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1994 continued

7/1/94: ROSICRUCIAN RETREAT NOTES [From back of Barth's Somebody:] Arrive at Center at 9:04AM, leave at 9:41AM. "Montreal 328" at 10:50AM. Stop for lunch at New Baltimore at 12:22PM, and have sourdough roast beef and sourdough bacon cheeseburger and a large orange juice for $8.25. Leave 1:12PM. To border at 4:52, pass at 5:14. Stop at "Douglas Motel" at 5:30 in Napierville, have onion soup, chicken, two glasses of white wine, French fries, cole slaw, carrot cake, for $22.35 Canadian on Visa. Leave 6:40PM. Arrive at 8:20PM. [From notes page 8:] Welcomed by two T-shirted Frenchmen, bags in lobby, slapping at mosquitoes, and in to set-up refectory where I sat and poured myself water. Then others sat. I took pear/vanilla tea and Claude told us to sit and eat. Quarter egg-salad and tuna-salad sandwiches, GOOD vegetable/tomato soup, and tea. Silly to have eaten so much BEFORE, but with two cups of tea I had three squares of cake. TOLD of daily three and seven-bell schedule, high-room procedure, work-staff, no talking, four convocations, sales place for incense and candles and books and soap, no taking sheets and books FROM room-shrine, hand out four alarm clocks to ten who have none, and five aprons to those who have none, and LIGHT water-use from 7:30-10:30 ONLY, otherwise QUIET. Napkin rings with our room number show where to SIT. "Get settled in room and come back to help us clean up." I go to shit, then dropping off bags and down NOW to help clear tables and up to shower and wash hair at 9:20PM to almost-dry at 10:30, reading books in shrine and thinking, "This is too much." Make bed and put stuff away and place is at least NEW and CLEAN. Bed 10:45 and sleep almost at once. Try WITHOUT earplugs but people cough, run water, walk around, so they go back IN. HIGH-ROOM TIMES: 7/2: 11-11:30AM; 7/4 7-7:30AM.

