Strangely, I am in Amsterdam. Strangely, because of all the places I
have been in the course of many non-careers, this is the one where I feel most
connected. Here is where I came
mainly by accident, it being the place the plane went when I left Scotland,
where I had been visiting Rosie, my friend from Quaker Meeting in Paris, whose
life changed when she counseled criminals and ran off with one of them, leaving
her husband, the head of a department at the University of Edinboro, I think it
was, and several children. Not a
happy finale, though, as she rode on a bus and saw her lover lying dead by the
side of the road. But aside from
that, almost a movie.
Nothing in the world anymore seems
to be almost a movie, and I imagine that is because of jet lag, one of the
least pretty figures of speech in the English language, but more than a little
accurate. It is now ten days, I
think, since I left wherever I was, Los Angeles to the best of my cloudy
recollection, and I have failed to catch up with myself or whoever she is. Handsome Daniel, my acquired
scamp from an earlier journey, was waiting for me at the airport in Amsterdam,
took me home to his totally unsettled (except by every friend who comes through
and a few teenage children and all his daughter’s friends over the weekend)
apartment, a ground-floor with a back porch with a roof that is sinking into
the cellar below. I love him very
much, (friend only,) but organization is not his suit—he is a mountain climber. His walls are decked with pictures of
slopes, I think they are, and books, mostly mysteries, more than I have read,
or probably ever will now, and pictures of his beautiful daughter and son (beautiful
as well,) by an angularly gorgeous Dutch woman from whom he is long estranged
except over the fates of their children.
I trust he will not be angry with me for revealing this much inside info
as he has no wish for fame, notoriety, or fortune, but wants only to keep
climbing, earning a living however it makes itself available.
I suppose if athleticism were this
available instead of compulsory education and the option of non-material goals
in America, there might be this much mountain climbing, or even climbing
without mountains—they have rocks or just artificial things I don’t remember
the right names for, as I am still painfully behind, maybe never to catch up,
it feels like. But I am lucky to
have found this little corner of the canal, and the beauteous souls afloat in
it, no matter how cluttered their environs—not a criticism, just an
observation.
And it was gorgeous, and privileged,
to have had a little side trip to Copenhagen to visit my beautiful Danes,
Kristoffer and Maria, picked up on the streets of New York when they were
working for the UN, with one beautiful little year-old girl checking
Herself out in a mirror. There is another one now, a three-year
old, Winston, who tore my heart out as the taxi pulled away from the Tivoli
Gardens where we had gone for the evening, as he mouthed, uninstructed, “I love
you, Granny Gwen.” Never before
have I taken being older as a gift of Grace.
I am still hopeful that this
sluggishness of mentality might be jet lag, and not what I can expect forever,
or what there is to be of forever.
The place where I am now is a
café/restaurant in a building right next to Apple where I will have a lesson in
an hour to try and move me up to the next plateau of using this thing, so I
will not feel so retarded. I am
hoping it is only the weariness that has made me so slow, and not having lived
as long as I have, to my surprise.
Darling Jack Carter, a very fast-talking, fast-thinking and nice(in-between
insults) standup comedian, who was a friend has an obit in today’s New York
Times, gone at 93—a pretty good run, it seems to me, especially for a
comic. As I remember, we
introduced him to an ex-girlfriend, or maybe it was a wife, of Warren Cowan,
the publicist, and he married her.
She was not mentioned in his obit, but some of his jokes were. A really good guy, which it couldn’t
have been easy to be, the way that business was.
And maybe still is, though from what I
have scanned, racing through the TV stations, it has become much different from
my idea of funny. As love has
probably become different from my idea of love. Though decency and caring have stayed pretty close to my
idea of decency and caring. At
least in Amsterdam.
