Whoa, oh gentle, light in the loafers, soft as a baby's butt, reader. Tomorrow Sri Gwee Doh gets all hitched up, ties the knot, enters the holy state of matrimony as practiced in this Hellenistic culture. (It is Hellen Earth). We (Athena and I) have spent the last coppola weeks shuffling around, preparing for a wedding. Since neither of us indulges in recreational substances, it will not be a Chemical Wedding (arcane alchemical in joke. yuk yuk yuk. I slay me. Pass the Rosenkreuz, Christian). Then, of course, I must leave this apartment next week, then Agamemnon is off to Venezuela. Oh, what a butterfly life we lead! When I finally move, after we get all of this wedding stuff behind us, I will move my computador and there we go, I will be up pecking away. Then, before long there will be a little fetus creature screaming away into the night who will keep me up and wanting to chat online. Maybe the sound of the rattling keys as I peck away at lightning speed will keep him up. Tough. He's gonna be a computer boy if he is to make it in the 21st century. He will be a fucking genius. He has to be smarter than dear old dad if this is possible. My humility about my own brilliance has always been one of the main ingredients in my killer charm and charisma. The absolute awe-inspiring magnitude of my genius staggers even me, the owner of this magnificent brain. Thus, my spawn must be Leonardo fucking Da Vinci. He must amaze the world and then tell them about his neglected genius father. The opera ain't over 'til the fat lady sings. I see no overweight females on the horizon, and certainly none with a song in their heart.

 So, here I am in in these last days at this quasi-mausoleum apartment of mine.Whatever else comes to pass, I don't think I will regret leaving this place. There has been little joy here, to put it mildly. The place still resonates with a tangible melancholy. It scares people off, no joke. The one bright spot in this place has been here in my computer suite. Here I have reached out and touched many someones. Oh woe is not necessarily me, oh, what a kick in the butt life is. How in the 12 nested universes could I have ever painted this picture of Sri Gwee Doh in the 21st century, even one short year ago? Now the trauma of transition is once again upon us, all of the little Gwee Doh beings boiling around in my heart and mind, we must move we must continue putting one foot in front of the other one day at a time, 12 steps forward, 12 steps back. Twelve-steppin' out with my baby...and yet and yet and yet. As always I sit back and wonder "What de hell you be up to, Big Juju? Whut choo gots in mind fer yer workin' boy now, lawdy lawd?" (In case you don't know, "Big JuJu" is a name invented by the science fiction writer Larry Niven for God. I find it apt more often than not.) Of course, Big Juju moves in a mysterious way, he do a complex tango boogaloo funky chicken step ain't no one can imitate, cause we know he's the king of the cooOOOL JERK!!!! Whoo...praise HIM!/HER/IT!! 

Then, lately I have been biting my tongue speaking with greek orthodox priests who no way were gonna sit and listen to my Sufi rap about God is the friend of friends, closer than our own heartbeat, no, sir. God comes to his people via his chosen messengers, the priests of JAYSUS, bearded old goats with constipated dogma up they butts. Be quiet, Sri Gwee Doh, Christianity is as valid as any other path to the light. Oh, dat Gwee Doh do go on, dancin' 'round the subject like a big old sombrero set up in the middle of the room. It happens as it happens. What what what? 

I have come to the conclusion that the basic questions of Journalism 101 are the basic questions of life. who what when where why are we? Of these, I think the toughest is not 'What?" or even "Why?" But "Where?" Where is "here" when is 'now'? Of course the answer is obvious, Little Richard and Keats said it all in their one and only collaboration CD, "Romanticism and Collard Greens, Biscuits and Gravy"

      "womp bop a lu bop a womp bam boom" 

       That is all ye know, and all ye need know.

