say, chasing after women, period. Perhaps I should say, having any interest in women, per se, period.

This whole thing about meeting someone and falling in love, and making love, having sex is a bigger myth than I ever realized, so rarely does it happen, even after the numerous lovers and scores of trysts I have initiated, participated in, been a party to, experienced, I can say with authority: "myth!"

The point here is not to swear off women per se, or to swear off partying, or even drinking. The point is to keep the energy closer to the center, and to keep everything, including the drinking and the expectations well within the hallowed halls of moderation. Ok?

And also to acknowledge, somewhat as I did at several similar but way earlier times in my life, that though I may be an artist seeking some unusual social interactions at times, I am also a professional, I live in the community, I have to work hard for a living, I need my sleep, I need the respect of the people I do business with, and some amount of keeping a lid on it might just be a good idea.

We are here about to launch into the realm of excuses. And I say, if I had a piano to play, and a beautiful woman with whom I was making love, and a form of aerobic exercise I did frequently and loved, my behavior would fall into line pretty quickly. I think this goes more or less for most of the people in the world. Stop spending on missiles and grant people their heart's desires for christssakes! It Is cheaper than missile programs and than manufacturing, much less cleaning up, nuclear waste! Yes, I did say that.

For me, there has been no bicycle or swimming of late. No piano, though I do have plastic water bottle drums, and I have written some poetry, and taken a few films and photos. And very little sex, down to about once every eight or nine weeks if that. Whew! I am clearly onto to excuses here, and it is clear to me why I have been acting as I have, and I must alter toward moderation regardless of the outstanding grievances, absences. Because I don't seem to be getting any closer from here.

Plus the thing about money. Though I go to the parties to meet potential clients, the actual occurrence of serious contact is fairly rare, and the objective switches pretty quickly to the other, more sensual priority. That I am more or less the more sober partier at numerous of the gatherings I attend is also not of consequence. Or it is a point in my favor, and an encouraging factor, and a circumstance, that many of the people, of all ages, whom I have met here in Europe, whether in Italy, Greece or France, do on occasion go in for a serious binge or two. As in frequently. All night.

But that is for them. Not for me. I have my own priorities, My own searchings. My own needs. My owns paths and processes, which are precious to me, and which, other than the wisdoms I accumulate by going in the wrong directions so much of the time, are not being achieved in the measure that I desire. I desire fuller measures of fulfilment. More joy. More buzz. More clarity. More manifestations of health and prosperity, love and transcendence.

2001-06-06T01:15:00.000-07:00

Wishing

If given the choice, if that is a choice, I would prefer to live in a finely described elegance, in every respect possible. Which is not to say that informality, possibly extending to simplicity of clothing, or basic accommodation should be excluded from this realm of elegance. After all, by elegance, I mean "most enjoyable and inspiring."

Here we are talking refinement of design, which is also to say, not to exclude ornately covered divans, handmade designer furniture, wild ceramics, balconies overlooking the Med, the Pacific or the Aegean, lap pools under clear starry skies, and crystal goblets filled with astutely aged organic wine from the Peloponese. Or natural mineral rich water from France. In an ex-mustard jar if that is more convenient.

Elegance extending, of course, to the paintings on the walls, perhaps paintings done by moi. People don't like my paintings, which is to say, not enough people like my paintings, though some do enough to buy them. That is almost enough.

But back to elegance, being a democrat, though I long for it for myself, elegance, though I want to live in elegance, and though I know that many, possibly by far most people would either not like it or not even vaguely get it, I hope, pray and wish that these other non appreciators of elegance, no value judgement intended here, would get what they wanted, as long as it didn't impinge on the rights of others to enjoy the best available and possible. I would like everybody to be as happy, including the dolphins. For a dolphin, I imagine that elegance would be supremely clean, deep, clear water filled with schools of mackeral.

For myself, simplicity in everything possible would perhaps be preferable. The most simple of clothing. The most simple of watch. A zen ascetic. A raked crushed marble garden with a pool for poi, surrounded by ten different types of palm and bamboo, or oak and pine depending on the clime. An inspiring view. Inspiring sounds. Bird song or taxi cabs, crashing sea or cruising traffic. I would prefer the quieter, the more natural, but I will allow the other, if I am healthy, able to enjoy it. Not disturbed or threatened by it. I would rather silence and clean air. Sea views and pounding rain. Blazing sunshine and howling winds.

