.:wanderlustmedia+dot+org:.

Subject: th n- incident: prologue

once upon a time…

- round about midnight last march 27, which happens to be my birthday, to be more precise-

n- & her girlfriend b- flew into luis muñoz marín airport in isla verde from canada.

a month later, not quite to th day, i found myself e-mailing th following note regarding th fallout

from what proved to be an exhausting, frustrating week…

To: dmost@magna.com.au

Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2001 1:59 PM

Subject: official sos

dear d-,

sorry to trouble you about this, but n- has been a little less than diligent about saving & forwarding all transaction records regarding expenses related to her trip here for th photoshoot, causing me no end of anxieties & complications when it comes to organizing a track record for accountants & other paper chasers.

could i trouble you for a copy of yr receipt for fedex charges on shipping th wedding dress?

if i may vent a bit, i’m still on square one regarding officializing wanderlustmedia or even being able to file my taxes

‘doing business as’ & every initiative i take to develop projects with friends only seems to deplete my dwindling emergency cash funds w/ precious little to show by way of results. aarghhhh. so how are you doing?

all th best, davidj=(8{>

it takes seven days to round out th week
(a patriarchal repeating grid…two morning trinities
fold a squared cycle to break th lunar month down-
wotan’s hinge closes north, hermes opens rome)

another saturday night-
my first run in fifty days: thursday made it seven weeks since my last
-barely nineteen minutes, not even two miles…

it’s a struggle, beginner’s mind…room for clutter & search.
is it th new moon? cudda mighta shudda checked-?
online missing th sunset, then rush to close th house & warm up

domingo de gallo, rooster cockerel doggerel crow-eat-crow sturmy sonday:
tio jaime celebrates his eightieth birthday at his daughter’s house.
lunch was served around five: beef & ham & rice & caesar salad

momday, momday- playing watertricks
on my growing tommy lapcat
i recover my practical joker w/a nasty streak

i’m just beginning to see/now i’m on my way- tuesday afternoon-?
(dreams & heavy morning, grey wash & blur) repent, repent!

midweek again- unexpected tropical storm dean bearing down
th very evening my aunt selected for th memorial mass ahead of ma’s eighth anniversary
…brother javier just called to cancel our drive into san juan…

thunders’ay night felt fine because i finally ran again
much better- 2m/3.2k in 2o minutes
-plus a couple hundred extra meters after missing my road mark

tgif. but i had too much wine enjoying my menage-a-un:
found some dried shiitake mushrooms & a gorgeous head of radicchio
en amigo supermarket (lo mejor al mejor precio!)
-so i stirfried a mostly mediterranean medley of veggies
for a big semi-oriental marco polo bowl of penne primavera

ess ay tee you ar- one more saturday night’s alright for fighting song…
seems to be th day i give in & have a second espresso. but i didn’t run. ayayay.

…after mezzanott/zze, tonight becomes wedNextday!
not th middle member of what god hath joined!
still, love, still let no man put it, tear it asunder…

(certo, nicht wahr? osip mandelstam:)
‘our life stands upon a base so thin
& th language of rejoicing is so poor…

everything happens & happens once more
& nothing is sweet but th moment of recognition’
-arc-hit-tech-chewer? overarch-king…eye-dee-awelogie?

totality & finality: ‘death’s at th bottom of everything’
-th paperback writer searching for his friend harry lime
in postwar vienna played by joseph cotten is told
by th british occupation officer played by trevor howard

full-cycle midwoch & ’round mitternacht again, again…on th beach…
‘call me aimless- er, ishmael!’
(i remember a talk by polish theater director & theorist jerzy grotowski where he made a point that reaching a

goal
meant dealing w/ th loss of yr stated aim rather than gaining anything)
all too quickly i’m back on my coffee habit & frittering unfocused energy on old self-distracting routines…
walking, not running. today i managed two ’supersets’ of my five-exercise abs circuit. champing at th bit.

golden seal applied topically every night th last four nights or so has done wonders to bring down what was

left of lingering
inflammation. th strange & scary part is that at th center of th ring of shrinking but still rubbery-hard

lymph nodes, th still
feverishly warm center of bacterial debris from enduring infection feels soft enough that a careless jab might

break th skin,
deep enough that half of my thumb might sink into pus & lymph without finding solid flesh.
auughh! (to quote charlie brown) where’s my quad or th sartorious that connects to th pubic bone & crosses th

thigh
to reach th outside of th quadriceps & got worked so hard as i forced my turn-out in dance class, lo! those

many years ago??
too too terribly attached to this instrument & vessel- how do i let go? is this part of th process? awareness

of
th perishability & contingency of ’causes & conditions’…

midnight come & gone…earlier, don tite curet alonso (composer of numerous popular latin music classics

beginning
w/ boleros in th ’40’s, guarachas in th 50’s & 60’s & that catch-all hybrid called salsa since then) was

featuring
th late, great cuban sonero beny moré on his radio show. one old bolero i had never heard began,
a medianoche comienza la vida
a medianoche comienza el amor…
(life begins at midnight/love begins at midnight…)
-& i remember guessing at th german for midnight as i wrote last week & mixing it w/ th italian ‘mezzanotte’,

which i love th
sound of, that double zzzzzzzz, & sliding it into ‘mezzanozze’ which, as far as i know, is a nonexistent

made-up word which
might mean something like ‘mid-wedding’- or maybe, ‘half-wedding’? -in spanish, you see, ‘medio’ means both

