Could this be the Forbidden City?
AN ARTIST�S VIEW OF HIS WORLD.
Reality is retrospective, retroactive, and illusionary. To the c-reative mind there is no right or wrong. Every action is an experiment.
As Emmanuel once said, �Nothing happens that you have not called to you..�
The Taoist thought of the day:
Wisdom. Logic has its place in human affairs but isn't everything. There is a limit to what we can understand through rationality and reasoning. To transcend that limit, we need to engage our intuition fully. This is the key to insights as opposed to knowledge, and the difference between living the Tao and reading all about it.
In 1979 I sold my first townhouse and plowed the money into a bigger and better one.
This is the frontal view of the second one. Now you will also see the back view and my young daughter as well. She came to join me and go to a foothills high school. It went well until she got herself a job at the local horse racing track training horses. When school ended for summer, she went to Colorado with a horse-breeder with my permission but never returned for school in the fall.
Living in the foothills was a great experience.
I was up to renting out fourteen units and letting them pay off their own mortgages.
By now I was owing over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. These are eight of the units that were located on Columbus street. I called them the Columbus Apartments. All were furnished.
My son Mark was enjoying being back in Tucson and living with me while attending college for a year.
One thing I had to do was teach summer school to make a little more money so I could buy even more units for rental.
These are some students I took on a trip downtown to visit the mayor and see the city-offices and county court buildings.
One thing for sure� having rentals meant there was always repair work to do.
However, in 1982 I decided the computer age was here to stay and I should get one and learn what computers could do for me.
My first one was a TRS-80 from Radio Shack. I had to learn an entirely new language called Script to use it, but it did make certain kinds of work a lot easier. For instance I began a new business. It was called �mail order� and involved selling items such as bee-pollen. I ran ads in magazines. I also collected female addresses in Asia that were looking for pen-pals and maybe marriage. I was paid $15 for 150 addresses. The very good-looking and best ones I began correspondence with myself. Some I offered the opportunity to be my guest for a month if they bought their own air-fare. I did have four very charming guests over the early 80�s. Being a bachelor during the 70�s was a busy time for dates were easy to find since we had a Tucson Single�s Council that arranged parties especially if our homes were in the foothills.
There was an artist colony south of Tucson at Tubac.
I always enjoyed seeing what the locals were doing with their art.
We also had a Jacuzzi and tennis courts at the new townhouse.
I think I liked taking my dates at night down to the jacuzzi the best. Usually I looked the part of a sportsman.
In 1953 I saw my first UFO. I was in the army and out in the desert around El Paso.
This one just appeared in my developed film and I�m not even sure it is for real.
One way of meeting females was at the nearby Tennis Club.
We played a lot of doubles and I did meet some fantastic women tennis players.
One of my first houseguests was a Filipino nurse from London who was extremely interested in marriage.
My house guests for a month always appreciated a trip out to Old Tucson, the movie set.
Mary loved the western U.S.
Especially old steamengines.
Then I wanted to learn scuba diving as well as leaning to sail.
It was my idea that by 1987 I would find a wife that could swim well and would love life on a boat.
I took sailing lessons and loved sailing.
One of my tennis partners was Vena
I sold my townhouse and moved in with her.
We even went skiing together up in Breckenridge, Colorado.
It was a colorful old western mining town.
If she tried sailing and did well
she would make a good wife for my retirement.
We encountered a storm on our way to the Dry Tortugas off the tip of Florida.
Vena hated sailing and wouldn�t even sail back to St. Petersburg with us.
She took a sea plane back to the mainland and flew back to Tucson without me.
I decided to do a honeymoon in reverse. If this woman couldn�t love sailing she was not going to be a good marriage partner for me. She didn't realize that when we got back from our summer trip I planned on moving out and kissing her good-bye for good. She was a good Italian Catholic and I promised her a view of the Pope! We landed in Amsterdam.
When I came up with the idea of doing Europe with her, I told her if she would spring for the air fare I would rent a car and show her the Europe I had come to love. Personally I wanted to investigate an island in the Mediterranean off the coast of Greece called Santorini.
When leaving Holland we went to Paris. The first night there thieves broke into our parked car and stole my video camera that was in the trunk.
I do love those sidewalk cafes of Paris.
Our next big stop was in Venice.
Everytime I stay in Venice I stay in rooms here on this street. The fellow remembers me and actually gave us the �honeymoon suite�. The last time I was here I had my paint box and canvas with me.
Traveling in the communist country of Yugoslavia was actually a pleasant experience this time. Last time I was here was by train and it was with my first wife. Not that great.
Then we were in Greece.
Look at those tassels on soldier shoes!
Then it was boat time.
Nothing like those Greek islands.
This is what Thira on the island of Santorini looks like from below.
I did get some strange looks.