Somehwere in this day, I would like access to a beautiful guitar, an exquisite piano, a recorder, in both senses, a powerful computer, a studio with paints. Clients wanting my work. People wanting to pay me for being me.

In the evening, if I could have swum for much of the afternoon in a beautiful sea, I would like to dine with articulate, intelligent, inspired people. Or to dine completely alone. And after dinner, ballet or film. Startlingly refreshing, bold, different, avant garde. And maybe after that, a walk along the shore, possibly dancing, reading a few poems, before surrending to vivid dreams.

So, I am simply putting this forth, acknowledging that this is what I really want, have always wanted, have perhaps told myself that it was not really available to me, for me, or for the rest of the world. But I think it could be available to everyone, if we cut out the so-called defense budgets.

2001-06-04T23:21:00.000-07:00

Tantrums, Different Aspects of Self and the Need for Money

I guess if I joined a monastery I wouldn't need money. Or if I lived with some very rich friends. Other choices for living without money do not appeal. Don't even think of them. When we are talking money, we are talking "social energy," the ability to do things within society, to feed, clothe and house oneself for starters, vacations, second homes, and cars are another topic.

And when we examine ways of getting money, we are talking livelihood. Making, earning, or getting money, usually involving some kind of exchange of goods or services, "your money or your life!" notwithstanding. And, of course, by mentioning money in the first place, we are acknowledging that we don't have enough right now, since that's the only time one talks about it, thereby lowering ourselves several notches on the social scale.

Back to the getting of money, the point is to get it by doing something one really loves to do, enjoys doing, has fun doing, while doing it with people one really enjoys. That is the ideal formula. And it doesn't matter all that much what that activity is at all, mowing lawns notwithstanding. Designing fabrics. Selling stocks. Writing brochures. And the amount of money isn't so important either, as I once thought. There are all kinds of creative things that can happen when one has just enough. The key here is to be creative.

Ok, to break to the personal aspect of all this, it looks like there are just enough different initiatives happening with the web design business such that we may get a contract or two in the near term, and make some headway with cash flow. And if not, then, things get more interesting, possibly different, and it is that being on the edge of radical economic change that is focusing, if not downright upsetting, anxiety producing and depressing. But it does cause the creative juices to flow.

It is getting time for the thousand unseen doors to open to enable me to "follow my bliss." And on the whole issue regarding amount of money, the psychological, or social or professional need to have more than one really needs to live securely and comfortably can really throw things off, really disorient you as to values, see reference here to my now ex-wife. It wasn't so much her in my case, it was that I married her, and then that I stayed with her for so long, and allowed myself to become so thrown off course. There were lots of financially suitable alternatives that I did not avail myself of because I was with her, and we were trying to meet a standard of living that she was dictating even though she was unhappy with it. This is the topic of at least a chapter, if not a book.

Regarding the different aspects of self and tantrums, there seems to be a common ground here, also with the money issue, perhaps, which is related to coping effectively. When you feel you can no longer cope effectively, you throw a tantrum. When you lose confidence in your ability to influence the turns of events in the real world by doing things such as talking to people, negotiating with people, or taking independent action such as leaving or going elsewhere, you throw a tantrum.

And often the tantrum is thrown in recognition that the things that one did up to this point were either ineffective or outright destructive to achieving one's desired goals. In my case, there are several things dangling that look highly ineffective from my current standpoint, things that other people participated in, or led the way in, or insisted on, and now that I sit here contemplating those things, contemplating how those failures make me feel, I want to rage around like an angry gorilla. I want to hurt somebody emotionally to the same extent that I feel frustrated and hurt. Because I did not get what I thought I would get or wanted, and by going along with others, against perhaps my better judgement, I ended up here, and now I am angry!

And the reason I want to throw the tantrum is to show someone who was once close to me, such as my ex-wife or a prior business associate, or a prior girlfriend, or someone who is close to me now, such as my fiancee, just how hurt and upset I am by going along with one of their bad decisions. I want to show them my hurt and anger in the hope that they will take pity on me, and somehow, perhaps by making herculean efforts on my behalf, miraculously correct whatever wrong it was that they had initiated. That they will make me whole. That they will pay me the money they owe me, or that their carelessness lost for me. That they will salve the hurt and loneliness I feel in my heart. That they will reward me with a job with colleagues I will enjoy working with or with clients whom I find interesting and whose companies I can benefit with my talents. Who will pay me and appreciate my presence and contributions.

