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Malta

SUNDAY, 1/11/04: After getting home from Touching the Void the long way---A- train on the wrong platform, changing to the uptown-A at Jay Street because the Brooklyn-bound A wasn't running---about 3:55PM, I had a BIG lunch and sat down to play Spider about 4:55-9PM, feeling tired and full and decided, "Why not get to bed NOW, trying an oxycontin," which I'd just heard about from Shelley about 8:15PM, making me happy I'd stayed awake until then: oxycontin (coming in doses from 10 mg to 80 mg, which latter sometimes killed its young abusers) is the generic term for the brands Percocet and Indocet, which I'd gotten, and the measure on the label 7.5/325 indicated 7.5 mg of oxycontin and 325 mg of acetaminophen (Percocet was labeled 5/325), so Sherryl may be right about the lowest PURE oxycontin being 10 mg, but when mixed with acetaminophen, it can be as low as half that, and what I got was halfway between the two minima. She said that the PDR said, "Do not chew, swallow with water, no booze." At 9:09PM I swallowed my first Indocet with my evening 7 and my night 3, making a total of 11 pills I gulped down with apple juice. Bed at 9:21PM, but even though I felt calm, and did Actualism (and saw the briefest possible mympths in the morning), and lay comfortably with absolutely no thoughts at all, I didn't fall asleep. Up at 11:37PM, fingers, toes, right shoulder still hurting, and I feel the least bit hungry, so I eat the last two oatmeal cookies with apple juice and take the last of my bottle of NyQuil, having had it re-suggested by Shelley, disregarding the 18% alcohol, and listen to the phone message from Piri at 9:35PM asking me to call her. So my last list now includes: 1) water plants, 2) complete index, Juno, and turn off computers, 3) record phone message, 4) check flight departure time, 5) call car service, 6) mail index, 7) gym?, and 8) call Piri. Oh, how I had FANTASIZED that I'd AT LAST found the perfect sleeping pill and that all future trips would become a breeze without my worrying about how I'd sleep and what I'd do on the plane and how long it'd take me to get used to the jet lag. If only my leaving for trips would feel ROUTINE the last few days!

MONDAY, 1/12/04: Up at 12:17AM to take doxylamine at 25 mg, finding that Paul's Normodorm, or whatever, is also doxylamine at 15 mg the square. Get to sleep at last, but look at clock at 3:15AM and 4:40PM and root myself out of bed at 6:05, peering sleepily at my feet before I force myself to dress and get to the window to find it's still dark out, it had snowed, and I push myself to have breakfast, over at 6:55AM, and checked Carolyn's late-returned Travel D pages, and checked three messages from Juno, all junk, and finish this by 7:35AM, still logy and weary, hoping to sleep tonight with doxylamine and be OK in Malta TOMORROW! 4PM (from note): panting, finished, frantic, taking lip gloss and programming Ebert and Roeper as a last-minute task, having pushed things into the blue bag as WELL as the A&K bag, which very quickly became necessary instead of the computer-bag Paul gave me, and when I finish and weigh, I find that each of them is just over 10 pounds, so say each is 11, since I continue to add things. At 4PM just WAITING for the call, and decide to take my ONE small glove, in case I might need it, and the phone rings at 4:03 to say that my green Lincoln car #26 is waiting downstairs. Check the mail: no magazines, but a piece from AmEx that I take, fearing it might be my bill, due before I return, and it only verifies the return of my $15 penalty for late payment, leaving me with a credit of fifty-some cents; THAT's a relief. The other, from Social Security, says how much I got and gives me a rough idea, depending on what my income is (very low, I'm sure, with only $15,000 in billable work), of how much tax I'll have to pay on my income. Decide to look at it NOW, at 5:39. 5:43 found that I pay NO taxes on SS income, since half my SS income (about $7300) plus my OTHER income (less than $16,000) is LESS than the $25,000 top! Great! To the car at 4:08 and as we drive side streets until we get past BAM it SNOWS lightly, getting dark as we pass, and the NPR news is depressing about the mad ruling mullahs tossing out all the nominations of liberals for the governing body---though it ends with hopes of "negotiations"; yeah, I bet! And then the Americans with Disabilities Act is criticized because it allows a lot of lawyers to sue various buildings and businesses for not providing access to the disabled, which is sure questionable. Slow going, and he cuts off the news when he gets a phone call for someone else's phone number. Go and go, Atlantic Avenue going up just under 3200, and arrive at the blocked-off United terminal at EXACTLY 5PM. Check in at the door, she putting in all my information, and saying the suitcase has to remain unlocked, and she even suggests taking off the shoulder strap as I'm moving to do so. The pass says "Boarding at 6:15." To the security line at 5:06 and I'm told to "Go onto first class (and Concorde) line, ignore signs." Through screening by 5:28, getting my legs checked without taking off my shoes, my pockets emptied up and down, and he suggested I take off my belt and put it into the shoulder bag when I go through security next, so I won't set off their alarm. Girl worried about who was going to pick up my computer, in a separate box, and the other assured me that only the FIRST security x-rays were strong enough to ruin all film, THESE were safe for anything below 800 speed, as I've seen to be OK in the past. Pee, then down an escalator I don't need as I'm going toward gate 10 but want 9. VERY small area, so I sit way on the side and catch up with this at 5:51; so I should be in Malta in about 20 hours! Let's hope the doxylamine works tonight. Debate getting out the two half-sandwiches I made with the last of the ham, throwing out a portion of salad---and forgot to empty the swichel bottle. Now to puzzles? Do lots, and they board from the FRONT first, oddly, so I'm on about last, boarding at 6:38, next to rather pretty young woman who's very independent. "5:38 flight; smooth, but windy coming down in London." Each seat has a MAP. Move out at 7:05 and off at 7:16, very clear at first over the island, then clouds. I take a doxylamine, but it does no good. Try a bit of Actualism, but it obviously won't work, and even try counting backward from a hundred a couple of times, but just can't get to sleep on the barely reclining, though plush, seats. Finally finish both Times puzzles by 11:18. At 11:22, I move past her to pee and get orange juice for evening pills and night pills, ten in all.

TUESDAY, 1/13/04: Then there are lights below, of Ireland, lovely skeins of golden lights with some early car-lights moving along highways. Then a long lowering circle over London, endless suburbs and highways and bypasses and apartment blocks with illuminated main squares intermittently, also blocked by low (4000 feet, he said) dark clouds, with not yet a sign of dawn though it's coming after 6AM. Down in some bumps, and the descent is so rough that I can't imagine landing smoothly, but he does it, and we land at 1:03 and come to the terminal at 1:08, quite fast. I wait until the end (no need to rush for an 11AM connecting flight) and get off leisurely, taking LONG moving walkways to get to the central mustering area, and I note that I have to go to Air Malta in Terminal 4. To the transport area at 1:27, and it really seems to be the lower end of the economic rainbow: Indians, Pakistanis, other coloreds, and onto the bus at 1:39, just nicely full, everyone who wants seats gets them, and I say, "Air Malta?" to the fat daughter and aging mother with cane and large carry-on luggage, which I resolve to NEVER help with, for ANYONE. They smile and start acting up for me, but I ignore them, and we finally drive up to terminal 4 after MUCH construction and bypassing, about 1:50, and a LONG wait-line for two x-ray machines that just shove things through (I'd debated eating my sandwiches, since I hear they don't like foreign meat imported), and I read on line and puzzle beforehand, thinking it might reduce in pressure, but it just keeps growing and growing, and just before I step up to the machine someone shouts that their plane is leaving in 7 minutes and they let him into line behind me. Pass x-rays at 2:15, enter and quickly leave a baby-screaming "quiet sitting area" but it's nothing but shops, so I pee and sit in a central area and at 2:25AM change my watch to 7:25AM, still no listings past 10:50AM for my 11:25 flight. Many people moving past, and a gabby group sits right down next to me and says "That's OK" about my typing, but I finish now at 7:37AM and move on. Find a quiet corner under a flight-board and work a NUMBER of puzzles, keeping track every twenty minutes or so, but about 10:30 I get worried and move out so I can SEE the board, and at LAST at 10:50 it changes, to say boarding at Gate 16, and I immediately take off for the gate, taking only a moment to pee, and then I hear my NAME announced to come to the desk behind gate 19, which I'm just passing, and it's the KLM desk, asking why I hadn't come to check in! I said the gate had JUST come up on the board, and I HAD wanted a window seat, and she says I HAVE a window seat, asks to check my passport and baggage stub ("Your bag's here, too," she says nicely), and gives me my boarding pass and I get to a noisy lounge and type this by 11:04, they say boarding is delayed 15 minutes and will be at 11:20, and I'm QUITE tired, but I suspect I'll be energized if I can see ANYTHING from the window on the way down to Malta, hoping it's better weather than the gray day outside in London. Oh, yes, ate my ENTIRE ham sandwich while reading New Yorker, and feel vaguely stuffed, though I see that there's lunch on the Malta flight, so long at 200 minutes now that I'm tired, but it may be reduced with what WAS a 120 mph tailwind across the Atlantic and which I HOPE continues with us now. Departure is delayed and delayed, until finally we board at 11:52, and my seat is JUST behind the first-class section, and SO small that I feel it must be special, but when later I walk back to the john I see that ALL the seats are jammed tightly against each other, and there are at least 20 rows in economy, for 120 seats, and I'm SURE this plane holds more than any other plane of this size. Then the parents with the three kids come to share my front row! Stare out the window in disgust as the kids shuffle back and forth across the aisle and shout and cry out, but the plane is otherwise full, except for the 24-seat first class, which isn't quite half full. At 12:01 they announce it's a 2:35 flight, at 155 minutes down from 200, good. Still sitting at 12:13 with a GOOD Malta Airlines book, which I open to the decent flight-map and keep for the tourist information and photos inside. At 12:20 I do the final change in my watch to 1:20PM, feeling quite tired and hoping the rest of the day isn't too demanding. Off at 1:27, over lots of airport construction, fairly clear over suburbs until we rise into the clouds just at the British coast at 1:48. Then the drinks are announced, and they even serve free mixed drinks, so I ask for a gin and tonic, and then Pop says I should also ask for wine, so I ask for white, and get both at once and hope my spirits improve! Lunch of chicken and mashed potatoes and peas and carrots in gravy is pretty good, with a dry cake for dessert, and at 2:48 it's still cloudy solidly below, halfway there. But then I remember I forgot to take my morning pills, and ask the stewardess for water, and another brings it back from first class and I take my pills at 3:02PM, or 9:02AM NYC time. Only dinner still to eat last today, feeling like ONE LONG DAY from the Monday I took off. After dinner he goes back to the john, so I figure to go back, too, and people stare up at me blearily and I wonder who of the old couples are on the tour. Only a small line for the two johns, but Pop keeps his full for a long time with two kids to handle, too, and an American comes out of the other to announce that it smells, and another American woman goes in ahead of me and then I'm in, and it's not bad, and I'm relieved to be relieved, ready for the transfer to the hotel. Back at seat at 3:16, 49 minutes to go. Sicily coast is clear at 3:32, a strange west-facing promontory that I can't square with Edista (or whatever the small hill-town I visited was [Erice]), nor Segesta or Selinunte on the southern coast. Then over water again, and at 3:41 we start down. Rocky western Malta swings into view and I take a very cloudy picture through the clouded window, and the views of the towns and cliffs and rivers and harbors and cities come so quickly into successive view that I take TEN shots to 3:58, and when I'd been sorry that I wasn't on the left side, to possibly see Paris and Rome and Palermo, which I couldn't have seen anyway because of the clouds, I was totally blessed with ALL of Malta proceeding below me from west to east as we rounded the eastern side with its forts and bastions and chemical plants and harbors and shipyards, taking up to #14 to our landing at 4:02PM! Out of the plane quickly and rush ahead of many of the slower older couples to get to "next" behind a talkative older fellow at one of the 6 passport-checking stations, and she doesn't question that I just put "hotel" as my place of residence in Malta, and get FIRST to Stephen, very darkly handsome with his long black hair, long-lashed dark eyes, beautiful pale skin and straight nose, in a Romantic puffy-sleeved white shirt with a black sweater-vest and black pants over slightly bowed legs, holding up the Grand Circle Tours yellow card and telling me to stand to the side, my bag having come out practically first, letting it go around twice when I stopped off for the john as we got to the baggage area. Lots of older couples congregate around themselves, chatting furiously, and I see by the exchange, wrongly, that 1 US $ = 3.09 Maltese lira, but it turns out to be $3 to a ₤. Had gotten to baggage at 4:18 and first out at 4:26, and go to the second card, the first being now overfull. To a new card at 4:27PM. PERFECT long-sleeved-shirt weather, warm, but humid. ALL OLD couples but for a few strong, feisty, single women, but NO one interesting YET. Onto big 52-seat bus at 4:39 for a LONG wait (and it turns out that about FIVE people hadn't gotten their bags, Pam being one of them at breakfast). Some gals talk CONSTANTLY about their previous trips and how awful it was to have lost their luggage. One even talks about missing her bag in Tibet, and I turn around to see if it was the couple I was with, but can't see them. Sun sets about 4:55PM, though when the bus ascends to the town, it might have been a bit after that. Bus finally goes, in the twilight, at 4:59, Stephen apologizing and saying it was beautiful weather today with 62° weather, and it should be the same for tomorrow. Tonight's low will be about 50°. To hotel, right at the top of a hill in Sliema, after going through colorful streets with fanciful wooden dormer windows on almost every two-story and even three-story building, some marvelous panoramas over the towns in the valley with the pink-clouded sky of sunset above. To hotel at 5:25, rush out to get to reception desk third and get room 453 at 5:30, pleased with the big room, down a stairs to a balcony looking over the bastion of Valletta, large bathroom, comfortable robe that I change into to get out of my clothes and shoes and socks, bag comes about 6PM, and take notes to 5:34, pee, put stuff away, and down at 6:25, talk to people, have sparkling wine, and Stephen starts at 6:39. It goes quickly, he answers some questions, and we're into dining room for everyone to sit quickly at tables for 8, I fussing until I find myself across from the fellow I talked to in the meeting about his tightness, misquoting Mange Tout at 60₤ rather than $60, and Felix's clearly not interested, more interested in Marilyn from Virginia Beach, but we have nice chats through our buffet dinner, joined by Stephen for a coup, who fills up on ricotta ravioli, while I have cold cuts and patés to start, then a GREAT cream of vegetable soup, and a selection of hot meats, pork tenderloin being the best, grouper interesting, a mint sauce OK with turkey, and a glass of white wine and water for my pills. Upstairs at 8PM and try to do a puzzle, but don't feel sleepy, then look at TV, nod off during a Discovery Channel about Copan, and get to bed at 9:05, feeling I'll be able to sleep with a whole melatonin pill, and toss a bit but GET to sleep about 9:20PM. (Finish typing this at 9:16AM the following morning.)