The village of Thira was mostly white domes and enchanting.
We took a bus to Kamari where the sand was black and the beach was known all over Europe as a nude beach! I do admire those who believe being natural in their beach appearance is truly being themselves. I could be a natural nudist.
I did love Santorini. It too became an enchanted place in my first book.
Nothing like a nude beach to make a place interesting.
We took our car by ferry over to Italy and drove to Rome.
This was our visit to the Vatican City.
We didn�t see the Pope.
Mad Ludwick�s castle.
I would later paint this view and also the Domo in Florence.
Hippies were camping out in the square.
We drove next to Frankfort, Germany and flew home.
One way to keep healthy
is the desert hike. If not that then flying off to Honolulu and taking in the beach.
My Hawaiian friends got me interested in selling water-filters back in Tucson. I moved to a rather upscale apartment in the foothills where I could hold sales-meetings of personnel who would sell door to door. I even bought an almost new Cadillac to use while training salesmen. It all came to naught since my advertising for salesmen produced but one female who was a poor sales-person. I really lost on that venture.
Molly in back was former guest.
My next adventure was with Molly's friend, a Chinese night-club singer from Singapore. She finally ended up as a character in one of my books. She was impressed with my Columbus Apartment complex.
Ivy went off to see San Francisco and afterwards got a job in Houston singing.
I wanted to scuba dive in the Sea of Cortez.
This was the dive boat we lived on while playing tag with the baby seals we found along the coasts of islands in the sea.
About 15 minutes after this picture was taken I had an asthma attack and lost consciousness. The female in the picture was suppose to be my dive-buddy and stick with me. She didn�t. I sunk to the bottom in 50 feet of water and lay there for several minutes while those above surmised I was in trouble.
It took some minutes for them to start the motor of this boat and locate the dive master who was spear-fishing some 200 yards away. They hauled him back to where I was last seen and he went down to recover me. I was pulled up and was shaken until I decided to come alive again. Yes, I saw the bright light and decided not to enter it but to come back and finish the book I was writing. It was called,
Gift From The Gods
It was the end of 1985 and I decided to spend my Christmas vacation in Taiwan as a guest of Ting Ting and her family.
She was extremely beautiful and a middle school teacher as well.
Her brother was a doctor over in South Africa and had given the family a new Ford. I got to drive it from one end of Taiwan to the other.
TingTing�s English was not as proficient as I thought and we did have some misunderstandings.
I bought the family a Christmas tree and they did not appreciate the gesture. We also had tire trouble and I could have handled it better.
By the end of my two weeks in Taiwan, Ting Ting knew I would not be the husband she could handle. I was my own boss and knew my own mind.
At least I knew how to rub a belly.
It brought me no luck with Ting Ting. She thought I was too old and hard to manage.
With the new year came some good fortune. I received letters and pictures of a former nun that really appealed to me.
These two pictures changed my life. When Trudy sent them to me, I told her about a Penang gal and Canadian who were both after me, and whoever showed up first might have the best chance. That did it. She got her visa and airline ticket within three weeks!
One of my former houseguests (Molly) had given her friend Vivian my picture and she had given it to Trudy. Guess she liked the cowboy hat I was wearing in that picture.
This is the way I pictured my new found friend from Sarawak on the island of Borneo.
Yes, from the time this young girl joined this order of nuns eleven years had passed and now she was out and looking for a life partner.
Would I be that partner? She said she knew how to swim and had been on boats up and down rivers many times.
I showed up at LAX Airport in L.A. a day early.
It seems they are a day ahead of us in Asia and I got confused.
She was eager to come over to the U.S.
These two pictures were my first view of Gertrude Hii Hiong Hong and I was astounded at her youthful vigor and attractiveness.
I was definitely smitten especially after our first kiss. I had been single for 12 years and had dated and lived with dozens of various female personalities. One might say I was well educated on the subject of attraction and love. We met April 3 and on April 5 we were married!
One of my favorite artists was Ettore De Grazia. He had a house and gallery on the north end of Tucson along with a beautifully painted chapel.
Here I am saying, �I do.�
We did have a profession take a good picture.
While away to Florida visiting my mother our apartment was broken into and robbed.
The thieves took the collection of turquoise jewelry I had given my wife along with my TRS-80 computer. Soon I would be retired and have my own boat. I would need a lap-top for any writing I would do. So this was my second computer.
We did go visit my wife�s country.
It was really an eye-opener.
When we got back to the states our boat was waiting for us. It was steel and it took several months to build.
We are sailing her out of Bellingham, Washington. Once we learned to sail her we would take her on our first �blue-water� trip down to San Francisco.
Can you tell I�m happy over being retired from teaching and now a sailor?
Well, every time we are in Tucson I�m not the sailor but the cowboy!
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