Or maybe these loved ones, seeing my desperation, will take me to the seaside for an extended vacation, or buy me a house overlooking the sea. Or maybe they will just tell me they are sorry and that they love me. As weak as that sometimes is, and as manipulative as that can be, it is something.

Though I do have anger at the outright betrayals, falsehoods, misrepresentations, lies and mendacities, I am mostly focused right now on the things that I went along with. The things I could have stood aside from. The things I could have said, such as, "That's just not for me!" And taken those consequences instead of the ones I am now facing. Those earlier consequences might have been rejection, disaffection, the anger or frustration, or pouting, or tantrum of another. I might have had to find another job, another apartment, another girlfriend, or put up with someone close to me being unhappy or petulant.

Why is it that these lessons are so hard to learn? What is the truth of this matter? Why, when I understand more or less completely, exactly what I did at such and such a time, to contribute to my loneliness and unhappiness, to my feeling lost and full of despair, do I engage in that activity again?

What are the things that I regret? What are the things whose outcomes are so surely sealed at this point that they warrant rethinking, redoing, or undoing, if such things were possible? There are many.

Presented one way in a sitcom it would look funny. Presented another way in a film noir it might look comedic, or confrontational, or foreboding. Or just lost. Having given up smoking for more than ten years, having clearly decided that I do not like anything about smoking, starting to smoke again. Having clearly understood the many problems associated with casual intimacy, deciding to live with a woman who wants to have numerous lovers, and encourages me to do the same. The night I walked the far walk along the seacoast in Normandie, alone, after my dinner alone, while she was with her lover, in our bed, and later at dinner with him.

What can salve the feelings that I had then? Or having had a determination to be free of such hurts, such inconveniences in the future, how was it that I decided to remain living as a family with her? What prides, what selfhoods did I have to swallow? What recompenses had I promised myself to make me even, to make me whole, or are such things possible at all?

2001-06-04T01:02:00.000-07:00

St Michel and the Slaying of the Fiery-Throated Dragon

Wednesday 16 May 2001 -- Mercredi 16 Mai

Bordeaux, France

After partying hard at the gallery opening vernissage for the regional sculpteurs exhibition, I can speak more eloquently about St. George or St. Michel and the Dragon, namely that the dragon has a fiery throat this morning, and that he is belching, if not clouds of smoke, then gobs of phlegm. And that he feels like hiding in his lair from which he would surely devour any little boys or girls that ventured in to disturb him. And maybe a cat or two! This is certainly how I felt for much of the time while writing The Nights for Agapanthus, www.agapanthus.4t.com

St George and St Michel are always portrayed as virtuous young men slaying the dragon, which I take to be the tendencies toward less bridled living, possibly more sexual freedom and experimentation, since the dragon is usually portrayed in very vaginal forms, usually accompanied by a damsel holding him gently on a light golden chain, from which he does not stray. I think the English portray the dragon more fiercely than the French. The greater the level of fear, ignorance, guilt and self-hatred, the more ferocious the battle with the self?

I have heard it said that the hang over is worse the greater the degree of guilt, fear, self-hatred and remorse. From where I am sitting this morning, that is obviously true, since other than my cold and a foggy feeling, a bit of tiredness, and some awareness of a few admittedly bizarre behaviours last night, I feel more or less okay about everything. Let's see, I did make Indian bird calls in the canyons of the old city, hoping to see who would come to the windows of the so romantic looking upper stories. I did that several times, and Serena seemed embarrassed each time, which I do regret. And I did make a show of noticing the underwear that peeked above the jeans of the artist, below her navel, as she strived to pull it into that position. And I did prop myself up in the empty bath tub to consider my sins, before going to bed.

Other than that, I shopped for dinner and provisions, made Selene a wonderful pizza, before which I had taken what are I think some fantastic photos of door handles, and Ispoke with half of the sculpteures at the show, in French. This after warning myself sternly not to get too carried away at any more vernissages, which my intuition steadfastly advises me against going to in the first place. And there was the sword fight with cardboard tubes with Alan and Selene.

