More Me on Me

By jan gero

Who do you think is going to read this? my friend asks, throwing up her hands: Its your journals! Every little detail. Every lecherous fantasy, all your perversions, obsessions. Even dreams. Who gives a fuck? Youre not a famous person so who cares?

I would have thought that my several long marriage-like relationships, twenty years in psychotherapy, careers in architecture, modern dance, fashion, filmmaking and decades of dedication to nutrition & exercise would be foundation enough to give me a steady hand. That seems not to have happened.

I remain frightened of life, of people; any interaction provokes anxiety. Yet, I remain longing to be in the world. And in many ways, physically, I am. But inside, Im still inside.

Who cares? my friend says. I care. I want out of my prison; out, to show myself in these journal-driven stories, where my fears and dysfunction are vivid and evident. However, I believe my writing expresses what we all feel subconsciously, then suppress, and is, therefore, interesting.

www.meonme.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462043606

jan gero

I am a journal writer and have written consistently for twenty-five years and intermittently for fifty. From these hundreds of thousands pages I've culled fourteen stories which I offer here with my drawings. I've lived most of my life in New York City but was European through my mid-teens. Today, at seventy-eight, I feel almost as confused and incapable of handling my life as when I was that teenager. I would have thought that my several long-term relationships, eighteen years in psychotherapy, careers in architecture, modern dance, fashion, film-making, and decades of dedication to exercise and nutrition – would be foundation enough to give me a steady hand. That seems not to have happened. I remain frightened of people, any interaction provokes anxiety. Yet, I long to be in the world and in many ways, physically, I am. But inside, I'm still inside. "Who cares?" my friend asks. I care. I want out of this prison, my prison, to show myself in these journal-derived stories. My fears and dysfunction are vivid and evident; however, I believe, my writing expresses what we all feel subconsciously, then suppress, and is, therefore, interesting and relevant. I crave transparency of myself, my self, and that is why I write.

Book preview

Contents

Thirty

Cabrini

Control

Israel

Tuesday

CA

Dancing

dedication

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Thirty

DAY 0

The 4-day Belgian portion is settled, the 3-day Holland portion with Daria also, and the 10-day French apartment close to being settled at $400; the 7-day Berlin portion remains a little elusive though I am assured by AM’s German partner in their travel agency that $50 per night pensions are commonly available. A possible 1 day in Hamburg. And the last Danish portion is relatively settled-it will be the Niels-Erik 3-day stay in south DK, a visit to our father’s birth-place, and then the final return to Brussels for 1-day before the 30th day return flight back to New York City. Pretty good structure. I think to include visiting sister Annemarie in north DK will be too much.

11:30 am: I have at best 5 min to state that the trip-anxieties are clearing up somewhat-there are still a few loose threads including the Paris apartment which I’ll address the second I get back from 72nd St yoga session where I’m heading now on the bike. Maybe I shouldn’t go, but I love it so much. Tonight’s the night I leave. I can’t believe how much energy it takes to leave for 30 days. It will take no energy to keep me from leaving.

5:30pm: This has been an incredible day. It has come off fairly smoothly: Iyengar Yoga with Vashanti (then return to make the Paris-apartment call and it’s on for $40 per day for ten days), bank for Amex money, Kinko for Journal-stories copying ‘n binding of Mexico, Death & DK-Trip, health food store (my special asthma drink $3 and Familia cereal to take back to Europe), phone Rudy in Haiti for Paris number, phone Ed for Per’s number, Per for his sister’s Berlin number, pickup at Kinko, defrost the refrigerator (in progress), doing the laundry (in the drying phase at the moment) and now I need to start feeding my face and then get the packing done or the other way around. I am too nervous to eat.

6:15pm: The laundry is done, folded but not put away. The refrigerator is in the last phase of defrosting (some ice stuck in the back of the freezer cabinet), and the packing has begun in a slow searching way. I have a buzz on from a joint I smoked a little of on three occasions since the return from yoga, so I am not in total command …however I do see some light at the end of the tunnel. Things are winding up. A new alarm/timer/nitelite is the only thing that escapes my busyness focused on being totally prepared for all planned activities and many emergencies.

Tia is coming around 8 pm and we’ll probably have dinner somewhere. The watering of plants, the keys for the concierge and some additional outgoing mail is all that is left in terms of contacts outside of my architectural studio business life and my personal life. Hmm…

7:22pm: It’s getting down to the wire now. What has transpired in the last hour is ending the refrigerator job, the laundry sorted for going, for staying. The sports-bag is packed (everything related to the race and to training) and the suitcase, the Samsonite .the teal-green 30 inch wheeled Samsonite with everything else for the yoga practice (mat, wrist & ankle weights), for social dance (shoes & jacket), even some food (Familia). I have done the pill story (vitamins & supplement minerals and in case the herpes springs me an episode). And now, all that is left is the paperwork, the Pobo, passport, notes from all the contacts and maybe a little marijuana just in case I need to break the ice in a potential sexual situation.

So I will sign off to do those things and this may well be my last communiqué on this continent. Tia & I are going to eat. Speak to you later Popo. All is done.