7/2/94: Wake at 4:20AM! Six hours’ sleep feels OK, BIRDS starting ALREADY! Lie thinking of ALL I must DO: copy schedule and prayers into notebook, get out credentials for showing, worrying about "sign of the cross" Rosicrucian style, and how I wanted to GET AWAY from details and this is ALL details. AND go back to "This is just FIRST day, and as with ANYTHING new it seems mysterious at FIRST and then grows better as I get USED to it." Doze to 5:30, then 6:30, then 7, then three chimes come QUIETLY through plugs at 7:30, and I'm up to pee into sink and dress in long-sleeve shirt and get out at 7:50 to find all grouped around closed refectory door. It opens at 8 and I (Idiot!) go in, see "9," think, "Oh, I hit mine FIRST," and sit down! Then Yves asks, "Who's sitting at 9?" and I raise hand; he asks me, "What's YOUR room number?" I start to wave 20 fingers at him and he says, "You may speak," and I say "20" and someone BEHIND table says "Here" and hands me "28," which I accept---WHAT is going ON? Then "20" turns out to be JUST ACROSS from 9. Pour orange juice, motion for "multigrain oats," which are bland, but sugar's too far away and milk eventually comes. Have a good cherry muffin with white (handmade?) butter substitute, and take pills. Yves calls one from each table from twelve waving hands for table cleanup and setup for the day, two floor-moppers, one bell-ringer, and three dish-washers. So these 10 have 9:30 "work for collective" and other 21 have next two days? Then he says, "Leave your napkin in ring on bench" and white-shorts (George) gets up---"Not yet, please." Then he points to high-room signup list---once each three days, and line forms and I take next free: 11AM today, since I tested alarm THURSDAY and it rang at time, but LAST NIGHT I tested it and it rang ALL TIMES, so I can't set it and use it. [Following from page ONE of my notes: taken first] 8:30AM convocation gong rings from inside temple, woman opens door and comes out to lead us in two by two. "Salute to East": walk "squarely" and face center altar, three steps forward (the foreign-accented woman could barely be understood as she instructed us), left-hand index-finger to forehead, right hand to (I think) the heart. Then three steps back and go to one of the 31 seats, two rows on each side, 10 and 8 in back and 7 and 6 in front, divided by side daises. When we were all in, she [page 3 of notes has diagram of temple-interior] rang the gong thrice, closed the entry door, went to "inner door" to my right (above) and opened it for "priest." Frater Claude in black robe with pectoral cross, who "squarely" bowed to altar and went up to light three candles, saying, "Light, Life, Love." He went to back altar, played a tape, then trained us in three sounds, in A-natural above middle C, 1) rrrraaaa (trilled) for masculine, 2) mmmmaaaa (closed hum) for feminine, and 3) fraters on "ra" and sorors on "ma," each HE led once after pitchpipe. Then "practice" three, battle for longest-held breath. Before that, a tape by a woman, probably the Imperator, welcoming us to silence. Then "go passive" to get psychic connection. Then focus of body parts, breathing in through nose, holding it, out through nose at each of feet, ankles, calves, knees, thighs (and intake of breath began to sound FUNNY, like "Oh!"), hips ("Oh!"), lower abdomen (intestines, stomach, liver, pancreas), upper torso (lungs, heart), hands, wrists, lower arms, elbows, upper arms, shoulders, back from lower back to neck, neck, head (gums and teeth, cheeks, ears, nose, eyes, forehead, upper part of head). Then intro to glands: 1) pineal in center of head, connection between higher and lower, "third eye," 2) pituitary below it, 3) thyroid at either side of larynx and "below Adam's apple" (so much for WOMEN). Then we closed eyes, feet flat on floor, hands on knees, visualized the sun, and a ray coming from it striking the top of our head, then down to pineal, visualizing it bathed in a "rich violet" light, while we vocalized "ra," then ray continues down to pituitary, visualizing it bathed in a "red-orange" light while we vocalized "ma," then ray continues down to thyroid, visualizing it bathed in a "red-violet" light while we vocalized "tho," then (or before) we vocalized "ra" seven times, "ma" seven times, "ma/ra" seven times, all breath-holding contests, my throat TIGHT, others "singing out, Louise." We went passive again as he played a new-age tape of simple piano notes, then we were to "harmonize with world's leaders for peace" to a New Age tape of simple harp notes. Then he put out his light, said (I think), "Make a lodge," left hand over heart, right hand over the left, and then, "Leave starting from the southeast." She opened his door, closed it after him, banged gong, and we filed out, squaring corners and taking off our aprons. I looked through Roerich as a white went into high room WITHOUT turning on light. I wrote on balcony, pleasant, and watched 10AM high-room guy go in at 10, with apron but NO incense and candles, then out at 10:15! Still no light on---what a bunch of jokers!  [From notes bottom of page 14:] I go outside by mucky lake, but mosquitoes ARE out during day and thunder sounds, so I swat mosquitoes and get back to music room (which has 30-40 new-age cassettes WE can't play for ourselves) and see guy LEAVE high room at 10:15! Then "woman-guide" goes in at 10:25, seeing light off, and gets her apron (without candles and incense, as I'd wondered) and lights light and goes in to serve at 10:30. It starts to rain with a HUGE clap of thunder, lots come in and out, retreatists wander aimlessly, I move up a floor lamp and light it, use the john to pee, George reads a LARGE book, and by 10:53 the rain slacks, it gets brighter, and I finish writing this and leave to pee and get apron and get ready for high room at 11AM. But OLGA goes in ahead of me. "It's MY time," she speaks. I shake my head no. We go back and forth and I go down to GET list: there SHE is for 11PM-11:30AM (typo!) which she scans through inch-away glasses. She's as embarrassed as I was this morning at napkin ring 9 and 28! She leaves, I light candles, (and take two pink ones out of trash to substitute for the two I bought for $1 this morning from the shop, two good white ones), and light MY incense in addition to her brick, and read about going UP in upper room to BEYOND earth, "Seeing it as a blue spinning sphere," and look OUT to "Whatever you envision as your version of the Celestial Sanctum" and harmonize with it and bring down a SPHERE of light to "surround the earth." Clock up there is three minutes fast. Put out candles after doing ceremony (forgot out echo of "So mote [and it IS pronounced "mote"] it be." Ending two prayers in convocation. No one seems to replace me at 11:30AM. Back to light pink candles "to make them mine." Light incense and write this to 11:45AM as rain gets HEAVIER, and it was DRAMATIC in high room with lightning flashing through triangular windows (and "blue bowl" of a "permanently lit" high-altar candle), and lights flicker now in room with electrical storm and COOLING breeze from my window, sheltered by an overhanging cornice, as I blow out candles to conserve them and rain comes down even HEAVIER and I wait for 11:55AM to put on my apron and go out for the noon convocation, changing to short-sleeve brown shirt against temple's closed-room humidity and (I guess) washing hands and drinking water AGAIN. And I hope things fall into a PATTERN, or I'll be WRITING all the time! Pee in sink, incense still going, rain slacking at 11:52AM, hearing doors closing for convocation and footsteps in hall. Don't we get three and seven gongs for this? YES, sheet says three peals five minutes prior. Is bell OUT in rain? Three peals at 11:54. Incense holder gets HOT! Apron on, notebook left behind. This convocation is 30 minutes, then lunch. Council of Solace is theme as stomachs call to stomachs! Chanted Aum three times, as we'd done LAST time, too, I'd forgotten. Added details: as he lit third candle, SHE switched on blue overhead "star" spotlight on altar. Few more "So mote it be’s" in response to prayers by priest or tapes by Imperator. THIS time we're to hold arms out, palms UP to get love and solutions and counsel for the Counsel of Solace, palms DOWN to pass it on to people who have ASKED for counsel. Then we were told to send loving thoughts to the Imperator, Grand Masters, Grand Counselors, Regional Monitors, Officers of Lodges, Chapters, and Pronaoi, and to Rosicrucians EVERYWHERE. But who are artinists, that I saw by mistake in Francesca's notebook on patio chair, and whose Southern Convention in 1988 gave the commemorative LED clock its 3-minutes fast TIME to the high room? Also, visualize the Egregore of our order, a pyramid surmounted by a rosy croix, and envision it bathed in a rosy aura, sustaining this Egregore of our order for all time and for all places. Taped music is ON as we ENTER Rand leaves, and he does the "sign of the cross" twice---have to sit at THAT end so I can WATCH it. Also appears I should have let the FEMALE half of my pair go FIRST, to touch foreheads again, it IS "make a lodge" with left hand on heart, right hand over it. Lunch, at 12:30, was delayed to 12:41 for two latecomers, guy to my right NOT having cole slaw, but digging into spinach and cheese casserole and cooked carrots, and cherry cake for dessert was good enough to eye others, which I didn't get. ADDED a TAPE of food-blessing before we started, music and a reading from Gibran's Prophet during. Ate fast and large, talked not during chattery 1-2:30 in music room but read Roerich and skimmed Ancient Egypt: Discovering Its Splendors before my eyes CLOSE on me and I'm back to room to lie on my back and SNORE twice. Then roll on side as rain stops at last and up at 3:40 to note this before 4PM "message" convocation. When do we retreat?? Shit smellily after lunch, had only two cups of verbena-mint tea for lunch, yet just pissed again (woman on bus on the way back mentioned that some herbal teas are DIURETIC!) before ANOTHER hand-wash and water-drink at 3:53PM. It really IS endless! 3:55 no rain, no BIRD-CALLS either, but one starts as I write, and now 3:56 and NO bells, but THERE they go! This time I sat at HIS end, and "sign" is directed OUTWARD with a "pencil-holding" right hand, seemingly down, up-and-across, down again. We "make a lodge" as he enters and leaves, holding it until she lets him out, bongs gong, and SAYS, "You may lower your hands." The speakers are at the FOOT of the peaked-roof temple-room, though, much diminished from the HEAD of the room. The red skylight remains ON and there's an always-lit floor candle to pointed stairs' left. Each dais's omega is surmounted by different symbols, at Aton-head across from me, but an EYE on speaker? He READS a long message on Cosmic Consciousness that I'm sure loses 75% of the people: how mortal consciousness and SUBconscious are really SAME as Cosmic Consciousness, only MANIFEST differently. White gal nods off and young guy slopes toward her. Guy in front of me bows VERY deeply. Priest ends with seven Aums and "passive silence," then does an EXACT reading of high room "Going to Celestial Sanctum," then plays music (Gymnopedies) while we're out there. Can HEAR her intro now: "Wearing your aprons, you're invited into the temple two by two." Out at 4:50, sprung early. I'm down to douse with "Off" and get out to see shadows of dozens of inch-body, inch-tail tadpoles just below brown surface, rippling it as they dive, after gulping air. Path around lake is SUBMERGED, as is ditch around back, where I look at the open screened/shaded windows at ENDS of temple, then see two chipmunks that come within a foot of me in case I want to offer them anything. Some mosquitoes land, but maybe NOT attack? (I get a couple of bites which I don't scratch, so they go away quickly; back home, I notice 3-4 red, raised dots on my right foot and they're too small for mosquito bites, and they look suspiciously like poison ivy, but in 4-5 days they're gone, thank goodness.) Woodpeckers in trees, and red-winged blackbirds flash past. In at 5:35 and out to balcony to write this to 5:30. Stomach intrigued by GREAT smells coming from kitchen below. Only 2-3 others out for walks, 5-6 in music room. I'll have a brownie now, to quiet clamorous stomach! The sole woman---as tall as me---on the second floor lives between me and ladies' room. Claude smiles as we pass on stairway. "Douce-heure du soir" is perhaps best coinage by Sylvie Beauvalot in Les Heures de Fleur, signed 35/250 and printed by "Chateau D'Omonville, Le Tremblay, Scribe DT4, AMORC." Frillily lesbian in character---one WONDERS! Then skim the French Sects Maudits, chilling, and The Rosicrucian Manual, FINDING the sign of the cross. Music is on and dinner bell is LATE, no three peals, just seven. Again great (thin) soup, TINY bit of lentil casserole, stewed tomatoes and poor canned green beans, with LOTS of bread and butter---a thin night. Chocolate pudding with sliced bananas, then no reading and out to sit and watch the sun on the trees across the lake, returning for my jacket and camera for one picture, and in at 8:25 for last convocation, to Celestial Sanctum, thumbing through many landscapes, and a "goodnight" from Imperator after seven ad-lib Aums that finish ME on some others' sixth Aum. A couple of "So mote it be’s" and we're out at 9:10, barely dark yet. I light incense and write, stomach rumbling meatlessly. Hair very frowzy, and I keep forgetting to note the great DEER swimming a river, perfect view from the bus on the bridge, on the way up, about 4PM. Lovely FLAT farms in Canada, too, and a too-distant view of Montreal towers and the huge dome ON Mont Real, around it three times. During this fourth convocation see that there's a spotlight on the dais that turns on and off, for effect, too. He really clanks with changing the cassette reels. Tonight's music is rather gloomy, maybe the same male chanting as in the music room earlier. Shut window for cool night. Let's read some Barth! Brush teeth and read to 10PM. Mosquitoes FIERCE, so sit on balcony to 10:25 and back to wash face and get to bed at 10:32PM.

