I drink mountain burgundy in the international center on this easy evening happily listening to foreign voices in the other room, male and female. Impassioned Swahili chants drift in from a radio somewhere. Layeh tells me about Hans Hofmann, with one “f.” A photo of Linus Pauling looks over my shoulder. I see him distorted in the opposite window where I too am framed: a serious portrait, contorted more to the true idea of myself. The phone rings. The phone rings. It’s for somebody who talks Turkish. The blond man gets somebody from the other room who has a sweater tied over his shoulders. This is a nice place. The Turkish speaker asks, in English: “Why didn’t you call me this morning?” This I have to entertain me. “Well. Thursday night, I called you Thursday night. You weren’t there! Yeh. Nobody answered.” I take my shoes off.
5 July, 10 August 1977