=au0502220
Continuation of =au050219
which is continuation of =au05021j , =au05021g, =au05021f
The which being my Autobiography Number 2
written on those dates
unread by me, and I suggest by you.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

As I lay in bed, after having been whatever care I seemed to need,
and hooked up with an intervenous drip which I did not need, the
nurses went to the window to see or hear the fireworks of the
Millenium.
So that does clearly mark the approximate time of this incident.

Well, the next moring -- or maybe it was later that evening, I
don't quite recall now -- I walked out of the hospital, rather
believing it was not a real hospital but some sort of facade.
(In fact it was the Rodos Muncipal hospital.)
I walked past the Casino, pasuing rather defiantly at the Casino
trashcan for a brief mid-morning snack, and then proceeded to
Mike's.  He has a good soul, and great tolerance for the weakness
of the world, and took me in and gave me a good bed, and was
concerned to wait on me for whatever I needed, including getting
up from bed to walk to the bathroom.                            


It was Carmen Cohen, I think the Secretary (that is,
administrative secretary, really the manager) of the Jewish
Community of Rodos who I think had me taken back from Mike's to
the hospital.  My will was not the strongest at the time.  Up to
the point of my flipout I was beginning to involve myself in the
affairs of that community, which in effect might have meant that
I was or seemed the one person who could challenge some financial
irregularities.  Like they were charging Anna Kapeta Cohen, though
she is Carmen's cousin, an exhorbitant rent for their shop in the
old Jewish Quarter, the only Jewish shop in that Quarter, or for
that matter on Rodos.  He had been there since some time after the
war, with a little local clothing shop and a few postcards, but by
the mid 90s Rodos was booming as a cruise-ship port, and shlock
tourist shops, some with gold and furs, were taking over space in
the Plaza of the Hebrew Martyrs, since that is closest to the
port, and where all the cruise-ship shoppers first troop in.  So
now they were asking exhorbitant rather than nominal rent.

And there were some other matters of financial irregularity too.
Mr. Sakis had supplanted Mr. Soriano as head of the Jewish
community.  Well, Mr. Soriano was an old duck, but tough, and with
real roots in the Jewish community of Rodos.
Mr. Sakis is a businessman, though as far as know a decent enough
chap.  A bit of a hustler I think, but not egregiously so.
No real roots in Judaism that I can see, neither religious nor
cultural.  Mr. Soriano, however unobservant, seemed to be
religious by nature, or upbringomg-

As I noted at the time, Mr. Sakis owns (as of 1999) a building
that was one of the pre-war synagogues, in the old city.

And I am not quite clear what happens to all the money attracted
by the old synagogue of Rodos.  Mr. Cohen, Anna's father, who was
really at loggerheads with what little one might call the
religious establishment in Rodos, did make a few critical remarks.

So I think one can safely say that Carmen Cohen would have be glad
to see me out of the picture of the Jewish community of Rodos.

I did write a few detailed articles on these matters, but that is
very dated details now.  Nor was there much more than conjectdure
and peripheral details.

Well, in any event, I was trucked back in an ambulance to the
hospital, where they offered to give me every imaginable
examination, and I declined.  They did manage a scan for internal
injuries, which I gather and am sure was negative.  One doctor
spoke of a possible heart attack, but I declined examination for
it.

I stayed in that hospital, in what was termed the orthopedic ward,
but I think doubled as a sort of dump for psychiatric patients. 
By chance I was in the bed that had been occupied by Carmen
Cohen's mother, when she came in with a broken leg and then died
there.  Where that remark might lead I cannot guess. 

There was a male nurse there, a homo, who seemed a rather
unpleasant sort.  Carmen, who came once to visit, said he made
quite a rude remark to her.  I had complained of him to her.  A
matter of attitude I should say, nothing explicit, no physical
mistreatment.  Though the doctors there apparently disdained the
American notion of 'bedside manner', and I would say could be
rather cruel, psychologically and even a bit physically. 
In any event, Carmen apparently had a few words with that guy and
he gave me no trouble thenceforth.
So whatever my resentments, I am indebted to her as well.
R. Shlomo once said, "I bless us all that we should pay our
debts."

I do think that by that time I had written him a check or two for
the 50 dollar performance fee that I tried for a few years to
stiff him out of after I first met him, that was for an SPU fund-
raising concert at MacMillan Hall in Columbia U. , in 1963 I
think.  We did not make money on it, and I suppose I blamed R.
Shlomo for not having had a few thousand ticket-buying hasidim at
the time.  And anyhow, as I sat up in the balcony being a Big Man
on Campus for the evening, I was not inspired bedazzled or even
especially moved by the wonders of Yiddishkeit, nor did i walk out
the door humming hasidic tunes, tying tzitzit on my undershirt,
and putting paper napkins on my head, so I held onto the money tho
he did ask for it several times.

As I have often written.  It was in the mid 70s, and I was dating
Debbie Jaffee -- whatever one might say of her, she did have a
real compassion for me, and did offer me real support at times.
She is the one person who ever really offered me heartfelt
consolation on the death of my father, whom she never had met, I
just spoke of him.  We were -- she was, anyhow, that's all I
noticed -- naked at the time, in my 3rd floor bedroom.  I said
something, in passing, and she walked over and reached over and
touched me on the shoulder.  That was all, and I went on to talk
of other matters, but it did mean something to me , and still
does.

The night my father died, Hilton Hall, who once worked for the
OIS, the World War II precursor of the CIT,  and then dropped out
of the Morman Church and married Kyra, who my mother met as her
best friend working together in the RLE Publications office at MIT 
-- an Italian, they met in Italy, so I'm ssure he had to leave the
OIS to marry her.  A great-souled woman. -- so anyhow -- Hilton
Hall came up to my room, where I was dishsheveled and re-dressing
-- there was a great rainstorm that eveninng, with thunder and
lightning -- so he just shook my hand, without saying anything. 
And that too is class.

So anyhow, it happened that R. Shlomo was giving a talk at MIT on
day in the mid-70s.  I wanted to go, but was not sure I dared,
having all but cheated him of his concert fee.  I asked Debbie
Jaffee what to do -- she had a more religious background than I --
and she said, Well, I wouldn't try to borrow money from him again. 
So I went, and of course he was warm -- he would treat anyone who
came up to him as a prince, regardless of circumstances -- and,
well, I suppose I've since tried to do a bit to make repayment on
that account.   10 Mb of transcriptions maybe, which is a drop in
the bucket, but still, "it ain't peanuts".  Or as I'd say, "small
potatoes but potatoes is potatoes".

Well, where are we.  It's motzi Shabat, so henceforth this writing
is legal.  Mazaltov, as Seidman would say.

Well, I was in that ruddy hospital for about 6 weeks or so,
because I didn't really want to face leaving.  They had given me
some brilliantly made but rather atrocious contraption with which
to support my neck, but I took it off and went back to just using
the surgical collar, one of those things you can buy without
prescription at any pharmacy.  As a matter of fact I kept that on
for quite some time, well over a year.  Well, it kept my neck
warm.  