7/3/94: Incredible: 12:20AM and I dream I'm pissing on my newspaper on the floor of a SUBWAY, and some cute guy wants to read about some senator as I'm still pissing, now down one leg. Wake and gotta go in sink! Also dreamed a WACKY episode of looking into the sky at what seems like a smoke-cloud, and it's a helicopter wrecked "by flying into that giant spider web in the mountains," and it lands close by, REALLY a wrecked helicopter, and we think, "Boy, the pilot must have been PISSED while he was dying!" Pee at 3:15, wake at 5:30 and pee. Wake at 6:30 after dream of planning an excursion to a new Florida resort: the White Month Music Tour, sponsored by Bang and Olafson Speakers, in BACK niche of month (?), a tour the SAME DAY as huge two-page ad (one page has two sets of maps of area) in the New York Times gets me to tear it out, three prices listed in the ad: $1024, $140, and $28, but we just have to pay the $20 "music charge" part of it. We all want to go! AND guess what? Pee! VERY faintly hear bells at 7:30, dreaming of Anne B. preparing for an elegant cruise, having married---NOT Mark S.---that bodyworker---just yesterday. Only 1.5 hours to halfway point! Out to mosquitoes and in to breakfast, volunteering for dishes. Sign up for high room 7-7:30AM tomorrow. Convocation comes up with three NEW sounds: "may" for heart, red; "tho" for adrenals (called suprarenals)(or opposite those two), red-violet, and another sound. One in F#, one on A-natural, one on middle C. Three more Aums, same message on "new day," and it's YVES as priest this time, though still thick-accented. Out at 9:30 and down to find Claude has WASHED the dishes, just put them in sterilizer, dry, and put away. Done by 9:45, take camera down for place-photos. Spray with Off and go up driveway to see parking lot to right and there's a PATH that goes way into woods along lake and comes out JUST at the slash-of-white trunk I saw last night. Back to take photo of back of building about 11AM, then find a way ACROSS the water I thought blocked trail yesterday, and this goes to frog-bog side, then goes UPHILL where perversely it gets VERY wet, shoes soaking, and back and try the "exit" path, and it probably circles around but there's not enough time. Back at 11:45 and change to slippers, clean socks, blue pants, brown shirt. Wash just in time for Noon Convocation. Much like last noon, and down to lunch of tuna mashed in scalloped potatoes, sweet potatoes and carrots hot, and a salad of celery and tiny bits of romaine with two dressings, and raisin cake with apple-cinnamon tea. Another quote from The Prophet on Freedom, then with George to wash dishes while others dry and my glasses get so steamed I can't handle dishwasher at ALL. Chat (he's vegetarian, I'm not) and out about 1:30 to go upstairs and just lie down. People talking outside, but I don't care. Actually drop off to sleep to dream: take a blob off the ceiling and it leaves a brittle-looking object that I thwack with a towel and it falls to a table where two huge-winged butterflies start eating it and I think to take a picture of it. Another dream-snippet of a play where the wife is dying of cancer, she wants something bad for her, and her husband breaks down in tears as he denies it to her, and his SISTER is also so affected that SHE starts crying and the cancer-one has to comfort them BOTH. Decide to get up before the bell at 3:40 and write this to 3:50. Only six Convocations, 4 meals, 3 days left! Pee. Our NYC leader is the celebrant! He speaks CLEARLY of Self and Selflessness, and time goes quickly, saying that ONLY when we go BEYOND the Self can we have any chance of LEARNING or IMPROVING our lots. Then the trip to the Celestial Sanctum (which he calls CelestRial) after seven Aums, and we're out and back in my room (yep, all of us) at 4:45! To library till supper at 7. Read Roerich's "Shambala," some interesting, most a tease---like much of the writing in the library. Music is poor this time: I'm getting grumpy! But we're LEAVING tomorrow. Dinner, wash dishes, Convocation at 8:30. I shit AGAIN. Out at 9:07, having watched sunset to 8:31. 4 convocations, 3 meals, 2 sunrises, 1 sunset. Bed? 11:15PM: totally outrageous dream: Winner of contest films an ad of going ANYWHERE on a bicycle, including flying and underwater, and ending at beach---presented with a bill for $43,000 for filming it. It ends in Lincoln, Nebraska, saying the "Sweet-Lincoln" would make their dreams come true when you got there on their trip, but by spending so much on the film, now they couldn't afford to take the trip! VERY colorful underwater scenes, and of flying over various countrysides. And, of course, I gotta pee.

