Cynthia's Journals Thursday Dec. 1, 1988 A Lockheed L 1011. Flight 904 to Madrid via JFK. Take off, my ears popped already. Nancy is sitting a few seats ahead of us. She was worried we would miss the flight. R.G. Always likes to be last on the plane. Nancy threw her arms around me in relief. She was prepared to get off the plane if we didn't show. Patches of brilliant sun light skitter across the seat in front of me. I'm annoyed at myself, having difficulties operating my brand new, fully-automatic, camera. Something to do with the auto focus mechanism. The camera doesn't fire if the distance from the subject is off. We are landing already. Short hop, Logan-JFK. Detached from my surroundings. Remembering the intensity of my emotional state from past trips. Bill has cancer. We just found out last night. The words are never far from consciousness. Bill has cancer. I have thought the worst and the best. We don't know yet how bad it is. He has a tumor on his prostate. They don't know if it has spread to other organs. He will be having a CAT SCAN done in the next few days. Perhaps it will be revealing. Pink clouds on a ridge of sky as we approach JFK. R.G. is not feeling so good, a little airsick. We did not tell Erika about Bill. She is a bit paranoid about cancer for herself. She has some feeling for Bill. She has placed tremendous pressure on herself to perform. Study was never easy for her. Since the accident she must work doubly hard to get results. Getting into college, a school that will not embarrass her. We (R.G., me. Rise, Art and Nancy) are on TWA flight 747 listening to safety instructions before landing. Art and Rise are sitting together. R.G. and I tried to take the empty seats behind them but the true owners of the seats showed up so we had to move. Nancy is nowhere to be seen but we presume she is in a seat somewhere. She has been relaxed, pleasant and friendly. An easy person to travel with so far but we've just begun. five and a half hours now to Madrid, not bad, then another short flight, Iberia to Teneriffe. Art had his hair cut, a great improvement. Nancy, R.G. and I were waiting in the lounge at JFK International Terminal for Arty & Rise. Nancy didn't know they were coming, we forgot to tell her. I'm writing this and I barely have the energy for it. Have only written sporadically since Erika's accident a year ago. I was quite compulsive about it for several years. Running remains a constant. Only a week ago my mother, father & grandmother were sitting with us around the dinning room table eating Thanksgiving turkey. Just finished the #1 worst airline meal I have ever had. "We use the cheapest ingredients and pass the savings on to you", a quote from R.G.. I turn to the women sitting next to me and repeat it. She had left the food untouched after one bite. This gesture on my part opened up a long, interesting exchange. She was traveling alone, a women about my age, nice face. She was writer, a translator, and a correspondent. She is Italian, from Milan. She and her husband have been living in NY. He is a writer also. He does the more "serious" writing; politics, culture, etc. for more "serious" publications. She writes more for Italian women's magazines, society-she writes about what is going on in NY. She has two daughters. One is going to university in Barcelona-the other is finishing high School in Milan. She is going to be with them till after Christmas. There was some immediate warmth and intimacy to our contact. We have some shared experience. She asked what I did, where was I going? I told her about my recent descent from the Ivory Tower of Art to the telecommunications business. She said it sounded inspirational. She was thinking of getting involved in some new business with a friend when she gets back to Milan. She was reading a book about a woman artist and art historian. I wondered what her husband and children were like. She seemed like a child of the sixties. We talked about feminism & how neither of us "bought-into" the movement. Rise came over from her seat to talk to R.G.. I turned to look and they were eating the cookies Sandy had made for Otto. "If Sandy knew she'd be turning over in her grave." "She'll never know" says Rise. "She probably counted them and faxed the amount to Otto", says R.G., a remark that says a lot about Sandy's character. You feel as though she is just waiting to catch you at something so she can beat you with it, then feel superior about the whole thing. I have had my difficulties with her this past week. I was a wimp and allowed myself to respond to her ugly viciousness with some ugliness of my own. She has a hard time letting things go. Carries her vengeance with her. It infects every small contact we have. I never had the urge to kill her before but it crossed my mind last week. When I left things were still quite bad between us. Any attempt on my part to interact with her is rebuffed. R.G. says I shouldn't bother. Just wait until she is ready to be civil again. 