WEDNESDAY, 1/14/04: Wake at 1:44AM. (Start typing this at 12:16PM.) Wake at 1:44, dream of young guys in an Italian Mafia-family scene, one getting sucked off, saying it felt so good that he just came, and something about the skill of the tongue that went alongside the penis-shaft and drew the sensations out. Remembered that I forgot to take the NIGHT pills, so I take those with tap water, which is not salty, after I peed. Try to get to sleep, but by 3:06 I'm still awake, so I get up and take another whole melatonin with a doxylamine, and start Actualism and seem to drop right off. ALARM wakes me with a jolt at 7:04AM, and I pee and make a note at 7:18AM, feeling quite fuzzy with tiredness, changing the clock-time back about 15 minutes, maybe I inadvertently changed it when I was trying to set the alarm last night. Take a shower and when I come out at 7:18 the sun has risen brightly right in line of view of my window, probably about 7:10. Shower and dress in hiking clothes and clogs and get down to breakfast, chatting with ONE couple and arranging to sit at their table, but when I come back to the table some OTHER couple has sat down, and there are moments of confusion when his coffee comes and he's moved down one table, and when my hot chocolate comes. Have lots of cold cuts and then get one of the first ham and mushroom omelets, small but good, and bacon and then go back for a small pancake and a good French toast with maple-flavored syrup, and then a thick glass of peach nectar and a glass of water for my pills, reminding everyone else at the table that they'd forgotten their pills. Pat, the "beautiful redhead," per Jay Pease from Florida, though she didn't hear it, sits across from me and chats with Felix and Marilyn at the next table, and others seem to be a bit out of it. Try some of the small pastries: the pea and the other vegetable, and that fills me up so well that now, at 12:27PM, I'm not the slightest bit hungry for lunch. Back to the room and try to get things into order, but still a mess in the room, so I fill in my information form and put out the "Do not disturb" sign and get down at 9:25, lots gathered already, some missing still at 9:33, and find that we're 36 in the group, while the Red Group, two of whom we talked to in the elevator going down, is 43 and halfway through, and another tour will come from GCT in a few days. Stephen starts his pedantic talk at 9:37, spelling out EVERYTHING, but still a remarkable number of duplicated and stupid questions are asked. Forecast for the rest of the week predicts 64-66° until Friday, but we should always bring an umbrella, since we can never predict the weather in the winter. Malta has about 365,000 people, Gozo 27,000 people, and Comino 4 people, two sets of related siblings, and the hotel there isn't open in the winter, only busy in the summer. I'm feeling TIRED, almost SICK, and people ask SUCH silly questions. He goes on to 11:25, saying we should meet in the lobby at 11:40 for a look around outside. Talk to Eva Sanson, who's from the Philippines---I had been told that she WAS an actress in Northern Exposure---and her sister is much more quiet. I ask behind the desk about Libya and Cyprus, and he tells me to go across the corridor to Howard Travel to get more information, but, "One day flight in, next day flight out is not EASY." Look behind the local travel desk and pick up lots of nice brochures about the places we'll be going with Stephen, also a day-long boat tour that includes Popeye's Village and the Blue Grotto, and show that to Felix, who comes over to figure where to use the Dine Around vouchers with Marilyn in some detail, and then Stephen sails out with the group behind him and goes around the Pizza Place (which has a convenient door to the lobby without going around the driveway) and shows the group down the street to the bus stop, the Marks and Spencer, the ATM machine, the grocery store, and the way to the waterfront. I stop at Howard Travel and get told that I'd have to be approved by the State Department BEFORE leaving the USA if I wanted to travel to Libya, just across Malta to Cyprus, and that the only flights from Malta to Cyprus are at Sunday and Wednesday, and I surely don't want to spend FOUR days away from THIS tour, but I DID ask. Back to the room at 12:10 and write a note to Felix about what I had to do at the reception desk: make a reservation for the buffet this evening at 6:30 for a table for five in my name in room 453 and his name in room 455, and I slip the note under his door and take the "Do not disturb" sign off mine, and a maid knocks at 12:36 and I say to come back in half an hour, and bring in a SECOND bottle of water that GCT (or someone) nicely put in front of my door. Now have a small bottle to carry in my shoulder bag in case I get a thirst on my walks. Finish typing this by 12:38, ready to at LAST get the room ready enough to be cared for by the maid, having opened the drapes, curtains, and window to the balcony ALL the way, for a PERFECT air to flow into the room, looking across to the scattered clouds over Valletta and the sounds of construction from the new high-rise hotels going up to block out the view. Still feeling tired, but I'll get caught up on rest and be better later. Put things away, wash face, Felix calls over the balcony-corner to say that Marilyn has the room on the OTHER side of me: what a COINCIDENCE! Or are we the only three singles who signed on cheap? LOVELY breeze from outside, but I close the window before I leave at 1 to meet people downstairs. To lobby to cool, to hot bus at 1:08. At 1:10 Stephen counts and says, "Four more." Off bus at 1:36, follow Helena down to get my ticket, and then race back---#28 a plant-lined street at 4:39, near sunset. #29 "Greek Arcadia" view in Kalkara (calcite site) at 4:51. To bus at 5:08, tired, and it goes at 5:10 through the same sunset-dark streets as from the airport yesterday, and into hotel at 5:40 and into room at 5:45, the awful single elevator stopping on every single floor on the way down, for no one, and on every floor on the way up (1 as usual has no one, and it's ALWAYS lit), with others getting off on 2 and 3 before my 4. Undress and Felix knocks to say he could only find Marilyn as "part of our 5," but I figure others from the tour might see us and ask to be put with us, which I'll tell the maitre d', in case there's a problem---except will it be billed to our rooms? Type the note for the day until 6:05, feeling certain that when I get back from dinner I'm going to collapse into bed fairly quickly, trying to feel almost perfect tomorrow after the often-drowsiness of today. I'm pretty hungry, having had nothing to eat since breakfast, but it was huge and my stomach's confused anyway, and we'll be eating in half an hour. Imagine having to wait until 9PM and then not being able to get to sleep for an hour after finishing eating! Got to wash my face, too, which feels almost sun- or windburnt after the outside forces today, and wonder when I'll be getting to the end of this file after only THREE days, even though I'll fill only FIVE files in FIFTEEN days. Down at 6:20 to change reservations to THREE, and they insist they don't start until 6:30, so I'm back to the bar to look at the photos and hear Marilyn say that their martinis are the worst. Back to the line waiting for entry, and get to a table for three, sitting facing the window, and they load up while I have tiny tastes of appetizers, a bowl of cream of pumpkin soup that sadly isn't up to last night's cream of vegetable, and then various meats, the best a clean-looking pork roast with surprisingly hot (temperature, not spice) apple sauce, and then bits of mediocre cheese with more butter and crackers, and then tiny slivers of each of four desserts: lemon meringue pie, chocolate-cream cake, apple crumb cake, and strawberry fluff, the best, with funny-tasting chocolate sauce in the middle. Felix is more of a gabber than any woman, and Marilyn may be getting tired of him, though they've probably shared a drink since I left them at 7:22 and came back up here to finish this by 7:30 and put on TV to see what's on NOW. Nothing on TV. Go to puzzles but my eyes just CLOSE on me, so I've GOT to get to bed. Bed at 8:32PM. No trouble getting to sleep, but wake with a sort of jolt and look at clock: 10:59PM, slept only 2:27 to wake with a confused dream: Rolf is in my apartment, which ends in the living room of 1221 Dietz, and he'd burned a videotape of mine that I wanted to keep (somehow connected with my erasing the files from the floppy disk that turned out to be my saves of the last few indexes) AND I'd patted my lips until he allowed me, with a slight smile, one small peck on the neck, saying he had to go, but still with the odd feeling that he might want more----maybe if he were drunk enough---or honest enough? I type this to 11:10 and then contemplate getting back to sleep. Had shit before bed, before, and still feel vaguely like I have to. Pee again. Take another melatonin and a doxylamine and bed at 11:15, NOW hoping to sleep a LONG time!

THURSDAY, 1/15/04: Wake at 2:31, pee, and seem to get right back to sleep. Wake again at 4;42, hoping I can get back to sleep, and start the first few moments of Actualism and DO get back to sleep, to wake with surprise at 6:54AM, at last able to get up, having slept, possibly, just under TEN hours, and then l think I MUST record the extraordinary DREAM I had in this last session: I'm in a place that FEELS like it's a version of the Gay Center, or even of Mattachine: I'm younger than I am now, have had some connection with the place, and I have a package to carry under my arm about the size of a long-playing record, and they're reorganizing the space, so I'd better take home a small rug (maybe 4x5 feet, rolled up) that I'd bought at auction somewhere [file 2 at 7:08AM 1/15], and I picture it as I had left it: rolled up on top of a pile of stuff in the middle of the storage room in back, but when I look into what had been that room, it's been transformed into a library, with shelves up to the ceiling and constructed around corners, so that the walls of the room appear to be made from books, and ELEGANT books, too---I remember looking at a set of travel books at eye level and being struck by a pair of agate-bound books inscribed Barcelona and the Garrett Edition below, and this is an elegant gift-set that might be worth a price into the low hundreds. Other sets and treasures line these shelves, and I wonder what happened to my area rug. See a man go down a narrow flight of stairs to my right, and think he might be going to the storage room I remember, but when I look down the bare descent, I know my memory holds nothing like this from before. Then there's a movie, or cartoon, about a woman who wasn't happy with her life, so she somehow turned into a spirit and, becoming wraithlike, she slipped upward into the door of a red elevator that had some mystical significance, and when she returned, she was dressed in a white gown that enabled her to fly, and suddenly there was the announcement of "a new mode of being," and she appeared as a bride, in a beautiful flowing-trained dress, SKIMMING across the stone floor with her groom at her side, attended by equally fleet, flowing maidens behind her, sweeping swiftly and majestically for all their speed, across to a minister waiting for their rituals to proceed. As she disappeared, swooping from left to right, from the far right, in "real life" in the dream, marched a "truly real" cortege of similarly dressed actors and actresses, running lightly, as in a ballet, across the front of the cathedral in which we found ourselves as the congregation, and brilliant lights came up all around, and my peripheral vision caught the gleam of jewel-bedecked white powdered wigs over liveries from some opulent French court, and I even glanced into the nave to see, massed for effect, it's true, on either side of the aisle, two columns of elegantly dressed and coiffed extras, up and down either side of the main aisle for about 20 of the 30 rows, and I turned to try to project my startled question over the resounding organ music accompanying all this: "Where did we get such money all of a sudden?" Before this, a vaguely remembered segment concerned handsome young men, possibly in uniform in some kind of military unit, displaying sexy muscles and crotches, and then returns a memory of looking at a small ad, at the bottom of a page in the New York Times Classified section, Section 4, Sex, and there's a small but surprisingly detailed photo of two men sitting in the front of an open-topped convertible, quite clearly jerking off for each other, and I'm amazed that the usually fuzzy reproduction quality of the Times is anatomically clear here, unquestionably revealing the circumcised back of a shapely cockhead poking above the fist of the masturbator on the right, with a shadowier show of cock from the clothing-muffled young man on the left. And I wondered, again, how we'd progressed to this modern era where the Times could print such explicit photographs, but which was only natural, since such activities WERE perfectly natural and it was only the blue-stocking mentality of our time that prevents such explicitness of sexuality and even language---imagine bleeping out "fuck" when EVERYONE knows what's being bleeped out! OTHER sections of this dream (like thinking, "If I can only find a large sheet of paper in which to wrap the rug, I'll find it easy to carry with my record-sized other packet") are forgotten. Opened the curtains and drapes at 7AM, hoping to see a clear sunrise, but the sky is covered in gray clouds, though there's no sign of rain on the roads, and only now, at 7:27AM, does the sky have any sort of pinkness in the clouds, and the waves are surprisingly strong against the rocks at the base of Valletta in the distance, splashing up what must be 20-30 feet on the rocky promontory that stretches across my view past the busily moving and bowing construction cranes working on the site between me and Valletta, and bustling cars back and forth, with people in black moving about so early on their business. Typing in my hotel-supplied bathrobe against the chill in the room, and now I'm feeling pangs of hunger, though I'm still vaguely muzzy-headed from what was not enough sleep and what now may be too much sleep last night, and I'll have to dress quickly and get down to breakfast to fill my stomach this morning, though I check my day-to-day schedule and we next meet at 1:15PM for the walking tour of Valletta. Earplugs out now at 7:32AM, hearing only cars passing outside and the strange water-bubble sound from the small refrigerator at my left elbow. Though the palm trees are bending in the strong winds, the clouds above, now more pink than before, seem ominously stable. Doesn't look like much sun today, and better DO carry my umbrella. But as I sit listlessly at the window, now at 7:38AM there's even a clearing with bits of white cloud and blue sky, right at the top of my window. Lots of stray cats on the streets under the cars, and a dog-walker and his little charge seem almost apprehensive as they cross the street, glancing nervously behind them to see if they're about to be attacked. The cloud-opening had closed, but now an IMMENSE break right above brightens the room considerably! Though the waves across the arm of bay still seem horrendously storm-toss'd. Then a shade of cloud slowly lowers, an open eye turning lazily down the sky, opening to the sun beaming directly into my eyes at 7:47AM, surprisingly high, over 6-7 diameters, above the horizon. But then the dark upper lid of cloud drifts down, the intervening sea glints in exact sun-penny effect, and the scene darkens again except for a spotlight ray extending to the south over other parts of the island of Malta. Then the sky clears from the north, a stubby what-might-be-parrot flutters overhead, and sun's rays slip out of the left rent in the cloud-cover, silver-coating the sea-waves, raying down pinko-gray light-beams silhouetting the point beyond Valletta, which I guess must be Vittoriosa! Church-bells now at 8AM as the sun again invades my room and my view, now a sky of hovering clouds, rather than a pall of gray. Maybe a morning cup of tea WOULD be nice, I surmise. Really SHOULD get down to breakfast before "everyone" is there already. Hear Felix moving about next door. Leave for breakfast 8:10AM. Down on the elevator with a couple from the previous group who said the weather was wonderful the last week, and that the elevators had always been as bad as they are now. Down to the restaurant to sit across from someone brought up in Canarsie who's now living in Florida, without a nametag, who subscribed to the old Met with her father and thought it an adventure when they took the trolley, a ferry, and a bus to the stadium on Randall's Island for the opera. Felix and Marilyn are at the next table, and Felix starts bending my opposite's ear while Marilyn talks to the couple on their other side. Have an omelet, half a French toast, toast, hot chocolate, juices, fruit, and take a glass of water when I leave. To the elevator about 9:07, which shows no lights, and the floor-indicator says "2," but when I push the button it goes UP to 5 and STAYS there, until Pat comes over to bitch with me, and I ask a floorman what's going on and he says, "They're working on it," but I insist that it WASN'T in operation when I pushed the button, and only THEN did the lights come on and it went up to 5. He seemed to say something about an elevator around the corner, but showed me to a stairway, after I said I was in room 453, and go up the HIGH stairs between EACH floor, up four WHOLE flights, but it's JUST in the small hallway that leads to my stairs down to 453, so it's convenient ONCE I CLIMB THE STAIRS. It WOULD be nice if they're actually FIXING the elevator! Back in the room to find full sunlight streaming onto the table with my AlphaSmart and earplugs and pen, and write this until 9:20, still feeling TIRED, so maybe I'll lie down a bit and rest before putting on shoes to get some cash at the ATM. Lie, think pleasant thoughts, enjoy having the time to just lie, then up at 11:23 to type this and put on shoes and get out at 11:30, and back at 12:35 with two 5₤ notes that I changed downstairs for a 2₤ note, 2 l₤ coins, 1 50¢ coin and 2 25¢ coins. Didn't get water, and find two NEW bottles of water on my tabletop, though they DIDN'T do ANYTHING to the room! Then go to brush my teeth---and find out I didn't bring my TOOTHBRUSH!!! Figure to buy it somewhere, but then think to ask at the desk and they produce a packaged product labeled "Dental Kit" after I take the SECOND elevator behind down across from 414. Stephen says, "Bottles NOT in frigo NOT charged to room," when someone suggested that the bottles given to us will be CHARGED to us at the end. To almost-full bus, 3 missing at 1:10, Marilyn saying Felix is missing. Felix is last at 1:17, sits with Marilyn. To Valletta at 1:32, take EVERYTHING if we're not returning on the bus---we're Dining Around, restaurant opens only at 6:30! #30 building on Republic Street, old opera ruins in foreground, bombed in WWII, at 1:42PM. #31 church in BRILLIANT LIGHT. Cocopazzo two blocks from Republic Street on right side of street. To Co-Cathedral at 1:55. Two bills at 1:56. #32-33, inside (no flash permitted) Co-Cathedral, ENTIRE floor of marble TOMBS at 2:05. 8 (beatitude/ founding European nationalities)-pointed cross of KNIGHTS for 248 years, but really of knights of St. John. UGLY STUCCO-crammed walls. #34 (no flash) Baptism of Christ statue and silver censor donated by Respigliosi. #35 monstrance throne by Carafa of the right hand of St. John the Baptist. At 3:11 SIT in Palace chamber. Malta ALWAYS known as island fortress. Armory (and rest of palace) is quite "normal" in appearance. To Armory at 3:30, wait to pee, at 3:53 (couplet). Out at 3:57. #36 roller coaster street at 4:10. #37 panorama of the Citadel of St. John at 4:12. Roll 2: #1 hidden entry to Grand Harbor. #2 upper Barraka Garden (closed!) at 4:14. Sit on steps at 4:30: first the street person sits on the steps with me, tuning her staticky radio, then sun sets and it gets cold and I put coat on, then a wandering minstrel band sits on the steps importuning passersby, they're 8 whites and Blacks, singing "Glory to the King of Kings, Hosanna in the highest" then similar-sounding lyrics in French. Passes the time. Now 5:45 and I wish it were 6:30. At 5:59 they move on. I hear "WC" from one of them. Steps all to myself for now, crowd older and somewhat more attractive, the only REAL find was the fellow with the LOVELY chest and "O'Neal" on his T-shirt. Stand for a long time outside Cocopazzo, then the waitress said some OTHER group reserved that evening for 30 people, and she can't put all of us in, but then it turns out she can't put 11 of us in AT THE SAME TABLE, and fifteen are crammed into the tiny back room, lining all the walls except for the doorway, and the last five of us are given a table for 7-8 in front room, which we take gratefully: when I pass on my way downstairs to the john, which turns on a heater right at the doorway disconcertingly as I pee, I see how jammed in the others are. The "Grand Circle Special" menu is quite varied, with ravioli, risotto, salad, fish soup, octopus as appetizers, of which I choose the risotto, an ENORMOUS portion of which I eat only half, with the stinky-salmony taste, and then from the swordfish, veal, chicken, spaghetti I choose the veal with the Malta caper sauce, so she gives me the tomato sauce UNDER the veal cutlet and the caper sauce in a huge bowl at the side. Not bad taste, though the vegetables (potatoes, zucchini, peppers, squash) don't go very far, and the lemon pie for dessert is really quite good. I pick red wine, as does the lunk on my left, and the others choose white, so I have a lot of red, and then two from the former GCT group, the red group, come in and are told there's no room, but we invite them to our table and they're a charming addition, and they seem to appreciate me, too. We pay with only our vouchers and I persuade many to leave an extra 50¢ tip, and then we're out in the cold to go for the 65 bus in the square outside, leaving the restaurant at 8:22 and for 15¢ the bus leaves from 8:40 to 8:53, to the room at 9:03, finding that PRESSING the CLOSE button still lets the elevator stop on 1 and 2, but the doors don't open, saving a LOT of time. Shit and watch TV on the trying-not-to-be-suicide of Marilyn Monroe, but it seems it testably WAS suicide, and then a painful-looking bantamweight boxing match until 10:56, and shit and get to bed at 11:05.