7/4/94: 1:05AM: Dream: I'm in a hospital interviewing someone else, and there's Tina Turner in a bed in a corner, recovering from a birth, and Harry Belafonte right next to her, recovering from an operation, and I want to take a picture of both of them in one shot and interview them, too. Dream ALSO involves a couple who’d just got married and won a honeymoon for which the hosts have uncrated 5-6 bottles of Royal Brut Champagne and are pouring it into their bridal bath/swimming pool on TV, and it's Dick Clark and Ed McMahon, of course. All a ludicrous gossip/mushy TV combination. What's Rosicrucian got to do with it? (Sing it, Tina!) Dream 3: 2:50AM: Huge party at a place like Kykuit, and someone like David Rockefeller says he would never eat on silver plates; he has his own individual gold service. I get recognition for my photography of the event, which looks rather like my work for the Tel-Buch, EVEN to my own photo being included with the original caption: "Pictures and layouts, I'll see them in my dreams," though I admit THOSE photos are by Burt W. WHY do I PEE so much? Do they put something in the FOOD? Do I have an infection? But no fever. Dream 4: 4:40AM: I've connected with a better-looking Jim M. again, and for the THIRD time I'm being molded into a MUMMY at a fancy party. Some idiot comedienne introduces Clinton, and Secret Servicemen are handsome and accommodating and smile at her jokes. I'm to be more comfortable with a "painful but re-operable maxillary displacement" that will enable me to TALK, and they agree to a broader straw for me to breathe through in the molding so I won't feel so suffocated. I insist on reading the script as in the newspaper, but it's so indecipherable I can barely determine they've LEFT OUT a section, which everyone is thankful to me for discovering. We're waiting to get into Jim’s apartment from downstairs, and his assistant has taken us with a prettier girlfriend, but he has to use an atomizer to catch HIS breath when he's kissing her. He seems tired: he leans his forehead against my arm, which cheers me with his new, gentle vulnerability. Odd, odd, odd! 6:20AM: Dream? Such CLEAR IMAGES, I MUST have dreamt them: Jim and I are going to a movie presumably, holding hands in private, saying, "We've gotten consecrated." A young Peter Ustinov is in bomber command, coaxing a new fellow into a game of chess, when bombers fly low outside them in Japan, and a woman is serving an officer, saying, "I always wanted to live in Nin-Ja-Poo," and the movie has that "colorized" flatness of old color-movies. In bed for nine hours and I'm STILL tired---though WITH 4-5 dreams! Shit and get out at 6:55AM and woman who sits across from me comes out and nods me in. The clock up THERE (I set my watch by the clock downstairs) is 4-5 minutes FAST, so when I settle in, it says 7:04AM. The altar is a mess: candle drips, incense smears, match soot, snuffer schmutz, and I take ALL my half-hour CLEANING it after "setting up" area, and sun is IN east window, almost shining on sphere-in-pyramid, which I now see is the EARTH---how neat. Finish at 7:34 by THAT clock, and come down JUST as three bells are ringing, and SOME WOMAN is waiting to go up! To mess it up again? To guide me on neatness? Back to write this in WARM room to 7:36AM. See that the "glass slabs" are simply glazed WALL tiles. Black male macho: at our table SAME woman cleaned for two days, she was gone this morning, table had to be PRIED into getting young guy to volunteer. MAYBE one did a floor yesterday, and FINALLY one volunteered to ring the bell, but other 2-3 did NOTHING---must have been in the Army! Yves commented, "Good thing it's only three days." Now in Convocation, do I sit next to the rotten lungs, the stentorian breather, the "ker-plunk" swallower? How I've grown to dislike some in three days; imagine being in a monastery for YEARS?! Experiment with three new sounds, 1) arrrrr (tongue trill), 2) mantra Aum ra ma om, 3) a(h)mm. First EMPHASIZES aura's main color, second deals with thymus, and third with pancreas, which can cause unbalance. Finish this at 9:25, free to 12. To shower, clip toenails, clean hair out of shower (which I throw down toilet when I dress in a T-shirt and go pee). Woman across from me is gatekeeper and Claude is back as celebrant. Out at 12:25 to write this: 2 more meals, soon to be one, and 2 more convocations---at least maybe the last will be special? Do the gatekeeper and celebrant eat lunch together? Lunch of carrot-raisin salad, couscous and sloppy peppers/squash/tomatoes/vegetables and peach cobbler and strawberry-black-currant tea. Get form that shows the domain is $50 Canadian/day, and $20 for arriving prior night, or $170+11% tax or $190, less 30% for $57 = $133, so BUS was $166! Even $20/day US is TOO MUCH for this food! 2 convocations, one meal, departure! Read, in bed, to page 192 and then about 2:45 just flaked out---post-trip depression already. Shit at 4:45---flush three times---vegetarianism NO good for water conservation! Mosquito bites on foot itch. To page 32 on days one and two, to page 40 on day 3, to page 53 on day 4. [8 notebook-pages to one WP page.] Big Black is new celebrant, giving his Discount---uh, Discourse---in a loud monotone. Again I sit next to the diarrhea smell. Maybe it's ME. A number of men seem affected---milk? Out at 4:55. One left of everything! Read better Barth till 7PM and supper is salmon casserole and potatoes, everyone cleans ALL out and I finish with a cup of the last of the soup. Awful "angel food" cake and ersatz caramel syrup. "So mote it be" ends it, saying NOTHING of finish. Merely bring down towels and glass and Convocation at 8:30. It goes, and no one says anything! But bus is outside and all get same seats. Write in back of Barth: 9:13PM board bus, 9:25 off. 11PM: "We've been lost a long time." 11:12 on 40 WEST(?). Note on right-hand page: Route 158--Mirabel Airport, route 15 to Blainville, toward L'Assumption and L'Epiphanie, which the maps show to be DIRECTLY NORTH of Montreal, so we went from Lachute much FARTHER EAST than we needed to. 11:40 from 40W to 15S at LAST. 12:27 to Customs. 1:42 pull out: "one stop" more. 4:52 stop in New Baltimore. Take Rohypnol at 5AM. Leave about 5:25, about three hours more. 8AM get off at the 14th Street subway stop, and 8:25 HOME. Take down number (and phone) of LIRR tours. [Back to notes from bottom line of page 51:] We get hung in an EAST-bound bottleneck for about half an hour and I see six lanes of traffic in OPPOSITE direction filtering down to one. "I'm glad we're not on THAT side," I think. About an hour later, we ARE! LOST and re-found. Then 12:27AM to Customs after BYPASSING Duty Free (drat!) and off to drink US water and pee. All BACK on bus at 1:15 and leader says, "They're finished in there, so we have to be next, or whatever." That's VERBATIM! At least no mosquitoes. It was 7:10 from NYC to Canada, so 1:20 (say) + 7:10 = 8:30AM, including a 50-minute stop for food? Who KNOWS? A bus SOME say came in AFTER us unloads. Leader says, "Greyhound has a special concession with the Government, they go first, always." Really? Later he says that Greyhound is SCHEDULED, so they MUST have priority over us, who are NOT on a schedule. At 1:38AM a customs guy comes on, looks at first few passports; I get up to root in my bag and he asks me, "Where were you born?" "Akron, Ohio." "OK, don't bother," and my birth certificate NEVER gets checked. [End of notes.] Paul was jerking off when I got in, and we spend the day in the Museum of Natural History and dine at Dallas BBQ, making up for my lack of meat, and have a peach margarita, making up for my lack of alcohol. Feel sleepy when I get back, and find myself making silly mistakes, which Paul says is all part of the Rohypnol, of which I should have taken a one-mg tablet rather than a two-mg tablet, and he says, "The first metabolites are 75% the same," implying that it's a DOUBLE dose, in effect, which affects me the second day, too. When people ask how the retreat was, I usually summarize by saying that it was interesting enough for the first time, but I wouldn't want to do it again: the main thing was the predominance of BLACKS, which meant that (OK, sue me) people just weren't that INTERESTING. George had his girlfriend, and then joked about selling sirloin steaks for $25 on the bus on the way back, DESPITE his saying he's a vegetarian. I slept a bit on the bus, worrying about the driver's lack of sleep. I was encouraged to drop into the Rosicrucian center, saying the lessons were more interesting when shared with others, but I didn't care for the batch that came along with my renewed membership, and it didn't even take care of my wanderlust, since a week later I'm seriously considering the Baltic tour, letting it up to Paul M.'s going to determine if I go or no.

7/12/94: Could I ACTUALLY be going to the Baltics? She said there were five going, I phoned to get my passport speeded up (costing me $20 more for mailing), and left word with Paul to find if he still wants to go. Pope has nothing but good news: GOOD period: whole month. First 5-6 days EXCELLENT, lunar high on 3rd and 4th, new moon on 7th. Tarot: Hope & Magician (for beginnings), Juggler ("Can juggle things") "Money needs to circulate." Don't hold on too tight; trust intuitive voice. Balance objective/subjective needs and lots of FIRE/Leo/planets in Leo. Travel/communications/money: no CONTRAS!

7/14/94: TYPED ROSICRUCIAN RETREAT NOTES: Attuning to Celestial Sanctum: "May the Divine Essence of the Cosmic infuse my being and cleanse me of all impurities of mind and body, that I may enter the Celestial Sanctum and attune in pureness and worthiness. So mote it be." Closing convocation: "May the God of my heart sanctify this attunement of self with the Celestial Sanctum."

7/19/94: WHERE AM I NOW? Yesterday about exhausted my computer-game playing (though I suddenly have an urge to Mahjongg!), having started on the 12th with 1:24 on Minesweeper after :05 on Intercom to Merrill about my bill and :28 on MAS about a Skills-index, then the 13th with :11 on Commo and :48 on Mahjongg to one win, the 14th with :30 on Mahjongg to one win, the 15th with :57 for two Minesweeper wins and :48 for two Mahjongg wins, the 16th was all Amsco index and Sunday Times, the 17th was :55 Commo and 1:33 for three Minesweeper wins and 1:05 for two Mahjongg wins and :45 for a couple of Taipei wins for a total of 4:18, and the 18th was 2:35 for five Minesweeper wins and 5:00 for the gamut of 14 each-format-twice Taipei wins for a total of 7:35 (a good day's work!). So the 7 days were 1:57, :59, :30, 1:45, 0, 4:18, and 7:35 for 17:04, "only" 2:26 per day, but the 7:35 yesterday afternoon (coming at the end of a day that had me sorting through Sunday's porno-pickups, getting a blood test for "high cholesterol" news from Sunday night's steak and wine, reading New Yorker till Carolyn arrived with her lunch and my breakfast at 1:30, when SHE sat till 5:30 talking and reading while I read, showing her MAS and being disappointed that they didn't respond to my Skills-list idea, setting up my Gay Games videos for Friday, having a peach, and ending with finishing Nabokov's Eugene Onegin, which led me into "WHAT do I want to read; WHY do I read?" which got me to bed at 2:20AM, ending at the dream on page DREAMS:7/19/94 that I recorded before this, now at 11:15AM, thinking that today should be more PRODUCTIVE: water plants, go to the gym, do a backup on the computer, maybe go to Weiser's and buy Canton ginger to get some "do" pieces off my stack, phoning Laura about indexing France, [which I just leave word to do], and enjoy not-blazing-hot New York in the summer!). But at least now at 11:20AM I should BREAKFAST!