It’s midnight (Belgian time 6:00 am) and I am on the plane. The plane to the race, the plane to the other world, the old world as it used to be called. Tia arrived a little after 8:30 and we went for dinner and left for the airport around 10:30. All went well even though I was nervous and anxious about not forgetting anything. She left me off outside the Sabena departure gate around 10:45 and all went smoothly. I’m sitting uprite with two pillows in back of my lower spine and just went through a whole ‘alternate-nostril breathing’ sequence which takes just 5 min. I feel a little self-conscious sitting here in my seat with this lit screen in front of me as if I was an important writer that had to complete an assignment on the fly. I am very silent. My immediate neighbor to my left is a couple from Belgium who seem as if they have been traveling the hard way, sleeping on the bus or at terminals, and she has a very strong body odor. I fear that she’s looking over my shoulder at what I’m writing. I will probably sneak a peek in a few minutes to confirm that she is asleep or disinterested in my activity. AM & E are further back in the same seating area and we only spoke briefly at the airport waiting area where E handed me a bag of carrots which are supposed to be helpful in maintaining oxygenation in a plane that is oxygen-deprived. We may be getting some food shortly altho we’re not expecting the breakfast until just before arriving after the 6:45 hour flight. The plane is filled-lots of Hasidic Jews traveling with their black clothing, sidecurls for the men and bandana clad females (shaven heads). Why and where are they all going? Some food or drink just passed me heading through the aisles to first class.

Anyway, the main thing is that I am alive and well and have finally gotten through the long itinerary of things that needed to get done to get to this place. I am traveling ‘heavy’ as Tia pointed out. I have all contingencies covered. All manner of social activities from bathing to dancing, from exercising to racing, from writing to drawing, from reading and photographing. My battery indicator is showing 3:10 hrs of life left which will have to be spaced out over the 6 plus hours flight. Tough titty.

We have made the six hour journey and leaped the six hour time zones. It has been a difficult time trying to keep the body from going stiff and finding a quiet place physically ‘n mentally to come to rest. It has been a restless time. I don’t feel good about having this large, seemingly large, instrument in front of me. It looms like some technocratic wizard that could so easily be replaced by a secret little notebook with lines and a quiet familiar and non-threatening pen. It will be better in more expansive surroundings like a hotel room or a lounge or lobby or waiting room if it has to be used in public. I feel like these words are much too mundane for this piece of modern technology. I am though happy to remember that it only cost me $900 with 8MB RAM & 500MB HD-just almost the same as the cost of this journey. Allez-retour costs $800 with senior discount and 3 weeks advance purchase. All the manhours and service personnel that supports these 13 hours in the air equals this 11x8.5inch writing & drawing machine a mere 2 inches thick. (I still have 2:56 left on this battery; I obviously have not been a prolific communicator during this trip. Too confining a space, too unnatural a time to be traveling-in the middle of the night when I should have been sleeping in the quiet well controlled aura of my Studio on the park. People are standing within inches of me waiting to get into the bathroom and there’s lots of activity up ‘n down the aisles. An announcement has just been made:

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are beginning our descent to Brussels. Fasten your safety belts.

So this cooped up zoo will be coming to an end. It looks like we are just 7 women and 15 men coming on the USA team. All that literature regarding the sporting event was crammed into the folder that had been lying undigested, in fact untouched, on my desk for ten days. So many other problems needed to be solved before I could address those matters.

The intestinal gas has not been awful .my ears are beginning to feel the pain of decompression or whatever the lowering of atmospheric pressure means .rising pressure more likely. We are definitely descending. The constant throbbing noise of the engines has also stopped because we are gliding down from the upper atmosphere, however upper that is within the vastness of space-a flea-hop off the face of the Earth. I just freed one ear’s blockage by holding my nose and pushing the air from my lungs into it from the inside. The other, the right one, is much more stubborn. It resists, aching and paining me ‘…breathe deeply, be patient it will go away very very soon.’ Ache. A finger propped into it, shaking the structure vigorously is not helping. It’s getting worse rather than better. I could go off the deep end but I’m ashamed to make too much of a fuss. We all know it’s temporary; but if I was a child I would truly think that this could be the beginning of the end of the world and beg my parents to make it stop. And then have a tantrum.

I think I’ll sign off now. We are very close to the end of the glide-path. It’s 12:30 pm and the estimated arrival time was 12:40. Bye till later.

This has been a very dehumanizing experience confined to this two square foot of space for six and a half hours. I’m in a daze and could hardly be expected to say anything clever or insightful about the human condition. My mission is to state what my condition is-dazed. And I think I’ve discovered the source of that foul odor besides the body perspiration of my immediate left neighbor, the young Belgian Bohemian woman; I think it’s the feet of her Bohemian boy-friend, a huge 6 ft 6 hunk of a Hun-small features, crew-cut and with long legs. His white socks look clean enough .still this shit-like smell that I feared earlier in the flight was shit I left in my underpants (anticipating my own old-age loss of contact ‘n control with my organs, I did go to the toilet to make sure it wasn’t in my pants …it was not), I think it’s his or their feet. You know those bohemian ways that ..I’ve got to shut Pobo off, the stewardess told me-we’re landing at this very moment.

There is no doubt about it, I am falling asleep all over the place. Since I sat down here at this desk in my hotel-room, in this al …I don’t watn to do it. It’s taking me too long to write these words; I have sught fivafo …this doesn’t make sense. I am tired. I’m making the bed and going to eg …I am falling at oooooo. Bye!

Here I am trying again to bring myself my Self up to snuff. Get it together, recount what happened and where I am at: I am at the Sparrenduin Hotel and sports facility in Den Hann an Zee a quarter of a mile from the North Sea which is the main feature of this ancient recreational tourist attraction. And that is some 15 miles from the the town where this sporting event takes place the day after tomorrow in Brugge, a really ancient medieval town in places. The future flows very naturally from the present, and the present is very conspicuously influenced by the past. This town, not set foot in yet, is clearly a town trying to convince itself that the 20th C is where it belongs. I’m going off again. Sorry, this will have to wait. I am falling off. The battery-charger is definitely working, battery full.

02

This is why I hate to travel: It is so hard on the nerves, so much to anticipate and so much new to adjust to.

