A View with a Room

I would apologize to E. M. Forster if I were not sure he would be pleased that someone still thinks of him, in spite of what a good writer he was.  But I am secretly suspicious that if the gods have plans for us, this apartment would easily figure in.

    Almost everything in it is a puzzle, having been planned and flawlessly executed by the more fastidious of two gay lovers, still a very young man and already an elevated executive.  But as a cloddish woman, I have yet to figure out most of it, in spite of being exalted by the layout, lifted every time I come into the living room, from which I can observe the not very high skyline of Amsterdam across the way, behind a row of five-story storybook buildings,  bridges, and, just below, in the canal, a line of anchored boats being patrolled by ducks, I think they are, or very fat pigeons who have mastered the waterways.  I speak of them as 'who' rather than which, since I am missing only my pets.  The people in my life I treasure are all invited here to visit, since I have a flawless guest room, part of the somewhat constipated design.  Not that it is missing anything, but everything has its exact space, much of which I can't figure out in spite of having been shown twice.  "The rich are different from you and me," Fitzgerald said, to which Hemingway replied: "Yes, they have more money."  But the gays are different from you and me: Yes, they have tighter anuses.  Or maybe not.  

      But I have been here two days now and have yet to be able to master the DeLonghi Nespresso machine, or the brilliantly designed stove top that you have but to touch or something like that and it boils the water, turning on that burner only.  So I have been forced to make my coffee instant, using the tap that sends out boiling water, because that much I can do.

     Fano, the brilliant young (younger than my son) owner, no longer partnered with Raoul, who designed it all, including His and Her faucets at the dual wash-up sink, or maybe they're His and His, is very kindly coming over tomorrow night to have me sign the contract for the apartment and, I assume, go over all these things with me again, so I can function.  I have never felt so stupid, but at the same time admire my having found this place, which seems a flash of inspiration all on its own, something that will nurture me as other parts of the world have done in the past, as isolated as I have often felt.  Here I have already connected with a number of unlikely people, besides the great gift of Daniel, the openhearted free spirit I met on the plane here from Glasgow.  There is Paul, the Chinese doctor dispensing holistic herbs and martialing a room with a healing masseuse, having abandoned Western medicine because it has too many side effects, who I took to dinner last night at a restaurant I was trying to make feel effective, the last time I will be that generous, --the food was really terrible and overpriced.

      But it was only food.  Today I go to the home in the country of Prince from Jokja, a recently retired chef of "Cuisine Orientale' who will be moving back to Bali part time but found me "spontaneous," and invited me to lunch.  He was with a recently retired Dutch woman doctor who has been working with afflicted children. All of this feels more soul-enhancing than averting eyes in the elevator, which is what I mostly do in my building in New York.  

      I am looking at the cover of Living to tell the Tale, the Nobel prize-winning book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the only book I have brought with me besides my loved friend Rosie's.  The cover has him as an infant, adorable, eyes very wide.  My own eyes have gotten quite tired and-- surprise! old.  So I am saving them for writing and intend to read only the occasional International New York Times or whatever the hell they're calling it, having fired most of the dedicated journalists left in that arena.  My old (though still comparatively young) editor from the Wall Street Journal Europe, Jim Ruane, having won his lawsuit against Bloomberg, which (again! surprise!) turned out not to love writers, says he will come to visit me, and I hope so.  As I hope any or all of you who have read these posts will come to Amsterdam. 

     Not that I am lonely.  Strangely, having left far behind any hopes or dreams of romance, in this city of rampant erotica, I am curiously peaceful, with no great unsatisfied longings other than the one for writing something really meaningful.  My half-landlord, that is to say, one of the youngish owners, the gym-running proprietor, as opposed to the executive world-traveling Meester who seems to think of everything including an assistant for me, how elegant, was just here putting up a handle on the wall beside the bathtub so I could pull myself up without slipping, and it just fell down.

    Happily, I was not attached to it.  Well, that's the lesson of my loved teacher Jack: from attachment comes suffering.  Especially in a slippery bathtub. 