Alright, so I am fine, and I would I think like to maintain a smoke free, fiery throat free dragon in the future. One that runs and does yoga every day with a true minimum of intoxicating liquors, vins, and fermented beverages.

Well, I must say now, that if I were to write the history, I would say that it is more important to restrain the over eager, puritanically minded St. Michel or St. George, than the dragon, who if left to his own devices, will sleep and dream quietly. And I did have wonderful dreams. Though the dragon will also meander through the firefly-lit fields at dusk, dance and cavort with faieries, nymphs, maidens, damsels, leprachauns, goblins, and even trolls or frogs if he has a mind to. And he may drink deeply of the mists, the dews, the streams flowing through the lusciously green fields, and may even accept a dram or two of the nectars and ambrosias brought to him by the little folk.

Of course, I must also admit that in a culture where one's neighbors, dressed in battle armor, and wielding axes and long swords are likely to come romping over the hill without much notice, then the virtues of discipline, vigilance, and readiness must be prized. Which is why St. George is always so eager to kill the dragon, because it poses a threat. Not directly, but indirectly, since it threatens, with its tendencies toward licentious living, the virtues of diligence and defense. I hope that here in France today, for at least my life, we have passed that time. Silence here for Andre Graule, shot to death by the German Gestapo on my doorstep, a mere 57 years ago.

And I hope the rest of the world is nearing that peaceful point, despite what I read in the headlines from regions in every other direction.

And I desire money, (that felt very dead when I wrote that last word "money"), a life near a beautiful sea where I can swim every day of late spring, summer, and early fall, and I desire to work with wonderfully supportive colleagues, producing something that lots of people want and find enjoyable to buy. Something where I am involved as strategist and creative director, designer.

Today will hopefully not be too difficult a day, a day of shopping, rearranging, cleaning, and writing and sending off a few memos, emails and marketing pieces, trying to interest the select few in my wares.

And at eventide, the sculpteur Georges Ragondin for dinner with his chicken, needing plucking. I wonder if that is a metaphor?

A day also for Selene to make some phone calls that she has been avoiding serenely. She is so precious and good.

2001-06-03T01:31:00.000-07:00

Regret, aftermath, and its consequences

Everybody asks me if The Nights for Agapanthus, www.agapanthus.4t.com is about adultery, and I reply that I never even thought of using the word in the text, and didn't, and further, I think that the Bible is great, but it was written some 4,000 to 2,000 years ago, before strip malls, highways and gas shortages, much less Internet chat and the advent of nuclear physics, megacities and super powers, space travel and television.

It is time to transition to a morality geared more toward species diversification, equal rights and democracy, freedom for sexual preference, sexual education beginning early in grade school, and basic concepts of compassion, not only taught but practised. Then, if you want to fellate thy neighbor's wife, as I put it in Agapanthus, you can do it without worrying about the wrath of god, though the wrath of thy neighbor might be worse. But some progress is better than no progress.

Speaking of which, I seem to have returned to a period in my life where I am living a life that I do not want to live, like making a film I do not want to be in, or perhaps, even see, yet it is starring me. Some of this has to do with compulsive, possibly addictive behaviour. Doing things I know will probably not make me happy, doing them in the desperate hope that they will.

Thus, I go to dinner with a group of women I am not really that attracted to, and feel hurt and abused when the one I am most interested in will not go home with me. And maybe I show my hurt, and act angrily, and embarrass the women. Then also I am upset that the young women who flirt with me become upset if I get a bit aggressive, turned on, and approach them.

And I spend time with people whose behaviour requires an explanation, an apology. Who are so passive aggressive and demanding and manipulative that it is exhausting and defeating to be around them. And after round after round of everything from scotch to wine to armagnac, I awake with a hangover no closer to my goals. Or if it is I who go home early and sensibly, leaving the others in the bar, or still around the brandy, or queuing for another dessert, I awake to knowing, as the Austrian merchant said to me when I gave him the wrong change, "This is not it."

Or I go to an otherwise normal seeming dinner party, and it is I who become overly excited, I who drink too much, I who act the clown buffoon, I who say things and do things that make the other people howl with laughter, perhaps, but that buy me no time, no space, no affection, no recognition, no respect. Or not for long. This is not new to me, these behaviours. They are all too common, too familiar, even if previously infrequent, or from the now distant past of college, of formal parties in Boston in the 70's, of friends with champagne and cocaine in the 80's, of off-site team-building weekends and drunken bashes for various firms in the 90's.

