Guitars Take Trips, But They Ain't No Piano

(Blah, blah, blah. There was text here, but I cut it, need it for something else. Summary: a guitar works in a limited way for a singer and musician who loves the piano, but better than nothing, and my guitar went from London to Damascus to Bahrain to Santa Monica and Seattle.)



And now I'm blaming you because I don't have a piano or a house in which to play it. Try and make sense of that.



(Meanwhile, tomorrow is the first day of November and NaNoWriMo, so I'll be busy writing 225 pages of the next book over the month and this is likely the last post for a bit.)



#Bahrain #NaNoWriMo

Was protecting you a gift?

I wonder if you ever realized that this suggestion was a gift from me:  that we remove ourselves from outside and your car near the beach one night to inside a Yusef bin Ahmad Kanoo villa nearby. 

I said it was the sand and then the need for a shower afterwards, even while we had been eager at the car, outside the car to be more precise. You agreed and we moved inside the house where, you may recall, there was a small dinner party in honor of your Saudi friend Prince Bandar. Somebody lost something somewhere, remember? I do. Gulf Air stewardess. We all had a good laugh about who might find what was lost.

At least one of us was aware on the beach that night that Bahrain is a small island with a lot of eyes and very fast gossip. Your enemies could have had a field day. I stopped it that time. At least one of them was at the party.

The First Marriage

You asked me every time we met if I've married again.

I did not. I never married anyone but you.

I love this photograph which you sent me along with a love letter after I was sent away from you (one of the times when I was sent away from you.) You didn't like the photo because you'd shaved off your mustache and felt that it made you look like a monkey with a cigarette in your mouth. Remember?

Chapter

Hindsight

Hindsight becomes even more clear with age, but photos and diaries plus education and interest provide not only clarity, but understanding, an important aid in writing a memoir.

It doesn't surprise me at my age to discover documentation appearing to show that various intelligence agencies, both British and American, had an interest in our relationship from the onset when we were teenagers of 15 and 16 to the last meeting at your office in the Ministry of Defense over 15 years later.

It did surprise me to identify some of those involved over 50 years after the fact, and I'm not referring to your uncles, whose sources you were well aware of.

Home Videos

          I just found out something that I did not know, or if I did, that I'd long forgotten. It's so exciting. I will try to figure out how to make a CD out of it and send you a copy, for Old Times' sake, if you want one. You won't have to share it with anyone else. It's between the two of us, and as you could recall from context, we were still innocent teenagers. You were 16 that January. I was 17.

Even though I don't like you at all anymore, I cannot resist looking back at the photos and diaries and such, especially since I've been writing these letters to you as well as working on The Project. They bring those warm feelings rather than the others described over the years in this format. I like reverie. I look at the earliest photos and can still sink into love again. It's ridiculous, I know, but it is the nature of star-crossed love. Even broken promises, betrayal and abandonment cannot change it. Old photos.

Remember just before you went back to England for spring term in 1966 and we were at my family's house and we were having fun behind the long curtain between the living room and dining room? Mother filmed us that day! I knew that she'd used her video camera sometimes, including at the horse races and the stables, and that she'd made photos and home movies of what I think could now be considered all "The Players." I don't really give a hoot about those, but I'm happy about the one that is you and me in Manama. Perhaps it will take the pain of Now away for a moment. A home movie!