A BRAND NEW DAY -HONEST TO GOD

So I awake in a room streaming with light, even though it is not that bright a day.  The anguish and cares of the past couple of weeks, though not quite vanished, now seem just more preparation for being all right.  I do not imagine for a moment that there will be no more problems-- I have had moments where I lost speech, lost direction, and I am hopeful now that that was all anxiety, because I didn't know where my life was going, or if.  It is beyond strange to get to my juncture of the road and have nothing settled in my life, least of all my body.  To be adventurous at this turning I understand is unusual to say the least.  But then, little in my history has been traditional, except for my wonderful college.  And my having opted out of Bryn Mawr Reunion to come to Europe sort of spoke to how I felt about looking back.
    Because God was I going to set the world on fire!  Broadway was just waiting for me.  I knew Frank Loesser, and even more base, Frank Loesser knew me.  I had a champion in Yip Harburg, the finest lyricist ever (that stands,) I had Summer Stocked with Marlon Brando, at his most marvelous and thin and terrible at comedy, I had loved up close a movie star, before it was okay and sort of known that he was gay, I had been abused even in college by a young man who would also become a movie star, before he threw it away with drugs, I had traveled the world and lived in the south of Spain before it was overrun with tourists, had a romance with a bullfighter, stopped short of being gored, sung in a night club in Paris, had my palm scratched by Maya Angelou.  Why, there was nothing I wouldn't be able to do.
     And then I'd met Don, and my fear that I wouldn't have children was obliterated.  They were wonderful when they were little. So much for that.
     But the good die young.  And he was very, very good.
     Then I started my life all over again, writing travel for the Wall Street Journal Europe, the only job I ever had after the one when I was twenty, writing comedy for NBC, sharing office space with Woody Allen, already much smarter than I, coming into the office only on the day we got our checks.  I had a friend then, Selma Diamond, who wrote for Sid Caesar, and when we walked in the park she asked a pigeon: "Any messages?"
    I still think of her when I see a pigeon, and they are everywhere. So in a way, I guess, she is immortal. As long as someone thinks of you, in a way you are immortal.  So I hope this will become a real book, and someone will read it, and think of me.  
     I mean, if people still read books, and it isn't all just the damned internet.

A NEW RE-BEGINNING-AMSTERDAM

Flat on the floor of the Apple store
Unable to lift a finger
Plumb out of gas and on her ass
She decided, however, to linger
For the locals seemed kinder
The worst was behind her
Or so, she most fervently hoped
And though not a native
It made her creative
And she hadn't even doped.

So it is looking good for the apartment I loved, for which I have applied, and am waiting just for approval to move in June 2nd.  In the meanwhile I am ensconced in the flat of my new friend Daniel, a professional problem solver.  Daniel comes from a Pentacostal papa, a priest who became a teacher, and is certainly a good advertisement for his religion, though he doesn't believe in any.  But he practices kindness, the best of the Virtues, in my opinion, and has taken me in till it is time to take possession of the flat.
    It is lucky I am with a professional problem solver, as this has been as difficult as anything I have been through in my life.  Not knowing where I was going, or if I would make it through to get there has been the least of it.  First there was Fred, the realtor/huckster/should be felon who leased me the studio/slum here, with its many tenement-like levels, who should more aptly be labeled felon.  Daniel says not to let him get to me, that that way he wins.  Still, I would like to expose him.  Amsterdam is full of hustlers, those who have come here looking for the clever kill.  Happily I think I am past all those guys.  At least I hope so.
   In the meantime, I have almost moved into a truly uplifting environment where although the designer/owner neglected to include a medicine cabinet, you feel like you won't get sick.  I skipped my Bryn Mawr class reunion much as I loved those women, and hope they had a great weekend looking back. I opted to try and look ahead.

AND IT IS A NEW DAY.  A kind doctor who lives in the building has been ministering to me, testing my skin to see if it bounces back, or I do.  My body is broken from walking these punishing stones, and I went out on my terrace this morning-- my landlord has let me stay in the apartment in spite of my accountant's not sending the money yet, which puzzles me-- and looked down at probably one of the world's most glorious views.  In the distance, cathedrals and museums, just below motorboats and the occasional renegade houseboat, across the water in front of the dock, picture-book houses, as in a fairy tale.  But just below the water is thick with garbage.  One great plastic bag fully loaded floats in between what appears to be an endless array of torn pieces of paper.  And stubbornly sailing along atop the mess is one fat black pigeon. 
    I suppose that's me.  Insisting on finding beauty in a world that seems not to be looking for it anymore, except maybe in Angela Jolie.   But I am hoping to conclude my business today with the owner of the place, so airy and full of light, I cannot help but have my spirits lifted, even as I cringe.
   You all have to come.  
     