FRIDAY, 1/16/04: Wake at 1:46, again at 4:08 and pee, then at 6:55 wake with a dream: 7:45AM: I'm wandering in a huge zoo, out on a peninsula for special new exhibits, and at one point all of us are chest-deep in water, and it passes through my mind that they'd better have facilities for drying out, or we're going to be very uncomfortable. At one point I ask someone how to get back to "where we checked our coats" as a way of indicating the entrance, or where we can get out. Before, I had seen a strange concrete spiral constructed into the side of a hill, and wondered what it was, and later we got into a small area and I looked to the side and saw a narrow, iron-railed path zigzagging back and forth down a trail, and figured we'd go that way, but it looked old and rusted and muddy, and then as we clustered in the little area in front of it, a gate closed and we began to swing back and forth like a pendulum, and it turned into a kind of elevator on a track that swung into huge arcs down and around what turned out to be that concrete spiral in the side of a hill, and this seemed to be a new, adventure-ride kind of way of getting us from one part of the zoo to another. There were other parts of dream, now that I'm sitting on the pot trying to shit but not able to, that I forgot, but I've got to dress to get to breakfast to get to the morning tour at 9:15, not having the time to shower properly right when I should be changing underwear, and WHY are the Maltese men talking loudly outside our doors so early---is 8AM early here? Just lie in bed, not wanting to shower, not having time to do what I want to do, beginning to fuss with myself, but finally drag myself to the john to shit and type the dream to 8AM, then dress and without showering get down to breakfast, I think alone, then the single woman to my right happens to have been at the restaurant last night and talks about HER experiences in New York, having gone to school there but doesn't even know where Brooklyn Heights is. Pass up the omelet for one fried egg, lots of bacon that is awfully gristly, rindy, and lumpy, two pieces of half-slice French toast, and then a lot of fruit to go with my hot chocolate, then a glass of orange juice and a glass of water to assuage my thirst, and get up to dress and get down at 9, elevator not working, so we're around to the other elevator at last, to the bus at 9:09, "full" already. Leave at 9:13. 1.2 million tourists/year. #3 St. Paul's islands, not a very good view, landing in 60AD, at 9:42AM. Maltese falcons BRED for hunting rabbits, but not anymore. Milliehena from 9:50 to 10:30. #3 the church facade and BLUE sky (66° F today, supposedly) at 9:55. #5 Mary and Jesus painted on ROCK of CAVE, attributed to St. Luke, who was the doctor on the boat carrying St. Paul when he was shipwrecked and blessed this cave. #6 votive icons up cave walls. #7 sea-view cemetery and seat at 10:15. Look through two OTHER Malta books (travel, and old one), both at 3₤, not as good as mine. Lone walk to view over North Malta and south Gozo. Mosta dome is 27 meters across, 4th largest: 1) Vatican, 2) St. Paul's in London, 3) Pantheon in Rome, and Helenya said she'd look up the figures, she has them at home. Let's see if she remembers them tomorrow [she doesn't]. Told to be at Mosta 11-11:45. #8 impossible-to-span Mosta dome. Flash at 11:06 and #9 of altar. Jews might have SABOTAGED bomb built in Poland for Germans. Get 25₤ from ATM at 11:29AM. #10 exterior at 11:31. Long back-way walk to bus at 11:55. Palazzo Parisio 12:05, #11 of ceiling Mercury at 12:09. Malta HAD no forests, all timber imported. #12 ballroom at 12:36. Fancy painted-silk walls, stucco ceiling fringe, baroque detailing, #13 infinite mirrored chandeliers. #14 bougainvillea on January 16 at 12:52PM. #15 garden from the rear gate. Nobility cultivates gardens like this to wow VISITORS (they can't possibly enjoy them alone, for themselves), just as I have slides to wow friends. Pee, to Ta Ali bus-stop and remember my JACKET and UMBRELLA left on bus, and dash to get them JUST as door is closing, and grab stuff and back to the stop at 1:05, but though Stephen said they came every 20 minutes, there's still no 65 at 1:25, and it turns out to be 30 minutes, and get on the bus for 40¢ from 1:30-1:50, stopping for truck-crane stupidly erected in the middle of the street (like the later cars that park IN the bus lane, and the delivery truck that parks ACROSS, narrowing the street impossibly, and then stares balefully at the bus driver when he has to move his car, and from his bleary-eyed look I tell my two new gay friends that I hope he's high on SOMETHING. #16 panorama on road to Ta Ali at 1:52. Minerals for 5 minutes, glassblowing to 2:18, assorted other junky places to 2:48, but the sign says there's no bus till 4:05! I walk to Mdina glassworks to 3:12, but what NOW? Then walk back to see two guys waiting for the bus, and we despair getting one (and the others must have caught the bus while I was in the Mdina works, before the two guys arrived! Because they kept insisting they caught the bus just after 3PM, when none was supposed to come! At 3:22 we pay 40¢ for bus to Bogibba, thinking they might have ANOTHER bus, quicker, to Sliema, but ask the driver as we get into Mosta, and he says THIS would be better than Bogibba, right here at 4PM. We're off at 3:30 and I decide to try the second-floor glassed-in balcony I'd seen before, and have a lovely amaretto hot chocolate for 55¢ plus 5¢ tip, going to third floor to find that a closed photography shop has the pride of street-place, and then back to the bus stop at 3:47 to find guys gone, but they show up at 3:55 and we wait until 4:13 for the 65 bus, thankfully not full as I'd feared, and we're off at 4:41 halfway up the hill, which I noticed and dragged them off, too, and up the hill I said, "I don't know how else to ask, but how long have you two been together?" And they tell me of sharing a room when both were chaperones for school groups, and it was one's first and the other's not-first relationship, and I said I was "like them," but I didn't have a partner, just a traveling companion who didn't come on this trip with me. Wash face, put two MORE bottles of water away, and [drep beads with coede--- whatever that means, not readable in my notes] down at 4:56 for the Maltese language talk: she's very defensive, the notes are pretty good, and we're over at 6:15, and I'm back to room to look through The Independent, which was pushed under my door this morning, trying to do the puzzle (which I can't finish), then get down at 7PM to just catch Stephen, in his INCREDIBLY sexy red sweater that shows off his LOVELY pecs and narrow waist, and tight-crotched jeans, and pay 3.5₤ for my ticket for 1/20 at 11AM, which he didn't think I would qualify for the over-65, even though it turned out to be over-60 on the ticket, and I continue down the hall to the Pizza Place to AGAIN (KNOW I saw it before, and thought "not tonight," but just FORGOT it) find it's closed tonight, and then back to room to put on shoes and jacket and walk down side street to find nothing good, then left along bay to find NOTHING of interest, then back to check up some side roads, but La Vigne was closed on OUR road, King's Head looked like a deli with bare tables, Italian place was closed, so I stopped at Tony's Place on 8, The Strand, Sliema, Malta, EST 1922, at which I get an extra napkin for MY Tony, hoping to see him again, and they don't have fish and chips, so I have the Four Burger, with AWFUL hamburg meat, a good hard-fried egg, decent ham, AWFUL fatty, rindy, raw bacon, and a tiny side salad and lots of pallid fries that I indulged two packets of ketchup on, with a good pint of Guinness for only 1.5₤, and the sandwich was 2.75₤, and they took Visa, so I added a 65¢ tip to make it 4.90₤ and came back up the hill at about 9, to watch TV (strongmen and just channel surfing---did I mention I got a battery which I changed myself for the TV?) until 9:58, and then decide I MUST type this all up, and it takes to 11:15 (I can't BELIEVE it, I must have recorded SOME time wrongly!) and I've GOT to get to bed, since we're leaving at 9AM tomorrow for our tours, and by Monday it's promising to RAIN! Now 11:16 and I'm TIRED! Take what must be my LAST whole melatonin and get to bed at 11:24, HOPING to sleep through to 7AM.

SATURDAY, 1/17/04: 5:42AM: Woke at 3:34, and then at 5 something and record a HUGE dream in file 3: 5:15AM: I'm at some kind of New Age festival in a place like Philharmonic Hall in New York, but I'm not sure there's even an entrance fee---maybe it's more like in Lincoln Center Plaza, where people can come and go as they wish---or Damrosch Bandshell, where there IS a sage (ha, funny typo for STAGE at this point), but people can easily enter and leave. I make the observation that since this is NEW Age stuff, everything that's done has to be something that's NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE, so BY DEFINITION events have to get more and more "far out," so that the emphasis seems not to be on TRUTH, but on NEWNESS, or at the very least NEWNESS ABOUT WAYS OF PRESENTING TRUTH. Toward one "end" the dream, a woman asks me to order something, maybe food or maybe a transcript of what's going on, and I say I don't want anything, but she seems to say, "I'm bringing you something, so you might as well say what it is you want, since you're going to get something anyway, so YOU might as well make the decision rather than ME," and I think this IS truly a new level of salesmanship, where even if you don't want to buy you're FORCED to buy---rather like the Publisher's Clearing House "Select an item even if you're not ordering an item so we'll be better able to serve you in the future." Anyway, I'm watching something, and listening to this saleslady, and somehow I know Barbara Lea is sitting near me, and I glance at an old New Yorker someone's been reading, somehow knowing (or not knowing) that the person READING the article is the person about whom Barbara WROTE the article many years ago, and I get his attention with some difficulty and misunderstanding, but finally communicate that Barbara Lea is sitting right over there, and he goes over and she almost passes him by---or he decides to pass HER by without "recognizing" her, and she shouts "NAME," whatever his name is, and he acknowledges and she POURS FORTH this WAIL of "Why didn't you want me, why did you leave me, we could have been perfect together, why am I seeing you now," and somehow I get the feeling that I should have read the REST of the article before doing what I did, and the basic lesson for me seems to be FINISH WHAT I'M DOING BEFORE I ACT ON IT, or SOMETHING about finishing, or completion, or looking WAY forward for consequences of what I do even lightly, and he starts arguing back: "But you said---" and she talks of "slamming a door," but he says, "But the wind pulled it out of my hands," and it maybe turns into a series of ghastly misunderstandings and misinterpreted circumstances and mixed messages, and both are in total misery and I'm miserable for having started the whole thing, and at one point she runs off in sheer despair, almost WAILING in her unhappiness, and he runs after her, but then he pauses, and then SHE turns back, and he rushes forward again, and it turns out that I'm watching a TAPE of this whole event, and the image becomes blurred and it SEEMS that as SHE rushes off, someone ELSE comes from the far left side and follows her out, while HE stays where he is, maybe with her NOT having rushed out, or with someone ELSE, but the image ends changing focus to focus on a close-up of a racing river with various sediments washing different colors into the river (of life, of course) and the ending being obscured, and I shout, "Wait, let me backspace that tape, because I'm not sure what I saw with this other person, or was it she, or he, rushing out of the corner of the picture," and as I backspace the mechanism gets more and more uncertain, with slippage and blurring of the images, and I end up more confused than when I started, and think it's some sort of simile for the actual universe: that if I look at something too much it changes, or even looking at it ONCE changes it so that it's not POSSIBLE to rewind it and show the same event in anything LIKE the same way, and in the dream my philosophical musings merge with the confusion of waking up FROM the dream and continuing with the philosophical musings about the meaning of the dream and the events of the dream, and what I saw or what I wanted to see, and then the added level of whether a dream is what I WANT to see or what I DON'T want to see, or what DID happen or what DIDN'T happen, or only RANDOM with NO significance, or with significance to be pried out with difficulty by me, or---and there was a previous segment about Actualism, and some attempt at "proof": whether it was "real" or just a hoax by Paul Schofield, or we could make the best out of it, but I'm now at 5:33 seeming to complicate it even more than it warranted, and I've got to pee and get back to sleep to wake up for the 9AM departure this morning. Shit and catch up with this at 5:43AM, hoping to Actualize back to sleep before waking again. It works, and when next I wake it's 7:04AM, and think that I FINALLY feel in synch with the time, having slept not quite 8 hours yet feeling rested and energetic enough to get up and start the day, even starting with a shower. Open the drapes to find the sky not pink at all, but light, and type this at 7:11AM, which should be just minutes before sunrise, but there's no sign of the sun in the bank of dark clouds at the horizon, and I'm surprised to see the shoreline of Valletta so totally calm: no crashing waves at ALL, just a quiet line of white with an occasional wave pushing up maybe 6 feet of spray at the largest, and the cranes at the construction site are beginning to swing around already as I sit in my bathroom in the morning cool. A wisp of cloud in the south turns white, a bird flies upward over my roof, more of the clouds are turning pink slightly now at 7:14 as the tallest and third-tallest of the five cranes out my window start rotating. Now there's a bright glow from the clouds to the left, rays stream forth, cloud-echelons appear etched in sun, a man appears on his south-facing balcony to watch the light from the sun, and it's increasingly brighter by 7:18 when the sun should come from the clouds about 3-4 diameters above the horizon, and the sun is above clouds at 7:19 and I can shower. Out of shower 7:38, wonderfully refreshing, though there's a small pool at the head of the tub and my body doesn't INSTANTLY dry as I thought it might. Put on clean red flannel shirt and get to breakfast at 7:48AM. Fill up a plate for breakfast and there's no SPACE for it, so Felix and Marilyn clear a place next to them, she gives me a spoon and he a fork, and I have an omelet and lots of fruit and juice and two half-slices of French toast with newly put-out strawberries, and listen to the three women gab away until I wave goodbye and they smile and say, "Girl talk," and I'm glad they didn't include me. Back at 8:33, front elevator permanently stuck at 5, so I use the back one with no competition. Up to blow nose again, put in afternoon calcium pill for the included lunch, which I'll be too full for, and note for Stephen about Sunday harbor-boat tour. Finish this at 8:38, still enough time to clear up room before leaving at 8:51AM. Bus full at 8:55. Last lazy wife boards at 9AM. Argyll is highly recommended, open only Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Off bus in Rabat at 9:31. Romans in 218BC. Into crypt at 9:42. Most faces DEFACED by Moslems. Crypts have no burials, catacombs do. I wander through rooms and up to another level, talking to someone I think is in our group who turns out to be German. Go lots of places no one else goes, as usual, and sit when few find a place to do so. Out at 9:58; I'm getting BORED. Awful guy takes VIDEO pictures though NO pictures are allowed. #18 catacombs at 10:06. From 400-600AD, under the Romans, Malta was a summer residence, name comes from Melita, honey. Agape table, shaped like an omega, is Last-Supper table, celebrating the dead who have gone to a GOOD afterlife. Catacombs emptied into cemeteries in 1942 for air-raid shelters. #19 TWO head-cuts in topped tomb at 10:22. Tree-roots invading in upper rooms. Out at 10:30. #20 Bes statues at 10:43, with cocks, in Museum of St. Agatha, who no one but me goes into when I go back to see the church, which is locked. #21 museum altarpiece with pork luncheon-meat box from Chonquing, China! Stay in museum till 11:05, two others left early, a few others enter when I leave, LOADS of tiny mineral specimens. 70 cl Bajtra is 7.5₤ ($22.50) in Rabat Empire Souvenir shop, check at duty-free airport? In Empire shop till 11:23, LOTS of stuff, none very interesting. Almost miss group going OTHER way to bus at 11:28. Onto bus at 11:35, DRIVER saying hello. Leave at 11:37, stop at St. Anton's Gardens, alongside the Presidential Palace, at 11:58. Go behind birdcages to avoid crowds, lots of overgrown plots and pigeons in with ducks and a black swan in the bird-pool with kids throwing stuff at the birds, then along the birdcages for Sorellas in many colors and some peacocks and colorful parakeets. Around the top, pass lots of kids, take a quick pee, and am the last one out to the bus at 12:31, Stephen walking me to Minibus 1 at 12:32, commenting on how fast I walk, and I get in with who turns out to be (but I described this at the end of the dream [on file 3] this morning), and Felix, who's questioning why he wasn't paired with Marilyn. To the house of Josette and her husband and friend Etienne, and later her fisher-son, at 12:40, and they speak perfectly good English, and she's used to serving lots of people because they board up to four students along with their two children who live at home, and the one working in Ireland with her boyfriend. I snag the roomiest seat, next to Etienne, who's pleasant to chat with when no one else is holding the whole table thrall, as Felix tries to do with his stock-market advice, and Granny does with her food-less requests, which I conveniently adhere to myself. Husband insists on pouring olive oil over my last bit of Timpana, and then over my beef at the end, and I finally copy down the recipe for the dynamite Cauliflower Fritter: with salt and lemon, boil, drain WELL (the evening before) and leave in colander. In the morning mash with a fork with two eggs and salt and pepper, then with olive oil in pan, fry 5-6 tablespoons of dip, and keep warm in a low oven. WONDERFUL. I start with red wine, change to white, then to Sprite because I'm very thirsty, and the talk goes on and on, and I vacate kitchen to look at the budgies (40 of them!) in the cage outside, and the ferny-feathers of fennel, and the apple tree and the orange trees and purple goldfish gobbling the end of an enormous earthworm. The dog barks and the cat is let out and comes in without closing the door behind him and the son comes in and then it's 2:45 and we finally go out to meet the driver, who takes us back to the hotel at 3:12, and I don't tip him because this IS an included part of the tour, just as I refused to feel guilty when Stephen mentioned something about not feeling bad if you didn't get a house-gift for the host family! So exhausted from the day that I lie down and doze to 4:15, get up to look at the sunset (recalled the feathery-pink clouds soaring above Republic Street at the sunset in Valletta on Thursday), and decide to start on the puzzle book, and do ten HARD ones, some of them delightful, some just difficult, thinking I should go out to dinner, but don't feel hungry, and I HAD two meals today, so about 10PM I have the cannoli, which is pretty filling, and drink some water with my evening pills, but start to feel somewhat lonely and sorry for myself (as noted after dream) and then shit, wash my face, take night pills, and get to bed at 10:53PM.