I had a hard night adjusting to the weather and the room conditions. The night was quite cold and the room is all stone and plaster, materials that just don’t warm up. There was no heat (the European way, the hardy way from centuries of frugal living and ecological concerns). I didn’t sleep soundly or warmly, nor nurtured. Nobody taking care of me. And when finally I could rouse myself from the stiff ‘n crunched state of my body trying to retain whatever body-heat it had, it was already 9:00 (9:00am). The 8 hour travel to Belgium (including the getting to and leaving airports) and the additional 4 hours getting to this Aan am Zee had exhausted this

63 year old man. And what that meant, I feared, was that the free breakfast was gone. ‘From 7-9’ is what I feared it said on the non-translated menu board standing across the street at the union-hall restaurant. (I just went there, the whole 1000 ft to it and the same back, relieved to have seen ‘7-10’.)

Yesterday the place was relatively empty, just a few Belgians, some Germans, a dozen Russian athletes and us six American athletes. Now there is wall to wall bodies of what looks like Belgian businessmen or retired workers or whatever-a serious crowd of handshaking coffee ‘n beer-drinking male bonding army-reserve types.

My body is loosening up a little and I better get unto the mat to do the rest of the job conscientiously. I did get to complete my yoga-routine last night, a slightly aborted routine because the 71yr old Bob M from the AC Shore club in NJ was anxious to get to the dinner which was closing at 20:00 (8:00 pm). Bob was on the 1960 Olympic team as a racewalker. A thin acerbic witty taciturn man with well defined features and a tall gaunt presence. A lot of hard work has been done by his body thruout his life. Cervin, my NY racewalking buddy at 68, has always had Bob as his nemesis, meaning that he usually beat Cervin thruout his 14 year racewalking career and it isn’t till this stage of their lives that Cervin has been a serious threat to Bob. C accuses B of not entering races that he knows in advance C will show up in.

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The hallways, stone ‘n concrete, all hard and reflective surfaces, resound with people’s hushed voices passing by my room #19. There are several wings and several floors in this socialist workers’ paradise. It is truly a well designed, modern full-facility vacation place. Swimming pool is several blocks away, tennis courts, miniature golf and half size bowling is around and also especially large meeting halls. The public facilities are all beautiful well lacquered wood designed with devotion to wood’s warmth and richness.

I must stop tapping if I hope to get my body slightly unstiffened before the breakfast. Bye.

I’m back and the European breakfast is done. I see now why the American breakfast of cereal or eggs ‘n something is having a hard time here in Europe. They eat mainly bread with cheese ‘n luncheon meats, pastry-bread coffee & juice for le petit dejeuner. This is a French speaking country and I see better the vision of the former French Empire here in the north in Belgium, the many former French colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands, not to mention the French influence in Russia, the Balkans and then Egypt that was French dominated before the British came in mid 19th C. France is big and was much bigger. Much. MUCH. Ebb ‘n flow of the peoples of the Earth planet. I brought the letter my French boss wrote me when I left his architectural office to return to NY in 1960 and it is filled with this sense of history and France’s place in the span of the centuries …its reach up from the Hellenic Era of pre-Christ Greece, through the Holy Roman Empire and the stubborn resistance the Gaul territory presented to its dominion, taking the torch of independence uniting their scattered herd-like rural existence to become a great force in Europe. Still that same battle. The Huns and the Gauls. Germans ‘n French. (What a magnificently feeble grasp I have of history .sweeping generalities over the patient persistent labor of millions of ants over millenniums of time, eh!?)

I returned from breakfast with a hoard of food: a pear, an apple, a banana and an orange; a cheese ‘n salami sandwich, a cheese sandwich, two miniature chocolate mouse containers and a croissant. I must be preparing for a hiding in the woods before the authorities come ‘n get me. I don’t know what war I am waging-the dollar against the Belgian franc. The protection of American values against the European stronghold. Speaking of stronghold: I want you to know that the building of infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, railroads, airports, sewers, dams, stadiums and housing is built to last centuries here in Europe; in America, these things last at very very best one century. This is part of the temporal quality and the haste with which America is built. Its fragility. Why a sewer failure in the streets of NY is a small calamity-it is not built to last. It’s also one of the downfalls of Europe, that all is built to last an eternity. Everything down to door-handles and marble floors. It will last forever. It becomes a burden when new technologies appear. It’s too much to modify things fast. It happens at a snail’s pace. When the space age finally grips hold of Earthling’s energy in a real way beside merely his imagination, when new activities demand new technologies demand new facilities, America is readier because it is not mortgaged to the past as is Europe. It costs so much to build in Europe because all the materials are expected to have a real useful life-time of 100 years. In the USA, we’ve come to expect much less, more like 25 years for a building’s or a fixture’s life-span.

I need to get into my exercise routine now despite my full stomach. I need to orient myself toward tomorrow’s race. Tomorrow’s ordeal of 3.5 hours of clawing persistent demand on my body’s energy. And then I can get back to making my plans for the next step in this momentous-to-me E-TRIP.

I don’t think I will find the time to relate how we traveled on that demanding cross-oceanic flight, sitting mostly confined to that airline-seat, our little universe for seven interminable hours. Thank God AM, the travel-agent, friend and RW colleague, heard my need for an aisle seat where I didn’t have to beg Others to let me pass. I could get up at will to stretch, to fart, to walk my stiffness away temporarily. A rash of aisle-seat demands will follow this description of being trapped on an inside seat. I don’t have time to describe its torture on the intestines and abuse on the psyche.