7/28/94: Note from 5/31/94: My guests tonight at The Shut-In by Eric H. at Gay Center: 1) Dennis, 2) Carolyn, 3) Charles, 4) Andre E. (he had to leave after first act, but Eric tried to contact him with the rest of his play afterward, may be a fruitful contact), 5) Sherryl (graded her final exam quickly enough to have the time to come), 6) Mary V. (could only stay for first half because she had to leave for Tai Chi class; but she saw the whole thing at her place later when Eric viewed the tape with Ken and Vicki and Bernice and Susan on 6/17), 7) Maya, 8) Marj M., and 9) John A., who left after first act because he hated it. The six who saw the whole thing ended up at the White Horse Tavern for snacks and dinner and drinks. It seemed to go very well---I'd love it if the play, the playwright, and the actor were "discovered" because of it, but since it's now 7/28 and nothing's happened YET, I guess that's the end of it---though I haven't given the two copies that I made for Eric TO Eric yet: no Village Playwrights since 6/17!

7/30/94: WHERE AM I NOW? At 2:25PM, having just looked for the first time in a long time at LONGDEMO, I'm impressed anew at FRACTINT and its capabilities, of which I have hardly scratched the surface. Got THERE in my look at c:\, seeing what isn't absolutely necessary in the BASIC directory, debating taking all the programs LIKE FRACTOOL and FRACTINT (and what IS the difference between them?) OUT of c:\ and putting them into DIRECTORIES, which will be more easily backup-able. But then I come across the duplication of most of the WP51 files in c:\ AND in c:\WP51\, even to the duplications of ALT?.wpm macros. WHY keep them in two places? I printed out CONFIG.SYS (which has nothing to do with PROGRAMS, I decide) and AUTOEXEC.BAT, and find that WP51 is no more "privileged" in the PATH statement than MACREX-5, and I certainly don't have duplicate MACREX-5 files in c:\. I can just as easily ALWAYS do a cd\WP51 before going to wp, rather than JUST saying wp from anywhere. But then come the worries: printing the WP51 directory and del-ing all the WP files from c:\, but maybe disabling something ELSE by mistake? Somehow overlooking some "connection" that will CONTINUE to fill c:\ with ALT?.WPMs. Well, I think, why not TRY it: FIND a WPM that ISN'T taken yet, DEFINE it in \WP51, and SEE if it AUTOMATICALLY appears in c:\! THAT is the reason I write these things out: it helps me DECIDE!

8/4/94: 3:30PM: Dr. C. says I should stop drinking ANY alcohol AND cut down on meat. I'm depressed. Decide to come here; re-quoting from the WHERE AM I NOW? above: THAT is the reason I write these things out: it helps me DECIDE! First, should I tell anyone? Second, should I follow the advice? Third, what do I do then? I, at first, want to call everyone and moan: but that would be worse than useless if I decide not to follow the advice. No use having everyone tut-tut at me if I DO decide to have a bottle of wine. So, for now, don't tell ANYONE. Should I follow the advice? Of course I SHOULD follow the advice; equally of course I don't WANT to follow the advice. And speaking merely practically, I know that I WILL, at SOME time in the future, have wine no matter WHAT I decide: it's a RECOMMENDATION; it's not as if wine is a DIRECT poison---only an INDIRECT one. Side effects of Loped are "lightheadedness and stomach pains." He asks to see me at the end of August and I make an appointment for August 30. But he also says that it's not generic and the pharmacist says that it IS generic now: at least it'll be cheaper. The side effects, if any, should occur about the first week of taking one tablet in the morning, one at night, regardless of mealtimes. The parotid glands aren't very enlarged, sometimes they enlarge if I eat anything sour, but they COULD enlarge because they're overproducing triglycerides! The redness of my face doesn't mean anything. The bruise on my needle-given arm doesn't mean anything. So, in a sense, I've already answered the second question: I won't SLAVISHLY follow the advice! My first thought: have to quit the Beard dinners: no point in spending such money for the food ONLY, though I'm sure some DO that. Maybe talk to Shelley about what it's like to drink no alcohol? THAT could be a start! So: leave word on Shelley's machine. Well, without Beard, there's MORE money saved! AND I haven't been NEAR slavish in my going to the restaurant-list restaurants: in FACT, the only TWO this YEAR were in APRIL! So THEY have ALREADY left my life, de facto. In fact. No more wine at HOME---I've done without for a couple of years, except for polishing off Kahlua and Sambuca Nera remains, Grand Marnier for a cold, and the VERY scattered bottle of beer. But no wine at the Mensa dinners? Ruth Ann and Ursula-or-whatever-her-name-is will be disappointed. BUT THE MAIN THING IS THAT I WILL BE DISAPPOINTED. Do I kill myself now? Overeat and drink so that I DE FACTO kill myself? Or stop to regard the lessons that the world is now giving me and continue to move toward living healthily until 105? My mind ALSO says: so what OTHER psychedelic-like experience will I replace it with? Find a supplier of grass? Try to find some LSD to put this whole thing in perspective? C'mon, writing, you haven't solidified my answer yet! Maybe my current reading of Richard Powers' The Gold Bug Variations has so steeped me in language that I'm able to ramble without concluding, as he does. Repeat: I don't WANT to but I SHOULD. Never DID like "should"! Certainly I CAN---there'd just be another list: "cheating glasses of wine." Obviously certainly, it's better than being warned off by a heart attack! For some reason it occurs to me that CHARLES may have some insight. John tingalings in across the way: should I talk to HIM? No, let's go with SHELLEY first. Does she also take medication? Does she know others who have had to stop drinking? Is it merely coincidence that I'm within a year of my father's death-age, he whom drinking obviously helped hurry to the grave. So, I've tried writing and I'm STILL depressed over it! At least get to the end of the page so I can print it out. At least I didn't find "The Ignorer," saying, "Anh, FORGET about it." Not even the "Get a Second Opinion" nudge. Get solace, that I want to do. Bemoan my physical givens, but to what use? Why do I keep thinking of that superlative Merlot Susan and I had at Rosemarie's? Why all these questions with so few answers? At least, now, I've said what I wanted to say.

9/1/94: 12:30PM: WHERE AM I NOW? In a LOUSY place! Obviously, my depression started way back on 8/4, and it hasn't let up much since then. Had the interim concerns of the C.s' visiting, and have been through 36 movies in the 31 days of August. The last was Tombstone, through which I kept thinking that the lawmen and the lawbreakers killed each other because they really wanted to have SEX with each other (epitomized in the acutely sexual High Noon cruisy circlings before one kills [un-huh] the other). Which reminded me that I STILL want to proselytize my feeling that "REAL GAY MEN DON'T FUCK": I get so TIRED of hearing about "the homosexual act." If I don't like the "homosexual act" does that mean I'm not homosexual? Would more men go to bed with men if they didn't assume that "the homosexual act" was the ONLY act of affection and love that gay men shared? I really SHOULD (cf. above) follow through on that. As I've wanted to elaborate on my thought, yesterday morning or the morning before, that "It IS disappointing to be old." 1) The PHYSICAL goes: A) pains, B) lacks, C) fatigues, D) incapacities; and 2) the MENTAL goes: A) not as interested in movies or plays or opera or ballet because of the BETTER ones seen through the past, B) can't FOOL myself as easily: can see THROUGH excuses and rationalizations, C) have even LESS patience with fools and liars and politicians and lawyers; and 3) the EMOTIONAL goes: A) less real HOPE of real love happening with all ABOVE decays, B) faced with pain and loss, my OWN death seems more real, and sits brooding behind my back everywhere I don't turn. So I catch up on videotapes and movielists and booklists and work and reading. And write some little like this, and keep hoping for more work. And print this out and go on with life.