SUNDAY, 1/18/04: Wake a couple of times and record LOTS of dream material: 4:04AM: Woke about half an hour ago with a dream centered on a woman who might be a combination of Anna Mae Wong, from last night's crossword puzzle, Olan from The Good Earth as portrayed by Luise Rainer, and Madge Mao: an Oriental woman, maybe widowed, determined to prove herself in a certain (unspecified) way that involved her making a profile drawing of some other woman, possibly to show a guilty person out of many, and she describes to another woman (somehow the mistress of the house) how it was difficult to capture the reflection from a boiling kettle of potatoes, since the water bubbled and steamed and made the likeness-taking difficult, and then the mistress of the house declares, "But I drew a picture of you, too," and shows her a dramatic vision of two huge eyes framed by a cap of hair with two Olive Oyl-like braids sticking up from the two sides, two huge eyes staring upward, and she is surprised to see herself portrayed so positively, and she stares at it as if to incorporate the strength and determination in the drawing into her own character. Wake and think what I'd thought before going to bed: I do NOT want to spend another evening totally alone like last night, so I've determined to befriend the gay couple even more: they seem quiet enough, not blabbering endlessly like most of the women on the trip, and Felix, and intelligent enough, and sturdy enough to enjoy their trip, not frail like some of the cane-carrying women and over-fat men, the worst one surprisingly found to be the 75-year-old 13-year-younger brother of the 88-year-old doyenne of the family with her 67-year-old (to be 68 in July) daughter and her husband, both men of which were seen eating last afternoon with white clumps of cauliflower or cannoli dripping from their lower lips until told to clean them off. Also resolved my water problem if they stop bringing bottles: simply fill up the ice bucket and let it melt overnight and pour the water into the bottles I've saved. AND have to clarify how to get to the Valletta Archaeological Museum, since that'll be my destination today, maybe freeing up a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday if that most-day around-all-islands trip indeed takes place this time of year. Now at 4:13 hope to get back to sleep to survive on my cannoli dinner long enough to not be starved for breakfast. Stop now at 4:14AM, too much light coming in around the sides of the drapes, but that's the way it is. 6:44AM: don't know WHAT to make of all these dreams or their imports, if any, but THIS one is a Hollywood extravaganza: I've gotten an invitation to a big studio, MGM as a guess, and I see by a map that I'm in building 2 on an arc that has maybe a dozen buildings, and I'm to meet a particular friend, but somehow I have free access, and someone half-famous is escorting me around, and I see Pat Chalfont going down a stairway and I'm sure she's famous, but I can't quite place her [may be thinking of Kathleen Chalfont?]. A later scene has a director wanting to kiss a gas station attendant, but he says, "He's only like a monkey," but the guy gets up and says some line like, "But I think," which I think is from The Planet of the Apes, which he's making fun of, but he IS cute and I wonder why the guy can't have him anyway. I step behind someone in a TV booth, being filmed, and it's a guy who's made up to look like Walt Disney, talking as if he were still alive, and I duck out of the frame because I think I might be destroying the illusion, but then I'm in his car, and it's during a commercial that he announces with asperity "is eight minutes long!" I hear over the car's intercom that someone is paging Data, and they try the Cordial Shop, where you might not necessarily be served what you order, and he comes on in his voice, drunken-funny, saying, "Who would assume I was HERE?" At one point I'm taken for someone famous, and I think I COULD have a chance here, but the feeling evaporates, as does most of the rest of the dream, though I'm talking to plenty of known people, having lots of fun---remember a friend going behind a door to a candy dispenser and asking rhetorically, "You think they'd have SOMETHING beside pretzels in this place?" Other vignettes were wonderful as I dreamed them, but they're forgotten now at 6:52, and do I stay up or try another nap before a late breakfast? Come across the stock-note from Felix: NFI, mortgages, volatile, but has 11% dividends. On a Crown Plaza note I number 5.5 I write "Up reluctantly at 8:05," and wash my face and don't bother to shower and get down to breakfast 8:30-9:05, meeting the gay couple in the lobby and arranging to meet them here for dinner at 6:45, thank goodness, and breakfast is a fried egg with wheat toast, sitting at a clean table all to myself with the couple from the Red Group from Cocopazzo at my left, and get lots of juice and only large cut pieces of melon and pineapple for fruit, and hot chocolate and bacon, not as much as before but it STILL lasts, and make sure I have the Dine Around cards for dinner, and leave at 9:20, stopping by Stephen's to fill out my address and e-mail on the sheet he's preparing, asking about the around-Malta-and-Gozo boat tour I'd love, and he writes me a note (starting "Dear Eric,") saying that it's not possible, unless I want horse racing or glass-bottom boat activity. Get down to Marks and Spencer and find there's no 65 in front of it, and note many busses across the divided street, and go to a 65 to be told, "No, 62 or 68 up front," but there are only Malta Visit busses up front. Then see a 62 stopping WAY ahead and it takes off before I can get there. Sit on the queue at 9:34, and get on a crowded bus 9:35-9:48, two Danish women not letting me sit on the broken-back seat in front of them, then walk into Valletta figuring to see the street market, which supposedly ends at 11, but meet the couple and they say it's OUTSIDE the gate past the bus parking, so I'm back with them to the MESS of clothes and shoes and underwear and interesting plants and fish and junk around the edges, to 10:13, jammed with people. To the Museum of Archaeology at 10:19, 50¢ for seniors, and GREAT photos: #24 model of Hypogeum, since no photos will be allowed inside on Tuesday at 11 for our tickets, 3 levels at 10:33. #25 a pre-made slide-selection of photos, #26 Xaghra stone circle (was this the one the guy said the birdwatchers pushed over much of because they were annoyed when the archaeologists took over a bird-watching site?), #27 wonderful comparative dates, #28 4000BC rock-cut tombs at Xemxija. #29 3-apse temple at Skorba about 3500BC. #30 5-apse temple at Mnajdra in 3000BC. #31 photos of figures. #32 Venus of Malta from Hagar Qim, #33 Sleeping Lady, 3000BC, from Hypogeum. #34 Hagar Qim group, headless. #35 Tarxien 6-apse (only one) temple, 3600-2500BC. #36 temple pieces in museum 11:02. To 11:37, upstairs a Malta Heritage exhibit of lots of bits and pieces, along with an idiot-child spitting up and coughing constantly in his stroller while being constantly fed some kind of pacifier, and a nice Hercules rather scantily lit, and lots of paintings from what turned out to be the Museum of Fine Arts I saw later. I try to find the place marked on MY map for the MFA, but it's not THERE (not seeing the "Parking for MFA only" on MY side of the street or the "MFA" small sign on the OTHER side of the street---that's how observant I CAN be! Walk BACK to Archaeology at 11:54, basically a wrong ENTRANCE mark. Fine Arts pretty poor to 12:42, though some nice watercolors, one by Turner, which is in a room whose lights turn on when you enter. At 12:55 walking down Republic Street, past the outdoor cafeteria where the couple is probably eating, and I looked but couldn't see them, I take #37 of the Nude Neptune at 12:55 in the Palace courtyard, and it's a SLOW rewind with the dying battery, and when I open the back, though the meter went to zero, there's still FILM there, so I have to find a dark place and unload the rest of the un-rewound film. Walk around toward the Malta Experience and see that the Knights Hospitaller exhibit IS open, and get in at 1:15, paying 1.5₤ because they don't have a senior rate, ask for the men's room for darkness, but don't find it downstairs, and look at some of the exhibits and back to find the men's room is past a ROPE across the passageway, and at 1:36 find that only the first 6-7 inches aren't rewound, so I HOPE most are OK. There were 8 Langues: Provence, Auvergne, France, Italy, Aragon, England, Germany, and Castile (with Leon and Portugal). Roll 3, #1 model of hospital with enema (?) for VD (!) at 1:45. They removed cataracts! Out at 1:56, tired and slightly cheated, and then decide to look for the Lower Barraka Gardens, but go along the Mediterranean Road in the heat and altitude and take #2 of the entrance bay with cactus at 2:08. Down and around and up and through abandoned streets and finally at 2:27, tired, get to bus 62, since 65 doesn't go to Sliema (BOY are these busses confusing!) and get a 5¢, two 2¢, and 1 1¢ piece in change, which of course I'll keep as souvenirs. Bus goes 2:30-2:42, CUTE redhead sitting next to me looks at me AND at the cuties boarding bus, and I decide to get off a rather long way PAST Manoel Island, but I figure what the hell, and walk back and at 2:47 buy a 5₤ ticket, told to come at 4PM, and time that it takes about 20 minutes, walking fast, to get back to the hotel, so with the performance from 4:30-6:30 I have to get to the couple to delay our 6:45 meeting in the lobby. Ask for their room number, but the operator has trouble finding Zoppi, at one point making sure I didn't want Zolnerzak, and there's no answer, so I should leave a voice-mail, and I can only get out, "Hi, it's Bob, and---," when there's a series of beeps and clicks and obviously the message is over. Not satisfied with that, I ask for a note-piece and write that I'd like to change our meeting to 7PM. Up to fourth floor and knock on their door and he ANSWERS, saying the phone HADN'T rung, and says 7PM is OK, they don't want to go to the circus, and back in my room my phone is BUZZING intermittently, saying I have voice-mail, dial 9, and nothing happens. Phone the operator and give him HELL, but he tells me to dial 1095, which it takes me about four times to get, and then, of course, it's MY message, from "4:14," they haven't even changed time zones (!) at 3:28. I wash my face and put my shoes back on my aching smelly feet (and smelly shirt, too) and get out at 3:38 to walk on the sidewalk side, passing a promising fish-and-chips-for-breakfast place rather far away, and get to the grounds at 3:57, and in at 3:59 to the centermost seat in the fourth row, two rows at highest price, second row at second-highest price, with obviously the correct angle because the dynamitely-handsome employee, or more likely manager, who seats some people but then drives the car around the ring and chats with the head clown about some of the arrangements in the tent---he and someone else take VIDEOS of all the acts from this angle, so could this be "the" performance to have seen? Soft-wheeled bike with four riders is most novel; walking ladder, six hula hoops, 7 balls bouncing and juggling, all these are normal, but then the guy balancing on a pole on the head of who for a while I thought was a dressed-up popcorn vendor was impressive, as was the 6'7" contortionist who squeezed himself into a box less than 3 feet high and more like 2.5 feet on a side, VERY odd. As was starting the program with the fat-thighed girl on the elastic ropes bouncing up to a trapeze that would be raised and lowered appropriately with more skill than she evinced on the apparatus itself, to the music of Enya "maybe near the end" bouncing in the background. Interactions with the audience fun with coins plinking into a bucket from nose, mouth, ass, and then at 5:25 there's a 15-minute intermission while they set up an elaborate plastic floor that is only used for inane tap-dancing on skis at the end of a series of magic empty-boxes holding six chorus girls, only the head with swords, and the impressive "shot through with flaming sticks" illusion. Over at the dot of 6:30, I dash out, then decide I have time, so I walk slowly in the dark to the hotel by 6:52, they're talking with the same 4 I lunched with, who are going to the same place, but by cab, and we leave after I pee in the hall john and we walk a rather long way down my-view exit-water to the Periluna (or P-something-luna) Hotel, to be told to go through the lobby into the restaurant from THAT way, and we sit to be bashed on the window by the daughter, who teaches some adorable teenagers to do the same to us, where Granny kills them by waggling her tongue at them. They're sweetly conversational, my pair, and one has the lentil soup to be disappointed along with me, and the ravioli as a main while I share the other's turkey liver (too much like chicken-liver for my taste) enormous appetizer, and the pork is wonderful, as is my chocolate cake, and one's fruit salad was alcoholed and the other's cassatta was too sweet and candied. Chat with the other four, get banged on the window again, and leave about 8:45 to get back on mysteriously wet pavements by 9PM, and I take the canister out for ice water---should I be SURPRISED that the ice machine didn't work at ALL? Start typing at 9:14 after taking a long time to find out I'd not yet typed card 5 from yesterday, let alone card 6 from today, and finish typing now, tired, at 10:26, feeling good enough to GO TO BED. MUST SHOWER and change underwear! Bed 10:41, tired.