Or it is noon time and I have spent two hours talking to women online who either abused me or simply became boring, while I wasted my life away trying to find a sexual excitement, an emotional rapport or compatibility. Somewhere in the hundreds of pages of diary entries that are soon to be swept up and dumped into the Aegean Sea because I cannot pay the rent on the little cottage in Athens, I say things like, "And I could have done something else."

Well, I don't do that other, better something else because I am so desperate for that elusive something. In my case, some form of healing, some form of heavenly experience, possibly of swimming for days or months in the Aegean. Being with wonderfully compatible, fun inspiring people. Being in great shape with a huge bank account. Not feeling lonely, misunderstood, and afraid.

In the short hand of my life of late, this search has been a cut to the chase for social reference, a place in the society of the European countries I have been visiting, and a search for sexual healing, per se, blissful endearment with a compatible other whose presence will salve my wounds as the nectar fed to me by a mythic mother goddess. As I read this over, it sounds too much to ask, but why not at least ask for it? Or am I like Icarus, and trying to fly too high? Is that why I am being burned? (And in all the times I saw the painting, and heard the myth, I was never sympathetic with Icarus as he fell back into the sea. He had been warned. His tragedy had been avoidable. He self-destructed. This is a comment on the hatred I believe the young feel for me.)

Yes, like Kelpy in Agapanthus, I am living with a woman I love, but I, somewhat as she, crave that new sexual wetness and excitement. In addition, she allows me into her sexual presence less than once a month, while I burn like a monkey with the more unseemly forms of lust for every female person who is not downright ugly. And I act like a buffoon, and they reject me. How did I find my Sandra and Serena? How did I find Elizabeth? And Abby? And Lucinda?

Somehow I believe with almost my entire being that having this sexual awakening would cure me of whatever malaise it is that grips me now, including this financial darkness. This sexual healing would set me on the path, bring money into my life, shine a light into my heart. So, if I have given myself hangovers, smoked cigarettes, even at the one a day rate that seem switched on to, if I have spent my evenings and alas my days in the presence of people I have found less than totally scintillating, it is at least because I am seeking something more, something higher, a form of intimacy and enlightenment, call it tantric sex. Emotionally rewarding, compatible and financially profitable social interactions. But I have been miserably disappointed.

This reminds me unhappily of my early twenties, even mid thirties, where for periods of time I was aware that what I seemed to want either did not exist, or how I seemed to be trying to get it, did not work. And that I was therefore spending my life not getting what I wanted, in fact I was wasting my life making myself unhappy, since sitting in a movie theatre or sitting on the couch at home alone was better than spending an evening dining and entertaining someone who hurt my feelings, or whose company, much less intimacy, I did not want anyway.

People are insecure and they will reject you for the slightest reason possible, for fear you will upset their little apple cart, see GBS play of the same name, The Enemy of the People, Hedda Gabbler, etc. (These last by Ibsen.)

(What I do not fully understand, other than remembering the feeling of abject lostness and failure I had that first fall after graduation, going to the party hosted by some first year law students when I heard someone quote GBS (I had read him, too), was why I felt so intimidated. Why does it take some decades to recall that and to wonder about that incident? We are talking about self-image and its lack of positiveness here, its fluctuations as part of my personality, and perhaps, my sensitivity to such things as tiredness, and self-inflicted hangover guilt. Eating too much the night before, and feeling both guilty and the burden of the time it will take to work off the extra pounds I have accumulated. I look like several of my friends who became fat, heavy, overweight, and lost that youthful figure. I do not find this becoming.)

But back to the people who seem bent on rejecting others of us, and to that bitch with the four syllable WASP name on Martha's Vineyard that first summer after graduation who said she was sure she had told me about something the night before but I had no recollection. Yes, I had had too much to drink. But in truth, I don't think she had told me, or not told me very much, or not so as I listened, perhaps. Anyway, she was angry with me, and dissed me in front of her friend, my girlfriend. A sting that still hurts.