At some point, after I had contacted the insurance company about
possible payment, they said they would not pay because I had not
notified them of my hospitalization, and in effect that I had
stayed much too long at the hospital.  Or maybe, I think, it was
that would not pay passed a certain cutoff date, which was in a
few days, and that they were cancelling my travelers insurance
because I had not notified them on time.  Yes, that was it.
In any event, I never submitted a claim, tho I don't know if
anyone ever did so on my behalf.  One reason I did not leave the
hospital was that I had just about enough money in my pocket for
one more trip, a thousand or so in Traeller's checks and a batch
of Eurochecks, and I did not want to leave myself without
resources.

I mean, the difference between an insane bum and an eccentric
gentleman is a minimum of about 1500 dollars.  
Or a solid imaginary line of credit, as Eliahu proves every day.
I have always admired good hustlers, and tried to be one myself,
if only for recreation.  Well, Eliahu is one of the best.  I don't
know how he'd do as President of the USA -- most likely get us
back to the moon or Mars or wherever -- and invent a few new
Internets that might or might not work but would surely have lots
of new feeatures -- and in any invent I'm sure he'd take the job
and give it a good try.  Well, so would I, and might do a bit
better though less imaginative, tho I'm getting a bit tired now
and less eager for the job.

Speaking of homos, or one should rather say, those who practiced
the sin that dare -- dared, rather -- not speak its name -- Sig
Schonbaum was a cook, chef one should say, at Grey Gables one
year.  Magnificently inventive, great level of energy, he also
designed stage sets, quie well as I recall.  Or rather, he cooked
occasionally and it was always a surprise and treat.  So he ran
for election as our co-op cook, and lost, barely, to Fran Fox, a
thoroughly conservative woman who later married Ed Moskovitz. 
It's hard to believe that conservatives go for sex, but apparently
they do.  Well, Moskovitz was one of the brilliant young men
around Mike Dukakis.  Nice unarrogant guy too.  Knew his
intellectual worth and neither denied nor flaunted it.

I think the cook at Zenith was homosexual too, though entirely
discreet about it, in the English manner.  Excellent cook, and a
throughly decent person, who would even help shovel dirt onto the
garbage pit when I asked him to.

I often wanted to say to Aziz:  You are not homosexual; you are
British.  There is a difference.  However subtle.

I'm stalking Dave McReynolds through the maze of the 5 Beekman
Street, with water pistols -- I mean, as leaders of peace groups -
- he was head of War Resisters League, I aas de facto head of the
New York Region Student Peace Union -- this would be about 1964 --
we had to do something to stay humble.  So Byron Rustin walks up
the stairs -- he was never a 'gay activist', as some say nowadays,
almost stayed neatly in the closet , in which he no doubt hosted
sherry hours --  as I note in a poem, as Steve Slaner once told
me, he once said to someone;  Sir, I am a Negro, a socialist, and
a homosexual; I simply do not have TIME for any more minorities.
A brilliant mind, with Oxford polish and of course impeccable
manners dress and diction.  So Rustin says, You know David, this
is only a substitute for sex, and McReynolds , who was no doubt a
bit in awe of Rustin, says, What do you think this is a prelude
to, and then immediately said, Sorry Steve, for he knew I was a
bit homophobic.  He lived with a perfectly nice chap, Peter
Stafford.

You see, it really doesn't matter what one is or isn't, or thinks
one is or isn't, inclined to do; the Bible says don't, so we
don't.  If the Bible wasn't more or less true it would have been
long gone from Greenwich Village sidewalk remainder bins.   

I mean really, one rarely has the job one prefers, so why should
one deem oneself entitled, even oblligated, to have the sex one
prefers.  And for that matter, why should one take pleasure as the
aim of sex rather than a sometime by-product.

Well, where was I, if anywhere.
Oh yes, that dreary Rodos story.  And no booze it the room too.  I
Just had a hit of Cynar, which is some sort of artichoke-based
apertif, pleasantly bitter enough -- and now I'm gnawing on the
orange slice, with my two remaining lower teeth -- one and a third
really, but who needs more, except to eat lettuce, and who likes
lettuce. 

Its early 70s, and I'm on the pueblo land trying to help little
Joe build the house to live with Adrian with -- no doubt it was a
pueblo scandal, that he was marrying a non-Indian woman, and maybe
50 years younger too, tho Adrian was no spring chicken -- so
anyhow, I have some sort of tooth crisis, and Little Joe says,
forget about it.  
I think maybe he meant, don't but all that foreign junk into your
mouth, it will leach into your blood and into your brain and make
you crazy - I mean, nowadays everyone but my dentist knows that
you should not have mercury-amalgam fillings in your mouth, tho I
think that the only safe way to get rid of them is to pull out the
tooth (I first typed 'truth', which was a phonetic slip, not a
Freudian one; it seems I really do write on an aural basis).
Because to drill it out would throw a duststorm of powdered
mercury into one's mouth, and much of that would no doubt be
absorbed in the body.

So maybe that was nature's way of saying, go back to the Bar and
order another Cynar.  I'd get drunk this evening if I didn't think
it might be bad for my self-image.  

Or Donavan, a fine poet:  This is late 60s I think, probably from
Sunshine Superman:  "Yourself you touch / but not too much /
you've heard its degrading".  A fine song, though I can't imagine
who but he could sing it.
"The magauzine girl poses / on my glossy paper airoplane. / Too
many years I spent in the city / playing with Mr. Loss 'n Gain /"
So I'd make a video.  We start with a live picture of a semi-nude
model posing -- that morphs into the magazine centerfold, and that
morphs into a paper airplane made from the centerfold -- it floats
toward a great wood office door with a large brass plate -- Larsen
Gaines, Esquire -- Getting and Spending.  The door swings open,
and Mr. Gaines rises from his desk, with a great phony multi-tooth
smile, hand outstretched toward the camera, -- which pans right
past him, at the same slow steady speed, and out the open window,
as he looks after it in shock, and the airplane is floating slowly
down to the street, with Donovon embossed on it somehow -- 

Also, I have always wanted to conduct the overture to Swan Lake. 
Well, the way computers are going, maybe I'll get the chance.
Yossi Sarid, they say, likes to pretend to conduct.  A prick, but
brilliant.  This is the guy who took the Meretz party from
Shulamit Aloni, who is a great liberal and womens' rights
advocate.  I heard her speak once or twice, nice person.  From a
remark she let drop, I think she might gladly have been a rabbi,
and I bet a very good one too, but in her day, which is the Israel
1950s, that was unthinkable for a woman.
Some say she is anti-religious, but I'm sure that is not so.
Only opposed to the institutionalized rigification of orthodox
religion maybe.

