Monday, July 2, 1979 letter to Tone

Hello Tuna: and here is another letter from my diary about life here.
Last night it seemed like a new trend is emerging: overcoming one's
parents.  Robert was in the middle and speaking about his father who did
suicide at 36.  He also fought with Otto and "won".  Then a standing
ovation.  The first time I've seen that here.  A few days ago I told
Claudia about a place in the US that works with children like Lilly.
The idea of speaking to her about this made me nervous.  I thought she
would get mad at me for suggesting that something was wrong with Lilly.
But no such thing happened.  She was pleased with it and,
misunderstanding me, said she would have to know more about this place
before she would go to the US.  So then I immediately started having
fantasies about going to America and starting a group with her.

Late Monday evening...  Kinderdienst this evening.  The 4 middle
children are now sleeping with their mothers again.  They found it too
chaotic with them together.  It was fun to play with Adam and Beni.  The
same game and tricks work over and over again with them.  They pretend
to do something bad while I'm not looking, or jump on me, then I fight
back, spank and tickle them till they beg for mercy.  It stops for a
moment then starts again.  Vinci fell off his bed, woke Otis up and
brought me and several others running.  Once Vinci was back to sleep
Otis seemed to prefer me to hold him.  He likes me a lot and sometimes
says hello during the day.  An interesting experience with Vera this
evening.  She came to me and starting wrestling, poking me etc, sat in
my lap.  She played my little baby.  Then a fight.  Then she started
jogging and we played another old game where they start running in
place, swinging their arms, or some other exercise, and I tell them "No
jogging!" and try to stop them.  It works for a moment then they start
again.  And so on.  But this time it made me horny, reminded me of
Cheyenne, who was 7 on June 6.  They we had a plain old fight with
wrestling, biting, bone-breaking, punching, etc.  It was a draw.  Tonite
is my third night of sleeping alone.  There is something different about
fucking now.  When something happens between me and a woman, and the
feeling/desire comes over me, it is immediately followed by the blood
turning to sand, a bear jumping out of the bushes, fear of being
rejected, and then the first feeling gets completely flooded and I
resist the urge to go further.  I even see myself avoiding physical
contact.  Otmar says he will see me tomorrow and I immediately find
myself in the bind of deciding to say something about what's going on
with me or should I just keep to business?  What a stupid thing to be
fighting about in my head.  What to do is obvious.  What to do is almost
always obvious but something in me gets depressed and stubborn.  But
lately I notice these two things becoming separate.
     Its not clear what this means but it just came over me.  Ivana has
just finished attacking me and nearly kissing and tickling me to death.
She has 8 days of quarantine to go and says she loves me.  The same for
me.  We wrestle a lot.  I tell her she can be my next couple
relationship.  She says no.  We will see.  But maybe that's something I
am over now that a situation with only one woman can't happen again.  It
is almost tomorrow when Ebi and I must speak with people from 2 computer
companies.  They will visit FH.

{Friday, December 9, 1994, email from Chris:

     I've been enjoying your recent flurry of FH diary entries--you know
I get a much much stronger sense of YOU then I did from reading CC '76.
Not sure if this is because I have 8 BIG years experience under my belt
since then or because your FH writing deals much more with your own
inner workings than CC '76 and more recent writings where you were
perhaps not so insecure and were more able to focus on others, exterior
events.  No, maybe it's not so much that as that in FH you seem to be
really struggling to keep up with density of events, mostly on your
heels, reacting whereas in CC '76, even though relationship with Simone
etc. was wild, YOU the narrator seemed more in control than all the
other characters.
	So, what's going on now? You communicate less about the present
that at any other time since I've known you.  Is that because it's less
vital for you just now?
	My theatre here is in transition, which places me in transition,
and the nature of this transition is one of waiting rather than one
where components are stirred up.  I want to make that change, and yet
affection for people around me here keeps me waiting, hoping that change
will come to me without my having to leave to create it.

to which Richard says:

     What you say about the density of FH is true.  Never have I had so
dense, such a dense, experience.  On the other hand, one never ever
really got behind.  I mean, you might feel that from time to time.  But
the real life there was formed in a way that almost made the modern
malaise/affliction of being perpetually behind, late, late, late...
impossible.  The behind/late thing was simply reformed into the present.
Peculiar and almost a paradox on thinking about it now.}