In Brussels, the three women AM, E & Angelica rented a car to transport them to Aan an Zee (Aan by the sea, the North Sea), and Bob M, Joan R (a 70yr old petite dynamo, piano teacher, former singer ‘n concert performer, living on Central Park South, and a racewalker with a penchant for traveling world-wide for races) and I, took public transportation to get here to this spa in Aan-Sparrenduin. First the train (subway type) to the Central train station (of three stations in Brussels; rail-travel is major in Europe), then train for 70 min to Oestende toward the north and finally a street-tram on rail for several miles along a busy port-city with the duned coastline on one side and a full residential resort city of 2-3 story modern and old masonry buildings side by side, on the other. In other words a protected coastline with public access. A novelty in the US. Europe is a much more evolved socially organized existence with more democratic sensibility. And then a 10-block long walk to this hotel/recreation spa. For me, traveling heavy, sports-bag loaded, notebook computer, leatherbag loaded with old Art&Leisure sections, travel brochures, etc on my shoulders and pulling a heavy but smooth Samsonite 30inch suitcase behind me over cobblestone sidewalks, tiles, curbs etc was hard work for a 63yr old. Bob ‘n Joan, were traveling light, Bob, very light with two shoulder bags only, and Joan with a 20 inch wheeled suitcase, a piggy-back shoulderbag, another shoulder bag and a newly stitched up ‘n bandaged foot. She is not racing due to an accident that occurred just days before departure. Stella, our coach, is not here for the same reason-severe accident just weeks before departure but in time to cancel all tickets unlike Joan.

We shared dinner together at the common hall, known as Free Flow, a 1000 person capacity modern dining facility with wood ‘n marble and huge windows overlooking the grounds. I spent almost $18 on a very excellent simple baked fish ‘n potato entrée, with a root vegetable like parsnip, small salad of shredded carrot and a miniature chocolate mousse desert. Good but costing maybe 50% more than comparable in the USA. OK. Later we came together again for a one hour walk through this resort city to the North Sea shore line with its elegant well-kept hotels. Europe is solid and high value. Much of America is so rough, so underdeveloped and unevenly valued. For trash you can pay a fortune, for diamonds you can pay reasonably. It’s a tough place to live and work. Here, even the kids are well-behaved. Peace reigns but there are obviously suppressed biological energies coursing under the placid controlled surface. Witness: Two World Wars here in this century alone. Millions of Europeans died violent brutal inhuman deaths. Nearly 100 million people, 8 in the first and 80 in the second by my generalized view of world-history (aided by Google).

Last night, as you might have noticed, I was practically falling off my chair trying to write down some of the events of yesterday. I am now mostly up-to-date. There is a bus-trip to Brugge this afternoon, a neighboring medieval ‘n modern city where the race will be held tomorrow. I may go on it but the main urgency regards the adaptor to my darling Pobo. POBO. Joan had one with her hair-dryer which she has lent me.

I haven’t even begun to prepare the camera equipment; before leaving NY, I added to my arsenal of recording equipment, a $30 Minolta Freedom-camera, a basic point ‘n shoot device. I had intended a new digital camera from Canon but found its resolution abysmal when testing it. I returned it. For when I have time and peace of mind, I have the Zeiss-Ikon 35mm camera that was Mammie’s and was probably manufactured in Germany at the time I was born. An excellent lens making very sharp pictures. It requires distance, shutter speed and aperture opening settings which takes time and presence of mind plus a light meter.

My beautiful Pobo. So small so reliable so right for me, taking aim with word and image of my soul. 13.4% is my current win/loss status in the solitaire game, Eric’s Solitaire, on Pobo, my Powerbook, which has the same operating system and solitaire game as Poma, my PowerMacintosh tower.

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A funny little thing happened: I’d just gotten myself a little further organized, laying out my vitamin supplements and other health & cleanliness related paraphernalia, when I came across a blue rubber band, my special band that fits just right around my balls to help me jerk off to orgasm. I packed that throwing it in one of the pockets of my sports-bag. I am by the way kneeling here in front of Pobo on the terrazzo marble floor because my chair is out of the way on top of the closet so that there is room to exercise on my rolled out exercise mat. I also have the other single bed standing on end with the mattress against the wall to give me the necessary room.

I had a dangerous-to-my-health thought, my mental health: AM, a married woman, heading finally for Switzerland, her home-country from where she emigrated 25 years ago to America with her husband, is alone here and could be a tempting target for a sexual adventure. Marriage can be rough on the sexual urge. I know that she’s a spirited very sensitive woman who is greatly armored against non-conventional activities. We have never been friends. This may be the time. Here I am always trying to tread in difficult waters. Stupid. We’ll see. This morning, in my rush to get to the dining room, I ran into AM in the hallway. I didn’t have time to talk because I had one minute to run four blocks there, but she was for once very friendly and smiled broadly. I owe her thanks for creating this opportunity for me to get out of my closet in NY, altho it is costing me three thousand dollars. Back to my exercises which I haven’t started yet. (I just heard a door open and close in the hallway …and again now; each time I go to the door, stick my head out to see if it’s her, hopefully.) Nothing washed dries here, it’s so damp in this part of Europe near the coast and with rainy weather threatened.

I know now why I took all that food, besides the fact that it was free coming with the room-rental, it was to feed myself. Not just because I am cheap and want something for nothing, or that I am deprived emotionally and compensate with taking things, hoarding things; it’s literally that the trip to the trip has kept me nervous and eating little for weeks. I feel my ribs. I want to fill them out again!

I’ve been out in hallway countless times since the thought of having a sexual encounter with AM dawned on me. I wonder if she has any thought in that direction.

A Catholic. A married woman: two for or two against ‘yes’, depending on the way the personal pendulum swings. I set up the Minolta camera and it is just fine for my purposes-to record. I am ready now.

