What is evident to me is how angry everybody can get about everything, and how confused and confusable we each of us are, with the possible exception of Jack. In the course of this totally uncharted adventure, I have come across three lovely young women just graduated from Columbia, one of who actually threw discus I think they are spelled, the handsome, thick haired Englishman who actually dropped out of the tour in Bruges to be concerned about me, Peter and Arthur and most touchingly Daniel who I love with my soul but suffer over because he has no clue how smart he is and says he is going to stop smoking but we’ll see, and my new friend from India who’s actually invited me, but I don’t know if I have the energy to set off on that big a trip.So it would seem I have gotten through it all alive, provided the plane lands. Having gone through blatant misadventure— that is to say, I went to Amsterdam as a not-really destination, with no real intention of going anywhere, just feeling out of sorts and out of energy, and probably out of luck, the reasonably priced ticket went there, and there was where Daniel was, and Peter, two beautiful friends I have made on my travels. So I bought a ticket there and from there intended to explore, an intention I abandoned when I got to Bruges as they spell it some places, when I discovered I had been robbed online by someone in Tuscaloosa, Alabama where I have never been and certainly have no intention of ever going. Stuck in a little overpriced hotel on a canal which everything is in Brugge which is how they spell it there, I went on a tour of churches, in the middle of which Amy at Citi bank called me to alert me to my having been pilfered for my entire account, at which juncture a beautiful white-haired Englishman actually came back out of the tour to see if I was alright, at which point I fell in love. I understand I will never see him again, and would like to make him into my final fantasy love story, but I don’t know that I have any more Fiction in me.
It would seem I should pull myself together for my Memoir, hate the word. My wonderful friend Barbara Conaty, the great woman at the Library Journal, she used to be, suggested I call it Recollections, I think, and I suppose I’d better do them while I still have them. Had a very long moment— it might have been almost an hour walking by the market place along the canal in Amsterdam, when I really couldn’t remember where it was I was going, or even where it might have been I belonged, if indeed I belonged anywhere. Sweet Esmir, the tall. smart, kind and wasted(he is brighter than just someone who should just help you learn to master what Steve Jobs left behind) came to visit me at the tiny sanctuary Miriam found for me near my old hood by the canal, having had a fight with his love, the mother of his little boy, which I hope he resolves by the time I finish this adventure.
Well, I guess we’ll see. Meantime, I have to fill out the customs form they’ve just handed me on the plane. Sadly, it feels like the trip was pointless, an adventure that wasn’t one, really. The definition of Adventure, I wrote in one of my novels, is you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. I am too old to be in love, except with Daniel, who glistens with the glow of Don, the nicest man who ever lived, though not long enough. I would like to think there is still something colorful ahead. Well, let’s start with the plane landing. One can only hope.
P.S. The PLANE LANDED!!! Well, there's a Beginning.