THE BIG REUNION

Today begins the Bryn Mawr reunion of my class, a wonderful class, full of bright and loving and questing women, many of whom have achieved important things in the eyes of the world, but all bright and exceptional human beings; I was lucky to be among them.  That I am not among them today was a conscious choice I made, because proud as I am to be one of their number, my hope is, unlikely as it seems at this juncture of the road,  to look ahead and build something fresh and new, rather than looking back.  Still, I hug them in my heart and remember them, and hope they will think of me this weekend, and maybe even sing one of the songs I wrote for our Junior Show, when my ambition was to conquer Broadway, which, generous spirits that they were and are, they were all sort of convinced I would.  As was I, almost, insecurity being as strong a one of my traits as was nerve.
      Junior Show having been the triumph it was-- George Segal, my Haverford crush later to become a movie star and always less than a wondrous human being, leapt onstage at the final curtain and kissed my hands.  And, more important, Katharine McBride, our great college president, said to my mother as we stood outside afterwards: "This is the greatest theatrical event at Bryn Mawr since Katharine Hepburn was a student here."  I nearly swooned with joy and surprise-- I hadn't even known she knew who I was.  
       My mother looked after her and said "Who was that?"
       "The president of the college," I said.
       "Oh," she said, superficial being a kind description of the woman she was, judging by appearances.  "I thought it was the washerwoman,"
       But I had new friends at the Actor's Studio, home of the at-the-time incredibly beautiful and gifted Marlon Brando, who wanted me to come join and do a project.  So when I passed Miss McBride a few days later in the Cloisters, the well-named center of the Gothic architectured library, I said: "Miss McBride: Shakespeare and Chaucer have given me everything they can, and the theatre needs me.  So I'm leaving Bryn Mawr."
      "Well, Gwen," she sort of drawled in her high-end way, "try to be back for exams."
      So I was.  The details of that Actor's Studio adventure I will save for another entry.  But to return to the point, my going back and finishing THAT college stands as the first truly important achievement of my life.  Without it, I am not sure I would have accomplished any of the things I might have, or known the value of friendship with truly great women.
     I thank all who were among them who gave me such affection and support:  Muggy, the prettiest girl in the class who tolerated and even seemed to welcome my having come over the roof to Pem West to sing my new songs to her in the middle of the night, Bethie, her roommate, the most sober among us, who I hope has made it back to reunion, Alice, with her committed and brilliant political consciousness with whom I watched the Army-McCarthy hearings,  as both of us feverishly pulled for Justice and Sanity to prevail, as it seems less and less to do these days,  Marilyn, whose indefatigable energy will be present among you today, organizing and beating the bushes still for good ideas, Gloria, who I trust will be leading you all in Song-- I capitalize it because it was such an important part of the joy that was my college career-- Suzie, our Egyptian Kopf who exemplifies generosity of spirit combined with clear intelligence, and gave her gifts to a less than illuminated with respect to women U.N., and continues her giving by helping the poor of Egypt by having them make rags into works of art, one of the colorful sacks they created here with me today.
     As I wish you all were.  But it seemed right to continue my quest to be the most creative and positive woman I can, while I can still walk unknown streets,  discover and grow,  in spite of my steps being a wee bit wobbly.  Though it seems, even to me, a bit quixotic, it feels like I am in the right place: after all, there are windmills.
     Great love to all of you.
      

MY FIRST AMSTERDAM LOVE AFFAIR

Dear Whoever, if you're there:This is out of order, as the only thing they don't know how to do at Apple is change the sequence.

    I got an e-mail from a beloved friend, in an exotic corner of the world, Hong Kong, reacting to my last report, filling me with joy as it has been a long time since we were in contact, and I didn’t know if anyone was even reading these things.  So the communication made me feel particularly light-hearted, as it included the great news that she is going to have a baby.  As close friends know, some of my Best Friends are Babies.  During our courtship, Don was afraid I might be arrested, as I had a habit of playing with and talking to babies who belonged to strangers. I loved babies so much. My biggest fear in life was that I wouldn’t have children.  So the joy— they told me “You forget the pain,” which I did, till they grew up when it became a different kind— was intensified.

     Yesterday I had my first Amsterdam amour.  His name is Jack.  I found him in the phone store where I went to make it all right with my iPhone which AT&T has fixed so no matter what you do to avoid costs it comes out a fortune.  As it turns out, everything here has steps before you can make it all right which it still might not be.  But hey—that’s Life. It’s the journey that’s the real fascination, and if you just pay attention to what’s going on alongside the road, there’s something that just might lift you.  So even though it didn’t work out with the phone, I did get a chance to fall in love.  Here he is.