MONDAY, 1/19/04: Wake 5:57AM, sore throat. Pee and type this dream at 6:07AM: I've been driven to a sandy beach and see a sexy dark-skinned man working nearby, so I go into a reading area and get a chair with a view to where he's moving around. Sit with my newspapers in another chair behind a bookstand, out of the sun, and a guy behind me, slightly unshaven and unkempt, taps me on the shoulder and when he senses that I would turn away IMMEDIATELY, strengthens his request and holds my attention by asking, "Wait, look, is it closer to take the test for driving nearby, or for some kind of job in a different direction?" Wake and type this bit, hoping I'm not getting a cold! Another snooze and jolt awake at 7:26AM with dream of sitting on a train and being PUSHED by a woman in a blue jacket through crowded corridors, and I say, "PLEASE don't push," but she INSISTS and so I start pushing, and after two or three crowded doorways get to MY seat, and as she continues on in triumph she waves gleefully back to me, thanking me for getting her so far so fast. Then I'm in a classroom reading a newspaper, and someone ELSE asks my help: a young man wants to enter a contest, and there's something about writing a saying in 1-33 words, but no longer than 132 characters, and he seems to think there's an inconsistency in the rules, but has forgotten exactly what it is, so searches for it while I glance at it, finding only grammatical errors of punctuation. Then JOLT awake, surprised to have slept so late, and type this to 7:30 and get into the shower. Pull curtains aside to another PERFECTLY CLOUDLESS morning! Shower thoroughly to 7:49, feeling somewhat fagged out and need to brush my teeth after breakfast. Breakfast 7:55-8:26, brush teeth, watch MARQUESAS on Outre Mer Francaise Channel 11. Rush down at 8:54. Two Filipinos last at 8:57 and leave then. Tarxien 9:19-10. #4 Tarxien 9:24, not much to take photos of. #5 replica from museum, WOMAN just to right at 9:33. #6 left apse, ship scratched on top. #7 back-most apse. #8 holes in which BODIES were buried at 9:50. From Hypogeum they found 12,000 kneecaps! #10 reconstructed entrance from high side-point, envying people on adjoining ROOF. "Rolling stones," under wall, proves it's the bottom of the excavation. 10:07 bus goes to Hagar Qim. Hagar Qim 10:29-11, NOT to the other place down the hill (Mnajdra). #11 Hagar Qim at 10:33. #12 Mnajdra temples, through locked gate. #13 Qim complex from below. #14 Filfla, and flowers under tree. #15-16 inside. #17 into sun. #18 farm panorama at 10:45. #19 side shrine with right "phallic symbol" and triangular temple, sex altar. Birdwatchers/hunters on Good Friday, April 2001, pushed MNAJDRA stones over and spray-painted them, now being restored. #20 tree and temple. #21 pedestal and "doorway" and "potty." #22 other side of oracle hole at 10:56. Tourists ACTUALLY well-behaved and prompt, just YAPPY, CONSTANTLY. Bus goes at 11:02. Ghar Dalam 11:22-12. #23 front to back: elephant, hippo, red deer (all modern examples of what were found in ancient forms). #24 plan (below) and section (higher) of 270 feet at 11:33. #25 stratigraphic wall at 11:42. #26 toward entrance. #27 toward back of cave at 11:45. #28 back from entrance. #29 cactus fruit. #30 aloe (name later) and blossom 11:53. #31 DISTANCE focus? On EACH of three boardings, always PRECISELY on the DOT of the hour do I get on board, usually last. Bus to lunch at 12:01. #32 Ghaxaq and church at 12:05. Leaving at 2:30. Park bus at 12:09. #33 fishing boats at 12:13. Get to walk at 1:28, good fish for lunch, nice talk with New Yorker about her work at Asia House. #34 Marsaxlokk panorama at 1:35. #35 family rowing at 1:40. #36 eyes of Horus on boats at 1:47. Walk to end, back, tired. Bus goes at 2:37, Felix gives me five COUGH drops, hope they WORK. Back to room at 3:11, Felix promising C. And I have MINE and HE has Fisherman's Friend drops. Start puzzles at 3:22. Pen I'd had all day JUST NOW gives out. Lie down at 4:26, putting on heat, getting room too hot, and then can't stand just lying there, so get up at 5:06 and do puzzles 29-35 to 7:58, then "just one more" 36 to 8:22, 37 to 8:42, 38 to 9:03. Feeling awful, taking LOTS of C and pills before bed. Bed at 9:16. Pee at 11:21 and record dream to 11:32 on the start of file 4: 11:27PM: Dream of a young snot trying to make out I stole "freelance money" from him, as I first meet him in some kind of ticket agency, where I buy a ticket to a performance on Broadway, but not certain of the time I wander down 42nd Street to find it mostly dark, with steel-shuttered storefronts, VERY few people on the street, and I think, "If any tourist came here, they'd think the entire country was in sad shape." Get to my hotel room to be mystified by finding him there, trying to put it into words by saying, "So everyone who buys tickets at that agency is assigned this room?" to someone else who is either sharing it with us, or is a policeman safeguarding the room. Seem to go to the john and on my way back to the room figure I should have taken my cash with me, because the kid seemed perfectly capable of taking all of MY money with the excuse in his head that I'd taken HIS money, and debated separating my wallet and my money in my pocket, so as to surprise anyone who would demand to check my wallet to find that I had NO cash in my wallet, because, as I would say, "I'd always pay with cash and never show my wallet, because I'd never want to lose my credit cards." Finish typing this at 11:32PM, nose beginning to drip AGAIN, as it had NOT done when I was trying to get to sleep before, starting Actualism to get to sleep.

TUESDAY, 1/20/04: Pee at 2:29AM, up at 5:40, lie miserably. Shit to 7:02 and up at 7:47, dress quickly and breakfast 7:55-8:43, an omelet and two pieces of toast and lots of melon and good dark hot chocolate, talking to Felix and Marilyn briefly on my right, and HE actually takes my pillbox that I tried filling with table salt until I found he had mixed it with rice so it wouldn't cake, and on his way to the kitchen runs across Stephen, and I hear his incredulous "Salt?" and then HE disappears into the kitchen and comes back with a totally loaded bit of salt. Gargle with this with tap water, and lie in bed until 10:20, finally turning down the heat so low that I shut it off, and open the curtains to see clouds at the start, but then it actually starts to clear and it ends up ANOTHER beautiful day. Look through the newspaper and start on the puzzle, but then I've got to get out at 10:45, the maid comes in when I take in the "Do not disturb" sign, and the front elevator is frozen, and I go to the back and down one floor when I realize I'd NOT taken my ticket! Jab door open at 3 and race up stairs to 4 and get ticket and get back to ground floor and get to bus next-to-last and it's off at 10:53-11:10. Sit and wait in lobby for entry-time of 11:30, but I decide at 11:20 that it's SILLY to watch this stuff without LOOKING at it, so I get up and go through door and the guy lets ALL of us down a bit early. Good audio-visual, then crowded, mumbled commentary with too-quick timed lights forcing the guide to push us on though some are shouting, "But I CAN'T see where you're pointing!" I want to buy a postcard, but all I can find is a 5₤ book that I want to see, and he directs me back to the crippled-armed guy over the monitor, and he gets out the fabulous book, which I buy and take to the minibus last at 12:20; offer to show book around but NO one is interested, and all are chatting among themselves, when Ann leans forward and says, "Robert, would you be interested in going back to Mnajdra?" and I immediately say "Yes." To hotel at 12:45, ask for a 22¢ stamp but they won't get it until after 7PM tonight, though they show me the mail slot that says mail will go out at 11AM tomorrow. Hear news that Gephardt dropped out (isn't that who Mildred wanted, and I said I wouldn't even ATTEMPT to make a guess until WAY into the campaign?). Ann calls Pat, who wants to come along, and she gets a bus-map with 38 and 138 marked that we have to get in Valletta. Down at 1PM, buy three postcards for 9¢, and onto bus 62 1:20-1:35 for 15¢, and then go across to find a bus 138 that goes 1:40-2:23, bright day, and have to pay 50¢ more for tickets when we can't find our tickets from yesterday. Down the path, Ann crowing over the splendor of being alone on such a dramatic landscape, and Mnajdra appears MORE detailed that Hagar Qim, but with no notes anywhere, no sign of pushed-over stones or spray paint, and only a few more tourists. #37 Mnajdra entry at 2:40. Change to roll 4, #1 major entrance with Ann and Pat. Leave at 3:05, hoping to get 3:15 bus to get us back to hotel by 4:45 for talk. #10 Hagar Qim from below at 3:15 on way to road, and then Pat sees a bus LEAVING at 3:18. We wait in vain for another bus till 3:50, having refused one cab who wants to take us to Zeibzugg, or wherever, and that won't help, but he sends ANOTHER cab to us, who offers Crown Plaza in 15-20 minutes for 10₤, and I coax them lightly to agree. I sit in front while they continue to gabble in back, I tossing in Aranui that they should try, and I ask for 2₤ tip, so we each pay 4₤ or $12, not bad at all, getting to hotel at 4:15, up to change clothes to sockless, resting a bit and feeling weak from cold, and down at 4:40 for Hamish (or DID he say Henry?) at 4:50, who gives a lovely self-centered talk about the independence of the Maltese, stating 260,000 cars and 600 miles of roads, which the Italians have started bidding to fix. He answers lots of questions to 5:50, and I ask Zoppi (who, of course, has THE nose) and Dan John where they're having dinner, and they say the Chinese, which AGAIN is perfect for me, except Dan makes clear that he DOES NOT share his food. We get first into the mall elevator, and number 6 pushes in to the 5-passenger elevator which seems OK for 450 kg, but then a plump guy INSISTS on squeezing in, and we move up to 2 and STOP, door still closed. We phone, guy arrives, and forces open door, eyes rolling when he sees how full we are, about 2 feet below the floor-level. We all get out and walk the rest of the way, saying we'll meet downstairs at 6:20. I quickly get the address for Sherryl and make out her card to mail on the way back, and get out to walk down the hill and up the special elevator to 8th floor with the two Filipino women, and get there at the DOT of 6:30, followed quickly by Felix and Marilyn, then another couple, then the "usual four" we ALWAYS seem to find ourselves with. Are there no OTHERS on the trip? The hot and sour soup is good, the sweet and sour pork is fatty, but the fried noodles are softish and sensational, especially with soy sauce. Lots of good vanilla ice cream at the end, and out at 8, mail Sherryl's card, get back to room at 8:13, and watch TV for BBC's Thermoman, kind of fun, and sift through others until stopping and start typing at 9:15, catching up to date now at 10:14---GOT to get to bed for shower tomorrow, then early breakfast before PACKING for the overnight trip to Gozo! Glance through the Hypogeum book until 10:26. Bed at 10:43PM.

WEDNESDAY, 1/21/04: Wake at 3:11, coughing and ribs beginning to hurt, and get up and pee and take two Comtrex, hoping for a miracle. Type this to 3:31 and try to get back to blessed sleep. Wake about 6:40AM, not coughing, and lie and feel ALMOST normal, thankful that Comtrex worked, and up at 7:06, coughing once to prove that I'm still sick. Shower wonderfully thoroughly to 7:25, counting that I might have to take only ONE more shower in the six days remaining in this trip. To breakfast 7:34. Breakfast omelet and VERY smooth, rich hot chocolate, and bacon and not even any fruit, since we have lunch today AND tomorrow. Elevator worked DOWN, but I strangely caught it as it CAME to 4 and I pressed and it opened, but it was stuck on 1 when I tried to come back up, and someone (Honey?) said it hadn't worked at ALL for her this morning. Back and type this by 8:08, ready to pack overnight bag and get out by 8:40. Packed by 8:35 and try to go down, but elevator now stuck at ZERO (with the door just sitting wide open when I get down there), and I go down the back way and board at 8:41, but ANN is last and bus goes at 8:49. TWENTY-FIVE are going! To ferry at 9:29. #11 ferry and Gozo at 9:45. #13 Comino Santa Maria tower and cliffs at 9:57. #15-16 Mgarr Harbor 10:02 and 10:03. #17-18 at 10:06 and 10:08. GREAT standing outside and WINDY and cold, with a cute (no, he's not cute, he's SEXY with his bony face and long fingers) long-legged Frenchman that a "straight" man (he's WITH a WOMAN!) seems intent on captivating "for some reason." Get to the bus at 10:17, on early enough to get a third-row seat, good for ALL the stops made during the LONG day, and it goes at 10:19. Gozo has 35,000 people, and the taller church at the dock is Our Lady of Lourdes. Original name is Audeche, lily in the water. Gozo roughly translates as "plaything." Ggantija dates from 3600BC. Other church is Our Lady of Victories. Off at Ggantija at 10:32. Artichokes grow like pineapples. #19 BACK of Ggantija and church at 10:37. #20 OLDEST in world at 10:40. ALWAYS visible for 5600 years, never buried. Assumed temples of "giantesses," NO written history, and no mention in OTHER written histories. NO carvings removed, LOTS of erosion (though book DOES tell of phallic symbol, snake carving, and two heads of Fertility Goddess at the Gozo Museum). #21 entering at 10:48. #22 TRACE of spiral at 10:54. #23 inner apse to left. #24 points below main altar in center. Animals BLED, then BURNED, maybe with aromatic herbs, says the French guide, with long-legged looking on. #25 from temples at 11:04. #26 holes and altar in SMALLER temple at 11:06. #30 RESTORATION blocks in large temple at 11:08. #31 facade from far side at 11:11. #32 back supports. #33 complex from entrance at 11:15. Buy 80¢ book at 11:15 and next-last back to bus at 11:21, leave at 11:22. #34 Ta' Kola windmill in Xagra photo-stop at 11:25. False church-facade clock to confuse devil to not steal souls. DID count over 5-6 keys in locks as per Helena's mythic talk of what Gozites do. #35 at 11:30, nave of church "Superstition on a sacred place" paradox, NO, TWO superstitions! #36-37 inside church. Roll 5: #1 corpse of St. Fortunatus, martyr (not so fortunate). #2 St. Michael behind glass at 11:40. 43 altars in use. RICH little church on ultraconservative "Paradise" Gozo. Pope made it a basilica. Homer's Ogygia is GOZO, so Calypso here, whom Ulysses left in seven years. Ramla beach at 11:56, #4 flower at 11:57, #5 Ramla beach, #6 tower from Calypso's window. Guy selling CANDLES for 25-meter cave, so I take #7 after he's gone; Calypso's cave at 12:09, seemed VERY shallow. #8 at 12:12 AEIONIUM [he spelled it for me, however I can't find it in the dictionary or encyclopedia with any reasonable variation of that spelling] [Aeonal means everlasting, but even that entry didn't help] flower. Leave at 12:13. Hotel is in Sannat. #9 Xagra-church at 2:06, after odd lunch of bland soup and blander hotel-made pasta with tiny bit of meat and lots of tomato sauce, and Neapolitan ice cream that's quite creamy and lime-strawberry-cream flavored, the oddness by Dr. Ernest Friedman, from Cleveland, telling me of stroke, neurogenesis, schizophrenia, and the fact that he solved the final problem of his computer algorithm here on the trip. He'd been published in Tuesday's Science Times on September 12(?), 2003, to "complete the cycle of his life," since he started under the mentorship of a psychiatrist on New York's Park Avenue. GREAT grounds around two pools and wandering paths out to distant cliffs that excite Felix, and into bus at 2:22, almost getting lost and picking up two great brochures from the desk. Xewkija church is St. John the Baptist, HUGE and St. Peter's-like. Rabat=suburb: of citadel. British in 1879 for 40th anniversary of the Queen named it Victoria, but everyone here still calls it Rabat. Blue Window at 2:50, with #12 at 2:53, then to #21 in FRENZY, never able to catch the rebounding spray at its highest, wonderful cliffs and huge breakers and NO one came out NEARLY as far as I went to stand at the tip and look at all the waters crashing. Reluctantly away from the shore at 3:10 and a quick dash to the inner sea, not really worth the time, and when I see the Gilmans poking back from a distance I dash up to glance into St. Anne's chapel, nothing. Onto bus at 3:16 and leave immediately to Ta' Pinu Basilica, from Pilipino who took care of the small chapel where Mary called to Carmen to build a big place, all donated and carved by hand. There from 3:27-3:50. #22: First four stations of the cross on way to big cross on top (only done on Good Friday) at 3:29. #23 distance view of canopy modeled on St. Peter's. #24 up to dome at 3:40. #25 painting (miraculous) and Pope from 1990 at 3:42. #27 Station 2 close-up. #28 church. #29 distant church at 3:48. RUSH. Starting to TIRE, and SWEATY. Stephen: "One glass of wine and I'm anyone's." Dinner is at 7, breakfast at 7:30, leave with everything at 9AM. To hotel at 4:13, and I unpack to take two Comtrex at 4:16 to stop coughing and hurting my midsection. Out at 4:19, calling for Felix [who WAS in 8!] and getting ODD response from guy (another Steve) in Number 9 (I'm in 11, don't know where anyone else is). Sole guy with backpack wandering cliff-top. #30-32 from cliff-top at 4:31. #33 ALL of Comino at 4:34. #34 WITH person on top, to left of "hole in wall." #35 part of Ta' Cenc Hotel at 4:39. #36 three ferries at 4:46. Roll 6: #1 down-cliffs 4:50. SURVEYING stuff toward nose of cliff: wires and nets and cables arranged sensibly? #2 three islands. #3 my shadow at 4:52, and I start back. #4 heather (?) at 4:52. #5 sunset clouds at 5:03. #6 guy at 5:07. #7 rock at 5:10. #8 guy before wall at 5:11. #9 cliff-side at 5:13. #10 cloudglow at 5:15. #11 at 5:17. #12-14 I SAW as green around right edge to 5:19. #15 at 5:24 backward from sunset. TOTALLY FILLED card number 9 with my jottings, and started card number 10 in my room by saying: Back at 5:37, after "window rapping" to the Cressmans as a joke, refusing their cheap wine, but they were happy I rapped, wondering where Donato was, since they'd seen an Italian wine named Donato. Relax and take my shoes off and read local stuff to 6:08, when I pull a pillow out of the closet and put it on the chair in front of the desk and finish this to 6:49, just time to wash my face and get out to dinner at 7PM. Going to be an EARLY night, maybe up to walk to cliffs again before breakfast at 7:30AM? From the sounds of everyone leaving, I'll probably be the last into the dining room at 7. And it turns out to be the case: only three seats left with either the tall/short gray-ladies pair and the mother-daughter (who DOES admit to maybe looking like Cathy, the cartoon character, though she doesn't like Cathy's uncertainties---and she's a MOTHER, with KIDS---so much for my single-daughter-idea stereotypes) and the Filipino sisters and the awful guy from room 9. I sit next to tall-gray, and then Helena sits next to me and Stephen next to number 9. Asparagus crepes are good and too-much, beef Wellington is good but for the cauliflower and Brussels sprouts with it, though Mama takes my cauliflower and returns with her chicken leg, and the Marsala cake is good. Conversation manages to go on, I have lots of good semisweet red wine, and go back for my camera to take #16 of Stephen and Helena at the table. Leave just about first at 9:22, when they say, "Oh, no, we're not going to perform," later this evening, and read New Yorker until 10:02. Coughing just a bit and go to bed at 10:08, nicely dark in warm room. Manage to get to sleep somewhat before 11, probably.