I mean, I'll write reminiscences through Sunday -- Sunday night
tht is, I often wake up in the night, and its easier to type than
to try to fall back asleep -- and then go down and find a terminal
to post it to my Website -- I don't much care where the writing
takes me, it's a certain satifactdion every time I use up another
65K bloc.  I don't intend to re-read this stuff, I just want it
somewhere down on the cosmic record, so if the Recording Angel
says, why didn't you say so, I can say back, I did too, it's just
that nobody found it and read it, so it's not my fault.
Well, they say, don't argue with the judge, and no doubt that
means the Heaenly Court that sends you to one or another relative
hell.

The Indians seem to tell each other that they're going to hell. 
Some hippie kid, or maybe it was an Indian, said that to Little
Joe when he was dying, and Joe just sort of chuckled.

Jason wrote me that he saw Joe get buried -- Jason was an
innocent, he used to spend lots of time with the Jihole Indians of
south America, the psilosybin Indians who make that magnificent
bright embroidery .   So anyhow, when I read that line I have this
hit of Joe getting to go to bed with this like ethereal aspect of
the Earth Mother.  The image was sexual but not physical.  Nice
treat no doubt.  Joe took joy im whatever came unto him.  You
could see through his eyes, or intuition one might say, the
harmoniouslness of whatever situation was at hand.

And after I post it I'm done with this, for now anyhow, and I'll
do something else.

Well, the day they were going to dicharge me from the hospital --
they were going to have someone come get me -- I was scared of
that, and I just walked out -- they let me, with a few yogurts and
cookies with which to get through the rest of my life  -- so I
walked up on the cliff overlooking the harbour, that's on the edge
of Monte Smith -- it was a very cold night , this was early
February of the new millenium, not that anyone cares anymore about
it -- or maybe the New Age was cancelled because I didn't get to
Ulm.  Who knows, but it don't do much good to think about it now.

Destiny always appears as an immediate possibility, though it's
really only a sort of limiting case.  I mean Messhiach could come
tomorrow, Feb. 20, but chances are better that it won't be for a
long ling time.

So amyhow I lie there and I am as it were barfing out all the
trash from TV and whatnot that I have taken in in those 6 weeks or
whateer it was in the hospital.  Everyone could rent TVs, and so I
had to see and hear all that crap.  And other things too that I
should not have had to see and hear, especially in a psychically
vulnerable state.  Like corpses of folks who didn't quite make it
to the emergency room in time being wheeled back across the
parking lot to the mortuary.  And the guy in the bed across the
way chaging clothes, after he had had his vitals cut off to slow
down cancer, and him not wanting to do it my sight, and his wife
saying oh go ahead, change your clothes, and of course I trying my
very hardest to see nothing.  A normal hospital would have an
ovrrhead curtain to draw around the bed, but his was Greece.
Also a normal hospital would not make you buy your own drinking
water, the more so as I had no money at hand.  I could have asked
the hospital for my money, but then they might have asked me to
pay.  And also, I had no-one , a visitor or family memger, who I
could ask to go over to the kiosk and get me a bottle of water. 
Ok, the tap water was safe enough, but it seems in Greece that no-
one drinks it.

So anyhow, I as it were barfed all that up in an hour or so lying
on the cliff at Monte Smith in near freezing cold, and indeed
those images did not trouble me thenceforth.  A voice had said to
me, you have to do this, but you only have to do it once.  And
such was the case.

Thenceforth I walked across the town of Rodos, always with Shabat
range I think.  I suppose I believed that since I hsd not properly
made havdalah, I was locked into Shabat until I did.  That had the
great advantage that as long as I was locked into Shabat, nobody
from the realworld could touch me.  And such seemed to be the
case.

When I got back to Modiin, I asked Ben-Zion if it was true that
the Shabat could be extended thus, and he said, yes, but only if
you don't eat anything, and don't do any malacha -- work, in the
technical sense of the term.  Well, I was not doing anything much
like malacha.  But also I think Ben-Zion said, but in any event it
stops at Wednesday.

I think it is this illusion, or self-delusion, that has been the
rational, if one might for a moment call it that, aspect of what
has kept me immobilized in just about all my flipouts.

Well, that would seem to call for a Cynar, if only for the sake of
the vitamin C in the orange slice.  One should take half a gram or
so of vitamin C a day, so I'd better get busy drinking Cynars.  I
mightr ask for a double slice, but I don't want to seem out-of-
place here.

Black magic is a bit like trying to drive a car by moonbeams, no
hands.  No doubt it can be done -- a municipal bus driver took his
bus up the mountain the other day that way, especially after I
asked him not to.
So black magic and magic is real enough, but mostly only if you
think now.  And everyone says, don't get stuck on that mezzanzine,
just get back on the elevator and to up or down.  I mean, anyone
who doesn't know how to go shopping shouild stay at home in bed
with an eggnog, Amen amen.

I mean, if you stay back on the material plain, black magic can't
have much impact on you.  Ok, maybe it will mess with your
subscious some, but who needs a subconscious, I mean that's what
traffic cops are for.    And psychoanalysts, but if you can afford
a psychoanalyst you can afford a subconscious.  Otherwise leae it
to the jetset, they need something to play with if they can't do
pick and shovel work and don't know how to swim.

Well, got a plate of french fries, and shot -- well, bit of grape-
shot size maybe, barely enough to wash a fly's eye -- of Cynar at
Honest George's.  Mr. Honest haveing gone back to his real
Restorante in Olivone I suppose.  I mean, that guy walks into
dripping gooey bad vibes, like the Hulk after a fall in toxic pink
bubble-gum pool.
If ever there was a guy who ought to be recyled in looney bin --
and no human deserves that "fate worse than death" -- it is Honest
George.  Unless he takes up mountain-dlimbing of course.

Fuckaduck.

And Millea said, do not say, Fuck the system, for fucking is fun. 
Say rather, unfuck the system.

Well, there was as sexy a woman as ever warmed a bed.  Naturally
sexy, the kind who have orgasms and babies and eat with good
appetite, by which I mean only, those who soon go plump.  Nice
person too, and no doubt raised her chidren well.  Died young,
more's the sorrow; we need more grandmothers of that build.  Left
behind much science ficion, much of it unpublished, which I'd like
to see and maybe play with.  Millea Levin Kenin, wife of Eliot
Kenin, long of Cambridge Mass., and then they moved to Berkeley. 
Once told me that she intended to write a pornographic sci-fi
story titled "Love with a many-splendour'd thing".

So ok, the saga resumes.  

Someone filmed The Tempest, which occurs all about Prospero, who
is in a bathtub.  And the little toy boat sinking beside him I
suppose.
Someone wrote a short story, "And all the isle with Calibans",
which looks like prose but is all in iambic pentameter.
I mean, Prospero really is rather a stuffed shirt in need of
pricking ticking or both.  "How now, Moody." "Get laid Daddy-o." 
Faggots should not be allowed to write plays.  