When the time came to leave, Jack reached out to me.  When I couldn’t take him with me—his mother was reluctant to let me have him— he said “Bye Bye.”  She was absolutely, gloriously stunned.  “His first words!” she said, visibly in ecstasy.  Apparently there are still some I can inspire.

      The one downside I have perceived so far to this fascinating city is that they tend to dismiss and look away from the elderly, which I find to my surprise I am.  I was always the youngest in my class, the one at Bryn Mawr I graduated with having their Big reunion this very weekend at the college. Much as I love my classmates and the college, I chose not to attend, as I don’t care to look back, but ahead.   This seems to be a kind of aberration, and that’s okay with me. As far as I know, and can remember, it has been my way to stay off the beaten path, often making a new one that others found strange, and in some cases risky.  But as it says here in the window of the Nike store: without Risk there can be No Victory. 

      Probably the most dangerous of these adventures up till now was after Don died, when I decided to try and conquer my three biggest fears: loneliness, Germans, and the German language.  The German part I imagine was genetic.  Though I have never actively practiced Judaism, the religion of my forebears, there’s no doubt that those who hated Jews wouldn’t care about that, when rounding us up. This fear was enhanced and exacerbated by my German teacher at Bryn Mawr, Heinz Politzer.  To graduate, or as my mother would be quick to correct,  to be graduated from Bryn Mawr, you needed to pass two language Orals, which, it being Bryn Mawr were written: one in a Romance language, the other in one of the tougher ones: Greek, Latin, or Russian, which took two years to learn. The only language you could study for a year and be good enough to pass the oral, the course being that tough, was German.  I had easily passed my Spanish, so enrolled in Baby German, as it’s called a little too tenderly.  Heinz Politzer, an Austrian, may or may not have hated Jews.  But he certainly seemed to hate me. 

      Bright though I might have been, he made me feel like an idiot.  Austrian, he pronounced ich, “isch.”  So when I read aloud from Die Lorelei by Heinrich Heine, following his example, he said to me: “No, Miss Davis.  Not ‘isch, isch.” The nightmare of that class lasted all year, intensified by the happy conflict of having interest in me and my work from the Actor’s Studio in New York, at the time the hottest thing there was in American theatre, my great ambition at the time being to write musical comedy. The Studio was run by Lee Strasberg, and was home of the young and still beautiful Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Maureen Stapleton, and a host of Greaties.  So when Freddy Sadoff, a member of the Studio invited me to come to New York to work on a project, I was ready to go. 

    I ran into Katherine McBride, our great college president, who had said to my mother after the show,  my having written music and lyrics, a lot of the book, and having the comedy lead, "This is the greatest theatrical event since Katharine Hepburn was a student here. "  I nearly swooned with ecstasy.  I hadn't been sure she even knew who I was.
    "Who was that?" my mother said, looking after her.
    "The president of the college," I said.
    "Oh," said my mother, dismissively.  "I thought she was the washerwoman."
    To say my mother judged by appearances is putting it mildly.
    Certain I was on my way to my true calling, I decided to go to New York to launch my theatrical career before the official school year ended.  Passing Miss McBride in the Cloisters, the appropriate name for our Gothic-architectured library, I said, ”Shakespeare and Chaucer have given me all they can, and the theater needs me, so I’m leaving Bryn Mawr.”  Miss McBride said in her sort of drawl, “Well, Gwen, try to be back for exams.”  

     But just in case I couldn’t be. I took a lot of them early. I asked Dr. Politzer if I could take my German final before the scheduled time. We had an Honor system at Bryn Mawr. Besides that, I promised him I would not tell any of my classmates what was in the exam.  But apparently he didn’t trust me. To ensure that I would not be able to give any help my classmates, he gave me one that covered almost nothing we had actually studied, including vocabulary I had never seen before.  Amazingly, I prevailed, and passed.  But it was one of the most intimidating episodes of my life. That, and let us not forget about Hitler. 

       So to decide to go and live in Germany, which I did in 199_was beyond brave.  I did not, however, pick my destination blindly.  I had made a friend in Hong Kong, a banker named Wolfgang Rohde, when I was visiting my loved friend, the Time Magazine reporter Sandra Burton there.  He and his wife Nurdi, had since moved back to Germany, and invited me to visit.  His bank had reassigned him to Mannheim, next to the small village of Weinheim that I explored.  It is quite literally quaint, its main street running down to the Marktplatz filled with flowers, always reassuring, on the square a hotel called the Pfaltz, married name of one of my best friends from Bryn Mawr, Marilyn.  I took that as a sign— I like to think that signs are everywhere, and if you;re open to them, they usually are. I made a reservation to return, planning to write my next novel there, writing being the way I defined myself, my children being grown, and the great love of my life behind me. 