9/6/94: Catching up on things, I find four notes from August to be typed:

Note from 8/2/94: 3:50PM: I feel SO guilty! Pete called, obviously from the street:
"Hi, this is Pete."
"Hi."
"Can I come up?"
"No, I told you I was busy, with work."
"I don't take long."
"It's also my train of thought, of concentration."
"You don't want me to call anymore?"
"Well, not for a couple of months."
"You don't want me to call anymore!"
[Pause] "No."
"Oh." [What I take to be a heart-breaking pause.] "OK. Goo'bye."
I hang up and feel so SORRY for him, though HOPING it'll push him to someone more PRODUCTIVE for HIS life. But I STILL feel guilty. But I can't BE what he WANTS. I still feel sorry for him. But I HOPE it's the LAST?!

Note from 8/6/94: With my DREAMS, and "hurt" in stomach interpreted as HUNGER, I try to think of Gemfibrozil as a vein-clearing HALLUCINOGEN which will be "my new high after taking away alcohol" in ITSELF. Feel AWAKE at 7:10AM (bed at 12, but only sleep at 12:50), making the 5:20AM dream after 4.5 hours or THREE REM-cycles of 90 minutes? So I get up to shit, shower, and prepare for boat, after shutting off 8AM-set alarm. And of course THEY'RE up, upstairs, and scraping by 7:30AM!

Note from 8/12/94: ONE-list: 1) ONE book: Love in Time. 2) ONE movie: The Way of All Flesh. 3) ONE travel destination: Angel Falls. 4) Get ONE book published. 5) Get ONE lover.

Note from 8/18/94: Heard on subway, from woman, in ONE continuous stream of verbosity: "Really selfish, really self-centered. Into themselves."

9/7/94: 6AM: Went to bed with a 100.7°F FEVER at 11PM, peed at 12, and 1, and 2:10AM, then 5:10AM, then at 6AM came up with BE, DO, HAVE concepts:
1) First, in CIRCLES of influence:
                                    A) BE - Essence of me - ME!
                                    B) DO - Activities of me - List-Box
                                    C) HAVE - Possessions of me - Apartment
                                    D) REST OF WORLD - Outside of me - World
2) Second, for readability, expanded into a "wedge" of listings:
BE             DO             HAVE                      REST OF WORLD
Essence        Activities Possessions               Outside

Active         Home           List-Box                  Apartment
               Out            Place-Lists               New York City

Comfortable    Shop           Food                      Grocery Stores
                               Clothing                  Shops

Computer-wise  Learn Stuff    Computer List-Box         Internet/MAS/InterCom
                               Files

Happy          Pleasantries   List-Box                  World

Healthy        Exercise       Gym-File                  Gym
               Diet           Cholesterol/Vitamins/Arthritis/Other-Stacks

Intelligent    Plays/Opera    Programs/Tickets          Cultural Events
               Watch Videos   Video-Shelves             Video Stores

Sexy           See Tony       Phone Number
               Cruise         Cruise-File               Cruising Areas

Well-Read      Read Books Book-Shelves              Bookshops

That will form a FRAMEWORK which will obviously be refined and expanded.

3) Third, I came up with STARTING POINTS: Put Vertical-File materials (Actualism/Computers/Letters/Restaurants/Travel-Other) into Black-Shelves, and use THOSE for Computer-Do/Home-Do/Out-Do/Misc-Check-Do/Write-Do files!

4) Finally, I came up with an 11-item list to DO today, Wednesday, around which I can accomplish the above and "refine" some of the ideas ALREADY.

9/13/94: 11:45PM-1:45AM: Write Facades, print, schedule with Kevin.

9/14/94: 52 years --> Sep 30 1988
+ 52½ months = 4 years (+4½ months) --> Sep 30 1992
+ 52½ fortnights --> Sep 30 1994; + 52½ weeks --> Sep 30 1995
+ 52½ days (+4½ months) = 6 months (+ 7½ days) --> Mar 30 1996
+ 52½ hours (+ 7½ days) = 10 days --> Apr 9 1996

9/22/94: 9:45AM: PLAYWRIGHTS CIRCLE
ACT I [55 minutes]: Scene 1: Six "regulars" chat:
     1) Leader, pompous, he wants to be the star.
     2) Sex-crazed, cruises NEW; doesn't write: "blocked"
     3) Oldman, depressed monolog
     4) Effeminate superficial "What does it MEAN?"
     5) Director: knows what everyone should DO and how each play should BE.
     6) Jokester: everything should be FUNNY.
     7) NEW enters: A hunk, young and quiet. 2) cruises, 5) tells him where       to sit, 1) explains format and leads everyone's introductions.
Scene 2: 3) reads Oldman monolog; gets critiques.
Scene 3: 4) gives Invisible Wall parts to 5) and 2); gets critiques.
Scene 4: 6) reads Fluff with 1); gets critiques; collects money, announces pee-break; to audience: "YOU have 20 minutes."
ACT II [55 minutes]:Scene 1:1) gives Heavy Preachy to 4) "woman" and 6) SERIOUS
Scene 2: 5) gives Facades to 3) and 7) for "two flips"; 7) goes OFF with 3)

9/27/94: 10:15AM: From "Black Hole" on Ch. 13 News Hour before 2AM this morning: 1) If "new" black holes have masses of 30,000,000 suns, isn't THIS the "missing matter" of the universe? 2) If SUN is 98% of mass of solar system, and all IN it swings about it, and every GALAXY has a black hole at its center, causing IT to whirl (and eventually be ALL eaten UP?), couldn't the UNIVERSE have a SUPER black hole at ITS center, eating IT up?? As "Great Attractor" in Hercules? Or "Great Wall" in universe? OVERALL universe is "galactic swirl" or cluster?

10/28/94: Last entry 31 days ago! Maybe that's why I feel there's SO MUCH to say, though MOST of it is just from TODAY: like watching Frontline about the Department of Agriculture: how the Forestry Department cuts down the trees, and the Department of Rural Electrification STILL operates, giving away $5 billion in 10 years, doing NOTHING but paying off fat-cat farmers who have elegant homes and threaten anyone who tries to expose them. Even the SECRETARIES of the Department say they can do nothing; even PAST secretaries say they couldn't have done anything. And it just KEEPS ON. Then the Train Trip between Capetown and the "Lost City," which turns out to be Bophuthatswana, and there's NO such thing as a travel documentary without getting into the POLITICS (how the Apartheid system has made it impossible for the Blacks EVER to get ahead) and the ECOLOGY problems (how the Karoo had been swarming with elephants and game and now it was just a desert) and economic problems (how 48 trains used to run in 24 hours, but now it's two a day). And I keep narrowing places I want to travel to, seemingly getting more and more depressed. And now? Hey, man: GAMES!

11/4/94: WHERE AM I NOW? With most of the work for the year out of the way, I finally bought all the tickets ($250 worth!) to catch up with the plays I've wanted to see, trying to make myself feel better. Reading lots of library books helps pass the time, but doesn't get anything ACCOMPLISHED, and Fountain of Age put me in mind of "only so much time left, better ENJOY it!" Then hours of games didn't help much, either, particularly when I'm not LEARNING any new techniques with them. AND it's becoming clear how much I ACTIVATE (can FEEL the bile rising when I just HEAR them!) about the people moving about upstairs. They're home EVERY NIGHT, and now it seems like they're staying home MONDAYS and FRIDAYS during the DAY. And they KEEP MOVING AROUND---what do they DO all the time? They don't SIT and do something, they walk back and forth, back and forth, dragging furniture around (at least they HAVE stopped the "CLUNK" of the futon), NEVER stopping. Have to resort to earplugs or loud music to drown them out, I guess. AND then the ambivalence about TONY's coming over in an hour: I certainly want to KEEP someone (the CLUE, I think, is to find someone NEW, but that's always LAST on my list!) (particularly with the Friedan "Love makes you live longer," which I BELIEVE) and feel good that I HAVE Tony, but actually FACED with his arrival (I guess I DO have to take a shower?) I'm tempted to phone and say I have to look at an apartment for Don M., or hope that TONY cancels, as he often does. But it's just for an hour or so (why do I get JEALOUS when I hear he meets someone new from 5-11PM?), and it'll be over for another time. But with his noise and the people HOME upstairs? Not to mention this SITTING in the printer when he's HERE? Anyway, got another page of this finished completely. Then transcribe GARNET HILL 1994.