So ok, I walked across to the other side of Rodos, the bad side of
the tracks as it were, walking behind the old city to the other
side of the port.  Lay out on the stone beach there.  A woman, an
after-hours whore maybe, would come down every daybreak to bathe
naked in the water.  She would call to me to join her, but I did
not.  Crazy but with a good heart I reckon.  No, I was not Henry
Miller, he would have done honorably by her.

A woman in a house overlooking he beach brought me hot food
sometimes, even with a fork and spoon.  A guy with a restaurant up
the beach did so too sometimes.  With a whole loaf of bread
someteimes.  Rather good bread.  The poor people on Greece, and
many who have been poor, can be extremely considerate of each
other.

I read in the newspaper that the Pope was about to visit Israel,
and was motivated to go there to see him.  I once saw Gorbachov
there, he had stopped his auo in the Rova, and got out.
This is one of great men who have changed history, for the better
I should say.  Bush, in an analogous if opposite position, is
changing it for the worse.
My guess is that Gorbachov is of Jewish descent, and does his best
to honor that, witin the limits of his position, which are very
strict limits, or were.

So anyhow, that day I really did set out to walk to the port. 
After all, I did have a thousand or so in my pocket, and probably
could have negotiated it.  The realworld will take money from
almost anyone, and say thank you sir, its only the ptit bourgeois
who think you have to be dressed up like a photograveure or else
have the good manners to go into a madhouse and stay there.

So I was walking toward the port, and thought I might now truly
get away pulled by the Pope's impending visit, and well I might
have, but the devil did tempt me, for as I passsed a trashbin
there I saw a box with exceptionally good chocolates, and did eat
one, for in the realworld one can indeed eat a chocolate.  But as
Eurdidice found out, in the world of shades and shadows one must
touch nothing, not even a persimmon seed, and so I knew at once
that I could not go, the possibility no longer seemed real, though
the boat still stood in the harbour that could take me to Haifa in
a day and a half.  On the other hand, it was quite a good
chocolate.  So I stayed in Greece for several more years, but
heck, poor old what's-her-name -- it's not Euridicye but some
other chick , Ceres or Demeter maybe -- anyhow she had to spend
half a year in Hades every year, though I don't suppose the town
of Rodos is that much different, with all the tourists anyhow.

So there I was back on the respectable side of the Harbour, little
enough difference tho it made.

Sometimes people would give me ham sandwiches, which I would eat,
tho when I had money I bought only cheese sandwiches.  That is,
when people gave me small money.  A few dollars or so, in
drachmas.  Though once I guy by the casino gave me something
larger, maybe 50 dollars. I suppose he was Israeli.

From time to time I would see Eli Cohen on the street.  He told me
that he father had died.  So now he lived in the Soriano house. 
He is maybe a bit simple-minded, so he did not regard me as crazy,
and did not speak to me as if I were crazy, he merely noticed that
it was not in a particularly good situation and ought to do
something about it.  A good man, and a gentleman.  He told me when
it was Pesach, and at my request brought me a box of matza.

Well, I had sent matza to various members of the Jewish community
one year, from Israel.  And a Hertz chumash, and a surprisingly
complete collecdtion of other basic Hebrew texts in English
translation, which should still be in the bookcase in the Bet
Knesset.   And I have written respectably enough about the Rodos
Jewish community, that is on my Website with nothing shocking in
it.
Maybe I played a part in catalzing its revival, though when I left
anyhow it was still tourist-driven, not culturally self-sustaining
as a reborn local community.
Many say, all Jews in galutz should come to Israel.  I say, Jews
in galutz should rebuild the Jewish exilic communities of old. 
Only after those are viable is one free to leave for Israel.
And what is lost, that great religious culture of eastern European
Jewry, is gone forever, except as it has been so carefully
replanted and regrown in Israel.  But it will never be reborn in
galutz, except as little Disneylands like the synagogues-turned-
musem of Praha, Prague, where even the Jewish cemetary seems
almost a pasteboard set, like those replicas in the Museum of the
Diaspora in Tel Aviv.
And the Venice Jewish community is now run by goyim for tourists,
and they do almost everything except daven, and it all rings just
a little bit false, but a little bit false means entirely false.

I asked once to take a photo of the inside of a synagogue.  They
said no.  Like a proper Israeli, I said, why not.  

(That's a line I heard once from an air force officer, a young
colonel who gave a talk to our group.  He said, when I go up in my
plane, I am the boss.  Meaning, a 1-person fighter plane.  The
ground command tells me do do something, and like any good
Israeli, I say, 'Why?'  He added, when I get down I may have to
make some explanations though.

They said, Security.  Well, that's a good line for a stopper. 
Sounds quite Israeli.  But in that context it made no sense, so
there was something phony about the whole visit.

It was 1999, before I went back to Rodos where I got stuck.  I
went to the old synagogue on Shabat morning, tho I might rather
have davened with all the other hitch-hikers in the Chabad
storefront.  But I did think I should be part of the Venice
experience.  They have a place where they call out all the names
of their dead, at least the recent ones.  Oy.
I was called up for an aliyah, which is an usual honor offered to
visitors.  Those who are called are expected to pledge something,
bli neder, for the honor.  I mean, to name a specific sum, bli
neder.  I can't quite figure that one out, so I said nothing. 
Obviously they did not press the point, that surely would be
brinign money into Shabat.  Properly I shouild have gone back
after Shabat and left something, tho I don't know how I could have
done so.  So sometimes on Rodos I wondered if it was that unpaid
debt, if you can call it that, which held me back.

I'm not sure why I'm detailing all these neurotic illusions. 
Maybe the detailing will do some good somehow. 

If I get down to Bellinzona on Monday, I can buy a Herald Tribune,
and maybe a porno Italian comic book.  And maybe a piece of quiche
or a hot-dog.  At Manor in Bellinzona they sell fresh-squeezed
orange juice , at maybe 4 times the price one would pay in Israel,
and of course not nearly as fresh.

I'm not sure why everyone likes lukewarm french-fried potatoes. 
Even dipped in ketchup.  But I don't suppose ketchup is what it is
used to be.

Correction:  Cold french-fried potatoes.  Room temperature, that
is.  Lightly salted.   But the orange slice adds a nice touch to
the gassified mineral water.   Whatever mineral water means here
now.
                                       
I met several very nice women on the beach, but failed to take
advantage of any of those meetings, in some sense maybe not
wanting to be saved.

One was a very nice woman, from Brussles as I recall, a banker,
married but apparently with a rather inactive marriage.  She would
come every year to Rodos for a vacation, and stayed at one of the
two good hotels on the waterfront.  I did mention Campra to her,
for I was rather drawn to her.  In her 30s maybe, with a sister
who had had as I rcall an eye operation.  Well, one never knows,
this is someone who I would like to see again, for a civilized cup
of tea or whatnot.   I last saw her leaving the hotel by the
Casino, in early morning, to take taxi to the airport.  And wish
had asked to go with her back to Holland, she might well have
taken me, and I might then quickly have taken on a normal role and
then grown back into it.  I did have friends in Brussels, Rav Levy
and his family, whom I think were quite prosperous, he having
served as Chief Rabbi in the Belgian Congo, after leaving Rodos as
a young man, with smicha as a shochet.  He would come back for a
number of years to lead High Holiday services.  A very good man,
very nice, very powerful especially for his age.  And a bit afraid
of the Greeks of Rodos I think.  When we left the synagogue and he
was to walk back to his hotel, he would take off his kippa.  for
some reason he often did not waar a hat on the street, as I always
did.  

