April 18, 2006
Jacqueline's green card--which incidentally is not green--arrived a few days ago. We expect Thalia's at any time. This is good, though much belated news. A certain phase of uncertainty has come to an end. We can now comfortably plan to go to Mexico in July for instance, for daughter Jacky's graduation--and to visit friends, renew our acquaintance with Aguascalientes. We look forward to sipping cappuccinos in our favorite cafes, and knocking back a tequila or two at Sanbourn's, on the plaza. And strolling in the Jardin San Marcos. Dinner at Saturnino's. Art galleries. We should have enough money on hand for a comfortable couple of weeks.

But now there are other questions to brood over. Where shall we make our home? What is a home? We live now in the house my father built when I was a kid. This is the town I grew up in. If there is a single place where my history resides, this is it. But most of my life was spent escaping this place--or indeed, any place. I have managed somehow to wander all over the world, avoiding any home. I told people I didnt need one--I lived in my head, in my imagination. I remember saying these words while I lived in a tiny shack in Western Australia, where I worked on the railroad. "I dont need anything," I said disdainfully. I could sleep anywhere. Work was always available for a healthy, strong young man. A few dollars--or pounds, or rupees--in my pocket and I was happy. I had my typewriter and a ream of paper. I created worlds with strings of vowels and consonants. My home was my imagination.

And now? I am married to a strange and beautiful woman. She lies in my arms every night. Is she my home? Around us are walls covered with my bas reliefs, photos, and masks. Are they my home? Our garden, in back, is blooming with wisteria and new roses; the grapevines are flaunting new filigree. I sit there in the fading afternoons, reading. Is this my home? I ache, at times, with a strange confusion. I have never been here before. I look around me with a peculiar mixture of awe and fear, pleasure and dismay. I am lost, I am found. I am new, I am old. Am I a blind man regaining his sight? Am I reborn? Eddies of feelings twist and spin in places I hardly knew. I am no longer quite sure who I am. I am certain only of my love and passion for the poet who graces my world with her presence. Shall that be home enough?

March 3, 2006
A couple days ago I sent off
what I hope are the absolute final, last, ultimate papers to the U.S. immigration serfvice, now esconced under Homeland Security. If all goes well--Jacqueline and her daughter will be permanent residents, and we can, more freely, plan for our future. We have been living in a kind of limbo for more than a year, and it has taken its toll. How can it be so complicated for a man to bring his wife to live in this country? Surely, it is my right to have her at my side.Some day I shall have to write about this experience...but for the moment, I only have the energy to hope....

Sept.26, 2005
One can see how excited I am about
blogs. It is more than a month since anything has been entered here. Well, we have been otherwise occupied. Life has its demands. I have done nothing more with my new novel, Evidence of a Lost City. No new photos, no new videos. But I did buy a new computer, and a piano for my wife. Isnt that acceptible activity?

July 17, 2005
I am a fiction writer, and there are issues of truth and falsehoods inherent in the genre. It is a paradox that one can, by writing fictions, reveal truths that otherwise would remain hidden. It is reality that has the aura of falsehood about it. Realism—the major American literary style—is entirely inadequate as a means of dealing with reality. Dreams are far superior. Surrealism—magical realism—expressionism—these are the tools which allow us, as artists, to search more deeply into our nature and the nature of our world. Thus this blog presents me with something of a dillema. I am not accustomed to write about myself in the normal sense. That is, I can say that my novels, some more than others, deal with my relationships to the world I find myself in. And some of the characters bear clear resemblances to myself: The Wilderness, for instance, the first novel I wrote and the most recently published—more than 30 years after it was finished!—has a man clearly modeled on myself and is composed around the recently experienced adventures in my life. Perhaps this is inevitable—first novels are commonly autobiographical. But in general my novels since then have become increasingly—disguised, shall we say. I often enough draw upon myself for traits and peculiarities. But Maya, my 7th novel, is much more remote from me than my first. Or second. One would have to search hard to find me in Osgood Fetters or Garred Haus, the two male characters in Maya. But such disguises allowed certain liberties which were not available to me in The Wilderness
.
Yet this blog is not intended as a work of fiction. I am a bit uneasy with the idea of a blog. Who cares about my life, as it is lived in the normal, reductive scheme of realism? I may write about art and literature and culture in a more abstract way—but would that not be more appropriate in an essay? Perhaps a blog can be a series of seeds, looking to sprout later in a fuller work. But if so, why offer these seeds to a distant public? Perhaps tidbits of our life here—tea in the garden, a growling day at the computer—possess some curiosity value. It was my idea to do this blog, one page among many here at our site, so if it is irksome I can only blame myself.

As I write these words—the original first draft—my wife and I sit in a café. It is Saturday, early evening. She has written her piece in this notebook, now I am finishing mine. Tomorrow it goes on the internet. A weekly update? Is that it? Why?

July 7, 2005
Our days usually begin
in the garden, with a pot of tea, and often end there too, in the evening, with a glass of wine or a copita of tequila. Jacqueline has taken what was a rough, unfinished area and turned it into a beautiful spot, a restful and peaceful retreat filled with roses and dahlias, wisteria and grapes and bouganvillea, pomegranates and olives and a thorn tree from Africa. There are adobe walls, mud sculptures, an underground room. I began it, alone, some years ago, out of a kind of desperation--I had to do something with my life--but it rather petered out, shall we say, my energy lapsed, I resigned myself to a slow dissolution. This dissolution is visible in the couple novels I wrote during this period, Orifice and Autobniography of a Wanderer. But then, of course, I met Jacqueline.

I spent this morning
in the cafe, a short bicycle ride from our home, working on these pages. At one o'clock--a few minutes from now--Jacqueline and I will rescue her daughter from summer school, then wander through the thrift shops on Harvard Street. This evening she is taking photographs of me--an odd experience, since I am usually the one behind the camera. We'll have dinner in the garden. A glass of wine. A copita of tequila....