Travel note from Garnet Hill: 9/30/94: Friday: Suzie comes at 10:20AM, JUST as I'm finally ALL ready, and lunch at New Baltimore at 1:40 (for speed, having been held up in BROOKLYN for about an hour!), and arrive at 5PM, greeted and put stuff away and 5:30 cocktails before 6:30 dinner of steak and baked potato and peas and carrots after filling mushroom-barley soup, salad, and grapefruit juice, and split chocolate cream pie with Betsy, with whom---along with Suzie and Jo---I share the only taste of wine for our party of 11. Up at 8:40 to read Morris's Pleasures of a Tangled Life to closed-eye fatigue till 9:45, and bed STILL stuffed (forgot AWFUL Beaujolais shared with Suzie and Betsy and Jo), and at 12:21AM BURP up AWFUL stomach acid and CAN'T get it cleared out and TROUBLE getting back to sleep.

Travel note from Garnet Hill: 10/1/94: Saturday: Wake at 7AM after DREAMS and STILL feel exhausted after 9-10 hours’ sleep. Suzie knocks at 7:45 and I'm down at 8 to order last and have juice and bacon omelette (DEAD, rather than LOOSE) and good slice of French toast and two SUPERIOR muffins and am STUFFED; up at 9 to mark 100 pages of Codesign to 9:55 and out dressed warmly and mistake Bluejay Trail and 4-H Trail for easy trails to ski house, by 10:40, and up Balm of Gilead by 11:35AM to cloudy colorful vista, with hawks and jets and chickadees flying in almost birdless silence, and lunch of tuna and brownie and chips and juice, then down, feeling chilly, about 1 to 1:40PM and work (after hour's layabed) from 2:55 to 5:15, when Suzie knocks to say dinner (buffet) is early at 6PM and to girls' room for their Italian Cream, too icy, and chat and songs to 6:10 and down to salmon and turkey and beef and onion pie after Manhattan clam chowder, and veggies and lasagna and AGAIN too much, but they have BROWNIE SUNDAE and finish poor red zinfandel before cleaning THAT up at 7:35 and up to read Morris. Water is off, then on except for drinking, till 9:45PM and write this! Then finish the Morris by 11PM and to sleep.

Travel note from Garnet Hill: 10/2/94: Sunday: DREAM: 6AM: Incredible "moving Theater de Lys" show: advertised jazz, I squeeze into the last seat in the center of the first row, CHEAP, and get to see the start of the show, but the balcony pulls back, goes forward to the stage, pulls UP and back, and back to the stage, then back and OVER and turns and goes to a BASEMENT exhibit of old shops and stuffed animals and props and then out to "Main Street" and miniatures and blocks of INTRICATE model mansions and houses and hotels and haunted castles and at the end goes back to the theater (forgot the old BAR, and bricks behind old displays, the seat swooping CLOSE to it) and I think that I MUST take notes. Then I find I'm lost, but I pick up yellow macs under the corner of the seat next to me and "the boss" recognizes me at the surrounding shops and I ask, "How far did it go?" and he ignores the question. BEFORE, I dream of sitting IN the theater with some kind of athletic contest or cruising up and down by one column and I sit in front of a second column, and I know two outside columns were "in the play." Then I have to get back to the store and I climb a trellis to sneak through and someone GRABS my legs and tries to ATTACK me and at last I turn the LIGHT on and it's a bald-Divine-like guy I'd seen in the theater and he points me up a slope to the next position. I try to think of WHERE this is on Barrow Street and wake AMAZED at the amount of detail. I'm thirsty, and STILL my esophagus is food-full and uncomfortable, and I’m thinking I hear a knocking on my door JUST as I'd hear my home-buzzer for "false deliveries" waking me up. Find bucket of DRINKING water outside door and drink and pee and glance outside at gray clouds over lake and back to bed at 6:20AM.

Travel note from Garnet Hill: 10/3/94: Monday: Wake AGAIN through night, LESS awful, and lastly at 6:50AM. Dress and down to breakfast at 7:30 and Eric did NOT tell kitchen we're eating early. Have bacon omelette and hot chocolate and a muffin and out at 8:05 to get to Ampersand Trail at 9:55 at mile 75, having to backtrack because we'd passed it. Out at 10AM and climb and climb through RIME (lots of photos) to 1PM, lunch to 1:30, three OTHERS at top, down to 4PM, passing 5-6 others on the way up, going fast, thought EXHAUSTED! Back to Garnet by 5:35, and I order two dark Heinekens and SOAK in LOVELY tub to 6:15. To dinner---with Mack and Betsy and Suzie---of shrimp and beef carpaccio appetizers only, and chef Andy and his brother-helper were BOTH graduated from CIA! Another beer and ½ chocolate cake and CONTENT to room (using Suzie's card to find no NEW telephone messages after I'd gotten new page-numbers yesterday from client) at 8:50 to write this and read at 8:55PM. Read to 9:50 and bed at 10PM.

Travel note from Garnet Hill: 10/4/94: Tuesday: Wake ONCE at 2:40AM to shit a lot, and then about 6AM and then at 8:20! Zip-dress and get comments on late breakfast, joining Suzie at the end of one table for a dead-bacon omelette. Tomorrow breakfast at 7:30, too, for their wagon-ride and our neat early departure. Up to room at 9, thighs SORE and still feeling SLEEPY. Work till 10, down to group going on the circle-route to the rim of the garnet mine for lunch, and back about 1, which means I can work straight through, finishing marking by dinner, which I again eat lightly at, and manage to get through the night OK and back the next day.

Also from 11/4/94: 1:30PM: Well, Tony was SUPPOSED to show up at 1, but he's not here yet, so I typed the Garnet Hill notes, above, and told Pope he could come over between 3-4PM to see the My So-Called Life episode he missed last night when he went to the last showing of Shawshank Redemption because his friend Francine recommended it, as he does. I even sorted through the "new stack" to get the notebook out of the way, passing the time before Tony would arrive, and now decide to just finish THIS page, too. THERE he is! THAT was at 1:32PM and it was FedEx! Phone Kelly to say, "Don't waste money sending EACH batch of 50-60 pages!" and get back to THIS at 1:38PM---so maybe Tony DID get my subliminal message and ISN'T coming? What to say now? HAPPY that I have enough money (or spare in First account) for mid-November bills, even with the gym-bill on Visa, HIP at $511, and $2030 for Shelley IN First. Still no response to my SECOND LW to Beard about billing problem that seems to happen EACH month. Ken is even MORE of a pain: berating me for not getting the Picholine reservation and not CHEWING THEM OUT, but liking Mefistofele, which made me tear (choke up, not tear pages) a few times even though the singers and production were NOT the best in memory. Got a $65 Carousel ticket for tonight. So I feel GOOD about catching up on plays, and have Frazetta and a few other things (Brooklyn Museum) to catch up with, and MAYBE will get energy for re-taping travel videos next, though I've been telling myself to vacuum all this week--at least I've been keeping up with every-four-day gyms, though they seemed VERY hard until last time, when it seemed more "normal." Phoned HIP for a pneumonia vaccination but C.'s out till 11/8. So this is just "one thing after another," I guess, which is what LIFE should be: going with the flow, living moment-by-moment---yet I STILL want to do the TWO LAST ITEMS ON MY "ONE-THING-LEFT" list: 1) GET something published (if only on INTERNET!) and 2) FIND a lover, bolstered with Friedan's thought that it doesn't even have to be ORGASMIC, just SENSUAL would be nice, and the thought of getting back, in some way, with JOHN A. is appealing, but meeting him briefly in the hall last night, with NO conversation, doesn't ADD to his appeal. AND I keep reminding myself to FILL MY KEOGH and IRA before paying off the Amalgamated debt, and maybe the work year is tapering off and I won't be getting THAT much more work until APRIL again! MAINLY: STOP FEELING SORRY for myself, having ill-will against my body and my bad habits and my game-playing. And DO ACTUALISM more, since that DOES make me feel good! So I guess THAT'S what I'll do next, rather than tackling anything major, still thinking that MAYBE Tony will buzz even though it's 1:46PM and he's usually not THAT late! RESIST saying, "Here's the bottom of the page," but there's not much ELSE that comes to mind: looking forward to MY play being done 11/12, and paying Dennis for Thanksgiving dinner, and whatever comes NEXT, and NEXT---.