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I’m half way through my yoga routine and I am really nicely concentrated. I have all the props I need, the belt, the Iow & high padding, my mat and my focus. I had one sacrilegious thought that now relates to my main yoga teacher in NY-I kissed her goodbye on the cheek when I Ieft on Wednesday …I should .have faked it and kissed her on the Iips …no, the thought was to come up to her or anyone in meditation (like I might well have done with Alexi when we were in our most sexually secure and adventurous period) and stick my prick in her mouth as she is sitting meditating …right at prick level. That’s it. Now that I am installed, settled here, I can get back to my fantasy life. I jerked off last night in a frustrated way which I feared would injure my back-squatting as normal on the floor, with one finger in my ass hole and one stroking my prick, both with shaving cream on them. I finally did come thinking of Ellen’s pussy, as well or as dimly as I remembered it from our one weekend sexual encounter two years ago. So long ago already.

I am into the Iast phase of the exercises, the meditation and the breathing exercises which will take another final 20-30min depending on my concentration. I just photographed myself naked in the mirror here, I was so taken by the thrill of doing the exercises and the beauty of the naked exerted body. When starting out doing the prone face down exercises, the bow, the back-bends, Ieg raises, I thought again of E’s pussy and had a hard-on; not a good thing for a man to have when doing face down exercises-crushing his poor balls under normal circumstances and now adding the prick as well. Luckily I was able to focus on the work and the hardness disappeared and could shove my prick up between my Iegs with the underpants holding them in place during this phase of the exercises. No harm done. I just checked. My lower back is getting opened up; I hear it cracking in the sacral area and the lumbar spine. Good.

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I can’t leave Pobo alone. As I was preening in front of the mirror before, a neighboring room with a balcony opened its door and a young boy came out to check out the sights, then the father came out in his trunks with a heavy muscular body flexing himself in the sunlight that has now finally appeared on this otherwise gray day. As I was getting ready to do my meditation on my knees on the floor facing the windows, he came out again in an all black out-fit, lycra short tights, black t-shirts and a tank top in bright blue over with a huge eagle with spread wings in white outlined in black & yellow with the word HAMBURG under it. What a Teutonic knight! What warriors we all are, we men. What a sight. His son came out and photographed him. And now the wife. Support for his masculinity. The cock. The eagle. The bear, the snake horse dog crab goat .whatever identification empowers!

The list of things that I forgot is getting longer: now it’s the alarm-clock, the German & French dictionaries and that wretched power converter from 110 AC to 220, and prong adaptor from American to European electrical sockets, from flat prongs to round spikes with grounding.

I’m eating one of this morning’s breakfast sandwiches that I made from the leftover extra food I took so greedily. Angry at being late and the personnel not welcoming me late, no grace period (a good mother would take her son under any conditions), and also angry because there wasn’t any cereal. I finished the entire series of exercises and during the breathing & meditation I felt myself slipping off into a coma again, sleepy …so I decided to go to bed again. No agony, just felt the fatigue and the desire to rest, I finished the exercises and crawled into bed. Again without underpants, so that I could fondle my balls in case I had some sexual dreams; but it was too cold, even with two blankets on. After 20 min I put the pants back on. I dreamed and I heard myself arguing with someone in French.

It is time for me to do a little racewalk workout now to get dressed for a turn around some field or through the streets somewhere around here. I’m eating the other sandwich and some of the carrots that E had given me at Kennedy. I am continuing that ‘going to the door and looking out in the hallway’ routine, hoping to catch AM one of these times. It’s fairly ridiculous to see a grown man at 63 entertaining sex fantasies and thinking this catching her in the hallway, seeing her talking to her is an activity that might lead to that promised land. More promising would be to chat up E telling her I still dream about her and hope she might feel that same way like two years ago about me especially now when away from the cares & worries of our business lives.

I’m basically just lying in the crib babbling away now. Shortly, I’ll be out doing my duty in the field-racewalk-training. What the hell am I going to do when Joan and I no longer live so close to each other because it’s her adaptor that I’m using and she is concerned when she’ll get it back for her hair-drier?

Later back from a trip to the front desk to ask about an adaptor that the director here thought he might have at home: ‘No!’; to find out where faxes or letters would arrive for me like from Niels-Erik in DK (Berlin architecture info) or Janine in NY (Berlin & Hamburg contact info): Janine’s fax arrived, but no personal names, only things to do (no one to meet and to fuck) just zoos, restaurants and places; to find out how to telephone with credit card: at the police station; to telephone with cash: right near the desk monitored & charged by computer; to change money: at the bank that closes at 15:00 weekdays and tomorrow, Saturday, in the morning only. I forgot to ask what room AM was in and that angers me a little. I’m not as forgiving and good humored with myself now as I was earlier after the exercises.

Bob M just knocked on the door and said he was going for dinner, said he’d been nowhere all day except the bank to change money. He wasn’t sure which room was AM or E’s. He is not training today. The race is tomorrow at 2 pm in Brugge. He said the record in his age-group is 3:21:00, 3 hours and 21 minutes held by an Italian ‘who always runs and gets away with it’ (a complaint often leveled at faster racewalkers who ‘lift’, meaning having both feet off the ground at one moment like runners). I’m hoping to finish the race in 3:45:00. There will be a banquet after the race which we have already paid for but the question of how to get there is a problem because of the few bus-departures from here by charter bus.

I now have some doubt if I want to go out or not to racewalk right now. I thought I’d go just for the air and work up a little sweat from the confined airplane, the difficult cold nites and my generally slow blood circulation. I think I will. Signing off. Bis spater. I should call Daria to tell her that I am scheduled to leave here on Sunday or Monday and will go directly to her in Eindhoven, Holland. Even with my big suitcase which I could pack and leave at the Brussels train station. Good idea, Jan-now you are thinking. I will pack my sports bag and back-pack with Pobo and leather bag, and leave the weights, the exercise mat and other things in the 30inch suitcase at the rail station. It’s perfect fit between the new back-back I bought with the suitcase for $16 tax-exempt and Pobo’s travel case; she/he/it doesn’t need a traveling case but since everything goes over my shoulders, it could be good on my back instead, and it’s also less conspicuous there. So the sports bag will have to hold it all-wish I could be frank and ask Daria if I’d need a jacket or dance shoes or condoms; I am afraid she’ll say: ‘I don’t care what you bring. I am not entertaining you and I am certainly not jeopardizing my current relationship by fooling around with you.’