THURSDAY, 1/22/04: Wake and look at my watch at 2:40 and at 3:33, coughing a bit over painful lower lungs, and then wake at 6:27, thinking about whether or not to take Comtrex, and whether or not to get an x-ray to see if I have pleurisy, using some of the reputedly good Maltese hospitals, and type this until 6:45 to get up and shit. 7PM: Gratified to give a tiny throat-clearing half-cough and NOT get any painful twinge from my midsection. Recalled little dream-fragments: I've been instructed to pick up a "lemon pie" that has to be baked before eating it, so I think that buying it by 1PM should be good enough for cooking it for a couple of hours and making sure it's cool after a few more hours and ready to eat for dinner about 6PM. When I go to the shop, I remove what now looks more like a half-pizza from a pie-pan and find that about a third of the far side's bottom crust sticks to the pan, leaving only the thinnest semi-crust holding the ingredients together, but manage to dislodge the stuck piece in a unit and mash it somewhat off-kilter into the bottom of the piece and think it will bake out OK. Look out the window (in real life) to see that they'd shut off the porch light during the night, which made a former brightness around the edges of the curtain vanish, and the early-morning sky is dark-cloud filled, and it's still VERY windy, and likely cold, so it looks like a repeat of the weather of yesterday, not much direct sun, but semi-dramatic clouds scudding past with no threat of rain at all, blessedly. Now 7:05 and my earplugs prevent me from hearing any noise from anywhere around. Lie to store energy for a busy morning, and people start passing by a chink in my curtain at 7:24, then a door slams in the hall, and I'm up at 7:28 to type this and dress for breakfast. Risen sun shining brightly into my only window! 7:34: "Good mornings" outside my door, so I'm not the last by far. Ah, figure to SNUB CORD AT EYELET to tighten hood-cord around head, and leave for breakfast at 7:38. 8:30: #17 view from room. Everyone's sitting at their table when I go in, so I get a seat next to one of the wives and go for the buffet. No one is there, so I take my time over the cold cuts (GREAT roast beef slivers and salamis and hams), but suddenly EVERYONE is lined up behind me! Ask Felix and he said no one knew it was ready yet: they thought it would be set up closer to them, somehow. I end up with three dishes piled atop each other, more beef, a lovely stale-bread-soaked-in-milk-and-sprinkled-with-chocolate-not-carob brown bread, Felix adores the tomato juice while I have peach, grapefruit, and pineapple, and then someone reports they've put out more grapefruit halves, lovely orange-sized precut tartness, and my hot chocolate is more cool than hot, but the service is good and everyone starts leaving to pack up for the 9AM departure, someone talking abut checking out, but others saying they're just going to leave the keys in the rooms. Sun coming in the window-door as I finish this at 8:35, not coughing that much, and even then it isn't painful, as I'd feared. 8:44: go through Where to find the Knights of Malta parade (but only Friday!) and the Casa Rocca Piccola and the Great Siege of Malta under the Library. People on their way out already. Down to the last three Fisherman's Friends. Pack and leave at 8:51, not that late after all: back to the same third-from-front seat, and everyone piles on after I get on at 8:53, most people passing putting in suitcases they brought for overnight. Chatter chatter. Bus leaves at 8:58. Gozoites are called Gozitans. Stop 9:11 to 11:20, Cathedral 9:20-9:45. #18 Gozo 9:52. #19 Gun emplacements at 9:56. #20 Citadel wall 9:58. Bastions to 10:01. Cathedral Museum 10:02-10;14: stuff: gold, silver, paintings, St. Agatha getting her tits cut off. Borrow 50¢ for Archaeology at 10:16. #21 phallus (r) and snake-carving (l) from Ggantija at 10:19. HAVE plaster (on dried clay, painted with red ochre) from inner walls of south temple, foot-high jar 4100-3800BC, both in #22. #23 2 heads and, lower right, human figure, one leg lost, and Tarxien shards from 3000BC. #24 discoid figurine piece, life size, found at Ggantija, but from Tarxien phase (2500BC). Computer: Mnajdra: sunrise of first day of FOUR seasons hit inside. Qim oracle hole cut on ANGLE for summer solstice sunrise! FABULOUS moving images from dancilia@tin.it. Out at 11:05, to others "meet at 11:20." Back to church IN service, and WAIT for bus, getting 20 1000 mg effervescent C for 1.20₤. Pay back 50¢. Bus leaves 11:30, to Fontana for crafts at 11:36, meet in 30 minutes. 70 cl Bajtra for 8.5₤=$25! $2/bottle of wine. Back on bus, bored, at 11:55. Read New Yorker, contented in sun, earplugs in, off at 12:10. To Xlendi at 12:13-2:20, St. Patrick's Hotel at window table for ONE at 12:20, luck with me! I pick up THIRD information brochure "left" for me, in SINGLE copy of GREAT interest, in churches! AND sit alone at table for 2 and "number 9" (find HE is Stephen, also) sits with mother and daughter and not me! Vegetable soup, hot, and fish, warm, and gummy carrots and cauliflower the best of the vegs, and Neapolitan ice cream wrapped in stale cake that I trim off, still watching wonderful waves back-splashing from walkway outside. Pee and leave at 1:06, walking shop-side to #25 Xlendi at 1:21. Out to end of tiny inlet with stranded flotsam high above, and an old stone bridge that a determined walker behind me passes me and crosses and vanishes over the next hill, and I take pictures of cliffs newly revealed out of cove. Back from ONE end, having taken #26-28, at 1:40. #29 "nun's pool" that I accuse Stephen of lying about, but he says in SUMMER the water is mirror-flat and they DO swim there. Withdraw 25₤ from HSBC at 2:02. Pee again from the backside of St. Patrick's and on bus at 2:17. Bus goes at 2:19. To Mgarr at 2:40, and my ticket EXPIRED. Get new one and sit at 2:45, getting tired. Board 2:50, giving BOTH tickets to them, and go up top, alone at first, and just about STAY alone. 3:03-3:25 trip, windy but sunny, smooth, missed the bright blue of Comino beach this time, hardly anyone else up top, and to bus at 3:31 across the way. Bus goes at 3:35. They play AWFUL popular music, earplugs in. Hotel at 4:13, watch waves? To room at 4:18, weary. Big shit to 4:33, newspaper puzzle to 4:53, puzzles from book, really addicting, to 10:20, elevator not working again, and to Pizza Place at 10:25 for a Four Seasons and 1/2 bottle awful red wine for 5₤ including tip, leave at 11 having eaten maybe half the pizza, most of the ham and mushrooms and sausage, though, and up at 11:08 to feel like jerking off, so I pull up a chair and wrap my testicles in my jacket-elastic and try not to get turned off by my mounds of flesh, and cum (not very interestingly) at 11:22, and take two more C in water and pills, and bed at 11:31, asleep quite quickly, not coughing nor running off at the nose.

FRIDAY, 1/23/04: Wake at 2:57AM: Dream of two different kinds of cataclysms: 1) a data "collapse" where four or five data-lines of the papacy coalesce in some hard-disk crash so that Quirinale, Giuseppe, is at once obliterated, in another way truncated, and so an early biographical line becomes "official," in which he hadn't yet been elected Cardinal, and was yet now Pope, data surviving only in a small-caps form of his name. 2) What may be a storm, or an earthquake, but which is so compressing and confounding of atoms that it must be more like an atomic explosion, where in a microsecond two people have the neuronal capability to realize "something happened," and to look at a clock to see the split-second time, or look at another face to see a blank aghastness before the moment of annihilation, and four other men are thrown into the middle of a wooden tunnel in which, somehow in the novelistic reporting or televisionistic romanticization of their fates, the "atoms of their bodies and the molecules of wood from the stair-canopy become inextricably mingled in a primordial soup in which only a cloud chamber could record the production of a hyperon or the annihilation of two quarks into a spurt of sheer kinetic energy, carrying away life force in a sun's-center paroxysm of transformation and reconstitution." Wake coughing from some lung-depth that seems mixed with gastric reflux from the pizza eaten without enough digestion time before retiring, and phlegm and stomach acid and possibly one last squirt of liquid vitamin C from those effervescent tablets merge in the same mad amalgam as the atoms in the dream. Finish typing this dream-followed-by-reality at 3:15AM and hope to get back to sleep. Wake at 6:46 and up at 7:16 and shit and shower to 7:43, breakfast 8-8:35 of nicely fried-over egg, lots of fruit, diluted hot chocolate, well-done bacon, sit across from Felix, while Marilyn is across from Donato, separated from Dan, who later gets Pat. Talk to Stephen about what to see in Valletta to 8:40, and down at 8:53 to talk, having to WALK down, since I had to report the LITTLE elevator out of service with the door partly ajar on 4 by reaching inside for the phone and getting a perfunctory "Thank you" from the operator. Only ONE roll of film in bag, should have been TWO? How many do I have?? Count that I HAVE five used, and checking back through the files I started roll 2 in file 2, roll 3 in file 3, and rolls 4, 5, and 6 in file 4, so roll 6 IS in the camera and all is fine. Stephen and speaker, a dignified gentleman named Jaime Camino, who can't think of "Beatitudes" and wants to say "Ethiopian" for "Byzantine," and is completely charming, arrive at 9AM precisely. In 630AD Emperor Croesus destroyed the Holy Sepulchre and TOOK the cross, and in l638 Emperor Heraclius got it BACK. Moslems (Omar, Prophet's uncle) took over. In 1000AD Hakim destroyed 30,000 places of worship (Catholic, Jewish, even Sunni, since he was Shiite). ("If the Sunnis and Shiites ever get together, watch out for the rest of the world, but they never will.") In about 1025 Christians start going to Jerusalem to "tour" but got raped and sold into slavery and killed and held for ransom, depending on age and wealth (and I suppose gender), and in 1050s there are even recorded NAMES of hospices along the way. Byzantium and Bagdad were the only two "civilizations," while Europe was a disaster area. Seljuk Turks (1071) devastated Anatolia, and in 1095 Pope Urbanus started crusades. 4 armies took Jerusalem in 1099, and MASSACRE followed. Gerard was running the ARABIC hospital of St. John in Jerusalem. 1113 put under Vatican. Gerard died in 1120, Raymond DuPuis took over, to Augustinian rules. HE started KNIGHTS to PROTECT, and 8-point cross of Amalfi, NOT 8 langues, which only came 1302-1462. In 1287 Jerusalem taken by Saladin. In Acre battle, NO Teutonic knights, only TEN Templars, and only SEVEN Hospitallers survived, in 1291. To CYPRUS, made NAVY; to Rhodes for 200 years. In 1453 Ottomans took Constantinople, ending Byzantium. ICON from then now FOUND in Montenegrin monastery 10 years ago, but they won't give it back (said to be Mary painted by St. Luke, but all black now). In 1530 Malta and Tripoli given to knights by Charles V. Malta had ONLY Mdina! In 1565 Sulieman attacked La Vallette, but lost, and in 1571 Battle of Lepanto destroyed Ottoman fleet. French in 1798-1800, then Italians to 1964. Now 12,500 members and many hospitals and hospices. Only THEY and the Red Cross sit in (not vote) at U.N. Back up at 10:05 to dress for the trip, and onto bus at 10:14, in FOURTH row. Stephen: MWF Parade not on. So today's itinerary is 1) Piccolo, 2) Library, 3) Siege, 4) stamps. At 10:22 Stephen is waiting for six, no one TELLS him they're not coming. Off at 10:26, making sure we know we leave for dinner tonight at 5:30. Bus leaves at 12:45 from Valletta if we want to return on it from Le Meridien Hotel. We get off bus at 10:45 and I go directly to the Piccolo at 10:55 to find a tour at 11, getting a good book with the price of 2.5₤, to a rather dowdy residence with some truly awful paintings, an interesting portable altar, some unique Maltese silver, and cistern-air raid shelters 60 feet underground. To Library to show my proof of identity and get a badge that lets me up to book-lined reading room with covered reproductions of everything but what I wanted to see: the drawings of the caves and the 1130 Papal decree, but they have copies of the 1500 something, lots of costumes, old engravings, and WWII bombing photos. Out at 12:12, chilly, and go next door to the Siege of Malta for a pricy 3.5₤, leaving my jacket and stuff while I put on headset and get drawn through history until 1:10, some good, merely OK for the most part, but not really worth $10.50! Manoel Theater is ONLY open at 5:15 today, should have seen it before. Interesting books in shop, including pictures of the pre- and post-fire Opera House from the WWII bombing. Bookshop to 1:30 and down to buy 7.12₤ ($21!) of one of each current stamp from obliging clerk when I said I didn't want ANY of the gussied-up "collector's items" that sold for far more than face value, though they DID include souvenir sheets, which would have been nice to have, but I have one new page to add and that's about OK, a 1₤ stamp BOUGHT for $3 and a 2₤ stamp BOUGHT for $6 must be worth a LOT in Scott! NICE clerk, manly face and neat clipping until 1:46. Pee at the bus stand, and on bus 62 at 1:54, and get off way ABOVE hotel to look at INCREDIBLE waves buffeting constructions offshore, taking #30 wave inundating swimming pool at 2:17, but later a FANTASTIC blue wave reared over the WHOLE THING and practically buried it permanently! Buy a tuna salad sandwich from a beach kiosk after debating just HOW hungry I felt, but there was really too much bread and not much tuna for 35¢. Watch waves to 2:34, then back to room at 2:39, main elevator still not working. Eat and read new Where, good, coincidentally on Mdina, where our last tour is tomorrow, and start typing this at 2:56, finishing now at 3:54, looking out at waves spraying up the bulkheads of Valletta across the way, ANOTHER bright sunny day, though somewhat COOLER than before, said to be down to 45° tonight, so I'd better take my sweater with my jacket to dinner. Now to finish reading the almost-done New Yorker from January 5 at 3:56. Finish that at 4:15. Repack everything and wash face and take another 1 g C by 4:45, then start puzzle until 5:20. Decide to give room-maid $10, Helena $20 and Stephen $40, and fuck 'em if they don't care for it. Most people on bus at 5:25, and the front elevator WORKED, even WITHOUT stopping on ONE! Leave at 5:31. Half-Way Inn at 6:15. Sit with anniversary couple from Columbus, mother/daughter, and Felix/Marilyn, for tastes of gillage (brown bean paste)(?), tomato-sauce on toast, and pickled vegetables, then potato leek soup, then bresaola, tenderer than at the home lunch, with peas and potatoes, then, inevitably, tri-color ice cream, with white wine. Stephen joins us at end for INCREDIBLE jokes and funnies, starting with my dropping Inuvik, Antarctica, Sete Quedas, but I could not say that I'd been to Timbuktu. Out at 8:43, I breaking the spell by going to the john, at which moment Stephen leaves our table and everyone gets up to put on their coats, and leave at 8:53, getting back in RAIN---FIRST OF TRIP---at 9:46, then brush teeth and watch French news on TV, finishing this at 10:33, late enough to go to bed NOW. Bed at 10:38, tired, but worst of cold seems to be over.