      The story of my journey to get back there I will save for another day, as it is coming to the close of my being able to get some help with learning how to do all this at the Apple store— sort of my Club here in Amsterdam. I have made a few friends among the instructors, so I feel more or less at home, as I always do when I am learning.  Especially when I understand, as I’m starting to do, this curious new e-world.  

      I took a break for lunch and went to a cafe I had lunch at yesterday, by a canal, of course.  There was a Canadian couple at the next table, Mark and Cindy, celebrating their 40th anniversary.  They’d come here on their honeymoon.  She told me how brave she thought I was.  It elated me to hear that word, as mostly what I’d heard about me from the people here was that I was old.  Even the sweet woman  when I got to the Apple store this morning tried to incorporate me into her circle as an “elder.”  It really enraged me, one of the things I intend to overcome by living in Amsterdam: not being older, but getting mad.  Anger is something I hope to vanguish here, a terrible vestige of my mother, as charming and funny as she was in a lot of ways.

    There was a popular saying some years ago: “Don’t get mad, get even.”  I’d like to improve on that: Don’t get mad, get creative. 

DIARY OF AN OLDER WOMAN

So I awoke at five this morning saying  'what am I doing? In this place where I know no one--- though now I have a friend in Daniel plus his beautiful daughter, India, his darling son, Sasha,  and bitter Peter who cooks and hates inequality and his ex-wife.
And I also have Stefanie at the Apple store, an award-winning documentarian who has two young children and her job and her husband so feels guilty because she doesn't just create.

    I understand where she’s coming from, because our gifts, our talents, if we’re lucky enough to have them, are the most demanding child

we have, crying for attention, giving us no peace unless we attend to them.  I remember the first spiritual retreat I went on with my lfriend 

DIiane, whose whole family was into a very intense form of Believing, that involved silent meditation, something that was, of course, very hard for me.  I managed a few days of it, then had to break away to do some writing,  And I think it was Anne, the mother, who said “Writing is your form of worship.”

     So here I am, on my mental knees, asking for help. Yesterday was fraught with peril.  I had to move from my overpriced hovel— a terrible outfit called AirB&B, my contact Fred, a driven American of Dutch descent, here to make his fortune, “accommodating" a jet-lagged, scared, no longer young woman desperate for sleep and someplace to rest her head, too groggy to see what a death trap it was.  Once a little of the fog cleared, and I saw how many places there were where I could fall down, having just acquired— all right, start facing it— a

new hip that could be easily broken, begged him to get me someplace else, which he said he couldn’t do. Wouldn’t, really. A terrible human being, and I am being generous to categorize him as such.  As kind as are most of the residents of Amsterdam, bustling with tourists as the city is, there are a parade of people on the hustle, and their drum major could be Fred.

      Grateful at least for having survived a week ($1752, my fault for letting him do that to me, but I was exhausted with nowhere to go) I packed up and got ready to move on, my new friend Daniel slated to pick me up at 1.  But before I moved on it was essential that I at least reap the benefit of the neighborhood I was in, close to the Anne Frank house, one of the leading tourist attractions of Amsterdam.  Every day I had seen the lines stretched long across the street, from the front door to the metallic Gay and Lesbian memorial flat against the earth, commemorating those who had been killed before people were making an effort to understand.  Because of the line, I had put off going, imagining it would be easier on a weekday morning if I got there early enough.  Wrong.

     I joined the line at 8:30. (The tour opened at 9.)  The young man in front of me, David, was an architectural student from Melbourne, where my daughter-in-law is from; and where her brilliant father, Rufus Davis, had been head of the university law school.  David, being an Aussie (“No worries” is their answer to almost any request, and defines their attitude) kept my place in line when I went over to a bench, and sat down, because as much as I have been offended recently when people treated me as though I were older, I am.  The reunion  taking place right now that I chose not to attend at my loved college, Bryn Mawr, coming to Europe instead,  is a big one.  Interesting that I am reluctant to even put down the number.

     Finally the line began to move, and I paid my entry fee.  And then the worst of it began.  Old Amsterdam houses, even the ones where you were not hiding from the Nazis, are built in two sections, the front and the back.  And all of them have narrow stairwells, with (seen by my eyes) hazardous steps, less than sturdy bannisters, as many chances to fall as there had been at my Fred-rented slum.  