OK, Jan, put on your gear and get the hell out of here. Stop spinning all these stories in your head. Get physical. Go go GO! GO! I didn’t go. I’m going now. I played solitaire. Average 13.2%. Bye.

I’m not in a good state of mind. I had a run-in with a young woman attendant at the front desk and another with AM. Both related to my travel plans. I will hate myself if I spend too much time on this matter but I do need or want or must relate just the general outline: I went to the desk, waited patiently till it was my turn. I asked for the phone number to the three train stations in Brussels. She, a pretty young thing (they always throw me) looked in the phone books as I had been doing at the time, then not finding it called information .she got a number which she handed to me. I tried calling it and there was only a message saying something in Flemish. I tried several combination of numbers for the outgoing phone and still nothing. I asked her if she would call the station. She couldn’t get it either. Now she was getting frazzled; a young man near the desk tried to come to my help interceding with her and got nowhere. She was out of it by now. Then I asked her for the information number so that I could get the correct number. She gave it to me and I still couldn’t get through.

That’s when E & AM and Angelica came in from being away all day or whatever. E greeted me with: Did you have a wonderful day?

I gave her a stony look because of this nowhere-land I was in operating the phone. Then AM tried to get into the phone problem and gave me this know-it-all dictatorial simplistic directive: Don’t try to get this information over the phone. You have to get it at the station personally. They speak Flemish here.

I would like to get through to someone tonight to tell them my plans. Why can’t I find out by phone what trains leave at what times for a destination?

I gave you a train-schedule for Europe, it’s a red book. If you will calm down and be sensible I’ll try to help you. Come let’s try to figure it out. Where do you want to go?

Eindhoven Holland.

That has to be gotten from the station. Can’t you go tomorrow after or before the race and they will show you the options. Trains leave for Maastricht or Amsterdam every hour and you have to go there first to get to Eindhoven.

We got into further problems when I said I want to drive there and she answered that I had arranged to take the two car rental days in Germany. I said I had only agreed to that because her office person in NY had pressed me to make up my mind. She dismissed that statement with: It can’t be changed now.

I saw I wasn’t getting what I wanted so I just slinked off in a sulk. Then just as AM and I parted, Joan comes out of her room and says she wants to get her electrical adaptor back. So we stood five minutes in that resonating hallway discussing the final return tomorrow morning.

When I returned to my room, I was fuming, cross-eyed with feeling the world against me. I vowed never to depend on other people; I took the electrical parts I had bought the day before for fashioning an extension cord to a European plug, opened the other end, cut the insulation off and spliced it to the prongs of my Apple transformer plug whose other end feeds my Pobo. I am working right now with this shunt. I insulated it thoroly with tape I’d also bought so that no accidental wires can touch and nothing outside can touch naked wire. It has been working for the last 24 minutes since I started writing and I think it’s safe to assume that it will continue working forever. The warmth of the transformer doesn’t seem to be excessive or more than it was with the regular adaptor, altho I can’t be absolutely sure-it is one of those situations like when going to the doctor with a suspected illness and the symptoms disappear. It could be wishful thinking.

While I was sitting here fuming and working on the plug, AM must have slipped a piece of paper under my door informing me that race-registration closes at 12:00.

I was going to take the bus to the stadium nearer to the race start-time that was leaving at 12:30. Now, unless I throw a tantrum about this, I’ll have to go on the 8:30 bus and stay in town until the race at 2 pm or 14:00. That’s OK. I’ll do the train-station story and see some of the town. Bring my racing gear and hang around. I can handle it. It bugs me that Joan and AM & E were at registration today to pick up their race-packets. They could have picked up mine like Joan did for Bob. That’s the thing about ever getting involved in relationships again for me-1 expect Others to look out for me (like I thought Mammie would; she really did when she disinherited me, leaving me out of her will-some look-out she was!) I don’t take these things easily which makes relationships difficult to say the least. On the other hand, that stuff of Others like AM saying to me: Be adult!This is not the first time I hear that one from her. It thrusts me back into childhood with her the mother. She may have a bug that misfired about that herself. Anyway it is time to pick up the shards and do it myself. I should just thank her for alerting me to the registration closing at noon. This will not be easy because I am mad about the car business.

Well, I’ve settled a few things regarding where to go and when. Without an alarm clock, I’m going to get to breakfast hopefully by 8 am and get the 8:30 bus to Brugge; there I’ll get the race-packet and wander around that ‘oldest medieval and most marvelous’ town, go to the stadium at noon and warm up with my yoga exercises before the race. Do the race at 2 pm. I could take Pobo in my back-pack if I wanted to. Why not? I may not be home until the evening after the banquet. Why should I be deprived of it?

Next day, I’ll buy a ticket for Amsterdam, go to the Anne Frank Museum, go to one of those really supposedly way-out sex clubs, stay overnight and leave for Eindhoven Monday, possibly Tuesday. I’ll return Wednesday going to Paris from Brussels where I’ll pick up my suitcase on the way. This will be day #1 of my Four Day Euro-Rail pass. That’s it. Time for bed and hope I’ll get up without an alarm. It is going to make me nervous and lead to sleeplessness.

Going to bed. I played solitaire and packed my bag for tomorrow’s trip(s).

03

Midnight: I got up this morning at 7:30 to exercise a little, finalize the packing for the day’s events (the race, sightseeing ‘n banquet), a bite of breakfast and catching the bus to Brugge. That went off without a hitch and when I saw AM at the starting-line I thanked her for alerting me to that fact, a psychically mature moment for me side-stepping my bitter feelings of last night. And almost everything from that point went alright up until most of the way through the banquet when I tried and failed to catch the 21:30 charter-bus back here to the hotel Sparranduin, some 22 miles from Brugge.