‘middle’ &
‘half’! -i forget th word for ‘half’ in italian, but guessing from th french, in which ‘milieu’ means middle &

‘demi’ means
half…hmm- ‘la moitié’ means th half of something. ‘demi’ i used only as a particel, i believe…hey

hans-peter-david, can you
help me w/ this? are you still visiting for a week or two sometime this month?? does no news at this late date

mean plans
never firmed up? give a holler sometime!

i discovered a wonderful, gorgeous site by a young, vietnamese-born woman travel writer:
www.wanderingspoon.com
i’ve been working on making my own curry powder from scratch lately & she’s been doing this long trek focusing

on curries
beginning in singapore, thru vietnam, thailand & ending, of course, in india…but maybe i’ll leave that for

next installment-i
only just browsed her site & started on th older articles th first time. i want her curry diary to light a good

fire under my butt
before i start writing on cuisine!
happy trails, y’all! d=(8{>

Subject: hebdo.convalescent

monday july30:

need to find a new bulb for th wall fixture in this room. it burned out yesterday between a couple of power outages triggered by some intense thunderstorm activity. all i have to read & write by is a table lamp- little better than a nightlight, what w/ th 25 watt bulb dr.dad puts in all fixtures as cost-saving measure.

been having cous-cous w/ chick peas for dinner since friday, after nearly three straight weeks of lentil soup. three weeks under th wandering- jaundiced?- clinical eye of der guter doktor, five weeks since i first noticed th marble-sized lymph node close to th groin on my inner left thigh. as th swelling slowly goes down, a ring of four or five hard nodes can be made out surrounding a soft center under drying, wrinkled purplish red skin, w/ something more like a tiny blister than

a pus-filled pimplehead on th edge of that area. as per dr.dad’s fairly plausible & logical theorizing, one lymph node,

most likely th locus of th original infection, collapsed & burst under th onslaught of bacteria, (virii? dr.dad insists on questioning th generalized assumption that bartonella henselae is th cause & agent of infection in cat scratch disease…)

launching th mounting high-fever crises as my defenses scrambled to contain th damage.

tuesday last-

javier is coming into town, actually going to th cockfights in isla verde. he offered to pick me up on his return & help

w/ th move back to th beach house. eight in th evening, maybe? i’m not sure about arriving late at night to a refrigerator full of rotting blueberries & whatever else may have been sitting, blooming, fermenting or making itself at home in th beach house these last 23 days…aimless randiness & inertia- after three weeks off coffee, my tolerance to caffeine has gone down so far a cup of green tea kept me up reading until sometime past two-thirty this morning. fittingly enough, i’ve been slogging through a rather idiosyncratic spanish translation of ‘th magic mountain’ by thomas mann…of course i didn’t wake up until nearly eleven so i’ve been out of sorts all day…

mittweek august premier- (approaching mittzanotte…)

sure enough, when my dear kid brother finally turned up a little after ten he was lit like ben franklin’s kite, high as

th rockefeller center tannenbaum. he had sense enough to suggest staying th night & leaving th drive for today, but

at one-thirty in th morning, after th usual ranting argument that only ended (but only temporarily!) when dr.dad shut

th door to his room roaring to be left alone- to read himself to sleep- javier was still asking for my latest financial statement, insisting i figure my losses, change brokers & get out of stocks as best i could FIRST THING IN THE MORNING.

it was a l o n n ng day today. long, hot & full of traffic. at least i got th basic errands done: i stocked up on bread, grains & breakfast cereal at freshmart in hato rey, then paid (part) of th phone bill back in th san patricio area. javier had not changed th oil filter in his ford f-150 in five (count em, FIVE) years & between a fairly long wait & getting th job done,

hi-tech jiffy lube took just over an hour. sweltering two-thirty in th afternoon by th time we got back to th house to catch a bite, gather my stuff & hit th road. dr.dad arrived just as i was throwing th last of th vitamins & bits of food from th fridge into a plastic bag, so w/ th old emotional push-pull we didn’t get on our way until quarter to four. heavy traffic everywhere- even all th way out on th toa baja straightway, at th entrance to th town of dorado, on th ramps to get on

th expressway…one last pit stop for further grocery shopping at xtra before finally arriving to find th old wheelbarrow

& th hammock hung between two palm trees i was looking forward to lounging in had been stolen. ah, well…home, bittersweet home…environmental activist robert kennedy, jr. & n.y labor leader dennis rivera were released from

th guaynabo federal pen today after serving a full month for th civil disobedience act of trespassing on navy property;

th navy is scheduled to begin full-out maneuvers, including old-fashioned (read outdated, ritualistic) w.w.II -style amphibious landings, in vieques tomorrow…