So it is cold here, gloomy, after a very bright day where I felt good, correct to be here, having an adventure in an old hotel I visited when I was writing travel for the Wall Street Journal Europe, a paper I am not even sure is still in business.
Actually went to a museum, a furnished house the garden of which I had peered at from the outside, through a gate, met a lovely woman and, so emboldened, visited my old haunt, the Grand Hotel de L'Europe, heard a fine pianist/composer in the lounge, felt a bolt of my old chutzpah and planned to go back today and swim in the very small pool that I dipped into when Swimming Through Europe for my old friend Jim, who is no longer with the paper as I'm not sure the paper is, either. Am suddenly a little scared, wondering what exactly I am doing here, here this peaceful place I thought would be a fine setting for writing my memoir,-- but now realize I hate the word, find it pretentious. Not even sure I want to write it, as stimulating and interesting and... lucky, I think, I add it all up to be. After all... Don, Cary Grant, John Dean in the house next door, my country still surviving, even though I am appalled and bored by the constant solicitation for money from the Democrats. Surprised to be so affected by the weather, after I found it so challenging, as they say in New York, to be so uplifted though made slightly uncomfortable by the heat and brightness of the day.
Saddened by a series of e-mails from my daughter in the course of which she drove herself Mad, so expect no good ending from that quarter. My son continues to be bright and borderline witty on occasion, so that is heartening, as living this high above a canal gives you a glimpse of the Eternal, which you realize you won't have forever, so it isn't Really.
Am also somewhat lifted by a review in The New Yorker, which happily I found at Filter, the coffee shop next door, where you never find anything to read besides Dutch, of the new act by Chrissie Hines, so I feel a small part of my life (The Pretenders, she told me once when I stood by her in a club, was named after my novel) has survived even though I have lost my husband, my dogs, and a fraction of my children. Am also heartened at the prospect of a visit to Copenhagen to see the wonderful couple and children I picked up in New York and thought would brighten that city and lift it for a long time to come, but am selfishly glad for myself that they will be over here, and I am invited to visit. It is strange how lonely you become even after a determination to not allow yourself to feel lonely, and a conviction after almost a lifetime of travel that it is second nature to you. Especially when you seem to have lost touch with the first one.