I was caught in a cross-current of misunderstanding times available and times required in the morning after getting my packet of race information & bib-number for the race. Then I watched the 10 km run in the stadium. This race was similar to the one I witnessed at the world senior athletic WAWA meet in Buffalo last year where an American at 70 yrs old turned out an emotional number one performance pushing himself to the excellent time of 42:00. I am fascinated with the capability of the aging human body and what men & women will put themselves through in endless training to achieve mere seconds better performance time.

I’m drinking a cup of expresso coffee that I luckily managed to buy before closing here at the hotel when I arrived home from having to hitch-hike those 22 km from Brugge; after waiting thumbing through nearly one hundred cars, when luckily, just as I was despondently heading several kilometers back to the banquet hall or a police station, a little van that had passed me turned around and came back and picked me up. He took me all the way to the hotel, within 30ft because he lived on the very same street by a great good fortune.

After watching the stadium 10 km run I hitch-hiked, after waiting futilely for a bus, and managed to get to Brugge but by the time I got there and walked around for some 20 min, I started worrying about getting back in time to prepare for the race. I couldn’t wait on the line at the train station for the Eindhoven information and anxiously caught one of these curvilinear buses back to the stadium but not before having an argument with the bus-driver. He wouldn’t move the bus until I produced the WAWA/Brugge courtesy-card that allowed me free public transportation. I could not find it in my pockets or my the sports-bag; finally a young boy bus-passenger pointed to it hanging from my neck in the back. We all had a good laugh at that; however I didn’t quite let the bus-driver off the hook for not trusting me having that card and not knowing about this weekend’s special arrangements for athletes. I sighed, shook my head saying silently to myself:

‘Bureaucratic employees makes so much of rules that the world could explode before they give an inch to avoid confrontation. ‘

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Nor will I Iet AM off the hook for having arranged these charter bus-connections that operate Iike city buses, on punctuality without margin for error for foreigners finding their way to the bus, recognizing the bus and so forth. At 8 minutes after the scheduled pickup I was on the street and thought I saw it, the already not very identifiable bus, leave from a block away when it should have been right in front of the banquet hall like the German buses were. AM could care less since she is with E & her friend Angelica in their rented car. She is not suffering their over-strict time-schedule and disorienting waiting places because the local drivers don’t understand the anxieties of strangers to the city.

I got back to the stadium where there were no facilities for stretching or doing yoga. I wound up doing it in an open drafty public hall on cold tiles. That pissed me off too but accepted the contretemps more easily-after all ‘they’ had not taken my money directly promising me all reasonable needs were anticipated for. So for an hour I did my regular routine with some shortcuts due to the hard floor and cold air on my naked skull and the dirt flying about in the draft. At 1:52 I headed for the 2:00 start which was much further away than indicated by race personnel I questioned. I got there just in time. There I met Bob, AM, E and other Americans in the race. The race was halted for 5 min while some technicality needed solving; I think it was the non-arrival of the pace-car. Then while waiting we had a small rain squall as we would have several times during the race. It was windy cold and wet. Not conducive to settling down. But I was not about to argue with God. Altho I would like to take him to task for the difficulty sleeping in this penetrating cold humid weather that makes blankets unserviceable. Down, quilts, would have been the way to go or electrical blankets. Or being an acclimated Belgian.

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It’s already past midnight and I will have to rinse out all the race-gear that I have soaking in soapy water. They won’t dry in this weather but they will drip some and tomorrow I might find some sun, who knows. I have had to leave half the window completely wide open with a screen in it so that my special racewalk shoes can dry out from the rain and the perspiration. I was exhausted after the race and wished I could be home in bed. I was shivering from exposure and barely made it through the finishing gate-it felt the effort was like a marathon at 42.2 km instead of the 30 km that we did. I sit here in front of a mirror and I see how red fired my eyes are. I am really tired. I got so little sleep last night from the cold and the anxiety of the race. I had though two dreams which means that I must have had some sleep. But not much I can guarantee you. They say in racing wisdom that ‘it isn’t the night before the race what sleep counts, it’s the night before the last night. Luckily I am well enough at this moment to get some of the happenings down on Pobo files.

The van driver who picked me up on the dark regional road, liked to pick up hitch-hikers because he had several times been the victim of not being picked when he needed help on the road, the last time being when he broken down and it took him two hours to get a ride. So he’s trying to right a wrong done him and prove the lack of danger in picking up hitch-hikers. I started out explaining my destination and plight in French which is returning fast here in Belgium where French is a regional dialect or they speak Flemish remaining hostile to the French as if they were still in a tribal feud. I offered to speak English (American) instead saying that I would like to reciprocate his kindness for picking me up with something that he might be interested in practicing. Sure enough, he wanted nothing better than to speak to an American in American. I had given up and was literally ten steps on my way to the police station to throw myself at their mercy or back to the banquet hoping to catch AM expecting her to redress the charter company’s inhospitable ways somehow. It is amazing how malcontent a person I am, and how ready I am to blame others for my woes.

And this final subtle but nevertheless disastrous thing happened tonight-devastating to my psyche, a realization of how difficult shy and socially inept I feel. At the banquet people started dancing. AM, E and her friend Angelica were available, not to mention Joan; their dancing threw me into a fearful state of apprehension of making a fool of myself being awkward in public, and almost immediately hastened my desire to catch the charter bus at 22:30. I also realized to my chagrin, that my thought of going to Amsterdam on the way to visit Daria, to spend the night there, going to a sex club that that city is so infamous for in their explicitness, is asking too much of my fragile psyche. I retreated into a closet psychologically and made myself totally unavailable or socially acceptable. Mind you I have been a modern dancer taking more than 1000 classes over 13 years, performed with a dance company, and performed solo work in eleven concerts up until just three years ago when at 60 I stopped because of bad reviews. But I did the work on my body and I am in superb shape. My body good but my mind bad (even after ten years of psychotherapy).