    Still, I started to climb, following the tour.  Behind me, mercifully, was Janet from Seattle, who gave me the occasional literal boost.  So I got a chance to see Anne Frank’s mush wall, with Greta Garbo and Ray Milland.  Love of movie stars by teenagers seems to have been as long as there have been movies. Still, it comes as a surprise: Ray Milland?

   But now came the last ascent, up to the place where they’d hidden from the Nazis.  And I saw that I would not be able to make it.  More than an admission: a concession to the fact that I was fragile.  That was something I had never allowed myself to be, in spite of an abusive (though clever and seductive) mother, an abandoning and insensitive father, and lovers who were not really lovers at all, but crushes, like Anne’s mush wall. First, in college, the boy next door, next door being Haverford, where there was a clever, narcissistic actor who was to become a movie star, and an actual movie star and closet homosexual in the time when the closet door stayed closed, Anthony Perkins.  Only one man had ever really been there for me, my husband, Don.  And he had died long ago, at forty-five.

     So I said I had to turn around and go back.  The line was coming towards me; it was a struggle to get out.  At one point I complete lost my bearings;  there was no one around.  I had to call out for help, and cry ‘Help!’ I did.  At last somebody came and showed me the way out of there.  I asked at the entrance for the manager.  When he came I said they ought to have a sign at the entryway that there are many hazardous stairs.

    “When we see people are handicapped, we tell them not to take the tour.”

    “I am not handicapped,” I said, with contained ferocity.  

    He gave me my money back. “You have your money,” he said, annoyed.

    “That’s not the point.  You need to advise people what the challenge might be.”

    He turned away, disinterested, done with me.  

    I left and caught a cab back to my club, the Apple store.  I was forty minutes late for my One-to-One appointment.  But when I explained why, they forgave me, and I got an unscheduled session with James, who helped me anyway. There is a generosity of spirit at the Apple store that is to be found nowhere else.  

    

    

     

    

Sent from my iPhone

THERE IS A GOD

Struck by a pram in Amsterdam 
Where nobody pays attention
She flew quite high 
Towards an azure sky
Ending up in a new dimension
Where the air was clearer
And God seemed nearer
And there were both nabobs and slobs
There was fairness, parity
Perfect clarity
All of it run by Steve Jobs.



      After the agonies, real and imagined, of my first few days in Amsterdam, plagued by insomnia, a word that seems to me not strong enough for the anguish you go through, plus not knowing where my life was heading from here, if anywhere, I end up in a pocket of peace. Not easily come by, of course, as Peace rarely is. More bouts of uncertainty, in this fascinating city of Amsterdam, where every time you think something will be easy to get to, there is construction in the way.  Like a metaphor for Life itself.
       Roberto, as noted, never showed up, though I called him many times, each of my calls answered by a hospitable recording of his voice mail, moderately unintelligible.  But when I got to the Apple store, my Club, and they called AT&T in the States to unlock my IPhone, I found out that all your calls, whether to or from you, which they don't tell you when you buy your however many minutes, are charged to your account, so even without being able to speak to him, I had used up the dollars I had bought, which were many. 
       Dispirited to say the least, I then went on my quest for sleep.  Knowing it would not come easily if at all, since I was now many days past the expected jet lag and I still couldn't even doze, except for one short interlude given me by my new friends, the young couple I'd taken to dinner the night before to celebrate their engagement.  He'd put an App on my IPhone called Sleep Hypnosis, which worked once, briefly, before I started getting annoyed with the female whose voice it was, because she gave alternatives... i.e.: "You are standing on a mountaintop... or maybe you'd rather be under a tree... or maybe you're by a lake... " and so on, so whatever spell there might have been was broken.
      Had a tea by the canal with my new friend Daniel, who'd been seated next to me on the plane as I flew here, and had me to his home for dinner. By now I was more than desperate for rest, so went to a pharmacy for something to help me sleep.  Available as are recreational drugs in Amsterdam, many of the young and older coming here to get zonked, I dared not even take a toke, not knowing what the effect would be, and there being so many steps and levels I could trip down in my "apartment."  This is the "terrace" that came with it, as advertised online by an agency here that handles B & Bs.  They didn't show this picture, and I was too bleary when I saw the flat to see how bleak it was.  (I hadn't learned yet how to switch my iPhone to color, but trust me, in color, it is no less dreary.) 
  