SATURDAY, 1/24/04: Wake at 12:30, 1:44, 3:25, and 5:20, then to type this and pee and feel my QUITE sore middle back from coughing during the third of those wake-ups, counting only TWO mornings left to wake so often. Up 7:36AM, put on heat and bathrobe, open drapes to find clouds and a rain-wet balcony floor for the first time. Today's tour is the LAST bus ride with group and last "required" outing. Shit copiously and trim beard and feel LAZY, now 7:54AM. Actually COUNT tours with Helena, and $20 IS on the low, but acceptable, side, and decide to kowtow to tradition and give Steven the driver $10, which is too much, but---there it is. Back IS sore; leave for breakfast 8:07. Back at 8:45, smaller pot of hot chocolate for the first time (only two cups, not 4), one egg, two half-slices French toast, lots of fruit, probably too much considering lunch is included today, as well as dinner tonight. Lots of new faces in the hotel; elevator still works, though it DID stop on 3 on the way down with no one there. Will wear SWEATER for the first time to the coach today. Label note card 13 and count to find that this IS the 13th day. Tomorrow only full-day of trip left! Decide to take New Yorker to read if there's any sitting-around time in the cold, windy, possibly rainy day. Lots of time to spend now at 8:56AM before 9:15 departure. VERY dark clouds building up outside. Find 5₤ in jacket pocket! Leave 9:03, too early. Elevator stops at 3, empty, again. Bus FULL at 9:06! Bus leaves at 9:10, 5 minutes early! Stop for #31, Mdina, at 9:33. Stop in Mdina 9:39. #32 Mdina gate 9:46. #33 Mdina cathedral cupola 10:05, baroque. #34 side altar 10:14 (poor flash?) (with ANOTHER "St. Luke Icon"). Out of Cathedral 10:24. "Free time" from 10:40-11:50 at square. #35 cabbie at 10:41. Museum of Natural History for 50¢ at 10:44. #36 polished agates at 10:46. GORGEOUS minerals! #37 aerial photo of Malta 11:02. Bones, shells, fish, butterflies, geology, paleontology, skulls. SOME nice dioramas (and a surprise shower from the ceiling in the hall), evolution, regular STUFF. Minerals best, and some shells. Museum to 11:20. Moon rock and flag from Nixon in 1973. Cathedral Museum at 11:22, 1₤ for "private" museum, no discount for seniors: authors, composers (sic transit!; makes me think about how I'm going to leave MY stuff), COINS, ceramics, fragments of old churches, GREAT drawings by Bernini, Parmigianino, Reni, Elizabetta Sirani with Jupiter KISSING Ganymede, both open-eyed, on the mouth. Ribera and FADED Michelangelo. LOTS of unsexy Dürers. Out at 11:50, group leaving, and I'm last. SUN out at 11:54. Mdina Experience (cats are FED, most are FAT) (could have spent LONGER in large museum with VERY poor paintings---another nude man by a woman) 12:02-12:26, not much additional information, no narrators listed. Bacchus Restaurant nice from 12:34-2:10, talk with couple, as he and I finish the bottle of red on the table, and shallow grayish minestrone, lasagna with side salad, and dessert of more cake than ice cream. Leave at 2:23 to cart tracks at 2:41, get off bus in cold for #2 and #3 of cart tracks at 2:45. Would have to see MANY to decide what may have caused them. #4-8 from Dingli cliffs stop to 2:55, NOT so special. #9 horse's earmuffs at 2:59. Start back at 2:59. To hotel at 3:33:33 and to room at 3:39, END! LIE till 4, after peeing and thinking about end of trip and month at home and start of NEXT trip. ENDLESS! Finish this at 4:13, ready for relaxing puzzles. Finish SIX puzzles to 6:36, 143 minutes divided by 6 = less than 24 minutes per puzzle. Decide to wear my SWEATER to final dinner. Out at 6:53, down to note that the gay pair are talking to the Philippine sister and the daughter, I'm talking to Ann and Pat and Mrs. Asia House, while five men talk to each other. Hmm. I lead the way into the dining room, sitting next to Marilyn, who's next to Felix, and a strange couple across from them, then Pat sits across from me, Ann and her husband (now quite animated, interestingly) sit next to Pat, and the snub-nosed no-camera-camera and his VERY old wife sit next to me. Enormous portions of cheese blinis come first, of which I eat 1/4, then it's buffet, and I have two pieces of pork and orange sauce, a bit of red snapper with a good cream sauce, some of the octopus stew, and two great Jamaican chicken wings. Then go for slivers of each of the five desserts, finishing my second glass of white wine before they start charging everyone, and kids start running around and I'm more and more just an observer, so I decide I'm going upstairs, say "Goodnight" to everyone and get back upstairs at 8:10, typing this to 8:15, and will puzzle some more and try to get to bed EARLY. Do three to 9:11, get ready for bed. Print a very important question: "Stephen has our AIRLINES tickets?" and get to bed at 9:30PM. Coughing, coughing, DAMNABLE coughing, so I'm up at 11:12 to take two Comtrex and a Noctamide! Fall asleep MAYBE 11:30PM at earliest.

SUNDAY, 1/25/04: Wake at 4:37, coughing, to pee, again at 6:47 to pee, look outside, and crawl back into bed. Plane tickets, I remember, are in my SAFE!! Coughing becoming DRY. Lie and think, count days and hours, think ahead to tasks in NYC, feeling weary of DOING! Finally root myself out of bed at 7:36AM to put up the heat and shower. Shower long and slow until 8:02, the LAST shower of this trip. And I keep asking myself WHY do I travel when the few days before leaving and returning are so anxiety-ridden? Well, clearly, the benefits of each trip far outweigh those anxieties. If only the anxieties could be REMOVED! Sit numbly, drying, at 8:06, wondering when (not soon, I wouldn't think) I'll be coming to the end of file 5. Fuss with everything and leave for breakfast at 8:30. Eat with tall/short gray-hairs, but STILL see a man I don't know with a woman I THINK is in our group. Up at 9:10, cold, still coughing, but GOT to go into Valletta to pass this last morning and afternoon. Fuss and putter and take two more fizzy C and dress and get out at 9:40AM. To bus stop at 9:52, feeling DRAINED. Bus 9:59-10:12. LOCATE Lascaris WAY around the side, then walk length of Valletta to Fort St. Elmo, 1.5₤, no senior price, and move a chair into my place at 10:38, chilly, but out of the sun when it's occasionally shining, and take #10 of pre-group at 10:39, #11 in SUN shining on armor at 10:52. They play recorded music until 10:59, then announce in 4-5 languages, then play on drums to march in four groups from four different lands: I guess Malta, Germany, England, Italy, maybe France, and do inspections, fire rifles, which I take, and then the four little mortars and then the machine gun, which surprises everyone. #16 chief honcho inspects at 11:24. To #21 for firings to 11:34. Sword-fighting in middle. #22 finale at 11:39. To War Museum at 11:45-12:57, 50¢ for senior, and there's lots of stuff, not THAT interesting, but I resist taking a photo of the relief oil-ship Ohio that they commemorate as helping end the oil and food famine caused by the German blockade in 1942. #23 King George Cross and records of air raids, on leaving at 12:57. Walk along Old Hospital Road, hoping to get to Hastings Garden, but they're uninteresting except for the view, #24 from there at 1:18, and people watching the cricket match with great shouts below. #25 bus terminus at 1:23, tiring quickly. Get to signs for Lascaris War Rooms, walk down from the (say) south roadway on a ramp, double back along the parapet overlooking five or six stories of carving into the limestone below, then through a tunnel with stairways, then DOWN a long ramp to the central area with the Ninfa (or whatever) Canteen, empty but playing music, and there's a sign on the TUNNELS connecting the War Rooms, but they're CLOSED (as is the "Lascaris Theater," which I can only assume is a theater). Back up through the exit marked Kalkara Gardens and Bus Terminus, and the gardens overlook the industrial harbor and are OBVIOUS cruising grounds, so I at least take #26 below-the-bus gardens at 1:49. Real maze back to the 62 to Sliema, getting 10¢ return from my 50¢ piece, and MAYBE he really thought I gave him 25¢, but I doubt it. Cheated out of 35¢ on my last day. To Royal Kiosk because it looks good in the sun and I've decided it's early enough for my FINAL dinner, giving two hours to digest before getting to bed about 7PM to feel OK getting up at 4AM tomorrow, and remind myself that I have to put my BAG out. Order fish (absolutely delicious plaice) and chips for 3.25₤ and two Hop Leaf beers for 52¢ each, and leave 60¢ tip on the 4.29₤ bill for one of the better meals of the trip. Walk wearily up the hill (to hear a couple going for the 3:30 harbor tour, which I hope they got right, since Stephen's note says the last one is at 2:45! [they did get it right], and decide to make sure I have no bill, and I'm surprised to get charged 6.4₤, which I find is for the buffet we had on first Wednesday, which of course was NOT with the group, only Felix and Marilyn, with 95¢ for wine, and they make me wait while they "change staff" and give me a receipt in an envelope and I've got THAT done, anyway. To room at 3:11, still coughing, and take two C and my evening pills and finish typing this by 3:36, and I guess I'd better pack---naw, let's do some puzzles first. Oh, and the blessed maid gave me two MORE bottles of water, so I have one to take with me on the plane! Checked to see that I did NOT bring NyQuil this time! Maybe buy some at the London airport? Puzzle rather unsuccessfully until 5:48, then decide to PACK! Sound of RAIN on the balcony at 5:10PM. 6:43PM: Seemed to have packed everything away and made a note for repacking at the airport: 1) unlock bag, 2) put umbrella into bag. Everything else is in my A&K bag, including TUESDAY BREAKFAST pills if things REALLY go wrong (including losing my blue bag), which doesn't really weigh too much, since my sweater is in my blue bag, to be gotten out only if it's below freezing in New York. Even my single glove is in my A&K bag if it's bad here or in London tomorrow. Had yet ANOTHER water bottle in the drawer, so along with the one I'm taking on the plane, there are THREE---well, TWO, since one is empty already in the room. No one else's bag is in the hall, but out mine goes at 6:50PM, getting ready for bed. No, THERE ARE three bottles of water. Take ONE C AND Noctamide and last two Comtrex, leaving two C for tomorrow with my melatonin before going to breakfast. At least got to 7:01PM. Can't think of anything else, so TO BED AT 7:08PM. Coughing, trying Actualism, but cough so much I get up at 7:28 to take last two aspirin and last Fisherman's Friend. Back to Actualism at 7:33. 11:17PM jerk awake and cough and type and pee, throat VERY cough-y. Take doxylamine; so I got maybe 3.5 hours' sleep so far.

MONDAY, 1/26/04: Wake once with a few coughs, but get right back to sleep, and then, wondrously, wake to the wake-up call at 4:02AM feeling almost normal! Wash face, take two C and melatonin, dress and put stuff in A&K bag (LOTS of room) and feel NO anxiety before flights. Out at 4:27. Tea and rolls and pills till 5PM, talking about NOT accepting a passport that will expire in six months. But they DID accept mine, 1/26-7/17, less than six months---Well, I WAS legal COMING IN. Tall-gray takes my e-mail especially for NYC secret places tour in April. Onto bus 5:28. Leave 5:39, no Stephen. To airport 5:57, no sign of dawn. Seat 5A again, bag to JFK, to 6:14. Buy Bajtra for 5.55₤ for 100 cl, glad I waited. Look at $13 paperbacks, 2.50₤ gay magazine with a sexy calendar, and hear that Stephen is BELOW, and he apologizes and I throw him the envelope, saying, "I took out the hundred-dollar bill." Look at few, but good, shops and catch up at 6:50, boarding said to be 7:10. Foral, from Basel, for coughs, with codeine, said to be great. Felix GAVE me 9 Fisherman's Friends, and I do SORT of stop coughing. VERY cloudy at 7AM, at last "today" in NYC. Chat with a few people amicably, and many ask about my AlphaSmart, including Columbus taking down the address. Boarding starts at 7:15, announced officially at 7:18, everyone in line before me, but what do I care, maybe row 5 won't have any kid, since I haven't heard ANY so far. Actually a few breaks in the clouds outside. Hope for a clearer flight going back. Everyone going onto the BUS. Board 7:30, seat on LEFT, into sun, drat. No blanket, wrap sock-feet in coat. Fine en route, light chop. 2 hr. 5 min? No WAY! Move out at 7:57. Off at 8:02. #27 town near airport 8:03. #28 Xlendi and coast at 8:07. Multi-cloud layers! But I AM on shady side. IS three hours, five minutes, arriving 10:10 their time. Breakfast at 8:34, eggs, fish, baked beans, of all things, and tea and tiny cake and orange juice. Glimpses of the sea and, I think, south coast of Corsica at 9:02. 9:13 flying into a cloud FRONT! When they pass out drinks, I ask for a tonic, then see red wine bottles going out, so I ask if they have gin, and they do, so I'm somewhat calmed at 10AM. Mostly clouds as I finish puzzle 64 ("Follow the leader," which substitutes amclintoned for ambushed, for example, quite difficult unless you know; even the title didn't help until right at the end). Finish that at 10:35, starting down soon? Change watch to 9:37AM. 9:39: "Landing in 30 minutes." 4° C in London. #29 Windsor Castle (the guy behind me said), just coming in and out of clouds at 10:17. Go round and round, sometime even seeming to go up, but we turn and turn and finally land at 10:19. Pass British Airways SST parked at 10:32. After FOUR empty Terminal 2 busses go, a standing-room-only Terminal 3 bus comes at 11:03. Air New Zealand "Airline to Middle Earth" has huge Lord of the Rings painting covering its side. Line at Terminal 3 starts at 11:15. Through at 11:23, changing sides twice, getting beeped on my belt again. Buy and take Benylin at 11:43, since they don't have Foral, and I DO seem to have stopped coughing, though I'm chain-sucking Fisherman's Friends. Dash back to United (confusing sign saying "Do not pass this point without boarding card," and the United desks are BEYOND that, and when the sign says "First and business classes," I bend over and ask, "Where do the peons go?" and they motion me up, saying the sign doesn't mean anything. Great. Go BACK to get my miles credited to my account on THIS leg, but they say they can't do it for the past, so I have to MAIL in the stub to get credit. Yeah. At 11:50 she says boarding is at 12:35, no gate yet. I sit and do puzzles and get accosted by old travelers and gaze longingly at a perfect-eyebrowed fellow who can't understand why I might be looking at him, but I suspect his girlfriend is used to it. Then look at 12:34 and see LOTS of flights announced after 1:40, and finally the multi-listing for UA905 comes around, and it's gate 14. Told by the sign it'll take me 10-20 minutes to get there, and I'm there at 12:42 to a JAMMED lounge, but at 12:58 they announce boarding rows 38-43, and all the yammerers move off to the line, and I hope they're WELL behind me. At 12:59 they're up to row 35, so I put this away. Also finish with card 14, working on the last: 15 on the 15th day! Board at 1:07, JAMMED. Announced as 6 hr. 34 min. flight. "Light snow in New York, overcast, nice weather along route, but choppy mid-Atlantic." Move back at 1:23. Off at 1:36. Watch Under the Tuscan Sun and cry and cry and cry. Saw LOTS of Corsica. GOOD lunch: BBQ chicken, herbed mashed potatoes, peas and corn, red wine, and TWO gin and tonics, so I'm SWIMMING. 4:01 pee, BLOTTO. 4:30: 29 mph tailwind, so tailwinds BOTH WAYS! We followed a spiraling-straight contrail for MILES. Read London Times and USA Today to 4:49, 3:13 into flight, 3:21 to go. At 5:48 change time to 12:48, 2:22 to go. #30 ice patterns in ocean at 1:37. 2:43 start down. All snow below. I'm sorta numb. Temperature 19°F, overcast. #31 frozen bay at Robert Moses State Park. Land at 3:15, over an hour early, dock at 3:26, off plane at 3:32, through passports almost instantly at 3:36. Decide to count bags until mine shows up, and it does at 19 at 3:41. PEE!! Home at 4:40, taxi $30 including tip. Listen to phone messages to 4:51, weigh bags and count money. Phone Arnold to 5:06. Look through mail to 6:10. Eat two slices of cinnamon toast and take pills and get to bed at 6:35PM. Wake at 10:54, tiny vision of mympths, strangely semi-hard but not really feeling sexy. Pee and drink water.

TUESDAY, 1/27/04: Up at 2:20AM, shit. Read mail to 3:50. Breakfast at 4:30. Unpack to 5:30. #32-37 at home at 5:20AM to finish seventh roll of film. Find that the VCR tape didn't RECORD while I was away, but I'd set it for 11:30PM Sundays, anyway! Brush teeth and watch TV to 6:20. Sort souvenir papers to 7. Turn on computer and transfer AlphaSmart to it and proofread to 8. Have "lunch" and computer freezes oddly while printing! THAT would be a pain! Read first Sunday Times 12:50-1:10, then go to lunch with Mildred and Charles at Gramercy Tavern, very good, with Ron from Beard, to 4:30. Ken calls late with flight times, and bed at 8:45PM!

WEDNESDAY, 1/28/04: Up at 4AM, breakfast at 7:30, finish FIRST Sunday Times at 9AM. Cleaning and dentist and Chanterelle, then SECOND Sunday Times, TV and J/O 9:10-9:35 and finally get to bed at 9:48, still feeling overly tired, still taking Benylin,not coughing much, but lots of blood-red nasal mucus constantly. Added from AlphaSmart too late to get on page 29: 1/28/04: 1:28AM: Dream of looking at a rug on a wall and thinking it would be good for a living room like Susan and Rick's, and buy it but then wonder how I'm going to roll it up and transport it, or even if it's any good, since when I look at it closely I see holes and poor repair jobs on it. Then Susie Mead phones the guy who owned the rug, who got me invited to the party where I saw the rug, and I shout into the phone. "Curse you, Susie Mead," as a joke, but she hangs up. Then I'm riding in a telephone-service car, thinking to go home, but realize that I have to go to the Express office to pick up the package (not really the rug anymore) and that I can't send the driver to do it because I have to show two kinds of ID and really SIGN for it, so I say he has to turn back, and he does so as I bend forward and say, "Lights, please," and he's turned on his headlights, but the light outside is so anomalous and indistinct that I really have to peer ahead to see the two cones of light on the road from his headlights. Confused plotting, but the LOOK of the rug (orangey-brown, Oriental-y, about 15 by 20 feet, which I had to convince myself wasn't TOO big for their living room---and maybe they could hide some of the worse spots under pieces of furniture or in corners of rooms), and the clarity of the decision I had to make about MY going to the office to sign for the piece I was getting, were very distinct. Get up, look at the thickening snow outside, put the light on while I shit and type until 1:41, taking 1/4 melatonin to get back to sleep, hopefully, quite quickly.