So I have now decided to go direct to Daria in Eindhoven, having AM cancel my return train ticket to Brussels (Bruxelles), scratching Amsterdam, and go from Eindhoven to Paris after the two or three day visit. A visit whose purpose I am not clear on, but that is for later, much later to deal with. I think I’ll try to book this room one more day here for tomorrow night, call Oestende train station and Daria, and travel the next afternoon leaving at 11:30. Eindhoven could be an inconvenience for Daria to pick me up from living some 25 km away. I am beginning to feel very negative about my life. I am on the verge of paranoia.

I think I must get to bed now. Tomorrow I will tell the ordeal of the race-it felt Iike a marathon, I was weak and wobbly at the end. MY TIME: 3:30:51. How that compares to other 30 km I’ve done, I can’t remember. It is fair time. Women do 20 km. E did 2:20:00 and AM did 2:17:00 which is about the same speed as mine. My 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 & 30 km intervals splits were: 0:33, 1:06, 1:41, 2:15, 2:51 & 3:30. This means I did the 5 km intervals at 33 min, 33, 35, 34, 36, & 39 min. I was shot at the end and didn’t feel well in shower/dressing room following the race. I had a couple a hamstring cramps in the two last 5 km loops and feared the worst, which didn’t happen. Bob did a very creditable 3:23:00 which he thinks will give him a medal, possibly gold in his age-group; and an American 37yr old woman won outright the woman’s 20 km race at an incredible 1:38:00.

04

I’m having warm milk and all is calm and all is well with the world again. There were a few threats to my equanimity this morning but I diffused them just as well as I created them. Truly, I am alright with the world and, for the moment, with my Self. How did this transformation come about and what were the threats this morning? I am sure you don…you do want to hear? Alright, it’s like this:

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I really didn’t sleep too well again last night. I haven’t since I got here; it’s the heavy blankets, the damp air and loud resounding hard masonry surfaces and my general nervousness about my identity here in Europe. Am I an American revisiting his past or a European with some experiences in America? The difference is kind of strong-in the former I am …no, it’s strong but not profound; it is really again a state of mind of sitting on two fences at once which drives a wedge into my heart or better my psyche. It is the sitting on two fences at once which discombobulates me, throws me for a loop. I’m having milk heated in a microwave oven; I wanted it for my Familia cereal to lessen its rawness. They serve milk here with sugar and

had that same little cocktail biscuit I had last night (I helped myself to another one, today’s is called Brio and is a coconut Oreo type cookie, yesterday’s was called Elite and I’ll tell you what it is when I open the one I took, which is an Elite; the warm milk is a nerve soothener.)

I booked the room again for tonight so that I can leave during daylight hours without rushing myself. I want some time to really give Pobo a workout and fill your ears with my loving kisses and agonizing wails. I asked at the front desk of the same attractive young woman I had a run-in with regarding getting info on the Eindhoven travel plans. She told me that the room and adjoining rooms was/were taken tonight for a whole crew of football players (jealousy raised its ugly head momentarily imagining this young woman creaming in her thighs for these hunks of masculinity while I, this aged intellectual-by-defense in his softie sport of racewalking was sucking air and far from stirring her nipples to fantasy of her being ravaged by me). She told me I could move to room #15 and that it would cost 1200 BF (Belgian Franks) or $40. This would require packing my stuff and live in limbo between 11 am and 2 pm when I could occupy the new room facing the tennis courts ‘n their noise and again work to rearrange all the furniture as I had done here. I left saying I would think about it. I passed room #15, saw its facing the tennis courts ‘n its noises but also the sun, and decided I would go through the bother if I could possibly move there without having to pack all my stuff up and simply transport it directly there. I returned to the desk and stated those concerns and that I would take it. She started the computer process to make the change and she saw that AM had already requested another day’s stay for me in the same room (I had left such a handwritten request under her door last night) and therefore said I could stay without changing. I was grateful. I then inquired regarding some new info regarding the Eindhoven story, the fact that trains depart Oestende, which is near here and might be simpler and less time-consuming and less expensive than going back to Brux-elles first, asking her if she would guess at the time the train would take from here to there and whether she’d give me the Oestende train-station number. She got it and gave me an estimate. I made the call relatively calmly (what with the phone unfamiliarity, the language barrier and the last frustrations still fresh in my mind). This time, pursuant to my theory that the average Belgian has hostility toward the French from past, way past, domination & threat, like the Chinese and the Japanese, I decided to go for it in English. It worked beautifully, simply and I got all I needed as if I was in paradise (I was going to say New York but I remembered that that is a very compromising-on-the-nerves-city for information gathering with all its automatic telephone systems. I pity foreigners in NY. No mercy given.)

In another graceful grown-up mature act that only humans are capable of in their socializing process (which is probably wrongly prejudicial and ignorant of the ways of animals), I apologized to Ms Pretty for my hysterics the other day explaining the unfamiliarity with language and ways made me nervous further complicating communication. She smiled and relaxed and I wanted to put my hand inside her white blouse and fondle her small breasts. I was and I am happy at that humanity and I am beginning to laugh at the up ‘n down swings I submit my psyche to. I even felt a wave of gratefulness to AM for doing these little things behind the scenes to smooth over the path through the unfamiliar territories. I had gotten up in the middle of the night to write a note to AM regarding my desire to stay and asking her whether I should do it through the desk or through her as my travel agent. I slipped that note under her door at room #20. This morning I