           
Now here is how it works at the Farmacie.  Though outside, not too many feet away you can find a coffee house with someone to deal you grass or hash or maybe even heroin, and that's quite legal, the police have decided they don't want to be troubled with enforcing any penalties so the recently discussed plan to make all this criminal has been abandoned.  In the pharmacy, though, you cannot get a sleeping pill without a prescription.  
     This is how you get one: the pharmacist calls a doctor, you talk to the doctor on the phone, give your birthdate, your problem, your passport number. The doctor, according to his discretion, faxes a prescription to the drugstore.  So you get the pills.  They bill you, besides the cost of the medication, twenty-five euros for the doctor, twenty-five for the pharmacy, and the pills.  I got a packet of 10 low dose Temazipan, a barbiturate, for 66.50 Euros.  At the current exchange rate that works out to about nine dollars a pill.  
    Still, I was so yearning for sleep, I didn't care.  I was on my way back to my apartment "with terrace" when the borderline good news came: an apartment I'd looked at, clean and beautiful, overlooking one of the spiffier canals, that I'd been shown by the real estate agent I'd met with the young couple I'd taken to dinner, was available to me starting June 2nd.  It involved a commitment: leasing it till the beginning of December.  But hey... I hadn't really known, as I said, where my life was going, if anywhere. I'd decided to try and look ahead, instead of back, so came here instead of going to my Big Reunion.  As I wandered these streets, narrowly avoiding being run into by bicyclists,  I'd made a few cries to the sky of "Help me, God!" not knowing, of course, if there was really Anyone there. But I knew for Sure that New York was nowhere I wanted to be this summer.
     It would not be possible for me to stay past next Monday at my studio with terrace, nor did I want to spend any more time there than I had to, with its ominous hallway that made me feel like Anne Frank had she lived to be old.  I had to find someplace for the next seven days.  Then Daniel called to invite me to dinner tonight with his daughter and Peter and Arthur who had a spare room he was almost sure I could rent.  And I can work here! I can write here! It feels... well, as we used to say in Southern Cal, meant to be.
      Today, May 24th, is the day my novel, THE MOTHERLAND, was published, in 19__ with the almost great support of Simon & Schuster.  My famed editor Michael Korda, said: "As far as I am concerned, this is the only book we are publishing this year."  He forgot about a little number called ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN.
Any interest in Fiction was obliterated by the fall of Richard Nixon.  So I figured God had a choice between saving my book, and the country.
     There is a Spiritual Diary I brought with me, bought early in my questing, at the Self-Realization Center in California.  Every day has a message, by one of the Greaties, who really knew how to let go. Today's message from Paramahansa Yogananda:
     "This life is a Master Novel, written by God, and man would go crazy if he understood it all."
       If that doesn't feel like cosmic orchestration, I don't know what would be.  And the best news: I fell asleep last night with no medication.  There is a God.  His name is Morpheus.

Friday, May 23, 2014

IN THE CITY OF ANNE FRANK

    Yesterday I heard a taxi driver tell someone in a foreign language I understood anyway, that he was bringing “a nice old lady,” which is what I guess I am.  As much as I appreciate the “nice,” I was of course offended by the “old lady,” though I made no fuss about it, even inside my own soul, as we must remember that I am here while Bryn Mawr will be having a reunion of my class the number of which I am reluctant to put into e-letters.

    Speaking of which, I have written an e-song, that I hope I can find a singer to record, as it seems to be to be truly of the moment, even though I no longer am. Here you are:

IT’S AN E-WORLD

AND I AM E-ALONE

I USED TO HAVE U

BUT NOW I HAVE E

IT’S AN E-WORLD

NOT EVEN A TELEPHONE

SO HERE I AM

ALL AT C

WILL MY SHIP EVER COME IN?

WILL IT BE AGAIN THE WAY IT’S BEEN?

OR AM I DOOMED TO B  LOST

FOR ALL ETERNIT-E.

Put that in your Smartphone and smoke it,

The cafes here are terraced with active dope smokers. Yesterday I saw a still-young woman walking down a busy street sucking devotedly on a glass pipe, nothing in her eyes, and I would guess, very little on her horizon.  Much as I have enjoyed the occasional toke, it seems even more hazardous to me than the staircase, as I don’t really know who anyone is, or what their true motives are.