There was also a young German woman, with eyes of two different
colours, whom I assume I will never see again.  Worked as an au
pair.  A solid person of good heart, I would say.  I remarked at
one point, thinking I was speaking of a sandwich or some such, I
don't know if I need it, and she immediately replied, Oh, you need
it, speaking of something else, and maybe suggesting another
source of that breakdown.  Frustrated sexual desire can misdirect
itself into the dark side of things.  That is one of the hazards
of kundaline, by the way.

And the third was a nice enough young woman, fond of one of those
pretentious new writers who are so popular, whom she ead in
German.  John Irving, as I recall, he wrote some dumb book that
may even have been the Hotel New Hampshie or some such.  So she
would sit in the late afternoon near me, topless of course, like
almost everyone on a Greek beach, and I would gaze at her, but
never make a move.  I think she came several years to the beach. 
Got me a hat once, something on which was written something that
in my situation was more than a bit ironic, like have a good year. 
So it may be that she was merely amusing herself with me, as one
would with a freak.


One day, when I just about psyched myself up to go, or so I
supposed, the police chief, or whatever he was, stopped by.  A big
man, who came by I think every morning to swim, and had once I
think taken some money for me.  That is, he had stopped by holding
a thin metal spike -- just a piece of metal that one might find on
the beach, but it could effortless have pierced any organ.  I had
had some sort of prevision of that, and was speechless.  He as not
in any uniform of course, nor did I ever see him in one.  He asked
to see my papers, which were in my wallet, from which I think he
filched a few large bills, though I never confirmed that.  All
that time I was literally speechless, I suppose from fear, but
also it served as a sort of self-protection, as it had when I was
questioned about the supposed accident.

So this chap appears one day, saying someting about how he lost
someting on the beach and did I find it, and so I suppose angling
for another payoff.  And no doubt he well deserved it, for it may
well have been he who had set out word that the local toughs
shouild not bother me.  For as I say, I slept out on the beach
each night, in plain sight, and was never robbed nor hassled.

In any event, I for some reasoon got up on my high horse and told
him, in rather patronizing tones, that of coursse I had seen
nothing of his.  Which may have been true, but was surely not a
smart move.  And as a matter of facdt, I had found on the brach, a
day or less before, a little paper bag, if I recall, with a very
nice girl's watch and several little cakes.  He had said that what
he had lost was something of sentimental value.  Well, I had had
vearious elaborate fantasies tht touched on that point, but who
knows.

I had had various elaborate fantasies while i was out on the beach
on Rodos.  For that matter, I do ot know if from time to time I
had been given food with drugs in it, or even found that planted
in the trashcans that I patronized.  It might have seemed so.

From time to time I thought rays of some sort were being shot at
my head, disrupting my thoughts, and that too, while fantastic, is
not quite inconceiveable.

But at this point I was somewhere in the general neighbrhood of my
right mind.  I would walk into Mandraki almost every day and buy a
mango ice with whatever money pepole had given me.  The vendors
were almost always very generous in what they gave me, ofen not
taking money.

Once I saw a sailboat from Hamburg, and wondered if it could be
friends I had in Hamburg, but I did not speak to them, and
eventually the boat left.
Thre was a bookstore with mostly English used books, and a bin of
them outside, and I would stop by and buy or take one.  Mostly I
read escape literature.  I would write long and rther well-written
notes in the mrgins, witty and critical.  As much to leve a mark
on the sands of time.  I did read King Lear a number of times, of
course, that often accompanies me on breakdowns.

One book I had read was itled something close to 'Behind the
scences at the museum'.  English, but quite good anyhow.  And
there was another, less good, about a group of Brits on summer
holiday, I found that on the beach.  Ostensibly trivial and comic,
though rather Shakespearean, the lives of its various characters
are resolved that summer, all but the two ingenus resolved sadly.

Also I read a few books in French, and as I recall one in German
by  refugee from, Iran I think it was.

So anyhow, this cop , or whateer he was, then calls a cruiser with
uniform police, and I am then taken in.  I'm not quite sure to
where, except it was downtown Rodos in Mandraki, a police complex
near where I often sat by the church on the water.  But almost no-
one was in unform there, I think it was some sort of adjunct for
border police and/or security police detainees.  some sort of
aperwork was completed on me, but I do not think it was a formal
booking.  They took all my wallets and bills and papers.  I was
shown up a bunch of them, and asked to pick up whateer was mine. 
there was one 200 drachma note -- that is small change, 1000
drachmas being about 3 dollars -- and I was told that was mine and
asked to pick it up.  It was not mine, and i think it was marked,
and I did pick it up for I trhink I had had one like it.  And I
think it was marked and used as evidence that I stolen something. 
But at this phase my recollectdion is somewhat muddled, and I
think mixed with much fantasy.

I was stood at a desk.  Behind that was a door.  Am inner foice
told me, there are prisoners behind that door.  I responded,
inwardly, nonsense, human beings could not be kept in so small a
space.  But it was the case, several rooms, unlocked, all but one
that was locked for violent detainees.  Scarcely room even to lie
down.  And there I was, I think for several weeks.  Food was
brought twice a day, no lack of it, but water was not.  The
situation with water was quite odd, and here my recollection seems
entangled with fantasy.  It was as if the available drinking water
was drugged or some such, and to get pure drinking water one had
to make special arrangements with the prisoners who had much such
arrangements.  So someteimes I would ask for drinking water, which
I think put one under major obligation.

The prisoners, or detainees, ere mostly Arab -- several from Iraq,
one from Iran, maybe one from Syria.  It may well have been
intended by whoever arrested me that they would beat me up, or
maybe kill me.  I did not say I was from Israel, but that may have
been made known.  I could barely speak at all, which may have
saved me.  I did say that I was from the USA, and I think they
accepted that, even though they may have known or been told
otherwise.  I would have to say that they protected me, and
covered for me when need be, as shall be told if I can numb my
nerve now for the retelling.

Well, if as it appeears they did protect me, I am indebted to
them, whatever they may have been politically.  Terrorist
infiltrtors, as I sometimes fantasied, or mere unfortunates
looking to make money to send home.  Some were homo, some not. 
None bothered me in any way, not even verbally.  

