Fun_People Archive
29 Nov
More from Amsterdam

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 99 15:17:25 -0800
To: Fun_People
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Subject: More from Amsterdam

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=From: xaviera hollander <xaviera@xs4all.nl>
Before you tune out, please tune in to my new theatre website
http://www.xaviera.com


Here follows an email [message] from John Perry Barlow, a most charismatic
man I got to know a few years ago during a big Internet congress in
Amsterdam and who I admired for years as part of the inspiring members of
the Grateful Dead musical group. We have been in email contact ever since.
It so happened that his beloved mother died merely a few weeks before mine
and we have both been very sorrowful and touched by those events as you can
well imagine. This might even have brought us closer together afterwards !

Here follows first of all my updated website that reflects the theatrical
activities I am involved in. I have been keeping extremely busy, a,o.
started to do a BED AND BREAKFAST at my house for a few selective people.
So, if any of you decides to come to Amsterdam and is looking for a place
to stay let me know. Or send interesting friends, I have two terrific cooks
at hand, who both live under the same roof as I do.


John Perry Barlow wrote:
B a R L o W F R i e N D Z ----->
A continuing series of occasional outbursts to 890 of my dearest
 friends. Please let me know if you wish to be removed from this
list. But you'll miss some great parties if you do...

 Dear Ones,

 So much time has passed since the last BarlowSpam that many of you, now
 close to my heart, have never received one of these. This one will be
 shorter than usual.

 A great deal has happened in my life since I last blasted you with a couple
 of hard obituaries back in July and then fell silent. I kind of "went to
 the mattresses" as they say down here in Little Italy.  Hunkered down.
 Mourned.

 Dealt with a lot of physical pain too, including a spine that seems
 permanently hosed, and responds to no therapy, as well as some fairly
 savage surgery in which they removed the titanium bolts from my shoulder
 (placed there after my skiing accident last spring), my vibratory
 life-style having jiggled them back out far enough to pling the tendons in
 my rotator cuff.

 There were other trials as well, any full account of which would sound like
 whining, which is, and should be, a hanging matter in Wyoming. Suffice it
 to say that 1999 has not been an easy year in my life. And I haven't
 handled it all that gracefully.

 Instead of taking "some time to reflect," as John Kennedy advised me in an
 e-mail he sent minutes before leaving for the airport, I've been drinking
 too much, smoking too much (and for me, any of either would be too much,
 of course), travelling too much, sleeping too little, working too hard,
 and generally having a kind of hurtling nervous breakdown.

 I also found myself neglecting my e-mail, including the many concerned
 messages I've been getting from various BarlowFriendz, inquiring into the
 sources of my lengthy e-taciturnity, thinking themselves stricken from this
 list. And when I didn't respond to these either, thinking themselves
 stricken from my life.

 But I awoke yesterday morning, Thanksgiving, with the certain realization
 that what I've really been doing *much* too much is feeling sorry for
 myself. Hard to admit, but there it is.

 I lay there for awhile and thought of you folks, many of you individually,
 and realized what an ingrate I have become. How could anyone with such a
 marvelous collection of loving and fascinating friends feel anything but
 blessed?

 I thought of my three daughters, still sleeping in the other rooms of my
 apartment, all of them elegant, eloquent, intelligent, gorgeous, and game.
 How could anyone surrounded by three such graces have so trivial regard
 for his own survival as I've had lately?

 And what of the other, almost daily epiphanies that have also been my
 bounty these last few months? It is suddenly and pellucidly clear that to
 him from whom much is taken, much is also granted.

 But I have wandered, glazed over and insensible, through this shower of
 little miracles, as if they were an inconvenient distraction from my
 melancholy.

 Well, to hell with that. I am sick of being sick of it. Enough already.
 I'm back. Or at least I will now try very hard to get back.

 This an extraordinary time to be alive and I am graced to be squarely
 placed in the middle of the marvels of this "age of miracle and wonder."
 I have a remarkably long lever posed against a pivotal moment in history
 and I need to put my back into it, sore or not.  Few have ever been in a
 better position to be a good ancestor than I

 am right now. So I will quit moping and return to the great work I've been
 graced with.

 And I am truly sorry to have been such a lousy friend lately. I will do
 better to deserve you. At least, I will certainly try.

 I might not come out of it right away. This isn't a movie. Some of these
 bad habits of heart may be difficult to break. But I feel the gratitude
 that entered me yesterday morning still shimmering.

 Thank you all very much for bearing with me. You are my redeemers.

 Love,

 Barlow


Xaviera wrote
 Hi John... so sorry to hear that you had such a tremendous dip, both
 emotionally as well as physically. I myself have experienced an enormous
 dive into the deep end emotionally in particular, right through the dying
 process of my beloved Mom..  We had a bizarre symbiotic relationship and in
 fact she was really all I had as far as family is concerned. You know what
 I did when I was watching over her during the last few days of her life on
 earth, I started writing a book about US.  This by the way was the very
 first book I have written in 12 years. Had suffered from so-called writer's
 block and she released that feeling.  I may call it tentatively THE DYING
 GAME or CHILD NO MORE... and each time when I feel depressed or down I go
 behind the computer, often as early as 7 a.m. after only having had 4 hours
 of sleep or so. And when nobody is around I sit and type and sometimes
 cry.. behind the machine when I write one chapter after the other..
 Sometimes it takes for ever, other times it just flows.  When I have done
 my three hours of work and other activities call my attention, I have a
 hot bath, regain my thoughts for the rest of the day and feel nicely purged
 of all sorrow again.

 It is not a book like the Happy Hooker, about sex and kinks, of course, but
 yet this new book, is probably every bit as emotional as I have ever felt
 about the two people that brought me into this world, gave me their love
 and wisdom, kept me alive in the war and who are both unfortunately no
 longer with me any more.

 I have also started producing several top quality English theater plays
 both at my house as well as in bigger theaters, meanwhile forming great
 bonding with a growing group of young dynamic, idealistic people who are
 all helping me make this theater project a success: the X TEAM. I hope you
 don't mind that I in turn use your letter as part of my own newsletter I
 owe people for quite a long time.

 At the same time I might as well send you my updated private website which
 states all the activities I am involved in lately, regarding theatrical
 events as well as the synopsis of my new book.  Be well and be happy in
 the year 2000. Love Xaviera

--

Xaviera

===

You are only young once,
And if you work it right,
Once is enough.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~xaviera
theatre productions http://www.xaviera.com
only send pictures, no .exe's!

© 1999 Peter Langston