THURSDAY, 1/29/04: [And just find that, thankfully, when I only print a SINGLE page I can continue to work with the document.] Pee at 2:20, take 1/3 melatonin and shit and type dream: 2:24AM: Woke at 2AM with some memory of dream, but now only recall it had something to do with a handsome prince, or a handsome castle, or a handsome inheritance: very appealing, very pleasant, a situation I'd rather be in---my transplanted head as discussed at Chanterelle lunch yesterday? 3:40AM: To ADD to list of "nice coincidences" like finding so many brochures, singly, in churches, that I pick up as souvenirs, and then my happy thought that FRIDAY I'm going to lunch at MARK, RIGHT NEAR the Metropolitan Museum of Art; wake at 3 and feel like trying to cum again, and find that Young Hercules is on TV, which I wanted to TAPE, so I DO, along with 4 hours tonight. And now TRY to get back to get SOME sleep before gym and Chin and Ken's stuff and Nobu TODAY. I SHOULD FEEL GREAT---and maybe I will, soon!
Add GYM to day's activities (but don't do it). 3:05AM try J/O AGAIN, and AGAIN I don't ejaculate, and the spasms are VERY light. Put a note to ask Chin about seeing someone about it. Type a note, back to bed at 3:55. Try a complete Actualism but it doesn't put me to sleep, though I hope it calms me enough to have a normal blood-pressure reading with Chin this morning at 11. Pee at 5:05. Up at 6:23, feeling that typical no-gym lethargy. Decide to see if I can see the sunrise, but stand on the cold balcony 6:55-7:15 and can only say that it wasn't in view when it rose above the small layer of clouds in the east. Will try again tomorrow. Play a bit of Spider to show that I'm not pressured by time, put the Malta stamps into the stock book, check with the two index jobs to find that they ARE coming in soon, and phone Carolyn at 10AM to leave word. Also call Go Ahead and find that I do NOT have to renew my passport before the cruise. Talk to Shelley to 10:20, to Vicki to 10:30, to Sherryl to 10:40, and get out to Chin, checking my bank balance to find that I'm OK, and Chin complicates things by 1) prescribing me Ambien for sleeping pills, 2) giving me an appointment with an endocrinologist for my sexual questions, 3) giving me a bloodwork sheet, which I'll do next week, but makes me feel much better by finding my blood pressure perfect at 120 over 80. THAT'S a relief! Buy groceries on the way back, forgetting lots of stuff, then out to phone Ken and giving him back his South Pacific Lonely Planet and $125 check for Beard, then to Nobu for Mildred and the third-best lunch of the three so far, back at 3:30 to play more Spider, letting everything pile up for tomorrow. At last decide to prepare my salad, and I have it with pastrami and one of Rita's warmed-up oranges for dinner about 8:15, but just feel TIRED, so bed at 9:07PM.

FRIDAY, 1/30/04: Pee at 3:25 and shit, taking 1/3 melatonin. 3:30 dream: However unlikely, we're SPIES, and go to a gambling casino's restaurant in a car that he's sure isn't bugged (which also seems unlikely), and notice that his dusty cargo pants aren't really the kind of dress this elegant, expensive restaurant would warrant, but then we're obviously special people who don't have to obey the ordinary rules. 4:09 up to J/O to 4:25, ejaculating a bit with lessened rubber-band pressure at the base of my cock, and watch a Farside hunk on Sci-Fi till 5. Up at 5:52, not able to sleep and thinking too much, but SLIGHTLY relieved of "all the things I have to do before I can start enjoying life." Take 1/3 melatonin and the last of the Benylin, still coughing moistly with blood-filled nose. Clip toenails and fingernails just to DO it, then print 25-28 of Malta and put away J/O stuff. Type this to 6:55AM, caught up at last, but still lots to do today. Finally erased the five phone messages yesterday. Look out at 7AM and it appears the eastern sky is totally clouded up. Put away the last Sunday Times (but of course getting another tomorrow!), clean up most of the living-room junk and now have a shitload of stuff on my desk to put away, no sunrise by 7:15AM. Breakfast to 7:35, then get right to clearing my desk, phoning Essex to get back on payment by Visa, paying bills, filling out forms to 8:50. Transfer the last dreams from the AlphaSmart and clear all its files by 9AM, feeling good to accomplish so much. Figuring to clear the table of the last of the trip, and almost caught up with sleeping, I can consider this the end of the trip and the SUMMARY can fit in below, I hope.

TRIP SUMMARY
MON,1/12: Fly JFK-London 7:16PM-1:03AM (6:03AM London time) 5 hrs. 47 min. QUICK!
TUE,1/13: Fly London-Malta 1:27PM-4:02PM, bus to Crowne Plaza Hotel dinner.
WED,1/14: Morning briefing, bus to Valletta for "Malta Experience" and to Maritime Museum in Vittoriosa, traveling around the island's bays; hotel buffet.
THU,1/15: Tour St. John's Co-Cathedral and Museum, Grand Master's palace, Upper Barraka gardens (closed) and sit on bombed-out Opera House steps before Cocopazzo.
FRI,1/16: Tour Marian Sanctuary in Mellieha, Mosta Dome, and Palazzo Parisio. Bus to Ta' Qali, glassblowing, to Mosta, language lecture, Tony's Place dinner.
SAT,1/17: Tour Crypt of St. Agatha and Catacombs of St. Paul, Empire Crafts Center in Rabat, and gardens of San Anton. Home-hosted lunch good, no dinner.
SUN,1/18: Valletta Archaeological Museum, Malta Heritage, Museum of Fine Arts, Knights Hospitaller exhibit, get ticket to Russian Circus on Manoel Island, walk back and forth, then dine with gays at Argyll Restaurant in Preluna Hotel.
MON,1/19: Temples tour to Hagar Qim, Tarxien, and Ghar Dalam. Lunch in village of Marsaxlokk, getting sore throat, lots of crossword puzzles before bed.
TUE,1/20: Hypogeum tour on minibus, bus with Pat and Ann to Mnajdra, taxi back to hotel for talk on Maltese Character, dine at The Peak (Oriental) Restaurant.
WED,1/21: Ferry to Mgarr Harbor on Gozo, tour Ggantija and Gozo Museum, Ta'Kola windmill and Xagra church, Calypso cave, lunch and dinner at Ta' Cenc in Sannat before Blue Window, Ta' Pinu Basilica, and cliff-walk before sunset.
THU,1/22: Gozo's Citadel in Victoria, Cathedral and Museum, Fontana Crafts Center, lunch at St. Patrick's in Xlendi, walk harbor, back for dinner at Pizza Place.
FRI,1/23: Knights of St. John talk, Piccolo Mansion tour, Library, Siege of Malta show, Manoel bookshop, buy stamps, Half-Way Inn dinner in Mellieha.
SAT,1/24: Mdina tour: Cathedral, Natural History Museum, Cathedral Museum, Mdina Experience, Bacchus Restaurant lunch, cart tracks, Dingli cliffs, dinner.
SUN,1/25: Fort St. Elmo parade, War Museum, Hastings Garden, Lascaris, Royal Kiosk fish-and-chips lunch, pack and still suffer from my cough-filled cold.
MON,1/26: Fly Malta-London 8:02AM-10:10 (3:08), London-JFK 1:36PM-3:15 (6:39).
TUE,1/27: Bed 6:35PM, up 2:20AM, bed 8:45PM, up 4AM Wed, bed 9:48PM, up 6:23 Thu.

 

MALTA SLIDES

Roll 1
1-10 shots of Malta to 3:58
11-14 to our landing at 4:02PM!
28 a plant-lined street at 4:39, near sunset
29 "Greek Arcadia" view in Kalkara (calcite site) at 4:51
30 building on Republic Street, old opera ruins in foreground, at 1:42PM
31 church in BRILLIANT LIGHT
32-33 inside (no flash permitted) Co-Cathedral, ENTIRE floor of marble TOMBS
34 (no flash) Baptism of Christ statue and silver censor donated by Respigliosi
35 monstrance throne by Carafa of the right hand of St. John the Baptist
36 roller coaster street at 4:10
37 panorama of the Citadel of St. John at 4:12

Roll 2
1 hidden entry to Grand Harbor
2 upper Barraka Garden (closed!) at 4:14
3 St. Paul's islands, not a very good view
4 church facade and BLUE sky (66° F today, supposedly) at 9:55
5 Mary and Jesus painted on ROCK of CAVE, attributed to St. Luke
6 votive icons up cave walls
7 sea-view cemetery and seat at 10:15
8 impossible-to-span Mosta dome. Flash at 11:06
9 altar
10 exterior at 11:31
11 ceiling Mercury at 12:09
12 ballroom at 12:36
13 infinite mirrored chandeliers
14 bougainvillea on January 16 at 12:52PM
15 garden from the rear gate
16 panorama on road to Ta Ali at 1:52
18 catacombs at 10:06
19 TWO head-cuts in topped tomb at 10:22; tree-roots invading in upper rooms
20 Bes statues at 10:43, with cocks, in Museum of St. Agatha
21 museum altarpiece with pork luncheon meat box from Chonquing China
24 model of Hypogeum, since no photos will be allowed inside on Tuesday at 11
25 a pre-made slide-selection of photos
26 Xaghra stone circle
27 wonderful comparative dates
28 4000BC rock-cut tombs at Xemxija
29 3-apse temple at Skorba about 3500BC
30 5-apse temple at Mnajdra in 3000BC
31 photos of figures
32 Venus of Malta from Hagar Qim
33 Sleeping Lady, 3000BC, from Hypogeum
34 Hagar Qim group, headless
35 Tarxien 6-apse (only one) temple, 3600-2500BC
36 temple pieces in museum 11:02
37 nude Neptune at 12:55 in the Palace courtyard

Roll 3
1 model of hospital with---enema (?) for VD (!) at 1:45
2 entrance bay with cactus at 2:08
4 Tarxien 9:24, not much to take
5 replica from museum, WOMAN just to right at 9:33
6 left apse, ship scratched on top
7 back-most apse
8 holes in which BODIES were buried at 9:50
10 reconstructed entrance from high side-point
11 Hagar Qim at 10:33
12 Mnajdra temples, through locked gate
13 Qim complex from below
14 Filfla, and flowers under tree
15-16 inside
17 into sun
18 farm panorama at 10:45
19 side shrine with right "phallic symbol" and triangular temple, sex altar
20 tree and temple
21 pedestal and "doorway" and "potty"
22 other side of oracle hole at 10:56
23 front to back: elephant, hippo, red deer (modern examples of ancient forms
24 plan (below) and section (higher) of 270 feet at 11:33
25 stratigraphic wall at 11:42
26 toward entrance
27 toward back of cave at 11:45
28 back from entrance
29 cactus fruit
30 aloe (name later) and blossom 11:53
31 DISTANCE focus?
32 Ghaxaq and church at 12:05
33 fishing boats at 12:13
34 Marsaxlokk panorama at 1:35
35 family rowing at 1:40
36 eyes of Horus on boats at 1:47
37 Mnajdra entry at 2:40

Roll 4
1 major entrance with Ann and Pat
10 Hagar Qim from below at 3:15 on way to road
11 ferry and Gozo at 9:45
13 Comino Santa Maria tower and cliffs at 9:57
15-16 Mgarr Harbor 10:02 and 10:03
17-18 at 10:06 and 10:08
19 BACK of Ggantija and church at 10:37
20 OLDEST in world at 10:40
21 entering at 10:48
22 TRACE of spiral at 10:54
23 inner apse to left
24 points below main altar in center
25 from temples at 11:04
26 holes and altar in SMALLER temple at 11:06
30 RESTORATION blocks in large temple at 11:08
31 facade from far side at 11:11
32 back supports
33 complex from entrance at 11:15
34 Ta' Kola windmill in Xagra photo-stop at 11:25
35 at 11:30, nave of church
36-37 inside church

Roll 5
1 corpse of St. Fortunatus, martyr (not so fortunate)
2 St. Michael behind glass at 11:40
4 flower at 11:57
5 Ramla beach
6 tower from Calypso's window
7 after he's gone; Calypso's cave at 12:09
8 at 12:12 AEIONIUM
9 Xagra-church at 2:06
12 Blue Window at 2:53, then to #21 in FRENZY
22 first four stations of the cross on way to big cross on top
23 distance view of canopy modeled on St. Peter's
24 up to dome at 3:40
25 painting (miraculous) and Pope from 1990 at 3:42
27 Station 2 close-up
28 church
29 distant church at 3:48
30-32 from cliff-top at 4:31
33 ALL of Comino at 4:34
34 WITH person on top, to left of "hole in wall"
35 part of Ta' Cenc Hotel at 4:39
36 three ferries at 4:46

Roll 6
1 down-cliffs 4:50
2 three islands
3 my shadow at 4:52
4 heather (?) at 4:52
5 sunset clouds at 5:03
6 guy at 5:07
7 rock at 5:10
8 guy before wall at 5:11
9 cliff-side at 5:13
10 cloud glow at 5:15
11 at 5:17
12-14 I SAW as green around right edge to 5:19
15 at 5:24 backward from sunset
16 Stephan and Helena at the table
17 view from room
18 Gozo 9:52
19 gun emplacements at 9:56
20 Citadel wall 9:58
21 phallus (r) and snake-carving (l) from Ggantija at 10:19
22 plaster (on dried clay, painted with red ochre) from inner walls of south temple, foot-high jar 4100-3800BC
23 2 heads and, lower right, human figure, one leg lost; Tarxien shards from 3000BC
24 discoid figurine piece, life size, found at Ggantija, but Tarxin phase (2500BC)
25 Xlendi at 1:21
26-28 cliffs newly revealed out of cove
29 "nun's pool"
30 wave inundating swimming pool at 2:17
31 Mdina, at 9:33
32 Mdina gate 9:46
33 Mdina cathedral cupola 10:05, baroque
34 side altar 10:14 (poor flash?) (with ANOTHER "St. Luke Icon")
35 cabbie at 10:41
36 polished agates at 10:46; GORGEOUS minerals!
37 aerial photo of Malta 11:02

Roll 7
2-3 of cart tracks at 2:45
4-8 from Dingli cliffs stop to 2:55, NOT so special
9 horse's earmuffs at 2:59
10 pre-group at 10:39
11 SUN shining on armor at 10:52
12-15 firing rifles, four little mortars, machine gun that surprises everyone
16 chief honcho inspects at 11:24
17-21 for firings to 11:34
22 finale at 11:39
23 King George Cross and records of air raids
24 from Hastings Garden at 1:18
25 bus terminus at 1:23
26 below-the-bus gardens at 1:49
27 town near airport 8:03
28 Xlendi and coast at 8:07
29 Windsor Castle (guy behind me said), coming in and out of clouds at 10:17
30 ice patterns in ocean at 1:37
31 frozen bay at Robert Moses State Park
32-37 at home at 5:20AM to finish seventh roll of film

24 discoid figurine piece,life size,found at Ggantija,but Tarxin phase (2500BC)
25 Xlendi at 1:21
26-28 cliffs newly revealed out of cove
29 "nun's pool"
30 wave inundating swimming pool at 2:17
31 Mdina, at 9:33
32 Mdina gate 9:46
33 Mdina cathedral cupola 10:05, baroque
#34 side altar 10:14 (poor flash?) (with ANOTHER "St. Luke Icon")
35 cabbie at 10:41
36 polished agates at 10:46. GORGEOUS minerals!
37 aerial photo of Malta 11:02

Roll 7
2 and #3 of cart tracks at 2:45
4-8 from Dingli cliffs stop to 2:55, NOT so special
9 horse's earmuffs at 2:59
10 of pre-group at 10:39
11 in SUN shining on armor at 10:52
12-15 firing rifles, four little mortars, machine gun which surprises everyone
MALTA SLIDES - 4
16 chief honcho inspects at 11:24
17-21 for firings to 11:34
22 finale at 11:39
23 King George Cross and records of air raids
24 from Hastings Garden at 1:18
25 bus terminus at 1:23
26 below-the-bus gardens at 1:49
27 town near airport 8:03
28 Xlendi and coast at 8:07
29 Windsor Castle (guy behind me said), coming in and out of clouds at 10:17
30 ice patterns in ocean at 1:37
31 frozen bay at Robert Moses State Park
32-37 at home at 5:20AM to finish seventh roll of film