One, I shortly fantasied, was Uday Hussein, the tyrant son of
Sadaam Hussein.  And later, after I was moved to another location,
in Athens, there was one very large chap whom I fantasized was
Saddaam Hussein, ingeniously concealed from Bush.  And another who
surely seemed to be some sort of evil genius, whom I think was
called Daoud.  And another bald-headed chap, white Haitian I
think, insane and violent but I think with rather a good heart, a
bit of an adept in voodoo I think.

Well, all this is exotic enough stuff, and might be amusing
reading, but I'm not sure what point there is in reading it,
unless one wants material for writing shlock stories, as I do not.

Well, let's get through with this stuff and have it behind me and
then maybe I can score another shot of booze, as those idiots are
still playing their thumping music, tho it scarcely intrudes upon
me behind this double-glazed window door.

The first night some sort of psycopath was put in the cells with
me, and shouting various very anti-Semitic remarks.  So I think
one of the undercover border police or security police or whateer
they were had told him there was a Jew there.  I think he had been
put in there to kill me.  He stood very stiffly, as if there was
metal rod up one leg.  Very solidly built, less than six foot
tall.  Called George.  A psycopath and I think retarded. 
Accompanied by a chap of ordinary build, who seemed quite sharp
and quite aware.  I think some of the other detainees covered for
me, for the shorter chap was told something that was apparently
sufficient, and just patted me on the shoulder once, after trying
to ask me a few questions, to which I could not, fortunately, say
a word.  I think someone said I was from Australia.  I did at some
point remark to one of the detainees that I thought this guy
intended to kill me, and he seemed to nod in agreement, and to ask
if I had a watch or some such that I would like given to a
daughter or other next-of-kin.  At one point I lay down with the
other detainees ina room in which there was scarcely room to lie,
where a few relieved themselves in mildly erotic forms, or so it
seemed.  Scarcely a place of concealment, but this chap did not
seem to have good vision.  For whatever reason I got through that
night unharmed, and that situation did not return.

It may have been that there was some anti-Semitic persecution
going on at that time, for it did seem to be that the adjacent
telephone, from which I had called my brother and asked him to
call as a lawyer a woman whom I had met on the beach -- she really
was a lawyer, in contracts I rather suppose, who had owned but
sold a hotel on the other side of the harbour, and had tried on
various occasions to help me, even giving me once some food that
her daugher had prepared.  But I was scarcely able to speak, and
so did not take advantage of her offers.  Well, I should make more
note of that anon.

As I say, this guy did not again come into the cells to get me.  I
think he was mostly kept behind a locked door, where one could
often here him pounding, usually demanding to be allowed to use
the toilet.  It may be that I had uninentionally taken his turn in
the toilet, there seemed to be all sorts of unwritten rules and
procedures in that facility.

My memories of what I went through are clear enough, or were at
the time -- as I write this now, several years having passed, some
of them filled with reasonably good events, and even some
beautiful events, my recollection of the sequence of events seems
to have become more muddled, tho I might clear that up.  But I
rather made a point of filing some of the principle events in
memory, tho I may now be recollecting those filed memories, not
the original events.  One can do all that you know.

It seemed to me there tht there were little trials, almost mock-
trials, with a shouting prosecutor against the detainees, all that
in an adjacent courtroom which one could just glimpse through the
hole in the door.

I do not know that any lawyer ever came to see me, tho I would
rather hide in the crowed -- maybe 30 or so men in about 3 small
rooms -- whenever it seemed someone was there to see me.  At onc
point during that first night someone said some "unformed police"
-- I do recall that phrase, for it must bee quite significant --
were there for me, but I did not come forth, and they did not come
in to get me, or not that I know of.  

I do recall, tho I am sure how authemtic that perception is, that
someone had come in from the street and asked if this was the
police station, and was told no, it was not a real police station,
and that the police station was next door.

As I say, these memories are I think all overlaid with a large
ammount of fantasy, which I cannot detatch.  I can only recall
what I thought I perceived.  So if these recollections are of no
legal nor political use -- for one does like to even scores, the
more so if one can do so from a safe distance -- then maybe my
attempt to set them down accurately may add a few bits of
complexity to a a traditional,that is empiricist, theory of
knowlege.  So that in addition to perception and conception, we
will have illusory conception, and then maybe a layer of
evaluation in which one must distinguish illusory from veridical
aspects of conception.
Though empiricist theory of knowlege has shown itself to be quite
clumsy, and a Wittgenstein approach much easier and more useful.

Well, at some point it may have been that I was told that I was
free to go, but I did not walk out the door, and so I stayed.  I
surely was not clearly told so, nor clearly addressed by my name,
which was usually so mangeled that I could not be sure that it was
me they were speaking to, and so did not respond.  

Surely no-one ever came in and directly addressed me.
At scarcely any time did I see violence amongst the detainees. 
There was one brief incident where one rather naive or bewildered
chap flared up -- some of the others would tease him some time --
but that died down almost at once.

It seemed that one or two of the prisoners would give the others
haircuts, very professional haircuts, with much use of a straight
razor, maybe to prepare the appearance to conform to a false
identity card.  It was my impression that prisoners were
continually being released under false identity cards, and sent to
varous nations.  That at one point they considered sending me to
the Sudan, and at one point to Australia under the ID of a child-
molestor from Australia.  This gets well ahead of my story, if was
from Athens, at the Athens airport, where I refused to go and got
myself taken back to the detention facility in Athens.

Well, someone who has access to some of the facts may be able to
make some sense of this.  As  I say, if as I think I was, as an
essentially innocent if most distasteful elderly man with a
clearly established identity -- for I had all my papers with me
when I was taken into custody, and left on my Israeli passport --
and a clear mental breakdown -- if I was indeed treated quite
badly by the Greek authorities -- who, I must say, had been one
might say too tolerant of me for several years -- well, one should
do whateer one can to try to ensure that such a situation does not
again occur.  Eg, to put the bastards out on the street with a tin
pan or accordian.  Greece, incidentally, apparently does not allow
street beggars.  

I suspectd that Greece may be a much more repressive society than
it seems to us western tourists -- for surely Greece is more
Levantine than western in its values, whatever they are.
I had heard, and this was while I was what passes for ssane, I had
heard of a village where the residents are obliged to dress in
traditional costume, to make a show for the tourists.  It was my
sense that that meant all the residents, not just those in tourist
trades.

It may even be that there is some sort of secret social police
that seize and beat up and confine those who break too many norms. 
Surely Mike had the look of a man who had been broken.  

Speaking of extra-judicial punishment, when I meet the man who
invented the compuer keyboard, before I shoot him i will demand
that he repair at least two defects -- not merely is an insert key
put next to the backspace-erase key, which i use continually, so
that I am often toggling into overwrite -- and as I said, who but
an accountant has any use ever for overwrite.  And also, the Caps
lock key often gets in the way. being write next to the shift key. 
Or so it is on my keyboard.  Well, somebody fix it please now, so
I won't have to bother to find and shoot this guy, at least if he
speaks English.