Well, I haven't entered anything in this journal for a while. I must content myself with doing so at the ever-popular EEXI, 'The Hellenic Society of Internet Users' which is a place where one can go and surf until one's eyeballs are bloody peeled grapes hanging out on their stalks for a small fee per month. It's where I started before I had my own computer, folk. The main thing of note is that Agamemnon ended its Athens run and we are soon off to Venezuela. There is even talk of taking it to Zurich in the winter. Agamemnon never dies. He is taking over my soul. Also worthy of note, I watched the other day as a determined Greek guy bashed the shit out of a 35 mm camera on a steel rail outside the theatre. He had an absolutely blank expression on his face as he did this. Once finished, he took the inner electronics from the camera and walked away. Nothing said. A bit later a garbage truck ran over the camera itself, splintering it without so much as a second thought. This town is full of little scenes like this. They defy reason, yet they engage voyeurs of life's passing parade like myself. Carnival just ended with "Clean Monday", the start of Orthodox Lent. You haven't lived until you have seen hordes of Greeks wearing velveteen harlequin hats and carrying multicolored plastic clubs walking aimlessly down the street, pummeling each other at random and munching on souvlaki. On "Clean Monday" one flies kites. The skies are full of kites, which one may purchase ready-made from roadside gypsies. One may purchase any and all holiday accessories, including the aforementioned harlequin hats and plastic clubs from these same roadside gypsies. This explains their uniformity. I also noted a skull costume for sale which featured a blood pump. An outer transparent layer and a re-circulating hand pump accomplished this remarkable effect. I am married for a week now. I haven't moved my computer to my new digs. That is why I am sitting here and that is why this entry is not particularly well-written. The stock market plummeted yesterday and the greeks rioted outside the stock exchange. Ho hum. The big news is I BOUGHT A CELL PHONE TODAY!!!
It was a wedding gift from Athena's mother. I won't give you the number because I hate you. I have to wait a few more hours for the account to go online and then watch out world. I'm wired and I got an axe to grind.
More from your working boy later.
Liebe,
His Oiliness Sri Pastananda Gwee Doh Rinpoche

June 17, 2000

Dear reader mine, oh gentle, schooled in Switzerland, refined, well-mannered, soft and velvety suede-skinned reader, sorry that I have been away from this page so damnably long. Did you miss me? Did you sit up at night in front of your television knowing that the internet was no longer of any value whatsoever without a new entry in "Guido's Eye" to peruse? I cannot blame you. Old Uncle Guido knows your pain, and he now takes steps to remedy it, to give you a collective cheek massage if you will. It has truly broken my heart, je suis tres desolee, es tut mir leid, many many appy polly loggys.

Much hydrogen oxide has flowed under the span since last I besmirched these pages with smut. I have been living what I am obliged to call "my life" since no one else occupies these fetching spectator pumps, these sandals, these size 12 (euro 46) Nike Air sneakers, unless, that is, someone has been sneaking in at night to walk a mile in my slippers. In earth terms, only I live here in my brain, at least that is what THEY want me to think.

Since so much of the tiresome verbiage here encoded has concerned the ancient Greek sitcom "Agamemnon" and my role in it, it is only just that I clue you into its denouement. We dragged old Ag's sorry ass all the way to Caracas, Venezuela for the international theatre festival in that city in April. I must refer to my physcial, handwritten journal here since the memory is far from fresh (ooh, Spazz23, how 20th century! How uncybernetic of the old boy!) I will insert comments as necessary and/or dictated by the Nescafe I have injected into my eye.

7/4/00 SABANA GRANDE, CARACAS Cafe Maron Scuro, Sabana Grande (tr. extra strength Venezuelan coffee with three molecules of milk to mellow it out). Sun goes down, salsa in l'aria, mi pana (everyone is venezuela is "mi pana" to everyone else, a genderless expression meaning 'pal') Las' night, dancin 'til 5 a.m., salsa salsa salsa, wigglin' women, sweatin', Greeks tryin like tourists to keep up. REMEMBER: Taxi ride in Ford Conquistador, Salsa pumpin' out the radio through the latino magic circus Caracas night. "Arepas de Pollo" (a corn flour pita type thing, containing one of many fillings, chicken in this case. what? okay, enough comments) Playin' fiddle to the tree frogs, E F-G Mi Fa Sol, Phasin' with Clave type high sounds. Arepas comin' out my ears "Conida tu madre pana. Chamada, chevre!" (some colorful local spanish dialect stolen from the indians) Ay, que lindas chicas aqui! Ayyyyyy! This is mi gente, esto es mi cultura. 

Oh yes, race seems to be no prob. here. All blended beautifully brown, black, white-skinned creole beauties. I am "latino" in this scheme of things. I fit. I am quantifiable. No doubt here, at least. None of the usual "Are you Italian? Greek? Jewish? Arab? (a lot of "are you an arab?"), Armenian? etc. (See "The Tao of Swarthiness" by His Oiliness Sri Pastananda Gwee Doh Rinpoche.) Sun go down...Otra vez cafe, senor....