And so it has been here on the banks of the Garonne. If I nod and sip politely, I fear I am not engaging enough. If I begin my usual dissertation on meaning, life, sexuality, the context of art, and spirituality, which always seems aided by more than three or four glasses of wine, then the evening begins to take on the dimensions of a carnival, one that gives others the excuse to tell me days, weeks, or even months later that I was ill behaved and had too much to drink. So there! It seems to make them feel better. Maybe what I was saying, or how they felt about me threatened to upset their little apple cart, and so awaking the next day, they decided to put me forever outside of their realm. I was too exuberant. Too outwardly sexual. I did drink too much. I leered too much. I told them that religion was a very bad idea. So there!

Of course, still others, having shunned me for weeks, not returned my phone calls, see me with their friends at midnight as they walk drunkenly down the street, in the middle of their carouse, embrace me, pound their chests and tell me that they feel I am an essential person. We will get together soon! Right.

So, if I am seeking love, acceptance, and business contacts in all the wrong places, I also seem to be doing it in all the wrong ways. Last night at dusk, I held a woman in my arms and tenderly touched my tongue to hers as she reached into my pants for my enlarging cock. And admittedly, if I had not been holding her, she would have fallen over, since she was that drunk, and she reeled around dangerously for several minutes trying to get back to my embrace when we separated, as I stood in the grassy lawn, watching her stagger, awaiting her return, partly hoping she wouldn't be able to span the one metre, now three, now two, now four, that separated us. No, I am not criticizing her for being so drunk and stoned. I am criticizing myself for having left myself open to this humiliating experience. Not that one of the other dinner guests, one of my best friends here in France, could manoeuvre himself any better by that point.

So, I return to the place I was at some 30 years ago when I said, "Enough!" At the point where I did opt for years, if not decades, for more or less curtailed, more sober if at all possible, social activity, knowing that it led nowhere anyway, knowing that however fun and exciting the carouse, that the pocketful of business cards at the night's end would not be worth the hangover. And rather than persist in that vein, better to do something else, even if that something was nothing. I feel like the Mastroioni character at the end of La Dolce Vita, who realizes, watching the guests drive quickly off into the dawn, that the party is over. This is definitely regret, not nostalgia.

Because as I said earlier, I am somewhat desperately seeking at least two things from society. One that I earnestly need like a thirsting man in the desert, that is money. And one that I seek with the earnestness of a true believer, and that is love. And if I have been disappointed by my new found friends in the country in which I am now sojourning, I can't say I was any more enamored of the friends and colleagues whom I left behind in California and Boston, much less Greece, who were equally well placed socially, publishers, marketing executives, and attorneys, nurses and social workers, investment bankers, shop owners, and artists.

But, but, but, there is always a but. Of that prior life, if I look even not so deeply, not very hard, I can see, if perhaps decades later, that there was a better path, and that the woman whose phone call I had not returned was the one with whom I should have gone out. That the better way was just a hair's breadth away, and that the women with whom I did go out and occupy my time, were woefully wrong, inadequate, maladjusted or immature. That the job interview in which I had got the job but had turned it down was the one I should have taken. That the woman on Martha's Vineyard was a bitch, and had not told me the story she claimed to the next morning. That if I was seeking something too hard, more the sin was not seeking it.

So all I am asking now, is, "If there is a thread in this Minataurs's labyrinth visible on my path now, a thread that if followed will lead me out, where is it that I might find it? So I will not be battered and eaten cruelly by the Minataur whose raging I can hear even now echoing in this chamber. His howls are cruel. He, too, is in some unfathomable anguish," though it is not certain that if I understood his pain he would be merciful with me, nor even if I were able to cure him, for I am unable now even to cure myself.

I see myself sitting quietly in a backyard in a quiet neighborhood. Maybe it is a balmy tiny town somewhere in Mississippi, or Northern Greece. I am older, in some ways healthier. I am content. I am not afraid. My life is not exciting. It is actually quite tedious and boring, but I am alert, and live a wonderful life of the mind. Somehow I have some money, and perhaps a successful career that I pursue without too much stress. In another vision, I see myself on board a large yacht, I am much thinner, I am energetic. I am with a young woman, but I am not happy. Then, too, I see myself walking into a hotel room, glad that I am entering it alone. Glad that when I leave it to go down for dinner, there is no one with me, and no one waiting in the room.

I have been carousing because I have been seeking, in one of the few ways open to the visitor, through gallery openings, parties, dinners, etc., and I let the enticement of the moment overwhelm my better sense, the wisdoms won earlier at a great cost.

I am so tired.