    Let us begin with Roberto, an Italian waiter at the Majestic cafe in Dam Square, who seemed sincere to me even though Italian. I understand everyone here is on the Hustle, but as I also understand Italian, and he actually said he would help me find an apartment, I borderline believed him. The beauteous, overpriced apartment I am thinking of taking in the event I commit myself to long-term here, which I am considering, as I do seem to be able to write well, though not sleeping at ALL, is not available until June 2.  Where I am staying now at a HUGE week’s rental is hazardous, to put it mildly.  Many levels of steps, shabby, endless places you could get hurt, and… well, you’ll see the terrace as soon as I can get back to the Apple Store and learn how to attach the photo from my iPhone.  I went there this morning to wait for Roberto’s call, which never came (SURPRISE!) 

Paul (see yesterday’s REPORT) was great as before, but the SIM card he sold me so I could make calls at less than a fortune, doesn’t work in my iPhone, so we have to call AT&T to unlock it and we can’t do that till 4 o’clock, as we are six hours ahead of the U.S.

   It is now only 1:06.  I would take a nap, but as explained, sleep is completely elusive.  Everything so far that has happened has come with a footnote of great difficulty to get past before I could get on with what I hoped would be a great adventure, the option I took to my college reunion, which seemed, and is, about the past.

 I wanted to be about what was ahead, if anything is.  I thought that might be a new kind of inspirational saga, different from all those offered by these charlatan religiosts who seem to be holding forums at enormous prices everywhere, the God they are offering: SUCCESS!! (The last one I know of before I left “home” was in New York, being held by Ariana Huffington, who scares me, because she is so obvious and people still pay attention) Among others I wanted to inspire was myself, because I hate to think my audacity is over. WITHOUT RISK, it says in the window of the Nike store here in Amsterdam, THERE IS NO VICTORY.  But of course, you have to live through it to win. 

    In Dam Square at the Majestic, yesterday, while I was hoping to get something sincero from Roberto, who was carrying a tray of sandwiches, I connected with a cantor from Israel.  He was a truly lovely gentleman, but he does not believe there was a God in Europe or the Holocaust wouldn't have happened.

    I have a different theory.  Some years ago, In a prior bout of audacity, probably closer to madness, I attended the Aryan Nations Congress, in Hayden Lake, Idaho.  Besides the registered out-and-out Nazi propaganda and committed Nazi storybooks, they were selling paintings by Hitler. I know that Hitler's mother didn't like him, and his stepfather was physically punishing, and possibly he was a Jew.  But besides that, the KunstAcademie, I think you spell it, the art academy in Berlin turned the young Adolf down for admittance.

      His paintings, as displayed at the conference were laughable, a number of them of cows.  But it occurred to me that if his mother hadn't been abusive, and the art school had let him in, six million Jews might be alive.  Rage at being unloved and unappreciated, it seems to me, was what made him crazy.

     One speaker at that Nazi Congress, a supposed minister, intoned "Harbor hatred only for Jews." Many of those attending had shaved heads, including the women, but with long braids hanging down the backs of their necks, a sort of style that seems to be in evidence here in Amsterdam among some of the young, as well as close-clipped on the sides, and spiked up and heavily gelled on top.  

     I had been followed carefully through the conference with regular check-ins via phone, as it used to be in that Age before texting,  by my wonderful friend the late Joe Wershba, a producer at 60 Minutes.  I knew I it was beyond risky to go there, but Don had died, and I was looking for my next novel.  When I had written it, or almost all of it, I went away for a weekend in the desert.  There was a great rainstorm in L.A. and a flaw in the roof over my desk. Water poured in and the manuscript was completely destroyed.  So though there may have been no God in Europe for the Holocaust, I think there was one in Southern California.  A man in Chicago who had been writing a book about the American Nazi party was found hanged outside his office  window, the other end of the rope attached to his desk.

     I had been joined at the conference towards the end by a friend living nearby, Tomi, a holistic masseuse I'd gotten through best pal Jamie Lee Curtis.  Tomi heard one of the hate speeches and asked me how I could stand it, as she wasn't even Jewish and her skin was crawling.  I made it literal and developed eczema.  We got out of there before the final night, when, I'd heard, a microphone fell out of a man's sleeve during the Nazi 'SIEGHEIL!' with which the gatherings always started. They'd discovered he was with the FBI, and killed him, or so the story went.  I had already left so I can't confirm that. 

     But I went directly from the conference to the actual lake, where I parasailed, for the first and last time, as fearful as I am of heights.  There was nothing to be afraid of, comparatively, just breaking your neck.  I made it through that parasail by looking up instead of down, and singing.  I mean, if there is God, maybe He/She likes  audacity.