Ok, writing all this I can hear that much of it has the rather
tedious metallic sound of classic paranoid fantasy.  And may well
have been.
I profess that I am not now paranoid, nor delusional, and that I
am just noting down, as accurately as I can, my perceptions as
they were at the time, and as I stored them in memory to later
record, as I am now doing.  And that those stored perceptions,
conceptualized with at least some measure of illusory, that is
delusional, conceptualization, may to some extent have
deteriorated in accuracy over time, tho I think not very much
deteriorated.
And that I am not fixed to these perceptions, and do not intend to
use them as a basis for any further action.  Though I might answer
further questions if any one in an apprpriate position, and on my
side of any applicable politial fences, were to ask them.

And that I intend only hyperbolicly to shoot the man who inventd
the computer keyboard.
Which means, somebody should design alternate and better computer
keyboards, with a re-examination of actual end-user needs and
practices.

And of course steal the Microsoft Source Code and publish it.  I
still have a few Mb left on my Websites if that would help.

Time to put on the heater again, and maybe half-boil some wine and
pour it over sugar cubes.  One copes.
The goofy music seems to have ended, nto that it was really a
noticeable annoyance, nor that I have ground to complain.

No, the goofy music still goes on, and almost two o'clock it is,
and I must take great care to not slip and fall on Lake Peepee,
the which must await the recyling services of gentle spring,
because I don't know that my ribs are strong enough now that I
should shovel snow over it.
Well, anything that grosses out the Italian weekend ski-ers in
their fancy clothes as they depart on the piste is not a total
loss.
"I'm sure I'm no asceitc, I'm as pleasant as can be.  You'll
always find me ready with a crushing repartee.  Yet to benefit
humanity, howeger much I plan / Everyobdy says I'm such a
disgareeagle man, and I can't think why.+"  That's Gilbert and
Sullivan, Iolanthe, and its past time to take the wine off.
I recollect it from a Shady Hill play, once or twice heard,
scarcely more than 50 years back, if a lie a bit about my age.

The hot wine is excellent, with just a dash of lemon juice, the
last of my sugar-cubes, and a mint teabag, there being no ginger
nor cloves at hand, nor even cinamon, one must rectify all that.
Honest George should post a sign, if he would become rich, that
Gluhwein is offered at the Trapp Family Lodge, scarcely 2000 miles
that away with favorable winds.  Or even sometimes at Andramatt,
next to the Israaeli-in-exile.
And if Honest George would not become rich, I might as well stiff
the bastard, for he'll never make a dollar by working.

But I digress.

This miserable saga slogs to an end, lett's be quick about it, for
I don't want to write this dreck again on Sunday morning.

They made to deport me, but I resisted, deeming myself unworthy in
my sorry state to return to Israel, and so modestly wishing rather
to crap up Greece until I was fit for civilization, or at least
the USA.
So I was taken on boat to Athens, handcuffed to some other chap
who I assumed to be -- what is the name of that famous terrort --
not Abu Nidal, that was the chap who ran the water cooler where I
next went -- I knew his name at the time.
I do think this is not all fantasy, I do think there was an
organized group in with me, and that they got messages from a
leader safe abroad.  I even think they practiced a secret code the
first night or two I was there, but of that I'm not sure.
Well, as I say, they no doubt saved my life, and for that I have
no doubt made no move to inform upon them, whatever I might say
and to whom I cannot imagine.

In Athens I acted out badly, if only to avoid being taken to
whateer benevolent looney bin they may have intended, an so wound
up after a false start or too in some sort of detention facility,
where it seemed I saw most of the same people with whom I had been
on Rodos.  And after rather many a false start, and a trip to the
airport accompanied in a small unmarked car by a chap named
George, who hit me repeatedly upon the the least provocation, and
addressed me as Satan once or twice -- you know there is a dark
strain of superstition amongst the Greeks, even extending high
into the orthodox hierarchy, at leasst where the Jews are
concerned -- I mean, we really might have been much better off if
PVK had not dis-encouraged Atum from going to Mt. Athos -- for by
now he might have been the first secret Sufi Greek Orhtodox
Archbishop or who knows what.  Because truth to tell he ain't
after all done all that much in the SO, for all that he always
works hard and as humbly as he nature will aloow, and is certainly
a decend chap.

Its only Nigel Hamilton I can't stand.  I mean oy, what an
Aristotelian do clamp down like a muzzle on the teachings of PVK. 
Arrogant prat too, for all that he once stood up to shake hands
when I passed by, which I deemed at the time an underserved
compliment or courtesy, but nohtheless did appreciate.
I telephoned him once when I was flipping out in London, and he
gave me directions which I did not comprehend to come by subway to
his place in London, but did not come to get me, and so I wandered
on for the rest of the summer.
And if it he who wrote a biography of Montgomery that remarks upon
his "bony knees" -- or so I read in the review as I sat on the
beach on Rodos, before carefully putting it away to save for
poopoo paper -- well, then that proves that faggots should not be
allowed to write military history, at least of His Majesty's best.
PVK remarks, Montgomery was a great leader because he took his
junior officers into his confidence regarding his strategy.
And eeryone knows, if you don't have feedback all the way donw the
chain of command, the structure will totter and fall from the top,
as Microsoft is bound to do so if I have stock in it, sell it now.

My mother told me that I once said, "Stop it.  Stop it, said."
Which is precisely what the philsopher must do, and no more.

Well, where am I before this wine kicks in and I nod off for the
rest of the evening, or ather until next pisscall.
I really am getting bored with this aging bit, and would like
someone to put a stop to it now if you please, thank you.  I don't
mean that I want to die, just go back to being thirty for a while
if you don't mind thank you.  I am quite prepared psychologically
for the transition, so I don't see why there should be any
problem.  I mean, nothing else is natural nowadays, not even a
candy bar, so why should ageing be so.  I've aged, I've been a
crothety clumsy and somewhat ill-smelling old man for momths now,
so let's do something else if you please now thank you.

McReynolds wrote his Village Voice articles in long run-ons
sentneces, and did it ok, so they stayed readable, but i never
have liked that style.  Like I say, it's an acrobat's rap.

Well, twice I was taken to the airport, and made a scence, and was
taken back to the detention facility -- much fantasy souround
those recollections, for it seemed I was taken to a different
place each time, but found the same people till there.  And it
seems we went each time by strange routes, in a little unmarked
car, and they hit me too tho I was making a sence, tho also I was
handcuffed, and even if I head-butted the driver, I did not wish
to inure anyone for I am a pacifist at heart, and surely they must 
have seen that.  I was you know over 60, having once vowed that
Iwould not live past the 60, for that was the age at which my
father died, which everyone but me though quite young, and then as
i got to 60 I realized that neither he nor even i would have
wantged to things to end at that stage, so I did want to negotiate
a way out of that vow.
I mean, vows is heavy stuff, and judaism says , don't make them.