011-34-22-87-12-33 La Gaviota - The Seagull Sunday Dec. 4, 1988 I have just come back from a swim in the blue green sea of El Cabrito. I have died and gone to heaven. A cow moos in the small pasture below. The sun is setting behind me.The shadow of the cliff on the western side of the island is creeping up the wall of the cliff on the east. R.G. points out a small bird in the tree below us. We sit on the terrace outside our white painted stucco house with the cerulean blue door. Nancy is looking for some lost, misplaced, item in the room behind me. It is hard to keep track of small things here in paradise. We see some people sitting across from us in a hollowed out place in the cliff. They appear to be drawing. Voices of children come drifting up from below us. Sixteen hours of travel time, at least. we landed in Madrid, a fast plane ride, 5 1/2 hours due to intense tail winds. Madrid airport is barren and hot compared to the airports in London, Frankfurt, Zurich, Vienna or almost any other one I've been in. The atmosphere of anticipation for what we didn't know. Only R.G. knew and he wasn't saying. Some confusion about boarding passes for the flight to Teneriffe. Not too long a wait. We fly Iberia. Our luggage moves on without our help. What a difference on the Iberia plane. Bright, clean and cheerful. Good food. Flying TWA is like being on an AMTRAK plane, I mean train. Two hours and we are on Teneriffe. What a motley crew. We are exhausted. What next. Our luggage is here. All of it. Hurrah! a friendly familiar face, Sandro has come to meet us. The bad news, he must wait at the airport to also pick-up Teresa, Kalypso and a few others from FH. We are to take a cab to wait on beach at Teneriffe to take the ferry, Gomera, to San Sebastian. The ferry leaves at 3:15. It is now 11:00 a.m. or about 5 a.m. for us. It is hot. I am overdressed. Didn't expect to spend time on the beach before we got to our final destination. We all pile into a cab. Sandro takes our luggage in the van with him. The magic of the landscape begins to hit me in the cab ride to Teneriffe Beach. R.g. Collapses onto a rented beach chair under an umbrella. Nancy (dressed in black), me(in a silk dress and high heels), Rise (in a long dress) and Art, attract some attention on this beach of 1/2 naked Europeans. My first experience, after 5 seconds, I'm at home. We decide to look for some cheap clothes or bathing suits and flip flops to change into. Winding our way through the picturesque streets Nancy is very excited; "how like Portugal" it is. Rise and I buy long Tee shirts in a small tourist shop and change out of our city clothes in a back room. Braless and free we hit the street again. All the time I'd been taking pictures. Everywhere some wonderful sight. Suddenly, my fully automatic technological miracle brand new camera went berserk. The film started to rewind and would not stop. To make a long boring story short, my camera was busted. Don't know how it happened. I am disappointed. It lingers for days. With my camera I was going to bring life on Gomera back with me. R.G and I have been sharing his since this happened but I wanted mine with the telephoto and macro lens. it is now pitch dark. The outside light is on. Pierre-yve has been making a charcoal drawing from the front of our house looking down the small stone path, including the workers house and the mountains beyond. He is drawing with a thick charcoal pencil made like the lead pencils they use for drawing. I ask him about it and he says he will get me one. We are sitting in the main dining room. Nancy next to me, R.G. across and Rise & Art next to him. we are noshing on a pile of dates. R.G. is writing a report on FH's earlier computer system failure. we all waited on the beach at Teneriffe like some washed up flotsam and jetsam. At 2:30 we leave the beach to go down to the dock and the ferry Gomera wondering if Sandro and the others would make it in time or if we would have to go it alone. Sunday Dec. 11, 1988 Wolfgang is playing the Piano in the Banana Hall. This is the big room where we eat all our meals. R.G. stands next to him. Nancy is back at our small cottage, resting. Art and Rise left yesterday. They had to hike over the mountains to San Sebastian to catch the ferry to Teneriffe. it was impossible to leave by boat, the way we arrived, due to a very severe winter storm which totally destroyed 2 small boats they had tied up in the harbor here in Gomera. it is very hard for me to write anything other the most simple, factual things. Meanwhile, all sorts of emotional hurricanes have swept me here and away and here again. Monday Dec. 12, 1988 Otto said I could move in with the group. I cried with relief. It seemed as though R.G. went into shock. Then, a few times with me afterward he played the doubting Thomas role. Now he has started working things out. He is supportive. In bed I feel a great deal of love from him. Other than FH, he has had the greatest impact on my life and I love him for it. I feel excitement tinged with fear that comes with new adventure and change. FH is harsh and beautiful, so is the environment where it takes root. Gomera is fearful, looming, ghostlike, mountains by night. Black sand. Rock everywhere yet the most majestic things spring out of it. Strange, exotic cactus, what Art called a century plant. To an outsider life here must seem as exotic as the plants. Like the Parndorfer plain, this terrain is being transformed. To chose to live here you must believe in constant transformation. Your feelings and your actions as well as your work must be part of this transformation. I must keep moving through my life. I'm driven to move. I don't like the idea of leaving people behind me. I'd like to carry the ones I love along with me but it is not possible. Only when you possess another can you drag them along with you. There is no one I possess. I occasionally have warm thoughts for Peter, the man I was married to for ten years. Now I carry in me pieces of Eddie, Robin, Bill and Richard, the four other most significant men. What can I do for them now that I am leaving? Erika, my secret wish, my strongest desire is that she chooses to come with me. She may give in. My rational mind says don't hold your breath. Richard has been promoting my selling abilities. He's gone a bit overboard I think by saying if I continue as I have I would be the top saleswoman in America. He told me last night he was saying these things. He believes it's true. I trust him in most things but this seemed to be more influenced by his love for me than anything else.