And so on. Still with me? Well, that was Venezuela. Agamemnon is currently in suspended animation, perhaps to re-emerge in Switzerland in October. Who knows? Perhaps this time we will get paid.
After Venezuela, I returned to Greece to settle down to some ritual abuse and hormonal high-orbit shenanigans with Athena, my wife since April 9. At this sitting, she is just into the 9th month of preggership, bakin' that bun to a turn in the oven as little Guido Junior prepares to emerge complete with shades and moustache into El Mundo and become another customer of Samsara, Maya, illusion.

I done went to Italy in May to work with Alfonso Santagata, a noted actore chappy in the Tuscan region. We will perform a series of skits, and/or japes based upon the sayings of the noted Hebrew humorist, Isaiah. I should, of course, be working upon this project rather than pecking away here, but as they say in New York, 'what the fuck?'
Of note in this experience was the place we stayed and worked, a "Castello" on the sea at Castiglioncello. I was wont to stroll a 'widow's walk' which did a circuit of the castle ramparts, gazing mystically out to sea and drinking the moon's reflection upon the 'mare nostrum' Rome's quaint term for our old wobbly blue pal, the MED. I saw my first ever fireflies in the sculpture-infested grounds of this place. Honestly, I found myself thinking that such a place was so damned ENCHANTED that it was a kitsch joke on God's part. Too much, dude, strolling through the Italian pines with the full moon in the sky, a fountain featuring a marble cupid with dolphin spewing water into a basin gurgle gurgling in the distance, fireflies sparkling away in the humid Medici Leonardo da Vinci haunted Renaissance night. Pass me the thorazine, Jethro, I think I am having an acid flashback. Fetch my velvet pantaloons and my lute, doctor.

Now I am free to resume boring you to death with the little details of life in The Big Olive, or Athens as we have come to know and love her. Yesterday, par example, I went to declare myself a visible entity, to surface, to emerge from many many years of underground existence as a solid burgher, registered-type alien with papers to prove it, officer. Calling beauracracy in Europe "Kafkaesque" is about as redundant as wasting valuable mental processing power to inform us that water is wet. Near the main torture station for immigrants in Athens is a little private business which knows everything required by the meatheads in the enormous edifice which literally casts its shadow over them. It is well-hidden, and it is not unlike the Advocate's office in "The Trial". They are courtiers to the bureau which they serve. They are ready to make the photocopies, fill out the declarations, take the photos, all in triplicate and triple triplicate...all what you need to become resident here and be free to wash windows or sell Chinese novelty items at the traffic lights. On this excursion into the nether regions I was fortunate to be accompanied by my pregnant wife Athena, big-bellied as the day is long and fluent in Greek since it is her mother tongue. Amazing how that works. In this wise, the Kafka element of my experience was lessened by greek sympathy for pregnant women, which turns the hardest bastard official into an old softy.Thank buddha. 

The papers is now filed, folk, and I await the white card which grants me entry into Festung Europa, the northeastern sector of the New World Order.Of note, I suppose was a Russian mafia-type guy with a couple of large-breasted young russian girls in tow. He pulled out a huge wad of bills to pay the "fees" to the officials. No doubt a very generous and helpful friend of russian immigrants, working selflessly on behalf of young russian women in need of work. Otherwise, it was/is the usual hopeless gaggle of dark and desperate people on the run from war, misery, poverty, looking to gain entry into the new america, old mother europe.

Our American readers will have no notion of these things, of course. Thus it is, thus it was, thus shall it ever be, a war was fought and lost not far from here, folk, the epic struggle between the Russians and the Americans, it is only now limping to its conclusion. The steady stream of amputees, walking wounded of all sorts from Russia, Romania, Albania, Kosovo, etc. is nothing more or less than the usual exodus of displaced entities after the fall of an empire. Ho hum. Pass the remote control, Victor.

I now return control of your television set to you. I am off. I am not finished, I just hate you, that's all. No. I love you, oh gentle reader, mine, I am Jane Austin to your Heathcliffe or some kind of damn English Lit. garbage. That's what you get for reading only science fiction all your life. Ah well, as Fred Flintstone said when Pebbles spewed Welch's Grape Juice all over Bam Bam "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow rolls by in this petty pace. Yabba. Dabba. Doo"
Until we meet agin, yer workin' boy signin' off.
Oh yes, go to the home page of this mess and check out the latest on the Elvisian ambassador thing. If you don't want to, don't bother. Hell with it. Good night Mrs. Macgillicuddy. Rochester, have you been cadging my cigar butts again?

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