Well, I'm getting a bit sleepy, and to write this dreck without
wit -- I'm alredy missing half my cues -- would be inteolerable.
So I'll knock it off for now.
Good chianti though, with enough sugar cubes init.

Dumbdass Dundass Double-Dumb Dundass.

Ah, what revelations we find in sleep.

As I sleep waking nearly hourly, I get to glimpse the logic of
non-REM sleep.  They say, TIME being they, that there are only a
few concepts, not story-boards, in the non-REM phase.  And so it
seems -- some abstracted concept -- for me, usually put in
computer terms -- delete, or copy, or this morning, the continual
notion of a file that would not copy so that I could save it and
move on.  Cha-cha Cha.

"See that woman all dressed in tan / that ain't no woman, that's a
Les-by-an.  She goes Ooh -- Eee -- Ahh -- Cha--cha-Cha.
"See  that woman all dressed in pink /l that ain't not woman,
that's the kitchen sink /
See that woman all dressed in Grue / that's a woman up to T-time;
Nelson Goodman after two /
Shrager, in a surely mood, ca. 1965.  My liness come in about
half-way through.  The last line was not a hit.

"There was a time that always is, when your tears were in my
eyes."
Shrager, in a better mood.  We shared a 3-plus room 2nd floor flat
in the relative slums of Cambridge, above Taj Mahal.  The Taj
Mahl?  No, that's in India; this was just the briefly famous black
folk-singer.  Shrager was courting Ricky at the time.  It seemed a
comfortable relationship, they surely liked and respected each
other.  She was out in Brandeis, studying under Marcuse, for a PhD
I suppose, not that Rick couldn't have picked up a PhD in her
sleep, on the way to the washroom.
As brilliant and clear-minded a person as I've known, and more
than as good as any.  A true American patriot, in the CP-USA
tradition.  Ricky is Eric Reed Sherover, and Reed of course was
for John Reed, one of the first to praise the USSR.
There is a Gita Sherover in Israel, very rich, very progressive,
she built that lovely Conference Center at the base of the Kineret
where sometimes the great and wise gather and discuss how to give
away to the Arab hatchedmen whatever pieces of the land of Israel
they and their friends from the north-central seacoast are not
sitting on.  I mean really, Sephardim can just delouse and and go
back to the transit camps, what do they know from cappucinio and
proscuttio.
I left her a note once asking if she was related to Rick, zl'b --
this pollution of food drink and air has cost us some very good
people who would have gone on to do more great things -- Rick,
Millea, Gretchen Grossner zl'b -- curiously, all three solidly on
the left -- and very fine solid women -- 
But never got an answer
Incidentally, she named the center after her son, killed in one of
the wars -- 
The Israel left is doing something very foolish and surely risky,
but their patriotism is exemplary -- HaShomer HatyAir strikes me
as the secular analogue of the kippa sruga crowd, both intensely
patriotic, with a tradition of volunteering for the most dangerous
positions in the armed forces.


So ok, there I am in Athens.  I do not know where they had
intended to send me -- maybe to some long-term detention facility. 
But I acted-out, without huring anyone of course, not that I could
have, and ended up taken to -- well, first it was some sort of
storage room with beds, in a sort of warehouse, no official signs
nor procedures of any sort, a bunch of polite guys in black --
Albanian mafia maybe.  Some younger guy came in and proceeded to
assert his territorial superiority by walking over the bottoms of
everyone's beds, tho not mine, a non-Muslim from Lebanon, or so I
took job.

Then it was to a similarly featureless building, somewhere in
downtown Athens I think, a bleak industrial sort of area, though
with many little churches nearby, on low hills.  Incidentally,
there were no toilet facilities in any of the cells.  So I
insisted that my cell door be unlocked, for some reason they let
that be.  Also, I insisted on private cell.  And got that too. 
Maybe these are clues to my status.  At one point a woman came in
and said she was my lawyer, but when she spoke, my mind was a
roar, and I recall almost nothing of what she said, except that
she kept saying loud and clear, in the hearing of many other
detainees, most of them Arab, that I should go back to Israel. 
She kept saying loud and clear, Israel, which was not the image I
really wanted conveyed to my colleagues.

I assumed she was not my real lawyer, but a neo-Nazi working for
the other side.  She seemed to have a mini-deck of things the size
of credit cars, each with a pictture on it, that she reather
surreptitiously showed to one of the prison guards, I assumed this
was people they wanted picked up.

At one point two people came in who I was told were from the U.S.
Embassy.  Both young women, unassuming.  One was lightly Afro. 
The other had buck teeth, which reminded me of a Ricky.  My buddy,
the chap from Lebanon, told me they said I had to keep in touch
with them, on a daily basis, because if I was moved they would
have no way of knowing where I had been taken.  I was given a
phone number, on a scrap of paper, but I did not call them.

As I say, these are my recollections, and pretty close to what my
recollections were at the time, but I cannot separate truth from
fantasy.  Maybe my food was being drugged, it would be odd if it
had not been.   Or maybe sleep deprivation was playing a part. 
Some of the sleep deprivation may have been intentional, in the
facility at Rodos, with prisoners told not to let me doze off, by
making noise, and some may merely have been from the noise and
stress of those conditions.  Prisoners were let out about once a
day to use the toilets.  On that point, minor as it is, I think I
am accurate.

There was one black guy, fairly light skin for a Negro, Afro-
American I should say, who always said hello to me and was trying
to befriend me.  He continually urged me to contactd the U.S.
Embassy.   Some prisoners seemed to think he was a sort of CIA
spy.  He was locked in one of the other cells, so I would see him
anout once a day, when they were let out to use the washroom and
toilets.  Quantieis of rather new clothing would keep appearing,
maybe taken from arrested shoplifters, or for some reason there
was this continual ritual that the prisoners would get new
clothing and immediately wash it , even the shoes, and hten hang
it up to dry.  Also there seemed to be this ritual that to obtain
good drinking water from the tap, not drugged or who knows what
water, one had to turn the handle back and forth in some sort of
combination of ways.

Well, someone could make a fine dark sci-fi story out of this, but
I'm darned if I will.  If it sells, send me 25 percent of the
provfits and I'll go out and buy a grappa.  And don't use my name,
this will not enhance my reputation as an epistemologist.

As I say, twice I was taken out of the cell, by un-uniformed
people, and driven in a small un-marked car to the airport, where
I balked and made a scene and was taken back again, to what seemed
a different location but turned out to be the same place.

The third time I was taken out I no longer had the energy to fight
it -- a resonably good idea, since it did seem that one of the
officers was inclined to manage the situation by kicking me in the
vitals -- with the aid of heaven I read his incipient body
language -- Shrager once did that in a Mendocino supermarket, and
then told me what he had done, so he could rush like a ghost and
get all his shopping quickly done, emerging at the check-out stand
with that faint cherubic smile -- he sold pot to the daugher of
the sheriff of Mendocino at the time, and taught guitar .  He was
sith a nice woman, quiet and rather plain-looking.