12/2/94: WHERE AM I NOW? Watched Bitter Moon earlier today, and that was bad ENOUGH with the Peter Coyote character so loving "Mimi" that SHE finally went over the brink and demanded to be loved though she be shat upon, whereat he started catting around even more, broke his femur getting hit by a truck when he leapt out of a cab to pursue a trick, and then SHE pulled him out of bed, which paralyzed him, also making him impotent, and he suffered until finally he killed her and then shot himself. THEN Savage Nights by Cyril Collard, playing himself, singing the final song himself, dying himself after it won some sort of Cannes film-prize: striving to live so fully under a sentence of HIV death that he not only persuades the fabulously cute Samy, played by Carlos Lopez, into his bed, but gets a new girlfriend in Laura, who so loves him that she goes crazy when she finds him in bed with his OLD girlfriend, who only wanted someone to hold, and the characters of the mothers of ALL the main characters, and some of the fathers, and everyone trying to live and experience and sure that their orgasms are more felt than anyone's had ever been before, and I find flitting through my crammed brain the science-fiction play idea I had of ALIENS who invaded New York, taking the form of dreamily handsome young men with "something different" in their eyes, and "my hero" would finally get one to bed to find that they were smooth between their legs, and end up being MADE smooth between HIS legs because of the intervention of the aliens, who didn't want their presence made known---so they'd do that in REVENGE, AFTER he'd made them known---because they were sure that THIS "uncovering" would PROVE that they existed, to add a soupcon of grimness to the play. So much I would want to say, so much I would want to experience before I died, so much seems to slip away when I actually get down to saying something about it: the EXCELLENCE and JAMMED-NESS of Savage Nights, talking of aberrant sexuality, even to the Seine-side male-gropes which were some of the more convincing, even to the being pissed upon, and the marvelous torso-slitting of Samy, just to prove that he could suffer, too, even getting into politics with the Skinheads attacking the Arabs, making Paris look somewhat like the worse parts of NYC. Then MY reflections on MY waning sexuality, compared with the raging hormones of everyone in these pictures: back to Bitter Moon, where they went into S/M to boost their flagging energies, with extreme makeup, though they don't even DARE impute homosexuality to Coyote or Hugh Grant, even when their wives can go to bed with each other and lie "magnificent after their voluptuous sexuality." And remnants from The Wedding Banquet, where the families were SO caught up with "saving face" and "doing the right thing" and "not telling someone something since it might kill him," though it turns out in one of the more touching moments that the father DOES know about the son's male lover, and how the stupid "customs"---UNBREAKABLE customs---caused the terrible post-banquet bedroom-party that actually GOT the woman pregnant, so that the father COULD have someone to carry on the family name---and that seems SO silly to me, who have thought, in total, maybe fifteen minutes in my entire LIFE about the fact that my name will be going out with me, rather than ANY of my genes being passed on to another generation---though even NOW I think I might have been born too LATE, since the world is quickly getting WORSE, not better, and by the time I die it won't even be worth living in at ALL, though I rather suppose that EVERY generation before mine thought EXACTLY the same thing, and at least now I have the technology to type and SAVE these thoughts of mine about the subject. MANY things to do when I finally catch up on the videotape watching, lots of things to do OUTSIDE, for which I hope the weather remains as nice as it's been the past week when I've been inside the whole time: museums and buying things and mending suits and taking care of bills and lists and IMAX movies. Only for about thirty seconds in the past month have I felt the THRILL of all that I've been doing, taking much of what's been offered me, and most of the time feeling depressed, lowering performances, castigating myself, and now that I've typed this page I can GAME!

12/14/94: Catching up with little notes jotted to myself:

Note from 11/12/94: 11PM after my playlet, we're at the Hunan restaurant and Dennis "reads" his "fortunes": "Your life is PATHETIC." "Just end it all and do away with yourself." So I ask him about it, and he SAYS he was just joking.

Note from 11/24/94: Think of Angels and Archangels and Cherubim and Seraphim, and EB 1:371 also names Thrones and Dominations and Powers, and later there are Virtues and Principalities, and I wonder if there's an Internet Concordance.
12/5/94: Noon at Aureole prix fixe lunch: 1) Ken has veal and mushroom tart, "Like shepherd's pie with mashed potatoes beneath," and I have ratatouille with a cheese ravioli with LITTLE cheese; 2) Ken has spring roll of shrimp, with NOT a crisp roll, and I have salmon on couscous with a FAT-STIFF top, but the best course; 3) Ken has "so-so chicken and vinegar" and I have venison in a tiny amount on too-hard rice-cake; 4) Ken has cheesecake in white-chocolate cup under inverted cone with spun-sugar daisy and "ordinary passion fruit sorbet" and I have a creme brulee with black dust beneath and tasteless wheat bread-cylinders tied with candied orange zest.

Note from 12/5/94: 6PM: Self-defense class: 1) Get to appear stronger: exercise; 2) DON'T turn your back; 3) Not a TARGET: walk with PURPOSE, not preoccupied or dozing; 4) DISTRIBUTE money and credit cards among pockets and pants; 5) Make BIG circles at corners; 6) Defense: Yell FIRE! 7) GO WITH gut feelings/fears.

Note from 12/7/94: Total Minesweeper for 6:21 hours between 11/3 and 12/6, and Mahjongg at 12:40 hours from 11/3 to 12/7, with 2:22 for others for a total of 21:23 for 35 days, or 12:05 hours for December, which is TWO HOURS PER DAY!

Note from 12/9/94: Carolyn and I try to find a place to eat after Barbara K.'s inept play and ept direction of three plays at WOW: 1) Bayamo is booked for a Christmas party, 2) Time is too expensive; 3) Louisiana is jammed and noisy; 4) Arturo's is jammed and noisy; 5) Can is too expensive; 6) Toukie's is crowded; and 7) Brother's BBQ gives us its LAST table and we BOTH love it.

Note from 12/12/94: 11AM: Phone Fethi: Call me to replace kitchen faucets. 12/13: 1:40PM: talk to B.'s office. About 10PM Fethi: Call me. 12/14: 11:40AM: He'll call back. 1:20 he called me. 2:50: Fethi will be here 9-9:30AM tomorrow. 12/15: 10-10:30AM: He FIXES it without replacing the faucets!

12/16/94: Palio: Kir is $6.50. Appetizers: My TINY duck and fois gras ravioli, Delores's mushroom risotto, Michael's tagliatelle with seafood and lobster not that special. Main: my veal filet and sweetbreads and kidneys on spinach OK, Delores's lamb chops NOT shared, Michael's pheasant breast and polenta. Dessert: my tangerine souffle and blackberries not special, Delores's same, Michael's chocolate cake. Meal at $60, $15 for half-wine, for 81.50 total + $21.20 for $26% for $102.70, which I exchanged for her $32.50 owed me + $70 cash for $102.50 GIVEN to her.