Travelling here, travelling there... in the end, why bother? Is it not just more of the same? Or overwhelming?

When I go to a museum, for example, I can appreciate half a dozen things-- after that, it's just overload. I get almost physically sick in fact. Like being spun around in rooms full of plundered treasure, gasping for air.

Country to country. City to city. Person to person. I'm gasping for air just reading about it.

I trust you know Paul Bowles?

Keith in Kingston
(You don't know me. I just happened across your journal last year -- fascinating reading)

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Hey Keith
yeah
i don't know you
Paul Bowles
well yeah
i know him
but mostly through Burroughs
i don't think i've ever actually read much of Bowles stuff
more circumstantially aware of him

and yes
it all is the same
same as walking around a NYC block, really
but it's the world
and it's tiring for some people
but really
everything is tiring for me anyway
so i really appreciate expending my energy in this grand way
it's very entertaining

and yes
i'm struggling
but i always struggle
giving myself this time to journal extensively about things is really helping me come to an awareness about things
and
actually
putting myself in all the people does the same
i learn a lot from all these interractions
and sometimes i need the intensity to remind myself

but yes
i know what you mean about museums
and i've always been the sort of fellow that can put out a lot of energy in the day
but then need 6 hours to myself
so i'm glad Leo's gone
and i'm glad i'm not doing ANYTHING today
and i think all of this sleeping 11 hours shit i've been doing has been my compensation

thanks for reading.

do you have any internet presence of your own?

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Well thanks for writing about it all. I'll sure continue reading.

I don't have an Internet presence I'm afraid. I kept an LJ last year for several months but took it down when I realized how cramped I was because a few friends and acquaintences were reading it. Next time (which is coming because I miss it), I won't announce it to anyone remotely connected with me. (I'll send you the URL... hehe)

Paul Bowles travelled around the world for 30 years or more. Finally stopped in Morocco where he lived the last 50 years of his life. Died in 1999 (?) close to 100 years old. I think he balked at being bunched in with the beats but the beats all started visiting him in Tangiers. His autobiography is called Without Stopping. (William Bourroughs, who thought it didn't have enough juicy gossip or sex in it, called it "Without Telling".) Besides his autobiography, 2 novels are my favs. Sheltering Sky and The Spider's House. Sheltering Sky, as in the movie (Paul Bowles is the old guy sitting in the cafe). The Spider's House takes place in pre-independence Morocco and shows that vanished world. I have asked a few Moroccan people if they know Paul Bowles and they don't. I think he should be embraced as one of their national writers!

Keith

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